I'm Gonna Make You Cry

I stumbled upon this beautiful website. It will make you cry if you have a heart. Or at least almost cry. Or at the very least contemplate the possibility of crying.

The premise is very simple: people hold old pictures and superimpose them over the location in the present, creating a cool looking visual with an emotional punch. Please do check the website, but here are my three favourite pictures to give you a taste:

Dear photograph, dad never took a picture of me, ever. Then I noticed his reflection in the glass.

Dear photograph, can you tell him to turn around? I wanna see that cute little baby face again.

Dear photograph, we outgrew our clothes, but never the visits with you, daddy.

Actually these are not really my favourite three pictures. I liked many more, but decided to only choose three rather than just strip off most of that website and recreate it here in one blog post.

The website is touching for various reasons, but mostly for reminding us how fast time goes by and how before we know it our present will become our past. A past we long for when we never truly appreciated it when we originally lived through it.

How long before Blake will abandon any toddler traits and then suddenly plunge into adolescence? All of a sudden this magnificently cute and beautiful creature will cease to exist outside of pictures and videos, replaced by a sultry door slamming teenager. At least we have pictures and videos, I suppose. The poor cavemen must have sat by a cave wall and sighed heavily at scratchy drawings of their little ones who were now young little men hunting Mammoths and Sabre-toothed Tigers.

I don't for a second wish for Blake to be frozen in time. I want him to grow up and experience all the amazing stages of childhood. I want him to make life-long friendships, to fall in love, to travel the world and see amazing sights, to fulfill his dreams, to have a satisfying career, to have children and grandchildren. To get the collector's edition boxset of Six Feet Under. For all of that to happen time must move forward and Blake needs to grow up and age.

Besides, it's not like anybody cares what I wish. It's going to happen anyway. No one can freeze time (expect for that chick from Charmed, but she's not real).

I want Blake to grow up and kick my ass playing videogames. I want him to wow me with new things he can do and eventually surpass me in many areas. Nothing will make me prouder.

But I won't deny that I am saddened by the idea that one day the only way for me to spend time with the current version, Blake 3.1, will be through pictures. I am already forever seperated from Blake 1.0 and Blake 2.0.

Blake is asleep now, but I'm sure he won't mind if I'll sneak over for a quick cuddle.

Mickey

Pick of the Day.

I'm Bloggers.com's editor pick of the day and while I'm grateful for any acknowledgement, I'm not quite jumping for joy. There are three different bloggers featured every day and I've been around for months, so it seems to me as if they just got to me as they were working their way through the people who registered with the directory.

As a result I got five visits via Bloggers.com and fifteen friend requests, meaning that at least ten people requested to become my friend simply because I was featured without even bothering to check my blog. Really warms my heart. Five referred visitors on the day I am featured... One must wonder what is the point in joining any of those blogging directories...

Bloggers.com hasn't even cracked into the top ten websites that directed traffic to my blog. Most of my visitors come from my other websites (including the Facebook page), other blogs, random Google searches and mostly repeat visitors. I would love to crack the code and get more traffic, but I am fairly happy with what I have going on right now.

It's going to be a very interesting summer and I hope to blog along, so stick around.

Mickey

London Gay Dads

London is wasted on me. There are so many features of this city that attract people from all over the world, but for me they are just so boring and tedious and even borderline repulsive. One of those things, as I was reminded on Thursday, was the gay scene in Soho.

Over three years after creating the Gay Parents in London Facebook group we finally had a gay dads get-together. Unfortunately the meeting place was The Yard in central London.

As soon as I walked in I had flashbacks to the last time I went out to a pub years ago and remembered why I haven't bothered since. It was a fairly big pub crowded with people standing around and loud music blasting from every corner forcing people to shout directly into each other's ears to be heard. Add to that the fact that I totally don't get the appeal of alcohol and I am left utterly unable to understand why anyone would decide to spend a few hours there.

But to each their own. Obviously the crowd of people was enjoying themselves so who am I to judge, Judy?

I had to pee so I popped into the toilets and was dismayed to find a big fat slob lurking by the sink. You see, I don't really mind it when in an extra posh restuarant you go to the toilets and it's all shiney and sparkly and a man in a suit squirts soap and lotion into your hands, opens and closes the tap for you and hands you a nice folded towel to dry your hands. You tip him, but it's worth it because it makes you feel like a prince. But at The Yard it was the usual smelly pub toilets with a fat slob wearing a dirty t-shirt, squirting cheap soap on my hands and handing me a crumpled paper towel. To make the experience even more fun he then heavily hinted at the tip plate. Here, take a coin, you miserable waste of space and oxygen, why won't you put it in a special fund to save up for training that will help you get an actual job that actually benefits someone.

When I realized The Yard wasn't the type of establishment that serves food I popped out to McDonalds for a quick bite. I know McDonalds isn't the type of establishment that serves food either, but I was famished and not very picky. When I came back I finally bothered looking up the other gay dads.

Much as I don't like pubs in general and the Yard in particular, the group has decided to gather on the open air terrace which was actually not too bad. No loud music and sort-of fresh air (certainly fresher than being stuck in a box with dozens of people where it's likely at least one of them is farting at any given time).

Anyway, the meeting. It was great. It was fun meeting people I knew only from Facebook for years. There were all types of gay dads: via surrogacy, co-parenting with a lesbian couple, previously married to a woman, child abductor and so on. Actually I'm kidding about the last one.

The one thing we all had in common was how much we loved our children and structured our lives around them. While gay parents have it much easier today in terms of society and the law (certainly in big modern cities like London), there is still a lot of unique emotional baggage and it was nice to talk to other dads and see that we share many of the same insecurities, doubts and worries.

One fun moment was when I said something about Blake and one of the dads replied "I know, I read it on your blog." That was a bit out of left field, meeting someone for the first time who has read my blog and has the advantage of knowing a lot more about me than I know about them. Had I known I was meeting fans I would've worn a cocktail dress and brought signed autographs!

I hope to see these people again soon. The problem with previous attempts to meet was trying to please everyone and find a date that works for everybody, which is practically impossible. A couple of weeks ago one of the guys just announced a time and place and that worked. Obviously not everyone could make it, but we finally had a meeting. How frustrating it is that we didn't organize such meetings three years ago and only started now when my time in England is coming to an end.

Still, better later than ever.

I forgot to take any pictures during the
night, so here's a picture of a YoYo.

Mickey