Richard called while I was out with Mary Dougherty learning to drive, but my phone was at home, so I got this message:

"Hey, Mackenzie, this is your fake-dad calling. I am in Oregon, dancing away, contra and zydeco, and I've been dancing with this young woman, who is maybe, 1 or two years older than you, and I think you would totally fall in love with her if you had the chance to meet her. I told her the same about you. So, you can call me back if you want, and I can tell you more about her. Her name is Katie, she lives in Portland."

My order of thoughts went: 1) Why is he telling me this, this is so random, portland is far away. 2) Aww, thats sweet, he is actually acknowledging that I'm bi. That's kind of awesome. that makes him so much more worthy of fake fatherhood. 3) Why did I not know about this dance weekend? this sounds awesome! zydeco! 4) *visions of fun and dacing and zydeco.* It has been so long since I've been to a dace weekend.

I guess I might call him back. He might know what he is talking about. (I am reminded of cos)


IN OTHER NEWS:

Chapter 3: "Mackenzie drives on Sacramento" - Mary.
Mary has this habit of narrating when I do something awesome and new: Mackenzie drives stick shift and Mackenzie drives in third.

I drove home from North Berkeley Bart, and around in that neighborhood a bit, with signaling and shifting into 3rd a lot, and only turning on a windsheild wiper once, and stopping to find the horn to honk at a raven eating something out of the middle of the street (the raven, not me), and not hitting J-walking pedestrians, and giving ride of way and all sorts of nfty law-abiding. Stick-shift is a great way to be sure you are not exceeding the speed limit, to a degree.

I also did a smidgen of parallel parking, and actually did two three point turns on city streets.

I made one guys day by waiting for him to cross the parking lot before he even got out of a different crosswalk and over the barracade toward the next area. He was laughin up a storm quite amiably, and me, needing to respond somehow or another while sitting there, put my moose ear antlers up the apples of my cheeks and wiggled my fingers. He laughed harder, and said, "Thank you for making my day!" Mary and I were laghing up a storm too. She likes to laugh so we were laughing a lot of the time, at, things the WERE genuinely quite funny. Like honking at the raven. It didn't understand horn, mary said, maybe it understands car. It did. I inched up a foot and it fluttered away.

BUt hey, AWESOME!

p.s. the two of us are such nerds that we sing while we are driving. Mary matches the cars pitches, like a kid with a toy car (or she did when she was learning), and I make sound effects.