Live Blogging on the 15th: Our Normal, Boring Gay Lives

7:49 a.m. Up betimes -- except for the dogs, who after waking us and getting us in the living room, went promptly back to sleep -- and ready for an indoor day of cooking and website management. Outdoors it's the first day of firearm deer season in Michigan -- another good reason to hunker down.

Fellow Traveler, who got up first, helped me get a head start on dinner -- white chicken chili, featuring locally grown navy beans from our friend Farmer Ken and homegrown hardneck garlic from Pleva's in Cedar. As soon as I get enough caffeine in my bloodstream I am going to make us a warming farmhouse breakfast with fried potatoes and ham steak.

I hear the kitchen calling.

10:28 a.m. We had a glorious breakfast...I made our fried potatoes with multi-colored fingerlings we'd found at Gallagher's Market in Traverse City during our last venture up north, so our taters were a crazy quilt of calico colors -- yellow, purple, pink. And now the house smells like my Aunt M's farmhouse kitchen; homey and cozy.

We are trying to get a good photo of the backyard squirrel pilfering suet from our bird feeder. So far our resident rodent has not solved the problem of our squirrel-proof feeder, but I don't hold out a lot of hope that it won't figure out some way to monkeywrench the mechanics.

This morning we're working on our church website -- we're co-webmeisters of this project -- and on the website of our local gym, which we're managing in exchange for free memberships. I love bartering. I'm trying to find some area farmer who sells directly to consumers, who'd be willing to trade meat or veg for our web services: Will compute for food!

1:59 After discovering that we're all out of cumin -- not acceptable on chili-making day -- I had to make a short field trip to the local supermarket. I brought along The Girls, who've been getting stir-crazy at home (taking a fawn-colored dog to the local recreational area for a run is not a good plan today, when the fields and woods are filled with hunters of varying degrees of expertise, in various stages of sobriety); when I pulled into the supermarket parking lot they looked at me in dismay, as if to say, You called us into the Jeep for this? So for a consolation prize I drove through town and over to the Mast farm, where I bought some onions from their roadside farmstand (commerce done on the honor system, an old margarine tub with a slotted lid filling in as cash register) and The Girls got a thrill barking at the Masts' sheepdog. Two small barefooted children watched us from the farmhouse doorway.

We watched Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood on TV. We wanted to follow with the Michigan game at noon; instead we find we're watching Ohio State. We're waiting for the MSU game at 3:00 p.m. (We live in a house divided, but over the past three years I have helped ease my partner into a marginal tolerance for Michigan State football.) Fellow Traveler is updating our church website; I'm providing editorial assistance from the other sofa. At some point I need to rouse myself and collect a washload of socks. Maybe in awhile.

4:54 pm. An MSU blackout; drat. So we're working on our websites and sipping wine. The socks are still on the closet floor. The four-leggeds are outside terrorizing the local squirrel population. I love our cozy, quiet Saturdays together.

8:35 pm. FT is still putting finishing touches on the church website. The trouble is, our pets keep interfering in the process; Mollie the cat just jumped on the sofa, walked on the laptop keyboard and turned the computer off.

I've been reading accounts of today's demonstrations in support of marriage equality, on Andrew Sullivan's blog and elsewhere, and it's very encouraging...even if the mainstream media, judging from websites, were trying to find instances of confrontation and bad behavior. To our community's credit, most of the day's events were peaceful, civil and devoid of acting out. Pride indeed.

So, anyway...as you have seen, we lead very mundane lives here. But we live them together, in a spirit of love, respect, service and fidelity.