I should have thought to write a dedicated post about Becca's baby shower over the weekend, which I normally do with events like this—and I just, totally spaced it. I think, mostly because I remain rather focused on the long project of my photos from Australia. I've actually finished adding captions to all the photos on Flickr that were also shared on my socials; between those and the captions pasted over from my photo digest emails, a pretty good percentage of them are now also captioned on Flickr. Beyond that, I have returned to adding all the tags, as I tab one by one through the main feed of photos in chronological order in my Flickr account. More than anything, this has meant adding tags for specific skyscrapers I've gotten many photos of, of which there were many in Brisbane in particular—and I am now near the end of the photos from the visit in that city. I've got
fourteen shots of Brisbane Skytower, the tallest building in Brisbane;
twenty shots of "The One," Brisbane's second-tallest;
sixteen shots of 1 William Street which is only Brisbane's third-tallest on the technicality of its spire; and a whopping
26 shots of Infinity Tower, Brisbane's fourt-tallest (third-tallest by roof height), largely because of all the particularly tall buildings, that one was both closest to our hotel as well as the area we mostly stuck to; also because it has a particularly interesting design, looking like radically different buildings depending on which side you see it from.
Anyway! I spent a lot of time on that stuff, and neglected to post about the baby shower on Saturday evening, or even yesterday morning, as I should have.
Shobhit made an observation on our way home that hadn't even registered to me: nearly everyone at the baby shower was from Tyler's family. Shobhit and I were truly the only two from her family who made it, which made me even more glad that we went.
This isn't especially a dig on the rest of the family, mind you. Becca is far closer to the family that lives in Spokane or Wallace, Idaho (Nikki, TJ, Christian and Braeden in Spokane; Christopher and Tristen in Wallace) and they just can't easily travel across the state very often. Christopher actually made it for Sherri's birthday on Easter last year; Nikki didn't. The inverse is true: all the rest of us made it to Wallace for Father's Day in 2021, and again for Christopher's 50th birthday last year, but Becca and Tyler did not. Furthermore, although Dad and Sherri as well as Angel and Gina live in Olympia, Becca has never known them that well. She knows Dad and Sherri more closely than any of the others, surely, but Dad and Sherri don't know anyone else at all who would have been at that party and likely wouldn't have been super comfortable as a result. (Again: not a judgment.)
Among Becca's family that actually lives in Western Washington, Shobhit and I are the closest to where she and Tyler live in Lake Stevens (outside Everett), and also have spent the most time with her, historically speaking: I had her visit me
eight different summer weekends while she was growing up, with an additional day spent together in 2013. We have a history. I think Becca would have accepted it fine were Shobhit and I unable to make it, and probably wouldn't have even been surprised, necessarily—but it was important to me personally that we come, especially since we were specifically invited. I have no idea who all else was invited, but once I realized that we were the only family of Becca's who made it, I was doubly glad we came.
Shobhit had it in his head that we might be the only men there, because baby showers are traditionally women-only. He didn't say this part, but I suspect he thought maybe we were invited as gay guys who are also traditionally seen as "honorary women" in contexts like these. Indeed, when we got out of the car, he said, "If it's all women we should leave pretty quickly." This wasn't a dig on women, mind you, just the idea that he might feel out of place if we were the only, let's say, "sausages" in the house.
Baby showers really don’t work like that anymore, though, and as it turned out, every person who was married among the guest list came as a couple. For every adult straight woman who was there, an adult straight man came along—the "dads" even
participated in a game where they raced to see how could suck apple juice out of a baby bottle the fastest. (The all discovered it was a lot harder than they thought it would be.)
Tyler even participated in the eyes-closed baby diaper changing race.
At least two other pairs played this game, including
the hosts, Brennan ("Bree" to her friends and coworkers) and Allie, who have apparently been close, best friends since early childhood. They both work as Executive Assistants, having met at Microsoft, where Bree still works but Allie is now at Amazon. The party was at Bree's house, which was in Maple Valley, kind of the opposite direction of where I initially thought we'd be going, where Becca and Tyler live in Lake Stevens. This meant that even Becca and Tyler had roughly an hour to get there. The party was listed as 2-5 pm on the invite, and Shobhit and I arrived at 2:15; Becca didn't get there until probably 2:40.
In any case, I have no idea what Bree's husband does for a living (we were never formally introduced; he spent most of his time in the living room watching sports), but it was a very nice house. And between her and Allie's involvement in hosting the party, they were very generous about it, I thought—not just using their house for hosting, but the
dinosaur theme created by Allie, who made the red velvet cake and cupcakes with a dinosaur motif, and even had
custom cookies made, some of them with the name of the baby:
Kayvaan.
You may be thinking that is an odd name, and you would not be wrong. Some might even be granted some slack for rolling their eyes at it: the name comes from a "tabletop game" Tyler plays, called "
Warhammer" The character's full name is
Kayvaan Shrike, and Tyler apparently wanted to include Shrike in the baby name, but Becca nixed that part (good for her). The baby will actually be named Kayvaan Joseph Holmes, because firstborn males in Tyler's family all have Joseph as a middle name.
Apparently Kayvaan, contrary to how it looks, is pronounced "Cave-in" (emphasis on the first syllable). When I first truly understood both the spelling and the pronunciation, I said, "Oh, like 'cave man' without the M."
Personally, I kind of like the name. I'm just a little stuck on the spelling, which is very counterintuitive with that double-A at the end. It really looks like it would be pronounced "Cave-
on," with an emphasis on the second syllable, and I can easily imagine that poor kid dealing with every teacher he has saying it that way with his first introduction every school year.
As for the dinosaur motif, that had far more to do with Becca than with the baby: Becca loves dinosaurs, so much that she has
several tattoos of them. This now explains some of the items she had on her Amazon registry, including a dinosaur onesie and a book set about dinosaurs.
Shobhit and I chose the baby bathtub because we wanted to get her one of the at least slightly more expensive items that probably not a lot of others would go for, as well as something eminently useful that might otherwise have been difficult for her to live without. She acknowledged that they had already received the package at home, which they apparently opened not realizing it was a baby shower gift. She thanked us for it after I asked if she had gotten it, as I realized they did not bring it to open along with
the rest of her gifts.
Shobhit and I actually saw a few people at this party that we had met once before, five and a half years ago at Becca and Tyler's
wedding reception party in September 2017. I had forgotten that we actually met both
Bree and Allie at that party; and that Christopher had been there too (I have no photos of him there but this was confirmed in the captions). I did remember
Val, though, Tyler's mom, the Black woman Shobhit loved and was delighted to see again this time.
Tyler is multiracial, with a Black mother and a White father, both of them apparently military veterans. Shobhit commented on how unusually diverse the crowd at this party was, because although Tyler and Bree (Tyler's sister) are technically as much White as they are Black, in the perception of American white supremacy, they are both simply Black, which puts at least three Black people there, or if you go with "brown" then Shobhit makes four—and Shobhit had darker skin than all but one person there.
How they all regard their children in these matters, I have no idea; it obviously would have been misguided to bring it up at this party, and I didn't even really think about it at this party either. But, Bree and her husband have two children, and Becca and Tyler have one on the way, and all of those kids have three White grandparents and one Black one. Allie had kind of an interesting story in her family as well, albeit by marriage: when we were talking about international travel, she brought up her lesbian sister who is married to an Egyptian woman, and the child they have together. None of them were at the party, but, even the conversation kind of lent to the perception of the diversity there, which was even interesting in the context of them being in Maple Valley: Allie also lives there, following shortly after Bree's move from Bellevue in 2020 during the pandemic, and she told us how that year they had Trumpers waving banners on the streets during that year's election. But, she said, the community has grown on her, and she likes living there. Even Shobhit was a little less inclined to generalize, probably because of the diversity at this very party: without that, he'd have been likely to paint all of Maple Valley with the same deep-suburban brush of Trump conservatives. Instead, he looked at their large backyard and commented on how it appeared to be a nice place to raise a family.
Anyway. I had a nice time. There was never any need to leave early, though Shobhit was still ready to go by the time it was closing in on 5:00, and so was I. I ate too much: there were plenty of vegetarian options even though they didn't know we were vegetarians, and I ate several of the bruschetta bread slices and probably five or six of the
mac & cheese bites, along with a small bag of Doritos, and later a slice of the cake I shared with Shobhit, and on the way home one of the frosted sugar cookies I took as a party favor. I decided all of that would have to cover both lunch and dinner. I also found one hard cider in their mini fridge full of drinks for the party; I never could find another one but I suppose that was just as well.
Just before we left, I did want to get a selfie with Becca, and then Shobhit suggested he take a photo of her and Tyler and me, all together. I'm really glad he did, because I think it's easily the best photo I got from the entire party.
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As for the rest of the weekend, on Friday evening Shobhit and I went next door to Alexia's for, finally, the next title in Alexia's and my "Harrison Ford-athon," from 1986 called
The Mosquito Coast. We all hated it. Harrison Ford played a character who was annoying as shit, we all knew he was destined to die at the end, and we were all eager to see that finally happen. T
The next film in Ford's filmography,
Frantic, sounds much better, albeit both similar and not as good as
The Fugitive, which we are really looking forward to watching when we get to it.
Alexia was also packing that night for a trip to Idaho, and starting Saturday morning I've been looking after her cat, Cassie, until Alexia gets back on Wednesday. She did still sign a document of support with a cash contribution for Shobhit
running for Seattle City Council, though, so that was generous of her.
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Speaking of which, Shobhit used the kitchen yesterday while Laney and I used the Braeburn Condos theater to watch our double feature of
Under the Skin and
Her, both Scarlett Johansson movies from 2013. Still a holdover from when these rooms were finally re-opened to condo resident use during the pandemic, they can only be reserved together, as opposed to separately as it had been done before. And when Shobhit found out the kitchen was free for the taking on Sunday, he decided to make it an inaugural "open house" for his City Council campaign.
I think Shobhit has had some somewhat naïve expectations in regards to this: at first he made broad assumptions that he could get at least half the residents at The Braeburn to sign over their Seattle Democracy Vouchers to him for this campaign; then he assumed at least twenty people would come in to talk to him in the kitchen over the course of the five hours he would be there yesterday, while Laney and I watched our movies. In the end, maybe five or six people actually came to chat with him, and he got, if I remember right, five people to sign over their vouchers, and four people made cash contributions ($10 minimum; I'm assuming most, if not all, were that amount).
I may be getting certain details wrong here, but it was along those lines, and roughly those kinds of numbers. Shobhit was noticeably disappointed. Laney and I were both much more positive about it: it's a start! He's further along than he had been the day before, and it's a day at a time thing. He just couldn't assume that our condo association would on its own get him halfway to the threshold needed to become eligible to use the democracy vouchers signed over to him.
Also, Shobhit is getting a lot more serious about this than some people might assume. He does still need to get a website going, and although I am helping him with some social media stuff, I'm not willing to commit to fully designing a website. I already work a full time job and I don't have the bandwidth to become basically a campaign volunteer. That said, he's already exploring other avenues for getting a website off the ground; I helped him create "voteforshobhit" social media accounts; and he's already in the process of getting meetings with key people. An old acting classmate of his named Amy actually managed to become a County Councilwoman in Illinois, who has moved back to Seattle and he had a meeting with her and got a lot of very useful pointers. He's also got other meetings in the works to get more insight and suggestions, including a meeting with someone tonight.
He fully recognizes the odds are stacked against him for this, but, neither is it impossible. For a while I was a little cynical about this idea, but the endeavor has really ignited his passions and engagement, and no matter what, he's going to learn a lot from this. If he gets to a point where it becomes clear he will have to bow out, then he will simply put his efforts into supporting the next viable candidate he actually wants to win, which I think is a good plan, and will help keep him engaged.
As for the movies Laney and I watched, strangely, she had seen
Under the Skin before (though she could barely remember it) but not
Her, and she really enjoyed them both, especially the latter (as I expected). Before Shobhit decided to use the kitchen for his campaign event—for which he even brought several refreshments from Costco, cookies and fruit and chips with artichoke cheese dip—I thought I would be using his laptop to connect to the theatre and stream the films from HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video. Then I found out Shobhit needed the laptop for taking notes.
I asked Laney to bring her laptop, and she did. She couldn’t get it to connect, and stay connected, to the wifi, however. Thankfully, there was still another option, albeit not quite as ideal: the options in the Braeburn Theater include a Vudu feed, in which I could log into my own account and just rent the titles. I paid all of $3.30 each for the movies, so, $6.60 total. Hardly breaking the bank. Even that had occasional glitches, the screen going black for a second and then coming back, and at one point the signal was so week the movie just stopped. But I was able to get it going again, and overall it worked out fine. And now I know it's a fairly good option going forward as a last resort in a scenario like this one.
After Laney went home, Shobhit and I gathered all the stuff between us and went back up to the condo, including 8.5x11 flyers he had hung in a few key places around the complex—two of which people kept taking down from elevators he hung them in, which really annoyed him. But, this is my perspective on that: if you're going to try and be a public figure, you'll have to learn to contend with people going out of their way to make things more difficult for you. It goes with the territory.
After that, I spent a good amount of time working on tagging my photos on Flickr, when of course I probably should have been writing a post about Becca's baby shower. Oh well, it's done now!
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[posted 12:34 pm]
