So it turns out that it’s a new decade. This fact didn’t really occur to me until I noticed that all the blogs I read were starting to do “best-of-the-aughts” lists. And then I realized, right. 2010. New decade. It was almost as bad as when I asked a British person if there was some big soccer championship that was equivalent to the Super Bowl. Oh, right. Of course. The World Cup. Anyway, in honor of the new decade beginning, I decided to create a list of things I would like to see in the next decade, rather than trying to recap the last one.

The holiday season is upon us. Seriously, tomorrow night is Christmas Eve. And as so like many of us are thanks to this economy, I’m pretty much broke. This leaves little money to spend on gifts for those you love, including your significant other. And if you, also like me, are terrible at planning ahead and tend to wait until the very last minute to buy gifts for your the one you’re with, I’ve created a list of some on-the-cheap holiday presents that go beyond the realm of coupons for backrubs, sexytimes, etc.

Right now, there seems to be three main types of lesbians in Hollywood: the closeted kind, the ones that seem to have their lives together, and the ones that are just plain batshit crazy.

Recently, Casey Johnson (the heiress of the Johnson & Johnson fortune) and Tila Tequila, the star of A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila (everyone’s favorite bisexual dating show) got engaged. About two weeks before they announced their engagement, they both showcased some pretty bizarro behavior. Johnson apparently broke into her ex’s house, stole some of her possessions and then left a used vibrator in her bed. Tila Tequila came out as a lesbian in an all-caps Twitter rant, and then developed some sort of bizarre alter ego. Why does it matter that two crazypants lesbians got engaged? Because the media keeps referring to them as being “engaged.” With the quotations.

Now, I follow my fair share of celebrity gossip. And by fair share, I mean I follow a lot of it. And I’ve never seen a straight couple, no matter how crazy either of them maybe, referred to being “engaged.” I realize that the main reason for the qoutations here is because of the fact that both women appear to be so out of it, and that it seems odd that so soon after Johnson’s vibrator-gate, they are engaged with a 10 caret diamond ring on Tequila’s finger. And while that’s true, the quotations still seem unnecessary.

The usage of the parentheses in the New York Post’s Page Six was probably the most egregious–the validity of the engagement didn’t seem to reside on the fact that both of them are crazypants, thus their behavior is suspect–but that it is an “engagement” because gay marriage isn’t legal. Putting engagement in quotations takes any sort of validity from the relationship and thus makes homosexuality and gay marriage suspect, not their behavior.

Do I think that the relationship with Tila Tequila and Casey Johnson will last? No, not at all. Do I really respect them or their relationship? No, but I didn’t really respect the relationship between Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman either. But when you put a word like “engaged” in quotation marks just because it’s a couple of crazy lesbians are together, that’s not okay. I’m not going to tell gossip columnists to start respecting the loony pseudo-celebrities they are forced to cover–but at least respect their sexuality.

Just to get this out of the way first: I took the train from D.C. to Texas. I know, I know–that’s crazy Amelie! Why would you do that? Because I don’t like flying. Airplanes are scary. The end.

Anyway, so I took the train to Texas. It’s really not that bad. I do the trip in two legs, with a couple hour’s break in Chicago. Every year when I stop in Chicago, I try to find pizza near by. I have yet to succeed, and the only pizza I have had in Chicago is Pizza Hut. But that’s not the point. I usual do the trip in two parts, and for one of the parts, I usually get what Amtrak likes to call a “roomette.” Roomettes are definitely tiny, but are also definitely great for pretending that you are riding the Hogwarts Express. For the other portion of the trip, I ride coach, which generally involves a seat buddy.

In The Ladies’ Room will be on hiatus this week (and the next) while I’m on vacation in Texas. And by “vacation,” I mean on a trip with that primarily involves eating excessively and marathon shopping for clothes that actually fit me/match. Nothing’s more relaxing than that. But, when In The Ladies’ Room returns after Thanksgiving, be prepared for stores about being back down South and the various adventures of my trip. Now, I’ll be getting back to my other vacation activity: playing MarioKart with my 13-year-old sister.

My girlfriend and I finally did get out on the dance floor for a slow song, but it didn’t last too long. The general awkwardness of queerness in a hyper-heterosexual environment was one thing, but you know what really didn’t help? That two-lady dancing (or two-gentleman dancing) is also just an anomaly to slow-dancing form–who puts their hand on the waist? Who puts theirs on the shoulder? Both go for the shoulder? Both go for the waist? That conundrum certainly doesn’t help things either. We briefly tried one hand on the shoulder, one around the waist, and when that got weird, we tried high-school dance style, which was even weirder. So at that point, we shuffled off the floor, went back to the bar and waited for “Shout”  to come on. Because that is music for everyone to dance to.

Yesterday Maine voted on gay marriage, which meant that I spent the majority of my night in the following ways:

1) Obsessively refreshing the Bangor Daily News, which was posting unofficial results as they came in.

2) Obsessively chatting with friends who were also just waiting to hear, and analyzing every aspect of the results as they came in.

3) Obsessively flipping to CNN whenever Keith Olbermann decided it was time to talk about baseball and/or his voice got to loud.

4) Hoping that when the Yes vote started creeping above 50% that somehow the No vote would suddenly swing back up.

 I love Halloween. But this Halloween is looking like it’s going to be one of the tougher ones. I have no clue what I want to be. but I’ve been really struggling to come up with a decent Halloween costume this year. As in, seriously struggling. And that’s the thing. I’m usually pretty good with costumes. In my own personal opinion, I think I’ve had some pretty good costumes over the years. Gay Dumbledore, tinsel (yes, the kind on Christmas trees) and one of my personal favorites, Alex Mack in silver-goop form. You name the theme party, I can find a great costume.

One constant in my life as a lesbian has been the search to find the appropriate term for my close male friends that happened to be straight. I definitely ran in a male-dominated circle in which the term “bro” was thrown around frequently (though always in an ironic sense, of course). Which is why when I heard the phrase “lezbro,” I was shocked that in all the hours we devoted to finding a lesbian-straight guy equivalent to “fag hag,” the term lezbro never came up.

All week, we’ve been bringing you coverage of the National Equality March. This weekend’s march was something that was incredibly important for me; it was the biggest call to political action I’ve experienced.

I’ve mentioned in previous columns that while at school, I was lucky enough to have a great professor who really mentored me and inspired me to become much more interested and involved in the queer political movement. That professor was Melinda Plastas, and she was not only a great influence on my academic career, but also a great personal influence. She taught me that having a clear and thorough understanding of what the queer community has done in the past is incredibly important–without understanding what queer activists have done in the past, our own work can fall short.