Dating?

 I'm 62. That's 62 years of age. Not 62 inches tall because I'm not. I'm 60 inches tall if I stand straight. Which I don't. Stand straight, that is. So I'm a short, round old woman with two bad knees that make me wobble and lurch...

you get the picture. I'm old.

And someone wants to date me.

He's a nice guy, named John. Not a romance hero by any means. He smokes too much and talks too much. I think I say a sentence once every 15 minutes. But... he's nice. And he has a good heart. And he likes me. I mean, I kind of don't really see myself in a relationship because I just don't and I don't always answer his calls and I haven't tried to get together with him and then I called him with a work thing and he practically jumped through the phone and was like "yeah! And then you'll have lunch with me!" and I said yes because he was so happy saying it and I was like, okay...

I want to be excited but I'm not. Why can't I see myself relaxing into dating someone? Everyone tells me that companionship is worth it and again, he's a nice man and I'm too old to really believe that one of my K-Pop boys is going to wake up tomorrow wanting an old, broken woman.

Is it possible that I really do like myself enough not to need another? Is it because my vagina is old and uninterested? Am I waiting for Hawaiian George Clooney? Or am I so damned scared I can't even acknowledge it?

There's a part of me that thinks maybe I can go to his house and just hang out with him. Maybe we could watch a video and just hang out. Maybe if I could stop thinking about how much I don't want to date I could just be.

Anyway, it is a compliment to have someone excited about going out with me. I just wish I was excited also.

Memories

 I recently saw an ad on Instagram for a journal to be written by mothers to their daughters. I had a small snicker at the idea of Mollie reading my memories and rolling her eyes. "You already told me that story," she'd mutter.

She says that every time.

Maybe it's about getting older or maybe it's just the idea of how small but special our lives are. But those things we remember, those small moments from our life that remind us of moments that have passed...

I remember the house in Laurelhurst. That was the only house we ever lived in that was my home. When I dream of going home, it's always to that house. My only real home.

It was a red brick house. I remember the brick stairs at the front of the house and a rhododendron bush on each side. My mother loved rhododendrons. The side of the house had a brick wall and iron gate which led to a small side yard. There was nothing special about the side yard but I remember it being so green and lovely. And quiet. Did I spend much time there? I don't know if I did but I feel like it was someplace I hid with a book.

But the memory I have: the cherished memory of a moment that meant nothing but I remember as clear as yesterday was sitting on the front step. I was a chubby girl, I was wearing shorts. It was a warm spring day. I remember the coldness of the brick under my skin. Even today, I can perfectly recollect that feeling of the cold brick, the warm sun and how it felt.

Memories are funny things. As I remember that moment, as my body slips right back into that feeling I'm still that girl. I'm always that girl. I'm a 62 year old woman with shot knees and a shuffling gait, but I'm that girl feeling the cold brick under her skin, the only home she will ever know behind her back and the endless wonder of a warm spring day.

What’s Going On

 Well I’m excited. I’m vaccinated (yay for working in a doctor’s office), I’ve been reading my ass off and I found a web series I really like.

I finished two books this weekend: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison and The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by K.J. Charles. Both books were excellent.

The Goblin Emperor is a wonderfully different book of an 18 year old Emperor’s son becoming Emperor. The main character Maia is uneducated, quite lost in the ways of the court and flying by the seat of his pants.

It’s a wonderful book, I say with a satisfied sigh. The author doesn’t really explain customs so much so sometimes you have to figure things out and make it make sense. But there’s plenty explained also. And almost immediately the reader is invested in Maia and wants him to succeed. So it’s a joyous journey.

The best part of the book is that it begins with a boy thrown into a world he doesn’t know and is unprepared for, but by the end he’s not only becoming an emperor who will lead well, he’s also creating a family/community around himself and conquering his deep isolation and loneliness.

The K.J. Charles book was a wonderful romance where not everybody’s happily ever after means finding a man but rather finding yourself and your passion and not letting it go. It’s a love story between two wonderful heroes but the women are the ones who bend the rules and find happiness away from the dance of The Marriage Mart and “polite” society.

And the web series I discovered is called The Hot Ones. It’s got like 9 or 10 seasons so I’m late to the game. But it’s an interview show where the interviewer is smart (Sean Evans) and the interviews take place while eating hot wings and I do mean those wings are hot. I love it. Sean is a brilliant interviewer and it’s joy to watch the interviewees start out really confident and then start gulping milk while crying hot tears from the wings.

Anyway, beyond that, I see a new knee doctor tomorrow and I’m hopeful that maybe living in pain will not remain my norm. And work sucks but it usually does so whatever.

My beta fish Sebastian is still alive and colorful. Nino the chihuahua is well and I did some sewing today.

Love to you all out there.

America’s Greatest Pandemic

 Is stupidity.

We all saw it this week as a bunch of white people were gathered together by the biggest con man to run this country in the hopes to overtake the government, kill the vice-president and destroy our democracy.

We saw their smirks and selfies as they shit in the halls of the senate and smeared their feces on the walls. The videos of them in Nancy Pelosi’s office, stealing her things and mocking her hard work and position.

Oh yeah... we saw the zip ties and mace. The guns and the noose. We saw their hearts and their egos. We saw how easily they were led and how quickly they were left standing asking “now what?”

They yelled democracy was being stolen from them as they tried to destroy democracy completely. They screamed the left are fascists while their leader asked them to rebel against a legal election that he rightfully lost.

We saw that they hate America with the very essence of their beings because America is not white and Christian and they are racists asswipes who are terrified of melanin. 

And Donald Trump told them “I love you. Go home” while the rest of America was counting the dead from a virus he doesn’t care about ravages our world. 

So we’re waiting to see what our elected officials are going to do as a fucking fiend holds the nuclear codes and any moment our world could be in flames. (I swear to God, Nancy Pelosi had to see her office violated and still thought she should be polite in the wake of this...)

It’s a mad time and the worst of it isn’t over. January 20th Joe Biden takes the oath of office and these right wing sheep might try again. After all, this isn’t the America they want and violence is okay as long as it isn’t against them.

And don’t get me started on the police who turned their backs and pointed these insurgents toward Adam Schiff’s office. For anyone saying Blue Lives Matter, just recognize that the average street cop is as racist and ignorant as these yahoos and more than happy to tear it all down.

This is the America Donald Trump has left us with and I don’t believe it’s fixable. Not in my lifetime. We were always heading into a wall (not the one that Mexico was paying for) and now we’ve hit it head on. We’re not coming back stronger after this. Trump has shown our enemies how easily we can be defeated and how little effort it will take.

He might nuke the world before January 20. He might not. But he most definitely destroyed us.

Thank God It's Over

 Driving into work this morning, talking to Carolyn and realizing that tomorrow is January 1 and in a few days the Georgia run-off will be decided and end of the month we'll have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in office.

Our first woman in the white house.

Tres excellent.

Honestly, I'm not expecting miracles. But it will be nice to have a president who'll feel compassion. Can you believe that in the year of pandemic, the president of these divided states never once stated that he was aware or cared about all the Americans who died. Not once. Not once. 

We've had a monster running our country. We might now have another old, doddering white guy but at least he has empathy and heart.

Okay.

New Years.

If the world doesn't blow up tonight I'll be thankful to have gotten through 2020. Who can ask for more.

And let me say that the woman, as the women always do, got me through this year: Mollie, Carolyn, Lea, Myrna, AztecLady, Divas and Monbebes.

Thank the fuck it's finally over.

The World Isn't Burning

 just ignore the flames...

Bridgerton

 If you're on Twitter then you know the talk is all about Bridgerton, the new Netflix series. Based on the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn, it's a love or hate.

I read the books (not all of them since finishing series is not something I aspire to but I remembered enough of the book to have moments of "oh yeah, I remember this).

So love or hate? I loved it. The hero, Simon is played by Rege-Jean Page who is utterly delectable. He's so fucking hot and when he turns a heated gaze onto the heroine my panties had scorch marks. That man has perfected the sexy smolder.

The heroine Daphne was so nondescript... she was probably perfect in the role but she was just bland as hell. I loved everyone else. The costumes were inspired. Not the proper ladies because they were boring. But oh my, the other ladies with their crazy colors and swelling bosoms. I was in heaven watching this.

So the things that people disliked was the casting being diverse. The Queen was black, the hero was black. Black, white, Asian... maybe it wasn't realistic but there was no reason not to have a diverse cast. As Karen Scott (from the former Karen Knows Best blog) said: why not show people having an experience that isn't tied to slavery trauma? Why can't these folks, just like white folks, have the pleasure of escapist fluff with people who look like them?

(We all need to see people in entertainment who look like us having more experiences than just 'ancestor was slave' or 'I can't birth no babies Miz Scarlett')

The other thing that got people's panties in a bunch was a scene where the H/h are having sex and the Simon does not want to have children and Daphne does and she gets on top and he ejaculates into her which was very not okay. So a non-consensual sex thing during a consensual sex act where a 90 pound heroine was atop a 180 pound, muscular, athletic man and he couldn't just lift her off of him and ejaculate on her stomach as usual.

That seemed silly to me.

Anyway, watch the damned show. It's delightful.