My colleague who almost died called me this morning. I told her about the couple that I met last night at the potluck. I’m definitely intrigued by the wife and had a conversation with her husband–truthfully, I mostly listened to him and validated his perspective and asked a few questions wherein he’d talk more at length. My two friends and another woman who I know from our discussion group were there too. While I was talking about that with my colleague, I had this epiphany.
My first girlfriend lived across the street from me 1987 – 1994. Those last two years I lived out of state where I had completed my undergraduate degrees, but she didn’t move out of her Dad’s house until 1994 when she got pregnant with her daughter. Her daughter was adopted. Her son, who she had a few years afterward with the same guy, was raised by her Dad and her Dad’s new wife.
I don’t think that my first girlfriend ever slept with any other girls than me. I guess she’d be what you call now heteroflexible. She dated my cousin who is only 2-years-older than me, and that didn’t bother me. In fact, I’m not usually attracted to lesbians who are stereotypically so. It’s often called “100-footers.” That term came from an episode of “The L-word.” These women are usually quite butch, heavy set, wear boots and have edgy short haircuts. They remind me of men. I’m not sexually attracted to men, so I don’t hit on these folks.
I hadn’t realized that in the early 1990s that I was also in a polyamorous relationship. That makes three total for my lifetime. I think that I’m having a second coming out. I started out solo poly when I was 15.
I still don’t like hiking on scree and need to learn to balance on trekking poles. In fact, I think that I could do some of that next weekend. I think because I’d warned my private guide about my lack of love for downhill–I love climbing up–he decided to rope me to him in the event that I fell or slipped. Like when I used to have to have someone tie my figure 8 knot, it makes me feel like a toddler. So, time to practice with trekking poles hiking down on mixed terrain and especially loose soil and rock! I was up 40-feet! Highest ever. It was my summit; although, if I knew more about route finding, I had another 80-feet to go. My accomplishment was no fear of heights. I just talked to my guide who is a professionally sponsored, second best in the US speed alpinist, about next steps and such. Well, screamed is more like it. The creek is loud there and the traffic louder. I can’t wait to get back to my private crag with the group in September with my new set of skills. So incredible. I was scared of heights so I started hiking at 34. One time got back up to a small area of minor exposure to a summit a second time, looked, and wondered why I was scared the first time? Being slowly desensitized to fears is changing me.
Sunday we staged the house in about 3-hours total. We did a good job, and the Realtor (Photographer) added more plants, another lamp and a white large blanket with a white comforter with pillows. It looked so much better! She said that she had those things. I couldn’t get the cooler going. It was missing a nut. I went up on the roof after work on Monday and there were more yellow jackets, so I came down. Two trips from a company, and nearly $1,300 out of my pocket to get it going and the motor is also failing.
Wednesday, I went back over to meet the technician again and all the lights were on in the house. Then I saw the Realtor going back and forth between rooms. When I went in, a very tall, very large woman in baggy linen pants and a crop top with dark curly hair and nose ring came toward me to shake my hand. I said, “Hello,” and the Realtor said something about partner so I assumed she was ______, who had to clean the paint off the hardwoods and fix the sheetrock that the subcontractors messed up, and I said that I definitely owed her dinner for those 4-hours of work and the Realtor said “romantic partner.” I said, “Oh, wonderful! It’s so nice to meet you.” She seems very young. She’s from Montana and has “done so many things” for work and is currently a massage therapist. I talked with her a bunch waiting for the technician to arrive. She is very nice, and adores the Realtor. I still have a crush on the Realtor. I won’t be seeing her much anymore though because I already have an offer for 25k over the listing for the house so that I can generate a counteroffer with an afternoon meeting via videoconference. I spoke with my attorney already too so that I can take off things that cannot be paid out of my parents’ estate. The Realtor had a showing within 34-minutes of the listing going live and there were 6 yesterday and an offer. There’s another summit.
I texted the climber on Monday and asked if she was at Burning Man, and if she wasn’t, did she want me to give her a lift on Friday. The nice guy is in Brazil. She said that she was here and would be gone the next two weeks and then we’d get the car pool crew back together. She had a dental appointment after work. On Wednesday during all the back and forth to the house, credit union, etc., I had happy hour plans with two colleagues and my colleague who almost died as well. It was a house and deck happy hour and really nice. However, I had to go home and get the pets fed and bring my dogs. Consequently, I was out of gas on Thursday. I had training in a Convention Center very close to my other site so I texted the climber and asked her to give me a ride. She got it late and texted me back asking if I got a ride. I was at the stoplight to turn onto the highway and texted her a picture of the gas gauge and said, “On fumes–turning onto ___, wish me luck!” She texted me that she could pick me up if needed and go car, go. That was cute.
I got there! During the last breakout session at the conference center, I left momentarily and got gas. My colleague who almost died made plans with one of the women from Happy Hour, the gay male colleague–going forward we’ll call him Catholic–and I said in text to invite the climber too. Only he and the climber showed for lunch. She hugged my colleague who almost died first and then turned to me with a big smile and said, “Happy end of summer,” and I said, “Happy nearly fall,” and we embraced a long time in front of the two others. I pulled away and she still had me tight so I went back in and hugged her more abdomen to abdomen. She’s even in better physical shape than she was last fall. We sat close on the bench by the lake with the others.
I looked at video that she shot with her Jerry-Rigged paperclip, electrical tape and thick yarn on her phone that she mounts for videos. It was beautiful. It was a sunset over a lake in Chamois from her paraglider. She did some technical and mixed ice climbing in France, but didn’t make it to Pakistan. I showed her a few of the OR coast and Crater Lake. She’d never been there, but when her sister and parents lived in eastern OR, she’d been to the coast. I was so sad when lunch was over. We hugged twice yesterday having arrived at the same time, and I went to her new office at the end of the day and told her to have the best build and festival ever. She said, “I will tell you stories about it, and you tell me stories about your adventures for the next two weeks.” I wonder if we will seamlessly get a road back to some dates? I’d love that.
I had plans with my friend to go to an Italian Festival last night, but she canceled having thrown up in the morning. So, I laid low last night and texted with the realtor about our counteroffer signing meeting today. I was very tired, so it was ok. The woman who introduced me to my ex-wife is in town right now, and we have super tentative plans for Monday. Hopefully, it will work out, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t. I am fine losing her for the most part in the divorce. I have a potluck with the poly group where I met Maryland tonight. I have a formal event for solo folk on Sunday. What a whirlwind of a week! I’ve not had time to process everything and have more people with whom I’ll be interacting.
Behind that tree and the start is some smoother rock to the ascent
I climbed yesterday and probably said, “That’s too scary,” six times. The guys running the wall were very sweet and would show me how when you stand tall and push away that the auto belay jerks for half a second and then you glide down. The guy that I like a ton told me that because I’m down climbing, I’ve really limited myself. Story of my life. Facing fears. I’m my own worse enemy.
The guide for the super expensive outdoor class called me today and asked me to write about what’s holding me back. I do want to become a climber. Both times that I’ve been actually up a route–and it’s happened TWICE–was both times indoors and both on belay. I told him that when I go fast I do better because I tend to psych myself out. I do that a lot. I want to get up an actual outdoor route tomorrow. I’d do anything to do that.
Trust the equipment
Step up
When you don’t have a handhold step around and keep focused on the handhold that you do have
Spoiler: this entry could be boring to read. It’s just a dump for me and something that I feel like I can process better if I write it out. If I was still Catholic, I could confess it. I’ve had five-years of analysis, and I’m grateful for that, and really used it to process the trauma that my Dad inflicted which helped me at the end of his life to just show up: take him to appointments, talk to nurses, go to hospitals, go back and forth to his house, get a roofing company to help him get a new roof, get Life Alert set up, etc.
We’d been hit: I had 7 fractures and was in the hospital, my brother was dead, and my first gf was barely injured in 1988, but I am going to start in 1994 when I moved into my apartment that was mine, as a college student. I had few things–it was furnished–but my old roommate started coming over a lot and then we wound up being together intimately. That was a dick move on both of our parts because she had a cousin of a Spanish exchange student living with her in the dorms at the time and she called this guy her brother. She never saw her and was with me all the time and most every night. My landlord got mad after awhile, so the following year we got our own 2-bedroom apartment, and she mostly slept with me. She began seeing a high school classmate of mine too, and we’d go back to the state where I am from and see him. She still slept with me. She eventually was kinda still with my high school classmate, me, and her new bf (She eventually married him), and we just stopped being sexually intimate. It’s weird that few people know. I didn’t go abroad in college because I was with her and she freaked when I suggested it. I started seeing a guy for the first time really during my senior year of college. Yesterday, we’d have been married 25-years.
I lived alone in 1997 and really liked it. That was a year that my Mom wouldn’t really talk to me. My Mom was always my touchstone. She was so pissed at me for going to graduate school that she cut off emotional and financial support. She said that I was “acting like _______’s family who has money.” I told her that I didn’t want to work for Social Services which is all that I was qualified to do with a degree in English and another degree in Psychology (I had taken AP classes so that I received two Bachelor’s in four-years. Not a double major–but, I rather got two full degrees and diplomas.). She told me, “Maybe you need to work for Social Services.” I liked grad school. That was the first time that I felt solo. I ate for the first time in a restaurant by myself, which was weird at first, but is now something that I do all of the time. If I didn’t teach that day, I didn’t hear another human voice. I learned about being lonely and how it’s just a dynamic state that shifts and is not bad, but an uncomfortable emotion.
My previous bf pursued me and then asked me to marry him. I just said yes because I was 23 and really young and dumb. I was married to him for nine years. We never really used any birth control after I completed my degree and we didn’t get pregnant until 2004. That was when I really saw that he didn’t know how to be responsible for much. He never helped with cleaning or cooking. He liked to garden, and that’s about it. He hates being active outside. It’s weird because even to this day he says that he likes it, but if you’re outdoors with him he rages around and complains the whole time and is a bummer.
He is also not one to be inconvenienced at all. One time when our son had his days and nights mixed up, he yelled at him, “Sleep!” while he was smiling in a swing. It’s like my ex-husband wants to play, be on the Internet reading, read books, and not be bothered with any chores, but is fine going to a job that is straightforward: wash dishes or sell attire. It’s a good thing really that in 2007 I fell completely in love with my Boss. I found places for my soon-to-be-ex-husband to live when he screamed at me in front of our son while he was sitting quietly in the back of the car in his car seat. I’ve never looked back after our divorced finalized in March of 2008. I don’t have much respect for the way that he leads his life. His IQ is 142 and he works in retail sales. He lives in a 403-foot square-foot unrenovated apartment and the units next door have been renovated. I found this apartment for him in 2017 and he doesn’t move, ask about a 2-bedroom or inquire with the management or the owner regarding a good space for himself, and now, our son too.
I fell in love with her picture in 2009. I waited until she was single, and she had moved back here where she is from in 2012. She was single in 2013. She fell in love with me quickly, we got engaged in 2014 and married in May. We had some good times together, but are very different people.
I work in spurts. I work a lot too and have a capacity for enormous amounts of work. I have to get in a zone though and am not steady. She would get on my ass all the time about grading, prepping, opening mail, put away clothes, etc. She is beautiful, but super bossy. Actually, she’s probably controlling. I was around for her confronting her sex abusing stepdad, dealing with her leaving a therapy group that was a lot like a cult and all the aftermath from it, and her mental and physical health declining. She was around for helping me finish my dissertation and taking care of my son, and then watching my son decline.
My son made threats at school, he one-upped his gf and tried to get hospitalized, he began emotionally manipulating friends and family members, he punched himself in the face over and over when his Dad had moved out of state, and told friends that his Dad was back and abusing him, he robbed our neighbors and gave their possessions to “friends,” he got suspended from school, he has been on and off lots of meds, he experimented with drugs, he has done some things that I don’t completely understand that have resulted in him being bullied at school, he dropped out, and he has never been respectful to me when I’ve needed simple help in the house that we shared until 6th grade when he declined. He has lived with his Dad about a total of a year-and-a-half and now will never be allowed to return home without some serious family therapy and trial periods. He needs to grow up, or marry royalty. He has very little motivation though and gained tons of weight since the pandemic when he stopped playing sports. I know he vapes. I know that he occasionally smokes pot. I think he is drinking now, and his shape is less like a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old and more like a 30-something alcoholic. It’s sad. He’s charming.
He transferred schools and graduated early in one trimester and was Valedictorian. Teachers and many adults love him. However, my tenure is useless. I can’t impact him anymore and he doesn’t talk to me since I told him that I heard my last fu. He’s really just mad that he doesn’t have full run of a 1056-square foot basement including his own bedroom where his gf can come and go. Someday, he will realize that he makes his own messes. I don’t deny mental illness, but he lets it rule him. He’s been in therapy since he was 6 and completed 40-weeks of a very expensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy Group (DBT) and was only supposed to take two-months off and then do intensive work in that area, but he hasn’t called a new therapist. I’ll see it on my insurance if his gf ever makes him do that. I think that if he’d get up in the morning and take a simple walk, he’d feel better. He could make food when he got back and have some free time before he coaches at night. He told his Dad that he is taking a “senior year,” and his Dad said, “If you don’t have a full-time job by next spring, you’re a bum.” I’m sure that they’re having lots of fun in 403-square feet together.
I had one dog, and my ex-wife insisted on all these pets. They’re hard to afford, hairy, and make lots of messes. I do love them. They’re a ton of responsibility, but I’ll see it through. I do love them, but they are so much work and care.
While all these things were happening with my son, and I was in a new marriage, my parents went downhill. Several weeks after I turned 40 my Mom shattered her shoulder. About a year before that, my Dad stopped sleeping. I think it was the very beginning of dementia. Like me, he was always a good sleeper. I can’t tell you all the stress it caused to respond to all the falls that they both had while I was working two jobs, doing training, parenting and trying to preserve a new marriage.
One time there was blood all over the stairwell when I went to turn off all the lights at their house when my Dad was in the hospital for 4-days. They’d always discharge him to home and it would be another round. My Mom was at home with higher levels of private care (They used to have 225k in cash in an Account.) from 2014 to 2018 when she transitioned from care at home (17-21k per month) to the nursing home which is an average of 11k per month. She spent down, I did failed applications, and finally found a consultant, and got Medicaid. My Dad followed her midway through 2019. COVID would kill him and he would die with staff around him in hazmat suits on April 19, 2020. It was a blessing. He didn’t sleep except during the day and couldn’t communicate well and mostly sat in his bed with his eyes closed and earphones on listening to jazz. My Mom got COVID that June (2020) and her health just declined until she died on December 1, 2021.
My job involves taking care of students who are 11 through adulthood. It’s also very stressful. I’m only going to do it for 6 more years. I should mention that I teach graduate school too, and have also coordinated a graduate program. Neither of the people that I have been married to have contributed to my mortgage, or really ever had lasting careers. My ex-husband paid half of the monthly mortgage payment for one year, and then promptly quit his good job and that was back in 2003. He didn’t work, clean, cook or help for 8-months as he was “finding himself.” I work and make money. I have been responsible for so many people, am still at work, and for these 5 pets.
In relationship, I don’t ever want to be responsible for anyone ever again. I’m waiting for my son to need his money–I have 20k in an ESA for school–or need to move out of his Dad’s 403-square-foot apartment. I suppose that he may just move in his gf’s parents’ big house. They’re really wealthy. He met her in his DBT treatment. I could see him getting others to take care of him. He really doesn’t like to do much with the exception of watch YouTube and Netflix.
However, with intimate partners, I want to keep it simple and respectful. I want to have intentional time together that is mutually carved out. I want to take care of myself as well as I can now. As a 48-year-old person, I think that it’s time for me to be the best person that I can be so that I can add to others’ lives and they can enhance mine.
So, there was this Thai lunch counter with four tables (You couldn’t sit at them unless you made a reservation and they accepted no walk-in sit downs.) in the area where I worked for seven-and-a-half years and I ate there with members of our consultation team. It was so good. I went back a few times before it closed, and miss the restaurant. It was HOT. And, I mean really hot, and sometimes not palatable. My son’s godfather is half Thai and said, “No one actually cooks like that,” but the owner was from Thailand. You ordered mild, medium, hot or Thai hot. Medium was very, very spicy. You also ordered dry, baby juicy, a little bit juicy, all the way up to very juicy. That referred to sauce.
I worked yesterday, biked to the insurance company–I only drove to work one of the three days that I worked this week and that was because I was when I had to go straight to the house for the walkthrough and then to dinner with the author–and then home to teach on Zoom. I got ready and was pretty close to where I’d be with another one of my Bosses for the night when she said that the Lyft was picking her up in 8-minutes. I called her and said, “I don’t drink much, so I can drive you.”
We had a lot of fun. I noticed something very odd about men though. They would stare, mostly at my friend, and we’d smile and they would avert their eyes. Peter McGraw says that men are unpopular these days and approaching someone in public is a bad idea. That’s sad. I was wondering what people think about that generally? I’m not an expert on men. We didn’t get a single phone number or even conversation started for her.
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