Monthly Archives: October 2024

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Energy

If you’ve read my blog before you not only know that it’s an incognito diary, but that I write about lots of topics which are going on in my life. About 11 or 12-years ago, I realized that I had a children’s book in my mind and heart. I finally storyboarded it all this January.

Then Batman and I worked on it on 2/15, 6/26 and 8/7. I would say that the latter date was the only time in which she contributed any concerted effort because she read the text in its entirety. She made some revisions too. In February, we mostly ate and drank and made out. In June, we talked about her two quarter hiatus from work and what she wants to do for a living and cuddled. She doodled three scenes in a small sketch book.

If I’m being honest, likely she worked focused during the last session because there were two men at my house for the two-hours that she was here and then a project manager for a bit. It took three-weeks to have my upstairs painted and in August I was in the throes. If she’d remembered that we were working on it in July and not just said that she spaced it, it would’ve just been us because the painting crew leader had a flat tire that day.

I have never seen a page.

I am, often, promised a page.

Batman is a dancer and a climber.

Her art cannot have a timeline.

Batman’s energy is only focused from her own volition.

I’d seen Batman by chance a couple of weeks ago and simply texted that I’d seen her to which one of her reply texts was, “Can we meet about the book soon?”

I told her that we could if she got me a page first. Not shocking, but it’s going on the third week with no page. Again, she has focused energy that is fueled moment-to-moment and doesn’t seem to have timelines.

My best friend is a professional musician and also sculpts, crafts, makes jewelry and has recently begun painting and has sold a few commissions.

My best friend has loving, light and almost naive energy. She’s the easiest person in the world to be around and with whom to spend time.

My best friend has introduced me to WI. She’s amazing. Tall, beautiful, and a visual artist who grew up making art with her family. Her work is wonderful. She lives here with her girlfriend and wants to branch out her work as she’s already selling some pieces in two places here.

I get a page on Sunday–one week from today–and only have to pay her hourly fee for it. That is so cheap because she has to read all the text and painstakingly go through the storyboards to tell me things that she cannot draw. My revisions will come from that point.

I told WI the three things that I’m married to in this book. She is sketching a pivotal scene which is a plot element that I’m married to as well. I CANNOT WAIT TO GET THIS PAGE.

It’s interesting to me that working with WI has impacted my energy about the book and writing in general. I think that the reciprocity of working together makes me happy. True collaboration is important to me. I feel good today and my energy is lifted. From slightly hedonistic energy, to light energy and then landing on solidly ambitious energy has changed my focus.

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Love

Last night my girlfriend came over to my house. I’d made hashbrowns, a quiche, and had bought fruit yesterday morning.

I received a text from her while I was cooking before I biked to work. She was very sick as was her daughter. She said that she wasn’t cancelling and had to see how the day went.

That gave me pause. She seemed to be prioritizing seeing me although she was sick.

I kept waiting for her to cancel and she didn’t.

I can’t believe that she made effort while feeling terrible to see me when she and her daughter had eaten bad Raising Cane’s.

When she got to my house she was really pale. I asked her what she needed. She’s not good at answering those things. So, I started offering options.

I grabbed my son’s old comforter, laid it across the couch and we sat together. I then started suggested all kinds of food. We settled on my making her miso and I brought it to her.

Then I asked her if she wanted to lay down. Then we talked and I rubbed her shoulders and upper back. She told me that she was starting to feel better.

I don’t care that we didn’t eat the food that I made for her. I am so sorry that she got food poisoning; however, I was glad that I could be supportive and caring while she was resting at my house. (She and I had connected at her house last Sunday and she caressed, ran her hands down my legs and rubbed tight muscles–she’s really good at being tender and nurturing.)

There were a whole bunch of times last night when she was talking to me about my basic fear of vulnerability, my bad temper, my past relationship problems that I have fueled and such that I nearly said, “I love you.” I didn’t though, because I know it’s fall and we met in summer.

I have a belief that love is abundant. I also believe that you could be in love with two people concurrently. I’m falling for this woman.

She’s smart, sexy, a little unpredictable, caring, supportive, funny and the best communicator that I’ve ever been around. I can’t wait to see her on Friday. I trust her explicitly and am enjoying our unfolding relationship. Our date wasn’t at all what we’d talked about or what I’d planned. And the time that I have with her always flies by. I didn’t tell her that she was late to relieve the babysitter either 😈

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Sleeping

It’s likely that I am now fully in menopause. I haven’t had a cycle this year. It’s strange, because my mother had cycles until she was in her early 60s. There are only 74-days left this year, so we’ll see.

I haven’t slept really well since before I got married. My ex-wife had nightmares and would often scream in the night. Of course, given that she was in state of sleep paralysis, the scream was like a moan until she could wake herself up and then really start screaming. She eventually slept in the spare bedroom, but because it’s across a fairly narrow hallway, I would have to go over there and either wake her up or knock on the door if she had it locked. My sleep became poor during my marriage, but if she was elsewhere, as she was sometimes for a few months, I could always sleep 7-9 hours.

My son has been out of my house for 15-months so humans don’t wake me up.

I do that myself.

Last night, I was wide awake at 12:30 (I guess Friday morning is accurate). I got up. Reread text messages between my girlfriend and I whilst sipping Valerian tea. I slept another 4-hours.

I feel fine.

I had two rounds of dreams as well.

I would like to go back to 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep. And I’ve had medical advice from a FNP. I’ll reproduce some of it here.

Magnesium can make me feel like I have a sleep hangover. I wake up and I’m groggy. Not that the FNP suggested this oral over the counter, but the same is true of taking melatonin. I feel groggy the next day. I have taken CBD and had mixed results with it (not medically advised), and sometimes it also can make me groggy.

I shouldn’t read in bed. I should read in the living room and then go to bed afterward.

Unfortunately, I grind my teeth. However, I have an incredibly expensive custom nightguard now, so I’m adjusted to that just now. Even that took time, because I guess I was trying to grind my teeth initially, because they would feel weird when I woke up and took out the nightguard. They feel fine now, and have for the entirety of this week.

I also sometimes fist my hands in sleep and wake up with hands so sore that it feels like I’ve been boxing. That hasn’t happened in a few months though.

What sleep advice do you have for a 50-year-old? How do you sleep? How has the quality of your sleep changed?

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Booze

My current girlfriend doesn’t drink.

I think that I drink if I’m bored mostly. I also sometimes drink with a few of my friend groups. I typically drink when I’m bowling and usually do so at dinner. I have fun at beer fests and did one solo recently. I have had wine with holiday dinners since I was born.

I learned from being with one of my previous partners, who now has a new liver, that it is anger-provoking to be with someone who is tipsy, drunk or loaded when you’re sober. In fact, I remember when she didn’t even acknowledge that I had landed, was swimming topless in a pool, and I had to drag my suitcase to the place where she was because I didn’t know the name of the complex where our room was in Key West. She was either drunk or was edgy and pissy all the time. If she hadn’t been drinking (yet), she’d snap at you.

Batman and I nearly split a bottle of wine once during dinner that we’d cooked together. We had drinks in a bar one time. Another time when we were doing book planning, she and I drank tequila and ate taco soup. Otherwise, she and I hung out sober. In fact, the time that we made out for almost four-hours we had been drinking tea. When I’m with women, I don’t drink at all unless they are too.

I had a hideous day at work yesterday and was tapped out too because the day involved my being away from the house just over 12-hours and the petsitter’s boyfriend came over after I’d gotten home. (He was supposed to be there 5:30-7:30.) I didn’t quite understand all of his explanation; however, I told him that I’d make two different arrangements while his girlfriend is abroad. I accepted his apology.

I low key wanted a drink. Instead, I made a potluck invitation and waited for my girlfriend to text me so I could connect with someone who I care about before I went to sleep. I would’ve made up my cardio given that I missed Monday because I was with my girlfriend and her daughter in a canyon, but I was too tired. I would’ve had a beer if I wasn’t thinking.

LA was either drunk or nursing a hangover by drinking when I she flew in to meet me in NYC after I turned 50. There was a time period that I wasn’t sure that the nature of our friendship would survive. However, when I was talking with my girlfriend about it, slept on it one night, and then when I awakened I realized that it was more about her sleep apnea that she doesn’t take care of that upset me. (My son was born with enlarged tonsils and by the time I fought with the HMO long enough and they removed them, his adenoids had formed plaques blocking his airway completely.) I don’t like that drowning noise. It scares me.

When I was pregnant with my son, I missed coffee. I had an even more heightened sense of smell then– and my sense of smell is strong anyway–but when I would smell coffee, I wanted a cup or five. It was only when I was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and so miserable that I would have four tablespoons of red wine and take a bath. I didn’t miss alcohol for my pregnancy.

What’s your relationship with alcohol? When have you had more of it than other times in your life? What do you see with your friends and family when they’re drinking?

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Romance

I have my fourth date with ________ tonight. I’m picking her up at 6:15.

I cannot wait to get my arms around her and listen to her.

She said that she likes the colors in the rainbow as her favorite color. When she asked mine, she’d painted a replica of Georgia O’Keefe on a small canvas and wrapped it. What’s really crazy is that I saw it at The Met. She added more red to it than was in the original.

I’m wearing a black t-shirt from my league that has rainbow letters tonight. I’ll wear jeans and Birkenstocks too.

She’s coming over for a bit because she’s never seen the inside of my house. Then we’re heading to the Realtor’s Housewarming. We can only stay an hour because she has to get home to relieve the babysitter.

On Monday we’re all three going hiking. If my son didn’t have school, I’d have him come along too.

I think it’s natural to reflect on previous relationships when you’re starting a new one.

The largest backdrop now is that I’m not exclusive with anyone. Whenever Batman pops up we’ll be romantic. When GA visits again, I’ll take her on a date. I’m still interested in having girlfriends who don’t live here too.

Face your past: One reflection point entered into my main site two weeks ago too and now I’ll work with her. I hadn’t seen her in 12-years. So they’re would be no issues, I texted her to meet. I think that she thought that I was still interested in her, which is alarming. It’s also arrogant.

How did it even happen: The CEO and I were excellent break-up / make-up people and I slept with this woman for a few weeks when the CEO and I were on hiatus. Of course the latter flipped out and then said that we needed to date again. This woman, who now I’ll work with, is called the Little Liar and Peter Pan in my blog. She ran with a lie about her career for weeks. I caught her in it when she wasn’t working. I was pissed.

Now, she’s just someone who I work with 3-4 days a week and we’ve agreed to say that we dated 12-years-ago so we don’t have to have dishonesty at work. She added, “I have a partner,” when she was standing by me when I was getting on my bike to leave, and I quickly said, “I have situations too.” Not that she asked. In fact, she didn’t ask me anything and jawed away for half-an-hour and I got bored and started getting up. Oh, the things that we do when we’re still in throes of a dysfunctional relationship!

Regardless, seeing her on site for an interview was alarming at first. Then, I processed and read entries from July and August of 2012. After I stopped seeing her and after I finally put the nail in the coffin with the CEO, I wrote about what I’m looking for:

  1. Smart
  2. Sexy
  3. Wants to see me
  4. Loves to be outside
  5. Enjoys music
  6. Wants to laugh
  7. Willing to work through conflict
  8. Open and adaptable

It’s so strange. I wrote this 12-years-ago. ________ checks off each number.

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Stereotypes

I’d heard all kinds of things about NYC from people who lived there, were born in one of the five boroughs, or had visited there once or with frequency. I didn’t find anything that I had heard to be true.

  1. People are not friendly
  • There could never be something more far from the truth. People in the hotels, people on the street, people in restaurants connected with me and helped me
  • A young man approached me at La Guardia and told me where the taxi stand was and offered to take me to where I was staying for a flat rate which included all toll fees. (I tipped him well because he was the sweetest. He was handsome and charming and I kept hoping that in 5-years that will be how my kid is.)
  • I got in very late, checked into my hotel at 10, and my room was 61-degrees and I called downstairs and the concierge told me how to turn off the blower. Then he called me back. Then an engineer from facilities came upstairs to check on me
  • I got lost a lot. Everyone helped me
  • I needed recommendations, and everyone offered one when asked
  • I fought with a Citi Bike to get it in the back in the rack. I couldn’t get it to thread and a man born in Rhode Island who has been a transplant now in NYC for 30-years helped me get it in the clips
  • The lesbians were friendly, made conversation and were so affectionate

2. NYC is expensive

  • The prices that I paid for meals were like those in Santa Fe, Denver and less than in Boulder
  • Portions are so huge that you can take them with you. I ate Asian style ribs, skirt steak with excellent Chimichurri and yellow rice because LA who met me at the end of my trip didn’t finish it. I didn’t have to eat gross and overpriced airport food when I was flying home
This is one of the best things that I’ve ever eaten–and I’ve had 36-hour rotisserie chicken at Bobby Flay

NYC is dirty

  • I have never seen workers pressure walking sidewalks with that much frequency. Everywhere I’d go in Manhattan, I would have to dodge hoses because they were making sidewalks pristine
  • All of the garbage from giant apartment buildings and brownstones are bagged and collected constantly. There are not plastic bottles or bags anywhere in the gutter, and I stayed on Times Square!
  • People sit out on their stoops and if they’re smoking or vaping, they collect what belongs to them and put it in a napkin or the like and throw it out in the metal garbage cans that are everywhere

NYC has tons of crime

  • Ok, truthfully I was in Queens and Manhattan; however, my step count for the trip was 110,680 and I was walking after 4 am twice, and once was alone! I also used the subway, and have never felt safer. (Times that I’ve thought that I could die have been in Jacksonville and Las Vegas.)
  • There are police officers everywhere. They’re pretty stoic; however, they’re at work in one of the largest cities in the world, so I understood lack of eye contact and business-like natures. When we tried to take the subway from the theater district to Little Italy for the San Gennaro festival, a police officer got us through the turnstile because we were heading the wrong way out of Manhattan and he called another Police Officer at different subway station to let us through the turnstile and not the scanning gate (He didn’t want us to pay again.)
  • You can see cameras on the streets, on businesses, and there are private security guards near shopping districts

I just hope that if you’ve heard these myths and not visited, you’d consider NYC. It is a wonderful place to visit because you have art and performance. It’s also a friendly, reasonably priced, safe and clean city. I guess that now I understand “I love New York.” I think that my turning 50 there will leave a lasting impact on me and my life going forward. Don’t believe the myths.

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Half a Century

I spent my 20s establishing my career, my 30s coming out, my 40s getting financially stable, and wonder what my 50s will hold. I’m not sure.

I got off of a plane and had a private driver explain the boroughs of NYC to me after he offered to take me to my hotel. He told me some things that I could do which would be unique. After I checked in, I went walking.

After a huge serving of guacamole and two tacos, I heard the staff singing to a man and realized, “Wait, it’s after 2 in the morning, so it’s my birthday! I went over to his table and asked when his birthday was and it was actually the day before. I told him that mine was today. He wished me a happy birthday.

An hour later, the staff came out with a vanilla ice cream rolled in toasted coconut topped with sprinkles. They sang to me, which I usually hate, but it made me happy. I told everyone at the restaurant that I was 50.

Did you know that Julia Child was an accomplished chef, but that her tv show which propelled her into fame was filmed when she was in her 50s? Judi Dench was a stage actress who’s appearance in “Goldeneye” made her famous. She made that film at 50. I hope to publish my book at 50.

I did things the next day that made me happy. I looked at art for 4-hours and walked everywhere. I went to a restaurant in Manhattan on the other side of Central Park, and I tried to eat broccoli rabe, but they didn’t have any, so I ate roasted carrots and calamari rings with homemade red sauce. When I did finally get back to where I was staying I read “Class,” and spoiler alert, this book is even better than “Maid” is.

NYC was a great place to reach 50. I’m glad that I made it happen. My other goals pertain to my book, reading for pleasure everyday, staying healthy and strong, working on my emotional landscape and being intentional with my time.

I try to ensure that I’m reading everyday because I want to publish my book this year. Right now, I’m looking for an illustrator. Batman is off-grid. I took her bio off of my website. I can’t wait around for her, so I’m contacting folks on Fiverr. I thought that I had a good connection with an artist in Spain, but now the messages are gone. I have to keep plugging away

Making it to half a century is a big deal. I want to stay in good physical condition and connect with people who I love. It’s important to me to continue things that are meaningful to me, and I know that I want to let go of many other habits thereby disrupting some behavior patterns.

I read an article to get ready to write this post. The author says that when women turn fifty that they have to see if the curtains that see match the patterns in themselves inwardly and outwardly. Looking inward is always a little difficult for me.

I struggle a bit making sense of my own emotions (inwardly) so I have to take lots of time to process. I wonder if it would be helpful to rate my emotion daily as a tracking? Outwardly, I’m in good physical shape–especially for my age and the fact that my body was in pieces 36-years ago. I think that my body matches my mindset. I am thinking about tracking where I am day to day with my sleep, activity, level and human connections that occur in real life.

I’ve done it. I am the last one in my family of origin and I’m half a century. I visited the coolest city in the world (I’ll have an entry upcoming.). I have been reading voraciously, I am contacting professional illustrators for my book, I am quite fit, I am committed to improving my emotional bandwidth, and I refuse to say yes to spending time with anyone who’s life I don’t enhance and vice versa.

What did you do when you turned 50?