A Sporting Friday Five

Matriarch Aunt Julie with Joanna and the Beloved at Rehoboth Beach, DE. where I did not swim in the Ocean but did swim in a swimming pool-and celebrated my 60th birthday! I'm the one on the left back.

Sally posted this wonderful Friday Five "The first picture is of Wildgoose, the second of an Albacore, at first glance there might not seem much difference apart from the sail colours, but there is much more room for my long legs in the Albacore!
So why all of this boaty information? Well because sailing is a family passion, we love the water and the wind, and take delight in the fresh air and quiet, but also in the competition, striving to do our best!
How about you?"

1. Is there a sport/ hobby that is more of a passion than a past-time for you?
When I was younger ( I didn't just say that! And had a house by the ocean, I sailed, too. I had a partner who had a 19 foot O'day Mariner (this is important information to sailors) and we would take day trips in the Great South Bay to the Hamptons and around Shelter Island. Often we would meetup for picnics with groups of women who boated from various places on a remote beach on the island. I wish I had pictures.
Now I swim, but I do not compete

2. Outdoors or indoors?
Then outdoors, but now both

3. Where do you find peace and quiet?
In the water

4. A competitive spirit; good or bad, discuss...
Neither, just not for me.

5. Is there a song a picture or a poem that sums up your passion ?
See the swimming song in a previous post.

Glitch in the PROJECT

As I was sitting in my 7-yes- 7 hour meeting today, my iphone started boinging. This is the designated call for my overactive beloved. I excused myself and answered. "There's a problem." she said. What, I said-I was in the middle of this meeting. I seems that the co-op beach house cannot be rented-an important feature if we should want to retire someplace else and cannot sell it.
Thank God we're seeing our therapist on Saturday. Mine is in Brazil for the month!
Stay tuned...

Update on the latest PROJECT!

Illustration Joanna and Beloved getting ready for work in their new Beach Palace

Beloved and I have been looking for a weekend place to supplement the tiny, 500 sq. ft."hut in the sky" where we currently live. To give you an update, we were perfectly happy, well not perfectly...but we lived-not together in two seperate states until for about 12 years, 6 years ago when we got married for the first time (another long story.) We had been looking for a place in NJ and in NY, but had been been unsuccessful (another long story which will go untold unless you come to NYC and have-at least coffee with me.)

On the virtual eve of our first wedding, I opened my big mouth and said, "well, why don't you move in here until we find a place." As I saw those words floating out of my mouth I wanted to grab them back and stuff them where they came from, that romantic part of my brain, just about to get married, for the first time, but not the last, although to the same person. Since that time, things have been, well...crowded.

About a year ago, I was talking to my therapist about how this introvert was feeling so dissatisfied and spending a lot of time in the bedroom with the door closed-read L of the L shaped studio made into a bedroom. How there was no relief from sound of smells-BL loves to cook smelly food, loves to talk on the phone, loves to do lots of big things that match her big extroverted personality that I love.

So into couples counseling we went and hence starting searching for a supplemental/ beach/weekend, yet commutable place. We would keep our hut as our main residence.

I think we may have found one.

Friday Five: Childs Play Edition

Today’s Friday Five celebrates the spontaneous child in all of us… ar at least the one that we admire in someone else:

1) On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being I can’t do this now I am about to jump into a pit of plastic balls at the mini-mall and 1 being I can’t do this now until I can get all of the fonts on my blog to match – where are you?
-Lots of things I can't do since my proprioception went, but lots of things I can and do. I've never stopped playing and acting like a child

2) What is the silliest/most childlike thing you have done as an adult?
-Dancing to the cadence of the copy machine. In my office. I do this often. I may think of more later...

3) Any regrets?
-Never

4) What is the silliest thing you have ever seen another adult do on purpose?
-Hmmmm? BL often dances while waiting for the light to change.

5) What is something you wish you did when you had the chance?
-Bungee Jump, absolutely! But I never had the chance.
-Zip line through the jungle. however that included going to the jungle and spending a lot of long sweaty time in the jungle, which I preferred not to do.

!

Facebook is What Happened

I see it's been awhile since I've been blogging. Actually I went on vacation and the house I rented did not have computer access as promised. I have a lot to say about that. Maybe this weekend.
But I have found that since I logged on to Facebook, and made friends with the Revgals, discovered all my old friends, learned to play computer games, discovered what my various names are- trailer park, historical badass woman-you get the drift, sent birthday cards to friends that I barely know, solicited birthday gifts from friends that I barely know, reposted news items that I think you should read... well I've been VERY busy!
Facebook is a very funny thing. I'm not very social in real life. I have my wife, a few close friends, work and that's about it, but on FB-see, we're so close we have nicknames, I feel free to comment on anyones post, even people I have never met in real life.
I've even had to censor myself.
So, excuse me. I have to go check to see if anyone wants farkle chips-what are those/

Physical Fitness Friday Five

Sophia posted this wonderful FF: "I just got back from an 8 mile bike ride down the beach boardwalk near our home, and was struck with the number of people out enjoying physical activity. Runners, other cyclists, surfers, swimmers, dogwalkers, little kids on scooters....

It's easy to lose track of my physical self-care in the midst of flurried preparation for a final on-campus interview Monday for a college teaching position in the Midwest (prayers welcome!) and the family move that would accompany it. But each day that I do make time to walk or ride my bike it is such a stress reliever that it is well worth the time invested!

So how about you and your beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit?"

1. What was your favorite sport or outdoor activity as a child?
When I was a kid we had a huge backyard and all of our activities took place there. I liked riding my bike on the streets of my small town, playing games with my friends in the backyard-cowboys and Indians-I had a Davey Crockett hat and cap gun and holster!

2. P.E. class--heaven or the other place?
I went to Catholic School, 6 periods per day and one was religion, so if you took band (and I did just to avoid gym for 4 years) you didn't have to take gym. I didn't know I was a lesbian then, but the thought of undressing and showering with other girls just undid me. Little did I know, I would be undressing and dressing in band uniform in the tiniest of rooms with all the other girls in the band virtually the first day!

3. What is your favorite form of exercise now?
I love to walk around the city that never sleeps. I also swim, not very well, in my gym.

4. Do you like to work out solo or with a partner?
I like to walk along because I can walk at my own pace which is considerably slower than my friends, cane and all. I'm also easily distracted by sales, bookstores and various things to take pictures of.

5. Inside or outside?
Both, see above.

Happy 4th

And on a Lighter Note

Friday Five It's all about the look

Sally posted this excellent FF: "In readiness for my move in 6 weeks time I spent almost all of yesterday morning sorting through my wardrobe ( closet, I am so British :-) marvelling at how I had accumulated so much stuff! The result is three large sacks full of clothes to be given away. Some came into the category of " what was I thinking", some too big now ( at last), and others I will never shrink into again. Some are going simply because I want to streamline my wardrobe."

So how about you:

1. Are you a hoarder, or are you good at sorting and clearing?
I let things go in my closet until it really gets too crowded, then I clear things out and send stuff to "Housing Works" the local HIV housing thrift shops. They also get the books that overflow my apartment. We, just this year, got a storage place, two blocks away.

2. What is the oddest garment you possess and why?
I have an assortment of odd hats and DID have an alligator head that I made for a costume-it was really nice, but it got lost.

3. Do you have a favourite look/ colour?
Since my 12 years in Catholic schools, I tend to be a little tailored. That uniform look carries on way too long.

4. Thrift/ Charity shops, love them or hate them?
Love to give to them and buy books and sometimes small furniture to them, although the Stressless lounge chair and ottoman I'm currently sitting in came from Housing Works-quite a buy!

5. Money is no object, what one item would you buy?
I would buy a tailor to make all my clothes, so that I would never have to shop for clothes again-except shoes which I like to buy!

Gay Pride 1972 NYC

My first Gay March was in 1972.
That was the year I moved to NYC. Since the Stonewall riots were in 1969, that would have been the 4th year after the stonewall riots. I was a member of the Gay Activists Alliance a group that met at an abandoned firehouse in SOHO before it was fashionable. That year we marched from Central Park to Washington Square Park in the Village. Later I'll scan some pictures I took and post them. Not time now. At that time I was working for SR Rosenberg LTD a store planning company making $100. per week, no benefits and lived in a sublet with 2 men. The person I was renting from was a dancer who was working for the summer stock company I just resigned from. I was thrilled and scared to be living in NYC. I was poor but free at last to be living as myself an open lesbian. It was a heady time with women's liberation really going strong and the gay liberation movement lively. I was in love for the first, but not the last, time.