Spring 2020

Hey!  How about that Pandemic!

We are still sheltering in place here in the Rose City.  I've lost track of how long it has been.  Since sometime in March and this is the 3rd of May.  Can't be bothered to do the math. 

For a retired homebody, the stay at home order has made minimal difference in my life.  True, I haven't seen friends or gone anywhere but the grocery store, but still... I can't complain.  In fact, it has alleviated the need to make excuses for not going out.  Lol. 

The biggest thing I miss is my public library.  I bought a couple of books early on in the lockdown.  One I had planned to purchase anyway since it was written by a friend.  The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Koya.  So proud of her!  So amazing to have a novel published!  The other one was the third book of a series that I was reading.  I had book #2 from the library and had to finish the series.  (The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness.)  Now I'm just trying to read from my own shelves.

I was texting with a friend last week, asking her how out of control her hair had gotten.  This friend is very butchy and gets her hair cut every three weeks.  She was going nuts!  She couldn't stand it any more and bought a hair clipper and did it herself.  It doesn't look half bad! That gave me the courage to try it myself.  I watched a video (some fashionable young Canadian man, to judge by the accent) and he made it look if not easy, at least doable. 

Here's the thing, I only have dog clippers.  The University of YouTube* assured me that it's ok to use dog clippers on humans as opposed to the opposite.  So, I rummaged around until I found them (my old dog with longish hair shuffled off this mortal coil several years ago and I haven't used the darned things since.)  Step one was to take some steel wool to the blades to get the rust off. 

Anyway, I did it and while it's far from perfect, it feels a whole lot better!  Here are some pix:

This is the before picture.  My hair looks like a thatched roof!

So much better!  I need to decrease the length of the top but I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.  And, really, it's only hair and mine grows fast.  I hope you are entertained by this saga! 

Other than my hair drama, I haven't done much of anything.  A little quilting.  Made a bunch of masks and gave them to friends and family.  Still working on a rug for my neighbor.  Just the usual pastimes of my old fart self.

So, tell me, what are you doing during these strange times?

* One of The Rancher's part time helpers has named it this and it makes me laugh.  :^)

Pride Roundup 2012!

Pride Roundup

Last weekend was Pride in my hometown.  Not that we’re not proud year-round…

Anyway, here’s how it went down.

Friday evening ~ hair cut.  Gotta look good for Pride, right?  T had a light trim and I had the clippers. 

Left side: shortish but swoopy

Right side: super short!

(I have a cowlick in front... can you tell?)

Saturday I had planned a busy but doable evening for us.  Before we could start on the gay fun, we had a backyard party for a friend to attend.  Got that done.  Then went home to don our gay apparel.

Next up was the Dyke March.  Now, let me give you a little history on that one.  Every year I say that I want to go to the Dyke March and every year T objects.  She used to say things like, “You just want to look at other women’s boobs.”  Or, “Why, are you looking for a new girlfriend?”  Yes, I know, she’s painfully insecure.  She doesn’t say that anymore, but this year it was, “It’s such a ridiculous spectacle.  I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t judge all lesbians by that.”  I mean, really.  I can’t spend the time going over these pointless arguments.  It’s …  never mind.

So, this year we were going.  A friend of mine was going to come with us.  My friend the jumper.  She needs to stay busy these days and I thought that our busy evening would be perfect for her.  We had a complicated arrangement logistically.  She met us at our house.  Then we took our car to the place where we would end the evening and parked it.  We got in her car and drove downtown to watch the March.  Only, when we got there, we discovered that we had missed it!  Argh!  Made T happy, though.

We went out for a bite of dinner.  There were two more things on our itinerary: the Hot Flash/Inferno Pride Party which was slated for 8pm to 4am.  No, we were not staying for the whole thing.  And the other entry on the itinerary was the World Naked Bike Ride.  We saw it last year and unbelievably T said, “Let’s do that next year!”  Of course she changed her mind, but still wanted to see it.

So, at this point, sitting in the café having dinner, I said “look, if this is too much for one evening, let’s skip the bike ride and just go to the Party.”  Yes, they agreed with that.  Fine.

So, we drive back across the river and arrive at the warehouse for the big Pride Party.  Holy smokes!  The place is teeming!  Teeming and Steaming!  We danced some, we had a drink or two.  We saw lots of friends, lots of gals who we typically only see on Pride weekend.  My fragile friend left after a couple of hours.  We stayed on a bit longer but eventually the heat and noise drove us out.  When we were leaving, maybe 11:00ish, there was a line down the block to get in.  I love that.

On the way home, we got up to 7^th and Burnside and found traffic at a standstill.  We drove up a few more blocks and parked the car and got out.  What do you know, we got to watch the Naked Bike Ride after all!  In fact, we couldn’t get across Burnside to go home for probably 45 minutes.  There are thousands, literally thousands of people participating in the ride.  Wow.

On Sunday, my fragile friend was picking us up to go to the Parade.  We got downtown in a timely manner and found a reasonably good spot along the route.  T and I nipped in to Hobo’s for a couple of quick mimosas.  We met up with another friend and the four of us watched the parade together.  Afterwards, we walked down to the Waterfront and strolled through the booths and enjoyed a couple of beers.  My fragile friend left and we caught a ride home with T’s friend Donna.  I would have liked to stay longer – the people watching is fantastic and we hadn’t seen some friends that we usually see there.  But, overall, we had a pretty good time.

Who else has a Pride story to tell?  I hope you are all out there waving your rainbow flags!

New haircut

I just had my hair cut super short.  It was bugging me and that was pretty much the only solution I could come up  with at the moment.  Mind you, I just had it cut a couple of weeks ago, too... If it irritates me again I'm going for the clippers.

My phone takes lousy pictures, but you can at least see how short it is now.  Amazingly, my mum didn't say a word about it this morning.

Me just now and weekend!

I cut my hair short this week.  Whew!  What a relief!  That chin length bob was irritating me.  Here is a blurry cell phone pict...

It's out of my face, and I like that.

What else is going on?
Three day weekend!  Thank you, Dr King!  I know I should be doing something worthwhile and altruistic, but I am going to start on a new project.

I think that the two most popular resolutions that are made in January are:

1) Lose weight

2) Declutter

I’m going for both!

T and I have started a weight loss plan that seems to be having some positive effect already.  Yay for that!  Next up for me is the long process of decluttering my house and life.

Here’s the thing, I have a two story house with a basement and an attic.  I’m happy to say that the attic is completely empty.  It’s the basement that is an absolute embarrassment.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that!  I don’t let people down in my basement because it is a disaster of epic proportions.

When I moved in to my house, I had too much stuff but couldn’t make decisions about letting it go.  Add to that a moderate tendency to be a packrat, a strong attachment to things of sentimental value, and a desire to reuse and repurpose everything rather than throw it away and you have a recipe for junk.

I did pretty well last spring when I took a week off work to clear out some of the basement.  I took 3 or 4 loads of junk to the dump.  Yes I did!  And I was proud of myself, because it was hard, dirty, and at times wrenching work.  I had to throw away stuff from my daughter’s childhood and that made me sad.  But, I had two “water intrusions” as they say in the home repair business, and I had to clear out the stuff that was ruined.

The first water issue was when the water heater sprung a leak.  The second was a leak in the basement wall under a downspout.  The result of these two leaks was that I had to move crap from one side of the basement to another and then back again.  What had once been reasonably orderly was now complete chaos.

As I said, I cleared out a lot of it last spring, but there is still much work to be done.  Here’s my new plan: I’m going to empty one box per week (minimum, more is ok too) for the entire year.  Yes, I realize that might only add up to 52 boxes, but that should make a difference right?  I might put a widget in the sidebar here to keep track and increase my accountability.  Feel free to ask how that project is going… I’ll need prodded from time to time.

Catching up with Bullets!

•          Happy New Year!  The resolution?  Just like everyone else… lose weight.  We are trying some new strategies this time, though.  One should help: we’ve stopped drinking.  We are not drinking alcohol for one month and, when February rolls around we will limit ourselves to weekends only.  Sigh.  Talk about a sacrifice!

•          Besides needing to lose weight and detox, I am also resolving to call my friends more often.  My two best friends live in California and I miss them a lot.  The phone is a poor substitute but it will have to do.

•          Changing up my teaching schedule.  I have been teaching kids classes two evenings a week and starting in February I’m going to be teaching a women’s self defense class one afternoon a week.  Much as I love the kids, I’m looking forward to the change.

•          Changing up my work schedule.  My department is undergoing some changes in leadership and I am going to switch from working the early day shift to the “white man” hours, ie: more like 8:00 to 5:00.  I am going to position myself to take my manager’s job because, for one thing, I already do the majority of it, and for another thing, he’s a putz and a useless one at that.  It will take a fair amount of strategy but I’ve developed some skill in that arena.  Wish me luck!

•          Also pursuant to the job strategy: new shoes.  And clothes.  But, I hate shopping and I’m not buying any clothes until I shed some weight.  But, I do need some office shoes.  Athletic shoes just don’t send the same message.

•          Hair cut!  For some damned reason I decided to grow out my hair, and specifically my bangs this past year.  They are just now to the point where I can tuck them behind my ears so I am almost there.  But, I realized that I now have the same haircut as my mom and much as I love her, I don’t want to look like her!  I browsed through some awesome styles at dykehaircuts.tumblr.com and I have an appointment on Monday to chop it all off.  Nothing too dramatic; I don't want to scare the administration.

·         Other than that, my goal for the New Year is to keep doing what I’m doing and love life and the people around me.  How about you?  Goals, resolutions, dreams?

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