Day 95 - Updates/Thoughts on Various in These Foolish Things

Brunching: When I get something stuck in my head (see: brunching from yesterday’s entry), I fricking DO something about it. I wish I’d get some other things stuck in my head as strongly as I feel about brunching. I now have not one, but two brunches scheduled in April! And people are RSVPing right and left that they will be attending! I’m going to have to adjust my reservations. When [Athena] and I co-hosted Brunch Upon a Time, she’d normally write out brilliant copy for the invite and I’d make the reservations. We’d invite 35+ people each time, and I’d say we’d have a 20% show rate, which is not bad at all since people have lives and can’t always make it every time. This time, I’ve had at least a 25% response rate after the first hour of sending the invites. That means we’re going to be larger parties than the average brunch. I should become a brunch planner, ha! This little project has made me exponentially happy in the last day. I’m so excited!

Lesbian Crush: Two of my local brunch invites are LC and her wife, V. As soon as I sent the Partiful invite for the in-town brunch, LC RSVP’d that she’s going, and then immediately sent me a text. She loves me right back! She just wanted to chitty-chat and catch up with me, so we FaceTimed. She also wanted to ask me if it would be possible to invite Jenna, who is this precious trans woman who comes to all of LC’s parties and events (LC, in case you didn’t catch this from previous entries, is highly, highly extrovertedly social, and I think that’s why I’m so attracted to her. She’s just a giant bundle of JOY). Anyway, she’s got it stuck in her head that Jenna is mesmerized by me and wants me to take her under my wing for some reason. LC keeps pushing me/us to take Jenna thrift shopping…the three of us. And the thing is, maybe Jenna does look up to me in some way, but she is excruciatingly introverted and barely makes eye contact with me. So to be honest, I don’t think she’d love a boisterous brunch. I think she’d be uncomfortable, and she’d also sit on the sidelines and not participate in conversations. SO…I made a plan for LC, Jenna and I to take a separate thrift shop excursion next Saturday afternoon. That will be fun. And we’ll get one-on-one time away from the brunch. That solved it for LC. And that solved it for me. But poor Jenna…what if she doesn’t really want to do this? Well, I guess we’ll find out!

Mom + Dad:Continue to plug along. I’ve figured out that my next visit with them will be Easter Sunday. I’m happy about that. And I’m so grateful that they continue to do pretty well for themselves - especially since their world is so small now. Neither one of them really gets up and out anymore. They are sleeping at least 12 hours a night now. Their “help” comes 4 days out of the week, and Bro and SIL are still around and doing the bare minimum, but thank GOD they are there every day with them. You know I call them almost every night. Last night, we talked for an HOUR. Mom was actually a little bit chatty for a brief 5 or 6 minutes or so, which was really nice. It’s gotten to the point where she will say “hi” and “bye” and that’s all, but last night was good. And dad…oh, how I savor these phone calls lately. He is such a helper of a human being. We were talking about my work life - I was telling him the crazy stories of Head Cat and recounting all of the CRAZY people I’ve worked with in my career, and he knows I’m looking for a different job AGAIN. So he sat on his computer while we talked, and he found several opportunities for me to pursue that I hadn’t even thought about! The guy is brilliant, and I was embarrassed to admit that these were not far-fetched ideas, I just hadn’t thought of the things he was saying. I thanked him over and over before we got off the phone, and he said “I just love doing things like this” and it truly made my whole week. I know he felt good too, because this getting old and moving closer to death thing is not easy. He desperately wants to be productive, but his myasthenia gravis weakens him more and more each day. So to have alllllll of that mental effort come out last night…what a beautiful (and helpful) conversation it was! I love them both so much.

Health and Aging: On a related note, as much as I dislike FaceBook, I have still joined several specific groups that I reference fairly frequently. One of my most recent groups is called “Over 50, Gaining Muscles” and I’ve gotten some fantastic information and inspiration from this group. There are people all the way into their 80s and 90s posting photos of their healthy, muscular bodies and it blows my mind! Because this is not what we normally see of aging, but it shows that if you work on it every single day, you can absolutely remain (and achieve!) athletic and fit! So there was a guy who posted photos of himself at 87. He said he didn’t start weight training until he was 84!!! But he looked so freaking amazing! And he wrote about all of the things he was doing at the gym and how incredible he felt. And it blew my mind a little bit. So I commented that I couldn’t believe that he was 87 and that my dad is 86 and he can barely move anymore. Now, I know that my dad has a terrible disease (MG) that attacks his muscles and that’s why he is now very, very slow. But it also got me thinking about my mom and how she’s been so unhealthy all of her life. When she was my age, she was almost like a 75-year-old. She’d never worked out in her life, and she’s never really had healthy eating habits. I don’t want it to seem like I’m shaming them here - it’s just that I now see what’s possible as long as you don’t have a disease or some other terrible health issue (like my mom’s COPD - she had Rheumatic Fever as a child and nearly died and that wrecked a lot of things in her body) attacking your body! I guess what I’m saying here is if you can stay on top of your health, it’s everything! And as someone who’s gone through a life-threatening vascular injury and late-stage cancer and now on the other side of it…it’s so, so, soooooo important to work on mastering healthy habits in order to live a long life. My medical issues were a huge setback because I really couldn’t make good choices during my treatments - I spent the whole time just trying to stay alive! I heard a saying the other day and I don’t know who to attribute, but it’s the most important thing I’ve heard in a while. It’s so freaking true: “A healthy person has many priorities. A sick person has one priority: to get healthy.” Am I obsessed with health? Yes. But you can see why, right??

Love Life: Once again, non-existent. You know I go through these phases where I want to try…and then I don’t. I feel like the chances of finding a life partner are dwindling. I’m beginning to think about my later years and living in a compound with my favorite people, and I think that might be the direction I want to take. But I still have hope. I still believe in romance. I just don’t know how to go about it right now.

And with that, I’ll close for now because I want to get on with the day. Lots to do!

I love you!
GS