Ponderings and Musings

Last July my husband and I were sitting along side a beautiful pool in a gay resort in Palm Springs, California. We were relaxing and on a quick getaway from life. My husband had given his all to his career for decades and was able to retire at a fairly young age; I took up the mantle and continued the whole “power gay couple” vibe and continue to do so today, with a sprinkling of vacation time here and there.

We didn’t know anyone around us at the beautiful gay resort. It was gorgeous and so were most of the men in the pool. Conversation flowed freely. Some were clothed, some were not. I was drinking early in the day. I was intent on exploring new facets of my personality. INFJ is a result, not a label. Let’s explore what it really means. I do this from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with new discoveries. Push your boundaries! There’s a place to do it and a place to refrain.

As naked and barely clothed men swam in the pool, as the club music quietly presented itself from the pool side speakers, as we mused about our current affairs and where we are in this life, I suddenly bolted up from my lounge chair and made a declaration to my husband.

I’m going to write my autobiography and it will be called “Trip The Moment Fantastic”! The exclamation points were in my voice.

He asked, “What does that mean”?

I replied, “I have absolutely no idea but at this moment in time it makes perfect sense to me.”

I will turn 52 years old here in this mess we call 2020. I’ve had a couple of successful careers during my lifetime and if I must say so I’ve done some pretty awesome things. When it comes down to the lowest common denominator, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Nothing. As Sandy Duncan, while in her 40s, once said, “I’ve done some great things in my life. The rest of it is gravy”.

I like this gravy!

When I declared the title of my unwritten biography in my head I was in an altered state. As I write this right now my head is in a similarity constructed altered state. COVID-19, coronavirus, meteors, and all the other ills of the world: the fact of the matter is, I’m sitting in a beautiful condo on the north side of the third largest city in the United States. We moved here from a very red part of the country some folks call a “snowy Alabama”. The root of my upbringing is “Thank god I’m a country boy!”, my head is a middle of the road politico, not too liberal and not too conservative, and my heart is where I am right now: if someone gave me a test I’d be on something other than a rainbow spectrum, I love technology, people make me crazy, and I really want to fly an airplane. And I am hopelessly in love with my husband, so thankful for our chosen family, and grateful for my upbringing, my family, and my bloody relations.

If I sat down and wrote “Trip The Moment Fantastic” I’m certain no one would read it. While my life has been quite wonderful, I would have no dreams of it becoming Kardashian worthy. My life has been perfect for me but no chapter would make “Hard Copy”. So I write in a private journal, password protected from prying eyes, and no pieces will be shared until I’ve moved to whatever comes next. My husband knows how to share my musings after I’m long gone.

But the title rings beautifully for me. “Trip The Moment Fantastic”. Such beautiful words. Like the screen name “Machias”, which still rings as spectacularly as it did for me in 1990, “Trip The Moment Fantastic” rings as a reminder to me: enjoy the moment. It likes a loud, golden bell, ringing louder than anything Jaye P. Morgan smacked on a game show.

Enjoy life. Be Free. No one else has your point of view, make the absolutely best of it.

I want my gravy to be awesome.

One of the main themes from the 1960s sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie” is Jeannie was a jealous wisp of smoke that could never really have her “master” the way she wanted her master. At least not until the ratings push for the fifth season rolled around. Astronaut Major Anthony Nelson would occasionally date other women, even though Jeannie lived in his house in a bottle on the hutch in the Kravitz’s living room, and this would make Jeannie jealous. She’d then blink and with a jump cut and a sound effect the object of her jealousy would become a porcelain statue or a dog or something. Boing plink, I’m jealous.

I’ve been married (in the relationship sense) for nearly 24 years. You know where jealousy comes from? From within. It’s a signal of a lack of self-confidence. No one can make you jealous. Jealous is your own thing. You’re feeling inadequate. You’re feeling insecure.

People have asked me how my husband and I have managed to stay together for nearly 24 years. Well, I’m going to share a secret with you. Back in 1996 when we decided we wanted to spend our lives together we decided the only exit plan was death. There were no other options. Divorce? Not an option. Separation? Not an option. Murder? Under extreme circumstances.

I find many men attractive. I find some women attractive too and quite frankly since 24 years ago we established “death” as the only exit plan for our relationship, I don’t hesitate to tell my husband if I find a guy cute. Years ago we were walking together in Crossgates Mall in Albany, N.Y. and apparently a man was eyeballing me on the escalator.

OK, let’s step out of the blog entry for a moment. I’m going to tell you something about me. I have never been able to pick up on these “clues”. I never know when someone is flirty. I never know when someone finds me attractive. I have no idea what the homosexual signals are for “let’s have sex!” in a Thruway Service Area.

I. Am. Clueless.

My husband has a keen sense of who is scoping out whom and he knows who’s having sex in the mall bathroom. He just knows. Even though I’m eight years younger than him and I came out of the closet years before he did, he knows who’s shagging whom in the stall number three and I’m just there to pee and wash my hands.

So we were on the escalator in Crossgates Mall in Albany, N.Y. near a department store called Cohoes and apparently this guy was checking me out. I didn’t have a clue but Earl, being the card carrying homosexual that he is, did have a clue and he whispered in my ear, “that guy is checking you out.”

Had it not been 1999 with dial up access there probably would have been a meme with two girls and a guy (no pizza place) on a street.

This type of scenario does not happen in our relationship because death is the only exit. Do not take the elevator, the building is not on fire, no one is leaving the auditorium.

Honestly, if everyone conducted their marital affairs the way we did, NBC afternoons would have never been populated by “The Doctors” and the other soap operas of the 1970s. Where would Mac and Rachel be? Would Iris be mean enough to spring herself into her own soap opera named “Texas”?

See, you really didn’t know that I was gay enough to know these things about NBC soap operas but it’s not a gay thing as much as it’s a freak thing.

So, when I find a guy attractive my husband is fully aware of it and there’s no harm done. When he finds a guy attractive I am really into it and there’s no harm done. What the secret to a successful marriage? Be confident in who you are, lay down some ground rules, and be yourself.

Just because you’re chained to the fence doesn’t mean you can’t bark at the cars.

I wonder what the American marriage success rate would look like if people were confident in themselves and their relationships. How much happier would society be if people just accepted the fact that human beings are like every other animal on the planet and will always admire the beauty around them.

I’m musing about this because last night we watched a first season episode of “Bewitched”. If you’ve never watched it in its original black and white glory you should do so. “Bewitched” was a much more adult show in its first season and we enjoyed an episode where Larry Tate ogled women and suspected Darrin of having an affair with a brunette woman that resembled Samantha’s cousin Serena (who wouldn’t make appearance until much later in the series). At one point Larry Tate thinks Darrin is having an affair with his wife Louise (played by the much better cast Irene Vernon).

Speaking of “Bewitched”, why weren’t people upset about the fact that Maurice and Endora had an open relationship? I think I’ll save that dialog for another blog entry.

The bottom line of this rounds of musings is this, be yourself and allow your spouse or significant other to do the same. Love is the strongest bond in the universe. Allow it to stand on its own and put all of your confidence in that bond. Have confidence in yourself and have confidence in your relationship.

Leave the drama for the soap operas.

If you visit this website on a regular basis you may notice I’ve made some changes to speed up the response time of the user experience. We’ve been with our web hosting company, Machighway, for over 10 years and they continue to be a joy to work with. Pages and photos should be loading faster. Please, if you see anything broken, please leave a comment so I can go fix it.

For the technically minded, I finally updated the version of PHP running the show here. I also fixed some WordPress plugins that had memory leaks and were slowing things down and discarded several that were no longer needed.

There are other blogging platforms out there, and many of them are quite fast, but with nearly 20 years of blog entries managed through WordPress, I’m not ready to jump to anything else yet. It’s all a matter of care and feeding. It’s not good to treat the underpinnings of this blog like the proverbial server that’s been forgotten and dry walled into a new wall.

One thing I do struggle with is finding a WordPress theme that fits the mood of the blog I’m maintaining. I’ve had this commercial theme here on this site for many years. I haven’t found anything that comes close to what I’m looking for, so it’s going to stay. It took me a little while last night to find the theme I thought best suited my new blog over at The Vintage Point of Sale Site but I finally found something I thought fits the mood.

Thank you for stopping by and continuing to follow my adventures here at Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity. I look forward to continuing sharing my adventures here and in my various annexes for the foreseeable future.

I ventured into a local Jewel-Osco (supermarket) today. I had also stopped at Target beforehand. The Target was handling social distancing quite well. There was a “sanitized cart” corral at the front door with a young man wearing a mask wiping down carts as they came in to make available for customers. Arrows and other reminders dotted the floor everywhere you looked. All employees were wearing masks. The checkouts were mostly being handled by the self-serve lanes, where markings on the floor showed customers where to wait and when to proceed. An attendant sanitized each register after a customer was done with their purchase. People were friendly. The staff was helpful.

Back to the Jewel-Osco. Things weren’t quite as organized. About a third of the customers were wearing masks. About half the workers were wearing masks, not including the folks behind the deli. Signs on the floor reminded customers of social distancing using carts as a measurement and relegating aisles to one way traffic. About half the customers were minding the direction of travel. The busiest part of the store was the alcohol section. One entrance/exit was blocked off. Again, more signs on the floor of how to maintain your distance. Plastic overlays on the card transaction machines at the self-serve registers; Jewel-Osco still wants you to decide whether to donate to their latest charitable cause or not which defeats contactless payment with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Does anyone still use Samsung Pay?

This was my first time venturing into the general public in these circumstances and I must say I don’t have a lot of faith that we’ll be approaching anything akin to “normal” even by Labor Day. I know beaches are opening in Florida and there are protestors wanting to apparently lick each other in public. For the most part the length of the effects of this pandemic will be determined by the lowest common denominators of the country. Rushing through social distancing practices will just make the social distancing practices last longer.

Maybe this is what the masses want. I don’t have an answer and I don’t know what passes as societal thinking these days. Things have been going crazy for pretty much the entire 21st century.

You’d like nearly 20 years in I wouldn’t be surprised by any of this.

One of the more depressing sights along my daily walk is the Day Care Center down the street. Even though it’s mid-April they still have their St. Patrick’s Day decorations up because no one is going to the Day Care Center. We’re all locked in and locked up trying to beat this virus while Trump encourages people to protest in the streets.

The nearby elementary school marquee talks about a “Patriot’s Day Dance” on March 30th but I’m positive that never happened. All the blinds have been closed, all the shades have been drawn, all the lights have been turned off in that elementary school. Today Governor Pritzker announced Illinois schools would be closed through the end of the school year.

I wonder if the Day Care Center will be taking down their St. Patrick’s Day decorations to put up pumpkins later this year.

I’m nothing special and there’s nothing unique about our situation; I’m sure like millions of other Americans we’re just as tired of sitting at home as they are. People liken these times to World War II when Americans went to war, built things for the troops, and rallied together. The comparison is like apples to oranges; we don’t have any sort of presidential leadership, there’s nothing to send troops to, and families left back at home during wartime could at least hug their neighbor.

We have to avoid our neighbors on the street.

I watched a man stand on his porch to don a scuba mask and snorkel. He was taking his garbage to the cans in the alley adjacent to his home. He would be passing by no other human being; the elaborate getup was absolutely unnecessary.

People are scared.

I get wearing masks when you’re out in public and mingling with other people, that makes sense for the most part, I have noticed that some folks wearing masks relax social distancing protocol because they think the makes them invincible. A little bit of brain power and research will prove this is not true, but there’s not a lot of that in American society. I saw a meme this morning:

“What borders on stupidity?”

“Canada and Mexico”.

It’s a very sad commentary on a very real problem this country faces.

I hope the kids are able to put up Independence Day decorations this summer. This gives me hope.

So we got a little bit of snow last night. It is not surprising the get some snow in the middle of April in Chicago, Illinois. In previous years snow at this time of the year would be disheartening but with everyone sheltering in place and not really going out to begin with, last night’s flurries didn’t really seem to have that much of an impact.

The streets were extra quiet this morning during the daily walk I use to start the day. I listened to a podcast from the folks at Relay FM. I like their selection of podcasts. Today I listened to “Focused”, which helped me get my brain back where it needed to be during these pandemic times.

I’m writing this blog entry during my lunch break and the snow on the balcony has already given way to the meager amounts of sunshine poking through the clouds. It is spring. We are moving toward more moments of sunshine.

We will be just fine.

My grandmother handled the posting of Accounts Receivables for the family business. It was a part time position and she generally worked from 10 to 2. She’d bring dessert for everyone to enjoy during the lunch hour. She liked baking things.

Grandma posted to the customer ledgers using a mechanical NCR 160 Posting Machine from the early 1970s. I found the machine to be a marvel, with its typewriter like carriage, flap the flipped open for the ledger card, and rows and rows of specialized buttons. I’d watch her work while she did the posting and most of my accounting knowledge was learned by simply watching her work.

After she retired in 1986 I took over the Accounts Receivable duties for a little while before my aunt took over the position. A couple of years later I wrote a computer program to replace the NCR 160 Posting Machine. We used the same ledger cards and statements for customers but the computer remembered everyone’s address and balances and the like and could automatically print these things for the new month. Grandma would type everyone’s address on their monthly statement after the previous statement went out. She had an electric typewriter but she didn’t want one with a ‘return’ key; it had a manual lever to return the carriage as if it was completely manual typewriter. My aunt replaced the typewriter not long after joining the family business.

Even though I’m an electronics geek I am still fascinated by all the things were able to accomplish in the mid 20th century with these mechanical marvels. The Posting Machine knew when to add, subtract, stamp the date, and print a balance without telling the machine what to do. It was all programmed on a specialized bar that ran the length of the carriage. It’s pretty amazing if you think about it. It’s kind of like those old mechanical cash registers at Kmart that kept track of daily totals for every department for a readout at the end of the day.

We did some amazing things with machinery before we went all electronic. Our gadgets lasted longer too.

ISS Astronaut Chris Hadfield offers some great tips for living in isolation. To keep things in perspective, while not as exciting, we do have it better than living on the International Space Station or off-planet in some other way (The Moon, Mars, etc). While it’s certainly possible I’ll see an off-planet colonization some time in my lifetime, this quarantine lockdown is the closest I’m going to get to the experience.

As a kid I was always excited about Easter. After the church service we would get together at Grandma and Grandpa’s house for a family dinner. Because spring does not reliably appear in the Lake Ontario Snowbelt it was a crap shoot as to whether we’d be playing outside in the lawn or playing in the barns, sheltered from the snow. When I got a little older I gathered up bikes left in the barn from when my Dad and his siblings were our age, get them working reasonably well, and orchestrate a bike ride with my cousins. The ride would be a couple of miles and we’d have a good time.

As I walk through the neighborhood this spring I’m very sad to see locked up playgrounds with police tape around all the jungle gyms and slides. There is no sound of laughter, no chattering among parents, no families gathering to see how they’re doing. We eat in small groups, hidden away in our quarantine locations. If we’re out, we’re most likely deemed an essential employee and thank god for our health professionals that are trying to fight this pandemic.

When you decide that it’s time to drain the swamp, and listen to media reports of a rogue email server, and buy into the demonization of what was probably the most qualified presidential candidate thus far in the 21st century, you end up with playgrounds wrapped in police tape. And an absence of laughter in the air.

Easter is a sign of renewal. Mother Nature is speaking. We need to listen.