I had to postpone lunch with a friend

 

Recently, I scheduled lunch with a friend from where I used to work.  Sadly, she is recovering from Covid, and I felt safer postponing our lunch until she has had more time to recover.

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My friend is one of two people I want to keep in touch with at the old job.  Although she knows I'm trans, she treats me as if I were a cisgender female.  Unfortunately, our schedules are hard to get into sync, as she is busy every morning, and has family responsibilities which I won't go into here.  As a result, the only time we can meet is on Fridays for lunch.

There are certain people in my life who are hard to schedule things with.  One of which is the former student clinician with whom I helped develop my feminine voice.  She's a person who I will likely need to find a way to squeeze her into my schedule when she is free.  And then, there are the people who live far enough away that we can't schedule a last minute get together.  

We all have friends like those I mention.  But these friendships seem harder to establish and maintain when one is transgender.  There are people who look at us in a strange way and fear us.  There are others who dislike us and consider us as untouchables for being transgender.  But there are the remaining people who accept us as people, no matter how far from the statistical norm we are. So, I cherish those friendships I make as Marian, and work hard to have them become stronger over time.

Hopefully, I'll be able to maintain these friendships as my relationship with RQS grows.  Keep your fingers crossed....

Cleaning up a mess

 

The above is not the mess in my house.  It is a picture of the mess from Ex-GF-M's place AFTER she emptied out a den where she tossed many things after her husband died.  Like me, in grief, she couldn't deal with the effort it takes to keep a place neat and tidy, and let things go to pot.  Even when the big mess is cleaned out, there are smaller messes still left to be taken care of - a process that has to be repeated until a place can be considered neat and tidy.

Lately, RQS has been helping me straighten out my place.  It's been a slow slog for me, as we seem to be taking two steps forward and one step back each weekend.  On my own, I've been trying to take care of things as well.  Today, it was another day where I find myself cleaning up the space around my computer desk.

RQS has described me as a person who can be very organized, but gets overwhelmed by the process of organizing things.  In many ways, I think she's right. Julia Child had a better way of organizing her kitchen than I do for my desk.  On one of her kitchen walls, she had a diagram for each of her kitchen tools.  If she saw the outline, she knew that the tool was either in use, or needing to be cleaned.  I wish I could be that good in organizing things.  

A perfect example of my lack of personal organization is my freezer.  I love to buy certain foodstuffs on sale.  But I never seem to plan far enough in advance to thaw out tasty food - such as strip steaks I buy on sale at Stew Leonard's.  So, by the time I think of having a steak, there is no good way to thaw it out quick enough for me to enjoy it for dinner.  Often, I end up throwing out (formerly) good food, simply because it sat in the freezer too long.  AARGH!

I find it interesting that I can clean up other people's messes, but have a hard time cleaning up my own.  I guess it is how I am wired - if I get too close to things, my ability to make sense of those things is negatively affected.  Instead, I must be disinterested in some way to work effectively.  In the case of my desk, I may be interested too much to do much of anything.  And I may not be interested enough to care much.

Who knows?  I may get this desk straightened out yet.

There is one problem with retirement other than money....

 

I have touched on this theme before - if I have no reason to get up in the morning, I simply do not do so.  And I've been doing this a lot lately, as I have no energy to get up and do things.

Since I decided to stop working, I have only gotten up early if I had something to do.  Otherwise, I'd wake up late and stay up late.  There is no routine I have to follow, and I am much more relaxed.  Yet, I'm afraid of becoming a couch potato like my dad was, and then being unable to take care of himself in his old age.

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Last night, I chatted with RQS and she said that she needed another pedicure and asked if we could go to the nail salon when she arrives for the weekend.  Since I wanted to get my nails done as well, I said that if we did so on a Friday, I'd have to be in Marian Mode all weekend.  Knowing that she likes to see Mario, I figured that this would get her to think about doing the pedicure on Sunday before she leaves for her place.

Even though it is left unsaid, I know I am walking a tightrope as I expose RQS to my Marian presentation.  I always want her to know that Mario is always there for her, no matter how I'm presenting at the moment.  One of the things I learned as I examined the failure of my last relationship is that we didn't communicate enough.  XGFJ always thought that a hint would be enough for me to know what is going on in her head, while I knew that important things had to be bluntly stated.  In my current relationship, I make sure to "reward" RQS for speaking her mind - especially if it's not an easy thing to say.

So far, encouraging RQS to be open with her feelings has worked for me, as well as the slow approach I've taken to getting her used to my Marian presentation.  Hopefully, things will keep working out well for the two of us - she's a good reason for me to enjoy waking up in the morning in retirement....

Closing out a weekend with RQS

 

Last night, RQS and I stopped at the local Walmart to pick up some storage containers for her apartment.  Today was the day I had to drive her and those containers home.  And it was the perfect chance to introduce her to my brother and my sister in law.

We didn't get out of the house until early afternoon, and I took the chance to show her my old neighborhood on the way to my brother's place.  Things went well, and my brother picked up some Chinese food for us to enjoy before going home.  (I ate way too much of it.)  All too soon, it was time to go, and we drove back to RQS's place.

Now, it's always hard to find a parking spot in RQS's neighborhood, and I warned her that I might have to double park for a minute to unload the car, then leave.  Luckily, we found a parking spot after 10 minutes of cruising, and we spent another few hours together before I had to drive home.

This was one weekend that neither of us wanted to end.  One wonders when "reality" will set in....

A Better Weekend Day with RQS

 

Given yesterday's frustration, we decided to take it easy for a change.  Yes, it was another day in Mario Mode, but worth it, even if I'm not presenting as I'd like.  By the time we got out of the house, it was about 2 pm, and I figured that I'd show her were some people with money live in the nearby backwoods....

I'll always find it amazing how many large plots of land are available in the Hudson Valley.  No wonder why so many "rich" people are choosing to skip the Hamptons and buy more affordable land on the nearby back roads. For today's drive, I chose to drive along the original Albany Post Road in Putnam County and surprise RQS.

RQS, living in the outer boroughs of NYC, doesn't often get the chance to see large plots of land with one (or two) building(s) on them. Seeing these lots made her understand why good properties in the Hudson Valley are hot right now.  Although I do not know what the selling price of one property I am familiar with, I am sure that the owners made a decent profit compared to the price the property once sold for.

On the way home, we stopped in Cold Spring for a photographic expedition.  I stayed near the gazebo, while RQS experimented with her camera nearby.  As you can guess, this was an even better day than the day before.

A Weekend Day with RQS - With one important annoyance.

 

RQS came up earlier than usual this weekend, and I was presenting as a male for a change.  Given that we needed a change of pace, I suggested that we go to Hemlock Hill Farm and pick up some freshly butchered meat.  (When was the last time you went into a traditional butcher shop?  Other than this place, I haven't been to a butcher shop in ages.  But I digress....

Given that my phone was working perfectly when I picked her up, I figured that this would be a weekend where everything would be working correctly.  G**, I was wrong about that!  I had Pandora on in the background while driving to the farm, and shut it off before we entered the building.  RQS salivated at how good the meat looked, but I was not going to buy Porterhouse steaks for $28/lb.  Instead, I chose to buy the more affordable pork chops for dinner, and she bought some lamb chops to eat at home.  When I got back to the car, I found out that my phone was bricked.  AARGH!

After we got home, I figured that I'd try a few tricks to get the phone working, but to no avail.  Instead, I decided to open up my bankroll and buy a new phone.  Thank G** for Google Backup!  Most of my apps and data was restored to the new phone with few glitches.

On the whole, this day was better than I made it sound.  RQS and I firmed up plans for one shore excursion, and we still were able to have an enjoyable and tasty dinner....

 

Thoughts on a VCR and on Travel

 

Ever since I started pulling wires to disconnect my old DVD player and connect a new one, I have not yet been able to get my old VCR to work.  The VCR is rarely used, but I want to be able to use it once in a while to play a tape of my late wife and I on a TV show.  As much as I'm starting to care for RQS, I will always miss my late wife and how she made my life better.

Although I think I have everything set up right, I know that I'm overlooking something.  I am very lucky to have had this poor quality recording, as it is all I have left of my wife, save for a few tiny pictures.  In the future, all there will be left of me will be a few pictures and the remnants of my thoughts on the blog entries I've posted.  This is normal in life.  From dust to dust, as they say....

Right now, I feel I have a few more good years left in my life.  Over the next two or three years, I plan to go on at least three to five more cruises, plus do some more land trips that I never have had the time or money to do in the past. For example, I will be doing another New England/Eastern Canada cruise soon.  And shortly afterwards, I'll be doing a Hawaii cruise on my own.  If all goes right, sometime next year, I will be doing a Panama Canal cruise with RQS.  Then I hope that we will be able to take some trips to South America (think: cruising by the Tierra del Fuego), Iceland, and Great Britain (with a Westbound crossing on the Queen Mary 2). At that point, I have to determine how much money we can spend on travel while we are both healthy enough to take bucket list trips.

When I went on my last cruise, the ship I was on had only 2 US type electric sockets.  In today's world, this is not enough.  By watching one vlog, I found out that the ship we're cruising on has USB ports on both sides of the bed.  If that's true, we will not need to play games with the extension core I use for my CPAP machine.  

It's nice to know that no matter what happens, that the world will keep moving forward when I'm long gone.  Let's hope that time does not come soon....