I have decided to refer to my stems as camo mottled–that’s what happens when you use your body as a counter weight vs just dead-lifting everything. But, if you knew me at all, you’d realize I take that as a suggestion, not as a rule (avoiding that). I hate depending on people for stuff I can do, and clearly maybe I shouldn’t do it, but let’s be real–I am terrible at depending on other people as a general rule.

Of course I have escaped some of the trappings of relying on just me with my semi-retirement last November. In hindsight it was obviously all the best timing with that anyways. I mean, yeah, my bp was in the high 150’s so definitely not something to continue on, but with the valve in there fucking everything up, it ended up being a pretty easy decision to justify later, though I certainly didn’t tell anyone in my family for a bit…well, the family I know well, of course.

So, we high-tailed it out of Denver a little over a week ago now–we have been in Virginia for some days and wow, what a difference. Nothing here is on fire, in fact it’s almost a verifiable jungle, and Alexandria seems to hold lots of cuteness–it has all the best things I love about old east coast towns–history, old architecture, small shops, a likelihood of ghosts around every corner. It is so cute, I mean, so adorably cute–it’s a lot sad that we aren’t living here in more ideal times since it has all the walkability I adore and the cuteness is clearly a big selling point. I assume I can last a few years still so hopefully will get to enjoy some of its sunnier parts later on. As it is, I kind of have my eyes on owning something in the old town neighborhood, something really old, possibly full of nice ghosts and workable. No idea where that will be, but I have dreamed of old houses my entire life–only in recent years did I grow accustomed to building something new, but it’s certainly not in line with the things I love the most (antiques and things that tell a story).

I saw one friend before I left and my esthetician, who, really was a better friend than most. I saw no relatives, nobody else, as there’s something obvious in the fact we were there for almost a decade and hung out with my actual relatives 3 times or so. My cousin Nikki, so sweet, but really nobody else but my aunt on my dad’s side for one or two total visits. I would almost bet money seeing them here would be more common given our closeness to the Washington DC line of options. Well, you hope so anyways…

My friend Alyse is coming in ten days for a visit with her fiance, maybe husband now–so somehow I am already more social than I was in much of the time back in Denver. She was thinking about coming out here for good, so was another friend from the Bay area in California, so this might just be one of those good juncture, meeting points for all the friends I’ve missed for so long…

Either way…this place feels better in more ways than one–it’s a new place and luckily because we know nobody–nobody but us gets to take credit for where we go and how we end up. I am so proud of him for all he has been able to accomplish and how hard he has worked. Clearly I deserve SOME credit given the resume re-write was my purchase for him as was getting clear of all of his debts–my idea. But he did the 99% of the work and I was there to shove through the rest. The pandemic obviously upped the ante for needs for his IT expertise, and luckily so. Without it, we might have been waiting for the world to catch up another 8 or 9 years. Someone was bound to do okay during this mess, and in upsidedown land, that is us. I kid–clearly I have been seeking a break and some great luck for some time, and we certainly deserved it, doing all the right shit, including endorsing that deal for him to spend $3k on another class–why he asks for my permission is something I still can’t totally get my head around, but he did, and of course, the girl taking all the classes said yes and look what happened…Moved across the country.

The lesson I keep trying to show Don and have him verbalize is true is that you cannot do the same things over and over the same way and expect different results. It’s why I love classes so much and will always push the best out of him–changing even just your mindset about shit can be enough to sustain the hope…and trust me, I have been so low I was underground more times than I can count.