Pride Overload .... so far

Now for some complete randomness: 

1.   The photo at right is to support Kelly Stern's annual Pride Challenge and is of his dear little doggie Pino who passed away this year.  So sad.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Kelly at our Washington DC Blogger Meet-up two years ago.  He's even more charming and handsome in person, with a southern accident which would make any gay guy cum in his pants.  

2.  It's been very chilly here with overnight lows in the 40 F (7 C) range.... not very summer-like at all.  I'm still wearing fleece bed socks and a wooly hat to bed!   But I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to survive the scorching Arizona temperatures which Dr. Spo recently posted about.

3.  Middle daughter is home from university and has mainly living with me;  it's been fabulous having her here as we're the most alike of any of our family.   I've missed her terribly! But having her here is putting a temporary dent in my hooking-up life which has dwindled to nothing in recent weeks.


I've turned down the occasional offer from some horny young dude but my daughter and I have mainly spent our evenings hanging out and I don't want to miss any opportunity to spend time with her.

4.   Eldest daughter has now graduated from chef's school and has secured coveted full-time apprenticeship in an upscale bakery / eatery in town.  Best of all, she has a regular day shift,  much easier for her than the late, late nights at her previous restaurant job.  

Now that she's not doing the double whammy of full-time school and full-time work, I hope (and expect) to see more of her.


 5.  As a member of the organizing committee I've been heavily involved with our local Pride festivities this week.  I've attended and / or volunteered at most of our fabulous Pride events..... one every day this week!  Exhausting and exhilarating!  Every event has exceeded the previous year's attendance and we've seen everyone of importance in attendance:  our federal, provincial and city politicians, school board officials and various church leaders as well.

6.  I was the new organizer of one of our major Pride events this year (which I won't name).  I switched to a beautiful new venue and hugely improved the programme. 

As a result, this year's attendance jumped to about 150 including some of my own children;  a huge improvement on last year's flop which attracted only 30 people.   I was so thrilled that everything worked out so well!

7.   In one week, I will be at Toronto Pride for a five day trip.  I'm looking forward to it enormously!   Attending Toronto World Pride by myself last year (which I posted about here) was tremendous fun, life-changing, even.  I was a Lone Wolf!

My Toronto Pride experience will be very different this year and I hope, even better. You see, I will be attending with a Special Friend who I haven't posted about (and won't), other than to say that he's age-appropriate for me (46), single, handsome, and is most definitely boyfriend or LTR material.  

My foursome with three 70-ish lesbians

Well .... it was sort of a foursome and no, I'm not going back to va-jay-jay.

A local government social service agency has provided an occasional coordinator and a small amount of funding to establish a social group for older LGBTQ folks.   This demographic is at high risk of being social isolation and loneliness and typically lacks the usual family supports such as spouses or children.

As an older member of our Pride organizing committee, I've been invited to attend these 50+ LGBTQ gatherings and have started to help out with them as well.

So..... last weekend, I participated in a scavenger hunt / car rally where teams drove around town in pursuit of 20 or so challenges such as:   "Take a selfie of yourself and a trucker with the Rice Lake Truck Stop sign in the background."  I took that one for the team.   Woo-hoo!

There were about 15 participants, mainly aged 60 -80, and I ended up on a team with three 70ish lesbian ladies!  I so wanted to be with some of the elderly gay men, several of whom were quite attractive, like the men pictured in this post.  In fact, one retired teacher, who I'll call the Silver Fox, was extremely handsome:   slim, piercing, brilliant blue eyes.... and interested in me.  So hot!  But the teams had been previously organized.  Darn!

But the lesbian ladies were all very nice. Two of them were a couple and they seemed to be typical overly-fussy, grandmotherly types; I'd never have guessed in a million years that they were lesbian.   They were both terrible drivers which made for a harrowing back seat experience.

My partner in the back seat was an aboriginal woman who was a residential school survivor,  an elder in her First Nations community, artist, recovered substance abuser and now a fierce LGBGTQ advocate. 

She was extremely impressive;  very serene, wise and courageous in overcoming her life's challenges and pushing ahead with her LGBTQ projects.  Inspirational! .... and I'm so glad to now count her among my friends.

It was enormous fun but many times during the day, I thought: "Where are all the hot young guys?..... oh, wait ..... this is an elder queer group!!!"  It would have been so much more fun being in car with men who I was sexually attracted to.

The last clue took us to a rural house where we socialized and had a barbecue.  It was quite pleasant getting to know everyone but I couldn't help shake a pervasive feeling of sadness for most of the participants.

Except for the lesbian couple, most were single and everyone was older, childless, queer and with various emerging age-related ailments.  Most seemed to have little to no family support.  For them, getting old, alone and queer, must be a bleak and scary prospect.


 Although I am somewhat younger than everyone else, I plan to continue with the group's outings which happen every month or so. I enjoyed their company and we all would benefit from developing a wider circle of friends.

And I hope I can ease their social isolation a tiny bit by helping to keep the group going.

I'm okay!

Me in some Andrew Christians: May 2015

Not only have I fallen off the blogging wagon, the wagon has disappeared over the horizon and I've forgotten that it even existed. Two months without blogging or even reading others' blogs. Wow!

I've been swamped  with texts, Facebook messages and e-mails (actually, about six!) from online and real-life blog-reading friends who were concerned about my disappearance from the blogosphere. Thank you for your concern!   I'm sorry to have worried you.

I can't imagine how I found the time for blogging every second day early in the days of my coming out / divorce drama.  On the other hand, I miss sharing my stories and reading about others' adventures.   I'm sure my blogging audience has pretty much disappeared but I'm thinking that posting more frequently but with much shorter posts would make it seem like less of a chore.

I have been doing well;  just extremely busy.  School has become busier and busier but not only with the classroom teaching and numerous extracurricular activities.  I've had many requests to attend numerous Professional Development workshops of various kinds which cause disruptions to my usual teaching schedule and suck up much time needed for supply teacher preparation.

It seems that the different Board Office flunkies running the various workshops needed to spend their entire budgets by the end of May or the money would be lost;  that's why all the PD sessions seemed to be coming at us so quickly.  Finally, I said to my Principal:  "Enough!  I'm done!" and discovered that I could indeed say "no."

My Principal also pointed out that I can also say "no" to school extra-curricular involvements at school.   My school has an extremely low rate of teacher volunteerism (for running clubs, coaching etc) and he said that when I came to the school in September, I was "fresh meat" and was swamped with requests to help out with everything.  I love working with young people outside of the classroom, but I am at the risk of burning out. I'll need to take a close look at what activities I volunteer for.  I've taken on too much and need to say "no" more often.

I was also on the steering committee running a major environmental conference for high school youth: which was a monstrous task. The conference attracted some 150 participants, most from the USA, and was a huge success but very exhausting.   As well, I'm on our local Pride organizing committee; very satisfying but the pace of work is intensifying as our Pride week is fast approaching.

As well, I've been helping out with some other queer community groups;  one involving elderly LGBTQ folks and the other or young people in their late teens and early 20s.

As my university daughter is back living with for the summer, I had to spend countless hours this month completing my bathroom renovations;   being toilet-less was not an option!

As well, I've continued with my usual sluttish ways and have had some fantastic sexytimes with some pretty spectacular young men, sadly, all out of my age range. My concern is now that when I DO start looking for Mr. Right,  it will be impossible to find someone my age who will measure up.   Details to follow.