We spent a wonderful Christmas day with Diana and her family. Diana is an excellent cook and we had a Christmas dinner table fit for royalty and loaded with delicious goodies!! Ham, asparagus, 2 kinds of potatoes, carrots, biscuits, soup, and tasty pie desserts. Thank you Diana!! Later we got to watch Ian and Heather's children, Liam and Damiama, tear into presents! Heather's mom, Tery and her friend Joe were also in attendance but photo boy missed them!
One of my major goals here in Florida is to improve on my fitness, especially after being sick last month. So, every day I try to walk, swim, and ride my bike. It's about a mile and a half here to walk around the park which is just right. The pool is less than 100 yards from my door and they keep it dreamy warm. Just the way old people like it. No heart stopping plunges here!
And then there is my bike. It is right out of the Wizard of Oz!! I didn't get to start riding until 2 days ago as I had a little mishap. When I got the bike down off the back of the bus, the tires were flat. Hey, no problema! I have the sweetest pump you've ever seen complete with digital tire guage. The only problem is that I am getting old and stiff and I failed to get bend over and get close enough to read it properly while I inflated the front tire. I leaned over just enough to see that there was 11 pounds of pressure in the tire so I kept filling. However, had I gotten closer, I would have seen the decimal point. Too late I realized that it really read 110 pounds of pressure in a tire that normally takes 40.
Imagine how I felt when the tire exploded with a deafening boom! I am indeed a fool! Stupid is as stupid does!
The guys at the JRA bike shop were very friendly and had a hearty laugh when I explained what happened to my tire. As I left the shop with my refurbished front tire it dawned on me that I now had more money invested in the front tire than in the whole bike, which cost me 25 bucks. Yikes!
Here is a shot of my trusty pony in her stall awaiting a run. How do I know she's a girl? Check out the bar!! (Easy on/off for clumsy old fool!) (Also good to have on the days when I am feeling gender fluid)
Finally, I read an article by Anthony Esolen of Thomas More College in New Hampshire on tolerance. It spoke to me so I share part of it here:
"I am the father of a twelve-year-old boy. I want my son to be comfortable being a boy. I want him to grow up to be attracted to women, and to be attractive to them in turn. I want him to have natural, matter-of-course friendships with other men; not the suffocating touchy-needy relationships that stunt a boy’s maturity. I want him to walk and talk and work and play and fight and laugh like the man I see developing within him. I want him to love the beauty and grace and wisdom of girls and women, and to see himself as perfecting them and being perfected by them. I hope he will marry a good woman and raise happy children, who will look like him and his wife, and maybe a little like me and my wife. It’s perfectly natural for me to want this. It’s what fathers have always wanted for their sons.
Therefore it is natural that I should want no one to lay a snare in the boy’s path. Adolescence comes with a maelstrom of new feelings: frustration with still being so young, fear that one is already too old, longing for some indefinite thing of beauty, curiosity regarding good things that are mysterious, and bad things that seem so; no one can chart a map for every adolescent child. Adolescents are, then, peculiarly vulnerable. We owe it to them to make their passage as healthy and easy as possible.
All right, then. I understand there are men who have not attained the healthy masculine nature I hope my son will attain. I don’t make fun of them. I don’t wish them ill. I count some among my friends. I extend to them my tolerance of a state that is at least a significant falling-short of a natural good. But it requires pretty serious reciprocity. For one, the rights of my son should be respected. No snares in his path, thank you. He should not have to suffer, by suggestion or invitation or public example or enticement or moral sophistry, any complication along his way to becoming a healthy man, able to love a woman in a healthy way."
Interesting missive and I see why it "spoke to you". It spoke to me as well. I even learned a new word, sophistry.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your PT and riding on that new tire/tube! ;>)