Back up

 Open Diary is, as you know, back up.

"Back-up".  Something I learned in 2004, when OD was hacked and I lost a month or two of my then slim diary.

It is not a slim diary now, with 4,047 entries, and I have a lot of incentive not to lose any of it.

I back up this diary every Sunday, or when I feel like it, and am never more than six days off now.

I save all the notes too – it’s important to me to see what others think or have to say.

***

103 days without rain.  September is the best month here in Portland Oregon – dry, warm, and sunny.

October typically brings the rain again, and there it is, falling outside my windows, as it has all day.  My cat died in January; the grass I have planted out on the balcony was getting thirsty (I do water it) and dry, but now it will have all the water it wants and more.  Cars hiss by on the streets below, adding to the noise of the day or night.

Time, I guess, to put my shorts away.  I suppose that if I had been born here, that those shorts might be a year-round thing – I’ve seen others wear shorts all year – but I was born in southern California, and 56 degrees still feels cold to me.  As a matter of fact, in putting away my shorts I got my long johns, my thermal pants, out and have a pair on now.

They don’t give you "panty lines", not that I wear panties*.  In fact, to answer a question no one asked, I wear boxers.

I wore jockey shorts all my life until I joined the Navy.  There, in those long endless lines where they give you clothes and uniforms in Boot Camp, they gave me 6 of each, boxers and jockey shorts, and I started wearing the boxers then and have never gone back to jockey shorts.  I have two or three pairs of them, even now.  They are handy for bike riding, keeping the package together, but I haven’t ridden my bike for years now, so the boxers get a lot more use than the jockey shorts do.

I see that some of them need replacing – the elastic is worn on some of them.  Most of my socks have holes in them, and my jeans don’t fit so well any more – the laundry fairies have shrank my clothes.

The dry cleaning fairies too; I have a wedding to go to on Sunday and none of my suits fit any more.  I guess I’ve grown – wider – than I was.  Oh shit.

For most of my life I wore 32/32s for pants, jeans, slacks, denims, all were 32/32s.  Now, even a 34 waist is snugger than I like.

The wedding on Sunday is saved, lol, because years ago, my friend K* bought me a Land’s End tweed sport coat, which was kind of large then and stayed in the closet for… almost 2 decades.  (good thing men’s styles don’t change much)  It fits ok now, and with a pair of black "comfort waist" chinos and the cowboy boots that K* got re-heeled for me in March, I’m ready to watch someone else get married.

I don’t see myself getting married again – you need someone else to marry, and there’s no one around.

I have been married three times already.  Of course, all three times were to the same woman.  Once for the license, once for our friends who said "awww, we missed it!", and once for her parents to see their oldest daughter get married.

I might have used up my quota.

Besides, I don’t have a "net worth" nowadays anyway.  Holely socks and stretched underwear don’t count as assets.  There would be a huge minus sign after me, if such things were visible.  Not conducive to getting anyone interested in marriage… or even finding anyone to marry.

I don’t ever see that happening again.

 

***

*there is a pair of panties in the top drawer of my dresser, but they aren’t mine and they wouldn’t fit me anyways.  A guest left them (a trophy?) and didn’t take them home with her last time.

No panty lines there, that day.

*****