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I began to notice a lot of number 11s showing up in my life lately to the point where I mentioned it to Aaron and Cole among others. I moved into an apartment on the 11th floor of a building on 11th street and my parking space is number 211. We are now in the 11th month and tomorrow i finally sell the home i bought in 2011. Tonight I looked this up online to try to find out if anyone had any theories about what it means when certain numbers present themselves in your life. I know it sounds like some kind of stupid superstition. Maybe it is. In the same way that cooking makes me feel closer to my beloved grandmother and whenever I see a train on a track I think of my grandfather what's the harm in it? This makes me feel good. What if there is a message that we are dismissing because we can not explain it? Here is what I found: If you repeatedly see the number 11, it is a message from the angels to  pay attention  and  take action . The number 11 is a message th...

I never thought I would be here in a million years if you would have told me, let's say, a year ago. How do I describe and recap 2018 so far with the dignity and the severity that it deserves? I have not written about the end of my 12 year relationship much or posted publicly about it on social media out of respect for a true love that was all at once so deep and so real that I fear I may never find anything else like it. Now with Aaron's blessing and in large part so that I don't forget how important this phase feels I want to document and share with you some of the details that have led up to this point. As of today I am at a total weight loss of 85 lbs. and I am down at least 5 pants sizes depending upon the store and the brand. Just before my last blog post around the time of my 40th birthday Aaron and me agreed that we would try an open relationship. This feels like the beginning of the end to me whenever other couples have told me they are going to stay t...

I got a room at the top of the world tonight I can see everything tonight I got a room where everyone Can have a drink and forget those things That went wrong in their life I got a room at the top of the world tonight I got a room at the top of the world tonight I got a room at the top of the world tonight And I ain't comin' down, I ain't comin' down from the song Room at the Top by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers We returned July 2 from a few days in San Francisco, California where I celebrated my 40th birthday amongst friends. This is one of my favorite cities I have ever visited. I reunited with dear friends. We toured Alcatraz and enjoyed photographing the Golden Gate Bridge. We also toured the Winchester Mystery House and dined at Wayfare Tavern, Jones, and Chart House. We had drinks at Club Fugazi for a performance of "Beach Blanket Babylon" then Vesuvio as well as Harvey's later. I have recently reached a 9 year anniversary wor...

14,245. That's the number of days old I am going to be tomorrow. 341,880 is the number of hours old I am going to be tomorrow. 20,512,800 is the number of minutes old I am going to be. My point is I have got to remember that age really is just a number and if I rally am only as old as I feel most days I am about 28. Of course there are also days when I feel 108. When I turned 30 years old I freaked out a little because my 20s were over but I made myself feel better somehow by saying 'well at least I am not turning 40'. When the end of something hits me like a ton of bricks my reaction has always been downward spiral. Self medicate, self pity... and now here I am in this positive place of making a newer, better, stronger me with confidence and power and a milestone birthday comes along and threatens to throw it all into a tailspin. I have daydreams of me "relapsing" where I just overeat and drink to excess and lose all the progress that I have made over this ...

About two years ago a woman named Kathy from my hometown died from terminal breast cancer. She was my third cousin i think and she had one son Billy if I remember that correctly from her one marriage that ended when Billy was 4 years old. While he was high functioning he lived with special needs. I am unsure if those needs were affiliated with autism or maybe a traumatic brain injury but he needed to be medicated and looked after. He lived in a trailer park with his mother his entire life. Kathy was sweet and kind to me on Facebook and if i would ever run into her back home. I only met Billy once for about 5 minutes and he literally said nothing and never made eye contact. when his mother passed i think he was sort of lost with no direction and no idea what to do next. his father was never in the picture. still alive but a hopeless alcoholic whose whereabouts were unknown, nor did anyone really care. His closest living relative was his u...

Next month is Pride month and as LGBTQ Americans especially those of us who were born here we sometimes forget or take for granted the freedoms that we have and we overlook the reason we celebrate Pride every June. Look up the Stonewall Rebellion and read about what happened in June 1969 New York City. Become familiar with the spark that lit the fire in the fight for equal rights and the change that would come.  Almost 50 years later we must continue to tell the stories of places where people are often attacked, tortured, imprisoned, and murdered for being honest about their sexual orientations or gender identities. Here is one such story:  Last Monday at my church Pastor Dwayne got a call from a jail in Sherburne County. I don’t know my Minnesota counties so I don't know where that is precisely. On the other end of the telephone line was Yousef, a young Somali man who had been pulled over for a traffic violation and was being det...

I want to preserve a couple of stories about one woman named Gloria that our guest pastor shared with us this past  Sunday  at church. He spends a good deal of time talking with and prays with people in hospice care who may not have long to live and it is during those conversations in their final days when people share secrets with him that they have carried for a lifetime. Parts of the story are paraphrased and/or they may be partly fiction based on my recollection. When he arrived that day she was eating a bowl of fresh strawberries as she often did. She enjoyed eating them so much that they were the only things she would request when anyone would offer to bring her anything. The pastor asked her why and she said it was because it reminded her of the farm. And so the story began. “Did you grow up on a farm?” he asked. “No,” she said. “but every  Sunday  after church my mother and all of us kids would change into our play clothes and drive out to the co...