I swam tonight, 2050 meters, a mile and a quarter. I showered, came home. As I sit here, with ice on my aching muscle, drinking a cup of hot tea, I contemplate what it means to be happy. All I can think is that the love of family and friends is of paramount importance. I love them. They love me.

After a longish workout, there is always that endorphin release. Losing time in the pool, means the endurance level is not quite where it needs to be, until tonight.

Sex is merely a remote thought.

R.B.A. is my son. We gave him three names. He was born on 25 June 1976, the Bicentennial year. He is a good man today. I could say much, but I can’t and won’t because I’m just sitting here enjoying the morning sounds of what may be crickets and the rumble of the refrigerator compressor. Dawn is breaking. The sky is an incredible shade of blue, like cobalt almost.

I will text RBA’s mom in a short to let her know I’m thinking of her too.

True Love never ends. So I’ve heard.

kitten nominated me for this. I am honored. And confused. There are a lot of steps here.

Her website http:succulentsavagesays

The person behind the challenge: The thoughtful person behind the challenge is Rory.

His thoughts on this : Once a week I will post 2 quotes on a topic, pick 3 bloggers to post on a topic of my chooding. 1 Choose a topic of their own.

Her topic: Hope

My topic for the challenge: Desire

My blogger nominees

Jadescastle

Porngirl3

Olivia

My quotes for her topic:

Hope is upset waiting to happen. Werner Erhard.

Love hopes all things (1st Corinthians 13:7) Now these three things abide: faith, hope, love. But the greatest of these is love. (1st Corinthians 13:13). St Paul

I was feeling particularly crazy earlier this afternoon, as in repealing certain amendments to The Constitution that would guarantee maximum chaos that I really don’t want. I told you I was feeling crazy.

Anyway, I took a nap and feel less crazy.

YouTube is on. I’m being lazy and simply letting the Virtual Railfan LLC live cam in Ashland keep me distracted..

Previously, I watched as YouTube Channeler Martin Zero showed me around Manchester, in the UK. We have a part of Richmond, VA. called Manchester. It was a separate city until 1911 and had its own courthouse, which is still used. Philip Morris had factories there that would process leaf tobacco before making it into cigarettes. The factories eventually closed as production was consolidated into more modern facilities. It had its own main commercial street, Hull Street. There was a railroad station for the Southern Railroad, called Hull Street Station. The track roughly followed the line to Danville, mentioned in the song The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,written by Robbie Robertson. It was performed by his group The Band, later by Joan Baez. (I digress.) The station is now owned by a railway historical society. The tracks near it are now operated by Norfolk Southern. They still go to Danville, VA. (I digress, yet again).

Then again, one can’t really digress if nothing worthy of mention or of any continuity was intended to be discussed.

The freezer has been intentionally depleted as I have used up the frozen food on hand. I have a restock planned when I get my Social Security stipend deposited on Wednesday. I wonder what I will buy.

I did not swim today. Tired. I did not go to Mass, because I’m hurting from my various infirmities. We did go to lunch at the local P F Chang’s, where our server was a genuine Oriental. Racist? Not really. I’m just pointing out a fact in the chain restaurant business. The employees aren’t family members any more, because a so-called “ethnic” restaurant merely appropriates a cuisine, modifies, and then alters it to reflect popular tastes and available food items. I don’t really think farm-raised salmon was ever a staple of Tuscan cuisine, for example.

The paper had a story on people who identify as nonbinary. In The Past, before the Internet, we could count on a trend, movement, or cultural phenomenon, no longer being newsworthy if the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or its extinct sister paper The Richmond News Leader, did a story on it. We’ve grown. Richmond was, at one time, a very large insular hick town. It was actually a lot more interesting then. The fight against segregation and racism had real meaning, because there was serious segregation and racism, based on statutes in the law, not merely hurt feelings or shallow grievances. Legal giants of the Civil Right Era, Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill argued the cases that ended Jim Crow. They were Richmonders.

When air conditioning became commonplace, the Civil Rights Act was passed and advertising agencies relocated here, Northerners and other sophisticates moved to town, the uniqueness vanished. That, obviously, from what I’ve written, was not a totally bad thing.

So we have lots of non-chain, entrepreneurial restaurants now, our neglected neighborhoods are being rehabilitated, on the way to gentrification. The bootleggers have been replaced by the drug gangs, and murders are just barely newsworthy. The bad and the good mingle.

It wasn’t a bad day by any means. I woke up (big +), watched some cricket, but I missed David Warner’s big day for Australia. Bangladesh had a formidable target number in the run chase, and they made quite an effort to catch the Aussies, but didn’t make it.

The latest item in the sex abuse scandal, a sexual assault by Joseph Bernadin, then a priest in 1957, who raped a teenaged boy. His Bishop knew of the assault. The Bishop, John Russell, later became Bishop of The Diocese of Ruchmond, Virginia. Bernadin became Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Sordid.

I’m back swimming after a four day break. My neck and shoulder are sore again. Heat, ice, exercise, NSAID pain relievers keep the discomfort in check.

But you know, what? I’m happy.