two years later....because sex and drugs
before you even start reading, there is a picture of a dead person and a lot of really gross health and poop talk in this entry. proceed at your own risk.
two reasons to post. #1, we went to colorado because weed is legal there and i want to record the experience before it fades too far in the past. #2, i'm getting healthy again and my sex drive has returned. it's causing some internal conflict.
so first, colorado. weed is legal and it is no big deal. pot shops are about as common as liquor stores everywhere else and for the most part they are fairly classy. most places had a sort of waiting room where someone came out to check your id and escort you to the back. most were pretty small and most had decent variety. pat likes vaporizers so he bought disposable pens. i bought a tiny bong and lots of bud and edibles. sadly, my tolerance is so high and the recreation THC levels are so low that i didn't actually have a true stoner buzz until we stopped at a gas station on the way to the airport to come home. i'd eaten six indica cheeba chews because i could not throw them away, stopped to fill up and clean out the car, lost the keys for 10 minutes (they were on the backseat where i'd laid them so i wouldn't throw them away). i never have stoner moments like that and i hardly ever get stupid high. i was pretty stupid high and it was great. it doesn't happen often anymore.
first haul!
second haul!
these are all the strains i bought:
Headband
Otieil's Egyptian Kush
Spaceballs
Girl Scout Cookies
Screaming OG
Maui Strawberry
G13 Griselda Blanca
Sour Diesel OG Kush
AK-47/Northern Lights
Mob Boss
Blackberry & Blueberry
Kimbo Slice
Golden Goat
not all of the weed is good. i was sort of shocked because i can definitely get better stuff here at home than some of the strains i saw. there was one place we went into that sold both rec and medical. i got the only disappointing bud there. shortly after i was told that medical is five times the potency as the rec. i hope when medical comes to florida it is the heavy-on-the-THC variety. my favorite was probably the G13, mob boss a close second. they were both fat, dense, crystal-coated, and delicious. edibles, they're great for body-highs but i can see myself mostly relying on them for pain management rather than for fun. of course i got my period while we were there, and 30g of edibles will calm the painful shit down for about three hours. i asked about the THC-infused tampons i'd read about before our trip, but could never track any down. i rode the golden goat out of colorado. it was so casual-glorious.
in denver through airbnb we found a two-story loft above a small group of offices on a street with other businesses but no apartments or condos. after 5pm you're the only one in the building when everyone goes home, and part of the house rules were checking that the front and back doors were locked at night. you're also the only one on the street after 5pm because all surrounding buildings are empty and people go home. our host said party as loud and as late as we want, invite all our friends, no one will hear anything.
view from the second story down to the party roof.
the loft and the middle window i hung out of most of our stay.
our first night there, i hung out that window for hours. there was a public parking lot behind our building and the main party/bar street started cady-corner to it. there was a lot to watch. i'd started watching around 7pm as people arrived to eat and start drinking.....
it doesn't matter that weed is legal. denver is a drinking town. breweries and bars everywhere. they love beer and breakfast. all menus seemed to have a hangover item, all taps seemed to be going even at breakfast. weed is legal to help them nurse their hangovers.
anyway, i'd started watching this one drunk dude walking the parking lot. he was carrying a bottle of something that he would set down in front of the various posts with which he would then engage in a spirited debate. people would park, go pay, and walk towards the bars. every time they passed him he'd try his absolute best to act totally normal, and fail completely. i watched him and everyone else for hours. this one group of dudes showed up, about a dozen or so, and they hung around talking for a few minutes before giving each other really genuine and meaningful hugs before breaking up. at the time i thought, 'huh, kinda nice to see a bunch of tough dudes true-hugging it out without worrying about how their masculinity is perceived.
hours went by. pat was asleep on the couch. all the loft windows were open because the weather was nice and i was hanging out of them a lot. around midnight i was sitting on the couch next to pat when all this loud fucking shit started going on outside. it sounded like someone was setting off fireworks right outside the windows. pat woke up and kinda giggled because he didn't know what was going on and was disoriented. about 15 seconds after the noise i walked over to the windows slowly and the first thing i noticed were people on the sidewalk opposite the parking lot running and screaming, 'run!' and 'let's get out of here!' instead of hanging out the window i just kind of stood in shadows peeking. i looked straight down and i saw a dude crouched between a pickup truck and another car. i looked to the left and there were six cops sweeping the parking lot looking under and inside cars. i looked to the right and there were another six cops sweeping the other side. this is about 45 seconds after the noise. the guy crouching is watching the cops, slips into the pickup and drives out of the lot with a white suv behind him.....somehow right through the line of cops. a third car starts to slowly follow and the cops stop it and ask the driver to exit. as i'm watching the cops on the left sweep, they find (and i with them) a kid who'd been shot dead.
this is about 3am when they finally erected the tent to cover him with.
i gasped loud enough that pat came over to see. when he saw the poor kid he couldn't look anymore and we both realized what we thought were fireworks were actually gunshots. a LOT of them. and i realized that those huggy dudes in the parking lot earlier were probably sealing this shit-deal that had just gone down. patrick's first worry was the door downstairs, and that someone fleeing the scene might be in the building. it was a good time then to tell him i'd already been downstairs about an hour earlier to check and we were good. first-responders arrived about 90 seconds after the noise and for the first time i realized the actual danger these people face when they show up on a scene like this. they had no idea if there were still active shooters. but they still had to get in there and do their job, even if the kid was dead before he even hit the ground. these people are brave life-savers. as they were tending to the body, the cops pulled two people out of that white suv with the open doors. i don't know if they ended up being involved or just were hiding and scared by-standesr, but later news did not report any arrests.
i watched the cops and detectives work the crime scene for the rest of the night. i saw the next day that the third car that was initially stopped as he was trying to leave had a bullet hole in the back window. the driver was uninvolved and was just coming back from the bars. he was unaware, as were all the people walking up and down the sidewalk on their way to the bars, that there was a dead person laying in the lot. aside from the people who were there to work, i was the only one who knew he was laying there, and i was sad for him. it was obviously gang-related and he was wearing colors, but later in the week i learned he had a new baby and had started a new job recently. and i came to the heartbreaking realization that if you are shot like that in public, the moment you hit the ground you cease being a person and literally become a body of evidence. all night long people came to the lot looking for their cars, now taped up and part of an active crime scene, but no one came looking for him. i could see several cars with broken windows and bullet holes, and i could hear cops kicking bullet casings accidentally as they walked around trying to collect and record evidence.
casing markers on one side of the lot. couple of shot-out windows.
casing markers and body tent on the other side of the lot. doors of that suv still open.
view out the backdoor to our building, right in the crossfire and a good door to try if you're fleeing. blue casing marker on the ground.
here's an article.
so yeah, first night in town.
the rest of the trip went pretty well. saw lotsa beautiful wow:
at garden of the gods.
pike's peak from garden of the gods.
great sand dunes.
after crossing wolf creek pass and the great divide, daybreak at san luis valley.
on the way to mesa verde, overview of mancos valley.
me and cortez.
cliff palace
long house.
airbnb schoolhouse we stayed in hesperus, co.
view from inside the schoolhouse.
road on the way to the schoolhouse.
schoolhouse road deer.
durango to silverton train.
happiest day :)
there was one rough day. the drive from silverton to ouray is all switchbacks on guardrail-less cliffs. the million dollar highway. on the train we met a dude that looked like mark twain who had ridden a harley down from maine with his accountant wife on the back. he was super friendly and we made friends. he told us he was also driving that stretch of road in the morning and the reason they call it that is you'd have to pay someone a million dollars to do it again. on the bus back to town after the train our driver said he'd grown up in the durango, been in the marines, drove a semi when he got out of the service. he said of all the roads he'd driven, he hated that stretch between silverton and ouray the most. patrick is afraid of edges and heights. i can stand on the edge of a foot-deep fountain and he's nervous. i do most of the driving because i am a bad passenger. i was going to be driving the next day, no question. so i spent all night fretting about it.
this is gross so you might want to skip ahead to a paragraph without a *.
*i woke up to a crazy period. i was bleeding so hard i was soaking a super plus tampon and a pad every 15 minutes. if i weren't worried about hemorrhoids i'd just sit on the toilet and bleed into it when this happens. it sucks. so this was how my morning started. we'd wanted to leave at dawn, but i bled hard until about 9am when we finally set off. i stopped in every town to use the bathroom. since we were going to be doing dangerous driving, i didn't eat any candy or hit my bowl so my pain level was outrageous. it was upsetting my stomach and that was hurting too. and the pain makes me nauseous. so all that going on....and i'm nervous and sweating the drive. fortunately it was a slow-roll in a caravan of cars and motorcycles and rvs.
*unfortunately it was a slow-roll in a caravan of cars and motorcycles and rvs. we hit one stretch about 5 miles from ouray. it was almost over and i started getting a poop cramp and crouched up on the steering wheel like i have to when that happens. pat noticed and started getting concerned. we see a sign that says no stopping for the next mile. my belly is roiling and cramping and i feel like i am gonna die. we crawl in this conga line for a mile of hell and pass the end of the stopping ban. i come around a corner and pull off onto a half moon of gravel just wide enough for the car, mountain sloping straight up behind. i tell pat, babe, i have to poop, jump out of the car and run around to the passenger side. i open the backseat door as pat is getting out and tell him to stand behind me, leave his door open, rip my pants off and squat just in time to leave a bio-marker for the ages on a pile of rocks. i am squatting there shaking, trying to empty my body and just watching the tops of this slow-rolling conga of vehicles pass us as i literally lose my shit. it was horrible and oddly liberating. fortunately i had baby wipes and plastic bags and i didn't get anything on my clothes. the worst was over.
*i had no strength left to drive and the scariest roads were done. pat took over and i took a nap.
*no idea how much time passes. we're on mostly flat land for the first time in days. i wake up, sit up, and again go babe, i have to poop. he's going seventy miles an hour on a highway with nothing in sight except other cars also going 70mph and there is nowhere to stop. i ripped my pants off for the second time, grab another plastic bag and leap into the backseat. i open the bag and throw it down, squat over it with one hand grabbing the back of pat's seat and the other grabbing the headrest of the backseat behind him and just start going. after about 15 seconds i realize, oh babe!, and quietly crack the window in silent, pitying shame. again i clean up and redress, still going seventy down the highway, and tell pat to please stop at the first place possible so we can throw out the shit bag. it's horrible and comical at this point, my mind and my body are exhausted, and we're still hours from woody creek/aspen where we'd planned to stop. in light of the fact i'd never had any poop experiences like that ever, and now i'd just had two in one day, patrick made an executive decision that we were stopping early and getting a nice hotel. and in the end, yeah, i had a crap-attack crohn's explosion. twice in one day. but i am extremely proud that i never actually shit my pants, no matter how dire it became. innovation, quick thinking, and a bit of timing luck saved the day.
ok it's safe now, the gross is over.
so we stayed in grand junction, stayed in a much nicer place than we would have for a much cheaper price, got as high as possible and watched the olympic opening ceremony. aside from the shitty daytime commentary that has no place on primetime, it was great. the next morning we drove straight to denver, hooked up with some friends and completed our trip without disturbing incident.
we're already talking about going back.
so next. my health, because it's improvement is leading to the sex.
i'm much better! i ended 2014 really sick and on long-term disability until i was strong enough in january 2015 to leave horrible retail that was killing me and find a new job. i became a transportation coordinator for a company that does stage lighting for concerts and conventions and stuff. i loved my co-workers and i loved my boss, but i didn't realize until poor health forced me out in july that the job itself stressed me the fuck out, and my 11-8pm shift was bad for my natural pattern. i also hated the company culture and most everyone else outside my department. after only three months i developed an infection in my bartholin gland, and because i take humira to treat the crohn's my weakened immune system turned a pea-sized bump near where my inner thigh meets my butt cheek into a baseball sized abscess overnight. i ended up in the hospital for a week and left with a pic line for daily IV meds and an order to not work unless i could from home. so i did that for a month until my pic line came out. in june i had to have another surgery in the same spot to prevent another infection explosion, and by july i was back in the hospital.
i'd gone to a walk-in clinic because i was running a fever and i was exhausted and just felt sick. the doctor took my pulse and at rest it was 135. she immediately told me i needed to go to the ER. so i went home and called patrick. his mother came to pick me up and we went to the hospital. i had c-diff and i was found to be incredibly anemic. my hemoglobin was at 6.8 (normal is around 12) and my platelets were at 7000 (normal is 150K-450K is normal). i was completely exhausted walking across a room and it was because my heart was working overtime to pump enough blood everywhere it needed to be. i ended up on vancomycin for the c-diff, which is a disgusting pooping disease that is incredibly contagious and resulted in me having to be let go from my job at the lighting company because i couldn't recover from it quickly enough and they needed someone to do my work. instead of making me quit they formally fired me so i would be eligible for unemployment. their HQ was in canada and when i spoke to HR there she was extremely sympathetic to how shitty american sick-leave laws are. since i hadn't been there a year i didn't qualify for short-term disability. firing me so i could collect unemployment was literally the nicest thing they could do. that was the end of july and i was sick until the new year. unemployment ran out on christmas day. 2015 was rough.
i started this year healthier and stronger. i began getting iron infusions every three months in the fall of last year, and in august i had my check up. hemoglobin is at 12 and in the normal range!!! i feel like a freaking superhero. i literally have not had the body strength or stamina to do anything more strenuous than walk a little for over two years. as of about may this year i have my strength, my stamina, some of my weight (i'd dropped to 160 as of august 2015 and am now right at 195), and most of my sex drive. i'm working on one last health issue, fixing/ending the raging periods, and i'm in almost perfect shape. apparently i have fibroids, so many that a transvaginal ultrasound can't find my uterus lining. only fibroids. i'm not a good candidate for a hysterectomy or uterine ablation because my surrounding tissues are too delicate and damaged from crohn's. i'm in the process of getting another tv ultrasound and an MRI so i can have something called a uterine artery embolization, which should shut down the blood flow and shrink the fibroids. yay. let's do it. if we can completely stop my cycle and make me infertile, let's also do that too. i think the procedure can actually cause an uptick in fertility, but we'll worry about that when it's actually a problem. i still do not want children, and after all the shit we've gone through together with my health for the past couple years, patrick agrees. he doesn't want to single-parent while also trying to make our money, cook and clean, and take care of me if i get really sick again. it's really hard. kids would so seriously complicate things. so please no.
along with the pic line, i also left the hospital in April 2015 with something called a seton. a seton is a blue plastic twisty-tie that is coming out of my butt and going into my vagina to keep an active fistula from becoming abscess. i didn't know leaving the hospital then that i would still have this fucking twisty-tie seton in my vagina 18-months later, but here we are. i recently learned that it's not coming out unless i elect to have major surgery to rebuild all the surrounding tissue, and since it's also been determined that it's not in the way and i can still have sex, it'll be staying there until i have no other options and i have to have the surgery.
my surgeon has obviously been trying to break this news to me slowly. i was so concerned about healing everything else that i didn't really have energy to focus on it for the first six months. then i got used to it, because i really can't feel it at all unless the twist gets too twisted, and that's not often. after joining a crohn's group and talking to my doctors and talking to patrick (because he was nervous), i got brave and strong and horny enough to want to try sex. and it's totally good. the seton thing is just a sort of weirdo plastic piercing that i kinda wish we could change the color of, and i kinda don't give a fuck about because whoever sees it at this point shouldn't be giving a fuck either. gotta be a little bit careful, and i'm pretty sure there will be no more anal for me for quite a few years, but regular sex is great again.
which leads me to my next reason for writing tonight. i'm horny again. for the first time in my marriage i'm healthy and horny and realizing that my sexuality is more complicated than my husbands. in may i had an awakening. i got crazy-town horny for about three weeks straight. patrick and i were having sex every day, taking pictures, making videos, having so much fun. but it's clean fun. there's nothing dirty or terrifying or depraved about it and ultimately that is not enough for me sexually to maintain a high level of stimulation for an extended period of time. i get bored. and i am totally unhappy and uncomfortable with the idea of behaving in the same kind of way with patrick that i have with other people i've been with. we are evenly matched in intelligence, maturity, humor, and almost every other aspect. but my sexual experience, drive, interests and willingness to do unusual things far exceed his own. i treated sex like a hobby for years until i got sick and then married. and while i was so sick and fairly convinced i was never going to be truly well again, i also had no sex drive and wasn't worried about anything related to it. i've got kinda reason to worry a bit now.
during this frenzy of sexual activity, pat shared with one of his friends something i'd done to him, and that friend promptly started chatting me up and sending me dick pics. of course i told pat about it, and for one hilarious and weirdo evening the three of us sat in a group chat trading pictures and building up tension and having strange fun together. it felt like drugs to me, and i was totally turned on and excited that i had been able to have a tiny bit of sexual fun with another person. we had actually become decent friends after bonding while his wife was going through a horrible illness and hospitals and treatments at the same time i was the year before. he was nice and checked in on my health frequently when other people had kinda forgotten i existed. i knew from talking to my husband that he was a walking erection, but up until that night i hadn't seen that in him. once i did, i recognized a bit of kindred spirit, although he's not someone i would actually touch in a million years. he's not honest with his wife and she surely is unaware of his dick-pic opening line with his friends wives. me, i freaking love my husband more than anyone i've ever met in my entire life and would never lie to him. we've still had problems.
within a week of that mild virtual threesome, things went badly. while i'd been on the receiving end of multiple pictures, i'd only sent the friend one in return. of my butt, so no big deal. and i told patrick about it. i'd talked to him a bit through the week, but no more than usual, and not always about anything sexual. but patrick had discovered he was jealous and we had our very first fight over it.
it took us five years, but we finally had a fight. he was jealous and i saw him truly angry for the first time ever, and instead of scaring me it made me really fucking angry. it killed my sex drive for him and anyone else, and it's only recently that i've felt any kind of stirring again. i was incredibly angry. i had extremely complicated of feelings of desperate love for him and absolutely devastating mourning for my sex life. i was angry that he felt ownership over my body and mind and sexual freedom. we are married but i am still my own person. i've been thinking about it for months now, and it's still cloudy but there are a few things i'm 100% clear on.
1. i want to bang tons of other people again without developing much of a bond with any of them outside our mutual enjoyment of each others naked bodies.
2. i want to tell my husband that i want this. and i know it's going to kill a part of him.
3. the temptation and the opportunities are there as long as i can find people forgiving of a twisty tie, but i can't do it unless he is willing to let me without being devastated by it.
4. i don't want him involved and i don't want the kind of sex that we have together to change from the natural, loving, and soul-drenching love-making that it is for me. i have never had this kind of love or physical manifestation of it before. it is exquisite, i love it and i need it. and i'm afraid it will lose some of it's special sparkle if it gets shuffled into that variety of itch-scratching dirty fucking that i feel like i need deep in my core.
i know we are not a match sexually. i know because i can smell the filth in other people's minds and his is clean. it doesn't squeak but it shines. what i share with him is the purest part of my soul and my love for him. i do not want to muddy that with depravity. it's too foreign to him and it would not turn him on. but there was something, some added excitement between us for a few days before he let jealousy and anger take over. something we could get back and maintain if i could figure out a way to work this out with him. there are a million things to examine so closely.
we spend so much time together that i really have no idea when i'd make time to meet up with someone else. we eat lunch together every day, sometimes we car pool. we spend most of our nights and our weekends doing things together. neither one of us get tired of each other. i've never met someone i didn't get annoyed with being so close to for so long. if we miss a lunch or something because of a doctors appointment or a meeting, i miss him. we spent 24 hours a day together on our vacation. we truly have one of the best marriages possible. so i've been asking myself very seriously, is it worth risking hurting this for sex?
i know what i want. i even know who i want if they'd agree. i just want a couple hours of fun maybe twice a month. i want to get cock-choked and spanked and feel a little nervous or scared for a fleeting second or two. i want someone who isn't in love with me to rough-handle my body and wear me out. i want to be a tied-up sweaty mess shaking in cum puddles on a kitchen table. just not in my own house with my own husband, whose gentle loving nature i'm not willing to reconcile with an expansion of his own sexuality.
yeah, there's that perspective too. what about his growth and exploration? i hinder it by limiting myself. i'm interested in his sexuality and development, but i don't want to do it all for him. that is work and responsibility and not fun.
it's so complicated. but there's no rush to figure it out either. so i'll keep thinking it out, maybe try to talk about it with a friend who might get it.
one thing that is more of an immediate lifestyle change, we're taking in a new roommate. she is one of patrick's closest friends and the ex-wife of his best friend/best man/our former roommate. one of the boys is coming with her, but only for a couple weeks. she is coming because her current situation is shit and her ex/our old roommate gave us a good review and recommended she ask us. so she did. i'm glad she's coming. it takes the sexual pressure off for now and although she and i are not close, we might be when it's all over. she is the only one of pat's friends that i know know's someone i've actually hardcore banged before. i don't know how well they know each other and i know she doesn't know 1) that i've whored as hard as i have and 2) that i whored with him. maybe i'll tell her if we get comfortable and really high one night if patrick isn't around. we'll see.
a couple of things other than colorado and good health and horniness that have made this year great. i started a new job in january. it was a temp job initially, as an admin for a construction company. i started at $15/hour, learned how to do everything i could, and did it alone for three months before we hired someone to help out. after three weeks they asked if i wanted to go permanent. i said i'd love it, but i felt i was worth $45K/year, would they pay it? and they said yes! it cost them $7K to buy me from the temp agency and they still gave me the money i asked for. so when we hired someone else in at $15/hr and she learned everything i didn't have time to learn and do, i encouraged her to ask for a raise and they gave her one too :) it's a great place to work. they are totally flexible with my many doctors appointments and have been completely willing to keep me away from the office if i get sick, especially if it's something contagious. the hours are perfect and i eat lunch with my favorite person every day. we are crazy busy and have work well through the next year. i hope i stay well enough and they keep liking me enough to work there for a long time.
patrick got a promotion this week! two years ago, right before i got super sick, he started taking programming classes with his eye on a specific position within his company, and they told him yesterday that he got the job. he may be able to make more money somewhere else, but he has been with this company for almost 14 years and has crazy vacation time. we also use his health insurance and pay the penalty even though my job offers it. through my company my humira cost 65% of the $7000/month, 1-pen-per-week habit and we cannot afford it. through his company we co-pay $5. it's fucking incredible. we have cigna, and i will shout from the mountain tops how much i love them. they are what an insurance company should be and i hope we don't have to change. i hate united. there's a good chance i'm going to max out every year. i hit the limit after the second $1400 iron infusion in march this year, so we start out about $2K in debt every year automatically because of premiums. oh well. humira is working because my colonoscopy on monday showed "ulceration, congestion, erythema and friability in the rectosigmoid junction, sigmoid colon and descending colon compatible with TREATED crohn's/colitis"....TREATED = HEALING!!! i will continue to stick myself in the leg every thursday at $1700 a pop until i am fully healed and in physical and chemical remission.
and then i'll really be a sexual handful again. i need to prepare.
man it's late, and this was cathartic.
two reasons to post. #1, we went to colorado because weed is legal there and i want to record the experience before it fades too far in the past. #2, i'm getting healthy again and my sex drive has returned. it's causing some internal conflict.
so first, colorado. weed is legal and it is no big deal. pot shops are about as common as liquor stores everywhere else and for the most part they are fairly classy. most places had a sort of waiting room where someone came out to check your id and escort you to the back. most were pretty small and most had decent variety. pat likes vaporizers so he bought disposable pens. i bought a tiny bong and lots of bud and edibles. sadly, my tolerance is so high and the recreation THC levels are so low that i didn't actually have a true stoner buzz until we stopped at a gas station on the way to the airport to come home. i'd eaten six indica cheeba chews because i could not throw them away, stopped to fill up and clean out the car, lost the keys for 10 minutes (they were on the backseat where i'd laid them so i wouldn't throw them away). i never have stoner moments like that and i hardly ever get stupid high. i was pretty stupid high and it was great. it doesn't happen often anymore.
first haul!
second haul!
these are all the strains i bought:
Headband
Otieil's Egyptian Kush
Spaceballs
Girl Scout Cookies
Screaming OG
Maui Strawberry
G13 Griselda Blanca
Sour Diesel OG Kush
AK-47/Northern Lights
Mob Boss
Blackberry & Blueberry
Kimbo Slice
Golden Goat
not all of the weed is good. i was sort of shocked because i can definitely get better stuff here at home than some of the strains i saw. there was one place we went into that sold both rec and medical. i got the only disappointing bud there. shortly after i was told that medical is five times the potency as the rec. i hope when medical comes to florida it is the heavy-on-the-THC variety. my favorite was probably the G13, mob boss a close second. they were both fat, dense, crystal-coated, and delicious. edibles, they're great for body-highs but i can see myself mostly relying on them for pain management rather than for fun. of course i got my period while we were there, and 30g of edibles will calm the painful shit down for about three hours. i asked about the THC-infused tampons i'd read about before our trip, but could never track any down. i rode the golden goat out of colorado. it was so casual-glorious.
in denver through airbnb we found a two-story loft above a small group of offices on a street with other businesses but no apartments or condos. after 5pm you're the only one in the building when everyone goes home, and part of the house rules were checking that the front and back doors were locked at night. you're also the only one on the street after 5pm because all surrounding buildings are empty and people go home. our host said party as loud and as late as we want, invite all our friends, no one will hear anything.
view from the second story down to the party roof.
the loft and the middle window i hung out of most of our stay.
our first night there, i hung out that window for hours. there was a public parking lot behind our building and the main party/bar street started cady-corner to it. there was a lot to watch. i'd started watching around 7pm as people arrived to eat and start drinking.....
it doesn't matter that weed is legal. denver is a drinking town. breweries and bars everywhere. they love beer and breakfast. all menus seemed to have a hangover item, all taps seemed to be going even at breakfast. weed is legal to help them nurse their hangovers.
anyway, i'd started watching this one drunk dude walking the parking lot. he was carrying a bottle of something that he would set down in front of the various posts with which he would then engage in a spirited debate. people would park, go pay, and walk towards the bars. every time they passed him he'd try his absolute best to act totally normal, and fail completely. i watched him and everyone else for hours. this one group of dudes showed up, about a dozen or so, and they hung around talking for a few minutes before giving each other really genuine and meaningful hugs before breaking up. at the time i thought, 'huh, kinda nice to see a bunch of tough dudes true-hugging it out without worrying about how their masculinity is perceived.
hours went by. pat was asleep on the couch. all the loft windows were open because the weather was nice and i was hanging out of them a lot. around midnight i was sitting on the couch next to pat when all this loud fucking shit started going on outside. it sounded like someone was setting off fireworks right outside the windows. pat woke up and kinda giggled because he didn't know what was going on and was disoriented. about 15 seconds after the noise i walked over to the windows slowly and the first thing i noticed were people on the sidewalk opposite the parking lot running and screaming, 'run!' and 'let's get out of here!' instead of hanging out the window i just kind of stood in shadows peeking. i looked straight down and i saw a dude crouched between a pickup truck and another car. i looked to the left and there were six cops sweeping the parking lot looking under and inside cars. i looked to the right and there were another six cops sweeping the other side. this is about 45 seconds after the noise. the guy crouching is watching the cops, slips into the pickup and drives out of the lot with a white suv behind him.....somehow right through the line of cops. a third car starts to slowly follow and the cops stop it and ask the driver to exit. as i'm watching the cops on the left sweep, they find (and i with them) a kid who'd been shot dead.
this is about 3am when they finally erected the tent to cover him with.
i gasped loud enough that pat came over to see. when he saw the poor kid he couldn't look anymore and we both realized what we thought were fireworks were actually gunshots. a LOT of them. and i realized that those huggy dudes in the parking lot earlier were probably sealing this shit-deal that had just gone down. patrick's first worry was the door downstairs, and that someone fleeing the scene might be in the building. it was a good time then to tell him i'd already been downstairs about an hour earlier to check and we were good. first-responders arrived about 90 seconds after the noise and for the first time i realized the actual danger these people face when they show up on a scene like this. they had no idea if there were still active shooters. but they still had to get in there and do their job, even if the kid was dead before he even hit the ground. these people are brave life-savers. as they were tending to the body, the cops pulled two people out of that white suv with the open doors. i don't know if they ended up being involved or just were hiding and scared by-standesr, but later news did not report any arrests.
i watched the cops and detectives work the crime scene for the rest of the night. i saw the next day that the third car that was initially stopped as he was trying to leave had a bullet hole in the back window. the driver was uninvolved and was just coming back from the bars. he was unaware, as were all the people walking up and down the sidewalk on their way to the bars, that there was a dead person laying in the lot. aside from the people who were there to work, i was the only one who knew he was laying there, and i was sad for him. it was obviously gang-related and he was wearing colors, but later in the week i learned he had a new baby and had started a new job recently. and i came to the heartbreaking realization that if you are shot like that in public, the moment you hit the ground you cease being a person and literally become a body of evidence. all night long people came to the lot looking for their cars, now taped up and part of an active crime scene, but no one came looking for him. i could see several cars with broken windows and bullet holes, and i could hear cops kicking bullet casings accidentally as they walked around trying to collect and record evidence.
casing markers on one side of the lot. couple of shot-out windows.
casing markers and body tent on the other side of the lot. doors of that suv still open.
view out the backdoor to our building, right in the crossfire and a good door to try if you're fleeing. blue casing marker on the ground.
here's an article.
so yeah, first night in town.
the rest of the trip went pretty well. saw lotsa beautiful wow:
at garden of the gods.
pike's peak from garden of the gods.
great sand dunes.
after crossing wolf creek pass and the great divide, daybreak at san luis valley.
on the way to mesa verde, overview of mancos valley.
me and cortez.
cliff palace
long house.
airbnb schoolhouse we stayed in hesperus, co.
view from inside the schoolhouse.
road on the way to the schoolhouse.
schoolhouse road deer.
durango to silverton train.
happiest day :)
there was one rough day. the drive from silverton to ouray is all switchbacks on guardrail-less cliffs. the million dollar highway. on the train we met a dude that looked like mark twain who had ridden a harley down from maine with his accountant wife on the back. he was super friendly and we made friends. he told us he was also driving that stretch of road in the morning and the reason they call it that is you'd have to pay someone a million dollars to do it again. on the bus back to town after the train our driver said he'd grown up in the durango, been in the marines, drove a semi when he got out of the service. he said of all the roads he'd driven, he hated that stretch between silverton and ouray the most. patrick is afraid of edges and heights. i can stand on the edge of a foot-deep fountain and he's nervous. i do most of the driving because i am a bad passenger. i was going to be driving the next day, no question. so i spent all night fretting about it.
this is gross so you might want to skip ahead to a paragraph without a *.
*i woke up to a crazy period. i was bleeding so hard i was soaking a super plus tampon and a pad every 15 minutes. if i weren't worried about hemorrhoids i'd just sit on the toilet and bleed into it when this happens. it sucks. so this was how my morning started. we'd wanted to leave at dawn, but i bled hard until about 9am when we finally set off. i stopped in every town to use the bathroom. since we were going to be doing dangerous driving, i didn't eat any candy or hit my bowl so my pain level was outrageous. it was upsetting my stomach and that was hurting too. and the pain makes me nauseous. so all that going on....and i'm nervous and sweating the drive. fortunately it was a slow-roll in a caravan of cars and motorcycles and rvs.
*unfortunately it was a slow-roll in a caravan of cars and motorcycles and rvs. we hit one stretch about 5 miles from ouray. it was almost over and i started getting a poop cramp and crouched up on the steering wheel like i have to when that happens. pat noticed and started getting concerned. we see a sign that says no stopping for the next mile. my belly is roiling and cramping and i feel like i am gonna die. we crawl in this conga line for a mile of hell and pass the end of the stopping ban. i come around a corner and pull off onto a half moon of gravel just wide enough for the car, mountain sloping straight up behind. i tell pat, babe, i have to poop, jump out of the car and run around to the passenger side. i open the backseat door as pat is getting out and tell him to stand behind me, leave his door open, rip my pants off and squat just in time to leave a bio-marker for the ages on a pile of rocks. i am squatting there shaking, trying to empty my body and just watching the tops of this slow-rolling conga of vehicles pass us as i literally lose my shit. it was horrible and oddly liberating. fortunately i had baby wipes and plastic bags and i didn't get anything on my clothes. the worst was over.
*i had no strength left to drive and the scariest roads were done. pat took over and i took a nap.
*no idea how much time passes. we're on mostly flat land for the first time in days. i wake up, sit up, and again go babe, i have to poop. he's going seventy miles an hour on a highway with nothing in sight except other cars also going 70mph and there is nowhere to stop. i ripped my pants off for the second time, grab another plastic bag and leap into the backseat. i open the bag and throw it down, squat over it with one hand grabbing the back of pat's seat and the other grabbing the headrest of the backseat behind him and just start going. after about 15 seconds i realize, oh babe!, and quietly crack the window in silent, pitying shame. again i clean up and redress, still going seventy down the highway, and tell pat to please stop at the first place possible so we can throw out the shit bag. it's horrible and comical at this point, my mind and my body are exhausted, and we're still hours from woody creek/aspen where we'd planned to stop. in light of the fact i'd never had any poop experiences like that ever, and now i'd just had two in one day, patrick made an executive decision that we were stopping early and getting a nice hotel. and in the end, yeah, i had a crap-attack crohn's explosion. twice in one day. but i am extremely proud that i never actually shit my pants, no matter how dire it became. innovation, quick thinking, and a bit of timing luck saved the day.
ok it's safe now, the gross is over.
so we stayed in grand junction, stayed in a much nicer place than we would have for a much cheaper price, got as high as possible and watched the olympic opening ceremony. aside from the shitty daytime commentary that has no place on primetime, it was great. the next morning we drove straight to denver, hooked up with some friends and completed our trip without disturbing incident.
we're already talking about going back.
so next. my health, because it's improvement is leading to the sex.
i'm much better! i ended 2014 really sick and on long-term disability until i was strong enough in january 2015 to leave horrible retail that was killing me and find a new job. i became a transportation coordinator for a company that does stage lighting for concerts and conventions and stuff. i loved my co-workers and i loved my boss, but i didn't realize until poor health forced me out in july that the job itself stressed me the fuck out, and my 11-8pm shift was bad for my natural pattern. i also hated the company culture and most everyone else outside my department. after only three months i developed an infection in my bartholin gland, and because i take humira to treat the crohn's my weakened immune system turned a pea-sized bump near where my inner thigh meets my butt cheek into a baseball sized abscess overnight. i ended up in the hospital for a week and left with a pic line for daily IV meds and an order to not work unless i could from home. so i did that for a month until my pic line came out. in june i had to have another surgery in the same spot to prevent another infection explosion, and by july i was back in the hospital.
i'd gone to a walk-in clinic because i was running a fever and i was exhausted and just felt sick. the doctor took my pulse and at rest it was 135. she immediately told me i needed to go to the ER. so i went home and called patrick. his mother came to pick me up and we went to the hospital. i had c-diff and i was found to be incredibly anemic. my hemoglobin was at 6.8 (normal is around 12) and my platelets were at 7000 (normal is 150K-450K is normal). i was completely exhausted walking across a room and it was because my heart was working overtime to pump enough blood everywhere it needed to be. i ended up on vancomycin for the c-diff, which is a disgusting pooping disease that is incredibly contagious and resulted in me having to be let go from my job at the lighting company because i couldn't recover from it quickly enough and they needed someone to do my work. instead of making me quit they formally fired me so i would be eligible for unemployment. their HQ was in canada and when i spoke to HR there she was extremely sympathetic to how shitty american sick-leave laws are. since i hadn't been there a year i didn't qualify for short-term disability. firing me so i could collect unemployment was literally the nicest thing they could do. that was the end of july and i was sick until the new year. unemployment ran out on christmas day. 2015 was rough.
i started this year healthier and stronger. i began getting iron infusions every three months in the fall of last year, and in august i had my check up. hemoglobin is at 12 and in the normal range!!! i feel like a freaking superhero. i literally have not had the body strength or stamina to do anything more strenuous than walk a little for over two years. as of about may this year i have my strength, my stamina, some of my weight (i'd dropped to 160 as of august 2015 and am now right at 195), and most of my sex drive. i'm working on one last health issue, fixing/ending the raging periods, and i'm in almost perfect shape. apparently i have fibroids, so many that a transvaginal ultrasound can't find my uterus lining. only fibroids. i'm not a good candidate for a hysterectomy or uterine ablation because my surrounding tissues are too delicate and damaged from crohn's. i'm in the process of getting another tv ultrasound and an MRI so i can have something called a uterine artery embolization, which should shut down the blood flow and shrink the fibroids. yay. let's do it. if we can completely stop my cycle and make me infertile, let's also do that too. i think the procedure can actually cause an uptick in fertility, but we'll worry about that when it's actually a problem. i still do not want children, and after all the shit we've gone through together with my health for the past couple years, patrick agrees. he doesn't want to single-parent while also trying to make our money, cook and clean, and take care of me if i get really sick again. it's really hard. kids would so seriously complicate things. so please no.
along with the pic line, i also left the hospital in April 2015 with something called a seton. a seton is a blue plastic twisty-tie that is coming out of my butt and going into my vagina to keep an active fistula from becoming abscess. i didn't know leaving the hospital then that i would still have this fucking twisty-tie seton in my vagina 18-months later, but here we are. i recently learned that it's not coming out unless i elect to have major surgery to rebuild all the surrounding tissue, and since it's also been determined that it's not in the way and i can still have sex, it'll be staying there until i have no other options and i have to have the surgery.
my surgeon has obviously been trying to break this news to me slowly. i was so concerned about healing everything else that i didn't really have energy to focus on it for the first six months. then i got used to it, because i really can't feel it at all unless the twist gets too twisted, and that's not often. after joining a crohn's group and talking to my doctors and talking to patrick (because he was nervous), i got brave and strong and horny enough to want to try sex. and it's totally good. the seton thing is just a sort of weirdo plastic piercing that i kinda wish we could change the color of, and i kinda don't give a fuck about because whoever sees it at this point shouldn't be giving a fuck either. gotta be a little bit careful, and i'm pretty sure there will be no more anal for me for quite a few years, but regular sex is great again.
which leads me to my next reason for writing tonight. i'm horny again. for the first time in my marriage i'm healthy and horny and realizing that my sexuality is more complicated than my husbands. in may i had an awakening. i got crazy-town horny for about three weeks straight. patrick and i were having sex every day, taking pictures, making videos, having so much fun. but it's clean fun. there's nothing dirty or terrifying or depraved about it and ultimately that is not enough for me sexually to maintain a high level of stimulation for an extended period of time. i get bored. and i am totally unhappy and uncomfortable with the idea of behaving in the same kind of way with patrick that i have with other people i've been with. we are evenly matched in intelligence, maturity, humor, and almost every other aspect. but my sexual experience, drive, interests and willingness to do unusual things far exceed his own. i treated sex like a hobby for years until i got sick and then married. and while i was so sick and fairly convinced i was never going to be truly well again, i also had no sex drive and wasn't worried about anything related to it. i've got kinda reason to worry a bit now.
during this frenzy of sexual activity, pat shared with one of his friends something i'd done to him, and that friend promptly started chatting me up and sending me dick pics. of course i told pat about it, and for one hilarious and weirdo evening the three of us sat in a group chat trading pictures and building up tension and having strange fun together. it felt like drugs to me, and i was totally turned on and excited that i had been able to have a tiny bit of sexual fun with another person. we had actually become decent friends after bonding while his wife was going through a horrible illness and hospitals and treatments at the same time i was the year before. he was nice and checked in on my health frequently when other people had kinda forgotten i existed. i knew from talking to my husband that he was a walking erection, but up until that night i hadn't seen that in him. once i did, i recognized a bit of kindred spirit, although he's not someone i would actually touch in a million years. he's not honest with his wife and she surely is unaware of his dick-pic opening line with his friends wives. me, i freaking love my husband more than anyone i've ever met in my entire life and would never lie to him. we've still had problems.
within a week of that mild virtual threesome, things went badly. while i'd been on the receiving end of multiple pictures, i'd only sent the friend one in return. of my butt, so no big deal. and i told patrick about it. i'd talked to him a bit through the week, but no more than usual, and not always about anything sexual. but patrick had discovered he was jealous and we had our very first fight over it.
it took us five years, but we finally had a fight. he was jealous and i saw him truly angry for the first time ever, and instead of scaring me it made me really fucking angry. it killed my sex drive for him and anyone else, and it's only recently that i've felt any kind of stirring again. i was incredibly angry. i had extremely complicated of feelings of desperate love for him and absolutely devastating mourning for my sex life. i was angry that he felt ownership over my body and mind and sexual freedom. we are married but i am still my own person. i've been thinking about it for months now, and it's still cloudy but there are a few things i'm 100% clear on.
1. i want to bang tons of other people again without developing much of a bond with any of them outside our mutual enjoyment of each others naked bodies.
2. i want to tell my husband that i want this. and i know it's going to kill a part of him.
3. the temptation and the opportunities are there as long as i can find people forgiving of a twisty tie, but i can't do it unless he is willing to let me without being devastated by it.
4. i don't want him involved and i don't want the kind of sex that we have together to change from the natural, loving, and soul-drenching love-making that it is for me. i have never had this kind of love or physical manifestation of it before. it is exquisite, i love it and i need it. and i'm afraid it will lose some of it's special sparkle if it gets shuffled into that variety of itch-scratching dirty fucking that i feel like i need deep in my core.
i know we are not a match sexually. i know because i can smell the filth in other people's minds and his is clean. it doesn't squeak but it shines. what i share with him is the purest part of my soul and my love for him. i do not want to muddy that with depravity. it's too foreign to him and it would not turn him on. but there was something, some added excitement between us for a few days before he let jealousy and anger take over. something we could get back and maintain if i could figure out a way to work this out with him. there are a million things to examine so closely.
we spend so much time together that i really have no idea when i'd make time to meet up with someone else. we eat lunch together every day, sometimes we car pool. we spend most of our nights and our weekends doing things together. neither one of us get tired of each other. i've never met someone i didn't get annoyed with being so close to for so long. if we miss a lunch or something because of a doctors appointment or a meeting, i miss him. we spent 24 hours a day together on our vacation. we truly have one of the best marriages possible. so i've been asking myself very seriously, is it worth risking hurting this for sex?
i know what i want. i even know who i want if they'd agree. i just want a couple hours of fun maybe twice a month. i want to get cock-choked and spanked and feel a little nervous or scared for a fleeting second or two. i want someone who isn't in love with me to rough-handle my body and wear me out. i want to be a tied-up sweaty mess shaking in cum puddles on a kitchen table. just not in my own house with my own husband, whose gentle loving nature i'm not willing to reconcile with an expansion of his own sexuality.
yeah, there's that perspective too. what about his growth and exploration? i hinder it by limiting myself. i'm interested in his sexuality and development, but i don't want to do it all for him. that is work and responsibility and not fun.
it's so complicated. but there's no rush to figure it out either. so i'll keep thinking it out, maybe try to talk about it with a friend who might get it.
one thing that is more of an immediate lifestyle change, we're taking in a new roommate. she is one of patrick's closest friends and the ex-wife of his best friend/best man/our former roommate. one of the boys is coming with her, but only for a couple weeks. she is coming because her current situation is shit and her ex/our old roommate gave us a good review and recommended she ask us. so she did. i'm glad she's coming. it takes the sexual pressure off for now and although she and i are not close, we might be when it's all over. she is the only one of pat's friends that i know know's someone i've actually hardcore banged before. i don't know how well they know each other and i know she doesn't know 1) that i've whored as hard as i have and 2) that i whored with him. maybe i'll tell her if we get comfortable and really high one night if patrick isn't around. we'll see.
a couple of things other than colorado and good health and horniness that have made this year great. i started a new job in january. it was a temp job initially, as an admin for a construction company. i started at $15/hour, learned how to do everything i could, and did it alone for three months before we hired someone to help out. after three weeks they asked if i wanted to go permanent. i said i'd love it, but i felt i was worth $45K/year, would they pay it? and they said yes! it cost them $7K to buy me from the temp agency and they still gave me the money i asked for. so when we hired someone else in at $15/hr and she learned everything i didn't have time to learn and do, i encouraged her to ask for a raise and they gave her one too :) it's a great place to work. they are totally flexible with my many doctors appointments and have been completely willing to keep me away from the office if i get sick, especially if it's something contagious. the hours are perfect and i eat lunch with my favorite person every day. we are crazy busy and have work well through the next year. i hope i stay well enough and they keep liking me enough to work there for a long time.
patrick got a promotion this week! two years ago, right before i got super sick, he started taking programming classes with his eye on a specific position within his company, and they told him yesterday that he got the job. he may be able to make more money somewhere else, but he has been with this company for almost 14 years and has crazy vacation time. we also use his health insurance and pay the penalty even though my job offers it. through my company my humira cost 65% of the $7000/month, 1-pen-per-week habit and we cannot afford it. through his company we co-pay $5. it's fucking incredible. we have cigna, and i will shout from the mountain tops how much i love them. they are what an insurance company should be and i hope we don't have to change. i hate united. there's a good chance i'm going to max out every year. i hit the limit after the second $1400 iron infusion in march this year, so we start out about $2K in debt every year automatically because of premiums. oh well. humira is working because my colonoscopy on monday showed "ulceration, congestion, erythema and friability in the rectosigmoid junction, sigmoid colon and descending colon compatible with TREATED crohn's/colitis"....TREATED = HEALING!!! i will continue to stick myself in the leg every thursday at $1700 a pop until i am fully healed and in physical and chemical remission.
and then i'll really be a sexual handful again. i need to prepare.
man it's late, and this was cathartic.