Being an over-thinking, over-analytical and over-the-top Virgo is one of life’s not-so-little fuck-overs, but I’m doing my best with the cards I’ve been dealt and the cards I’ve been choosing. Winter has arrived, and like so many other winters before it this is a time of rumination and contemplation. My daily meditations have resumed and my mind is in a more settled place because of them. Additionally, I’ve re-introduced elements of well-being into the daily routine, which has calmed my riotous heart as well. 

Along those lines, a book by Joseph Nguyen – ‘Don’t Believe Everything You Think’ – is tailor-written for someone like me, who tends to overthink and dwell much too long in my thought process rather than simply living. It’s already unraveling some knots that I’ve had for decades, knots I assumed I’d have to live with for life. When you finally untangle a delicate necklace it’s such a relief and joy you wonder why you didn’t tackle it in the first place, slowly and carefully and deliberately. 

I’ve just started the book, and I invite anyone who overanalyzes to join in the journey. More quotes like to come… 

After decades of dealing in and terrorizing people with glitter, I finally found a single sparkling piece of it on a singular part of me. Of course I mean my dick, and part of me is surprised that it’s taken this long for that to happen. (Glitter tends to favor eyelids and upper lips.) Immediately I texted a few chosen friends about it, and when Suzie asked why it was there I simply wrote back, “It’s the holidays.” 

The real question should have been why I noticed it, but since that was never asked it will be left up to your imagination. 

It first sounded last night, the first night of the calendar year. I was writing another blog post, sitting on the bed in the attic when I listened to it whip over the roof and around the window, seeking to gain some sort of entrance. 

The wind. 

Hearing it barrel by made me wonder how horrific a tornado or hurricane must sound in person. The rumbling and occasional whistling it made here must be a breeze in comparison. 

Such power and might continued early this morning, when I watched and heard the wind blow through the backyard, shaking trees and grasses and testing their pliability. In this life, you learn to either bend or break – proof that it’s better to be flexible than obstinate. My convictions may be stalwart but my stubbornness is more malleable these days. Give me time to cool down and collect myself and I’m likely to come around to a new way of seeing things. 

Have I always done this? For the most part yes, but it used to take a bit more time, and a lot more arguing, and while more often than not I ended up convincing people of my way, what an effort it was, and oh what headaches resulted. Today I’m more likely to let people make their own choices and decisions and deal with the fallout, even if I’m 100% certain there is a better way of doing things. Maybe that’s another failure on my part, but our failures make us better provide we learn something from them. I’ve learned to let people make their own mistakes.

FAFO is real.

While Tom Holland has already been crowned a Dazzler of the Day here, this is a post celebrating his current Men’s Health cover shoot, and his inspiring story of going sober. He recently released a line of non-alcoholic beer – Nero – committing to his lifestyle and welcoming the focus on not drinking. More of us can relate than one might think. Read more of it here.

Based on the figure he’s cutting, not drinking certainly agrees with him.

Beginning a new calendar year in mindfulness and silence is my preferred method of ringing in the next twelve months. Coupled with some industrious (for me) efforts and rituals, the day starts in quiet form. While Andy sleeps, I steam the outfit I’m wearing for a family dinner, prepare the roasted squash we’re bringing as a side dish, make myself a cup of oolong tea, and settle down at the dining room table to write this blog post. Trying to keep my mind focused wholly on the simple tasks at hand, I push away any nagging overthinking or mental analysis and attempt to inhabit the moment completely. For many people, silence and quiet is an immediate invitation for thoughts to run wild through the mind – for me, it invites the opportunity to focus on my breathing, or the simple act of making a cup of tea or cutting up vegetables. 

I pause and look at the outside world – slightly hazy, a fine mist and maybe even rain in the air, droplets of water on bare tree branches, like little silver buds of a spring that will, no matter what befalls us, come again. Cradling the cup of tea in my hands, I embrace its warmth while surveying the gray winter scene of our backyard. The fountain grass bows with crooked countenance, stalks of the cup plant splay as if they’d been trampled by some giant, and a fluffy squirrel perches on the corner post of our weathered fence. Which way will it decide to go? Which way will the year take us?

The cup of tea grows cool, no matter how piping hot it was when I began writing this. Tea tempers itself, something I’ve learned to do, on occasion, over the years. Tastes have mellowed and sharpened, in the contradictory terms that life decrees at its most infuriating. Holding such extremes when they seem at such odds is a Zen trick we can only ever approximate mastering. The action verbs that started the sentences when I started this blog post are now coming at the end, a shift worth noting and honoring. Let’s begin.

Sparse.

Stark.

Striking.

The vast expanse of winter.

The landscape of a new calendar year.

Beauty. Benevolence. Brutality.

Grasshead gone to fluffy seed – a horticultural feather boa – because that’s what winter does. It strips everything bare, leaving the only vestiges of glamour in the drying and waving stalks of desiccated grass. Winter holds its own, wrapping brittle arms like gnarled grapevine around the heart. It hurts and it helps, like a hug at the right moment, or the wrong moment. 

I don’t quite know how to begin this year. 

This year that I turn 50 years old. 

This year that Andy and I have been together for 25 years.

This year that we’ve been married for 15 years.

This year of milestones and markers…

Let us be wholly present for all of it. 

Let us be mindful of every moment. 

Let us… be.

We continue on the high summer note on which we left off from the first half of the year, which found us deep in coquette country and on the verge of a banner summer Olympics. Like most years, the months slowly but sometimes wildly shifted. Fasten your seatbelts, you know the rest…

July 2024: Back when we still held the wonder of hope.

The patriotic Speedo upon reflection.

Keep this guide handy so you don’t fuck up.

Shirtless summer shenanigans. (And one to blow on.)

Pink and wet.

My give-a-fucks went on vacation.

Summer night welcome.

A coquette visit with two dear friends.

Never the boy of summer.

Jaxon Layne turns two.

Our 24th anniversary.

A chosen coquette family.

The Paris Summer Olympics began with a bulge-tastic bang.

Making it purr and keeping it kinky.

A Silver Mountain summer scent.

The final coquette summer playlist.

The room where my father died.

August 2024: Dad’s anniversary.

A place of peace and rest.

Coquette loveliness.

Shirtless poses.

A fragrance fit for a father.

Summer Olympics 2024: a tale of two penises.

Zac Efron pumping sans shirt.

Our BroSox Adventure took place in August, a bit later, but every bit as fun and enjoyable as all of our excursions. 

Retiring Tom Daley’s Speedo.

Madonna seriously.

A coquette cradle song for therapy.

What are we supposed to do with coquette feathers?

A birthday on the cusp.

Feeling all of 49.

Birthdaying in Boston.

September 2024: Summer lingered happily by the pool.

The battle of pink and green was on. 

A hanging rope of pearls.

A father’s birthday in absentia.

Last gasp of a flailing coquette, striking a pose and losing hold of all glamour.

Andy saves summer with one plate of fried green tomatoes.

A summer day in Vermont with Suzie, on which we find some of the best ice cream we’ve ever had.

Nakedly harvesting super moon energy.

Closing out a perfectly lovely coquette summer.

Fall arrives with this fade-to-black theme.

Desperation.

Getting tired of this earth.

Black-brimmed avenger.

A witchy trio.

Fragile masculinity.

Remembering my first kiss with a man.

Words of an American psycho.

Smoking a fall clove.

At the turn to darkness.

A sex scene from the verge of twinkdom.

A Boston weekend in the fall with Kira.

Childhood church trauma.

Andy has the best balls.

October 2024: Thirty years ago I kept an unfortunate journal.

Getting busy.

Monster dick evil.

Ferocious, weak, pretentious freak.

A silver lining of social anxiety.

A treacherous tale of three.

The rough and tough meditation.

A new black parade.

Fall bacchanal, caftan style.

The Fade-to-Black fall playlist.

A sorcerer by a sorceress. 

Dangerously feminine.

Andy’s birthday.

Kamala, not so obviously, even if it’s obvious, and too late, now. 

Autumn in Ogunquit, as magical as ever. 

Super graphic ultra modern girl like me. 

Five years of sober living.

A bedtime story that’s lasted for thirty years.

Marble and mud.

A charming Saturday in New York with my person.

A family detour.

Let’s have another mid-life crisis because why not?

When a witch turns their back…

Who’s afraid of little old me?

A witch’s playlist.

Sound the siren.

November 2024: In which a villain re-emerges for survival.

Ben Cohen’s take-it-all-off calendar.

A November surprise with a project from 2004.

Swimming in November.

Mourning has broken.

A husband’s helpful shadow.

Ten years ago on this very blog.

I kept my promise, and I’m keeping my distance. 

Sexual activity my ass.

You must meet Irate Irene.

A magical flower from my magical man.

A cardinal visits.

Shades of nudity set to music.

Just what we need – another social media app.

Still Wicked after all these years.

No more news and no one’s unhappy about it. 

When tea-bagging goes bad.

Friendsgiving 2024 and a dinner with Kira.

Ulta ultra unhelpful.

December 2024: A holiday fragrance that is, like its wearer, a lot.

Everything is fucking fine.

Holiday card 2024: Shitter’s full!

The full ‘shades of gray’ project from twenty years ago is posted online for the first time.

Absence makes the heart grow.

Andy is my greatest comfort.

A cozy Christmas scene.

Waltzing through Christmas.

Racial profiling at the Newbury Hotel?

We can’t all be one of the witches.

Winter solstice.

Holiday Stroll 2024.

Boston Children’s Holiday Hour (entirely misnomered). 

Christmas coda with Chris.

A Christmas message for the lonely. 

The twins had their very first adult dinner party, thrown by me and Andy as it should be. 

A holiday recap.

See you in 2025, whether we like it or not…