It’s lesbian visibility week. In general, I haven’t been very visible lately on this blog because my Dad died (fuck cancer).

Warning: Long post. TLDR - my Dad was a great Dad and a good man.

Prior to that, I was spending a lot of time with him and Mom, helping as best I could. And afterwards, spending time with Mom getting everything done that needs done.

The Hot Wife has been at home, keeping everything going there and providing a lot of love and support.

My Dad was from the Silent Generation (the one before the Boomers). Unlike most people his age, he never stopped learning, growing, and adapting to the changing times. He believed in equity and justice not because he was “woke,” but because it is the right thing to do and he participated in civil rights protests in the 60s.

He taught me how to throw a ball and was always up for a game of catch.

He shared his love of folk music, classical music, science fiction, existentialism, art, and weird cult/art house/foreign films with me.

When I came out, he apologized for the times when he and Mom told me to act more like a girl, while encouraging me to be myself and grow up as a tomboy. He would buy fireworks for me and martial art supplies so my bff and I could terrorize the neighborhood in our ninja suits every summer night and a few other nights too.

He always bought boxes of candy for Mom, Seester, me, and my girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.

He randomly showed up at the Baltimore Gay Pride Festival one year (the year I wore my fav t-shirt that said “let go of my ears, I know what I’m doing”), and for many years after we went to Pride together.

We gossiped about our celebrity crushes together.

He refused to take my Mom shopping at Hobby Lobby and refused to eat at Chick-Fil-A.

He was so happy when I married the Hot Wife and he loved her too.

I didn’t know this until I cleaned out his desk - he had been donating to the Human Rights Campaign Fund for years and he had a few different clippings from magazines and downloads from the internet about how to challenge transphobes.

I didn’t just lose my Dad, we all lost an LGBTQ+ ally, a voting Democrat, and an example of non-toxic masculinity.

Good-by, Dad. Easter pizza dinner won’t be the same without you.

I give my Hot Wife “horror movie kisses.” I stand across the room and ask her close her eyes, silently creep closer, and ask her to open her eyes. Repeat but sometimes I’m really close, then further away, close, further, close, closer until I surprise her and kiss her. Then we’re both laughing too much to keep kissing.

I spent a year at my local library researching and writing my thesis in the special collections room - I’m talking several nights a week and on weekends, like, a lot of time. Also went there to study and write papers throughout grad school, as well as the local university library.

Now I use the online services more than the physical location, but don’t underestimate the impact of free, public libraries.

They are a haven.

A safe space.

Access to entertainment and knowledge for everyone for free. Libraries kick ass.

And if you have a college or university nearby (and you’re no longer a student anywhere), you might be able to pay a small annual fee to use that library.

Destroy the myth that libraries are no longer relevant. If you use your library, please reblog.

i just want to say I love your blog(s)!!!! Your posts make me so happy every time I see them!!! The way you refer and talk about your wife makes me smile so much!!!! You make me look forward to a future:) thank you cowboy Jen, for everything you do and have done for younger queer folks like me. I hope y'all enjoyed the eclipse!!!

Thank you so much! The Hot Wife and I are hitting our best years, I think. The eclipse was cool. It’s gonna be awhile before we see another! Hope you are doing well! (Also, just a heads up: I’m not Cowboy Jen - I’m another Gen X lesbian Jen. 😉)

Watching the moon and sun. The Hot Wife is a bit of an astronomy nerd.

Bumming around Assateague State Park with the Hot Wife.

Helped some horseshoe crabs back to the ocean, saw a harbor seal playing in the surf, and the ponies. The shell are from the Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. It was used by Native Americans for storytelling and recording important events and post-European contact as currency.

And to all a good night. 🌙😴 💤

Just got a flat tire on the NY Thruway. On the front drivers side, of course. I’m no front jack person, but I can do a quick swap with the doughnut. (The Hot Wife was very complimentary.)

Back to a tire place near my in-laws. At least the tire was in stock this time.

Endlessly grateful to my Dad for teaching me how to change a tire when I got my first car.

Finally got a little time together with the Hot Wife. Nice walk down to the Saugerties Lighthouse this morning.

Also boosting.

I never want to hear conservatives go on about repressive censorship in China, North Korea, and Iran ever again

Sometimes I dress exactly like the Hot Wife just to push her buttons a bit. Always makes her laugh, shake her head and roll her eyes at me. ���

Gen X is doing the best we can, but we’re such a small generation. Millennials can turn the tide.

please fucking vote

Finally in the same state long enough to go out for dinner (pizza) and a movie (Rear Window). So good to spend time together. Damn, I love my Hot Wife.

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/743255237060689920/the-thing-that-confuses-me-about-the-dont-vote

The “don’t vote” left’s point is basically that, if Biden gets a second term, it’ll basically signal that “They’ll vote for us as long as we’re not Republicans, why don’t we do some REAL fucked up shit, if we can get away with it?” It takes the power out of the people’s hands and places it firmly in the party’s.

I can’t completely disagree with that, my caveat is that there’s no real alternative system or party in place, because top-down change is ineffective; a third party president has to contend with a two party congress.

Except no. This whole "Biden just wants to do as much fucked up shit as possible while not being a Republican, and if you give him a second term he'll do more fucked up shit deliberately to spite you" mindset is only possible as an interpretation if you a) deliberately and comprehensively ignore everything he has done to date, and b) you approach the situation with the maximum bad faith possible. Not to mention, the ultimate outcome of this Big Important Teaching Biden A Lesson is that Trump gets back into power and makes everything orders of magnitude worse, because he does in fact want to deliberately do evil shit to everyone and says so at every opportunity. There is not some magical happy alternative that springs into existence by not voting. If you choose this as a year to Teach Biden A Lesson, you are enabling Trump. Trump will be much, much worse. If you don't care about that, I still do not care what your Great Ideology is. You are not helping anyone and you are directly and irreversibly hurting everyone.

I made a post a few days ago wherein I mentioned that I want to assess Biden fairly, taking into account both strengths and weaknesses, but the rampant bad-faith, lying, misreading, misrepresentation, and open sabotage of him (especially by the online left; the GOP sometimes only wishes they were as good at turning Biden's voter pool against him) makes it really difficult to do that. My frustration with those people makes me just want to go "BIDEN IS GREAT THE END." I know he is a flawed old man (though by literally every account of a career spent in public service, he really does care about making the world a better place and any remotely good faith reading of his accomplishments thus far can see that). It is also very likely that he goes MORE left in a second term because he won't have to face the electorate again, he has always gone more left when pushed before, and he's not actually the scheming genocidal mastermind that leftist social media paints him as. Shocking, I know.

I know there are things in the world we don't like and don't want and want to stop, and therefore we blame our own president for not making it stop. But I have zero, no, none, absolutely none whatsoever sympathy for this pseudo-populist "WE NEED TO TEACH BIDEN A LESSON BY ELECTING TRUMP AGAIN, I AM VERY MORAL MUCH ACTIVIST" mindset. There's this funny thing about America wherein it is still (for now) a democracy. If Biden wins a second term, he can't run again. I would take literally anything these people said more seriously if they focused on developing their dream progressive successor for 2028 (and also figured out how to get that person elected and in a place to make real change) rather than cynically sabotaging Biden in the most consequential election year, again, of our lifetimes. If you don't like him now, find a way to make his successor a better option. Throwing a toddler tantrum and handing the country back to a senile, deranged, fascist, revenge-riddled, theocratic Trump HELPS. NOBODY. I still don't know how many times I'm going to have to say that, but yeah.

Hello, just wanted to say I really enjoy your blog! :) always a pleasure seeing your posts on my dash. I hope life will get easier again for you soon. 🌻 give my regards to the wifey ✌🏻��

Aw, thank you. 🥰 You are too sweet! I will tell the Hot Wife you said hi. 😊

There’s a lot going on right now and life has become nearly unbearably stressful for me. I’m really glad that I’ve got such a wonderful, supportive wife. This is a little late for Valentine’s Day, but I dug up a few Photo Booth photos.

It cracks me up how we’re laughing too hard to kiss. The first photo was in the early 2000s, middle one prob 2012 or 2013, and the last is from 2021. A lot of years laughing and loving with my best gal.

Happy belated V Day!

The Hot Wife and I went to the Calvert Marine Museum for First Fossil Friday to have a paleontologist take a look at a whale vertebra my Mom found at Calvert Cliffs in the 50s and 3 things I at the Cliffs and at Flag Pond found to identify them.

The fossils are from the Miocene. They are: a vertebra from an adult baleen whale, a scapula from a sea turtle, a tooth from either an Otodus chubutensis or Otodus megladon but he couldn’t tell because of how the tooth is broken - which is similar to other teeth he’s seen that were modified by Native Americans for use as a spear point!!!! The final fossil is the inside of a geoduck and part of its shell.

We also stopped by to see the river otters (the Hot Wife’s fav part of the museum) who put on quite a show for her, swimming up to look at her and swimming away.

Then we hit the gift shop and I found the best fake teeth ever!