I’m off work today, and tomorrow I’ll be working from home, which means I don’t have to step foot back in the office until Monday. Honestly, that small buffer feels like a gift. I have an appointment this morning that I’m anxious about, even though I’ve been preparing myself for it for over a week now. I keep reminding myself to breathe, stay calm, and trust that I’ve done what I can.
If the appointment goes well—and if I’m feeling motivated enough afterward—I want to go to Planet Fitness today. My goal is simple: don’t let myself talk my way out of going. I know that once I get back into a routine, I’ll feel better for it, but breaking the inertia is always the hardest part.
Short post today, I know, but my mind is on other things. I hope everyone has a peaceful Thursday and an even more peaceful weekend ahead.
I really need to start going back to the gym. I haven’t been since those back problems started in July—other than two very short, half-hearted attempts—and every time I tell myself I’ll go after work, it somehow never happens. My orthopedist has encouraged me to ease back into it, but good intentions and actual follow-through don’t always line up, especially when your couch keeps whispering sweet nothings.
I had enjoyed working out… though I’ll admit that might have had a little something to do with my very cute trainer at the time. He showed me what to do, corrected my posture, kept me motivated—and now he’s no longer a trainer, which leaves me feeling a bit intimidated. Without someone there to guide me, I’m suddenly aware of how little I really know about what to do at the gym.
Planet Fitness’s app has videos and instructions for all their machines—upper body, core, lower body, plus whatever I choose for cardio (let’s be honest, it will be the treadmill). I could absolutely follow a routine from that. The problem is less about knowledge and more about confidence, or maybe inertia. I keep telling myself that if I could get into a rhythm again, I’d probably enjoy it. But step one is, annoyingly, simply making myself go.
And let’s be honest: the eye candy is definitely a motivator. Gyms always have eye candy. Unfortunately, it’s also the eye candy that makes me feel intimidated—like everyone else knows exactly what they’re doing while I’m still figuring out which way to face on a machine. It’s hard to look confident when your inner monologue is, “Does this adjust up? Down? Am I about to embarrass myself?”
I need to check whether they’ve hired a new trainer and, if so, get on their schedule. I think having someone there who actually knows what they’re doing would help me feel a lot less lost.
I’m off work tomorrow. I have a meeting—one I’m both excited about and nervous about. For once, it’s something I don’t want to talk about yet. Depending on how it goes, I may share more later. What I am hoping, though, is that after the meeting I’ll be able to ride that momentum straight to the gym. Optimism versus intimidation… we’ll see who wins.
Here’s hoping tomorrow brings clarity—and maybe the spark to get me back on the treadmill too.
Isabella can be a bit of a needy diva at times—lovable, adorable, and absolutely convinced that my entire existence revolves around her schedule. This morning she woke me up just before 5 a.m., demanding breakfast with all the urgency of someone who had not been fed in minutes. I obliged, of course, and then crawled straight back into bed. I was originally supposed to be in the office this morning, but my class got rescheduled, which means a work-from-home day for me.
I fell asleep again almost instantly and drifted into the loveliest dream. In it, I was snuggled up next to a very handsome man—the kind of hot guy who makes your subconscious say, “Yes, let’s stay here.” He was straight in the dream, but we were sharing a bed anyway. Somehow the night had ended with us in nothing but our underwear, my head on his bare chest, his arm around me, the whole moment soft and warm and unexpectedly intimate.
When we woke up like that, dream-me stayed blissfully half asleep until he leaned down, kissed the top of my head, and murmured, “Good morning, lazy bones.” I made one of those half-asleep groans that means, I refuse to move, and he just pulled me closer. We drifted back to sleep like that—sweet, slow, and yes, very arousing. I was rock hard in the dream… and in real life, too. It was that good.
But of course, Isabella does not approve of me going back to bed once she has declared morning officially underway. After her first breakfast, she decided she needed my attention—or, more accurately, a second breakfast. Instead of enjoying more of my dream, I was summoned back to consciousness by a diva cat with very firm beliefs about my responsibilities.
And now? Isabella is curled up in the corner of the living room sound asleep, looking perfectly content, while I’m sitting on the couch writing this post.
Sigh.
Sometimes I wonder who’s actually in charge around here—but I already know the answer.
I really don’t have much to say today. I’m feeling a bit low — just a little sad and worn down — and I’m not up to writing much this morning. Some days are like that: quiet, heavy, and a little gray around the edges.
I’m giving myself permission to keep things simple today, and I hope you’ll do the same if you need it. Be kind to yourselves, and I’ll be back when my spirits lift a bit.
Today is shaping up to be one of those days where everything seems to land at once. I’ll spend the first half of the morning setting up for a class, and the second half actually teaching it. Then, once the students are gone, I’ll be putting away all of the materials and resetting the space.
And that’s just the morning.
This afternoon I’ll be heading up to Burlington for an ultrasound of my liver. I had bloodwork done on Friday, and tomorrow I meet with my liver specialist—so it’s going to be a medically themed start to the week whether I like it or not. On top of that, someone is coming by to replace my windshield because the crack that’s been creeping across the bottom finally decided to make itself a priority.
So yes… a great deal of juggling today, and a sincere hope that everything runs on schedule.
Before I get swept up in the chaos, I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes yesterday. It meant a lot. I had a quiet day at home with Isabella—never a bad way to spend a birthday—and I’m grateful for all the kind messages.
I hope everyone has a wonderful week ahead. May yours be a little calmer than mine is starting out to be!
A good friend of mine—also from Alabama, and though younger than me grew up not far from where I did—and I are heading out tonight for Winter Lights at Shelburne Museum. It’s one of those wonderfully over-the-top holiday displays that hits you with the full force of color, sparkle, and pure seasonal joy. The whole campus is transformed with imaginative light installations: buildings glowing in bold colors, gardens wrapped in shimmering displays, and even musical moments tucked throughout.
We’re starting the evening with a nice birthday dinner. Usually, we go to Waterworks in Winooski because they’re the only place that carries a wine we both love, but since alcohol is off the table for me now, we decided on a different kind of celebration. After dinner, we’ll head over to Winter Lights for the full holiday experience. I just need to decide whether I’m in the mood for steak or Italian tonight.
Holiday lights have always been a soft spot for me. I’ve been to a few of these special displays before—there was a similar event at the Montgomery Zoo I used to go to with a former girlfriend, and I’ve been to the lights at Callaway Gardens in Georgia. When I was a kid, Christmas Eve meant going to my mother’s parents’ house, and Pop would take us driving to look at all the decorated homes. It was one of my favorite traditions.
A friend of mine once lived in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and that town always went all out—bright, tacky, gaudy, and absolutely over the top. But it was fun. And on my 40th birthday, a friend took me up to Montreal, where we stayed at a hotel on the edge of the Gay Village overlooking a little park near the Berri-UQAM Metro station. They had a small winter festival happening, and it made for such a beautiful scene.
So tonight feels like a continuation of all those good memories: a nice dinner with a friend, a wander through glowing holiday lights, and maybe a cup of Lake Champlain Chocolates hot cocoa to warm things up. A pretty perfect way to celebrate another year.
This Thanksgiving will be a small one for me, but it will still be a good one. I’ll be making my own little feast: turkey, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Truth be told, I’m mostly looking forward to the dressing. It has always been one of my favorite foods of the season—comfort, tradition, and memory all in one dish.
It will just be me and my lovely Isabella at the table this year, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. She has truly been a lifesaver for me in more ways than I can count. She has an uncanny way of knowing when I don’t feel well, when I’m anxious, or when I just need quiet company. I am deeply thankful for her sweet, steady presence in my life.
I’m also incredibly thankful for my friendships—especially Susan—and for the people who show up for me again and again with kindness, laughter, and support. And yes, I’m even thankful for my family, even though they do manage to drive me crazy most of the time. Love is complicated, but it is still love.
Most of all today, I want to thank you—my wonderful readers. So many of you are so encouraging in your comments, and over the years I have made real, meaningful friendships through this little corner of the internet. Some of you I still hear from often. Some I haven’t heard from in a long time. And some I know have passed on. Each of you, in your own way, has made an impact on my life, and for that I am truly grateful.
I know some of you rarely comment publicly, but every once in a while I’ll receive a quiet email instead—and I treasure those messages just as much. In fifteen years of writing this blog, I’m grateful to say that negativity has been rare. The overwhelming majority of what I receive from you is warmth, encouragement, and generosity of spirit. That is no small gift.
To my readers in the United States, I wish you a peaceful, joyful Thanksgiving. And to those of you around the world who don’t celebrate this holiday—please know how thankful I am for you being part of my life all the same.
Today, my table may be small, but my gratitude is anything but.
It’s been a bit of a rough 24 hours. Yesterday started with a migraine and nausea, and the longer I was up, the worse it got. Eventually the vomiting joined the party, and needless to say, I did not work yesterday. Instead, I slept off and on all day with my sweet Isabella curled up beside me. She’s always been good at sensing when I’m not feeling well. Sometimes that means she snuggles close; sometimes she simply stations herself nearby like a little feline guardian. She used to wake me up when my blood sugar dropped too low—thankfully that hasn’t been an issue for quite a while—but she’s still the most empathetic cat I’ve ever known.
I went to bed early last night but woke from a bad dream around 1:30 a.m. I’m not sure I’d call it a nightmare, but it was unpleasant enough to make getting back to sleep difficult. Eventually I drifted off again and slept until 5:15 a.m.—which is quite a bit later than Isabella usually allows. This time, at least, I was having a far more enjoyable dream. Let’s just say it involved meeting two guys at a bar and a rather delightful ménage à trois. Waking up from that was certainly nicer than waking up from yesterday’s misery.
I’m feeling much better today, thankfully. I’ll be at work for my half-day and need to get a few preparations done for the classes coming in next week. Afterward, I have a few errands to run, but I’m hoping it will be a good, calm day.
I hope all of you have a pleasant day as well. May it be migraine-free and maybe even dream-enhanced.
After ten days away from the office, I’m heading back in this morning. Luckily, it’s a short week—just today, tomorrow, and half of Wednesday before the long Thanksgiving weekend begins. I’m definitely looking forward to the extra time off.
It should also be a pretty peaceful week at the museum. My boss is out on vacation all week, and my other coworker has her office tucked away elsewhere in the building. So for the most part, I’ll have my little corner of the museum to myself. Honestly, I’m hoping for quiet days and easy work.
You may notice that my posts this week might have a slightly maudlin tone. It’s not because I’m spending Thanksgiving in Vermont or because my birthday is coming up. It’s because this time of year always brings a familiar sadness: a friend of mine won’t be celebrating another birthday. It’s been ten years, and I still miss him. Grief has a way of slipping into the rhythm of the holidays.
Every year, for my birthday, I go out to dinner with a close friend. We always share a bottle of wine at our favorite restaurant—at least, we used to. This year will be different. My liver no longer allows alcohol, but that’s alright. We’ll still have dinner on Friday, and afterward we’re planning to visit a holiday lights festival at a big outdoor museum near Burlington. It should be beautiful, and I think a little beauty will do my heart some good.
People always ask if I’m going home for Thanksgiving, and the answer is always no. I can’t afford two plane trips a month apart, and even if I could, I’m not especially eager to spend my birthday week in Alabama—or worse, fly back to Vermont on my actual birthday. I’d rather spend the day with Isabella, curled up in the quiet warmth of my Vermont home. Yes, home. My parents hate when I say that, but I’ve been here ten years now. Unless something tragic forces me back, Alabama will never be home again. It’s where my family lives, but Vermont is where I live.
Have a wonderful week, everyone. May it be gentle.
Every now and then a picture pops up online that sends your mind wandering down the oddest memory lane. I came across this picture earlier—just a very handsome, very naked man lining up a pool shot—and for whatever reason, it sent my mind spinning backward about twenty years to the first time someone ever taught me how to play pool.
Back in grad school, I had one of those unexpected friendships that just sort of ignite out of nowhere. He was a very straight, very frat-bro guy from Illinois. We met at the annual graduate welcome party at a professor’s lake house—the kind of event that involved a keg, mismatched lawn chairs, and a lot of awkward introductions. Somehow he and I started talking, and before I knew it, we were back at his apartment drinking on his balcony until dawn.
Too bad he was so straight—genuinely, hopelessly straight—because we could have had a great deal of fun together. And yes, I’m speaking from evidence. He was the kind of guy who talked a big game about his 9.5” dick and then casually proved it, not out of flirtation, but because frat boys operate on a completely different plane of shameless bravado. It was, I must admit, an impressive sight.
We became inseparable. Friday nights were for bar-hopping, poker with other grad students, or just whatever chaos the week produced. He technically had a girlfriend back in Illinois, but that didn’t stop him from sleeping with half the women he came across. She found it hilarious that her straight-as-an-arrow frat bro boyfriend’s best friend in Mississippi was gay. She always said he’d come home to her in the end, and she was right. They eventually got married, and to my knowledge, he never strayed again once they were living in the same city. But those Mississippi years? He was a horny little bastard. Weren’t we all when we were in our twenties.
One night in 2005—my birthday, I think—we ended up at a bar we almost never went to, one of those places with an almost perfect half-and-half mix of straights and gays. I can’t remember the name, but I could still drive you to it.
That night, he decided he was going to teach me to play pool.
Now, I was terrible at pool. Abysmal. So he stepped behind me, pressed his body against mine, and guided me into the proper position—very much like the pose in the picture above, though in our version everyone kept their clothes on. For him, there was absolutely nothing sexual about it. For me…well, it was one of the more pleasant lessons I’ve ever received. And honestly, I did get better at pool after that night.
Somewhere in the mix, we ended up playing pool with two girls who I’m pretty sure were on the university’s softball team — definitely not the stereotypical “lesbian softball players” people love to joke about. One of them came back to his apartment with us and was very clearly hoping for a threesome. To my eternal regret, I figured it out a little too late, mostly because I had drunk way too much. I got sick, passed out on the couch, and fell asleep to the soundtrack of the two of them having sex. I woke up to round two the next morning before she cheerfully said goodbye to me on her way out.
Those were my “wilder days,” though in truth I was never that wild. I was still a very serious student. It was simply the first time in my life I’d had real freedom—living three hours from my family, coming out, navigating grad school, rebuilding life after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the house I’d been living in, and having to move into the dorms for a semester because my town was overrun by Katrina refugees and housing was at a premium and in short supply.
Another morning, I woke up in his bed with a female professor lying between us. Nothing had happened; none of us had hooked up. But the way she woke—going from dead asleep to standing at the foot of the bed in one swift, acrobatic motion—is a sight I’ll never forget.
A lot of people didn’t like him. He could be an intellectual snob, and he was proud of it. For some reason, he thought I was the only person in our grad program smarter than he was. That’s not true, there were other people smarter than him. But he was a loyal friend to me during a very chaotic time in my life, when a lot of people I thought were friends turned out not to be such good friends. After his two years in Mississippi, he went back to Illinois, got a master’s in library science, followed his girlfriend to Texas for a job at a major oil company—she was a biochemist, and he eventually became the oil company’s corporate librarian—something I didn’t even know existed. Last I checked, he’d gone on to law school and was working as an attorney for the same big oil company.
We eventually drifted apart, as people do. But him teaching me to play pool—pressed behind me, bending me over just right, guiding my hands—remains one of my fondest and most vivid memories.
Funny how a single picture can open a door you didn’t even realize was still there. If this sparks a memory of your own — a friend, a night out, or a moment that caught you off guard — don’t be shy. Share in the comments. I always love reading your stories, and I know other readers will enjoy them too.
Joe
The Closet Professor 