Long Beach Gay Pride 2009 part 1

One of the more important events for us in May is Long Beach Pride!! I first attended Long Beach Pride back in 1988. It was truly a life changing experience for me at the time. The year before my sister Trixie had attended, it was his first one and told me that the next year (1988) I had to go with him. So, I did.
Never in my life had I been in the presence of so many Gay and Lesbian people. I cried through most of the parade and as the end of the parade came to where we were, we joined the many hundreds of other people in the street and followed the parade to the Festival grounds. It was one of the most exciting times of my life. The parade went down Ocean Ave there in Long Beach and then turned left at Pine Ave, went down the hill to the Festival on the "island" (where the Aquarium of the Pacific is now). As the parade made left on Pine to go down the hill, along with all the people following it, I came to the corner and stopped dead in my tracks. Looking down on those thousands of Gay and Lesbian people, together in once place to celebrate who we are, was just too emotional for me, and I really started to cry. An older gentleman (well older for me at the time, he was probably the age I am now) came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me to him for a moment and said," This is your first festival isn't it?". He told me he had a similar experience the first time he went to one. That was 1988, when it still was not a good thing to be Gay and out. It was a wonderful, wonderful time for me that day. Since that time,
I have missed very few of the Long Beach Pride Festivals. I have attended with different friends through the years and have MANY wonderful memories of things that happened in Long Beach as we got together to celebrate who we are as the LGBT community.

This year we attended a Brunch after the Parade at the home of our Wonderful friend, Phillip, who graced us all by wearing his Pride Fairy hat during the brunch!
He is a gracious host and as you can tell, everyone had a marvelous time!!
THANK YOU PHILIP!!

Long Beach Gay Pride 2009 Pics of Pride

So Excited!

I can not tell you just how excited Patrick gets whenever we get on the Tram that takes us in to Disneyland!!

Happy Birthday Mom !

Today is my Mom's Birthday, she would have been 91 years old today! I really miss celebrating her birthdays, she was so hard to buy for. She had anything she needed and could have pretty much bought anything she really wanted, so to say it was a challenge to find "just the right thing" for her birthday is an understatement.
My sister and brother and I had this thing where if we thought of something really great to get her, we would not tell each other what it was so one of other would not run out an get it for her. Every year she would always tell us not to get her anything but there was no way in hell that was gonna happen. She told my poor Dad that one Christmas and he took up on it and we saw what he had to go through for the next year!! But it always ended good and she always seemed to like what we got her,even if she had to fake liking it!! But then after we did figure out what to give her for her birthday, Mother's Day was just two weeks away!!!!!!!!!

Happy Anniversary....to US!!

Wow can you believe it??? Today is mine and my Hubby's 9th, I said 9th Anniversary!! As of today we have been together for 9 years, they say time flys when you are having fun and we must have been having a hell of a good time because it just does not seem possible that we have been together that long. It really does seem like just a few days ago we met and started dating and now here we are 9 years later, celebrating our Anniverary. Love is truly a tremendous thing!!

For those of you in a relationship, can you honestly remember the very first time you saw your partner? I can,really. I will always remember the first time I saw Patrick and I will always remember the feeling I had when I saw him, I was totally and completely blown away. I am not so sure he felt the same way when he first saw me, but I know I did because it scared me so much at how I reacted. It would be a little while later before I could actually tell him how I felt about him, but it really did scare me how I felt. Now I had boyfriends in the past and I had actually had two long term relationships by the time I met him, but NEVER in my life had a guy effected me like Patrick did, and still does.

Of course when we met he lived in Los Angeles and I lived in Palm Springs, so EVERY morning, we would write to each other. I would always send him his to his computer at home so he would be able to read it each morning when he checked his email. He would send mine to my computer at the Desert Aids Project where I worked so I could read it first thing when I turned my computer on to start my day. It is something we both looked forward to every day. Everday we got to start our day with a love letter from each other. And you know what, that is something we both still do till this day. I get up before Patrick does in the morning, and one of the first things I do is I write a love letter to him. And sometimes after he gets up and before he goes to work, he write to me. I have almost every letter he has written to me over the course of the last 9 years and he has mine. It is really hard for me to start my day without it.

Over the past 9 years we have had some really awesome adventures together. We have more than our share of fun times and we have had a few low times as well, but here we are, 9 years later and going strong. We really do not know what the future holds for us, but this we do know, that without a doubt, no matter what comes our way, we will face it together. And we will be sharing many more adventures and many more years together.

Thank you to all our loves ones and friends who have shared these past 9 year with us! Hang on tight, because we are just getting started!!!!

later.

p.s the picture up top is our first picture together






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Happy Birthday Timmy!!!!

I want to give a very special shout out today to a very special person in our lives, our friend Timmy. Now Patrick and I have many special people in our lives, but Timmy holds a very close space in our hearts, because if it were not for Timmy, Patrick and I would never have met. (I will save the explanation for a later post). He and Patrick had been best friends for several years before I came along, and I am very thankful that he is one of my best friends too!
When Patrick and I met, he told me some about the adventures he and Timmy had had. I knew they were very close friends, and it worked out that he was the first of Patrick's friends I got to meet. I well remember the first time I met him,I was SO nervous!! Yes, he who usually never meets a stranger, was way nervous. I have to say I was more nervous meeting him the first time than I was Patrick's parents, really! Patrick and I met him for lunch at a Tex-Mex place and some time during the meal I finally relaxed. Through the years we three have had numerous adventures together.
We have celebrated many Prides together form LA, to Vegas, to Palm Springs. We have danced at a few clubs together, and have even gotten more than a little tipsy at brunch at Hamburger Mary's in Long Beach. (When the Drag Queens start looking pretty, you have have one too many Mimmosas ok?.) When I moved from Palm Springs to Los Angeles, Timmy came to PS with Patrick to drive my car back to LA since it was stick shift and Patrick did not know how to drive it!(I was driving the UHAUL) He made us very proud a few years ago when he trained for and ran the Aids Marathon in Hawaii. We are both
very thankful that he is in our lives and I know that in the years to come, we have many many more adventures together in store for us.

HAPPY BIRTHAY TIMMY !!!