thulemir

thulemir — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:35:57 GMT

thulemir — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:27:12 GMT

hi sweeties!

i'm back & recovered from the holidays . . . and cheerful! whoda thunk it?!

some links to a couple of things of interest -

first - a lovely emily dickenson poem abt truth - recited by the artist wolf kahn . . .

http://www.patriciagoodrich.com/kahn.html

and another artist i think we'll all enjoy . . . since we all have similar warped senses of humor!

http://www.inkydreadfuls.com/google572e4c226c54e032.html

plus an update on what i've been doing, health, & older son moving out -

before the holiday, i had to get the zen group website updated, the beginner's handbook revised & to kinko's & online, plus do the last issue of Rin Shin-ji Voices for the year! whee doggies was i busy! you can find it all here, if'n you wanna take a putter around . . .

http://arcatazengroup.org/index.php

the Voices includes a manip of an oil painting i did called mountain / ice . . .

it is so much easier to do the website now that i redid it all from scratch - it's in a combination html/php/css - and it's so much easier to work on now! (btw, if you see anything that needs fixing, could you let me know? thanks!)

the holiday went well & we're still going thru leftovers (uh, what do you mean i was supposed to be dieting?!), but the other day we had a big emotional scene w/ older son - he had been in denial that i really wanted him out - so the three of us sat down & ironed things out. we addressed the problems that are why i want him to move out - that it really isn't good for a 25 yr old to live at home & interact only w/ mommy & his brothers, that he's refused to get a job, and that he is - despite his helpfulness in fixing things - really hard to live with! what an earful he got - and he got a little threatening (he felt attacked & unappreciated etc) - verbally - and his brother calmly explained to him that that was really awful (he later told me he was very angry at O.S. for doing that) - Y.S. was a real brick - sat down with pencil & paper & did the math re OS getting a job, finding housing, costs, etc. & in general backed me up.

the upshot is, he has to finish his major project (selling off their father's stuff that's been in storage since he died 2 yrs ago) then look for work & housing - and be easier to live with! if he doesn't do any one of these things, he's out immediately - and, in any case, whether he has housing &/or a job or not, he's moving out june 2nd. he agreed to it all, & i wrote it up in a personal agreement & he signed it!

i don't know, kiddos, whether this is a better step or not, but it feels better . . . but i am really tired of parenting . . . i know i should be patient (it was once suggested by a professional that he has mild asperger's, but he has never wanted to go to counseling or anything) but it's mighty hard . . . i tried to explain to y.s. & he tries too, but it's really wearing . . .

and in other news - my regular doc thinks i should have the surgery done to drain the liver cysts so i'll have to speak to a surgeon - but i don't wanna unless i have to . . . am exploring an herbal possibility thru my acupuncturist/chinese herbalist that may shrink the cysts . . . since they are not impinging on liver function, & the pain is a lot less than back in aug/sept, i am tending toward a wait & see response . . .

k - off to eat whole lots more - have i mentioned transparent pie w/ liquid whipping cream? home made parker house rolls w/ gravy? *ducks* ok, ok - i'll stop now!

love,

thulemir — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:37:13 GMT

to all the amazing folks on my flist . . .

whatever you're celebrating around this time of year - i guess from buddha's birthday on december 8 to, umm, is it russian orthodox christmas? on january 6th ~

source

thulemir — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:23:53 GMT

hi everyone!

just a quick note!

i ended up doing really well at the hospital yesterday, tho the doctor knocked me out early 'cause i was so upset abt it! am still pretty silly from the anesthetic, and slept all day & night afterward.

will post again soon but the basic story is, everything looks fine - i "have the colon of a young woman"! the endoscopy showed a slight gastroenteritis, they took a culture but nothing to worry abt.

so - it's back to the good ol' liver!

ta!

thulemir — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:27:15 GMT

teehee . . .

gingerbread house - Dr. House, that is . . .

http://buzzsugar.com/872001

got there by way of stephen fry's blog+guardian col

http://stephenfry.com/blog/

this is the day i prep for the colonoscopy & endoscopy i have to do tomorrow . . . i freaked out yesterday (to the extent of actually tearing up during morning zazen - luckily no one noticed - i don't want to upset my sweetie more than he is) about all the pills etc you have to take to clean out for the colonoscopy . . . re-talked with the pharmacist & the doctor's nurse (pharmacist very helpful & supportive, nurse rushed & wrong & uninterested) re possible effects these could have on someone w/ chemical sensitivity . . . not to mention my worries re the hypoglycemia . . . blech!

decided to calm down & get them done . . . if only so m & the doctors all stop complaining i won't let them treat me. both boys'll be home today so if i have any adverse reactions there's help immediately to hand. & younger son & m will go to the hospital with me tomorrow for the actual tests . . . older son has to stay home & pick up the xmas box from the free food place up in trinidad - every year they give a box w/ a turkey, stuffing cubes, cranberry sauce, onions, margarine, carrots, potatoes, celery etc - all you need for an xmas dinner . . . when the kids were young there were presents, too . . . so many years that's gotten us thru . . . and so often those were the only presents i had for the kids . . .

crummy time of year, crummy time of life -

and i'm laughing over gingerbread house! a reader of stephen's blog pointed it out - and she promises to make a gingerfry & post the pic! ooh boy!

ta - i prob won't be back online till friday . . .

*love 'n' hugs!*

thulemir — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:25:59 GMT

Happy Birthday, Sairalinde!!!

i was looking foir an animated daisy birthday gif - and found this one (and a few others!):

teehee - couldn't resist!

Hope your day has gone great, sweetie!!!

*love 'n' hugs!*

thulemir — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:56:18 GMT

not grumping!

just checking in to say hello & that i feel a whole lot better! am getting used to the idea i'll have to go thru yuck to do those tests, and that i'll prob need an operation . . . and that i will prob live thru the operation just fine - after all, i was even around a lit scented candle the other day & was able to tolerate it for abt 1/2 hr! so surely with oxygen i can do the tests & if necessary an operation!

so - i'm happy! i get to laze around tomorrow, and bake a cake w/ younger son & my sweetie'll come over in the evening & we'll all have sandwiches & cake & ice cream & watch either "cat people" or "black sheep" - or both - i love bad horror movies!

hope yr all doing ok - hey shelley - are you better yet?

ta, sweeties!

thulemir — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:01:01 GMT

"I've never seen liver cysts this big - I've read about them . . ."

not really what i wanted to hear from the gastroenterologist i saw yesterday . . .

so weds i saw the regular doctor - no pneumonia or bronchitis - just a cold that's not going away . . . yet another new p.a. or n.p.a. or whatever . . . a whole new person i have to train on how to treat me since apparently it is not possible for a doctor's office to teach their own people how to treat their own patients . . . hmmm . . . that sounds a little bitter, doesn't it . . . but i get sick of having to explain abt airflow/no alcohol/re-rinsing yr hands & washing them outside the room i'm in/ no temp cause of the covers on the thermometer/ sleeve down for the b.p. etc etc . . .

anyway (ha! i'm grumbling again!!) i am finally getting better - no fever, throat better for swallowing, etc . . .

and then yesterday was the gastro guy . . .

i asked abt exercise, he said, i don't know - there not much real data on what's ok for people with cysts this big . . . and on the 19th i'm scheduled for both a colonoscopy (well, i've never had one yet!) and the same but from the top down - they'll drug me, spray my throat with a number, stick a tube down it & have a look-see . . . because with all my other probs, esp the fibromyalgia, he's not positive that most of the pain/discomfort i feel is from the liver . . .

and he thinks i'll end up needing surgery anyway . . . apparently if they get too big, they can burst, leading to infection, or they can cause the liver to start atrophying . . .

rats . . .

so there . . .

at least he seemed intelligent & competent, and not full of himself . . .

well, i'm over the shock of it, anyway, and starting to resign myself . . .

and off to do the first of the month shopping!

ta, everyone!

thulemir — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:19:47 GMT

*grumble grumble*

hi all!

i've been pretty ill (cold, flu, ?) & not at the computer much - got to catch up a little here tonight but need to sleep again - have a dr.'s apt on weds to make sure this isn't pneumonia . . . glad i was ok for the big cooking last thurs, but that's been abt it for weeks (actually, i feel like i've been ill on & off since august) thurs is the long-awaited apt with the internist re the super-special-expandable liver . . .

sorry i've not been constant . . .

shelley dear i owe you an email! hope yr feeling better . . .

random, hugs & good wishes & i hope things are looking brighter by the time you read this . . .

saira - the new kitten is adorable!

beeej!! teh sir - in person! super cool, man!!

i'll try to do more tomorrow commenting-wise . . .

hugs to all!

oh - p.s! i did have a rather marvelous, if strenuous, dream abt stephen fry & hugh laurie . . . sigh . . . at least some part of me is still functioning well!

thulemir — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:01:38 GMT

happy t day, for those who're cooking/eating away!

i've gotten well just in time to cook & cook - and clean house! will be me, the 2 boys, my sweetie - and my delightful cousin, who's 78. it's the first time she's come & much excited! the fact that i am on vicodin for knee/back has nothing to do with it - really! pretty much . . . !! oh - and maybe half-son, we're still not sure . . .

here's the menu:

mashed potatoes              gravy with mushrooms
cranberry sauce                cashews
turkey                                ham
curried chicken                  olives (black & green)
creamed onions                 rolls
salad                                  carrots with orange brown sugar glaze
sweet potato & marshmallow casserole
corn                                   macs & cheese
mess of spicy greens with bacon

and for dessert:

spice cake with frosting       maple syrup mouse
apple crumb pie                  apple caramel betty
sweet potato pie                 cheese cake
ice cream                            whipped cream
pumpkin pudding                shoofly pie
chocolate fudge

sigh . . . yes, we are mad . . . younger son & i prepared a work order for doing all of this - we shopped monday, and started cooking tuesday! all that's left (the turkey's in the oven already) is the ham, the rolls (i make them up soon as i'm done here), salad, and greens . . . we're scheduled to eat abt 5:30 pm (it's 1pm here now), so we're going along great!

been missing you guys - first time i've been here for a bit - as usual . . . but i'm hoping i'll be well for a little longer this time . . .

happy happy, y'all!

*love 'n' hugs*

thulemir — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:33:11 GMT

Happy Birthday, Cousin Shelley!!!

you're adorable, sweet, funny, and one of the finest people i know - and i'm really glad i do!

can't beat the wonderful pics lostlucidity posted, but . . . if i could get this for you i would - cause i know you'd want it!!

http://www.modernplasztika.co.hu/audioful_eng.html

love 'n' hugs, cutie!!

thulemir — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:27:11 GMT

pretty cool - guy took his camera with him as he climbed the world's tallest tree - in prairie creek, just abt 45 mins north of here . . .

thulemir — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:24:36 GMT

a friend sent this . . . very silly . . . david letterman playing with a transformer . . .

http://pages.suddenlink.net/thulemir/Transformers.wmv

thulemir — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:42:31 GMT

oh how proud i am!

remember that article, that dumbledore is gay? well, one of the students in my younger son's online class posted it to their discussion board - another student commented that they had thought so, since there was never any mention of a romantic interest in the past for dumbledore. my son commented that he had thought it simply had never come up in the story - and postulated that if it had, it might have been . . . well . . .

Harry ran into the bright study, concern on his face. "Dumbledore! Can we talk please? I have something I really need to talk to someone about."

"Of course my boy." The gentle old man's eyes twinkled as he gestured for Harry to sit down. "What seems to be the matter?"

"Well, I'm kind of embarrassed about it, but I couldn't keep it bottled up anymore." He flushed and stared at the floor.

A friendly, knowing smile crept onto Dumbledore's face. "Ah my boy, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Every young man goes through it. At your age, your body starts going through some changes that are perfectly natural. You will find yourself attracted to some people in a way like you haven't been before. Why, when I was your age, I was quite the stud. I slept in a different room every night. Well, there wasn't much sleeping, you wouldn't believe the amount of complaints I got about other students being unable to sleep." He gave Harry a wink and a grin.

Harry's face had drained of color. He sat there gaping, temporarily unable to speak. "God. Oh God. I just wanted to say I thought I'd make a good prefect." He ran from the room, stumbling in his haste.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

sigh . . . his first slash writing . . . it just doesn't get better than this!

thulemir — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:18:05 GMT

wow - interesting (tho long) article on the relationship between diet, exercise, & weight - it, by the end, reflects what i've found to be true, that when i eat fewer simple carbs (she says with a big pot of white noodles just waiting on the stove!) i eat less, exercise more, and lose weight more easily . . . and maybe we've all thought that, but this does back it up a bit with the logic of why that might happen . . .

New York Magazine

The Scientist and the Stairmaster

Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we're wrong.

* By Gary Taubes

Let us begin with a short quiz: a few questions to ponder during the 30 (or 60 or 90) minutes a day you spend burning off excess calories at the gym, or perhaps while feeling guilty because you’re not so engaged. If lean people are more physically active than fat people—one fact in the often-murky science of weight control that’s been established beyond reasonable doubt— does that mean that working out will make a fat person lean? Does it mean that sitting around will make a lean person fat? How about a mathematical variation on these questions: Let’s say we go to the gym and burn off 3,500 calories every week—that’s 700 calories a session, five times a week. Since a pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories, does that mean we’ll be a pound slimmer for every week we exercise? And will we continue to slim down at this pace for as long as we continue to exercise?

For most of us, fear of flab is the reason we exercise, the motivation that drives us to the gym. It’s also why public-health authorities have taken to encouraging ever more exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle. If we’re fat or fatter than ideal, we work out. Burn calories. Expend energy. Still fat? Burn more. The dietary guidelines of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for instance, now recommend that we engage in up to 60 minutes daily of “moderate to vigorous intensity” physical activity just to maintain weight—that is, keep us from fattening further. Considering the ubiquity of the message, the hold it has on our lives, and the elegant simplicity of the notion—burn calories, lose weight—wouldn’t it be nice to believe it were true? The catch is that science suggests it’s not, and so the answer to all of the above quiz questions is “no.”

Just last month, the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published joint guidelines for physical activity and health. They suggested that 30 minutes of moderate physical activity five days a week is necessary to “promote and maintain health.” What they didn’t say, though, was that more physical activity will lead us to lose weight. Indeed, the best they could say about the relationship between fat and exercise was this: “It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.” In other words, despite half a century of efforts to prove otherwise, scientists still can’t say that exercise will help keep off the pounds.

The 30 minutes recommended by the AHA-ACSM report is a departure from the recent guidelines of other authoritative organizations—the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and the International Association for the Study of Obesity—both of which, like the USDA, have recommended that we exercise for up to 60 minutes a day to avoid what the USDA calls “unhealthy weight gain.” But the reason for this 60-minute recommendation is precisely that so little evidence exists to support the notion that exercising less has any effect.

The report that these experts cite most often as grounds for their assessments was published in 2000 by two Finnish researchers who surveyed all the relevant research on exercise and weight of the previous twenty years. Yet the Finnish report, the most scientifically rigorous review of the evidence to date, can hardly be said to have cleared up the matter. When the Finnish investigators looked at the results of the dozen best-constructed experimental trials that addressed weight maintenance—that is, successful dieters who were trying to keep off the pounds they had shed—they found that everyone regains weight. And depending on the type of trial, exercise would either decrease the rate of that gain (by 3.2 ounces per month) or increase its rate (by 1.8 ounces). As the Finns themselves concluded, with characteristic understatement, the relationship between exercise and weight is “more complex” than they might otherwise have imagined.

This is not to say that there aren’t excellent reasons to be physically active, as these reports invariably point out. We might just enjoy exercise. We may increase our overall fitness; we may live longer, perhaps by reducing our risk of heart disease or diabetes; we’ll probably feel better about ourselves. (Of course, this may be purely a cultural phenomenon. It’s hard to imagine that the French, for instance, would improve their self-esteem by spending more time at the gym.) But there’s no reason to think that we will lose any significant amount of weight, and little reason to think we will prevent ourselves from gaining it.

The one thing that might be said about exercise with certainty is that it tends to makes us hungry. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. Burn more calories and the odds are very good that we’ll consume more as well. And this simple fact alone might explain both the scientific evidence and a nation’s worth of sorely disappointing anecdotal experience.

It’s difficult to get health authorities to talk about the disconnect between their official recommendations and the scientific evidence that underlies it because they want to encourage us to exercise, even if their primary reason for doing so is highly debatable. Steve Blair, for instance, a University of South Carolina exercise scientist and a co-author of the AHA-ACSM guidelines, says he was “short, fat, and bald” when he started running in his thirties and he is short, fatter, and balder now, at age 68. In the intervening years, he estimates, he has run close to 80,000 miles and gained about 30 pounds.

When I asked Blair whether he thought he might be leaner had he run even more, he had to think about it. “I don’t see how I could have been more active,” he said. “Thirty years ago, I was running 50 miles a week. I had no time to do more. But if I could have gone out over the last couple of decades for two to three hours a day, maybe I would not have gained this weight.” And maybe he would have anyway. If we trust the AHA-ACSM report he co-authored, there is little reason to believe that the amount he runs makes any difference. Nonetheless, Blair personally believes he would be fatter still if he hadn’t been running. Why?

There was a time when virtually no one believed exercise would help a person lose weight. Until the sixties, clinicians who treated obese and overweight patients dismissed the notion as naVve. When Russell Wilder, an obesity and diabetes specialist at the Mayo Clinic, lectured on obesity in 1932, he said his fat patients tended to lose more weight with bed rest, “while unusually strenuous physical exercise slows the rate of loss.”

The problem, as he and his contemporaries saw it, is that light exercise burns an insignificant number of calories, amounts that are undone by comparatively effortless changes in diet. In 1942, Louis Newburgh of the University of Michigan calculated that a 250-pound man expends only three calories climbing a flight of stairs—the equivalent of depriving himself of a quarter-teaspoon of sugar or a hundredth of an ounce of butter. “He will have to climb twenty flights of stairs to rid himself of the energy contained in one slice of bread!” Newburgh observed. So why not skip the stairs, skip the bread, and call it a day?

More-strenuous exercise, these physicians further argued, doesn’t help matters—because it works up an appetite. “Vigorous muscle exercise usually results in immediate demand for a large meal,” noted Hugo Rony of Northwestern University in his 1940 textbook, Obesity and Leanness. “Consistently high or low energy expenditures result in consistently high or low levels of appetite. Thus men doing heavy physical work spontaneously eat more than men engaged in sedentary occupations. Statistics show that the average daily caloric intake of lumberjacks is more than 5,000 calories, while that of tailors is only about 2,500 calories. Persons who change their occupation from light to heavy work or vice versa soon develop corresponding changes in their appetite.” If a tailor becomes a lumberjack and, by doing so, takes to eating like one, why assume that the same won’t happen, albeit on a lesser scale, to an overweight tailor who decides to work out like a lumberjack for an hour a day?

Credit for why we came to believe otherwise goes to one man, Jean Mayer, who began his career at Harvard in the early fifties, went on to become the most influential nutritionist in the country, and then, for sixteen years, served as president of Tufts University (where there is now a Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging). As an authority on human weight regulation, Mayer was among the very first of a new breed, a type that has since come to dominate the field. His predecessors—Wilder, Rony, Newburgh, and others—had all been physicians who worked closely with obese and overweight patients. Mayer was not. His training was in physiological chemistry; he had obtained a doctorate at Yale with a dissertation on the interrelationship of vitamins A and C in rats. In the ensuing decades, he would publish hundreds of papers on different aspects of nutrition, including why we get fat, but he never had to reduce obese patients as part of his clinical obligation, and so his hypotheses were less fettered by anecdotal or real-life experience.

As early as 1953, after just a few years of research on laboratory mice, Mayer began extolling the virtues of exercise for weight control. By 1959, the New York Times was crediting him with having “debunked [the] popular theories” that exercise played little role in weight control. Mayer knew that the obese often eat no more than the lean and occasionally even less. This seemed to exclude gluttony as a cause of their weight gain, which meant that these fat people had to be less physically active. Otherwise, how could they take in more calories than they expend and so become fat?

Through the sixties, Mayer documented the relationship between inactivity and the overweight. He noted that fat high-school girls ate “several hundred calories less” than lean classmates. “The laws of thermodynamics were, however, not flouted by this finding,” he wrote, because the obese girls expended less energy than the lean: They were much less active; they spent four times as many hours watching television. Mayer also studied infants. “The striking phenomenon is that the fatter babies were quiet, placid babies that had moderate intake,” Mayer reported, “whereas the babies who had the highest intake tended to be very thin babies, cried a lot, moved a lot, and became very tense.” Thus, Mayer concluded, “some individuals are born very quiet, inactive, and placid and with moderate intake get fat, and some individuals from the very beginning are very active and do not get particularly fat even with high intakes.”

It was Mayer who pioneered the now-ubiquitous practice of implicating sedentary living as the “most important factor” leading to obesity and the chronic diseases that accompany it. Modern Americans, said Mayer, were inert compared with their “pioneer forebears” who were “constantly engaged in hard physical labor.” Every modern convenience, by this logic, from power windows to the electric toothbrush, only serves to minimize the calories we expend. “The development of obesity,” Mayer wrote in 1968, “is to a large extent the result of the lack of foresight of a civilization which spends tens of billions annually on cars, but is unwilling to include a swimming pool and tennis courts in the plans of every high school.”

Mayer’s hypothesis always had shortcomings, but they were ignored for the same reasons they still are—who wants to openly question the idea that physical activity is a panacea? The first issue is a logical one: That conclusion that the fatter we are, the more sedentary we’re likely to be is actually a correlation; it tells us nothing about what is cause and what is effect. “It is a common observation,” noted Rony in 1941, “that many obese persons are lazy, i.e., show decreased impulse to muscle activity. This may be, in part, an effect that excess weight would have on the activity impulse of any normal person.” Equally possible is that obesity and physical inactivity are both symptoms of the same underlying cause.

This logical problem was then obscured by Mayer’s all-out attack on the role of hunger. Mayer acknowledged that exercise could make us hungrier, but he said it wasn’t necessarily the case. This was the heart of Mayer’s message—a purported loophole in the relationship between appetite and physical activity. “If exercise is decreased below a certain point, food intake no longer decreases,” said Mayer. “In other words, walking one half-hour a day may be equivalent to only four slices of bread, but if you don’t walk the half-hour, you still want to eat the four slices.”

Mayer based this conclusion on two (and only two) of his own studies from the mid-fifties. The first purported to demonstrate that laboratory rats exercised for a few hours every day will eat less than rats that don’t exercise at all. But this would never be replicated. In more recent experiments, the more rats run the more rats eat; weights remain unchanged. And when rats are retired from these exercise programs, they eat more than ever and gain weight with age more rapidly than rats that were allowed to remain sedentary. With hamsters and gerbils, exercise increases body weight and body-fat percentage. So exercising makes these particular rodents fatter, not leaner.

Mayer’s second study was an assessment of the diet, physical activity, and weights of workers and merchants at a mill in West Bengal, India. This article is still cited—by the Institute of Medicine, for instance—as perhaps the only existing evidence that physical activity and appetite do not necessarily go hand in hand. But it, too, has never been replicated, despite (or perhaps because of) a half-century of improvements in methods of assessing diet and energy expenditure in humans.

It helped that Mayer promoted his pro-exercise message with a fervor akin to a moral crusade. In 1966, Mayer was the primary author of a U.S. Public Health Service report advocating increased physical activity along with diet as the best way to lose weight. In 1969, Mayer chaired Richard Nixon’s White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health. “The successful treatment of obesity must involve far-reaching changes in lifestyle,” the conference report concludes. “These changes include alterations of dietary patterns and patterns of physical activity.” In 1972, Mayer began writing a syndicated newspaper column on nutrition: Exercise, Mayer now wrote, sounding suspiciously like a diet doctor selling a patent claim, will make “weight melt away faster,” and “contrary to popular belief, exercise won’t stimulate your appetite.”.

Our culture of physical exercise began only in the late sixties, coincident with Mayer’s crusade, which explains why our parents might not have been quite so devoted to the idea of spending their leisure time perspiring profusely. In 1977, the New York Times was covering the “exercise explosion” that had come about because the conventional wisdom of the sixties that exercise was “bad for you” had been transformed into the “new conventional wisdom—that strenuous exercise is good for you.” When the Washington Post estimated in 1980 that 100 million Americans were partaking in the “new fitness revolution”—coincident with the start of the current obesity epidemic—it also noted that most of them “would have been derided as ‘health nuts’" only a decade earlier.

Meanwhile, the evidence simply never came around to support Mayer’s hypothesis, even though our beliefs did. My favorite study of the effect of physical activity on weight loss was published in 1989 by a team of Danish researchers. Over the course of eighteen months the Danes trained nonathletes to run a marathon. At the end of this training period, the eighteen men in the study had lost an average of five pounds of body fat. As for the nine women subjects, the Danes reported, “no change in body composition was observed.” That same year, F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, then director of the St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital Obesity Research Center in New York, reviewed the studies on exercise and weight, and his conclusion was identical to that of the Finnish review’s eleven years later: “Decreases, increases, and no changes in body weight and body composition have been observed,” Pi-Sunyer reported.

Granted, all this still doesn’t explain why we bought into Mayer’s idea that we could exercise more and not compensate by eating more. One simple reason is that the health reporters bought it, and we were reading their articles, not the research literature itself. In 1977, for instance, the National Institutes of Health hosted its second conference on obesity and weight control. “The importance of exercise in weight control is less than might be believed,” the assembled experts concluded, “because increases in energy expenditure due to exercise also tend to increase food consumption, and it is not possible to predict whether the increased caloric output will be outweighed by the greater food intake.” That same year, The New York Times Magazine reported that there was “now strong evidence that regular exercise can and does result in substantial and—so long as the exercise is continued—permanent weight loss.” By 1990, a year after Pi-Sunyer’s pessimistic assessment of the evidence, Newsweek was declaring exercise an “essential” element of any weight-loss program, and the Times had stated that on those infrequent occasions “when exercise isn’t enough” to lose weight, “you must also make sure you don’t overeat.”

As for the authorities themselves, the primary factor fueling their belief in the weight-maintaining benefits of exercise was their natural reluctance to acknowledge otherwise. Although one couldn’t help but be “underwhelmed by” the evidence, as Mayer’s student Judith Stern, a UC Davis nutritionist, wrote in 1986, it would be “shortsighted” to say that exercise was ineffective because it meant ignoring the possible contributions of exercise to the prevention of obesity and to the maintenance of weight loss that might be induced by diet. These, of course, had never been demonstrated either, but they hadn’t been ruled out. This faith-based philosophy came to dominate scientific discussions on exercise and weight, but it couldn’t be reconciled with the simple notion that appetite and calories consumed will increase with an increase in physical activity. Hence, the idea of working up an appetite was jettisoned. Clinicians, researchers, exercise physiologists, even personal trainers at the local gym took to thinking and talking about hunger as though it were a phenomenon exclusive to the brain, a question of willpower (whatever that is), not the natural consequence of a body trying to replenish itself with energy.

Ultimately, the relationship between physical activity and fatness comes down to the question of cause and effect. Is Lance Armstrong excessively lean because he burns off a few thousand calories a day cycling, or is he driven to expend that energy because his body is constitutionally set against storing calories as fat? If his fat tissue is resistant to accumulating calories, his body has little choice but to burn them as quickly as possible: what Rony and his contemporaries called the “activity impulse”—a physiological drive, not a conscious one. His body is telling him to get on his bike and ride, not his mind. Those of us who run to fat would have the opposite problem. Our fat tissue wants to store calories, leaving our muscles with a relative dearth of energy to burn. It’s not willpower we lack, but fuel.

For the last 60 years, researchers studying obesity and weight regulation have insisted on treating the human body as a thermodynamic black box: Calories go in one side, they come out the other, and the difference (calories in minus calories out) ends up as either more or less fat. The fat tissue, in this thermodynamic model, has nothing to say in the matter. Thus the official recommendations to eat less and exercise more and assuredly you’ll get thinner. (Or at least not fatter.) And in the strict sense this is true—you can starve a human, or a rat, and he will indeed lose weight—but that misses the point. Humans, rats, and all living organisms are ruled by biology, not thermodynamics. When we deprive ourselves of food, we get hungry. When we push ourselves physically, we get tired.

Our bodies, like all living organisms, have evolved a fantastically complex web of feedback loops. These physiological mechanisms serve fundamentally to work against the inevitable pull of thermodynamics (which is entropy, a.k.a. death) and so make life possible. The necessary condition of life, as the great French physiologist Claude Bernard noted 140 years ago, is to keep the internal environment of an organism stable and conducive to life, regardless of what’s happening on the outside. This is what the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon, in the thirties, called homeostasis—or the “wisdom of the body,” as he put it. “Somehow the unstable stuff of which we are composed,” Cannon wrote, “had learned the trick of maintaining stability.”

The key is that among the many things regulated in this homeostatic system—along with blood pressure and blood sugar, body temperature, respiration, etc.—is the amount of fat we carry. From this biological or homeostatic perspective, lean people are not those who have the willpower to exercise more and eat less. They are people whose bodies are programmed to send the calories they consume to the muscles to be burned rather than to the fat tissue to be stored—the Lance Armstrongs of the world. The rest of us tend to go the other way, shunting off calories to fat tissue, where they accumulate to excess. This shunting of calories toward fat cells to be stored or toward the muscles to be burned is a phenomenon known as fuel partitioning.

The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin in concert with an enzyme known technically as lipoprotein lipase—LPL, for short. (Sex hormones also interact with LPL, which is why men and women fatten differently.)

In the eighties, biochemists and physiologists worked out how LPL responds to exercise. They found that during a workout, LPL activity increases in muscle tissue, and so our muscle cells suck up fatty acids to use for fuel. Then, when we’re done exercising, LPL activity in the muscle tissue tapers off and LPL activity in our fat tissue spikes, pulling calories into fat cells. This works to return to the fat cells any fat they might have had to surrender—homeostasis, in other words. The more rigorous the exercise, and the more fat lost from our fat tissue, the greater the subsequent increase in LPL activity in the fat cells. Thus, post-workout, we get hungry: Our fat tissue is devoting itself to restoring calories as fat, depriving other tissues and organs of the fuel they need and triggering a compensatory impulse to eat. The feeling of hunger is the brain’s way of trying to satisfy the demands of the body. Just as sweating makes us thirsty, burning off calories makes us hungry.

This research has never been controversial. It’s simply been considered irrelevant by authorities, all too often lean, who have been dead set on blaming fatness on some combination of gluttony, sloth, and perhaps a little genetic predisposition thrown in on the side. But contemplating the means by which we might lose weight without considering the hormonal regulation of fat tissue is like wondering why children grow taller without considering the role of growth hormones. Or, for that matter, like trying to explain the record-breaking triumphs of modern athletes—Barry Bonds, say—and never considering the possibility that steroid hormones (or human growth hormone or insulin) might be involved.

If it’s biology, and not a lack of willpower, that explains why exercise fails so many of us as a weight-loss tool, then we can still find reason for optimism. Since insulin is the primary hormone affecting the activity of LPL on our cells, it’s not surprising that insulin is the primary regulator of how fat we get. “Fat is mobilized [from fat tissue] when insulin secretion diminishes,” the American Medical Association Council on Foods and Nutrition explained back in 1974, before this fact, too, was deemed irrelevant to the question of why we gain weight or the means to lose it. Because insulin determines fat accumulation, it’s quite possible that we get fat not because we eat too much or exercise too little but because we secrete too much insulin or because our insulin levels remain elevated far longer than might be ideal.

To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, it’s carbohydrates—particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars—that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. “Carbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,” as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods—potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer—that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires.

As for those people who insist that exercise has been the key to their weight-loss programs, the one thing we’d have to wonder is whether they changed their diets as well. Rare is the person who decides the time has come to lose weight and doesn’t also decide perhaps it’s time to eat fewer sweets, drink less beer, switch to diet soda, and maybe curtail the kind of carb-rich snacks—the potato chips and the candy bars—that might be singularly responsible for driving up their insulin and so their fat.

For the rest of us, it may be time to take a scientific or biological view of our excesses rather than a biblical one. The benefits of exercise include the joys of virtuousness. I worked out today, therefore I can eat fattening foods to my heart’s content. But maybe the causality is reversed here too. Maybe it’s because we eat foods that fatten us that the workout becomes a necessity, the best we can do in the battle against our own fat tissue.

Gary Taubes is the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease (Knopf, October 2), from which this article is adapted.

.

Copyright © 2007, New York Magazine Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved.

thulemir — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 01:45:24 GMT

meet the spartans . . . gee, i can't wait!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meet_the_spartans/trailers.php

thulemir — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:19:37 GMT

for the lady writers on my flist
(umm . . . isn't that everyone?!)

op-ed from this morning's new york times on women & writing . . .

New York Times
October 15, 2007
Editorial Observer
Politeness and Authority at a Hilltop College in Minnesota
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Last week I spent a couple of days in western Minnesota, giving a talk and visiting some classes at Gustavus Adolphus College. The campus covers a hill above the small town of St. Peter, and the wind cuts across it like old news from the west. Gustavus Adolphus is a Lutheran college. I asked a couple of students how it differs from St. Olaf College — another Lutheran institution in a small Minnesota town, where I once taught — and they said, “They’re Norwegian. We’re Swedish.”

Once, a town like St. Peter would have seemed like destination enough. After all, small farm towns with good colleges are not that common. But now, more and more of the faculty live in the Twin Cities, an hour and a half away, and, as one professor told me, the college describes itself to new recruits in terms of its distance from a city, not its presence in a town.

I sat in on four classes, which were marred only by politeness — the deep-keeled Minnesotan politeness that states, as a life proposition, that you should not put yourself forward, not even to the raising of a hand in class.

Things always warmed up, but those first lingering notes of hesitation were something to behold. I tried to think of it as modesty, consideration for others and reluctance in the presence of a guest — from New York nonetheless. And yet I kept wondering just how such bright, personable students had become acculturated to their own silence. I had grown up in a similar place and knew a little how they felt, but that was a long time ago.

Midway through lunch one day a young woman asked me if I noticed a difference between the writing of men and the writing of women. The answer is no, but it’s a good question. A writer’s fundamental problem, once her prose is under control, is shaping and understanding her own authority. I’ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often hear is the sentence that begins, “My problem is ...”

Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of defining a young writer — a young woman — in negative terms, as if she were basically incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why not accept what you’re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?

Another young woman at the table asked — this is a bald translation — won’t that make us seem too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we’re like that? I’ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means, Won’t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves? This is the kind of thing that happens when you talk about writing. You always end up talking about life.

These are poignant questions, and they always give me pause, because they allow me to see, as nothing else does, the cultural frame these young women have grown up in. I can hear them questioning the very nature of their perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting the clarity of their thoughts.

And yet that is the writer’s work — to notice and question the act of noticing, to clarify again and again, to sift one’s perceptions. I’m always struck by how well fitted these young women are to be writers, if only there weren’t also something within them saying, Who cares what you notice? Who authorized you? Don’t you owe someone an apology?

Every young writer, male or female, Minnesotan or otherwise, faces questions like these at first. It’s a delicate thing, coming to the moment when you realize that your perceptions do count and that your writing can encompass them. You begin to understand how quiet, how subtle the writer’s authority really is, how little it has to do with “authority” as we usually use the word.

Young men have a way of coasting right past that point of realization without even noticing it, which is one of the reasons the world is full of male writers. But for young women, it often means a real transposition of self, a new knowledge of who they are and, in some cases, a forbidding understanding of whom they’ve been taught to be.

Perhaps the world will punish them for this confidence. Perhaps their self-possession will chase away everyone who can’t accept it for what it is, which may not be a terrible thing. But whenever I see this transformation — a young woman suddenly understanding the power of her perceptions, ready to look at the world unapologetically — I realize how much has been lost because of the culture of polite, self-negating silence in which they were raised.

thulemir — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:25:59 GMT

a silly thing . . . cockatoo dancing . . . sigh . . .

http://birdloversonly.blogspot.com/2007/09/may-i-have-this-dance.html

thulemir — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:27:59 GMT

letter to my flist . . .

i'm sure this has been around the internet, but it was new to me & i laughed a long time . . . needed it, i guess . . .

here's the pic first - the subject on the email was "another chinese toy recalled"

____________________________________________________________________________

the riaa stuff (the tmi is underneath it) - my friend joseph byrd (you can find him on wikipedia here) long ago gave up trying to squeeze some royalties outta the record companies . . . he wrote this to a buncha friends today . . .

Good morning,

The publicity over the RIAA's victory over Jammie Thomas, a single working mother, and its trumpeting by the White House as a triumph of the protection of intellectual rights, has begun to work its way to the grass roots. The popular press has reported very little about the many cases where the RIAA has been rebuffed by the courts, nor of its refusal to obey court orders to disclose information which might be embarrassing or detrimental to future cases (which refusal in at least some instances has caused the judge to dismiss the action).

This may have a huge backlash; the Industry could have surely found a better target.

But now the fight is beginning to be recognized for what it is – the compounding of the determination of the music industry to refuse to deal with the reality of peer-to-peer file sharing, and its stubborn insistence that the public must pay $16 for a CD in order to listen to one song off it.

Here is a typical blog entry:

"What upsets me is this lady is now $220,000 in debt for sharing 24 songs. Yes, she shared more than that, but they only pursued 24 of them. That’s completely ludicrous. Are 24 songs really worth that much? I want to know how many times these songs were downloaded. Tracks sell for $.99 on iTunes, so in theory, each should have to have been downloaded over 9,300 times to justify that hefty price tag.

"Another way to look at this is that the music industry actually goes out of their way to make it difficult for people to purchase music and use it as they please. If you download it from someplace like iTunes, you’re locked down with DRM which limits what can be done with it. So maybe you’ll buy a CD. You can do anything you want with that, right? Well, according to Sony, if you rip the music and burn it to a mixed CD, you’ve just broken the law. Since you’re breaking the law anyway, why even bother paying for that CD when you can download it for free? Either way, you’re a criminal in the mind of the music industry.

What this judgment seems to have done on a grass roots level is to give expanded impetus to resistance. The single central site coordinating this resistance is http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/

I know nothing about the people involved, but there is a mighty Goliath waiting to be destroyed, and any start is better than none.

I have gotten scant media notice for my letter to the Napster judge, claiming that record companies which keep "Hollywood" books, or which do not even pretend to pay royalties to 99% of their own artists, do not deserve the protection of copyright, since they themselves operate in a lawless territory.

Those few musicians who do get money from the RIAA companies tend to be 1) current hot properties, still generating income, or 2) enormously prestigious artists or legends…such as Yo Yo Ma, Beyonce, Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, Wynton Marsalis, Elton John, Bela Fleck, Paul McCartney, Prince... (those few are paid far more than what their actual album sales might account for –a cheap price for deluding a credulous public). So for all the anti-establishment public stances those people might proclaim, they are all of them, in fact, lapdogs – the pampered, cosseted, perfumed whores – of the effete establishment.

Hey, I'm not blaming them…if someone had offered me total artistic freedom, endless promotion as "a voice of artistic freedom", and the wealth to have anything I want, and do anything I choose for the rest of my life, I'd be ready to get fitted for my collar.

And what of those who have actually gone to battle against the entertainment kleptocracy and won? Well, The Dixie Chicks seemed like a good example: they could afford the millions to file suit, have the SONY books audited, demand public disclosure of the corruption, and blow the entire establishment to hell. But what happened? They settled out of court (meaning no public disclosures, no airing of the filthy laundry, and no legal precedent!), and the did so for merely getting released from their contract, a new label of their own and a sweetheart distribution deal, plus about $20 million – chump change for SONY. And they are heralded as revolutionaries!

In any case, I'm certainly a tiny fish in this pond, though it's curious that I seem to have been the first person to go public with it, way back in 2000. As to my own music, I am pleased to have been even a minor factor in the evolution of popular music – and to my delight, one of the British bands that claim me as an influence is now – single-handed – trying to subvert the paradigm. (See Radiohead's new release, which is offered online, and you, the fan, get to decide how much to pay! Yeah, there are plenty of complaints about their less than ideal technology, but this, from the most respected band in Britain, is a statement.) And, just possibly, a tremor in the foundation of the monolith.

Oh well, I do rant on.

Joseph

Oh, BTW, this is a private letter, not for publication without authorization or payment.

__________________________________________________________________________________

me again . . .

tmi - i am having a very high pain day & pretty discouraged . .. my innards are aching awfully, and the knee/leg is really bad (gonna go back to the dr on thurs) & for all i know could be any of abt 73 things (arthritis anyone? lyme disease? torn ligaments?) various med folks have offered as possibilities . . . the knee brace isn't helping as much as i had hoped . . . the only thing that has helped is my acupuncturist stuck a hole in my ear (at the correct knee point, i assume!!) and bled it! it actually felt better for a day . . . well, the knee did, not my ear!

grump grump grump grump . . . the marching of little grumps across the screen . . why, it's almost like being . . .

i don't know why - i'd rather ~~yummylovesuck~~know stephen any day over ol' pitt . . .

i adore you all . . .

love,

s!

thulemir — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:47:17 GMT

2007 Ig Nobel Winners

(my favorite is the linguistics one . . .)

Medicine - Brian Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.

Physics - A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.

Biology - Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.

Chemistry - Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.

Linguistics - A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.

Literature - Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the", and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.

Peace - The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops.

Nutrition - Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup.

Economics - Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.

Aviation - A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.

thulemir — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 23:00:30 GMT

i just said to older son, "i feel like a little old lady, having to use my cane in the house."

his loving & supportive response?

"if it quacks like a duck. . . "

thulemir — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:06:36 GMT

getting back here & trying to catch up over weeks of missed postings . . .been feeling weird but still ok here . . .

but!

i see by the bbc that there is hope for us older ladies yet!

Man, 24, weds 82-year-old bride

Newlyweds Reinaldo Waveqche (L) and Adelfa Volpes
Ms Volpes (R) has known her new husband all of his life

The groom, Reinaldo Waveqche, told reporters after the ceremony in Santa Fe, northern Argentina: "I've always liked mature ladies."

Mr Waveqche added: "I don't care what other people say." He and bride Adelfa Volpes, 82, are planning to travel to Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon.

Asked if the marriage was purely spiritual, Ms Volpes laughed and replied: "There is going to be more."

The couple were married in a civil service after several years of engagement, and later walked through a local church surrounded by reporters.

Their love blossomed when Mr Waveqche went to live with her after his mother's death when he was 15.

He said he admired his new wife's zest for life, and emphasised how special she was to him.

link for video!! (i haven't watched it myself as i can't open it)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7019998.stm

thulemir — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 01:26:22 GMT

hi everyone!

just a quick update - the cat scan showed that it really is "just" benign liver cysts - nothing else is wrong, and no functions impaired. am awaiting a call from a gastro person so i can go in & get his/her opinion . . .

am feeling a bit better too! so back to catching up here again . . .

wrote the following for the david b'day challenge at dave uncensored, if'n anyone who isn't a member there is interested . . .

Finding Love

Chapter 1

David sat in the confessional, listening to the slow footsteps approaching. The dusty old church, long forgotten in this tiny village, smelled of incense and old people. As the steps came closer, David tried to identify them. Not Mr. Pedersen, too fast for him, he thought. David chuckled silently. The last time Mr. Pedersen had come to confessional, his daughter had to literally push him onto the seat. "Now Dad," she had whispered loudly, "I'm sure you've got something to confess after nearly 90 years!"

David sighed as the footsteps stopped a short way up the aisle, and thought back to his experience with Mr. Pedersen. What could he do to help a man who had lived so long, who had more real-life experience than he ever could? Each day as he performed the services, he felt more and more detached, like he and his few parishioners were participating in a comforting but meaningless habit. And each day he felt more and more purposeless. Emptier. I'm missing so much . . .

Mr. Pedersen had confessed to fondling - just fondling - another woman once in 68 years of marriage. And although it had been more than half a century ago, his vivid description of his own strong physical reaction to that fondling had left David quite uncomfortable in the severe black pants he wore under his robes. David had assigned a number of Hail Mary's and, as Mr. Pedersen recited them in his quavering old man's voice, he had pondered once again his decision to enter the church before he had ever experienced love. I was running away from who I really was . . . am . . .

The footsteps outside the confessional started up again, and David could tell the person was walking back up the aisle. Might as well close up for the afternoon, then. These days, only a couple of elderly women and one or two ancient men came to church during the week. Even on Sundays there's never more than four here. He got up and gathered his things, giving the person time to leave the church unobserved. It's a wonder they keep the church going at all. He thought about Mr. Pedersen again, and what he'd said just before he'd left the confessional. "Love was the only thing that stopped me, Father. Love's the only thing worth anything in this world!" He had said the last part defiantly, as though the Father would protest that the Church was most important, but David couldn't have agreed with him more.

What kind of world is it - no, David had to be honest with himself - what kind of religion is it that branded the feelings of love he had as evil? The new Pope, in a sub rosa papal statement to the bishops in all countries, had been very clear about how the Catholic Church would respond to homosexuality, in both the parish and the priesthood. David could not agree. Love is love - the purest, strongest, finest, most honorable feeling possible - no matter with whom you find it. Those were the words - well, some of them - David had written to his bishop when informed of the Pope's announcement. He had also made it very clear that he believed any physical expression of love was as pure as the love which gave rise to the act in the first place. As David left the confessional, he chuckled and shook his head. As if a virgin would know . . . You always were better at theory than practice!

He got changed out of his robes and into street clothes. The only thing about his job that he still felt was worthwhile was visiting those who couldn't leave their homes. This morning Mrs. Wycliff's granddaughter, Jo, had called and asked him to come round after services. The elderly lady was doing poorly; her doctor had told David she probably wouldn't last the year. Not that anything I can do as a priest will help . . . but she always enjoys my visits. He smiled, remembering the tin of home-made biscuits she had sent back with him last time. He glanced at the clock, and decided to leave before lunch, in case he brought some goodies home today.

Mrs. Wycliff's cottage was just up the hill from the church. As he ambled along, he noticed a man ahead of him on the path. Wonder if he was the one who didn't make it all the way to the confessional? David tried to place him, but couldn't. Not one of my old-folks crowd. His shoulders are too broad and his . . . David stopped himself before the stirrings in his slacks got any stronger. The man continued on as David turned off the path into the Wycliff's yard. He shut the gate, pausing to collect himself. The abiding loneliness that had been growing within him for so long suddenly seemed overwhelming. He breathed deeply and raised his eyes to the heavens. Surely God and the Pope are disagreeing over this one? He searched the sky for some meaning, some connection in him with anything his religious practice dictated and demanded. Nothing. He felt utterly hollow, so desolate and alone that if he hadn't promised to see Mrs. Wycliff today, he'd have left. He felt like he was suffocating, and tugged on his clerical collar. Get it over with, get home, deal.

Mrs. Wycliff was indeed doing worse than the last time he had visited. Her voice was barely audible as he sat by her, chatting. Her need drew him out of his misery, and he told her about the flowers he'd arranged in the church, the fishermen's hauls, and how much he'd enjoyed the biscuits. She hardly responded, and he thought he'd tired her out. "I should go and let you rest," he said, rising from the cane-back chair by her bed. She put out her hand and he paused.

"Stay." He nodded and sat back down. She called her granddaughter over to her with a wave. "Please leave, dear. I want to talk to Father David alone." Jo gathered up the mending she'd been doing and went outside. Mrs. Wycliff closed her eyes for a moment. David waited.

"Father." Her voice was so quiet, he had to lean over her to hear. "I have to confess something to you."

"Of course I can hear your confession."

"Oh, no, dear." She shook her head, wisps of white hair floating gently over her forehead. "I just want to tell you this. You - not God." She looked angry, her pale cheeks blushing. "If He even exists. Goodness knows if He does, that new Pope of ours sure can't find him!"

This furious outburst so astonished Father David he leaned back in his chair with a quite audible "Mrs. Wycliff!"

She looked up at him, defiantly. Like Mr. Pedersen. "I did something very wrong almost fifty years ago, Father. I loved another man."

He cleared his throat to speak but she continued. "And I bore a son from that love." Her eyes clouded up. "My husband had been at sea, and he knew the boy wasn't his. He took him away to the sisters at the orphanage." The tears came now. "And I have never forgiven myself."

He held her hand and brushed her hair away from her eyes. "Sometimes the vow of faithfulness is very hard . . ."

"That's not what I can't forgive myself for!" She was indignant. "Love - true love - is never wrong!"

He looked at her, realizing - and regretting - how little he understood.

"What I can't forgive is that I abandoned my son. He never knew a mother's love."

She sobbed for several minutes, her withered body racked with the guilt and pain of so many years. David held her hand, wishing he had known the kind of love she and Mr. Pedersen had each felt, the kind of love they were so sure of. When she began to quieten, he handed her his handkerchief.

She tried to speak but couldn't catch her breath.

David got up. "I'm going to make some tea." She nodded, and he moved over to the stove and put the kettle on. In the few minutes it took to get the tea together, Mrs. Wycliff regained herself. He brought the tea things over to the bedside. She looks so sad. He waggled his eyebrows at her. "I'll be mother, shall I?" She looked at him, then laughed. "Oh, Father! You are a one!" Her smile stayed as he poured.

His curiosity got the better of him. "Have you ever tried to find him - your son, I mean?"

"Oh, yes - but the nuns were very cagey. I expect my husband had made the baby's origins clear to them and they wanted nothing to do with me." She paused, a hard look passing over her ancient face. "But I left my address with them, in case he ever tried to find me." She paused, her eyes now bright and glowing. "And he has! He's here in the village right now - renting Harold Foster's old place just up the road. I saw him this morning!" She smiled. "He found me a few days ago! And what a fine, handsome man he is - a Yorkshireman, of all things!" She laughed at that and David joined her, glad for her joy.

She told David all about her son, his life in Sheffield where he owned a welding plant, his marriage, divorce, and children, his fanatical devotion to his football club, and what he had confessed - tearfully - to her as their morning visit today was ending. "He's a gay, Father."

"Ah."

"That's why I'm so angry at the Church. He's a fine man - he tried to do what the Church wanted. But he just couldn't. Not that he's . . . done anything . . . " She looked searchingly at David's face. "They say people are born that way, Father - is that right?" Her eyes skittered away from his. "It wouldn't have anything to do with my abandoning him, would it?"

He looked at her, this frail woman so near the end of a long and good life, and took her hand. "No, of course it doesn't. We're born that, uh, way, errr, everyone's born as who they are in those matters." His tongue stumbled a bit around the words. "We're born as God made us."

He believed that and was relieved to see that she did too. "I've always thought so," she said, "but with the Church's stand on the matter . . . He's turned away from the Church now, I think . . ."

"Yes, well . . ." What could he say? He'd already spoken out within the Church against the Pope's position himself. But he knew now he couldn't simply sit by and do nothing about it any more. He had been born this way, he was not evil, and he wasn't going to subject himself to the judgment of the Church any longer. He breathed deeply, resolved to free himself and yet afraid of what such a resolution meant.

He felt Mrs. Wycliff take her hand from his and looked down. She was looking distractedly at her tea cup. "So you see, Father, why I wanted to tell you about my son. He's a good man, but he's . . ." She rubbed her finger along the rim of her cup, searching for the right word. "He's terribly lonely. He needs some one, Father, to talk to . . . to love."

When David left Mrs. Wycliff's, he had washed the tea things, helped Jo fill out the hospice-care forms - and promised to see Mrs. Wycliff's son, Sean, that afternoon.

Chapter 2

David phoned the number Mrs. Wycliff's granddaughter had given him. He wasn't surprised at the deliciousness of the Yorkshire accent so much as by the thrilling lowness of the voice. He took a deep breath and introduced himself.

"Ah, me mah - she's just the best! Ah'm so glad Ah found her . . you know . . . before it was too laight."

They arranged to have tea in the rectory. David puttered into the village to get some biscuits and a couple of tea cakes, trying not to be as nervous as he knew he was going to feel. If the man's voice - and what he'd seen of his back - were anything to go by, David knew he'd have to take himself in hand. Urgh! Honestly! He smirked at himself, feeling about fourteen years old. If this is freedom, I'd better take myself in hand - who knows what I'd get up to otherwise! He chuckled and turned up the road that lead to the church.

He got back home, prepared tea and the table, and waited. A few minutes later the knocker sounded. He resisted the urge to peek out the window between the curtains, and opened the door.

Oh dear God! The man was handsome - incredibly. Rugged, life-worn, craggy - and with so many laugh-lines around his eyes David knew he had to be as good-natured as his mother had said. His darkening blond hair was shaggy and long, falling over his eyes and his collar with equal abandon. And those eyes - sea green and kindly and mischievous all at the same time. What's more, David noticed with a shiver of - was it excitement? terror? - those eyes were actively engaged in taking in every detail of David's appearance as well. David had never thought of himself as attractive, but he was immediately, instinctively sure Sean found him so.

They froze. The inappropriateness of their reactions to each other hit them both at once. They started stammering hello's and introductions and somehow found themselves in the parlor. Sean picked up the teapot and shakily asked, "Shall I be mother?"

David laughed. Sean looked at him and he explained. "Your mother always laughs when I say that." They grinned at each other and relaxed as Sean poured the tea and David passed the plate of biscuits.

"There's so much about her I don't know yet."

"I've been in this parish since . . ." David paused, the weight of the years he'd passed here settling around him. "Since I left Seminary school. Ask away!"

They chatted, mostly about Mrs. Wycliff, her family, and the village in general. When they finished, they both got up and brought the tea things into the kitchen. It seemed quite natural to continue their gossip as they washed the dishes together. David learned that Sean had been adopted as an infant and hadn't known it until his father passed away 6 months ago. He had found his adoption papers among his father's effects, and had immediately set about looking for his mother.

"Good thing I found her so soon, too," Sean said, passing a last plate to David to be dried, "from what the doctor says."

"She's a marvelous old bird, and she's had a great life." He looked at Sean. "Giving you up is her only regret, I think."

David realized he was getting very distracted by the man's profile, his hawk nose and that long, lean neck. He forced himself to start thinking about why they were here together. To lose your parents in so short a time . . . and your religion, too, on top of the other matter . . . He wondered how he could bring up the subject Mrs. Wycliff had told him about without sounding too forward or nosy. As he finished putting the plates away, Sean looked out the back door at the church.

"Would you like to take a look inside?"

Sean started. "Oh aye?"

"What's wrong?" David surprised himself; he wasn't usually so blunt, certainly not with people he'd just met.

"Well . . . I've seen the inside - I started to come to confession this morning . . ." Sean's voice trailed off.

David hung the towel up on its rack. "Wanna talk about it?" Sean looked at David, then at the church and back again. David smiled gently. "As a priest - or as a friend?"

A huge smile broke out on Sean's face that made David's knees weak. "Me mah's been tellin' yah, has she?"

David chuckled and nodded, but he couldn't meet Sean's eyes as he said, "I . . . I think because she senses I'm . . . uh . . ."

"Ah."

"Not that I've . . . I mean . . . I haven't . . . " David knew he was blushing but he couldn't help it. He stole a glance at Sean and saw he was blushing too, and studying the floor rather intently.

"Me, neither," Sean said, his voice an embarrassed rumble.

David tried to rally. "Well, then - a nice theoretical discussion after tea!"

Sean stared at him, then burst into laughter. After a moment, David met his eyes and smiled.

Sean moved away from the door and held out his arm towards the parlor. His voice was quiet as he asked, "As friends, then?"

David nodded and they went back into the parlor. He and Sean settled on the couch facing the fireplace. Sean was glancing around the room; David watched him.

"You said you've been here since you left the Seminary, but I don't see anything personal . . . no pictures of family, old friends . . ."

David sighed.

"I'm sorry - it's . . . it's not my business."

Without thinking, David interrupted him. "Yes it is." He looked directly at Sean now, meeting his curious, friendly eyes without embarrassment. "There is no one. My parents threw me out when I first told them I thought I might be . . . " He suddenly realized he had never actually spoken the word out loud about himself to anyone else since then. "Gay." He swallowed then continued. "And the rest of the family followed suit."

"Oh jeezers, I'm so sorry. Mine . . ." He paused, and David got the feeling that he was trying to phrase his response honestly. "Mine were accepting of it, but I don't know if they would have been if I'd ever been with . . . with a man."

"When did you first know? When did you tell them?" David caught himself, realizing that this was a great part of what he'd felt so starved of - the chance to talk with someone who knew, who understood - who wouldn't reject him for who he was.

Sean smiled. "I think I'd always known. It's just that . . . well, growing up in a working class, football-oriented neighborhood, you get the message pretty young about not being . . . poncy." Sean chuckled shyly. "So I married my first girlfriend right out of school, played some football, had three kids . . . " He looked up, staring absently at the fireplace. "And then I couldn't take it anymore. I told my wife first. She took the girls and left for her mother's. And her mother told everyone - my folks, my mates at the pub, even some of the fellahs on the team . . ."

David touched Sean's hand resting on the couch cushion. "I'm sorry," he said softly.

Sean shrugged. "Well, the worst of it was the girls . . . they got teased something awful at school. And the oldest one told me she'd run away if I ever lived with a man." He looked down at their hands, now intertwined, and smiled. Looking back up at David's face, he continued. "But that was a long time ago. Everyone seems to have forgotten, or at least, they don't mention it any more. I built up my business, even got on the Board of Directors of the football club! I see my girls - all grown now - happy with their families, and life is . . . good."

David looked closely at Sean. "You don't look like 'good' is really the right word there."

Sean sighed. "I'm lonely. I don't have anyone to talk to like . . . like this. Anyone to . . . love. I don't mean just physically," he added in a rush, "but to really . . . love."

David smiled. "That's what's been on my mind lately, too." He told Sean about what his mother and Mr. Pedersen had each said about love, and what he'd written to the Bishop about the purity of love - and of the act of love.

Sean's jaw dropped. "You said that to the Bishop? In writing?! And how long do you expect to have a job?!"

David replied soberly, "Not long. I'm going to leave the priesthood."

They talked for hours. When the sunlight left the room and it got chilly, David made a fire. Foraging in the fridge when they got hungry, they discovered some elderly vegetables and frozen chicken breasts. Sean was an excellent cook, turning their finds into a fragrant stew. They talked through dinner and pudding, and went back to the couch in the parlor to have an after-dinner drink. Somehow they ended up sitting quite close. The ice cubes in both glasses rattled excessively as the men sipped their drinks. Suddenly, after hours of easy chatting, there was a nervous silence.

David cast around desperately for something to say. "Would . . . would you mind telling me why you didn't come in to the confessional this morning?"

Sean took another sip of his drink. "The whole time I was walking over to the church from my mah's, I was thinking about all the years since I told my family. The closer I got to the church, the more resentful I became - not only about their reactions, but the Church's - and especially my own." He put his drink down, and turned to look directly into David's eyes. "All these years, all this loneliness . . . I did that, by letting other people judge me for who I was born as. I got to within a few feet of the confessional, and I felt . . . not penitent - but proud! And bold. I went right back to me mah's and told her. I was shaking - I didn't want to lose her so soon after finding her - but she was a delight about it." He laughed. "Said she knew just the thing for me - and had Jo call the priest!" He looked shyly at David. "At the time, I thought she wanted me to confess in the Church, but now I think she's meant to set us up together!"

David laughed. "That does sound like Mrs. Wycliff, alright!"

Sean reached over and took David's glass out of his hand and placed it on the table next to his. Looking at David mock-sternly, he said, "Now, am I to understand that you have never kissed anybody?"

David gasped. He knew Sean was teasing, but suddenly the differences in their life experiences opened like a chasm before him. Maybe Sean had never been intimate with a man, but he had been with women. David realized he was terrified - of doing or saying the wrong thing, of looking like an idiot, of just about everything this moment could contain.

"Oh God I'm sorry," Sean breathed. "I was just trying to lighten things up a bit . . ." He looked devastated. David quickly explained what was going on with him, adding, "Maybe that's why I fled to the Church . . . the prospect of learning to be . . . with someone seems so . . . daunting . . ." His breath was coming in short, quick gasps.

Sean got up from the couch and held out his hand to David. "C'mon, lad, we're going for a walk."

They took the path behind the church that led to the bluffs above the village, overlooking the sea. The moon gave them the light they needed to follow the trail. They didn't say anything, but they didn't let go of each others' hand, either. When they came to a large, flat rock with a perfect view of the ocean and distant horizon, they sat down, pressing shoulder to shoulder for warmth.

David shivered. "Guess we should have gotten our coats."

Sean put his arm around David's shoulders. David started to pull away but stopped himself.

"Please. Relax, David." Sean said. "I don't think either of us is ready for much, yet." His voice was soft, and he spoke looking out to sea. "You're still in the Church and me . . . I'm gonna be losing me mah soon." He looked at David. "I'm going back to Sheffield tomorrow, to arrange for my foremen to run the shop so I can move here to be with Mah until . . . until the end." His voice caught. David turned in toward him and took his other hand in his. Sean turned to him. "And I know I will want to see you - often."

David raised his face to Sean and, without thinking, kissed him gently on the lips. "I'll be here for you - and yer mah." They were both smiling as they kissed again.

Chapter 3

David put down his social work theory and methods text book and looked out the window. It was raining and the window was covered in droplets and mist. Sean had phoned to say he wouldn't be home for tea - one of the welders had called in sick and Sean was taking his place to get an order shipped by that evening. David stood, stretched, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle up. He rummaged around in the fridge and found some leftover steak and kidney pie Sean had made a few days ago.

He returned to his text book, tea things in hand. He had decided to get his Master's in Social Work at Sheffield Hallam University shortly after he had left the priesthood and moved in with Sean. Sean had assumed that he would cover the expenses while David got his degree, but David had objected. With the bursary he received from the General Social Care Council, he could pay for his schooling and chip in something toward household expenses as well.

Sean had pulled a long face when David had told him about the bursary. "What's wrong?" David had asked.

"Well, " Sean had replied with a straight face, "it's just that I've always wanted to have a kept man."

David had leapt on him, knocking him down onto the couch. Dinner had been very late that night.

David smiled, remembering. So much had happened in the year since he had met Sean that day over tea in the rectory. He had indeed gotten a letter from his Bishop, in which it was suggested he resign; he had asked to stay until Mrs. Wycliff had passed on. It had taken Sean a fortnight to arrange things in Sheffield, but he had been able to return to the village to be with her full-time. He and David talked every day on the phone while he was gone, and saw each other every day when he came back.

Mrs. Wycliff's funeral was just four months later. David had officiated. Almost everyone in the village had come, including Mr. Pedersen. In the way of all villages, word had spread about Sean and his origins, and the villagers who had known Mrs. Wycliff all their lives wanted to see this Yorkshire son of hers. Mr. Pedersen's daughter had expressed the general opinion when she said to David after the services, "Father, he's a proper son, he is. And so good to Jo, too." They watched as Sean helped Jo into the car which would take them back to the cottage Mrs. Wycliff had spent her life in.

Once there, David helped Sean sort through his mother's things with his niece. Opening a small cedar chest they had discovered tucked away on top of the rafters in the attic, they found a packet wrapped in faded newspaper. Inside, packed in camphor, were hand-knitted baby things - in blue. Jo looked at them. "These weren't my Mom's . . ." Her voice trailed off as Sean started sobbing silently. David took him in his arms, murmuring over and over, "It'll be alright, dearest." Jo patted Sean's shoulder. "I'll go make tea."

David had to struggle to hear what Sean was saying. "She loved me, David. She loved me - even after I told her."

When Sean had dried his face, they went back down the attic stairs to the kitchen. They found Jo staring out the window, the kettle nearly boiled out. Sean took her hand and they went into the living room. David put up more water to boil, then made tea and joined them. He set the tray on the low table by the couch and Jo took up the teapot. "Shall I be mother?" she asked. They had to explain to her why they were smiling.

Later that afternoon, David got a call from his bishop. "With your leaving, we're going to shut the church there. Not enough people to keep it going, really." David spoke on the phone with his few remaining parishioners, and arranged for those who could still leave their homes to get rides to the nearest village on Sunday mornings. Mr. Pedersen had refused, insisting he had said all he had needed to at his last confession. "Remember what I said, lad - love's the only thing worth anything in this world!" David heard Mr. Pedersen fumbling with the receiver. He started to say his goodbyes when Mr. Pedersen spoke again. "He's a nice bloke, is that Bean. Goodbye now, Father."

Yes, he certainly is. David wandered about the rooms, gathering his personal items. The bishop was going to send people to properly close up the church and rectory, so he had only to do his own packing. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him.

In the months since they had met, Sean and David had talked a lot about the future. Without saying it explicitly, they had both assumed that that future would be together. Occasionally, one or the other would tease about living the life of nightclubs and fleeting contact with unknown men in dark corners of urban parks now that they were both out and ready to be active. But the teasing had inevitably turned into giggles, which had led to hugs and kisses and assurances of their love for each other. They always stopped, though, shy of any further physical intimacy. They were both waiting for that right moment free from the cares they now both bore.

David persevered in his packing until Sean called to tell him that Jo had gone to stay with a friend for a few days before returning to live in the cottage.

"Would ye like to come over?" Sean sounded worn out.

"Sure, love, I'll be right there." David quickly made a few sandwiches and packed them up with some cookies.

They ate at the table in the kitchen. David told Sean about the church closing, his calls to the people he'd tended to all these years, and his packing. He felt suddenly nervous. They had never actually said that David would move to Sheffield. Maybe I've assumed too much. Maybe he's not ready. Maybe . . .

"Ah, good." Sean paused to raise his beer to his lips. "I thought, " he said over the rim of the bottle, "we'd go to Scotland for our honeymoon. I've got a little cottage by the ocean there." He put his beer down. "What do you think - Wenham-Bean, or Bean-Wenham?"

David had burst into tears.

The ring of the doorbell startled David out of his reverie. He looked out the curtain to see a florist's delivery truck parked in front of their home. He accepted the long, slim box and brought it into the kitchen. It contained two long-stemmed white roses, tied together with a red ribbon. The card read, "Sorry I'll be late, love. S."

He put the roses into a vase and brought them back with him into the living room. He smelled them then settled back down with his text book again. But his eyes kept straying to the roses as his mind kept straying back to their wedding night - the first time Sean had given him roses.

They had returned to Sheffield for their wedding. Sean had been dreading his daughters' reactions to his marriage, but he needn't have worried. Whatever resentments had formed had dissipated long ago. His eldest daughter took Sean aside right before the ceremony. Later, when David had asked how it went, Sean smiled, glowing. "She apologized - oh - and she said I have really good taste in men." They left for Scotland after the reception, arriving at the cottage a bit after dark.

Sean fussed about, turning on lamps and heaters and making the place cozy while David brought some of their things in and started unpacking. He looked around when he heard Sean clear his throat in the doorway of the bedroom. He had a bottle of champagne and two glasses in one hand and a vase in the other. In the vase were two long-stemmed white roses, entwined with a red ribbon. David smiled. He walked over and took the vase from his husband. "They're lovely, dear," he whispered. Sean whispered back, "But you're lovelier." He kissed David on the cheek and, taking him by his free hand, led him over to the bed. He took the vase from David, placed it on the bedside table, and poured them each a glassful of champagne. When he reached over to turn out the light by the bed, his hand came to rest on David's hip.

David's virginal nervousness expressed itself in hemming and hawing. "Uh, dearest, you don't think . . . I know we've been over this before . . . but . . . that we should have waited longer to . . . uh . . . marry and . . . "

Sean's fingers brushed David's lips. "Hush, dearest. We have been over that, and you know well as I it's what Mah wanted." He paused, his fingers playing with David's full lower lip, smoothing back and forth over it. "What I need to know is, am I what you want."

They stared into each others eyes, and Sean pressed his finger into David's mouth. David's tongue wrapped itself around Sean's finger and he gently closed his mouth. Sean gasped. David softly sucked on Sean's finger as his tongue slipped up and down along it. They both moaned, and David swayed slightly into Sean's arms. Sean brought his finger out to caress David's lips again, then held him closer and kissed him.

Their tongues danced together, sometimes slowly, sometimes in a frenzy of arousal. Their bodies were pressed tightly together, hips moving in rhythm, the champagne forgotten. It was only when David swayed again that they moved apart enough to breathe. Sean chuckled. "Is that a 'yes'?"

David giggled. "No. This is." He held Sean's gaze, and began to unbutton his own shirt. Placing his hand on Sean's chest, he pushed him down on the bed. Sean sat, mesmerized by his beautiful husband.

David finished unbuttoning his shirt and slipped his hands inside to caress himself. Sean moaned as David's hands explored his own chest. Sean could see David's nipples erect and puckered. David's fingers tweaked each one, eliciting moans from both men. He licked his lips and Sean quivered. David took his shirt off, continuing to caress himself. Sean made a move to get off the bed, but David breathed, "No," and he sat back down.

David bent down and slid his shoes and socks off. When he stood up, the bulge in his pants pressed tightly against the cloth. Sean's eyes were fixated on that bulge. David's left hand continued to caress his chest, while the right pressed against his erection. He moaned deeply, sending Sean off the bed and onto his knees. Sean murmured, "Oh, dearest," pressing his face against David's hand over the bulge. He licked David's hand, nuzzling and pressing against that delicious, hard form inside David's pants. They were both moaning when David suddenly said, "Stop!"

Sean looked up, startled. David smiled weakly down at him. "Close call, there."

Sean smiled that killer grin of his and got up off his knees. "Then let's do this properly, shall we?" They moved to the bed and sat shoulder to shoulder. Sean slipped his own shoes and socks off while David unbuttoned his shirt. His hands found Sean's nipples, teasing them as he caressed his husband's chest. Soon they were both down to just their pants.

Sean pressed David back onto the bed and lay nearly on top of him. Their hips were moving automatically now and both men were moaning. David pushed Sean to his side, and reached down to unbutton his husband's pants. Sean undid David's and in seconds they were naked together for the first time. Their hands found each other's erections, each sliding his hand along the hard length, and slipping under to caress the luscious mounds beneath.

David pushed Sean a bit further away and stared at him, hungry and demanding. "I want to taste you."

Sean gasped, his erection leaking and quivering. He sat up, pivoted on his hip, and lay back down. His face was inches from David's dripping beauty. He inhaled his husband's scent as they each brought their mouths to the base of their lover's shaft. Their tongues explored the lengths, going up and down, until David began licking the head, his tongue teasing the opening. He moaned at tasting his husband for the first time. Sean followed, and thought he would never in his life taste anything more wonderful.

"Oh, dearest," Sean murmured, and took David deep into his mouth. The cry that escaped David's lips was smothered by Sean's erection sliding over his tongue and down his throat. Sean shifted slightly so that he was more on top of David, and lowered his head so that he took his lover fully down his throat. He swung his leg up and over David so that he was pressing down on his face, his penis sliding over David's tongue and down his throat.

They were moaning almost continuously, the sweet vibrations thrilling them as they sucked and pressed and swallowed each other. Their tongues twisted and curled against the hard shafts filling their mouths as each man pumped his hips to send himself down his lover's throat. Their hands explored, too, enjoying the firm roundness of buttocks, squeezing and pressing and parting their lover from behind. As fingers found places that were hot and tight, each man moaned more deeply, and their hips began to move erratically, pumping their love into each other's mouth.

Slamming and sweating and moaning, they pumped faster until, suddenly, each man stilled, then pumped twice, hard. They came inside each other's mouth and throat, moaning deeply for the joy and love and taste of it. Hands clutched tightly, pressing to feel every quiver of orgasm, taste every spurt of semen, to get the last of the erection as deeply down their throats as possible. To be, finally, one.

As their bodies quieted, their hands unclutched and, still caressing each other, they slid enough apart that they slipped from between each other's lips. Tongues gently licked the leaking softness that now rested against their faces. Joy, completeness, love enveloped them.

After quite a while spent talking and laughing, with not a little kissing and petting, they took a hot bath together. Their playfulness resulted in a soaked floor, but two very clean men. They found the forgotten champagne, unpacked the food they'd brought, and made a light dinner of salad with bits of avocado and grilled chicken. They did the dishes together at the sink, hips and shoulders touching.

Sean laughed. "We haven't stopped ginning for about two hours, now."

David laughed too. "I don't think I'll ever stop."

They kissed then, a gentle, serious kiss that meant forever. When they drew apart, they looked at each other in wonder. Sean held David closely, murmuring, "Oh my love, I never knew joy like this." He brushed away the tears that were now slipping down David's cheeks. "Happy, love?"

David smiled through his tears. "I've never been happier."

They kissed again, then decided they'd better finish unloading the car before they went to sleep. When they stepped outside, the full moon lit the night. Hearing the sounds of waves breaking, David realized they were very close to the sea. "Can we walk down to it?" he asked.

Sean nodded, got their coats from the back seat, and took David by the hand. In the light of the moon they made their way along a trail which followed the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The trail descended, getting rocky and steep, until they came out on a flat expanse of beach above the reach of the waves. Hollows of sand nested among the beach grasses and plants, and the waves, gentle tonight, rustled the stones in the surf.

David sighed. "It's wonderful."

Sean turned to him, delighting in the look of joy on his husband's face. "Want to walk some more?"

"Oh, yes!"

They went along the beach, picking their way among the plants and rocks, finally coming to a massive log washed up on shore long ago. In front of it, the sands of the beach smoothly descended toward the water, the edge of the surf glistening in the moonlight; behind it, time and wind had hollowed out a depression, now in dusky shadow. They sat on the beach, leaning against the log, watching the waves, talking about the future in part just to hear each other's voices on this still night. In a while, they too stilled, gazing into each other's eyes, reading each other's hearts.

Their hands found each other again, exploring, teasing, enjoying. Their kisses became deeper, more demanding, and soon fingers were undoing buttons and zippers. Sean grinned as his once virginally-shy husband impatiently tugged his pants down. They stood up and spread their coats out on the sand, divesting themselves of the last of their clothes as well. Laying down, they wrapped each other in their arms, pressing together, kissing and murmuring their love.

Soon, both men were fully erect. They stroked each other, fingering the delicate openings while they kissed. Their hips pressed together as their hands explored each other's buttocks. Sean pulled back to gaze into David's eyes. Very deliberately he slipped his middle finger into his own mouth, wetting it. David moaned.

Sean lowered his hand, slipping it between David's firm butt. His finger found his hot, puckered entrance and pushed. David's moaning became louder as Sean's finger entered him, slowly teasing him looser. Needing more lubrication, Sean brought his hand back around between them and began stroking David's hard cock. He dipped his finger into the precum leaking from his lover, and brought his hand around the back once more. This time his finger slid in easily and David pressed back against his hand, whimpering. "Oh, love, take me, dearest."

Sean's breath failed him at the words. He gently removed his finger, and turned both himself and David around so they were facing down the beach. Getting between David's knees, he pressed his husband's legs apart, high and wide, and placed the tip of his erection, slick with precum, at the entrance to his lover's hot path. He pressed, gently, letting David's moans guide him. With just the head in, he stopped, allowing David's body the time it needed to adjust. Then David pressed his hips upward, and all of Sean's great hard length slid inside him.

They both groaned from the pleasure of it. Slowly Sean began pumping in and out of his love's body, pausing at the end of each downstroke to feel David's path squeezing around his erection. The heat, the tightness, were amazing. Sean had to concentrate on David's every move, every sound, to keep from coming immediately. The more they fucked, the slicker David became, until Sean was slipping in and out as fast as his hips could go. David's hands clutched at the coats beneath him as the powerful thrusts started sliding them down the beach. He was groaning loadly now over and over, while Sean was silent, his teeth gritted in his effort to delay the end.

Suddenly David's hips thrust upward hard and strong. He began yelling, "Oh God, oh God," and he came, his seed spurting out over his belly in great bursts. Sean shouted, "Yes, please, God, yes," and came inside his husband. They grunted over and over as their orgasms thrilled through them in waves. Their sounds quieted to whimpers of pleasure at the last contractions wound down. Sean lowered himself on top of David, trying to steady his breathing. He felt David's belly, slick with cum, heaving beneath him.

As their breathing settled and they stopped shaking, David giggled. "I had no idea I liked the ocean this much!" Sean growled and nibbled his neck.

David's text book slipped from his lap, waking him from his daydream with a start. He pressed the erection his dream had given him, then glanced at the clock and saw how late it was. He grabbed his cellphone from the table, and dialed Sean.

"Hello, dear." Sean sounded tired.

"I saw the time and got worried."

Sean chuckled. "Nowt to worry about love, I'm just parking the car outside."

David rose and looked out the window. Sean waved up to him as he got out of the car. David whispered into the phone, "Stay there."

"What, love?" Sean was about to step away toward the house when he saw David unbutton his shirt and slip his hand inside. Any tiredness Sean had felt left him in a flash of desire. "Why you vixen!" he shouted into the phone. He bounded up the steps, slammed open the door, and pounced on his husband. The phones lay on the floor next to the forgotten textbook until the next morning.

thulemir — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:29:55 GMT

another quick update . . .

just got back from the doctor's re the tests that were done after the er visit 3 weeks ago . . .

well, what she thinks happened 3 weeks ago was - i may have had mono - which of course they didn't check for in the tests done at the er - even tho i had pain in an associated area, raised white count, fever, & a number of other symptoms . . . would also account for my being so slow to gt back on my feet. no idea how i'd'a gotten it . . .

but we'll never know now.

the bad thing is, they found several cysts on my liver - one of which is 13cm big! they found them in the abdominal ultrasound they did - and now she wants me to go for a cat scan (it's on friday) - she says they look like benign cysts, but given the size of the one, and the fact that my liver is lower than it should be by several inches, she wants to be sure.

i am really depressed. came home crying. the boys were great abt it, and i'll be calm enough by the time i see m this eve not to upset him too much.

but geesh! more crap from my body! why can't i just be normal?!

sorry this is so depressing . . . can't even think of a pic that'd cheer me up - oh wait a minute! yes i can - gakked from a stephen fry site:

ta, all . . .

thulemir — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:04:23 GMT

quick note . . .

i am ok - have been pretty ill - still no word, from all the testing they've done, on just what was wrong with me - but i now know why House likes vicodin so much!! (don't worry - took only 8 over 15 days!)

catching up with my flist - miss you all so very much!

and ooo - my er doctor went to johns hopkins just like house - real looker, too! even if he couldn't diagnose me worth beans, still nice to look at! for some reason, m & younger son did not appreciate my pointing out this to them . . . men, huh?

*love & hugs, y'all!*