When it comes to defining the word lesbian, I am not nearly politically correct enough for some. I could attribute this to my age. Except that I came out during the 70's which was a most radical time for dykes and women in general.

My last lover went nuts because I refused to come out at work. She wanted the whole world, including my coworkers, to know that she loved me. And she felt that my refusing to come out at work would cramp her style. If that isn't hubris, I don't know what is.

Ya know. I truly do not care who is fucking whom. I ask the polite questions such as "How is your husband doing since his heart attack?" I say "I'm so delighted to meet you" when an employee introduces his or her spouse to me at the Christmas party. I know that these significant others are terribly important to the people who love them. But really. Who that person is is of no consequence to me and my life.

Having said that, what exactly is a lesbian? In my world, a lesbian is a woman who calls herself a lesbian. I don't care what she looks like, to whom she is wed, or with whom she has sex. If she says she is a lesbian, then that's what she is.

Some people think that the insides and the outsides have to be congruent. Since when, in this society, is it usually true that what you see is what you get? Not often in my experience. People like to say that they are consistent. But most of us are generally not that consistent.

Sexuality is such a fluid and ever changing concept, that it amazes me that any of us know what we are in sexual terms. My parents were Freud freaks. They were the first to tell me that we are all born polymorphously perverse. Chew on that for awhile and see if it makes you crazy.

I have probably known that I was a lesbian from the time I was quite young. I didn't have a name for it. I only knew that I didn't quite fit with the rest of the little girls. It would have been a real shock to my mother as I was the most frilly and feminine of her 3 daughters. That's what my friends all said when I told them I was a dyke. It was either "But you're so pretty!" Or, "But you're so feminine!"

I had a lesbian friend who once said to me "If you want to find a life long lesbian, find the femme who never married." This pretty much shoots down your average person's idea of what a lesbian looks like.

The main difference between a lesbian and a straight woman is this: the lesbian is more interested in women socially, sexually, politically, and spiritually. There are plenty of lesbians out there who have never had sex with a woman. And there are plenty of heterosexual women out there who have. However, I still maintain that only I can tell you what my sexuality is. And it's much more complicated than I want to get into today.

So I call myself a lesbian and am plenty happy with that. Oh. And what do lesbians do together? For pete sake. Use your imagination.

I spent 5 hours yesterday in the emergency room. I work in a psych facility and one of my nurses got sucker punched in the jaw by a developmentally delayed schizophrenic who is 6 feet tall and about 220 pounds. The nurse is about 5 foot 4.

Luckily, her jaw wasn't broken. But for 5 hours, I got to watch the never ending stream of human misery. Broken wrists, broken arms, broken ankles, migraine headaches, strangulated hernias, strokes in progress, car wrecks. You name it, they had it.

Of course, I don't have to go to the emergency room to see this stream of misery. The staff provides me with plenty of drama and entertainment. In the past 6 weeks we have had 1 gall bladder removal with complications, 2 cardiac catheterizations, 1 nearly lethal case of congestive heart failure, and one gangrenous foot. Nurses do not take care of themselves.

We smoke. We eat fatty foods. We ingest massive quantities of caffeine in the forms of coffee, coke, or pepsi. We never sleep and we are consummate workaholics. And people wonder why I tell my neices if they ever choose nursing as a profession I will cut them out of my will.

My will? By now it must be a family joke. I just purchased my first home. An elderly mobile home in a retirement park. Hence the title of my Blog. I have a dog that is sucking up hundreds of dollars per month with a bad case of irritable bowel, a huge tax bill, and my dilapidated little trailer. I can't even afford to make much needed repairs right now. If I play my cards right, I can retire at 72.

The trick will be to stay alive that long. Without a long list of physical ailments that will suck up the principal of my 401K. Which, by the way, is not growing nearly fast enough even though I sink every extra penny I have into its insatiable and terrifying maw.

Retirement is a discussion for another time however. For now, I will bid you all adieu, knowing that you cannot wait to see what else will flow from my twisted mind.