I am a mature bi woman. I hope you enjoy my stories and comment on what you liked and perhaps didn't like to help me improve my writing. Be warned, I sometimes, to better frame the scene, include passages from stories I have previously published here. All characters are 18 years old or older.
In this series I write as Doris Sweeney a widowed, bisexual, 53 year old woman.
A little background......
"Over Fifty Housing" the ad read. What the hell does that even mean?
I'm sorry. I've noticed that I am using the word "Hell" a lot more these days. My grandchildren seem to use it in every sentence, well they actually use worse words, but I didn't until recently. I never use it out loud but it is always in my thoughts. I'm just getting old and grumpy I guess.
Now what the hell was I saying? Concentrate Doris, concentrate. Oh yeah, about this Over Fifty Housing, how am I supposed to know what they are selling if they can't even use correct English? Are the houses over fifty years old? Are all the people living in the houses over fifty years old? The old farts who live here even call the place OFH like everyone knows that stands for Over Fifty Housing.
On my first drive thru it appears that it is really neither of my guesses. I'm told by friends that it is a neighborhood exclusively for people over fifty but that would mean those children on bicycles are really very young looking old people. The houses are all new with many still under construction. I later learned that those were grandchildren visiting.
I took the walking tour and it turns out they are lovely, moderately priced, new homes on small lots designed to have little or no landscape maintenance. Did I mention how much I detest gardening?
I have lived in my home in a neighboring town for over thirty five years now. John and I raised our four children in that house and today it's just too damn big, too damn empty, and too damn expensive. Now there is another word I have started to use a lot.
I learn that I can buy a new two bedroom two bath home in OFH for three hundred thousand dollars. I can sell the big house, a realtor tells me, for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Realtor lady mumbles something about location, location, location. Who would have thought when we bought it that one day it would be worth three quarters of a million dollars?
With the money from the sale of the old house, my pension from teaching, Johns residual pension, social security and Johns life insurance I can easily live comfortably for the rest of my life and travel, something John never wanted to do. It's time to move on. The children will go ballistic but with the right planning it can be done before they know and can object.
I have lived here for three years now and love it. OFH has opened my eyes to many aspects of getting older that people seldom talk about and I hope to explore many of those in this in this series of stories.
OVER FIFTY HOUSING -- The List
I met Alice in OFH yoga class when I first moved here. Nice enough person, pretty and a perpetual smile, but nothing ever came of our chance meeting until almost three years later when she asked a question of the group during a class break. Alice was planning international travel and needed to renew her passport and to renew her passport she needed an up to date 'official' photograph.
Years ago before I retired and moved here, my now deceased husband and I owned and operated a pharmacy that also provided passport and some other photo services. We sold the business when he became ill but I still have, I'm sure, the camera and other equipment I would need so I approach Alice after the class and volunteer my services.
We agreed that if she wanted we could do it at my home and we set a time for later in the week. The camera and other things leftover from my 'hobby business' were in the garage and I got everything out, checked everything and bought a few things that I needed.
When Alice arrived we sat, talked, and had coffee. The conversation flowed freely like we were old friends. I liked this woman, Alice. Like everyone living in OFH Alice is over fifty but not by much, she is fifty-two. I am somewhat taller and guess she is about five foot three inches tall. Not slender, not obese she mirrors my own battle with chubby. What I first noticed about her were her legs. I'm always envious of women with slender, muscular defined legs. She has short 'dirty blond' hair and is in every other way 'average lovely.'
As we talked, I explained how it happened that I took passport photos, how it all started for me about thirty or more years ago when my husband and I owned a local pharmacy. My husband was the pharmacist and I ran the retail and photo side of the business. As part of that business I took passport photos and developed a photography hobby.
I pointed to the camera and photo albums on the table and Alice picked up and looked through an album. She asked about a particular photo. "And who is this?"
I looked. "Oh, that is Lauren, my first private photo customer."
Alice rightfully looked puzzled, "private photo customer?"
I explained that Lauren and I were good friends, back to high school, good friends. I had taken her passport photo at the pharmacy and she discreetly asked if I knew of anyone who would take 'boudoir' pictures of her to give to her husband on his birthday. I was surprised by her question, mistakenly thought she meant naked, and initially said I didn't know anyone but she should be careful doing that.
As she was paying and about to leave I had second thoughts and quietly suggested I could do it but certainly not here in the store. In a parking lot conversation she agreed to my conditions; in my house; while hubby is working and no one can know who took the pictures.
Two days later Lauren arrived and it did not go well. Somehow she thought makeup was optional. Lauren also apparently thought gym shorts were negligee. For a reason we later laughed about she also thought a few untrimmed stray hairs were sexy.
First things first..... both of us, off shopping for just a few things for her to wear. Then, a few days later in the morning early, a good salon for full makeup and a full wax hair removal, front and rear and everywhere. We had laughed and agreed that she could explain it to her husband as an early birthday present.