moominmuppet

I'm still really not feeling very social, so just a few updates.

( In bullet point form )

So, I talk about sex and sexuality-related issues very differently than most folks, and much more openly. And now seems like a good time to explain how boundaries around that work in my life. Or hopefully it is; I did just wake up and may not be entirely coherent yet.

I talk about sex, including my own sex life, in graphic detail. And I also sometimes flirt and have online sex of various sorts (great way to burn off extra sexual energy without worry about navigating extra safer sex stuff in my life, given that my relationships explicitly permit such play). What's the difference?
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Response to a question to me about how to address a teen's questions about poly stuff:

I think the most important thing to convey, whether talking about monogamous or poly relationships, is that there is no "default" she has to live by. That it's up to her and her partner/s to construct the relationships that are healthy and happy for them.
And that they can take pieces and ideas that work, and discard those that don't, and that every relationship is different.
And that any kind of relationship can be unhealthy, if done badly. Respect and compassion will get you far.

_______________________

Related to that, I find it every bit as true in regards to all forms of relationships:

Also from the conversation with the awesome sex-geeky couple I've been talking to, in regards to my public vids (and I get what they mean; there are times I've postponed looking into certain elements of folks lives until it felt "right" to me)
*grin* yeah, I get that. I do share them with my platonic local friends as well, so it may be less weird for me. I'd recommend starting with the moya filter; that's more general sexuality rambling. Graphic often links to or discusses vids and really directly porny writing that might be a touch awkward if you want to explore what boundaries feel right to you at the moment. I tend to believe in consciously building dynamics in relationships, platonic or sexual. I really hate trying to dump things into pre-existing molds. We get to construct this friendship in whatever way we all enjoy and find healthy.

_______________________
Related conversation with Chad about one of the most beautiful and meaningful elements of how he accepts and welcomes all of me:

Incidentally, this is why it's so incredibly important and meaningful that you react to me being poly the way you do, welcoming the joy it brings me and willingly taking on the extra emotional work it sometimes requires to support that.

me: I've had that treated as an irritating quirk to be grumpily tolerated, too. Especially by Mike. Haven't made that partnering mistake often in more recent years.

And something related that I just edited into the last post, but really fits here better:

This really relates to a lot of what I was talking about in terms of primary partners and ability to cope with my radical openness on taboo topics, and it being so important to me. Whether it's psych or sex or chronic invisible illness, or what-have-you that's on my mind at the moment, I basically see this as my calling. It's not just about the misery of having to hide, and hassle of remembering who knows what, the fun of talking sexy-sex. It's about my calling, what I can contribute to the world, my passion for committing to living this way.

Edit to add:
And it's about my joy, too. That's a big element of some non-LJ-appropriate stresses at the moment. I can't be in relationships where my joy is tolerated rather than celebrated. "No tell" relationships may work perfectly well for many people. For me, no. To not be able to freely share that joy with my partner, ramble happily in sexual nostalgia, share my excitement about new developments? Horrible. Horrible to lock down like that, and it kills my sexual relationship with that person, pretty much invariably. It creates a certain type of de facto monogamy that isn't natural, but stress-based. If a flirtation is likely to be a source of stress, of conflict, how can I joyfully enter into it? And what's the point of entering into it if I can't do it with joy, without a guilty conscience nibbling at me about the tensions and stress this is likely to cause? Some of my closest partners have all kinds of erotic frisson about secrecy, and playing at the edge of boundaries. I get it, but for me, it's a sexuality-killer; I can't eroticize it at all. I'm also totally unable to eroticize humiliation-play (see last few days of posts for crystal clear reasons why), or certain types of power dynamics, including being truly submissive (I play around that territory in various ways, and can enjoy other people in those roles on occasion, but I'm basically a switch: stone top/encouraging domme or power bottom willing to accept help being submissive to my own clit, but not to other people. I also cannot eroticize feminization (of me) in the vast majority of ways (there are a few earth mother/warrior woman tricks around that, though, that do connect authentically with my internal gender sense)

OK, the clonopin has kicked in, and HARD. Can't read paragraphs. No idea if the last few rambling paragraphs are even close to coherent. Back... later.

The reasons I hid my relationships and sexual involvements over the years are hugely complicated, and have been one of the bigger mindfucks in my life. It's taken a long time to sort out the multitude of often conflicting reasons that was such a strong pattern, most especially in middle and high school.

Reason the first (starting with the simple stuff): Access. Mom and Dad always accepted me having both male and female friends. I love them for that, but it also gave me an odd conundrum: if I told them I was involved with a guy (because I wasn't yet aware I was queer and women were an option for me), odds were good we'd get watched a lot more closely than they ever did about my friendships with guys. What halfway sane and horny teenager wants to risk fucking up that bit of excellentness?

Reason the second: my own weird gender shit. "Dating" meant my guy friends might stop treating me as a friend and start treating me as a "girl". I was horrified by that idea. Most of my early grope and tickle was with close male friends, and very much as a rough-housing tomboy. I got to second base and dry-humping about three years before I got to kissing, largely as a result of that. (kissing would've "changed things" in ways that wrestling and riding each other on the bed wouldn't) It was partly about fear of losing my real friendships with these guys, especially Chris (the reason Appetite for Destruction is still a powerhouse libido album for me today). It was also partly about my own discomfort about being pushed into gender roles that never felt comfortable for me, and reactions that I didn't really understand until I encountered the concept of genderqueerness years later. One of the reasons Chad and I fit so well together is that he actively recognizes and appreciates both my masculinity and my femininity. I feel grokked deeply enough to feel free of all that shit in ways that's extremely rare for me with male-identified male-bodied people (genderqueer and female-identified people, regardless of their bits, don't trigger that defensiveness in me. Trans guys feel downright safe to me, because they're more likely to get it than almost anyone else).

Reason the third: My own weird poly shit. I consider myself deeply and inescapably poly. I was long before I had the conceptual framework or emotional maturity to understand that about myself. I have "officially" been contractually monogamous for a total of two weeks and one day in my life; a week with Jordan once, summer after graduation from high school (I freaked out, broke up with him, was so relieved and happy I lost my virginity the next night with him), a week or so with Scott when we dated at the beginning of freshman year in college (an awesome guy, and it mostly ended because it was freaking me out in weird ways I couldn't, at the time, understand), and one day with Mike when we were trying to resolve relationship issues and decided to give monogamy a try (he wasn't even back to Cleveland before I was calling, freaking the fuck out and declaring we needed a different solution or an end to things). That's it. There were times when I wasn't sure whether the situation implied I was "supposed" to be monogamous, and that stressed me the fuck out, but those were the only times I actually officially tried it. Not to say I haven't been de facto monogamous or celibate at plenty of times in my life, but that's worlds different inside my head from committing to it as a indefinite promise. Monogamy isn't just unnecessary for me, it's actively harmful to my psyche. I describe it often as "feeling like someone just built a white picket fence around my sexuality". First I shut off my sexual reactivity to the rest of the world, and then it shuts off to my partner. I start perceiving my own sexuality as a threat, a risk, a potential problem. So I shut it down. This way leads misery. I respect why monogamy suits many people much better than it could ever fit me, I don't equate monogamy with jealousy and possessiveness in any necessary way, and I have no real problem respecting the agreements that others have in their lives or avoiding crossing those boundaries. Now that I get it about myself, now that I have a conceptual framework that makes space for who I am, it's all fine and dandy, and pretty fucking full of joy. In high school and college? It fucking sucked. I'd want intimacy and commitment and connection and all those things beyond furtive FWB involvements, but I couldn't comprehend that it might be possible to "have a relationship" and also not feel the horrible way I always felt when I tried (because I just accepted as fact that if you were in a relationship that of _course_ it was going to be monogamous). So I mostly had FWB involvements, with heaping doses of "I don't know if we're acknowledging this publicly or not" piled on, and then dealt with a lot of pain when those didn't actually assuage my needs, and left me feeling hidden and uncertain about everything. I adore having friends with benefits. Now that I understand the difference, and know how to navigate multiple different sorts of relationships, they have a wonderful place in my life. Now that I'm not using them to replace what I also need emotionally in terms of romantic relationships, that is. Find the poly community in a way in which I was capable of recognizing it and imagining myself in that kind of dynamic, was a Hallelujah light-bulb moment in my life when I was about 20. Life changing. I'd encountered it online prior to that, but it was at a point when I was 16 that I sort of half believed it was just online fantasy, not something people actually and really did. Highly amusingly, this was AFTER my first threesome. I am queen of obliviousness.

Reason the fourth: The parish. Weaponized against my Dad, as I talked about in the other post. They were always looking over my shoulder, and I knew some had hostile intent in doing so. Made me paranoid as fuck. I could go to a silly Davison carnival with a friend (can't recall whether it was Brian or Steve), and have 23 goddamn people ask Mom about it at church on Sunday (we counted). Paranoia? My reality.

Reason the fifth: School bullies. Most of the bullying in my life was psychological; I've always been more capable of defending myself (and others) physically, and only had a few fights or situations where I felt physically unsafe. Thank you, big strong body. The psychological shit, though... Fearing that any expression of interest might be a setup for a prank to humiliate me. Being publicly mocked for my weight, my lack of social or fashion sense, my geekery. Believing because of that that no one would possibly _want_ to be publicly affiliated with me in that way, it could only humiliate them. The bully obsession with the sex life of the american teenage girlgeek, and the joy they had in cornering me and interrogating me about what was happening between me and anyone I was seen with. Alan, the first boy I ever loved, held hands with me once, awkwardly, at our local mall on the way to see Last Temptation of Christ. I was cornered the next day at school and harassed mercilessly for details. Whatever could have been between him and me when we were in high school basically died that day. I was terrified, humiliated, didn't want to expose my precious little connections with people out where they would get us treated like that.

The shit that lasted in my head, long after I'd put all the rest satisfyingly to bed, was Reason the fifth. Oh, I knew people could be sexually attracted to me. I had plenty of hot, hot evidence of that, in corners, surreptitiously, hidden, hidden, hidden. I don't even know how much was my idea to hide and how much any of theirs, but I wasn't capable at that point of believing they could possibly want it any other way, anyway. It took years to get over that. It wasn't helped by continuing that pattern with all the confusing and "maybe secret maybe not" hookups in college, either, especially with Mike, who seemed to loathe his attraction to me 90% of the time (the other 10% was when the chemistry would get too powerful and we'd fall into bed again, and then there's be another moral crisis and declaration from him that it could never happen again. Until the next time it did, usually with at least months between occurrences and all kinds of fucked up awkward-not-quite-friendship dynamics between us in the meantime. That's the first five years of our history, before we ever (quite shockingly) became a real couple for several years (my most serious relationship to date aside from Chad, one of the greatest loves of my life despite being 100% certain that the best thing we ever did for each other was to break up). Unsurprisingly, not being a "dirty little secret" in Mike's life was some of the earliest shit we had to sort out between us when we suddenly got actually and truly involved.

It's a lot of why I will never deny a partner, or my history with them. No one will ever be my dirty little secret. Ever. I don't mind if casual partners don't proclaim me to the world; I get the complexities involved in being publicly affiliated with my life, and it's one of the biggest distinctions between "casual sex" and "relationship" in my life. Again, something I could navigate healthily once I finally understood what I needed, and what I needed to fix in my life. And one of the reasons I've chosen "mostly single" over "bad relationship" time and time again in my life, without compunction.

It is, again, one of those huge things I've found with Chad. When we started developing feelings, we had a number of very serious talks at my instigation to make extraordinarily sure he understood what he was getting into by being publicly seriously involved with me. I am ridiculously open about taboo and generally private topics. It's hugely important to me to be so. It also means, though, that just dating me will "out" people in all sorts of ways. When I talk at length about how I really only connect on a primary partnership level with other queer folk? That says things about my partners. When I say I don't date guys that don't like assplay, and rhapsodize about the joys of pegging? That says things about my partners. My experiences being weaponized against my Dad have left me very leery of connections close and public enough to redound into negative effects in other people's lives. Even after years of intentionally keeping myself and my life as far from any new parishes as possible, I discovered that the moment Dad retired from life as a parish priest, there was a huge weight lifted from me, a sense of freedom that shocked me. I had no idea how much of that I was still carrying around, still worrying some parishioner might stumble on and use against Dad. It's been one of the great struggles in my life as a sexuality activist, how to balance my need to follow my passions with my fear of being used against someone else.


And I may still have more to say about all this, but right now, Katy awaits!

Pic of a bug on FB, and an ensuing conversation about tattoo history

>2:1
Just talking to chad about life philosophies as they relate to Kidlet. This is my basic shorthand for one of my practical approaches to both expressing my philosophy and having a generally happier and more joy-filled life; try to give at least twice as much compliment as critique (or in any given situation generally try to be at least two times as likely to compliment than to critique)

Damn do I love me some Olympic women's weightlifting.

Ah, fuck-a-duck. Just overslept through my first appt today.

*sigh* now I'm freaked about going back to bed and risking sleeping through my gp appt too, even though it's not til 12:35. Insomnia is most annoying in its absence - once I need to be awake is often right when the fatigue catches up.

Baby Grasshopper!

Amusing, but I have to quibble with the implication that the Doctor wasn't present and acknowledged; there was a distinct TARDIS sound during one of the musical interludes. I listened twice to make sure.
Poll: Which Doctor Who Villain Is Mitt?

Book sale AT my doctor's office? Dirty pool! Sneak peek at the goodies! (Fuzzy toe socks for me, all else for kidlet including light up saber and light up magnifying glass!)

Home from the doctor. Love my GP so much. She's totally awesome. Also had a number of really enjoyable interactions with random strangers on the trip home, including getting to share some of Kidlet's new books with a couple kids bored at the bus stop with their mom. Naptime now. So tired.

In terms of things I've done this week that I might not've if I weren't in this mood state:
1. Send the best apology I could to a friend I wronged repeatedly a long time ago. Hard to do, still kind of hard to have done, absolutely no regrets -- it was long overdue.
2. Told another friend something revealing about how he had influenced me. A touch nerve-wracking, but glad I did it.
3. Told a casual friend how glad I was that he existed. Not even the teeniest little regret.
4. Because I've been on OKC more often, made some unexpected and potentially interesting contacts*, including reconnecting with a sexy long-distance friend who is apparently now living substantially less long-distance, and having an excellent conversation with a local couple who may be awesome new friends in the making. We're currently trading sex ed geekery, which means I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. Nothing heading in even casual "new partner" directions at the moment, but new interactions with people are fun, so I'm all psyched.
5. Had a bunch of positive interactions with random folks on the street yesterday, including sharing books with kids and their mom at the bus stop, going out of the way to leave compliments with the manager about my excellent lunch server and hostess, had pleasant casual conversations with probably a half a dozen other folks while I was out and about. I enjoy being chatty and friendly. Cool stuff in my life has happened as a result. Therefore, I like when I'm in a state where I'm more likely to interact with the world, because it's just generally more chances for nifty experience and connection.

*usually the case that I'm more likely to at least read messages there and reply to some of then when I'm feeling more social and interactive, unsurprisingly -- this, of course, means I suddenly show as having recently logged in, and more people therefore message me. It creates and odd sort of progressive and cumulative effect that can get overwhelming quickly, but it can also be fun and interesting and casually flirty.

Downside of mania? Still haven't fucking slept. Argh. Maybe now that I've shaken most of the words out of my fingers I'll finally be able to.

Tired and melancholy today, not really sure what direction I'll end up going with this post. So much to mention or discuss, so little time or focus at the moment. I suspect it's going to be a grab-bag.

Last night I had insomnia until this morning. I think I finally got to sleep around 7am. I suspect the lack of sleep is probably a lot of why I'm feeling relatively emotionally fragile; being underslept does an awful lot to give me roughly the emotional maturity of a temper tantruming three-year-old. Also, I am so damned tired of itching. I wish I knew what was setting it off, because hives and eczema climbing up my arms and intermittently popping up all over the rest of me is really damned irritating (no pun intended). Also, the vision changes with the trileptal have been getting pretty non-trivial; it feels almost like my eye focusing ability is partially paralyzed; it's like sudden onset presbyopia. It's been especially bad in my right eye; the other day when I did a quick check, I couldn't focus completely at _any_ distance. *sigh* Oh, just fucking grand. I'm scheduled to see both my GP and the Chronic Pain Rehab Program coordinator tomorrow. Life got annoying thanks to med effects, and I called my doc to ask her to do a quick vag smear for me so we know whether the two doses of diflucan in the past few weeks have really sorted things back out. This appt was _supposed_ to be about fibro followup, and I've got a lot of stuff I really need to discuss with her along those lines. Just got a call back from her office. They can fit in the pelvic, but at the expense of _everything_ else. Her schedule's too tight tomorrow, so now I have to schedule another appt, maude knows how long a delay that's going to be. I've still got my fingers crossed that we can multitask enough during the pelvic for me to catch her up on some of the biggest issues, at least. At the moment I'm feeling thoroughly frustrated.

Some linketies related to life here at the moment:

A friend of mine, Mitch Andelmo, died early Monday morning, late Sunday night, however you want to look at it. A story had come out earlier that evening, I had been reading about it, about a car driving through a barricade and straight into the crowd at a street festival. -- This death has hit my local community hard; I didn't know him, but many people I care about are deeply grieving at the moment.

CKG Benefit for IDKE XIV (The International Drag King Community Extravaganza) -- I do believe this means that IDKE is happening in Cleveland this year!!!! I adore Drag King performances with a passion, and IDKE is especially meaningful since it was one of the first dates for me and Katy and Tori lo those many years ago.

Baltimore Gay Life -- speaking of Katy, so proud of her! Those awesome folks on the cover are folks Katy hired and works with. Go her, go them!
And the interview! (the one about The Den)
Also in happy news, Katy's on her way through town this coming weekend, so I'll get at least a bit of time to catch up and see her in person. Hoorah!
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Really wiped out and sore but in a remarkably good mood. Lots of reminders this weekend that my life, overall, really does work the way I want it to.

Yesterday was almost entirely recuperation from Friday night overtime, so I slept most of it away and was pretty groggy the rest of it, but was also fed and cared for by my housemates. There's been lots of good conversation in the household recently, one of my favorite things about living with multiple people. And a lot of working together in various ways, which is another of my favorite things.

I managed to get out to the 'burbs to pick up two additional carpets (one for my bedroom, one a city play-mat for Kidlet) thanks to Holly's willingness to run us all over tarnation between my naps. Grafton made us tasty food from the grocery run Holly facilitated (which he does very regularly, and is a wonderful thing in my life). Becca and Grafton have been putting in a lot of work on the garden, too, which is really paying dividends. We had a household meeting today organized by Caleb to discuss finances and all of us being broke as shit right now, but it was oriented toward problem-solving, and really quite peaceable. And we managed to to dig up an unused blackberry for our member-of-household-at-large, Liv, when hers died at a really bad time.

Also we've figured out plans for shifting space and making a new bedroom for Holly: Grafton's studio is moving to the back house kitchen, which is without appliances and would require major rehab to be a liveable kitchen anytime soon, but is pretty ideal to be an art studio w/sink. That'll both move a bunch of unsafe-for-pets-and-kids stuff out of spaces with pets and kids, and give us an extra room to section off (we'll need to build a wall, but it's been halfway built for quite a while now). Liv came by and she and Grafton and I went through the attic to sort out whose stuff is whose, so we can shift some stuff and use space more efficiently -- that'll give us more space for Liv's stuff from the back house and Holly's incoming stuff.

Chad's been out-of-town this weekend visiting a relatively new involvement, and I'm feeling all frubbly and pleased about that, and about how smoothly poly stuff has been going for us, and about what kind of relationship we've managed to create in the past year. And, actually, I think we've probably had a one-year anniversary somewhere in the past few weeks, not that either of us is good enough with remembering such things to be overly concerned about it. Looking back in Gmail, our first contact with on the 7th or 8th of June, our expression of mutual interest on a casual level was 9th of July, we first hooked up about the 13th, and by August 1st, I was already acknowledging that something serious was going on. Sometime in early/mid September we actually had the "I love you" conversation. I'd really have to do serious hunting through my LJ and back email/chat logs to find out when we decided we were serious primary partners and thinking of things in the long-term, but that happened too. Anyway, we're good and we're solid, and I'm really enjoying the continuing development of that relationship. And looking forward to him getting home tonight, too!

On the practical side, I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed by life. All the doctors appointments and med changes mean that I've already spent through my flexible spending account for the year, and the rest of the copays for the year will be coming out of pocket. Ouch. We're still in the midst of lots of med adjustments, paperwork for ADA work-at-home stuff, etc. I'm doing too little on Kenyon stuff at the moment, or I feel like I am (things have been in a bit of a holding pattern, so I'm not really sure how much I should be doing, and stress about that is weighing on me a good bit). I have an outstanding project at work that maybe I should be doing something about, but I'm not sure what. The mania finally seems like it might be tapering off, which is both a huge relief and an additional stress (I can stop obsessing and breaking my body! / Oh crap, how will I get everything done otherwise?) All in all, I mostly want a very, very long nap. 6 hours of shift left to go, though, so instead it's time for pain meds and provigil.

First of all, two Audiobooks I just finished:

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales -- I really enjoyed this one; excellent narration and music, silly and giggle-provoking. The narration was extremely over-the-top in terms of expressiveness, which is good for drawing young kids into audio stories. And having seen the book, I know a lot of the humor is in the illustrations and arrangement, so I was really impressed with how well that was conveyed in a purely audio form. I'd still recommend getting the hard copy, but for $1.36, I don't see how you can go wrong with this (well, except for using an Audible Credit for it, which would be hugely wasteful -- always spend cash for anything under $17 or so). 20 minutes of excellent car entertainment, especially for young kids who are old enough to recognize the shape of familiar tales being satirically twisted. Also likely an excellent accompaniment for the book, which is well-worth owning in its own right.

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
Publisher's Summary:
"One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792. Neither Jefferson nor the other Founders could ever have envisioned the contemporary national security state, with its tens of thousands of "privateers"; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine.
Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse.
Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America's strength and power - and who gets to make those decisions.
©2012 Rachel Maddow (P)2012 Random House -- An entirely accurate summary. The audio version is read by Rachel herself, which was extra enjoyable for me. I plowed through this, despite normally having to drag myself into reading material on war like drinking cod liver oil. I found it fascinating and very usefully educational about how we got where we are. I laughed more than I expected. I understood more than I expected. I'll let better reviewers than myself tackle it beyond that, but definitely highly recommended.

Doctor Who: Starry Night TARDIS Jigsaw Puzzle -- See this awesome puzzle? See my icon? See this awesome puzzle? It's now in my Porta-Puzzle (the only way to do a puzzle in a house with so many pets) thanks to Bec and Jer! I spent most of last night working on it; it's wonderfully challenging, with no hard edges or unique color blocks, and lots of swirling gorgeous. As I commented to Chad, puzzles are great for my OCD traits; it's all about making order out of chaos, with bonus shiny colors! This one is extra-special, since it's from one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes of all time.

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids -- While I admit to being a bit baffled by this being at the Natural History Museum of all places, it looks like a lot of fun! This is the tentative plan with Kidlet this coming weekend.

Also, I have plans to go out to a party with Erin this weekend, too. Wow. Out of the house twice in one day voluntarily? What is my life coming to?

I also have good news on the health front; doctor appt yesterday about the fibro, and I finally have a scrip for provigil! Woot! Only took two years, and I'll have to be really careful about monitoring for mania, but this will make a huge difference in my quality of life (I was on it before, so I'm really quite sure about that). Even being all exhausted today feels more manageable knowing that once I fill the scrip I'll actually be able to _do_ something about it.

The other thing I was thinking about was why I post what I post, and what goes into selecting the Linketies. A few people have asked me recently, and this is what I brainstormed:
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This was an extra-uber-special date weekend. Along with it being a Chad weekend, my very long-term sweetie Katy arrived for a much-anticipated visit.

And this is where it gets hard to explain just how overwhelmingly lucky I am. It was a mellow, relaxed, silly, sexy, fun weekend with them and the household. Good conversation, Apples-to-Apples, West Side Market shopping and much nomming of excellent and tasty food, movies (introduced Chad to Brazil!), and much cuddling and napping (the only minor downside to the weekend was my own frustration with my fatigue levels).

I'm just regularly amazed at the awesomeness of the people in my life, and the dynamics between them. It is, essentially, my youthful pipedreams come true. I have my big communal household with critters and garden and wonderful creative/queer/kinky/poly/hippy friends. I have activism work I find rewarding. I have amazing partners and really incredibly low-drama and fulfilling relationships. And I've been rather shocked by finding a primary partner this past year who is capable of embracing all this about me. I have a community and home and work environment where I can basically just be myself. I have accepting biofamily and friends who celebrate all this goodness with me.

I'm 37. I've had these sorts of dreams for my life since I was a teenager. At many points along the way I despairingly thought that maybe it was all a pipedream, and I should just "be sensible". I especially thought that while learning all my painful poly and/or shared housing lessons over the years! But you know what? I did learn lessons. I did get better at communicating, and interacting healthily, and all that good stuff. I grew up, and my dreams didn't really change, they just matured along with me. And often I look around at my life and have a bit of trouble believing in it. Things aren't perfect -- there are always financial and health and other life stresses -- but they're damned good. Things that made me smile this weekend: two of the most important people in my life getting to know each other better, my partner and my housemate cuddled up on the couch together, late-night post-fun nom-fest, silliness and giggling and pictures and love. And communication -- so much goodness in the communication department. It amazes me how easily both Katy and I and Chad and I accomplish that these days.

Chad and I dropped Katy off at RTA for her trip home, and then he dropped me off at work on his way home. I'm here, I'm exhausted, but life is good. I feel like everything wonderful about my relationships with Katy and Chad has been abundantly reaffirmed. Also, special appreciation to my housemate G, who's a marvelous part of my life! And for Katy's fabulous wife, Miss T, who added her own special flavor completely unawares!

Well, I already posted this, but apparently I still have more to say. The way Chad and I fit together just continues to blow me away. It's no easy thing to start seriously dating someone who already have several long-term relationships. Even with the best of intent, it can be a hard road to walk to find one's place in the dynamic. His ability to accept not just me but also my existing partners regularly amazes me. Seeing them welcome him into my life has been a joy, as well. And it really does feel like the solidity between him and me is so based in mutual respect for each other's needs and autonomy. I never feel like he's trying to claim me, or possess me, or turn me into anything except who I truly am. As hypersensitive as I am about such things, he's doing a near-miraculous job. I love you, Chad!

Really feeling worn out and exhausted today. On the positive side, no headache, and relatively minimal body aches. I took one of my small supply of provigil, so hopefully I'll be in better shape in a bit.

And a few hours later I'm feeling better, but weirder. It's rare I think of my most serious ex; it's been more than a decade, I made what efforts I could to rebuild or at least make comfortable peace since we still share a social group (see next link, actually) and live in the same city. No luck. So despite historically having a ridiculously hard time letting go of friends (that's the part that messes with me when parting is on bad terms, even when it's a romantic/sexual relationship), I've finally been pretty clear that it's something I can just drop, and be happy that he's happy with his life and I'm happy with mine, and hope that we navigate reunions ok. For him to come up today, of all days, is extra weird, since it's his birthday. So, anyway, blarg. Still, can't really say life sucks; I've screwed up plenty in my life, and only know of two people who actively and intensely want to avoid me (Cheers, Josh and Mike, and I hope life treats you well). And the third I feared was in that camp is back in my life, so yay for that!

HuffingtonPost: The Best Colleges For Students Slow At Making Friends -- #5, Kenyon College. To say I was "socially unskilled" when I got to Kenyon would be generous. Folks actively took me in and tolerated all my growing pains and helped nudge me in less obnoxious directions (it's a lot of why I still tend to "adopt" folks who need a bit of safe space). Given that I'm still in loose contact with several dozen friends from there, and still very close to at least 10 or so (almost 20 years after the fact), I'd say they've got my vote. And every time I visit (every few years), I'm amazed at how many of the staff and employees still remember me by name despite the years (influenced by the fact that I worked there as well, but still...) And now I'm all nostalgic and verklempt and shit ;) (I have two "nostalgia" icons -- the aerial view of my childhood home, woods, and ponds, and the above icon of the turtle wall painting in the Peep Lounge at Kenyon)

And I think I'm cutting out the rest of the linketies and making them a separate post, since this one got more personal than usual.