I just spent a while getting honest with Mint. If we want to come out even at the end of the year… I’m going to have to figure out how to… change what we are doing.

I feel guilty about it, but we probably aren’t going to sign up for more for-pay classes this year. Medical stuff needs to be… more budgeted. We are going to eat some rice and beans and slow down how fast we are going through the meat in the freezer.

If I’m careful, by the end of the year everything will be back where I want it to be. If I’m not careful I could fuck us for several years. This remodel is becoming problematic. First of all: the contract ended up not including *anything* other than labor. (That was uhm, not clear to me till well into it.) And I’m paying the lawyer a bunch. And. And.

Deep breath.

I feel like an asshole but I’m going to slow down (not stop) my charitable giving. I’m going to keep my steady list and catch up my bank account. When I no longer worry about wiping out my bank account with an unaware credit card auto-pay then I’ll make up what I am supposed to give for the whole year.

I like auto-pay. It keeps me out of trouble. Right now… I can’t pay off my credit cards. That scares me. It’ll be fine. They will be paid off in May. But…

Eeek.

And my remodeling company called me last night and told us they don’t need to follow the law, it’s only a $250 fine.

Tomorrow, when I have time, it’s time to involve the state licensing board. Enough shenanigans. I gave them enough rope and now it’s time to hang ’em.

We aren’t going to negligently break the law all over my construction project in my name.

Nope.

There’s nothing to be frustrated about. Geez why are you over reacting.

I’m just like that.

Tile work made progress yesterday. As I’m doing my lay out it occurs to me…. I don’t think I’m leaving enough room between tiles for grout. Shucks. I think I need to go get some tile spacers so I have an actual idea of how much room to leave. Right now I’m pretty sure I will do it wrong and in this complicated of an art piece it will seriously matter. That said.. the tree is stunning so far.

I’m doing wavy lines of different styles of brown/gold/copper tiles for the trunk. It’s really gorgeous. Some of the tile lines are uniform and some are variable and both together look so pretty. Because I want it to be wider at the bottom, I’m trying to figure out how to get a whorl in the trunk. I want to see movement and change. I want to see how life forces you to adapt to what is rather than getting what you want all the time.

The leaves are going to be these gorgeous gold stones. Ok, square leaves, but whatever. They will be pretty. At the end of branches. Surrounded by blue tiles for sky. But just a little blue peeking through because it’s a dense tree on the edge of a forest.

There are going to be fall flowers among grass and bushes.

Shit. I’m going to need to order more tile at this rate.

This bathroom project is going to be about $140,000 because I picked the wrong damn contractors. I’m so mad at myself. This is my fault.

I feel kinda weird and bad about the fact that I can absorb that loss.

I should get ready for today.

Noah is hawt. Like, ridiculously meltingly hot. I say this because he woke up when I came back from my middle of the night pause and we started talking and then of course we had to have sex cause that’s pretty much how we work when we are alone in a room talking.

Sigh.

This was an unusually good conversation. Noah was very brave telling me about things he is interested in. Most of the sex was narrated by how he would hunt this person in his life. (Whoa. That man has words.) We would giggle at moments when “Oh that would totally work” and strategize “what if x happened at y juncture?”

Not many lovers of mine have been happy to do this. Usually it creeps people out.

I’m all, tell me tell me tell me how you bang other people. Pleeeeeeeeeeease.

But no. Sigh. What is up with you bastards not wanting to kiss and tell? That shit’s lame.

It is nice when Noah feels comfortable telling me stuff because I know he is insecure. I know he’s really scared. I know this, as he tells me, because he thinks that the way to manage his insecurity about me leaving is to ensure that I have a deal so good I won’t leave. This is a situation where his insecurity is very much to my benefit. Which is mixed.

I need to not take it for granted that he is more insecure than me so it is ok to be an asshole. He has limits too.

We talked about the ups and downs of my sex drive and managing it. Breeding has been rough. We talked about what we want and need.

It is kind of tricky that I fill most of Noah’s needs. But I have a lot of needs he… really isn’t up for. It makes sense. No one should ever be hit unless they want to be hit. No one should ever allow themselves to be degraded unless they choose it.

And frankly, it is sometimes hard that Noah wants to transition from bdsm to sex so fast. My body doesn’t process the separate experiences as one very well. I get really overwhelmed and freak out and have to stop everything.

I like rough sex. I like bdsm. I like doing a scene and then having sex. I don’t like doing scene-level-playing in the middle of fucking as much. That’s hard for me. Being hit involves a lot of bracing. Fucking is a lot of taking in. I can’t do both at once.

I can fuck someone else and beat the shit out of them, so I get the appeal of that. But if I’m getting fucked and beaten, no.

I keep having this thought bubble up in my consciousness every so often… two people are having blood testing done this week so we can do blood play. You really don’t know how hot that is to me. I haven’t actually done that much blood play. I’m kinda shocked that it is coming up so fast in these ways. But thrilled! It’s been a long time!

My previous lifetime hardest biting experience was when I was young and stupid. I didn’t understand how much power a jaw had. I was fifteen. I was going to Rocky Horror Picture Show and doing my best to do the whole cast. (I totally failed. Most were wise enough to not fuck minors.) One of the cast members liked to walk the line pre-show and bite the necks of virgins. I told him that he had to let me bite him back.

Oh. Apparently you have to be careful. Whoops.

I have only made one other person drop to their knees that fast in my life and it was on purpose the second time.

A bloodcurdling scream of fear and pain combined with iron in my mouth. I got very little blood, but I nicked him. He was a guy in his 30’s? I think he was uhm, not expecting that. When I pulled back he looked at me like I might be a rabid dog. Then he shook everywhere and said, “hot.”

I have not since bit someone hard enough to draw blood. I felt super weird and bad. At this point I am looking forward to biting someone until they bleed. Things change.

And he’s self conscious about his bruises in the locker room. Well isn’t that sweet. You might want to get some bike tights honey so you can put your regular pants on over them to not show off the marks. You may be colorful for a whole long time to come.

I have a whole lot of want-to-hurt built up in me.

I’m really looking forward to playing with Sarah again. As she points out, we haven’t played since before the bad house-break-up. That time was a bit strained. It’s going to be really nice to make more good memories about how much fun we have playing together. We giggle and laugh and tell the stupidest jokes you can imagine in between me pounding her. It is joyous.

Every masochist is different. I am not like Sarah. I do not giggle and wiggle and laugh when I’m hit. I go for catharsis. I go for suffering. I go to sob like a snot nosed little kid. I go to get out the internal pain I can’t get out other ways.

Sarah can play darker too, but it isn’t our style together.

Together we are kinda like when Pippi Longstocking and Lyra Silvertongue grow up and have really rough sex. Over the top lies and silly stories and but but… you’ve just gotta.

It’s so much fun.

I’m feeling really guilty about the amount of complaining I did about my female friends yesterday. I feel like I’m being ungrateful.

You all give me what you have going spare. It really isn’t your fault that I am a bottomless pit.

I really like talking to the same people many many many days in a row. Months if I can swing it. Not many women have space like that for me in their lives. I know a number of men who do. I have a fairly isolated life, but I am a deeply communal person. I just have issues living communally because I’m a highly traumatized person with all kinds of baggage.

I am so fucking annoying.

Sarah, Pam, K, & J are the women who have gone through intense periods of contact with me over the last few years. They are all busy. They can’t center their lives around me. I’m not mad. I’m just lonely.

I don’t think these guys are going to center their lives around me. But they have more bandwidth for talking to me right now.

I’m at this point where I recognize that I just literally can never resume the driving schedule I had. It is too hard on my body. I know some people handle it fine–great for you. We have different bodies.

My closest friends are totally GU (Geographically Undesirable) but I love them anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what love means. I love a lot of people. I love messily and chaotically and devotedly and absentmindedly. I tend to love forever. It’s a lot of why I’m not always graceful after breakups. I still want you. Even if I broke up with you because of 3,562 incompatibilities, I still want you.

I wish I never had to give anyone up. But I’m usually the one who ends relationships because I’m ready to change some aspect of myself and other than Noah I have never experienced other people to be all that supportive of change. People don’t want to change how they treat you or think of you. In order to get them to do so you have to go off and change while they aren’t looking and come back so demonstrably different and demanding about it that they have to change.

This is why I can’t move to Portland. Too many people I met at 19. This last visit was extraordinary in that they are finally recognizing that I have changed… but shit dude it has been 15 years and I’ve been different in stages all the time. They are just now being dragged into not being able to avoid seeing that I am different.

Ugh.

This one dude… at a munch when I was 19… he tried to pull my top off. In his defense my shirt said something horrible like, “If I’m still wearing this shirt you aren’t doing your job” but still! We were in a coffee shop!

He finally knows not to touch me without permission. 15 fucking years later.

I have to believe that consent is the beginning and the end of “what is ok”. If people can agree to doing something it is ok. By definition. Doesn’t matter how other people feel about it.

If I want to ask the Professor to find all the darkest stuff he’s been hoarding up for a long time and use it up on me, and my husband is ok with it and the Professor says yes… it is ok.

Even if I feel squishy and weird and a little weird and guilty/ashamed about flipping the dynamic of our relationship so entirely so suddenly. For him it came out of nowhere. Naw, I was thinking it for a while. I just… don’t know how to bring it up till I throw a brick at your head. Hi! I’m charming!

I gotta say though, bringing it up with the Professor was more tactfully done than with Daddy. With Daddy I was crude as hell and “I want ___” and his response was, “Aren’t you sweet. No. Well, maybe. If I have time on a random day but you have to ask 24 hours in advance and the answer will probably be no.”

I’m really happy Daddy is doing so well. I don’t begrudge him an instant of this contentment. Yay him.

Just like I’m really happy when my female friends are doing well in their lives and they don’t have much time for me.

Always more fish in the sea. Seven billion people. I can get someone to talk to me.

I think… today I might be able to nap. Poor Noah. He has to go to work after being up all night fucking. Let’s all dig deep and find some pity for him. heh

He got about six hours of sleep. I got four. I will putter with tile, sit still, and take a nap today. Seems wise.

I had a brilliant idea. Noah and the kids are going to a comic book convention this weekend. So I asked Noah if he is ok with me asking my submissive to come over and help with chores. He said that was ok. Yay! I get manual labor! I’m going to have a list. Spanking won’t be on it.

The more work we get done in the two hours you have available the more rest I will be able to get before our date in a few weeks. You want that to happen. Let’s be productive.

I’ll keep doing chores after he leaves. Cause I’m compulsive like that. Because I have a lot of stuff I want done. If I have a day off from the kids I rarely rest. I work like a fiend because then they aren’t undoing my progress as I go and it is intensely more satisfying.

Unschooling is fucking work. I do the hard work to teach the kids how to do most of what I need to get done in life. How to organize, clean, be responsible, track what is going on, plan for the future.

They are incredible already.

But doing it myself can take four hours. Doing it with them takes two weeks. I’m tired.

Breakfast!

I got eight hours of sleep again! I finished cleaning up the tile piles in the garage! I need to go get approximately a whole palette of double sided tape and I’m ready to rock and roll.

If only my contracting company had decided to start getting an engineering letter promptly instead of waiting. It’s been 37 days. I think it is time to write to the state board.

Well, given how expensive my contract is it looks like they are going to take me seriously. Shit

Maybe. God I don’t want to escalate. This sucks.

I am… other than the remodel… doing really pretty ok. The kids and I are having some interesting tiffs lately. The kids are doing normal, appropriate testing of limits and boundaries. So of course sometimes I get mad.

The thing that makes me want to scream and scream and scream (I don’t…but I want to) is when a kid does something and lies and claims the other did it.

Oh that’s a problem for me.

The kids are finding it easier to lie to Noah. I say, “Oh wait. When kid does ___ it means you are lying.” GLARING FACE.

Kid melts like ice cream, “Ok you’re right.”

At bed time I told my kids, “Don’t feel bad about it. I couldn’t lie effectively to my mom until I was much older than you are now. Moms know you. It’s hard to lie to moms.” Then I got a big hug. I was asked if I could forgive them.

Already forgiven.

I think I forgave you for everything you could ever do wrong on the day you were born. Well, you can’t kill anyone. Uhm, at least not without good reason.

You are my flesh and blood. I never understood what that meant to people until you. I will forgive you anything. I just want to be near you. I love you.

And let’s be clear that on a 1-10 scale of life fuck ups, I don’t think you’ve hit a 3 yet.

But blaming someone else for your misdeeds…. that makes me cranky. Don’t do that.

If you fuck up you take the heat. Every time. Forever. Notice how I have to? That’s what being a grown up means.

I actually think I do a good job of modeling accepting responsibility for when you fuck up and for saying, “Nope this is not my fault.”

I think both are important.

I feel like I don’t know what I want from the future other than lots of time lying in the sunshine in the back yard having sex with Noah. That’s most of why I obsessively garden. Someday my kids will be gone for long periods of time. Then we can have sex in my beautiful garden. I’ve been working on this for like seven years now. It isn’t done yet. In 5-10 more years it is going to be fantastically beautiful.

When I lived at Auntie’s house in the mountains I had to walk to the bus stop. On the route was this beautiful little garden tucked right next to the road. An elderly couple lived there and this garden was the wife’s labor of love. She had been building it most of her adult life. I loved that garden. I would leave early for school and get home late because I spent so much time dawdling in that garden. I would lie on the ground and look around me at the profusion of life, color, and happiness.

I want that. I want to share that with Noah. He really likes the home I’m making.

Not long ago I was on the train and I was speaking with a woman who had never ridden public transit before. She was a career lady. She asked what I did. For no reason that I know of I responded, “Oh I’m a home maker.” (Did I say house wife? I think I said home maker. I’m already forgetting.)

She stopped cold. Stared at me. Then said through pursed lips, “I have not heard a woman refer to herself that way in a long time.”

Clearly thinking I shouldn’t be doing so now. BAD FOR FEMINISM!!

But uhm… that’s the easiest description for what I do.

I homeschool my kids. But we are unschooling so mostly what I’m doing is setting up a really interesting, diverse environment and trying to not get pissy when they wreck it trying to find the boundaries. Mostly I build their home for them.

I do a lot of chores around the house, sure, but I don’t do all of them. I’m not the cook. I make the kids do more and more of their own labor (I don’t fold kid laundry any more; they clean their rooms; etc). I make it so Noah comes home to a home instead of a house.

I know what this place was like when I moved in here. He’d lived here for a while with lots of roommates. The roommates were often fine people, but they left here when they wanted a home.

Noah doesn’t change his environment beyond what is absolutely mandatory.

I make a home.

But he does dishes and if I’m folding laundry when he’s home he helps and he vacuums and lots of other stuff.

I’m looking forward to late summer around here. It’s going to feel like ascending to the top of a victorious mountain. We have worked like fiends for ten years. What has it produced? I’m so happy with our life. I kinda wish I didn’t have such a fierce need to beat people, but I do have it.

I’m seriously wondering how the hunting is going to impact my pot usage. Bdsm does a lot to calm me down. It exercises through all the hormones that can become problematic stewing in my brain. I get catharsis. I get to move through things so much faster. My usage isn’t down very much yet, but hunting is still in the scary stage.

I still don’t know who will like me in three months.

My submissive wants to have dinner more often. That will be easier when Pam is gone and when we don’t have classes 5 nights a week. I can’t do it yet. Not that I’m looking forward to losing Pam–I’m not. But I don’t like having too many days a week booked and she’s been parked on one night a week for a gloriously long time. I’ve been very happy to pick that standing date over lots of other shorter term more rare options. That kind of continuity feeds my soul. It gives me a chance to work through bumps and complications and hard stuff. Because she keeps coming back. So when I have a week I’m freaking out, next week we can process it. It’s not like I have to be super careful to be on my best behavior like with other people because I only see most people once or twice a year and if I freak out at them… they may never want to come back.

Pam has given me so much love, support, consistency, and help. I’m not going to be happy to see her go.

But I will have a free night a week.

Noah and I have been talking, “Does one date a month mean one date per person you are dating (which is a way to set it up to game the system) or does it mean one date per month?”

Honestly probably somewhere in between.

I don’t know yet. Oh god. So far I’ve kept it to one a month. One in February. One in March. One in April. That’s my submissive, the Professor, then the deity. One party in March. Two parties in April. I wish they weren’t on consecutive nights. But that means I’m laying low every other weekend in April. In May I am going to a grief ritual retreat.

My spring is awesome.

The increased sleep is a combination of Lorazepam and “I have to hurry up and go to sleep because then I can wake up and talk to interesting people.”

Between Noah in the house and the folks I’m talking to online, I don’t feel as lonely all of a sudden. It’s ok that my women friends mostly don’t reach out. They wait for me to initiate. But right now there are folks who are popping up to talk to me.

I feel a lot less lonely.

I feel a lot less invisible. This is why I don’t chase women harder. Because I always end up doing so much chasing that it becomes really demoralizing. I feel like men have fewer options for people who want to pay as much attention as I do and they are more interested in receiving it. I wear women the fuck out and they pull back and back and back trying to get space to recoup. Then I stop chasing.

It hurts.

I am sorry I am so hard.

I keep a fairly clean inbox. I don’t like letting coupons or mailing list shit sit in my inbox. I make it go away. In the last 50 emails, exactly 3 women are represented. Pam, who is usually negotiating about what she needs to bring so she can come to my house and cook me dinner, Sarah, and a friend who wants help looking at her resume.

I don’t think I chase women less hard because I’m not interested. I think women are hard to chase.

Completely random change of topic: we are finally going to the local homeschool book club. I’m nervous because the kids are 9-14. My kids are 5 & 7. But you have to start somewhere. The book is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nihm and that seems like a fun way to jump in. It’s an hour long discussion 3.5 miles from our house. We should go.

Do you know why it is easier to pay attention to men? Men act like I’m interesting. Women want me to be interested in them. I mean, I am. But I don’t feel like other women (Pam and Sarah being huge exceptions) find me very interesting. Which is weird because I know I have blog readers who have been here for years.

But you are kinda invisible, you know?

Dudes come and bang on my SMS windows and say, “Hey I want to talk to you.” I promise you that less than 20% of what we talk about is directly arranging sex. We talk about life. They bitch at me and listen to me bitch about whatever is going on.

I have a hard time doing that with women. I overwhelm the fuck out of them and I’m not sure why. I try with women. I can get into patterns that last a few months. Then they get busy and tired.

I know it is partially that I’m at a phase where I really can’t go meet up with people in a neutral location or at their house all the time. That has been most of my social life most of my life. I can’t right now. Not mentally, emotionally, or physically.

It’s so much work. And I have so much work right here making this home.

I’m not really complaining about the work. I choose the work. I’m having fun. It is going to be hard to stop painting at the end of the remodel because there is so much painting I want to do in the house.

Some day my kitchen will be full of colorful flowers and twining vines. It will feel like being encased in a jungle of growth. Me being me, there may be fake and real plants put up near the ceiling eventually. It would be cool to have fake plants stapled to the ceiling and real plants hanging down.

Yeah. No one will mistake me for someone with classic good taste. Ha. No neutrals here. No tasteful expensive art purchased because society says this bozo is important.

I wanna see what I wanna see.

I’m tired of living in cold austerity and severity. I hate white walls. I hate flat surfaces. I don’t want mass market ugly ugly ugly ugly “this is just what people live in” environment. I can’t do it.

I need something different.

Trump needs to lose because I don’t want to move. My house is almost where I want it. My hard work is paying off.

Past Me, well done.

The last time this house was painted was the summer after I moved in. So nine years ago. These colors have been fun, but the teenagers mostly did a shitty job. Ha. I need to slow down on big projects. Which means I really can’t take on another room any time soon. What if I did one wall at a time over a week or two? That would be a much more sane pace of work…

Just stop, Krissy.

But but but… art… pretty…. happiness… hate the ceiling in my kitchen cause there is a horrible white splotch where the old lighting fixture used to be…

The bathrooms will be seasons. The kids say the play room should become a jungle. I am… anticipating fun.

I want to do it slowly. So realistically the spring party won’t happen until the end of May. ha.

That’s ok. I’m pretty busy between now and then.

Do you know why I love country music so much? Because of lyrics like: “If you’re going through hell, keep on going. Face that fire; if you’re scared don’t show it. You might get out before the devil even knows you’re there.”

That’s an awful lot of how I get through life. If something is hard, I put my head down and just push on. That’s how I got through the marathon (whining and griping the whole way with my beautiful, wonderful friend coaxing me on–see, a woman who shows up for me–notice how I fly up to see her!?). That’s how I got through the road trip (whining and griping the whole way with my wonderful beautiful kids coaxing me on–see, girls(kids) who show up for me). This cycle of work really isn’t that hard.

Ok, I hate my contractor. But it isn’t even a school semester. Shuddup and get it done.

I’m scared that I need to make sure there is a chaperone at meetings from now on. He really has to stop touching me or I’m going to flip.

Him being bad at his job sucks. The fact that he keeps calling me “my dear” and touching me when I say stop… I’m going to go postal.

What am I doing with my anger over this situation? I’m trying to strategize so I get my way and I stay out of jail. Seems prudent.

And I’m distracting myself with sex with Noah and talking to other people. It’s fun.

Had a chat with Noah last night about the fact that he’s been a wilting flower for quite a while here. He periodically complains that all he gets to do is work. He’s right that all he does is work at his job, work on his second job, and work at home. It’s true. But I’ve been telling him to change that for over a year. I was kinda mad at him for sitting at home when we were on the roadtrip. YOU HAVE FRIENDS. GO SEE THEM.

But Noah does that man-thing where he isn’t good at organizing and arranging stuff with people unless he is dating them. Then he’s better than average.

I told Noah that he should finish the book he is most of the way through creating, because he’s already put so much time into it. But he should finish by June. Then he needs to take a break from having a second job, kind of indefinitely.

And instead of hunting for a raise in your next job you should look for an 80% position. If we could have that at exactly this salary, rad. If we lost $10k-$20k it wouldn’t be a problem at all. If we kept good medical insurance, a $20,000 dip would be fine if it gave us 3 day weekends every week.

Noah has been working like a fiend for ten straight years. He has provided magnificently. He has put us on a such a trajectory that it would take a rather major disaster for us to lose course. We are almost set for life.

And it’s not really about the second job, you know? Your primary job pays absurdly well. We are fine. It’s ok to spend more time not working. It’s ok to remember if you even have friends. Hell, after how hard you’ve worked for this long… go date. Something. Stop looking like a sad zombie walking through life.

I have worried that Noah was depressed for a while. I’ve been talking to him about it. He doesn’t find a lot of joy in… anything. I’m concerned. If this is how you feel just doing work and the kids and me…

Let’s change something. You matter. You are so important. Your happiness is so important.

Sarah is smart and Sarah says, “Ok, you are up. How are you going to handle the come down?”

This is why I keep my friends around. They check me on my shit. They keep it real. They remind me of the realities of my life. I know I’ll come down again.

I’m actually being somewhat careful about this up. I’m not adding that many new things. A date a month. A couple of parties a month. That’s … very moderate for me.

The kids, Noah, and I have all expressed a really strong desire to slow down, which I find hilarious given that we have a slower pace of life than most of the people we know in the bay area. This is still too much for me. Everyone has requested that we try to get to two days a week of classes. (That’ll be tricky.) We want to have not a lot on our plates so that we have the energy to say, “Hey do any of our friends want to come over for dinner?”

Right now we are too tired. We don’t want to see people much because we are drained and pissy. Everything dips from our bucket instead of filling it.

Only flirting with my submissive is dumping extra spoons in my drawer every day. I’m sleeping really well. Last night I got more than eight hours of sleep. I’m trying so hard.

I’m told I have to go cook eggs now. I told Noah he could have a no-chore weekend because he’s looking like a limp dish rag.

I love you honey.