Noah and I spent time working on the calendar this weekend.

I’m not seeing Cupid till June. May is just busy. That’s a bummer and yet… probably good on the balance? I’ll see him again. It may not be as frequent as I want, but I’m a big girl and I can be patient for an excellent good time like I’ll have when I see him again.

I have a Daddy date in May since he asked for one. That makes my heart jump. Usually he waits till I call him. We go months… almost a year between seeing one another sometimes. It goes on my timetable. This time he asked. Oh. I like that. Thank you.

I have a dinner date scheduled with my submissive for May. And I’ll see him at a party in May. That’s… probably a sustainable sort of rate. That’s not excessive.

Noah and I have carefully put dates on the calendar. Multiple in each week. Because I need to pay attention to him and act like he is my forever. If you have a fucktastically good deal… don’t fuck it up. Just… don’t. Be smart. Be long-term self-interested.

The professor told me with great emphasis that I do not know what he wants and he’s right. I don’t. But I haven’t gotten strong “Come here” signals either so… I love you. I’m so glad I get to be your friend. I don’t have enough chase in me for play. Once upon a time ambiguous was appealing, not right now. So I have no idea how much interest was there, but I know I haven’t been told “Come here”. So. I will redirect away from trying to change this relationship. Boundaries are awesome.

I have… told other tentative flirtations that I need to not add a new partner for a while. I feel that is responsible right now.

I think we are going to change the quota. It’s not working as is. We are talking about what it will morph into. It has worked for many years and I’m not sorry. I’m ready for something different.

I need to change the associations I have in my sex life.

Then we come to Deity.

(Isn’t it funny how I capitalize when using it as a name and I lowercase after an article like they are common deities or professors?)

Ahem.

Instead of talking about him in the third person I asked him how many dates he wanted. He said three. I felt my little heart go pitter patter. That’s… a lot but sane. Oh thank you. That’s like… awesome boundaries. Thank you. Three was probably the sweet spot for a lot but not inappropriate? It’s a lot. I know.

I feel weird and guilty and I’m going to feel weird for years over my submissive not getting the lion’s share of my extra time. There are a few reasons that is going to be hard and complicated. There are a number of factors involved here… not all of them I’ve put on the internet. So I’m just talking to myself.

It is easier to not wreck my life over wanting to see my submissive. He’ll be there when my kids grow up. If I don’t hurry up and see him all the time now… I’ll still have lots of bandwidth to be seeing him in many years. I… don’t feel that kind of assurance about Deity.

I trust my submissive to still be there almost as much as I trust Noah. Which… is kind of strange to realize. When I look around at the people in my life, the people I love… I spend a lot of time wondering who will still love me in 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

My submissive has already been around for fifteen years. He’s going to stick around. I can see the shape of his life. I can see the fault lines of his need. He won’t leave unless I’m truly awful and I have no intentions of abusing the gift I have been given. I appreciate the gift I’m being given.

Will I keep Jenny? What about Sarah? What about Kira? Pam? Daddy? What about any of the people I met through the home school community? What about the people I know in that community? What about Blacksheep? What about DSH?

I thought I would know Brittney forever. Alex. Chris. Marcie. Anna.

I love you still. Some of you can’t come back and some of you can. For some of you I screwed up beyond forgiveness. Some of you crossed my boundaries so badly I will not be inviting you back. Life is like that.

I have room in my schedule in April and May for playdates with children during the day. My date-time is filled, much of it with Noah and the kids. I need to keep my eye on the prize. This family is my lifelong goal. I need to preserve that. I will have tons more time to fuck around and play in ten or fifteen years even if things are as enmeshed and lovey-dovey as possible with Noah and my kids. If I hold the ship together and keep my priorities in line.

Ok, I can be smart.

I have gotten through almost ten years of this marriage so far. Noah is being incredibly flexible and supportive about how I can get through the next ten years. I should be gracious as I accept his leniency.

How many people would be happy about me picking up three regular-ish lovers overnight from nothing? The list is short. Be grateful. Be appreciative.

And holy tomato is he fucking me six ways from Sunday. I don’t feel disapproved of. I feel like Noah is thrilled to be married to me. Which is so nice because I’m thrilled to be married to him.

A lot of what I love about our marriage is how real it is. We don’t pretend for each other. We talk about the various ways we need to be selfish assholes. We are supportive of one another doing what we need to do to be properly selfish. That’s how we will make it through the long-run. If we both encourage one another to figure out what we need.

You can’t do that if you are always too worried about rocking the boat. You can only stretch your wings properly if you know you have a safe place to land.

I have a thing for mixing metaphors lately.

Trite! Predictable! Other people have had every thought already! Yeah… I know. That’s the thing about writers. We take words other people have used and we recycle them. Such is life.

I am feeling… ridiculously happy right now. I’m going to have a two week window where I gasp don’t have a date outside my house and… that’s… feeling really ok. I’m not bored. I’m not dissatisfied. I’m good. My bruises are healed but I don’t feel the need to replace them now. I’m ok.

Ok, I did ask Noah to cane me yesterday. But it was only a little switching. Not hard enough to cause me to make noise. So it barely counts. It was perfect though.

I like the way Noah’s face lights up when I ask him to do things. Any thing. Even after almost twelve years of knowing each other. “Me? You want me to do that with you?! YES! THAT SOUNDS GREAT!” He’s not subtle.

I love my subtle-as-a-brick-through-your-window-husband. We match.

Noah performs delight-with-me. Because I like it. Because it makes me happy and helps me feel secure. He does consciously work at it. He has changed in his displays over time and at this point he has just about exactly nailed my preferences. I feel so lucky to be loved this way. He looks at me. He has stared at me so long. He knows what I want in such intricate detail. He thinks about me.

I want to do the same for him. He is harder to know. He doesn’t volunteer as much. I have to probe harder. I have to snoop into the rare times he writes down his private thoughts so I can say, “Oooooh. Now I get it.” I’m not sorry, not even a little. I want to know Noah. I want to know him inside and out, the good and the bad.

Noah can be a right son of a bitch. But he’s mine. I can live with that. I am a complete fucking asshole pretty regularly and he loves me to distraction.

Noah has supported me through the most incredible journey. Everything I’ve wanted to do in the last ten years the answer has been, “Ok how will we make that work?” The answer has never been “No.”

That’s…

That’s fucking amazing.

Ok I’m sure there have been no’s in there. But they’ve been small and easy to forget.

I think he’s told me no for sex maybe six times in our marriage? I’m probably up to turning him down ten or so specific times? (Pregnancy sucked. Sometimes I turned sex down. Healing from birth sucked. I refused sex for months.)

We don’t like saying no to sex requests.

Money is complicated. I feel he maybe should tell me no on money more often but he doesn’t. As a result our debt is currently intense (it was planned for in advance… then I bought way more tile than I expected) but I’ll pay it off fast.

I feel guilty not increasing his wealth. If I’m going to be an expensive pet I need to earn my keep. I need to make it worthwhile to keep me around. If I’m going to be expensive I need to pay that back with wise investing of money every single month. I am trying.

When I feel guilty I go look at the fact that the investment stuff I started a few years after having kids is up to over $65,000. I am investing money and I’m doing ok.

That is my attempt to make sure my kids and Noah are taken care of long-term. It’s not close to the bulk of our investments. Those predate me or are 401ks from Noah’s jobs. Those are much larger.

But I am helping.

I am not just a drain. I am not just stealing to be selfish.

When I think about what I want to get done over the next few years financially… I kinda sweat. I have such big goals.

Guess what, motherfucker? I’m going to reach them. I’m going to find a way.

I mean, some of these goals are going to change. The kids are saying a year of travel is just too hard and they don’t want it. (We’ll keep talking. They don’t understand I mean four long-term locations with a couple of shorter week or two trips in between long stays. Not the constant travel of the road trip. We are talking. 2021 is still far away.)

So much to do and so little time.

Life is so big. There is so much I wish I could take in and there just isn’t enough time. 

It occurs to me sometimes that I could probably take more in if I could forget more of my past. And then I listen to songs like this on repeat. For days.

I don’t regret my life. I don’t want to forget it. Not the good parts and not the bad parts. I wouldn’t be who I am without all of those pieces.

What does broken mean?

I’m feeling… freaktastically good. Not manic good, even though it is the middle of the night and I’m not asleep. That’s… that fact that I have 6 nights of sleeping pills left and 11 nights to get through.

I am strangely excited about this psychiatrist visit. I’m ready to try something else. My attitude is in the right place.

Let’s see if we can slash my medical expenses. Ha. Pot is expensive.

Can we make it easier to travel?

We’ll see.

I am starting out from a place of feeling pretty happy, not sad and desperate. That increases the likelihood of success. I need help staying up, not helping getting off the floor. That’s a different experience.

I dragged myself off the floor. With the help of my friends and time and gradual building of connections. And money. So much money.

As I’m thinking about nonmonogamy and how I feel about it. I reflect on the messages I got as a child. Stuff like this. I’m not a homewrecker. I want you to have a happy home. Ahem. And I’m supposed to want to beat women off of Noah? Uhm. How about if I just leave the room till you are done and then we can have snacks afterwards? Is that ok?

I don’t hate you. I don’t think you are going to wreck my home.

Do you know what would wreck my home? Me acting like a giant bitch.

Let’s be real here, motherfucker.

Noah can handle a lot of insecure and scared and sad. He can’t handle me being mean to him. He got enough of that with his mom and I think that’s just fucking fine. I don’t need to be mean to him.

I’m supposed to be really sad at the idea of sleeping with other people. But then I think “It’s been just over three days since my date with Deity and my throat is no longer actively sore… yeah I’ll handle the three dates in eleven days in May.”

But but… my sleeping around is more like this. I already have my degree. I’m doing this to have a connection with new ways of thinking outside my family. But I don’t want to go.

Reba was the first three concerts I went to. She has been formative on my life. I’m not sure she means to encourage me to be a big slut but I’m not sure she’d care either. She divorced her first husband after ten years. Her second husband left her after twenty-six years. I hope she’d tell me to do what I need to do to be happy.

Also: I bought pants from her clothing label. Please be ok with me, Reba. I’m loyal. I’ve loved you all my life. You give me reasons to think about what I want.

Would I do it the same as I did back then? No. I do it different now.

“I don’t need any more accidents in my life.”

You know… something like 1/2 of all children are “accidents”. That’s a fucking loaded line in that song.

I’ve had four planned pregnancies. Two that didn’t complete. It’s interesting thinking about what it means to be adapting to accidents and choices in life. What kind of grace do you need to handle different life events?

“I learned more from the stains than I learned from the paper.”

Life is like that.

The way you handle the things that just come up decide who you are.

Noah says I’m a lot nicer than I used to be. I’m not getting upset at small bumps the way I used to. I’ll say, “Oh that sucks. Ok.”

You made me a lot safer. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel insecure. I don’t feel like I’m going to be homeless or hungry any minute. I have a lot more nice to offer. I feel nice. I feel happy.

Reba reminds me that I need to make things work or I won’t like the results.

This came after I was an adult, but it was a remake of a song that came out when I was younger. I think of my family. I used to think of my mom. Now I think of my kids. But I didn’t learn to play it safe. I learned to jump into any pit of vipers because it would be better than where I was starting. Now I am trying to consciously learn how to stay safe because I have learned what it feels like. My heart has been put back together piece by piece. I need to stay safe because my kids don’t need to experience me being traumatized. It feels like a lot of pressure. I can’t come home and flip out. I just can’t.

This song is why I left so many other partners. That’s why Noah talks to me. Noah does show me what I mean to him. I need a lot of display of emotion. Noah has learned quite a bit of that over the years. I’m frankly impressed. He has listened to feedback and changed. I’m a feral cat. I stay if I have a good deal. I have such a good deal.

I gotta say Reba, I think I do better than you at some of these topics.  We had a good chat with the kids this weekend about pornography. What it is, why it exists, why it isn’t sex and how to think about it as a thing that is neither good or bad as itself.

I mean… it was simplistic and not graduate school discussion. Solo sex is awesome sex. It isn’t training for sex with a partner it is to be enjoyed for it’s own sake. Porn is often part of that for many people. At this point in time… you can’t act like folks don’t use porn. You need to teach them how to do it in a way that is respectful.

And I won’t have trouble with kids who are partying. “Baby I can forgive you for anything. I love you. Thank you for trusting me enough to call.” I will never do what my sister did and hang up on a teenager who calls saying “I’m at a party with drugs and I’m scared.”

That’ll be easy.

Eldest Child is in a cute phase. When we ask her if she did something she says, “Yes. That’s true. I do not want to tell a lie. I did that.”

I will earn her trust by reacting well hundreds of times to little shit. Then when big stuff happens… I will have a full trust bucket.

I love this job.

I like this one. I may be nostalgic about all the people who didn’t want me the way I wanted them. But I fucking love where I am. (Ok the dancing in that video is just more proof that white people can’t dance. Whoa.) Puppy told me that he wanted to break up with me because I would spend my whole life bitter and angry and vengeful.

Guess he should ask for his money back on his Magic 8 Ball.

On the shallow front, it occurs to me that a fun bathing suit would be really awesome on the cruise. Some folks are campaigning for a two piece but I like this one and this one. Opinions? It isn’t that I dislike my midriff. It’s that I don’t see any options that make me go “Yeah that’s me.”

I think waiting until 12:30am on Monday to start typing is like my subconscious’ way of saying “I sorta did what I tried to do.”

Can I go back to sleep yet?

I spend so much time feeling so shitty. I’m feeling… really good.

I had help this weekend on the mosaic. It was a regular work party. It felt so good. I had so much fun. Thank you friends. And I should sleep cause I’m picking one of them up again later today for more help. (She needs to be out of her house for fumigation reasons. Yay me!)  And another friend is helping later this week. This project may actually get done this month. Ha.

This is good and bad. If I finish… before they are getting close to tiling in the bathroom… I’m totally going to paint the kitchen ceiling. I have mixed feelings about that right now. It is bugging me so much that it looks bad. And I can’t keep remodeling shit this year. So it is get it done before the end of the bathroom or don’t do it.

I’m trying to have some boundaries.

So yeah. “Can have playdates” means people can come over while I remodel my house. Cause I’m fun like that. Hi. Uhhh… at least it is artistic?

Yeah. That just makes it slower.

Although… no… I won’t make that dig. Ahem.

The canopy of the autumn tree is gold and green and red and orange and purple. Blue shines through for sky to help shape the branches. It’s beautiful and I’m proud of it. I have posted some pictures on twitter.

Ok Reba. I’ll look at people. But I won’t stop at one. Oh. That’s not what you meant? Oh well.

Noah reminds me that I should go back to bed. He’s probably all responsible and such.