And it’s pronounce pro-gress not prog-ress.

We met a nice lady solicitor in Aberdeen. It was a long day getting there and back and we missed the first train so everything felt more hectic and stressful than necessary. I was not nice to the kids as I mostly flailed myself for us missing the first train. I apologized of course, but that’s shitty of me.

Apologies bake no bread and all that.

I am running out of spoons for “don’t get frustrated and don’t ever let your creeping frustration impact anyone else in any way” without pot.

It’s coming to Scotland!

Anyway, nice solicitor lady. Other than being 100 miles away she seemed like she would be great to work with. I liked her attitude, her mannerisms, the way she answered questions, and the fact that everything we asked was met with an immediate answer and a flip to the page of her hand out where she was getting the answer. Noah’s first choice for visa is a new scheme so she had to look up a lot even though she’s been working with immigration for 12 years. There was one question where Noah had a different interpretation of the text but I think she clarified and got it right in the email follow up. Her rate is noticeably lower than the nice lady we worked with in Fremont so I don’t feel she is overly expensive.

We have one more solicitor interview to go through.

I didn’t do PT yesterday with being out of the house 12 hours. Deep sigh. I will get it done before I go out today. I am trying a new massage place. Fingers crossed. They list it as deep tissue and I did a 15 minute add on of “just my hands” so we’ll see.

I hurt so fucking bad it is hard not to curse all day long at speed. But my kids have asked that we all work on not cursing together because it is going to be a rough transition to school if they keep dropping f-bombs as casually as they do. Totally reasonable. Yes, we can do this together.

An ATM here charged me double but only gave me one set of cash. If I challenge it they will turn off my ATM card. I don’t have PINs for the other bank accounts. This is not so good. I should probably try to get PINs first then challenge it. Ugh. Or, I eat losing £200. Which is less stressful?

I am super weary. I’m glad it is Friday. This weekend is lightly booked. I have stuff today for body care. Tomorrow I am going to go out after supper to a munch to meet folks. (I’m going to have to taxi there and back because it’s later at night.) Munches are sitting in a chair and listening to other people brag about how exciting they are. It’s fairly low energy at this point. I’m not hunting and I’m not trying to catch up with old friends. I miss people. One person, Miss V has been at 90% of the munches I’ve ever been to and I miss her like an open aching wound. I don’t get the impression I am going to meet someone here quickly who is going to have her dynamic intense energy. That’s good and bad. I don’t have it in me to hero worship someone else like I do her at this point. But I miss her. I will miss the way she makes me feel yearning and love and admiration. She is so inspiring. I want to top. I want to bottom. I want to wallow in all the intense energy of power.

Sigh.

But, if I am going to make it here I am going to need friends other than just Jenny and I’m not a knitter. I can’t just make mommy-friends. I need to be a mostly in the closet freak for the sake of my kids, but perversion is absolutely bone deep in me. I need to know other kinky people. I just do. Even if I don’t have the spoons to do anything with it yet.

Bdsm is part of me. It is part of the background radiation of my life. I won’t walk into a party here and have the old timers tell the newbies to back off and let me do whatever I want… but I can make lower key friendships. I can get to know people. They will never witness the full bloody insanity I used to engage in and that’s ok. I don’t think there is space for that here anyway. Not in public.

Noah and I will figure out a public persona together. That will be healthy.

Frankly it will be good for me not to be leaning on the full throated ferocity I established as a teenager and young 20-something. I can’t live up to that any more. Not because I am less perverted, but because my body can’t take it. Damnit.

There is almost no bdsm education culture here! I see a niche… We’ll see!

Aberdeen had decently tasty Mexican food. Their “4 chili” level spicy was nothing to burn a mouth, but hey. If I go back I will ask for double the habanero and maybe there is a way to get some actual heat. I don’t think the Scots in general like to burn their mouths in the same way. Which is interesting because I had a vindaloo that left me with intense burn the next day. It was lovely.

I used to have a stick up my butt about not eating Mexican food outside of California because it always tasted wrong. Then I went to Mexico and found out that Californians do it wrong. Now I am more keen to try the variations I can get all over. We live and learn, yo.

I get to have pot in at most 18 days. I am feeling utterly grateful right now. I feel worn to the bone. I haven’t had any in 3.5 months.

ack, bye