I managed to do a good job of convincing my shrink that Deity is not the scary looming problem she is convinced he is and I managed to raise her threat level with regards to my submissive. That seemed… prudent?

“You don’t seem to understand that one of these men is professing undying love that will last decades. The other wants to fuck me. Which one are you freaking out about?”

She reconsidered after that.

I knew it would just take finding the right words.

I’m not saying I’m flipped out about my submissive. I just… sometimes feel bothered when my shrink just can’t perceive something accurately.

After a while of me rattling off “This person this that person this other thing that person over there was on quite a roll and…”

She stopped me and said, “How is it possible you know all of these people? How do you keep them straight in your head?”

I said, “Oh, you just don’t know how to compartmentalize them properly” (which is something she’s been telling me to work on–compartmentalization) and she laughed.

I felt funny yesterday. That’s not an every day experience. Normally… I’m kinda the opposite of funny. I suck the funny out of a room. But yesterday I made her laugh several times.

We are both excited that I’ve managed to get myself up off the floor before I start med trials. *cry*

Med trials is a phrase that makes me queasy. This has never gone well. I mean, I did get to Lorazepam and pot. Those have helped. But ugh. You know how I’ve been complaining about sleep dep for years? Nothing has ever been worse than Paxil. Awake for 14 days straight. I thought I would die. I… don’t want to get into the complications. They suck.

I’m nervous but I need to do this. My lungs need a break.

Harm reduction. It’s a thing.

I’ve been having mixed feelings (shiny change of topic) about cruise stuff for a long time. That’s gotten easier. K’s family deciding to come was apparently huge. I didn’t know I was hoping for that? I thought they were a no? I’m so excited I get to help my Bonus Kids go on this trip. This is going to be a blast.

The not my immediate family wedding party just about doubled from 5 to 9. I feel actually outnumbered by guests.

She told me, “I would spend the rest of my life regretting not going with you. We’re going.”

That made my heart soar.

I feel consumed with gratitude. You would regret not being with me. Oh. Thank you.

Ok no more time for typing.

How am I doing? I’ve been asked by… six or seven people so far? Most of whom genuinely want to know.

It’s a good day. Given how fast I peel tile off of backing and how fast other people peel tile off of backing… I’m glad I did four hours of work today and I’m glad I only left the size of pile I left for my friends. If for some reason they finish (I doubt it) I can ask for help with taping. There’s work to do. I always have work for willing hands.

And now I have no excuse to avoid doing more layout at every spare minute. Sigh. I did about four hours of tile work today.

Lots of back and forth with lawyer and contractor. Festivities continue.

Medical appointment. I was very limited in what I want to pay for so I walked out with very little stuff. Ha. She says I’m doing surprisingly better. She hinted at but didn’t actually share stories from her hypersexual days. Ahhh. A friend.

“Why are you looking so happy?”

Well let me tell you about last night. And the night before. And the night before. And the night before. And the night before that.

Like, whoa.

It has been a good month.

Like, Noah and I have had sex more times than there have been days in this month. And we’ve missed days. It’s a good month.

I mean, my throat is extra sore and that’s all about Deity but I felt no need to be that specific with any of the folks who were asking me how I was. Even I have limits. Barely.

Sex is such a funny thing. What does it mean? What is it worth? Why do some people want some parts of sex and not others? What is sex?

I’ll tell you. In my considered personal experience sex can be an awful lot of things. It doesn’t always look how you think it looks.

I’m kinda boring. I really like a good long missionary fuck. I have friends who just aren’t interested in going there. I like it.

We all get to have preferences. I like lots of other things too, but it is important to understand yourself. It all comes back to wanting to watch someones eyes for me. Yes it is intimate. Yes it involves kissing.

Doesn’t that freak my spouse out?

I think people are wonderful and adorable and cute in how they express their boundaries.

Sport fucking is fine. WHY ARE YOU KISSING PEOPLE?!

I love the people in my life. Oh my goodness.

I kiss people for the same reason I want them to alternate telling me I’m a good girl with calling me a whore. I want them to be thinking about how weird I am and connecting with me.

Because I really kinda want to be both. It’s complicated. I’m not sure I know how to explain. I know that the whore thing will continue to be a problem because it is complicated reclaiming words. How can you deal with parts of your identity?

I’ve never been a for-pay sex worker. I’ve been called a whore a lot anyway. So what does that mean? It means people don’t pay attention to what words mean when they use them. It means that psychology doesn’t care what my IRS statements list as my job.

My cunt knows that for a lot of my adult life I’ve had explicit written or verbal agreements with my providers that I was to trade sex for housing/support/etc.

I’m not saying that marriage is the same as prostitution (another problematic word).

I’m saying people are complicated and my story is mine. If you are lucky enough to put your dick inside me… I probably want you to call me a whore.

I… honestly can’t say that I’ve ever had someone with a cunt try it. That would be novel.

Why do I care about what someone has below their waist when they are using words? I don’t? I’ve never had that kind of sex with someone who had a cunt. I have always been the aggressive party.

Which is so complicated.

I continue to have feelings about Michfest. I picked monogamy and I stuck to it through quite a bit of temptation. I saw some gorgeous folk there.

And I’m not chasing anyone new like that. I’m just… going where I’m already adored.

I continue to wonder if I made the right choice in not going all these years because of the trans inclusion issue. There were far more trans* folk there than you’d think. Of all stripes.

I…

If I could turn back time.

Ha. Oh well. Move forward from where you are.

Where am I?

It’s raining men.

Ok. Good thing I like them all. I can deal with this.

I’m going to slow down so I don’t scare Noah more. What is that going to mean though? I think it means not adding new people for a while. I need to practice my “no” for a few months. (I’m not saying forever.)

(This is mostly noting for Noah but uhh passive aggressive notice and all.) Daddy asked for a date in May. Err… Cupid expressed interest in a date and I’m thinking May. My bruises will heal by then.

I want to ask my submissive for a dinner date in May. So yeah. Err uhm. Let’s see how things go with the deity. Nothing booked in May yet. Four in April was uhhh yeah. Self control.

Cause oh man.

He suggested tying me up. Because he wanted to. I almost came out of my skin trying to act casual. “Yeah. Sure. That would be fun sometime.”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

We need to figure something out. We got this far, Noah. I like you. You’re my best friend. Let’s put some dates for us on the calendar. You aren’t feeling like I’m being very inspiring. Heh. I can work on that. Ok.

Sobonfu told me I would never feel like I fit anywhere. She said I was going to have to go build it myself.

Ok. But I’m not a good sustainer. That’s going to be a problem.

I am feeling deeply inadequate. I could not make monogamy work. I could not find a way to inspire Noah to share my interests and I could not find a way to just be ok with what was on offer.

I feel really guilty. I feel like an asshole.

I’m really enjoying the sex. Yes I know that’s a mixed thing, Noah. I know that causes you to feel inadequate too.

Not really. We’ve both felt inadequate basically every step of the way. But here we are. I mean, we could go through a list of things we’ve done and devalue them every step of the way. You don’t feel your job earning you more money than 98% of Americans is all that impressive. I think my marathon time is shit. Etc.

Should we do this forever?

I’m not sure I know what adequate or inadequate means. This is seeming more fuzzy than “deserve”. Adequate for what?

Noah the way you fuck me and love me and take care of me mean I’m happier, healthier, and more stable than I’ve ever been. If me being this much better makes you feel inadequate I don’t know what to fucking tell you. I’m sorry I’m not all better. I’m sorry I’m not perfectly stable and perfectly what you want.

I’m inadequate.

Are you absolutely everything I want and need in every single way? Honestly… no.

I don’t know that a single person could be. As you say… if you fucked up the way some of my tops will eventually fuck up… we would have problems. You are safe and that is part of why you don’t beat me harder. It is part of why you aren’t inclined towards doing vicious things all that often. I know. We create this awful conundrum for ourselves. I’m going nuts wanting to beat people. You’ve worked hard on not wanting to beat me because for years beating me would have been a problem and…

I don’t know what to do with the pickle we’ve made. I really don’t.

I don’t know what the future will bring.

Yes, for a while I genuinely had less interest in sex. Childbearing wrecked my body. But we knew that going in and we discussed it and we were more or less prepared for that. What we didn’t discuss very well and what we are trying to figure out now is what the fuck do we want to adapt to when my sex drive comes back?

I need to start texting Noah’s phone to tell him what I’m thinking of doing because I’m not saying things and blaming it on the fact that the kids are around and that needs to change.

What is true and not true?

I continue to wonder what kind of person am I?

I’m a snoopy motherfucker (this is as advertised) and I read some of the notes Noah has been making to himself. I’m really grateful he has been making them. I appreciate when I get to uhhh sneak into his private thoughts and read the angry and accusatory version. I like it for a few reasons. Specifically: I like that I’m not allowed to get angry about things I find when I snoop–that’s been true back to my Owner. I like that I get an unfiltered version of what the person I’m snooping on thinks. They aren’t trying to get my approval they are being pissy and ranting. Excellent. Good data.

I don’t snoop on everyone. I ask for passwords. It’s not like I’m subtle.

If you don’t give me your password then I won’t snoop on you. If you give me your password I will. That’s like consent, right?

How much about you do you want me to know?

That’s what it is about. I will work hard to integrate the feedback I got in this way. It was… more direct than he’s been saying to my face.

I need to slow the fuck down. He’s scared. That’s not nice. I’m not communicating well and it is hurting his feelings up one side and down the other. But he’s scared he needs to let me do this. Oh, baby.

For some version of “this” yeah you probably do have to let me do it. But for some version of “this” you really don’t. You have power to negotiate here. I know I’m being an asshole and I know you are worried about any request you make backfiring…

I’ve only broken rules I made. Not rules you’ve specifically made. (To the best of my memory.) I’ve taken back things I offered of my own free will. Because I realized I really didn’t want to offer them. I’ve tried hard to figure out where your lines are and I’ve gotten very minimal feedback.

From you I’ve gotten: don’t ever ask for unprotected sex with someone and don’t ask for permission to orgasm. I know you’re working on a more complicated list of rules we are negotiating as a back and forth…

But in my head those are the only two things you’ve asked for. So when I’m being a dishonest asshole and spanking people when I said I wouldn’t I have broken something I offered. It is not the same as spanking people when you asked me not to.

Which sucks, is dishonest and fucked up, etc…

I’m being inconsistent in my boundaries because I don’t know where the fuck they are. I thought I would be interested in teasing my submissive for… oh shit at least a few months.

Nope.

Yes. It sucks that I’m sated on Monday and not by the next day.

Or does it suck? I mean… really?

What do you want here?

You don’t know and I don’t know what I want. It does hurt finding out that we want x by bouncing off other people. I wish I had been successful at talking you into things in monogamy too. But I wasn’t. I don’t know how long I’m going to be off-leash or what that is going to mean.

I know you are scared.

Me too.

Historically speaking I go until I get burned really badly. I… worry about that. I sorta wonder if I should cut bait on the other fish on the line. I’ve had an absolutely unprecedented string of successes. Maybe not pushing my luck is wise? Emailed one.

I should maybe learn from my mistakes one of these decades. Noah thank you for your patience.

I’m not saying I’m going to say no if particular people ask. But I’ll stop hunting. I’m over busy as it is.

I am currently semi-stalled on the tile because I need the last bits taken off backing and folks are coming over tomorrow to help with that. I’m a hair nervous waiting for them because I take stuff off backing way faster than anyone else and I could be done between now and then.

I need to email the lawyer. Done. We are going to have a meeting on Monday or Tuesday about the remodel.

Oh god.

Noah I’m really happy to be your muse and pour energy into you. I like filling your cup. But I need it to come from somewhere. I need it.

I know you are scared. I’m scared too. I’m going to do this though. Or I can’t keep filling your cup.

I said, “Hey Daddy want to have dinner and talk?” Hahahahaha. We did get around to dinner. We did do some talking. Mostly we finally got around to fucking. It was glorious. Our first date was about twelve years ago and we’ve done a fair bit of sm in that time… but we never got around to fucking. I am thrilled to report that strawberry/chocolate flavored condoms are not bad for sucking on extensively.

Then I had quite a chat with my shrink. I am… amused that she is thrilled I’m hunting. She really is. “You are all consenting adults having fun! Do whatever you want!” At the same time she says, “Uhm it sounds like you are getting really attached to this deity. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

So my shrink is 100% on board with me sport fucking. If someone comes over and spends more time… that’s maybe not cool. She heard that he is going to have an overnight when the kids are gone and she just about flipped.

“HE’S DOING WHAT?! WHERE WILL NOAH BE?!”

Uhhh… in the house?

“Oh so you wanted a threesome.”

I have no idea if that kind of thing will happen. I’m not opposed (hi, I’m still me) but it hasn’t been arranged and that isn’t the point. The point is… having a date and getting to snuggle longer afterwards.

“KRISSY WHAT ARE YOU DOING HE SOUNDS LIKE A SECONDARY.”

This was a hilarious phone call to me. The expectations folks have of me…

(Uhm, my shrink says congratulations to the sadists I’ve been playing with. She’s delighted to see me so happy. It’s been a while.)

She got a little annoyed after a while trying to keep names and handles straight. I should probably send her an email with a cast list so she can follow along better. (She’ll get everybody. I wonder if I could somehow anonymize it for public. Ha. She’d hear about all the people I’m hoping to run into soon but I haven’t seen ’em yet. Goodness gracious I’m slutty.) I think it is funny how different my shrink feels about my dating compared to Noah. Noah’s a lot more ok with the fact that I’m being lovey dovey with my friends. He’s seen these people be my friends for long stretches of time. He doesn’t feel threatened.

My shrink is all, “Fuck ’em and move on to another person. Don’t get attached. That’s a threat to your marriage.”

…..

Given how much time everyone I’m fucking spends saying, “How is Noah? Are you sure we should do this?” I’m… less convinced they are threats.

She told me to be very careful not to start keeping secrets from Noah. I said: “When I fuck up and don’t tell him something to his face I try to make sure I document online because I don’t want to hide anything.” But she’s suspicious. She’s convinced I’m going to move the deity in next month. I think the closest I’ve come to moving a poly partner in was Sarah and… you know what? I’m not worried.

Speaking of documenting, there was a small hiccup in play last night. I tried to express a boundary and it was heard as an in-scene protestation. It was recognized and apologized for. I cried. I’m over it. These kinds of mistakes happen. Why is it so easy to forgive someone else and so hard to forgive myself? I know he didn’t mean it. His face crumbled when he understood. It’s lovely how these sadists want to hurt me but not hurt me and that’s a funny line to learn how to walk. There will be stumbles. We’ll keep walking.

My shrink started shrieking when I told her how much I talk to the deity during the day. “THAT’S A RELATIONSHIP!” Dude. I’ve been talking to him for years. It’s not just a while fucking thing. He’s my friend. “But! But!” She’s not upset about the dude I’ve been playing with for twelve years and I just show up at his house on a regular basis. That’s fine. Cause he’s ollllllld.

I didn’t know that fucking half a dozen people in a short period of time would convince me I’m not that casual of a hunter. Ok then.

This round of hunting is so glorious. I went to Renegade’s last night (it’s a bar where a munch is held) intending to just flirt because I have hot dates tonight. Yeah my friends don’t care. Glorious friends. Daddy and one of the flirtingest-boys-ever were both pinching and squeezing me a fair bit. Because it is funny to make me squeak. I guess. Cupid came and that was quite lovely.

Last night I felt like I was sitting on the corner of Makeout Lane and Pinch Me Harder Court. I kissed so many people. It’s funny going between casually, happily kissing people I’ve been kissing for a while and a new person leans in and I shove my hands out and blurt, “I HAVE HERPES.”

He laughed. He said, “You’ve actually already told me that.”

“YEAH WELL. I’M GOING TO DO IT A FEW MORE TIMES. I WAS AN ASSHOLE WHO WASN’T UPFRONT ENOUGH SO I’M GOING TO BE REALLY OBNOXIOUS FOR A WHILE HERE.”

He laughed at me more. But in a nice way.

I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Oh do you know what is funny? When someone says, “Oh you shouldn’t taunt a sadist… you never know what you’ll get” and I get to lean in and grin and say, “I know. I’m a sadist.” He pulled back like he touched an electric fence. That was awesome. hahahahaha

I have such plans for Saturday. I can’t wait to make that beautiful boy hurt. It will be glorious. That reminds me. I need to send an email to the party host about rules. Done. My proverbial dick is so hard right now. I do hope she says yes. Then… oh boy. I’m not going to preview what I’m going to do. He gets to be surprised. I have some shopping to do today. Oh fuck I love my life.

Why isn’t my shrink being weird about the other folks? Mostly I think because after asking me to rattle off ages she decided the deity was “age appropriate” and no one else I’m seeing is and that is somehow a big threat? Whatever. I’ve been involved with my submissive for like fifteen years. Oh. He’s not on IM. So he’s less threatening? Woman. You have weird ass boundaries.

Oh yes. I also had a chat with my former Owner. It went much better than I expected. He was respectful, supportive, and loving. I made the right choice in loving him all those years ago. I think it’s funny that my shrink is worried about the deity but she doesn’t worry about me going back to events where I’m going to sigh over my Owner. She says, “Oh I know that’s over.”

But I still sigh. Like I do with everyone. I don’t want to go back there. It’s just… sigh worthy that life doesn’t work out how you want. I really wanted to carry that man’s babies. I wanted it for the first big chunk of my adult life. I notice.

Not that I’m in any way sad about the family I have. I think it suits me better in every way.

But I’m a wistful soul.

I don’t want to move everyone in. I don’t want to live with everyone. But I am greatly enjoying the increased intimacy with my friends. I’m feeling so grateful that my friends want to love on me and hurt me and talk to me about why they want to do what they want to do in life. I am so grateful I get to crawl into peoples heads and learn about their motivations.

The talking about it part is almost my favorite. Except for the getting off. That’s my other favorite.

This was one of those times when my shrink spends a lot of time telling me how unusual I am.

“Krissy… other people don’t spend hours a day having sex. That’s not normal.”

Why not?

“Krissy… other people can’t orgasm like that. That’s not normal.”

Hey… you don’t know my friends. Ok yeah I’m easy to get off under the right circumstances but I know lots of folks like me. We exist.

“Krissy… other people can’t have sex with someone unless they feel a strong physical attraction like they want to be with that person forever and you can have sex with people you just like without feeling all that attracted to them. That’s not normal.”

Hey. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t attracted to them. I just don’t need to be in-love-get-married-have-babies attracted. Degrees. Levels.

I’m not attracted to people based on them looking like they belong on a magazine cover. I’m attracted to people based on how they make me feel. I care a lot more about the expression in someones eyes as they look at me. The more “conventionally attractive” someone is the more I find they don’t actually look at me. They look to see if I’m looking at them and then they keep scanning the room. Folks who are not necessarily gorgeous (but I think they are hot) look at me.

They want to know what I’m feeling so they can play with it. That’s fun.

Dad canceled yesterday. He doesn’t feel he can handle a trip in April but he hopes to try later in the summer. I have mixed feelings. I am going to work hard on coming down on the side of “Well my guest room is buried in tile anyway and cleaning it up would suck.”

Feedback: no more face slapping for a few weeks. My jaw hurts.

I know everyone is happy I’m playing again but I do need to heal in between woundings. Just sayin’. Geez. Go reread the Kushiel books. Phèdre talks about needing to heal between play. Ha. And she was a bad ass touched by the gods. I’m just a kinky woman. Healing. Yo.

My jaw hurts all the way up into the skull because it is so tired of being knocked out of whack for one week. I have some weird jaw stuff anyway because when the pit bull attacked me when I was five, it knocked my jaw out of socket and made things permanently out of alignment. Sufficient quantities of oral sex cause me problems. I’m probably going to get there soon with uhm how I’m going.

Slow down Krissy, you ain’t as good as you once was.

Yeah… time for more rest. I’m getting tired.

My shrink was thrilled to hear how my mood is elevated across the board. Things are going really well with the kids (beyond the fact that we are all sick of tile). We are snuggling more than we were for a while. We are talking really well. We are having intense conversations. I’m being pretty good about my expectations. They are falling into a rhythm of their own.

Home schooling continues to be the best decision I’ve made with my kids. I love the relationship we have. I love that I get to help them work through their stuff. Genetically my kids were going to have a high propensity towards being high strung, difficult, and troubled.

Instead they glow.

I am so glad I get to do this.

Frequency is a phrase Noah and I use a lot. If I’m a lot more intensely connecting with a whole bunch of old friends… what is that going to mean long-term in how much I see each person? All of them in aggregate?

He keeps sighing deeply and saying only time will tell. Pendulums do tend to over correct before they settle down to where they are going. I remain grateful he thinks of me as an expensive, troublesome pet. I so am.

I’m a feral cat.

Barely domesticated. But I have my perks.

Ok. I think I’m ready to go back to bed. I wonder how long until the kids wake up…

Do you know what the most common question I’m getting right now is? “How’s Noah?” I keep telling people that if they are worried they should ask him and not trust my reporting. It doesn’t matter if I say he laughed.

I could be lying you know. Ok, so he leaves comments here when I say something he disagrees with so I probably couldn’t get away with huge lies. But if they were funny Noah might let them slide.

What is love anyway? I have spent a lot of time wondering. So do most people, near as I can tell.

I don’t think that love is the same thing as wanting to rub sticky bits together. Is love that feeling where you want them to be as safe and happy as possible–even if that means not-you doing it?

Sometimes I say that I don’t fall out of love. I’m having a problem with my former Owner. He’s… he is the kind of guy who is prone to telling jokes that are a problem for me. It’s not that he’s a bad person. It’s that I can’t have men walking past my scenes yelling, “Hit her harder” because that creates a culture where treating me like that is acceptable. You can’t model that behavior in front of strangers. It’s not ok. If I didn’t like him I’d chew him a new asshole and move on with my life.

The trouble is, I love him a lot. I don’t know how to effectively communicate what I need without exploding because my feelings about him are all so intense. My response on day one of this was to kick him in the shins. Hopefully he will be more amenable to a conversation next time?

You can’t encourage casual public disrespect of me. Nope.

I don’t give a shit how much I love you. Nobody talks to me like that.

I don’t want to stand up to him. He was my Owner. He was my first Daddy. He was my best friend for many years. I want to just gaze at him adoringly like a puppy forever. But those fucking stupid jokes.

Fuck.

Come on motherfucker.

What does it mean to love people? I think about this so much. The way I love Jenny is not how I love Sarah is not how I love Kira is not how I love my submissive is not how I love Noah is not how I love my Daddy’s.

I even love all of my Daddy’s differently. They provide different kinds of nurturance to me. Different Daddy’s pay attention to different parts of me. They care about my physical or emotional health differently.

What does love mean?

Does it mean that you want to have connection with people because you believe you have something to give them or does it mean connection because you need to receive from them? I don’t know.

I have spent most of my life feeling guilty because few relationships are reciprocal. They instead usually go in one direction or another and then you need other relationships to balance the rest of your needs. I feel so bad about the relationships where people mostly give to me. I feel like a user.

But I know that I have lots of relationships as the giver. Where is the balance? I’ve always had relationships where I receive, I’d be dead without them. But I don’t feel good about them. I always feel ashamed.

I’m having complex feelings about what my submissive wants to give to me. I don’t understand it yet. I can’t see it. I can’t wrap my head around it. I don’t understand someone being that focused on giving to me. I don’t have any understanding of what it is going to look like.

I get the sex. The everything else confuses me. If what we were doing was just me beating the shit out of him because that is fun I’d get it. I’d feel like it was about something I had to give. It isn’t about that though. That’s part of it. He wants that. But it is something different too and I don’t know what it is.

I want it. Whatever it is, I want it.

“How is Noah?” I feel like I should make personal cards for Noah just so I can give his contact information to the people I’m fucking so they can check in on their own since they are so paranoid.

He doesn’t want to write publicly about how he is doing. I can’t make him. It’s uncomfortable but he’s riding the waves.

He’s waiting to see what will happen. I am too.

I’ve been listening to this Reba song a lot.

NRE (New Relationship Energy) is a potent drug. I’m sipping deep. It’s better for me than almost any other kind of drug.

Danger Will Robinson. Danger.

I’m not afraid of being alone. I’m afraid of running out of connection to people. I’m not afraid of being alone. Sometimes being alone is the best thing. Even when I’m alone I want to feel loved. Hell, if I’m alone in a room with a computer and an internet connection I’m never alone.

How much of loving people is just wanting to keep seeing them in the world doing whatever it is that they want to do?

I don’t want you to be like me. I want you to be like you so that I can adore you. I do adore you.

I’m feeling scared of loving people. I want it and I’m afraid.

I am afraid of loving too much or not enough. Does love mean wanting to hurt someone? Does love mean wanting to hear all the stories about them parenting because that tells you so much about how they care for people around them?

The older I get the more someone being a good parent is a ridiculous turn on. It isn’t that I want to make babies with you (Factory is closed) but the fact that you have that kind of love to give… can I touch you?

That’s coming up in a few places with a few people. I’m getting ridiculously into parents. I don’t think it is just my impregnation obsession. Good parents are good people.

Years ago my shrink told me that you can’t tell if someone is a good person based on what their friends or their coworkers say. Find out what their kids think of them. I think about that often and I’m trying to ensure that I make sure my kids see the best I have to offer in this life.

What does that leave left over for Noah, my submissive, the deity, other people who want a piece of me…

But what about me? What about what I want? I want 9 day weeks and 30 hour days. I want everyone I want to fuck to live within walking distance of my house.

Sigh.

More than once in the past week I’ve had a sad thought about this phase of promiscuity. I’m going to hit a wall: the driving will kill me. Shit.

Oh I’m getting old. The biggest thing preventing me from getting laid more is that the driving hurts my back. suck

Not that I need to get laid more, exactly. Frequency isn’t the problem. (Thank you Noah.) It’s the difference. It’s the different conversations. It’s the different kinds of permission. Noah gives me permission to be or do anything he can think of. The only trouble is the limit of his imagination. Other people think of different things.

Other people want different things so they think of them. So they suggest them to me. I like that kind of cycle.

I want to be so many things. I hope that in the fullness of time even my unpredictability will become predictable.

Goodness. Speaking of love. And because I am shallow. I have the fancy dress I will wear for the rest of my life. Apparently I like the Regency period. So the fancy gown is almost kinda like this style  because it has a green silk under skirt that is a full slip with a sheer over gown. The over gown is sheer and separate so I can wear it as the sole piece above the corset dress because being able to see the corset dress through the sheer mock up was so hot that the dress maker said, “Oh it’s a shame you can’t wear it like that later” and I said, “…… Could I?”

We talked. Yes. Yes I can. The nice man who is making my dress was a costumer for the opera house for thirty years. He went and found a nice Regency pattern to follow. The back is entirely lace up so that as I go up and down in weight (like I do) I can wear this pretty much for the rest of my life.

And the petal skirt… oh the petal skirt will be so pretty.

I’m a dork but I’m really excited about this. It feels like picking the costuming I want to have represent me. This is going to be clothing I wear a lot forever. I am paying too much money for this to be something I don’t use much. I need to get several decades of hard wear out of this for it to be worth the money.

I really like it. I like that it can be worn in many ways. Corset dress. Green silk slip dress (which may be wearable on its own). Sheer over dress (oh the sleeves are so pretty… and it trails just a touch in the back). Petal skirt (which can be worn over the corset or over the over gown). Then the jacket. The jacket is gorgeous.

So red. So “Hi. I’m here.” Red. Red. Red.

Noah wanted me to get married in red. I compromised. The jacket is red. The rest of the outfit is white and green and red. Because I’ve got this Wonderland garden thing.

I’ve gotta say, when I was looking in the mirror at the corset dress… the first thing I thought was, “Oh I’d fuck me.”

lol

I’m funny. Seriously though. I corset well. I cinch down to a 14″ difference between my waist and hips without effort. That’s hot.

I didn’t pick this body. But if I’m stuck with it I will find things to like about it. I am going to have to practice how to walk in the corset dress. So far I’m stiff and awkward. If I want to look graceful it will take effort. Just like I’m practicing with this damn red lipstick. I’m getting better.

I should… go do stuff.

Sure…. I won’t fuck my submissive. Right. Yeah. That’ll last till the first time he is naked, humping my leg and telling me how much he loves me.

I have no self control.

Oh that was nice. Wonderful, dreamy, loving and mean as hell. He is covered in bite marks that I could not handle at all. If someone bit me that hard I would probably whack their head hard enough to make their ears ring. But he didn’t mind me doing it.

Hot.

This is so nice.

On other nights I have theoretically thought, “Meh. I don’t want to tell someone they have to fuck me harder… I just want them to want to do that.”

Tonight I didn’t fucking mind one little bit.

Tying him up at Wicked Grounds was fun, but not nearly exciting as following him home.

When I say I need more lube and someone jumps off me to start going down on me with that much enthusiasm… yeah… that’s alright.

I haven’t been rimmed in years. That was also…. quite alright.

I liked it when he bit my nipples. Just a little. Not enough to be trying to hurt me. Just enough to make me squeak.

I like squeaking.

I’m feeling… like… I’m kinda ridiculous. I have no self control at all when it comes to fucking. I mean… I do. There are lots of people I’m not fucking.

But when it’s people I’m already in love with who are telling me over and over how much they love me?

No self control.

I want that.

Yes. Give me more.

More.

More.

I want that. I want you to tell me how much you want me. How beautiful I am. How much you love me.

Yes.

I’m feeling no draw whatsoever to find someone who will make me chase them because they aren’t that into me. Oh good grief no. Why would I waste my time?

It’s raining men. Hallelujah.

I am feeling no end of fortunate right now. And I have another date on Sunday.

/me dances all over the room

Sunday’s date says he will decide if I can write about him after we play. Well fine then. He’s also debating letting me use his name. Which will make several of you raise your eyebrows and go, “Wait… him?”

Yeah. Him.

I started it.

I started feeling interested in him before I got married. I sorta hinted I was interested in playing but I didn’t have enough courage to be forceful then and nothing happened. Then after I was married he asked me to play and I didn’t manage to arrange it during our last stepping out period.

Then I ran into him recently. I uhhhhh was very interested.

So I sent an offer that was fairly respectable from me. I’ve been way more pathetically desperate in my neediness in the past. I’ve slowly increased the raunch at a somewhat reasonable level. I think?

At this point I’m being pretty… graphic… but given what I’m hoping he will do to me, that seems appropriate.

Noah… thank you. Thank you for saying that I can go do whatever the hell I want so I can figure out what the hell do I want?

I don’t even know. I thought I would have a lot more fun telling my submissive no. Then I had a hot naked man telling me he loved me and yeah no.

/me flops to the floor in a heap

I want all the love. All of it. Alllllllllllllllllllllll of it.

I’m tired of saying no.

I don’t want to say no. I want to say yes.

You know what…

I feel like I don’t want to die.

There is no deserve in life. I am not getting these good things because there is justice or because I was carefully weighed and measured and found worthy.

Life is fucking unfair.

But the wheel has turned. I have so much to look forward to.

I get to go forward and say yes to the experiences I want to have. That’s been building in a variety of ways over the last fifteenish years.

I don’t want to say no. Except when I do. And when I say no I’m ok with backing it up with physical force and/or (preferably) long philosophical conversations about why folks need to change their ways.

I can say no. I do it when I want to.

I told the neighbor no in no uncertain terms.

I’m really not interested in folks who are younger than me. I’ve actually turned down several direct propositions in the last week. Err, I didn’t bother to mention them Noah because they were so young I didn’t consider them seriously.

I mean, a 30 year old. Me? No.

Cradle robbing.

I am so funny.

(Ok another one was 23 and holy shit for shoe shine no.)

It isn’t that I can’t say no. It is that I don’t want to say no to people who love me and who are very nice to me.

I’m going to pay for this sleep loss. But I feel like I’m glowing. I feel like it will be easier to say no to things I don’t want. Because there is such a clear distinction between what it feels like to want to say yes.

I wanted the sex tonight. It wasn’t just that I wanted to have sex. I could have been at home having sex with Noah. I wanted to have sex with my submissive. Why. Why. Do I feel like I’m leaving him out and that’s not fair?

No… that’s not it. I mean… I did have the thought.

But no. I wanted to have sex with him. It was hot. He wanted to please me and he succeeded. It was so different from the deity.

I….

Shut up Krissy. No. Don’t do that.

Just say yes. Just say thank you.

Just be grateful you don’t have to pick. Comparison is stupid.

Then what the fuck is up with the Top 5?

Err. It’s not really about comparison exactly. It’s about acknowledging degree of compatibility. I’ve had sex with a lot of people. I know which ones I can go back to most reliably because our interests align.

I find it uhm distinctive that most of my Top 5 has either been through specific treatment for sex addiction or they’ve considered whether that might be true for them.

I have preferences, ok.

We live in a world that says that people like us, the kind of people who go out and fuck hundreds of people are broken. What if we are just like this? If we are safe, and most of us are quite safety conscious, are we just ok?

If I want to love me–is this part of it?

Promiscuity has been part of my life for more than three decades now. In the sense that other people would understand only two decades but I think all that oral counts.

I like variety in sex in a way that most people don’t. When you look at statistics and there are a bunch of guys who claim they’re having lots of sex but you wonder who it is with? It’s with me.

I’m kidding.

Sorta.

I wonder a lot about us outliers. I ask other promiscuous people lots of questions: Why do you do it?

I get some interesting answers. Maybe I’ll tell you in a few more decades when people won’t get so pissed off at me for breaking confidence. It’s too soon. We are still living our stories. It’s not ok for me to talk about them yet. It’s funny how I do these boundaries.

It’s funny what I say and what I don’t say. Lies. Lies of omission. It’s only a sin if you are ashamed to admit you did it.

I skip saying that much about the kids because boundaries.

But uhm if you fuck me then you are crossing into my writing world. Hi.

Because I want to think about you. I want to think about why I want you so much. I want you all for different reasons. I’m not nearly as free as you think I am with telling you why I want you. I can only tell you a small bit to start with.

I’m afraid to tell you all of why I want you. I don’t trust you. I know that doesn’t sound nice. It’s true anyway.

I’d rather piss you off than lie.

What to say. What not to say. Lies.

The process of writing is a process of creation of self. At least for me. I hear those fiction writers are off on some other weird ass trip. Whatever. That isn’t my gift this lifetime.

I kinda wish. Shit it would be nice to get out of my head.

But if I want to deliver the behavior I want to deliver during the variety of environments I will encounter in this life… I need to keep working on a variety of kinds of self control. I often feel abashed about how much of my parenting skills I learned in the bdsm community. I learned how to negotiate. I learned how to read body language and talk about emotional responses to sensations without framing everything as trauma. I learned how to talk about what it feels like to experience something in my body. I learned how to choose joyful shared catharsis instead of isolated self mutilation.

I’d much rather go ask a nice friend to beat me than cut myself. Quite frankly. Because after the beating I will strut like a peacock and get a lot of work done and feel all full of badassery.

After the cutting I will keep my mouth shut and my head down. I will do my best to be unseen. When I am tempted to speak I will touch the wounds and remind myself that it doesn’t matter what I think.

Why is it either/or?

You may not understand my brain chemistry. My hands hurt. I’m not up for that digression.

Suffice to say: the beating is just a better idea. But I so far I keep asking “mild to moderate” sadists and you know what… I’m wondering what lesson there is in that.

Who do I know who just goes to 11? Oh man. How many of those people do I think would actually stop if I said stop?

Uhhhh fuck.

Maybe it is so fucktastically healthy that I’m asking people who will probably max out before me and I need to cope or some shit.

Or keep asking around.

Goooooood grief Kristine.

Decide later. For now: go to bed. Yes I will masturbate first.

It’s raining men. Hallelujah.

(Thanks for the song introduction, Noah. You are so good at bringing things into my life.)

Noah and I continue talking, like we do. I continue to believe that I am lucky to be married to him and I need to not fuck this up. He is being so patient and understanding.

I have been a serious asshole. I didn’t negotiate in advance. I started breaking rules and saying, “Shit shit shit I can’t follow rules any more.”

That’s fucked up. I’m not being good at all.

And he’s being patient with me. I don’t deserve this. I also don’t deserve having Pam come over to make me dinner and waking up to Noah making me breakfast and I get those things too.

Life isn’t really about what you deserve.

He’s my best friend. He is the person in the world I feel safest with. I think we can figure this out. I mean, is it really a bad thing that he’s not an evil sadist? Probably not. It is probably why he can take care of me and love me the way he does. The way I need him to.

Even though I have a hard time with the fact that I have to be directive during sex… if I do just a little bit of it boy is the best lover I’ve ever had. Ok, maybe I want some vacation from being directive… but it’s hard to argue with that kind of success. I get why he wants advice. I do.

I like being married to Noah. I like how we talk. I like how we cuddle. I like how he kisses me. I like how he makes me food. I like how hard he works at the things he thinks are important. I have mad respect for him. There aren’t many people who say, “I will do _____” and follow through on it like Noah does. I watch for that. He’s amazing.

He isn’t perfect and he isn’t everything. But what he is is so good.

Noah sees me in a way no one else alive has any desire to see me.

I can live with stepping out to get my ass beat.

I can’t live without Noah. He points out that I said pretty much exactly that about four days before I broke up with him the first time.

Yeah… notice how even breaking up with you that time didn’t involve me being able to stop climbing into bed with you? Or hanging out with you? Or cooking you food? Or wanting to work out with you so I could flirt and beg you to be inappropriate with me?

You haven’t been someone I could walk away from. Even when I tried.

No one else has ever given me permission to tell my story.

And shit, at this point it would mean split custody and dealing with dispersal of property… given that you’ll let me go fuck whoever when I get a little nutty…

I need to stay. This is the only route to happiness for me. I know it. I mean, if you die (please don’t) I hope I can figure something else out… but I really doubt I will ever be this happy without you.

No one else will ever want to go through years of experimentation to figure out how to feed me without making me sick. And honestly you know more about it than I do. You pay more attention than I do. You care more than I do about my health.

Thank you for forgiving me for breaking rules. Thank you for forgiving me for being shitty about telling you that I broke rules. This is part of why I compulsively log all of my fuck ups here. So that even if I can’t say it I’m not completely lying.

Which isn’t good enough. I need to stop it.

I am kind of ridiculously grateful that you have agreed to “no rules” for a while here. Yeah. I do need it. I need to be a free agent just deciding based on my whims and not based on what somebody else wants for a while.

I need to spend some time figuring out what I want. And that means not caring about what you want.

I mean… I have to only do stuff that is kosher for me and whomever I am playing with. Respect and boundaries and yada yada. I know. I’m trying for that. I’m trying to not be too pathetic in my begging for people to blow right past where they are comfortable and hurt me until I’m unable to walk.

I know that most people just won’t do that because yeah… liability…

I know. I’m trying to uhh respect some boundaries somewhere. I’m not sure how well I’m doing. Oh fuck everything.

Do I have boundaries right now?

I will discover them in the moment. I want to discover them in the moment. I want to find out what they are because right now I don’t even know and that is bothering me.

I have no idea where my limits are right now. I’ve been operating under other peoples limits for so long I feel like I don’t know who I am.

“In addition to being a hippy-dippy housewife Krissy also moonlights as a severe masochist. Details at 11.”

Who am I?

What about me is worthy of love? What about me is worthy of tolerance whether you love it or not? What about me is ok? What about me is wrong? Wrong for whom? Why does it matter?

I called it in January. 2016 is going to be a fucktastically intense emotional year. What about me is worthy of love.

I want to be able to talk to my mother someday. I cannot do so until I love myself completely without her regard. I have to love myself or I may leave that conversation and go drive off a bridge. (Side note: I am continuing to hand write a book for her. Progress. Not close to completion. God this hurts, emotionally. The handwriting process is fucking intense for me with all my issues around handwriting. Anyway. That’s a different processing thing going on. I’M SO TIRED OF PROCESSING. CAN’T I JUST CRY FOR A WHILE?!)

Because I don’t think she’s going to love me and that’s going to have to be ok. That has to be ok.

I can’t let that end me.

My children deserve better than that from me.

I’m still thinking about that thing that is weighing on my heart. A thing about promises and what I can really and truly be. I’m still not going to admit publicly what it is. I have told Noah what I’m thinking about because thinking about this makes me so frantic that he needs to know why I’m flipping out. He lives with me and has to help cope for the amount of strain I feel.

He cares so much about how our children are treated. He has been willing to jump through any hoop I put in front of him with regard to helping with the kids. He does monitor my behavior. He assists me in figuring out self care so that I have more patience to give. He makes sure I don’t get to be too much of an asshole. He will tell me my tone of voice is inappropriate.

(This isn’t a constant thing because I do well most of the time. But we don’t act like parents are perfect.)

There is no chance I could be the parent I am without the amount of support I have gotten from Noah. I won the lottery.

I don’t know that I am that good of a parent. But I know that whatever good I have been able to do has been because of the privilege Noah has given me and the support he has generously offered.

Maybe it is good he isn’t more sadistic and selfish. Really really really good.

Noah isn’t the first person to ask me to marry him. He’s the only one where I ultimately decided it was a good idea to say yes. I put him through hell as a courtship. Then ran away to get married in secret because I couldn’t handle having anyone look at me as it happened. Would I be able to keep this promise?

Who knows.

It’s been almost ten years. I think I have mostly kept the promises I made. Good thing monogamy wasn’t actually on the list.

I have a date tonight. And a date tomorrow. And another on Sunday. I’m going to go take a nap. I’m going to need my strength.

I’m sure I will tell you how it goes. At least a little. Maybe. We’ll see. Maybe all you’ll find out is “Will see again.”

Hopefully I live up to my advertising.

I’m whinging on Twitter about this and I want to be clear in my overall documentation.

I’m not upset that people turn me down. I’m upset because I put people in the position of having to say no and that upsets a lot of people. Many people feel just about violated by having to refuse something they don’t want as having something happen to them by surprise. I’ve had people get so mad at me.

So far so good on what I’m asking for these days. No one has blown up and been very angry. There are lots of “I’m up for x but not y or z” which isn’t a flat no in the same way. But it’s a lot of negotiation.

I’m feeling very anxious about enforcing this on people. Am I being an asshole? I don’t know.

Of all the people I’m negotiating with the only person I was a dumbass and flat asked for assurances that I’m not pushing too hard is my submissive. I have to kind of pretend that I assume everything is going fine with everyone else. I’ll tell him I’m freaking out directly. Because shit dude it’s been 15 years and if I can’t say that at this stage fuck everything.

Is it ok that I’m asking you for things that you have to say no to. I don’t want to be a problem.

Not that he’s saying no to much. I’m not upset about him having boundaries. Anything but.

Having boundaries is ok. I feel very bad that I’m so bad at figuring out where other peoples boundaries are. I need really explicit verbal conversation in order to understand and usually I need to repeat questions a few times and…

I feel like a bully. I feel like a monstrous predator who is trying to force people to do things. Even though I’d prefer people say no to things they don’t want. Making people say ‘no’ hurts them sometimes.

I’m forcing “Ask” culture on “Guess” culture people sometimes and that bothers them a lot.

I’m reminded of the chick this last year who told me in great detail how horrifying rude I am to ask for things instead of just accepting what is offered to me.

You know what… without asking… people just don’t fucking offer what I want.

Does that mean it is wrong for me to ask? Because people rarely automatically offer up what I want?

I don’t know. She clearly thinks so. My submissive says, “This is just how relationships go. You are fine. We are negotiating.”

I want to cry.

I’m sorry that I am not good at intuiting what is “right” and what is “wrong” and I need you to tell me explicitly.

I feel like a failure.

I know that this feeling is today. I don’t think it is always. But right this minute I feel like I’m hurting people and I feel scared of that.

Luckily today Noah is going to beat me six ways from Sunday and maybe I’ll forget.

It is 1:26. I woke up at 12 and haven’t been able to slow my thinking down since. First: have to pee. Then pain stuff. My back hurts still. This period has been awful. My arms were hurting. I was up and down to get water, Ibuprofen, my braces… after an hour and a half of racing thoughts on top of mounting physical whines… fuck it.

What am I so worried about?

I want. That means I’m going to ask people for things that they may not want. Oh I don’t like myself very much for that. I feel really bad for the fact that I spend a lot of time putting people on the spot and causing really awkward and uncomfortable feelings. People are going to have to say no to me.

Hundreds of people have already said no to me in the past. I have no reason to suspect the future is going to change that dynamic much. Asking people I already know is only so much more successful because… complicated.

I don’t god damn know how to read signals. Outside of a few glaring examples I’m usually not real clear who is interested in me for what.

This is a rather distinct problem as I treat other people wanting things from me as permission to be that thing.

Which is kinda ridiculous and lame at this stage of the game.

I’m completely freaking out about how some of my uhhh more conservative friends are going to feel about this uhm U-bend turn in behavior lately. I haven’t done any of this while they’ve known me. It was all in the distant, more theoretical past.

Hi. I iz weird. I hope you still like me.

I’m scared.

When I was tossing in turning in bed I started thinking about the things I want to ask for and I felt so ashamed I wanted to go in the bathroom and start cutting just because then I won’t go out and ask anyone for anything because I’ll be too ashamed and…

No.

No.

No.

I’m not going to cut myself down to size anymore. No. No. No.

On Twitter, a woman I follow (Feminista Jones–just so it’s been said) posted a link to a woman who wrote about accepting compliments on dating sites with “I know” and how that leads to a lot of abuse.

Like a fucking moron I spent a while reading the comments. A shocking number of people believe that if you don’t perform humility appropriately you deserve any amount of abuse people want to throw at you.

You know what? I don’t think I’m pretty. I don’t think I’m beautiful. I think I’m kinda a funny looking motherfucker. But for the fucking rest of my life I vow that if someone tells me that I’m pretty/beautiful/whatever I’m going to say, “I know.”

I won’t say thank you unless I asked for the compliment before it was delivered.

Why?

Because I’m a rude motherfucker.

Because I want to know this about myself without it being about you or your opinion. Because if you are the kind of person who believes I deserve abuse if I have positive self regard I want to know that as fast as humanly possible so I can get the fuck away from your disgusting self.

Shiny change of topic. I’m hunting so I went bra shopping. Mostly… I just don’t wear them cause I don’t give a shit and Noah doesn’t either. This was something I argued about with the friend who took me shopping.

The contention was: if I dress up for Noah in fancy lingerie/makeup he will be inspired to greater than normal heights over my sweats/t-shirt ensembles.

To this I say… you really don’t know Noah. It doesn’t matter what I have on. It really doesn’t. It matters how much I strut/push/seem interested.

Ok, now it is true that I turn on more in the dressing up process so usually I strut more (thus hunting meaning I go bra shopping) and that’s fun. But no really Noah doesn’t care. If I wear uncomfortable shoes and put a whole bunch of effort into my appearance… our sex life stays static. There isn’t really a spike. I’ve checked.

After ten years you don’t think I check that shit!?

Ahem.

Heh.

That’s the hilarious thing about keeping records of your sex life. I haz the data.

Ok, we do both like dressing up sometimes for a role play scene. But it has been years. Sad face.

I won’t play where my kids can hear and we haven’t had overnight babysitting much in years.

Other source of anxiety: how is this impacting the kids? I don’t think this is impacting my time with them that much because it is coming out of personal time. I’m just getting less alone time.

I can’t get to the point of no personal time but I’m not close to that.

Given how much work I’m pulling off, I think hunting is actually helping me with the kids. I’m being pretty damn patient. I’m not yelling much. I haven’t screamed recently. I’m being clear with expectations and boundaries. We are having good conversations. I’m not being good at record keeping, but Eldest Child is actually making a lot of progress on school-y stuff lately by choice.

I’m feeling realllllllllllly bad about asking people for things they then have to turn down.

But I’m a lot more scared to stop asking. This process feeds me. It makes me have more to give my kids. I am so empty. Noah fills me as much as he can (ok the sex puns here are just so bad) but he needs so much work from me…

It’s been a long ten years.

I’m happy to be where I am. I’m happy with how I spent the last ten years. I can honestly say I would not have been physically capable of doing much more work.

I am so grateful I get to work with and in front of my kids.

That’s another anxiety brain monkey: god home schooling is selfish. It’s not just selfish because I’m keeping my kids from having other opportunities and I’m limiting them to what I can offer (although that’s there). It is that I am not helping to make the system less abusive for other kids. Why aren’t I organizing the PTA to refuse homework in elementary school?

Because I’m selfish. Because that would be a hard horrible uphill losing battle and I’ve lost so many battles to this system already.

I’m selfish because I was highly trained by a public education system and instead of being the fucktastically effective teacher I am for hundreds or thousands of children I am picking two.

I borrow kids whenever their parents will let me.

I want to have impact on more kids than just mine. But I need to see to mine first. Because I’m selfish.

I had them. I made them. I made them on purpose out of pure selfishness. Because I wanted to meet them. Because I wanted to know if something that came out of me would be as intrinsically bad and horrible as I thought or if maybe I could make something good.

So far so good.

What a horrible science experiment life is.

On a regular basis people tell me they admire me because when I had children everything changed. I upended every part of my life to have a new center. I don’t think that is the “correct” way to live life. I think that is what I had to do to try and create a less broken system given where I was coming from. I made them because i wanted to have no choice but to be something different. I’m a mom now. I’m not just a mom. I’m their teacher too. The buck stops here if there is a problem. It is my fault. I can’t blame a care provider or class mate or other authority figure.

If there is a problem… it is me. I have to change me in order to change how I am modeling behaving in order to fix behavioral problems in my kids. If there is a problem I have to learn how to differently express the boundaries until the kids can understand.

One of the things that made me so effective as a teacher was the fact that I consider it the teachers failure if a student doesn’t learn something. I remember one test one time where an entire unit just… failed. Something like 80% of the kids in all periods failed this exam.

I wept and apologized. I told every period that I let them down and I am so sorry I wasted their time with such bad teaching. I am very sorry that we will have to repeat this information and still get through everything else and that is all my fault. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Guess what? They fucking learned it after that. Not because I forced it or drilled anything. Because I found more creative ways to teach.

Teaching is about inspiring people to want to remember something you need them to know. It isn’t something that can be demanded. You can’t force people to learn. You can get people to rote memorize things… you can’t force them to learn.

Learning is about leaps and connections and being able to apply things in a cross curriculum fashion. Not being able to do a math worksheet in a given period of time. I believe in cross curriculum education.

I was told that kids need a math class to learn all the ways to solve math problems.

Pshaw. You clearly don’t have any idea how much math we use. We talk about many many many ways to solve problems. Because there is no one way to solve all problems. Given that I spent my childhood being told I was bad at math because I was at grade level (compared to my reading scores, which were off the charts high) I’m shocked at how being a maths-person is just part of the identity of this house.

We talk geometry, algebra, and make references to more complicated maths just as a matter of course. “How would you figure this out?” We talk about how to solve problems and we do arithmetic for fun. (Which is how you fucking know it isn’t at my initiation because I don’t think arithmetic is fucking fun.)

We are talking about combining fractions more and more. I gotta say… it freaks me out how easily these kids pick up concepts. I struggled with some of these into college.

It must be from Noah.

Home schooling is selfish because my kids are going to be so fucktastically weird. They will never be able to conform very well. They are going to be weird, weird fucking weird.

I like them so much.

We are all selfish in different ways. Is it ok? Is it ok to keep asking for things I’m not going to get? Asking for kinds of relationships and interactions that other people don’t want?

Getting rejected sucks. I get told “no” and “I don’t want to” a lot. That’s the downside of asking.

I HAVE NO PITY FOR PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN THAT THEY CAN’T DATE BUT WHO NEVER EVER ASK ANYONE OUT. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH REJECTION I DEAL WITH TO GET TO BEING THIS SLUTTY?!?!?!!?!!!

Yes, it is easier for a girl to get laid. I don’t just want to get laid. I want a very specific, in high demand skill set.

Noah may think I’m all that and a bag of chips but I’ve been in this market long enough to know that I can only be so demanding with some people. He’s going to keep being shocked by how often I’m turned down and I’m going to keep nodding and saying, “Yup. That’s how it goes.”

And when people do say yes they usually say yes to what they want to say yes to which isn’t quite the same thing as what I wanted and them’s the breaks.

Can I sleep now? Should I hide eggs first? Probably. Go get phone for flashlight…

I’m still high from last night. Today I realized something kinda funny: I’m good at turning people I have sexed into friends and it is kinda hard walking back to sex from friendship.  Awkward. How do you send signals when you’ve already sent so many “don’t touch me” signals.

Oh man. Complicated.

I have this sneaky suspicion that I want something I am not going to get. That’s ok. Life is like that. Even if I don’t get what I want from this interaction I’m going to cheer like hell for you to get what you want in life. I don’t like this word “deserve” but I think that if you got what you wanted you’d be good at it.

It is weird liking people.

I’m having fun. I hope I am helping other people have fun.

I’m nervous. I’m nervous about how to keep all these balls in the air. Oh I’m having fun. I still feel full of want. It’s deeper and fuller than it was a few days ago. It isn’t as frantic. Thanks, Daddy. I needed that. It really helped.

It also helps that Noah and I have four days straight next week where we are going to do heavy sm because we can. Thank goodness for camp.

Because we want to do it. Because we haven’t seriously played in years because getting the right size and shape of spare time is hard. 

I have such an interesting time visiting the community. Many of the people who were the village elders when I was a snot nosed 18 year old are still there. Still doing what they were doing.

I feel like they look at me differently now. I was talking to Noah about this. I said it feels weird that they treat me with so much respect. He says that usually people don’t have the experience of becoming the kind of grown up their elders respect and that is why it feels so weird to me. I don’t know. I’ve never been someone else.

I feel like the people I grew up respecting now act like they look up to me and that is fucktastically weird for me. I mean… I don’t think they “look up to me”. Shit this stuff is awkward.

I’m a peer. I am no longer a snot nosed kid they mock and deride. They listen to me with respect instead of rolling their eyes. No one has denigrated my opinion in a long time.

When I start kicking the crap out of people for being rude no one even thinks to tell me I shouldn’t because it is just expected that I’m going to do whatever the fuck I’m going to do if you start it.

I don’t start shit. But if you start it I’m going to bring it.

Dominance challenges. Dick contests. Posturing.

Oh motherfucker I can do that.

But I’m told I don’t posture any more. I just lay down my resume and look at you cold because I can back my big talk up and I’m still underselling myself. Ahem.

I’m thrilled to talk loudly about what a wimp I am as everyone watching winces every time I get hit. They know that was a really fucking hard hit.

I’ve spent a lot of years not getting hit and not hitting people. But do you know what I like to do of a Thursday night? (Or really any other night of the week.)

I like to go find one of my dear friends. Because I rarely switch with the same person, as I slink up to someone fluttering my eyelashes… it’s clear what I want. Whether that is to make you cry or for you to try as hard as you can to make me cry.

I really like calling myself a wimp. I’ll say it loud and long. But people who evaluate this sort of thing with credibility tell me that I’m an incredibly heavy masochist. I’m a small woman, so I can’t take what some of the big guys can take.  (Or hell, even some of the big gals.) But I’ve done scenes where audience members had to leave to vomit from fear. Because I’m happy to play until I’m screaming and screaming and screaming and fighting to get away. I’m happy to be hit with canes and single tails until I bleed.

There’s this one guy in the scene. He told me he really wants to cut me open and solder the wounds closed. If I run into him again… I will ask if he is still interested.

Why? Because in twelve years I’ve never been able to get that out of my head.

Fuck yes I’d like to try that.

I would trust that specific man to do this for a long list of very specific reasons I’m not going to list here because hello identifying information.

Some people can’t be as out as me.

I haven’t done tile in two days. I’m so weary of doing it. My hands hurt. Breaks are good. Also: I have to wait for another delivery before I can finish the tree. I should finish the mountain and work on the other corner of the shower.

Those are the most important bits that need to be tiled. The rest is just gravy. I mean, I’m going to do the rest because I have a fuck ton of tile but I’m not going to do all the walls in both half bathrooms in tile. Too expensive. My heart is sad. Paint to the rescue. Good motherfucking thing I know how to use a paintbrush.

I’m afraid I know why I’m sorta procrastinating on tile.

I told myself that if I finished all the tile way before these twerps are done with the remodel… I’d fix some of the yucky paint in the kitchen since I’m going to be dealing with the remodeling chaos still anyway.

I’m perilously close to having to repaint the ceiling. Shit. Years ago the light fixture broke and we replaced it with something not even close to the same size and the ceiling looks like shit and it bugs me.

I want to repaint it to look like a jungle.

Because I’m me. That’s why.

I’m not committing to repainting the whole kitchen right now. That would be nuts. My arms are pissed. (Why do I type? Because I feel weirdly lonely. Even though I had a date today and good sex and I could be snuggling with my family. But my stomach hurts quite a bit so I’m smoking and… that means not with the family. So I talk to myself instead of babbling in IM because after a while I just feel… pathetic.)

I’m going to bed any minute. I hope I’ll sleep late. Tomorrow I get a massage. Yay! My arms!

Tomorrow my tasks are: massage, dispensary run, tile, negotiate with Noah about our upcoming dates, and hang out with the kids. It should be a nice day. (The dispensary run and the negotiating will happen during the window of time when the kids are with the babysitter. Obviously.)

I don’t feel lonely. That’s not fair or accurate. It’s the wrong word. I actually feel very connected, lucky, blessed, and like my life is incredible beyond measure.

But I’m hunting for something and I really don’t know what it is. What I’m doing isn’t scratching the itch yet. I think…

I think I need to stop talking before I get myself in trouble. Goodnight.

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.