A Mono's Journey Into Poly-Land (or, "Aw hell, there's no road map?!")

(Well, after editing, this is still over the character limit. Two posts for you!)
~~

Thanks, Thirteenth! :)

I took a bit longer of a break than I was intending. A new round of stomach bug is descending upon us. Pokégirl and Chops both got hit, and I'm hoping it doesn't hit me like it did them... fingers crossed.

An addendum to the first thought exercise:
Finding solitary activities that are nourishing to me truly is a good thing, and I do need to remember that, but honestly? It's not a bad thing to admit that I'm an extrovert, dammit. I like being around people, and that crash I get every single time I come home from work to an empty house is REAL.

I get together with my friends on and off, but they all have lives, and don't live all that close, which makes it more of a "let's plan this a month in advance" type of thing. My neighborhood is nice, but we don't really socialize. So...

I signed up for a few more groups on meetup.com. It's tough when most meetups happen during the weekend (when I have the kids), or cost $$ (like the glass jewelry making group I enjoyed - once :p ), but I managed to find a gaming group that meets on Monday nights right near where I work, and I'm planning to check it out this coming Monday. 'm looking forward to meeting some new folks and seeing if I can get some regular activity out of this. Here's hoping it works out. :)

So, Thought Exercise #2...

This one came about either via Reddit or Twitter or somesuch site linking to a set of questions about resentment. 4 simple questions to help you work through it.

As much as I like to think I have my shit together, I *know* I still have some resentment, so I clicked.

The four questions were:
1. Who do I resent?
2. What did they do?
3. How did it impact me?
4. What was my part in all of it?

I added a fifth question:
5. What do I do going forward?

I knew this stuff, but putting it down on paper (well, electronically, but still...) was eye-opening and a really good kick in the ass.

The things I wrote down are a bit personal, so I'm torn between wanting to blog about it on my other blog, and wanting to avoid hurting people's feelings by dragging some personal stuff up in public. I think I'll need to find some way of editing it in a way that still keeps it pretty powerful without publicly indicting anyone.

Anyhoo... With anonymity via obscurity here, I think what I came up with may be interesting, if not useful for others, so here goes... I'm sure some of it will make you cringe, and I'm sure you'll see my own mistakes here in print long before I did.

Some of this may be kind of confusing, as new things sort of jump in without warning. It's just how my emotions and thought processes went, and I just captured them along the way. Just go with it. ;)

Exercise 1:
1. Who do I resent? Chops. (Yep, let's start with the difficult one to admit)
2. What did they do?
- "Led me on" prior to our official relationship by talking about marriage with me, letting me believe it was a possibility, and pulling it away when we were able to start our relationship.
- Surprised me with Xena's move and left me feeling abandoned (while stating that he "couldn't leave Xena in a lurch")

(Note: about two weeks after I'd bought my house, and was dealing with a major bathroom project - with his help - he went to move Xena cross-country to move in with him. I mention this earlier in the blog, I think, but it was an absolute low point in my security in this relationship: feeling that Xena coincided her move with mine on purpose, feeling abandoned when he went to help her, and dealing with communication issues - hello, crappy cell service in East Bumfuck, Arizona! - that didn't help matters any)

3. How did it impact me?
- Contributing toward my insecurity about the future. He wanted to marry me, until he didn't. How do I really trust what he wants now, when it changed before? How do I not be skeptical about getting a "bait and switch" again?

- Worries that his knee-jerk reactions come out first, before he has time to think, and that those reactions aren't trustworthy.

- Worries that Xena will always have priority over my relationship with Chops.

4. What was my part in all this?
- Being too pedantic about marriage versus "have a life-long relationship with". He DOES want a long-term relationship, but had also stated in the past that he was unlikely to ever marry again (despite talking about marrying me). I chose to believe that his wanting to "marry me" meant more than his desire to never be married again. Meanwhile, we are handfasted, and while it's much more important to him than marriage is, I was still hung up on it not being as "real". Being hung up on the form of that relationship is causing me to hold a grudge where I really don't need to.

- Wanting to believe he wanted marriage so badly that I didn't look at it critically. I stuck my head in the sand and put myself in a position where I could easily be hurt if things didn't go just so. And I was.

- Misplacing this resentment to Xena (see below), and blaming her for changing/ruining things (she was the one who introduced him to the concept of polyamory to begin with).

- Accepting knee-jerk responses without digging deeper - just believing that he obviously wants <x> if he's that passionate about it, and giving up/feeling beaten before ever talking about it.

5: What to do/realize now...
- Forget the terminology (partner/wife/etc) and look at what's behind it. What does he want without all those terms, because that seems to be a better indicator of what's going to happen. (Having "the talk" about how he sees the future was also a nice help here)

- Watch and be suspicious of knee-jerk responses. Question them. Give them time. When he came in the house, pissed off from all the snow, and said he was ready to move to Arizona in a heartbeat, I took this at face value, given other knee-jerk decisions. This led to a lot of avoidable angst. QUESTION it. TALK about it.

- Understand that there is no certainty. Planning is needed, yes (so PLAN things!), but looking for reassurance of the future only goes so far. Realize that each day he spends in a relationship with me in the present BUILDS that future.

- Understand that Xena was not doing something against me when she brought up polyamory with Chops. She wasn't trying to ruin our plans, or take him away from me, or fuck up my life in any way. She was talking about it. He identified with it.

(Continued in next post)
 
Next one...
1. Who do I resent? Xena.
2. What she did
- Already mentioned the "talked to Chops about poly" thing (misplaced resentment there).
- The move. I was upset when she told me that she wouldn't move out for "at least a few months", and then coincided her move with mine.
- Other things I felt were disrespectful to my relationship with Chops, and me as a person (telling me during a difficult moment that, "well maybe you'll cross paths later in life" if I couldn't handle a relationship now - it felt very "I win / you lose" at the time), doing very public "coupley" things on Facebook, showing up late to Xena/YouAreHere activities, sometimes hours late.
- For acting like Chops's "welcoming committee" on facebook - answering for him when people comment on his status, or answering for the two of them, when the original comment was to Chops alone.

3. How it impacted me
- I felt like she was exerting territorial control. That I wasn't allowed to have a week's worth of time with him - ever. That this proved that she would always come first by having Chops come out to help her while I felt abandoned.

This still manifests itself into my feeling that she still exerts some level of territorial marking/control, and that me and my time are disrespected in general. Her FB posts have been interpreted by me as evidence of the former, while her lateness when we get together for activities are evidence of the latter.

As a result, I question her motives constantly. I do not want to hang out with her, I don't trust her, and I find it hard to relate to her. I am envious of her relationship with his family (even though I'm happy with the relationships *I* have with them) because I feel she's staking her claim as THE partner by being as prevalent in the rest of his life as she is. This gets reinforced when I see the "FB welcoming committee" thing.

4. My own part in this
- Attributing to malice what can be attributed to naïveté or just not thinking about me at all in her decision-making process (when she SHOULDN'T be).
- Taking her desire to fix things at face value and getting upset when it'd fail because she doesn't understand my bugaboos. (Xena would offer to fix the FB thing, and then get irritated later because she felt limited about what she could post)
- Being vague about times ("late morning" versus "10am")

5. What to do
- Stop accepting Xena's offer to fix things or change things, and don't expect or want her to. We are different people who don't really get what makes each other tick (or break), and it just dooms her to failure and future resentment. I need to (and am beginning to) learn to deal with these things for myself and not rely on her actions.

- Understand that her decisions with Chops do not have to take me into account. CHOPS should take me into account if we will be impacted, but it's not up to Xena. Their relationship is theirs. Ours is ours. Even when the public pieces bleed together.

- Take my relationships with Chops's family for what they are. I don't really WANT the "mom" moniker from Choplet, and it did make me a bit uncomfortable (to clarify: his 20-something son made a comment on FB that equated Xena to a 2nd mom, and me to a different kind of mom figure in looser terms, and I was HIGHLY uncomfortable with that, although it was sweet). Why am I envious of it when he's close with Xena? I didn't want to be a step-parent because I'm personally acutely sensitive to what happened after my dad died and my sisters started calling my mom's BF 'dad'. I need to realize where this comes from and not hold it against anyone else when I'm more reserved about impacting their relationships with their parents. That's *my* issue.

- Be CLEAR with times. If I want her here for 10am so we can leave before lunch, SAY THAT. Do not assume that "lunch" to someone means 12pm.

- Realize that there is nothing to do about the FB thing. I don't want to answer/talk for him, or presuppose that people are talking to US when they're talking to HIM, and I find it territorial when she does. If I'm not going to try to control her actions, then I need to leave this one be. I don't understand why she does this, but I don't have to. Accept that she does. I don't control her actions, and it doesn't bother him any.

I am happy with the relationships I have right now with his friends and family. I don't NEED to stand up and wave my arms around, and being around for a good length of time will ensure that I'm visible regardless of how much I jump around. Maybe just being cognizant of that is fine. I can be irritated, but I should quit dwelling on it, because at the end of the day, I'm right there too, and people are aware of that.

(Clearly a need for public validation when I'm not the most "lookit me!" person out there, and feeling overshadowed by Xena)

~~
So.
A lot of personal stuff, and a lot of my own judgmental thoughts right there in front of my face. It's a damned good exercise if you follow through honestly.

Do I still have my moments? You betcha. Xena recently posted something on Chops' FB that got my hackles up again, but I went through the exercise and dealt with the emotion, and I was done.

Much better than holding onto that aggravation. Finding a way to move forward is better than holding a grudge against the past.

And hey... Xena and I are chatting once in a while, and it's going pretty well. Yay that. :)
 
Wowzers...

Well, a lot of stuff has happened since I last posted. Some bad (the stomach bug, for one... that little bastard held on for about a week, and BOTH Chops and Pokégirl managed to expose me to it on the same day, so I have NO idea who to blame... the brats) and some good.

I still think the resentment exercise was a good one, although I'm not planning to blog about it on my other blog just yet. It's nice to have the stuff in writing when I'm feeling wonky, so I can review it and see if it's one of the old issues rearing its ugly head. Reading it helps me work through it faster, which is a nice thing.

A bad thing that turned into a good thing happened fairly recently, too, and it's why I tend to be pretty adamant that working through problems is a GOOD thing. As long as it's meaningful introspection, even if it takes a while (like this one did), it helps you figure out what the roots of your problems are, so you can tackle THAT THING or at least recognize it when it comes up again.

I had a weird reaction to an email I received from Xena a while back. We had scheduled a powwow for us all to talk about our shared calendar, since there were a lot of events coming up that we had to reschedule for. The aforementioned stomach bug had hit Chops fairly hard, though, and he had zero energy (not eating will do that to you), so he texted me and begged off, and I was fine with rescheduling. He was beat and needed his sleep. A day or so later, I emailed the both of them and said that we really do need to reschedule the talk, since the events were coming up fairly soon. I got a response from Xena that basically said sure, and thanks for rescheduling because they needed their sleep.

And I got really weird about that response. I felt as though I'd made the agreement with Chops, but really it was the two of them who wanted to beg off, and I just felt weird about it... like "I talked with him about it, not the both of you... or was I really talking with the both of you and not knowing it?" I felt the reaction was way out of proportion, so I chewed on it a bit.

This was right around the same time all the Unicorn Hunting threads popped up on here, so there was a lot of talk of Couple Privilege, and after chewing on it a few days, it whacked me over the head with a hammer.

I don't like being placed in a position where I'm interacting with them as individuals, only to have that suddenly shifted to me interacting with them as a couple. It's jarring, and I end up feeling like I'm on the outside.

Suddenly, a whole bunch of nagging annoyances fell into place. The irritation I have on Facebook, where his friends comment on his posts and she answers them? It feels like it's now THEIR post. Her territory. And now any response is to them and not him. The irritation about seeing all the mooshy-gooshy stuff on Facebook (which I don't see any more)... The reason that I won't stay in a relationship with him if he were to ever get married to her... I don't like feeling secondary to their couple-ness, especially if we're both equal as partners.

It's clearly not over-the-top couple privilege. There's no veto. There's no dictating how our relationship should go. It's a bunch of minor situations where I feel on the outside looking in, and it just bugs.

It was an interesting realization, and I'm glad I finally made it, because it makes those other things just make sense in that context. They're not a whole bunch of unrelated issues that need to be fixed separately. They're all offshoots of the same problem.

Of course, knowing that it's MY problem, I also realize there really isn't much I can do about it. These situations will come up, and even though *I* don't like acting like "a couple" in situations that would seemingly exclude Xena, it's because *I'm* sensitive to it. She's not like that. She's happy to be "a couple" publicly, and I'm sure she'd be fine with me doing it too. I just see it a different way than she does.

So, it's an interesting note to keep in the back of my mind when the next related thing pops up. I can flip back into the database and go, "oh yeah... it's that problem" and either mention it, or not.

So... good thing. Except, when Chops kept bugging me to see what I was chewing on, I told him (once I figured it out), and then HE went all silent and thoughtful about it. Me, not dealing well with silence, figured he was upset, so it made for a stressful day for YouAreHere until he finally talked about it and said that he's just going to make note of it as well... he just had to process it all.

Eventually, a good realization for the both of us, I guess... without there having to be a "solution" for anything. Awareness is a good thing.

Anyhoo... tonight I'm working on a blog post for my other blog about "owning your emotions" (I was asked about it by someone, and I can't remember if it was here or via email, so I'm going to have to go spelunking through the blog thread here to see if I'm forgetting someone... oops :eek: ). Boy, can that be a double-edged sword sometimes. I see the value in it (obviously), but when someone says it as a means of absolving themselves from any responsibility or compassion, it can be a huge slap in the face, and I can see why people hate the phrase. I love being able to dig into both sides of an argument (too bad my high school didn't have a Debate Team... that would have been fun)... hopefully I do the topic justice. We'll see!

Onward and upward. Now to shake the damned cold that DanceGirl gave me. Dammit...

Later, folks! :)

Oh, and I juuuuuuust got the news (as in, I was previewing this post when Choplet called me) that Chops is going to be a Grampy! Hehehehehe... Yay, babies! :D
 
Well... posted a couple blog posts on the "From Baltic to Boardwalk" blog, and now I'm getting ready for vacation. Taking the kids to Phoenix, AZ and the Grand Canyon (with some stops along the way to see family). I'll be off-grid, but I'll catch up with the boards when I get back. WHEE! :D
 
I'm Not Dead! (Bring Out Yer Dead!)

I swear I'm not dead... just been supercalifragiBUSY lately. Holy effin' moley.

Lots to talk about, and with no time to do it, the desire to talk about it turns into a rather lackluster, "What the hell was it that I was going to talk about, anyway...?"

So... just a catch-up in the life of YAH:

The Arizona trip was FANTASTIC. Still haven't posted my pictures online, but at least I got them off the camera. Baby steps, right? ;) We started in Phoenix, went to Prescott to see family, hit the Canyon, and then off to Sedona (and back to Phoenix to hit the zoo and fly out). It may be one of my top three vacations of all time. The driving in between our destinations led to some fun bonding moments (honestly, when the 14-year-old is spelunking through the radio stations and settles on "Collard Greens and Snails," you can't help but bond while you pee your pants in laughter), and I think that has stuck a bit, which is really nice. If you're on the fence about going to either the Grand Canyon or Sedona, I can't recommend either one enough. Just go.

Poly stuff...
Well, Xena and I are conversing a bit more, and that's going pretty well. I think we're trying to find a middle ground between her initial "sisters" thing and my knee-jerk "back off" maneuver in response. I was even blunt about the "I don't want to hang out with you because you've been late every single time" thing, and she took it very well (and apologized, and expressed that she would make it a point to be on time from now on). So, knock wood - we have an antiquing day planned next month and I'm hoping that goes well. At the very least, since I have a minivan now, it can be a very... ah... productive trip. ;)

Otherwise, it's been mostly uneventful. No big meltdowns due to feeling abandoned or anything. Hooray that. Too damned much to do and not enough time to do it, but what else is new? I need a new roof on the garage, I'm working the accounting for mom's estate (thank GOD I didn't need to file taxes for her, or my head would have exploded), I still have a bathroom that's in limbo, and I'm trying to make time to get together with my friends in between all that, time with the kids, and yard work. Oy.

Not that I don't love the yard work. And hey... the mulberry tree has berries this year. Woo-hoo! :)

Other notable events of late: Seeing the BNL / Violent Femmes / Colin Hay show (FANTASTIC!), deciding to join Planet Fitness so I can get off my ass and do some moving around, being hopeful that MiddleSis really HAS kicked meth (Jesus is her new drug, and I'm A-OK with that), and planning a trip out to see BabySis and her fiance in their new home next month (which will be a road trip, unbeknownst to the kids... mua-ha-haaa...).

Because, clearly, I can't NOT pack my time from stem to stern. Wheeeee!

Got a few blog posts (for the other blog) percolating but no time to write. I suppose I should get on that once the accounting paperwork is done.

So yeah. Summary: not dead. Arizona great. Relationship fine. Much stuff going on. Mulberries. Hope everyone else is doing well out there... :)
 
I saw your trip pix on FB and it looked wonderful.

Also, miss pixi is so jealous of your Violent Naked Ladies show! Must check youtube to see if there is anything from that there.

And... YAH and her bf visited miss pixi and me and had dinner in my Pyrex shrine. So fun to meet Chops. Next time, wine tasting, and if you don't get enough stiff antiquing with Xena, we can do that too!
 
Your writing always makes me smile, YAH. I was excited to get the email notification that you had a new post here.

Off to look up "Collard Greens and Snails" on Spotify. That sounds bizarre!
 
thirteenth said:
Your writing always makes me smile, YAH. I was excited to get the email notification that you had a new post here.

Off to look up "Collard Greens and Snails" on Spotify. That sounds bizarre!
Click to expand...

Aw, thanks! :eek:
BTW, the artist is Antonia Lamb, and the album is "Banjo Grandma's Family Album" - no joke. Just... wow.

I haven't found a place where I can actually play it without buying it, but I haven't tried Spotify. Good luck! :)


Magdlyn said:
I saw your trip pix on FB and it looked wonderful.

Also, miss pixi is so jealous of your Violent Naked Ladies show! Must check youtube to see if there is anything from that there.

And... YAH and her bf visited miss pixi and me and had dinner in my Pyrex shrine. So fun to meet Chops. Next time, wine tasting, and if you don't get enough stiff antiquing with Xena, we can do that too!
Click to expand...

Well, dang! Next time, I'll put Miss Pixi on concert distribution! :D They did put a Yahoo Screen link up, so try this: https://screen.yahoo.com/live/event/barenaked-ladies?plVideo=barenaked-ladies-150014222

And wait... "enough" antiquing? *Is* there such a thing?

(It was awesome to get together and meet Miss Pixi this time around! Chops had a fun time, and the Pyrex Shrine is faboo! :) )
 
thirteenth said:
it's on there! I like it. :p
Click to expand...

yeeeeeeeeehaaw! :D

(Okay, so every time I type that in all caps, it comes out all lowercase... is there some sort of weird "anti-yelling" filter on the boards?)
 
Last edited:
Only for the word yeeeeeeeeehaaw. ;)
 
YouAreHere said:
yeeeeeeeeehaaw! :D

(Okay, so every time I type that in all caps, it comes out all lowercase... is there some sort of weird "anti-yelling" filter on the boards?)
Click to expand...
I have experimented with that and discovered that the forum software changes words that are all in caps to lower-case only if the all-caps word is the only thing in the post. If you add more text in upper and lower case to the post, it will keep the caps. I have no idea why it's set up that way.
 
I give up...

I tried. I really did.

I did my research, I took my time to make sure I was prepared, even though I knew there'd be surprises, or just things nobody could anticipate. I know that there's a time to handle things with kid gloves, and a time to just press on and do it.

And I failed.

I give up.

Screw you, wallpaper.
I'm leaving you for paint.
:mad:

(Anyone want one unopened and one "lightly used" roll of pre-pasted wallpaper, a water tray, and a sponge? :p )
 
nycindie said:
I have experimented with that and discovered that the forum software changes words that are all in caps to lower-case only if the all-caps word is the only thing in the post. If you add more text in upper and lower case to the post, it will keep the caps. I have no idea why it's set up that way.
Click to expand...

Aha! That's why, when I had the colon-capital-D after it for the smiley face, it translated it into ":d"

I was able to alter the face, but when I altered the text again, it immediately fell into "all caps" mode and reverted it again.

Fun with filters! :D
 
I make ONE joke post, and all hell breaks loose...

WTF, life?
Where the hell do I start?

Early Thursday morning, my grandfather passed away. It wasn't completely unexpected - he was 94, and had suffered a stroke earlier this year. He had a bit of an uptick in his recovery early on, and then settled into a slow decline over the last few months. He was a strong man, a doctor, with an amazing presence and sense of humor, and his decline was sad and frustrating, although mercifully short, all things considered. He and my grandmother were married for 61 years, and while her independent streak is coming out (she's handling EVERYTHING and taking very little help), I'm still worried for her. :(

He will be missed by an awful lot of people.

*sigh*

Right around the same time, Chops found himself dealing with his own issues when his ex-wife kicked out his daughter for a few days.

Nutshell version: ex is probably at the same mental/emotional state as their daughter, which makes any argument more like a dramatic "I'm not your friend anymore!!" rather than anything more akin to a parent/child relationship. Chops had his daughter for about a week after the "kickout incident", until grandma (who causes her own share of problems) swooped in and took daughter back to mom's. Chops doesn't have custody or placement, so is pretty much unable to do much to fix the situation, other than to go to therapy with his daughter.

Most important in all that is his daughter... then his own sanity, and Xena and I are trying to be there for him through all of it while wondering what it means, long-term. She never wanted to date anyone with kids, so *boom* - suddenly there's a 14-year-old around the house and now what? With me, the distance is the problem, as he needs to be where his daughter is (especially during the work week), which makes the travel up to his home with me much more difficult.

The upside of all this is that Xena and I are pretty much talking and leaning on each other with all of our own uncertainty while we try to be there to support Chops. We're both thankful that he has a broader support system, with all of us and our respective families in his life. Support in, kvetch out (as GalaGirl says), so Xena and I kvetch to each other, make ourselves available for Chops to lean on, and life is going on.

There's more to the story, but I'll leave it there. I just hope that his daughter shows up for the next counseling session and doesn't get pulled out by her mom. She's a good kid, but her "normal" has been thrown out of whack, and will probably remain that way for a while, unfortunately. :(

And if THAT isn't enough, I hear from my cousin tonight - her breast cancer is still there. She "fell through the cracks" after her radiation treatments and never heard back from her doctors until her 6-month scheduled followup. She'll be on chemo drugs long-term for a while and monitored. We talked on the phone for a while, starting with her in tears about our crappy gene pool, and ending with us laughing our asses off and planning to get together next week - which was a good transition, but holy hell.

Life was just scootin' along for a while, but noooooooo...

Eff that. I'm getting together with my cousin and buying the drinks so we can bitch, cry, and laugh all night. I'm helping my grandmother at the services and bringing her a damned lasagna and letting her talk our ears off all day with stories about when they were young (three dates and then they decided to get married! You go, Grandma!). I'm taking Chops out for seafood tomorrow night, pouring him a couple gin and tonics, getting snuggly, and letting him vent about it all. Life is too fucking short to not be there for those who need us.

The bathroom can fucking wait. Work can wait. There are things more important right now.
 
I am so sorry for your loss, YAH, and the troubles with Chops' ex. Humans are adaptable, and I hope his daughter can weather the storm.
 
Thanks, Mags.
I hope she can weather it. It looks like she's starting to play both sides, though, which is too bad. When she's with Chops, she seems fine, but then texts her mom stuff that's designed to wind her up (and tells her she hates it with Chops and wants to leave). I just have to shake my head at it all, be there (and be stable) for the both of them, and hope for the best.

So much going on that's emotionally draining, and while there's a desire/need to be there for those who need us, I have to remind myself that *I* need me, and I should take care of myself too. I've fallen into the "eat crappy food, drink too much, and not enough exercise" rut again, which is easy to do when I'm trying to do ALL THE THINGS. *sigh*

Oh well. I'm taking care of me and Chops tonight and having a nice date night. That's our priority today. :) Step by step, inch by inch...
 
ROAD TRIP!

Headed down with the kids to NC (from NH) to see BabySis and BabySisFiance this past weekend... in the van. And it was friggin' amazing.

Highlights:
- Seeing BabySis in her native environment
- Seeing CollegeFriend and her family for BBQ one night
- Hershey Park
- Carowinds
- Riding the 325 foot coaster FIVE TIMES.
- Meeting BabySisFiance's family
- Having fun with the kids on the car trip (despite Pokégirl's insistence that the car trip was awful)

And I am sooooooo tired. And happy. :)
And after not seeing Chops for 6 days, we're gonna shut the world out tomorrow and reconnect for a bit.

A vacation after my vacation would be nice, but work tomorrow. WHEE!
I'll post more at some point later, but living life takes precedence, methinks. Not that I don't love y'all (<-- NC influence). ;)
 
New blog post (finally) based on a discussion over on the Mono/Poly email lists. It was interesting to see some of the responses from the mono partner's point of view (and some disagreement), and it was a great question to ask.

Sort of a nice way of getting the mono partners to try to put themselves in the shoes of their poly partners for a bit.

http://frombaltictoboardwalk.blogspot.com/

Got another one percolating that's really involving some good self-introspection. There always seems to be that disconnect between mono and poly folks regarding love and romantic love. The whole "you don't love your kids differently" argument that falls flat because it's such a different kind of love and relationship just highlights this. So, I'm digging into what romantic love means to me, and it's been an interesting ride.

On the personal front, I really need to kick the self-improvement stuff back into gear. I fell off the exercise wagon a bit after my vacation, and I need to get rid of this weight so my back doesn't hurt as much anymore (working on my abs wouldn't hurt, either). I still drink too much (or what *I* feel may be too much, even though I get weird looks when I say I drink too much), and those calories don't help either. Blah.

Ah well. It's always something, and I keep spreading myself thin. I like the Monday night gaming because I now have a group of people I can hang out and chat with, and play some fun games (the extrovert in me is soooo happy!), but between Mondays gaming, Tuesdays with the kids, and whatever my schedule with Chops is, I end up having zero time to do stuff around the house during the week. Knock wood - tonight Chops and I hammer in some quarter-round, fill nail holes, paint, and get the damned toilet in the downstairs bathroom (after having only one pooper for over a year). Whee! Let's hope!
 
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