Change in all the areas of my life...

Turn the lights down low
Take it off, let me show
My love for you insatiable
Turn me on, never stop
Wanna taste every drop
My love for you insatiable

This is kind of a cheesy song, I suppose, but it's also both ridiculously romantic and ridiculously sexy and it keeps playing in my head over and over and over and over today. "Anniversary part 2" last night, with fancy takeout and flowers and the most gorgeous pair of earrings (with symbolism even!) and then *hours* of stoned sex.

(I am actively not exaggerating - if anything the time dilation effect was in full swing so it was something like 3 hours but felt like 6 or more, I kept looking at the time and being surprised it wasn't later.)

It's so funny that OKC used to ask - maybe still does, I don't even remember whether my account is turned on at the moment, I certainly haven't logged in for over a year - "Do you think drug use with your partner can be a romantic activity?" It was always a weird question to try to answer, as it's such a situational thing. There are times in which getting drunk or stoned is the farthest possible thing from romance, just straight up hedonism at best. But there are also times that it's... jeez. Describing something trippy is always so clichéd, like I think I've experienced something profound when it's really just chemicals... and yet aren't all thoughts, and really all experiences, just chemicals in your brain?

So when I say that there were moments in which I was inside an amethyst kaleidoscope, or moments when my body WAS the kaleidoscope and the colors and the light were bouncing around inside my skin, following his hands, that was at the very least real to me. When I say there were moments when his eyes were the green blue ocean I was drowning in as waves of sensation flooded me, when I say that there were moments when I thought every nerve in my body had somehow been short circuited together so I felt every touch through my whole body, when I say I came so hard and for so long it was like one long orgasm with peaks that just kept hitting over and over and over, when I say that there were moments in which it almost seemed I was feeling exactly what Artist was, and vice versa (we've always had near Tantric connection somehow, where somehow I can feel his pleasure in my body, but this was much much more than that).... when I say there were moments between the sex where I was almost crying because my body couldn't hold the amount of love I was feeling... All those things were real, in some sense, whether or not there's any objective reality behind these descriptions.

And I write this to remember, write this because I'm still shaken to the core the next day by the intensity of all of this, of him, of us.
 
Oh! And I almost forgot to mention - I may post a picture of this when I get it *really* done, but I have my own bedroom now and it's gorgeous! Painted + new bed, bedding, curtains, a fancy chest/ottoman for kink toy storage, and rearrange everything and as Joan says, "it looks like a grownup lives here now"! I love love love it. Still need to get a new slipcover made for the chair - I already have the fabric, just need to mail it and the current slipcover to a friend who's far better at sewing than me and does this stuff professionally. And the walls are still bare - I have a print already framed that I want in one spot, I know, and I'm looking for stuff to put elsewhere. One wall *begs* for a gallery wall and I'm kind of pondering, since I have a couple suitable images already, one made of B&W or B&W adjacent subtle erotic and/or romantic art. Not 100% sure I should, given kid, but it'd make me wildly happy.

And... it really does help me, mentally, to have Knight sleep elsewhere if we're not going to be intimate. I'm not sitting there *waiting* to see if he'll get around to making a move. So yay.
 
I thought that splitting bedrooms would improve my relationship with Knight a little, like I said in my last entry.

It’s ... actually improved it a _lot_. Like we’ve had sex 2x this week and it was even mostly spontaneous and not, like, prefaced with ridiculous “are you actually into me”conversations. I’m cuddled more and kissed more than I have been in years.

If things keep up like this I won’t have anything to blog about!
 
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

My marriage is old enough to vote today, and while I love my husband in ways I never would have dreamed eighteen years ago, I do still love him madly - he’s my own personal bad idea bear and I’d marry him again now, still, even knowing every complicated moment that’s happened since.

And that’s... something, really, given how few people can say that. Hell, both my sisters (biological anyway, the word implies a deeper relationship than we have since we didn’t grow up together, but then one of them is damn near my clone to a scary degree) both left their partners within the past few months.

My lover... well I sent him the poem that that quote is from today for Valentine’s along with another far sillier/nsfw text “card”, because I woke up with him in the best possible way and it really does take something silly and something sexy and something beautiful to try and wrap words or even concepts around what is between us.

And it’s funny because this morning I realized at this point both Knight and I have relationships that (calendar wise anyway) are as old as our relationship was when we got married. And time really isn’t the definition of a relationship - I was with DinoActivist back in the day nearly twice as long as I was with HipsterBoy, and yet in terms of impact on me it doesn’t even compare. But it’s still an odd realization to have (and part of me wonders if in another life I would have married Artist, even while knowing that on a practical level we’d be terrible life partners just from approaching the world so differently even while those differences are utterly perfect in a not-practically-entangled lover.)

I mean, in some ways I’m enough of a relationship anarchist that none of those questions really matter, but sometimes the programming is hard to overcome and so I wonder.
 
I totally get the stoned sex feelings you described. Pixi and I did shrooms on our anniversary a couple days before you posted that... we had a fire and Prosecco and sushi by the fire, then made shroom tea and ... sex sex sex. Shrooms are such an aphrodisiac for me. So... yeah. What you said.
 
I totally get the stoned sex feelings you described. Pixi and I did shrooms on our anniversary a couple days before you posted that... we had a fire and Prosecco and sushi by the fire, then made shroom tea and ... sex sex sex. Shrooms are such an aphrodisiac for me. So... yeah. What you said.
I would say that sounds lovely, except I've never done shrooms at all! Artist and I have discussed the possibility a few times, but haven't really sought it out yet - I am a little bit too apprehensive about the possibility of a bad trip, and from what I understand that apprehension is a good way to guarantee having one, so there's a bit of a catch 22 there. Not to mention I'm already paranoid about things that cause nausea (see: emetophobe) so it may just be one of those experiences that is not a good fit for me.
 
If you take a small amount, you don't really trip. It's not like acid at all. You'll barely get any visuals and you'll stay connected to reality. It's a lot more mellow. Grounding.
 
I'd rather like the weather people to quit predicting ice storms. Artist left Wed night late instead of spending the night so he didn't get iced in here (ok I'll admit I totally wanted him iced in). On the other hand, we never got enough ice to lose power or anything like that yesterday so I shouldn't complain.

Really, though, my biggest problem at the moment is my semi-feral 9 year old. I hate hate hate that I'm as frustrated as I am with him half the time; hate that I can't figure out how to connect with him or... yeah. Even Knight is getting frustrated with him, as he's just so _stubborn_ and never ever ever believes that anything he does is wrong ("but they started it" ... if I had a dollar for every time he's said that...) nor does he believe that anyone can tell him "no" about things he wants to do ("don't run in the house, go outside" "but I want to run and I don't want to be cold"...). I once read that severe ADHD ended up with kids with about 30% slower emotional development than normal, in terms of impulse control... which means I have a 9 year old that acts in many ways more like a 6 year old. ::sigh:: That pretty much scans to what is going on here.
 
I had an interesting realization this morning - well, I've known it for a while, but I didn't realize just how strong my reaction was. I've spent this whole quarantine very very specifically NOT doing anything (that I didn't have to) if I had to *change* how I did it.
  • Working from home? that's fine, I already did that, and if anything that got better since everyone else did too (it wasn't so odd to have my cat show up in the background of my video conference, for instance).
  • Grocery shopping? I already did online shopping, so having it delivered instead of picked up was an improvement. The idea of having to go into a store with a mask though completely squicks me out, and not from a safety point of view (as I've written before, I'm not nearly as scared of the virus as I should be.)
  • Zoom D&D? that's fine as I hadn't played in years so this is a "new" thing.
  • Virtual (hobby) events - not just no but hell no. I cannot cannot cannot bring myself to dress up in medieval clothing and sit in front of a computer in some weird and wrong version of the thing we do. I just... the very idea makes me want to run away and I don't understand why we couldn't just put the whole thing on hold.
  • (Ditto kink events.)
  • Social distanced outdoor hangs with friends - these feel worse for me, in some ways, than not seeing people at all. If I'm texting people that's a "normal" behavior for me, if I'm sitting there seeing them in masks from feet away I can't pretend that things are normal-ish and I'm just traveling or something. Not to mention the lack of facial expressions in a situation that ought to have them freaks me out, and understanding what people are saying while wearing masks is 5x more difficult than it should be.
I'm not sure how to deal with this. Sure things are getting better with vaccines but am I shooting myself in the foot by refusing to do ANYTHING until EVERYTHING is mostly back to normal?
 
I had an interesting realization this morning - well, I've known it for a while, but I didn't realize just how strong my reaction was. I've spent this whole quarantine very very specifically NOT doing anything (that I didn't have to) if I had to *change* how I did it.
  • Working from home? that's fine, I already did that, and if anything that got better since everyone else did too (it wasn't so odd to have my cat show up in the background of my video conference, for instance).
  • Grocery shopping? I already did online shopping, so having it delivered instead of picked up was an improvement. The idea of having to go into a store with a mask though completely squicks me out, and not from a safety point of view (as I've written before, I'm not nearly as scared of the virus as I should be.)
  • Zoom D&D? that's fine as I hadn't played in years so this is a "new" thing.
  • Virtual (hobby) events - not just no but hell no. I cannot cannot cannot bring myself to dress up in medieval clothing and sit in front of a computer in some weird and wrong version of the thing we do. I just... the very idea makes me want to run away and I don't understand why we couldn't just put the whole thing on hold.
  • (Ditto kink events.)
  • Social distanced outdoor hangs with friends - these feel worse for me, in some ways, than not seeing people at all. If I'm texting people that's a "normal" behavior for me, if I'm sitting there seeing them in masks from feet away I can't pretend that things are normal-ish and I'm just traveling or something. Not to mention the lack of facial expressions in a situation that ought to have them freaks me out, and understanding what people are saying while wearing masks is 5x more difficult than it should be.
I'm not sure how to deal with this. Sure things are getting better with vaccines but am I shooting myself in the foot by refusing to do ANYTHING until EVERYTHING is mostly back to normal?
I think it's fine to find NEW things to do in a new situation.
 
I think it's fine to find NEW things to do in a new situation.
You're not wrong... I just don't want to lose my chosen family because I can't deal with the the weirdness of masks and such - I've already missed some pretty important things, I feel like.
 
You're not wrong... I just don't want to lose my chosen family because I can't deal with the the weirdness of masks and such - I've already missed some pretty important things, I feel like.
Yeah, that would be wise. Will you tell them?
 
Will you tell them?
I'm not sure. Now that I've sort of realized how irrational I was being, that my actions haven't been based on safety but some weird emotional things, I'm sort of sitting with that and trying to decide whether I should allow myself to avoid reality to the degree I have been or whether I should try and approach it a bit more head-on.
 
You're not wrong... I just don't want to lose my chosen family because I can't deal with the the weirdness of masks and such - I've already missed some pretty important things, I feel like.
That said, the CDC's updates on what one can do once vaccinated say at least part of this nightmare will be lessened soon. I 100% plan on having Sunday dinners again as soon as we all have immunity... and that feels so very very close now, comparatively. So that's something.

Not that much else will change, really, although I suppose if I could ever quit working it might be worthwhile to even start thinking about working on medieval clothes again now that it doesn't feel like we're just going to be trapped in this time loop forever. Like, maybe I might get to wear them this fall.

Stopping working might be a bit hard though - I keep overcommitting myself and getting into the same sort of loop that led to this vignette - I get to the point where I'm very very behind on a project and don't communicate and make the whole thing worse. I'm starting to dig out of it but it's still a lot. But I feel like I do literally nothing but work and deal with my kid these days. That's not actually true - part of why I get into these holes is because I get paralyzed and can't work on the thing I need to BUT won't let myself do anything actually fun so I lose hours to playing "just one more silly phone game before I start working for real." Not quite sure how to fix that - I've been pondering seeing if a psychiatrist will add a stimulant to my wellbutrin, because while that has done wonders for emotional stability and improved the ADD a lot, it's still something that gets in my way. (Like, I think I've done 5 other things in the time it's taken me to write these three paragraphs level gets in my way.)
 
They aren't changing guidance here yet for vaccinated people- only fully vaccinated with fully vaccinated indoors, beyond the 33ish days or whatever they say the waiting period is after the second dose. But we're still quite a ways behind you guys.

My kid is devouring my days, too. I hope they hurry on a child vaccine because mine desperately needs some social time. I'm hoping everyone feels better when life has some semblance of normalcy again.
 
It can be hard to reconcile deeply loving who a person is while not loving who they are as a partner to us. It creates a cognitive dissonance. And often when this happens, we contort ourselves trying to change our needs so we can continue to be in relationship with this person we love, which results in a long-term feeling of lack and being unfulfilled. - Lavitaloca Sawyer
I had a conversation about this concept with a friend today - he's struggling with the dissonance between two of his relationships, one newer than the other, in much the same way as I struggle with the dissonance between Knight and Artist sometimes (though their incompatibilities are for wildly, wildly different reasons). It wasn't the sort of conversation that comes to any conclusion ... just like my musings here never do ... but I was sort of... ironically amused at the juxtaposition of that conversation and running across that Facebook post, with my conversations from this morning.

And what happened this morning? Knight and I got into yet another conversation about me not feeling loved or wanted, of course. (and to be fair he doesn't either, I think, but ... somehow it feels like I tell him how to show his love to me better and I don't get the same guidance... )

it wasn't, as these things go, a *bad* discussion, though it hurt as always it mostly wasn't a fight so much as a conversation about the ways we hurt each other and treat each other, good and bad, shading into a meta conversation about how we fail to communicate. I don't really understand how we start talking about emotions and keep taking a left turn into practical, truthfully I think that's one of the biggest reasons I end up feeling unheard. That, and the words we use have VERY different connotations to each other. Take the word "work", for instance - that's actually been a hot button between us for a while now. We'd have these conversations about relating to each other and he'd agree that I'm right and we should "work" on whatever x, y, z practical thing he thought would fix it. And every time he did that I would get pissed at him because if it was something he had to work on, I don't want it, I only want him to do things he's actually feeling.

Sooooo finally I realized that he wasn't using that word the way I do - he (apparently) just meant "he needs to put energy into this thing", not "he's going to do a thing that he needs to do but doesn't particular want to do and only marginally enjoys". (This... may say something about my attitude towards career. I enjoy my job about as much as I can imagine enjoying any career, and I'm fairly good at it. But if money was no object I wouldn't do it, it's not something I particularly identify with, exactly. Knight though... well, he's a stereotypical Capricorn and DOES identify with his job a lot more, so "work," to him, is just "putting effort into something" and while I consider the word fairly negative he considers it neutral-to-positive. ::sigh::

I don't know how to reconcile this thing I have to put so much effort into - and it's worth it, it's just a lot sometimes - with something that's so very *easy* like Artist and I are. Are now, anyway, clearly I have spent much angst on our relationship in the past in these pixels but right *now* it's just so... we just feel and touch and get each other without having to sit there and *translate* the way I sometimes do with Knight.

I mean, I don't know why I'm comparing, it's obviously not as though I have to pick one, nor could I if I wanted to. It's not even, unlike the quote, that I actually feel *unfulfilled*, exactly, and whether it's a lack or not I'm not sure. It's more... I feel like Knight and I could be *better*, that's the real thing, it's not that we're not good... and Artist and I are good in many of the exact places where Knight and I could be better which serves to amplify the difference enough that it's hard NOT to compare.
.
I suppose it's just a mindfulness exercise. Let the thought in, then let it pass - there doesn't have to be an action associated with it, it's just an observation.
 
They aren't changing guidance here yet for vaccinated people- only fully vaccinated with fully vaccinated indoors, beyond the 33ish days or whatever they say the waiting period is after the second dose. But we're still quite a ways behind you guys.
That's basically what they're saying here too, but I become eligible to get a vaccine next week as does Knight, just a question of finding one. And Joan got her first one today. Artist isn't yet and won't be til next group - no health concerns that would move him up in line, and unlike me he's fairly slender so can't just play the "overweight" card. (I consider myself to be about 20 lbs above where I'd be happy right now though apparently I officially hover on the border between overweight and obese, and would have to lose more like 35 or so to get down to "normal". I find this to be utterly ridiculous, mind you; I'm a size 10 in jeans, maybe 12, which is... a smidge above average. But I'm short - 5'3" - soooooo....
 
They aren't changing guidance here yet for vaccinated people- only fully vaccinated with fully vaccinated indoors, beyond the 33ish days or whatever they say the waiting period is after the second dose. But we're still quite a ways behind you guys.

My kid is devouring my days, too. I hope they hurry on a child vaccine because mine desperately needs some social time. I'm hoping everyone feels better when life has some semblance of normalcy again.
That's interesting. Here in the US, the health officials say that you're good to go 2 weeks after the second shot. And we're being told that fully vaxxed grandparents can meet and hug their (unvaxxed) children and grandchildren. They can have dinner unmasked with other fully vaxxed adults. That seems like a contradiction though. Why can you hug your adult children who are unvaxxed, but only hug and have dinner with fully vaxxed friends? Weird!
 
So the theory on the "who you can hug after vaccination" is that if you limit it to vaccinated people + one household, it limits potential spread since they haven't actually *proven* that vaccinated people can't transmit it. Immunologically, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume they can't. But absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence (yet) so they're being officially cautious for now.

And yeah, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with MiniMe once the adults in the house are vaccinated - on the one hand kids really don't get it much, on the other I'm not sure it's going to matter as his best friend's brother is medically complex and I don't know how cautious that family is gonna continue to be post vaccine.
 
Kids do get it, all the time. They just don't get symptoms much, so unless they are tested regularly, like once a week (and that's not happening, of course), no one ever knows.

Big "kids" cramming into bars and nightclubs and now Spring Break areas, are going to pass it around when they go back home, and I bet dollars to donuts we get another spike in 2-4 weeks. Not to mention, Texass and other places are completely opening up despite such a small percentage of fully vaxxed people anywhere in the US or the world. It boggles the mind how stupid people are.
 
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