Leaf on the Wind

I never paid attention to the ratings - I had to back out and go check. Apparently, I have 3 stars. Meh. I also have over 161,00 views, so someone is liking what they read, or at least obsessed with what I have to say!
 
I never paid attention to the ratings - I had to back out and go check. Apparently, I have 3 stars. Meh. I also have over 161,00 views, so someone is liking what they read, or at least obsessed with what I have to say!

I certainly am.

I think I only noticed because it was a change, and then it made me feel bad, and then it was like... why is this even a thing in the blogs section? Also, if you think a blog is bad, why don't you just... not read it?

I haven't read a bad blog on here. There are just those I have time to read regularly, those I catch up on when I have a little more free time, depending on how much the writing style grabs me (and when I say writing style, I mean does this writing grab me and make me feel connected, I'm not rolling my eyes at people who aren't MFAs or I'd have to turn that mirror around.)

Maybe I've been feeling a little raw the past few days. Straws, backs of camels, etc. But seriously.
 
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Right. So. I was grumpy last night from not getting enough sleep after the Superbowl (I'm not used to being jazzed up that late and then accidentally stayed up past my bed time), then having work, then having counseling. Today I'm feeling a lot better.

I'm just cleaning my work office today. My keyboard was nasty. I can't start on March stuff until I know that the February stuff is out of my hair, my boss is doing his part on that and we're otherwise all caught up, so it's just going to be a boring day.

My car is in the shop. Stupid vacuum system for the gas tank. I'm waiting for them to call me and tell me how much it will hit me for, etc. Guitarist had to drive me to work and he'll have to pick me up, so we're BOTH thrown off. Raven has real work to do today and a "work retreat" (oxymoron, anyone?) until Friday.

Which is the poly meetup thing. Smith might be there--there's a blast from the past. I'm pretty nervous about it but I'M GOING AND THAT'S FINAL.
 
We have to get groceries tonight. This is and has always been an area of major anxiety for me. So of course I was having nightmares about grocery shopping last night.

Guitarist and I were trying to push one of those big flatbed carts around a grocery store with tiny aisles and then find a checkout during a very busy time. After we got to check out we realized we had only gotten fridge stuff, no cupboard stuff, so I left Guitarist to pay while I ran around trying to find cereal and so on. Except he couldn't pay for the stuff so by the time I got back to the checkout, our cart of fridge stuff got confiscated. So I said fuck it, we'll make due on cupboard stuff for the week.

As we were heading out into the parking lot, we watched a space shuttle take off full of colonists for Mars. And Guitarist said something like, they're crazy for signing up for being the first to go. To which I agreed.

And then the shuttle exploded on take-off while we were trying to find my car in the parking lot, and we got knocked down by the shock wave. And then after making sure I was okay, Guitarist said we needed to get into the car because the shuttle reactor was nuclear. Except we couldn't find the damn car. And it started raining acid.

At which point I said "fuck this dream" in the dream and ejected off into wakefulness about an hour before I had to get up.

So that was fun.

I'm still all ramped with anxiety about the poly meetup thing on Friday. I'm looking forward to meeting with Raven in a social setting, but less looking forward to being at a bar when I can't really drink, among people who I don't know all that well, and maybe with Smith showing up after he was a total dickhole to Purr for so long AND recently went on an anti-trans rant that culminated in him "joking" about how he should donate money to alt-right causes. All because Spice called him out on a transphobic post on Bookface.

If he shows up, I'll probably just leave. So, so glad that rebound relationship never happened.

Oh. And! Cue cramps and blood that I should have seen coming.

But despite all that (and the dumpster fire presidency/government going on) I'm in a pretty even mood. I've transferred from my stressful weeks at work to the less-stressful weeks, and I'm getting a lot of writing done. I'm exercising about three nights on and one night off, which is doing great for my mood. And therapy and medication are REALLY helping.
 
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So last night was a disaster.

There was live music at the place the meetup was, which no one had anticipated because it was only the second meetup and last time there was no live music. It was Intensely Loud--I'm saying this as a woman who goes to death metal concerts. It was a concrete room and whoever was doing the sound had pushed up all the other instruments so that they drowned out the drum set. To give you an indication of how loud it was, imagine how loud a drumset in a concrete room is, and then imagine everything else so loud that you can't hear it. And boy am I glad I had my giant container of earplugs in my glove box because I had to bust those babies out. I had a headache within 20 minutes of the music starting, and the music made it an exercise in frustration to attempt to talk to people. I couldn't hear people sitting directly across from me, much less anywhere else.

Frustration plus being surrounded by a bunch of people I didn't know really exacerbated my anxiety. So Guitarist and I had a fight. We are now the couple that fights at a poly meetup. Hooray. It was one of those "mistakes were made" types of fights. We both made bad decisions during an otherwise shitty situation.

We had previously talked about how I was planning on only drinking one beer at the event, and also previously talked about how I might get very anxious (I used to deal with my social anxiety by drinking, which is both not a good idea from a mental health standpoint and because I'm on medications that make that a bad idea) and might need to go. We also talked about how if Smith showed up we might need to go. Guitarist conflated these two ideas to 'if Smith shows up, we are going to go because his presence will make me anxious,' combined that with 'Smith can't possibly show up until 12 because of the shift he works,' and arrived at the conclusion that as long as he was ready to drive at 12 he was fine.

So Guitarist was too drunk to provide me an escape route at around 10:30 when my one drink had worn off and I was starting to freak out. The freaking-out feeling was compounded by feeling trapped. Unfortunately the 'I'm feeling good and relaxed' effects of alcohol wear off way before the 'if I turn my head too fast I'll get dizzy' effects of alcohol, also because medication. So I asked Guitarist if he would be upset if I had another drink. To which he responded yes, because we had talked about how this would not be a good idea, etc. Well, we had also talked about how I might need to go at any moment. I obviously at that point didn't know about how he'd interpreted our before-party talk, so him lecturing me about my alcohol consumption when he himself had gone over the limit of what we'd discussed was just too much.

Cue fight. We couldn't exactly hash out our respective positions at top volume over Seriously Fucking Loud Music in the middle of a big social group, and we don't usually fight, so it left us both very upset. I said I didn't want to talk about it anymore and walked away, because the other option was bursting into tears, which would have been even more fun from an anxiety standpoint. I also realized that I was in a completely bad place (making bad decisions, picking fights with Guitarist) so I retreated into my phone for a while. I needed to check out and calm the fuck down, but Guitarist interpreted as me punishing him, so that didn't help.

And then to add breach of privacy to it, it came out as we were trying to hash things out in the car later that he told Spice that we were fighting and what we were fighting about, which was some floppy hinge shit that upset me further. I get WHY he did it. But still.

I think the fallout of my relationship with Purr is that I have gone in completely the other direction on inter-relationship privacy. It would drive me crazy to hear the details about her relationships, that she was fighting with X over Y, and so on. I love her and I want to defend her, so whoever she's fighting with is the bad guy. That in turn really deteriorated my relationships with my metas. I get that the urge when you're upset is to tell someone you're close with that you're upset and why, but when that reason is your relationship with another person, I think it's enough to say 'we're fighting' and leave it at that. Find a friend you aren't in a relationship with to talk about it with.

Anyway, we talked about all of it after we got home and got everything straightened out. That's really the best part about my relationship with Guitarist, that nothing festers and we talk everything through. We're both willing to admit to our own mistakes, accept that the reasons the other person gave for doing what they did were valid (benefit-of-the-doubt style), forgive, and do better.

In good news, I held hands with Raven off and on throughout the event, and we did some side-snuggling by the outside fire pit. And Guitarist and I had good make-up sex. So the evening wasn't a total loss.
 
Not poly related, but I'm intensely frustrated that a video game I'm currently addicted to tested a really good map for two weeks, and is now back on the old crummy map. I want to play it. But I want to play the new map. Exercise in frustration.

Despite the frustrating aspects of things lately, I'm maintaining a steady decent mood. I think my exercising every day routine and my low-grade excitement about my budding relationship with Raven are definitely contributing to that. Probably mostly the exercise, I can't believe that I ever got out of exercising (except I can because Serious Depression).
 
So tired lately. I'm currently embroiled in a writing spring with a bunch of other queer writer friends. This means I'm working my usual job, plus seriously working my writing 'job' that doesn't yet pay me anything, plus working on my mental health by trying to eat better and sleep better and working out. Also I have counseling once a week and a write-in night once a week, which means a lot of nights I'm out and about.

I'm going out with Raven on Friday to a live-performance radio play of one of my favorite noir novels. Super excited.

Guitarist is out with Spice tomorrow. I think I'm going to work on my feet. They've been sadly neglected by his lack of dates at Spice's house this week, but he's going out there twice this week, once for their date and once for a 'it's not a sex party stop calling it that,' so I should get plenty of me-time.

I'll probably play a lot of video games. Or maybe watch a new Netflix series. Either which way, I'm going to soak my feet in my lavender salt and take extra special care of them. So looking forward to it.
 
Oh and tonight was therapy night. According to my therapist, I'm more sensitive to drugs (including alcohol) than some children she counsels. So that's really fun!

It explains why I'm on extremely low doses of everything, and also why I had such a shitty time last Friday on exactly one glass of alcohol. She also pointed out that my anxiety medication was probably working its way out of my system at the same time the alcohol was, and sure enough, the majorest freak-out occurred right when I'd normally take my anxiety meds.

So she wants me to try another social occasion, sans alcohol (no more alcohol for me beyond 'can I have a sip' levels of drinks, hooray) and with taking my medication properly on time, and if I have another major issue like I had, I need to talk to my psychiatrist about my medication. Large social events is something I would really like to be able to do. I used to only get through them by crutching on alcohol. That is unacceptable.

This is why it's an anxiety disorder--it's preventing me from doing things I want to do. And the point of the medication and counseling is to get my disorders under control.
 
Fun with anxiety:

I messaged Raven to see if we're still on for tomorrow night.
She's been on FB since, but not responded.
She doesn't usually wait long to respond.
I bet something has come up and she wants to cancel but just doesn't want to say that.
I could say that it's okay if she wants to cancel.
Will that make it look like I want to cancel? Because I don't.
I also don't want to be clingy.
But dude, if she wants to cancel, I just want to know so I can stop worrying about it.
Hmm. Hmmmmmmm.
I'll give her a few hours before I say anything else.
Meanwhile, I'll obsess about it the whole damn time.
 
Me and Raven are on for tomorrow :D

Purr is also having a friend out from Other College City this weekend. I may go over there if she's having a bunch of people coming over thing, or I might just take Saturday off. Sunday I'm celebrating the event of my sister's birth with my family and between Friday date and Sunday family stuff, that may be far too much social.
 
I've been intensely busy for what's felt like ages. Between weekly therapy and weekly writing group and weekly grocery day/night, that's three days a week with things already scheduled in them.

I had a great time with Raven on Friday. The radio play was excellent, if a little shorter than I was expecting. As we pulled up to Raven's house, I was going to ask for a kiss, but Ravenhub jumped out of the bushes and I lost my nerve. Not literally. But he pulled up in his car from work. Instead we laughed about how he always seemed to be getting home when we were (ha ha ha AWKWARD).

Guitarist moved his date to Spice to Sunday from Saturday. It wasn't the 'not a sex party' date, that is next weekend. He's going out there again on Wednesday and then for the 'not a sex party' next Saturday.

We've had the unbarriered sex talk again. He would like to do unbarriered oral with Spice, in terms of receiving it. Unbarriered anything makes me really uncomfortable. It's not that I don't trust Spice to protect her health, it's that I don't know her other partners or trust them, and they presumably have other partners that I also don't know and don't trust, on to infinity. I wasn't able to find any numbers or studies or anything about whether risks with just receiving oral are lower than receiving/giving, or more importantly what the numbers ARE, so I wasn't able to assuage my discomfort and determine whether that's an acceptable risk. Guitarist said if he found some studies would I consider them. Well, yeah, duh.

I'm just not comfortable having unbarriered sex with someone who is having unbarriered sex with other someones without any data. It's just too risky for me personally. I know that risk is acceptable to some people, but it's not to me. In the end, if Guitarist wants to go unbarriered with Spice, we would have to start using barriers. And I'm okay with that. Not enthusiastic, because who EVER is enthusiastic about barriered sex, but I wouldn't be holding that choice against him or resenting it or anything.

Meanwhile, I had to cancel my counseling appointment tonight because I'm sick. My counselor also has a wake to go to tonight, so she had called to say we either had to move the appointment up or cancel, so apparently that works out for everyone. I hope it's just a mild food poisoning from any one of my poor food decisions this weekend and not the flu that has been going around my mom's house.
 
I'm feeling kind of lonely today. I'm getting over being sick, which has all my systems out of whack. A huge clue was that I feel asleep in front of the TV last night, a thing that typically only happens when I'm sick or drunk, since normally light keeps me awake.

Raven is at a work thing all week on the other side of the country. This sucks because I was just starting to feel a connection and now it's stretching thin and that makes me feel sad and fatalistic.

Guitarist has been out with Spice pretty much twice a week for the last couple weeks, which gives me a lot more alone time than I'm accustomed to. The problem is that a lot of this alone time has come when I've been sick. So instead of doing my fun alone-house things, I've been mostly glumming around. Less than fun.

None of this is anyone's fault, it's just bad timing stuff.

In other news, my mental health has been good for a few weeks now. Even with the disastrous meetup weekend, the couple of rejections I've received (writing, job), and everything else, my mood seems to bounce back fairly quickly and I'm sleeping well on a nightly basis. Who knew that you could feel feelings and not have them keep you down for weeks or months!
 
I tried to set up a date night with Guitarist on Friday but it semi-fell through. We were supposed to watch some TV and cuddle (so like an introverts married people date) but after dinner he asked if it would be okay if he played "one round of Spaceman." A glance at the clock showed it was 8:00 and Spaceman usually takes about 3 hours, so I was kind of like "uhhhh" (in a Tina voice) but I said sure, we... since if he was playing I might as well too... could play a round. So that turned into 4 hours of Spaceman and no TV+cuddle date. I was pretty disappointed and it was too late to really get into TV at that point, but Guitarist made it up to me by cuddling and talking in bed for a couple hours. So I was feeling a lot more connected and less lonely.

The next day was the "not a sex party" at Spice's house. I haven't really wanted to go in the past, but this time I was feeling really left out. I think it's that I'm friends now with Spice and Spicewife and Raven and Ravenhub, all of whom were going, and so it's like everyone in my poly circle but me was out having fun together. Guitarist has seemed rather iffy about whether he's want me there, he said because he's a huge flirt. I really don't care. My not wanting to hear about his sex life isn't an ownership thing, but more of a privacy/anxiety thing. We've settled on driving separately if I go so that if I get anxious/upset/want to leave, I can do that without anyone relying on me. And I think if I decide to go, I'll confirm with Spice that I'm welcome. If it's a her and Guitarist thing in her mind, I don't want to intrude.

I'm back to not even sure that I do want to go, now that I know that I probably CAN if I want to. It's like its no longer this thing I'm left out of, and now possibly a hurdle of social anxiety. So it looks like more work than a missed fun thing.

I'm going on an impromptu friend date with Tiny tonight. We're getting dinner and then going to see Get Out.

Tomorrow is a semi-official date night with Guitarist. He maybe might cook so I don't want to schedule anything else. Wednesday is therapy. Thursday is writing group. I offered Raven Friday but I haven't heard back from her yet, I imagine she's quite busy at work since she was just at a week-long training. Saturday, I'm cooking a turkey for my mom's birthday. And Sunday is my Deadlands gaming group.

Then it'll be next week again. Whee!
 
So much poly stuff the last couple of days. I finally came up with circumstances where I'd feel comfortable with unprotected oral between Spice and Guitarist, thanks in part to doing more reflecting because of Reverie's recent post, and I opened a dialogue with both of them in messenger. Spice gave me some good info about her testing habits, and the only other thing is that I'd want Guitarist doing testing every 6 months. Which he isn't currently.

What else. Guitarist and Raven made out during the not-a-sex party, leading to a lot of squicky feels on my part that I'm still working through. For some reason, my first impulse was WELL THAT RELATIONSHIP IS RUINED NOW. I'm still planning on hanging out with her on Friday though. The feelings are more toward Guitarist than her, but I'm hoping to talk with her about more poly-related things since we'll be in a private setting.

And today I pulled my favorite scent bottle out of my purse. I'm wearing it now, even though it painfully reminds me of Purr. I wonder if I should switch to the "painfully reminds me of Marian" for my purse scent, or try to find something new entirely. I have been going unscented since we broke up, and I'm tired of just smelling like me.

My list of painful scents is turning crazy. Rose (first gf), lavender (first fiance), sweet pea (psychotic break ex), lily of the valley (Marian), and now jasmine (Purr). If Guitarist ruins white soy for me, I might cut him. Just sayin'.

Raven doesn't have a smell yet. Though I'm starting to associate her with cherry blossoms from my cherry blossom glittery body spray I've worn twice now.

At least we'll always have each other, apples and cinnamon.
 
Had another interview today. Usually I feel really great afterward and then I don't get the job. This time I'm just feeling tired and empty, so maybe that's a good sign?
 
Oh, fun thing--I got the job! How's that for irony? Probably the worst job interview I've ever had, and they offered me the job the next day.
 
I finally came up with circumstances where I'd feel comfortable with unprotected oral between Spice and Guitarist, thanks in part to doing more reflecting because of Reverie's recent post, and I opened a dialogue with both of them in messenger. Spice gave me some good info about her testing habits, and the only other thing is that I'd want Guitarist doing testing every 6 months. Which he isn't currently.

Glad my post helped! <3
 
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