Random Bits of Happiness and Pleasure

So, after my mini-meltdown last week, and my subsequent “Hold it together girl,” chat with myself, it turned out that my fears were all out of whack with reality.

No, really.  I know that surprises you. (Can anyone say “hamster-head?”)

Anyway.  I have had a completely delightful two weeks since this new schedule has happened. Surprisingly, utterly, delightful.

First was the unexpected pleasure of a night with the Boychild, completely on our own.  Ad got called away to KC for the night, and whereas in the past I would have taken my happy butt over to W’s (and enjoyed myself) of course I can’t do that now.

I’m a parent. I have responsibilities.

So instead I took the Boychild out for dinner at the City Diner and then to the ice cream shop and we meandered down Kingshighway, looking in storefronts, eating ice cream cones, and talking about school, and life, and how he wants a job and–oh yeah–how he has a new girlfriend. A 19-year-old girlfriend.  I’m not actually too distressed about this (yet.) She doesn’t have a car, he doesn’t have a driver’s license, they met at Shakespeare Camp and haven’t seen each other since then, only communicating via text, Facebook, email and phone.  But now I know why he’s so hot to get a job.

“I need money to take her out on a date, Mom.”

“Oh? And am I going to pick her up and drive you both to the theater, like I did when you and your last girlfriend were fifteen?”

I predict this lasting about until she starts college this semester.  Which, oh, is this week.  We’ll see.

On the other hand, the Missy is quite in her stride with her guy-she-likes-to-hang-with-who-isn’t-a-boyfriend. As I was getting ready for bed she was getting ready to go out.

“Where you going?” I asked.

“Over to H’s,” she says.

“Isn’t it kind of late?”

“He just got off work.”  When I raise my eyebrows she continues. “Don’t worry, I asked him if he’s too tired.”

Eyebrows raise higher. “Too tired?”

She gives me a cheeky grin. “Gotta get me some, Momma!”

I shake my head.  Gotta love that girl. “Be careful,” I say, because what else can I say?

“I always am.” She kisses me on the top of my head (cheeky-ass girl.) “You raised me right.”

And I think I did, and am. I’m not making a hash of this motherhood thing. At least not yet.

Oh, and PS? The Girl started her own blog.  And sent me the link, because she wanted me to read it.  She wants me to read her blog. “Only if you promise not to censor yourself,” I told her.  And then said that I’d only peak in once in awhile.  Which is all I’ve done. But seriously–she’s freakin’ hilarious! The girl can write, and she has her timing down in telling a story. I am bowled over, awed, and just so proud to be her mom.  But the eggs? I swear they didn’t expire back in May.  She’s making that part UP.

I’m quite enjoying spending time with the kids, being home, cooking dinners. I adore those two knuckleheads, and they seem pretty fond of me back. The Boychild still hasn’t reconciled with his father, but I can’t do any more than I have done already. It’s up to him (the Ex) to be the adult and make it right with his son. I make sure to insert my opinion (that they do need to reconcile) into my conversations with the Boychild, but I can’t really do more than that.

This being home stuff is good for Ad, too. He loves having me here every night, and it seems to be helping his mood quite a bit.  Maybe it will be good for both of us, too, if I can get him out of his funk. Me being here seems to help with that, although I warned him that sitting around every night is not going to cut it for me. So we’ll see if he can motivate himself off the couch.  Meanwhile, I have my weekends with W (which I talk more about on PoJ.)  And much upcoming travel! I go to Las Vegas in early September, Twisted Tryst in WI (and meeting W’s mom and brother!) over my bday weekend, then Baltimore for a work thing at the end of the month. Later in October, if all goes well, I will be hitting Chicago for Kinky Kollege, and somewhere in there I need to schedule a trip to visit some new kinky friends in Des Moines.  And then, it’s Puerto Vallarta in November with the Missy and possibly Spokane to visit my son, daughter-in-law and new grandbaby over Christmas.

Thank god I got a raise, huh?

So yeah.  Things are good.  And yeah–I love my new schedule.

So far.

Playing Martha Stewart

I can do this.

After my morning temper tantrum, and a somewhat drama-laden email to W in which I decided I wanted to quit everything, my hormones settled down to a dull roar and I was able to see things a bit clearer.  You know, able to see that though my wings have been clipped a bit, tho I don’t have the freedom to do what I want, when I want and how I want, it’s not the end of the world.

And benefits like I described in my previous post might even make up for it.

Maybe it was reading W’s emails throughout the day as he described the process of replacing his hundred-year-old bathroom sink that made me stop and remember to take pleasure in the satisfaction of doing my work well; maybe it was Carrie’s post over on A View from the Floor that reminded me to be grateful for small things; maybe it was my dear friend Julian Arancia‘s comment on my post on PoJ that reminded me that in the grand scheme of things, this is only a minor bump.

I actually enjoyed being a little domestic tonight. The Boychild and I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and shopped for dinner groceries, something I don’t think he and I have done but maybe a handful of times in the past.  On the way home from there, he and I went over his list of vocabulary words, testing me to see how many of the 50 I knew (all but 3) and competing to see who could make up the best sentence for each.  A voracious reader, he has developed a vocabulary almost as good as mine, and just as large a love for words, something I would didn’t realize.  For supper, I baked potatoes, made a green salad with candied pecans, dried cranberries, diced apples and croutons, and set out crumbly Stilton cheese with crackers–all while still wearing my heels. There was no one to see, no one to care, except me.  I thought about cooking for W in heels and chains, and smiled a bit.

I’ll see W on Thursday, when I work from his house, and hopefully stay over Friday and Saturday with him.  The Friday-to-Saturday morning thing will be different.  We’ve done it a couple times, but far more often I am either home Friday nights or he stays here occasionally. In all my pissing and moaning I sort of forgot that this change means getting to spend the whole weekend with him.  And next week I start classes again.  Just a Tues/Thurs gym class, but that will be good for me, and I won’t feel like I’m vegging out every night on the couch.  I plan to add an additional workout class on my own at my gym as well, or perhaps a walk or hike during the week. Maybe I can get the boys to accompany me, who knows.  I’ll get back into a schedule.  It won’t be the same schedule, but I’ll make it work.

So, looks like things will be okay. Hormonal fluctuations aside.

Insomnia, Schedules, Motherhood & Mohawks

Insomnia sucks ASS. I may have mentioned this before.

It’s 5am, and I have to be up in 45 minutes, but I’ve been awake since 3am. No reason that I can think of, except that, you know, once I woke up my brain wouldn’t shut off. Blueberry flavored bite size Shredded Wheat almost makes up for it though.

Almost.

I have a first date tonight. Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it over on PoJ, but I’m back on OkCupid. Revamped my profile a bit to reflect my situation and what I am looking for a little more accurately: ie, not a “relationship.” What I’m seeking now–there or anywhere–is not another full-on poly relationship, or even “dating,” if I’m being perfectly honest. “Casual encounters” of the type that W and I prefer are what I’m after, and maybe someone to flirt with & go out with one in awhile.  I do love the flirtation, the anticipation, the getting-to-know someone phase. But I just don’t have the time, energy or desire to pursue anything more than very, very sporadically.

And no vanilla sex, although, by placing W’s special twist on things, the vanilla could become definitely twisted, and in that case, would be acceptable.

So, I’ve made that pretty clear on my profile, and…it’s been pretty well-received. I have had several interesting inquiries into what exactly “W-type” encounters are, forwarded a couple of them on to W after some back and forth clarifying the concept, and had a couple more emails from guys that I actually might be interested in for the “flirting/occasional date” category. In fact that is what my date is tonight.

So, of course, I’ll be running on short sleep.

The Boychild goes back to school this week.  And, since he’s moved in with me full-time, that means that I’ll be driving him back and forth to school daily. UGH. It really fouls up my routine. Not to mention when I start back to school–I am not even sure how that’s going to work!  For instance. Not remembering that he starts school today (yeah I SUCK as a mom) I made my date for 5:30 tonight.  Ummm…I get off at 4:30 and have to pick up the Boychild from school and drive him all the way home to South County before coming back to meet the New Guy back here in the city. There’s no way I could make a 5:30 date. So (for the second time) I had to beg his patience and ask him to reschedule–at least this time it was just for a later time.  But still. This whole being a full-time mom stuff is HARD.

Okay, I’m being a little facetious. A little.

It is a rude fucking awakening though, having to be responsible for and thinking about someone else’s schedule all the time.  At least when he was at his dad’s he was able to get back and forth to school without interfering in his dad’s work schedule. So it’s a lot more cumbersome for me than it was for his dad (and thus why he was at his dad’s during the school week in the first place.)  And also? I think it is one reason his dad was so “accommodating” when the big split happened two weeks ago and the Boychild decided to move in with me.  I suspect a smirk behind his gracious attitude (“Just see what it’s like, you’ll send him packing within a month!”)  And who knows, maybe it will be a failed experiment, this full-time motherhood thing. I’ve always been upfront about the  fact that I am great part-time parent.  But full-time? I dunno…

Except that…I am loving having him around. Oh, we don’t hang out and yak like The Missy and I do.  He’s much more social than she is, has a wide circle of friends that he keeps track of online, and is a gamer as well, but…I get little snippets of him that I didn’t have before. Like when he wanted his hair dyed pink (after he’d got the mohawk) and I did it for him.

Is it freakin' awesome, or what?

And this morning when I helped him spike it up for his first day back at school.  He and I in the bathroom at 6AM giggling about his hair and what his schoolmates are going to think.  And then on the ride in, when I asked him if he wanted to listen to the radio (enabling me to do my usual, listen to a book-on-tape on the drive in) he said no, he’d rather talk. And then he did!  Talked and talked and talked about school and acting and the tattoos he wants to get when he decides on his career (after he turns 18.) And the symbolism of each. And on and on about everything under the sun…

So. There’s a good side to this motherhood thing too. I could almost get to like it…

If it didn’t mess up my schedule so much. ;-)

Lies & Infidelities

I just got back from staying over at my mom’s house.  I love hanging with my mom. She’s getting more and more…addled…finally, at 75, beginning to show her age, but she is sweet, and kind, and loving, and every time I am there I wish she lived right here in our condo complex so I could see her more often.

Instead, she lives in the subdivision where my sister, T, lives, one block away from her, her husband and their little boy. My mom is lucky if she sees T once a month, and usually it is only an obviously obligatory visit.

My sister is not kind, or sweet, or loving.

Lately when I talk to my parents, I have been deliberate in bringing up W in the conversation. Not in an “in your face” way, but just as I do in every day conversation with anyone else. I don’t insert him into the conversation, but if it is natural to mention him or something he and I have done, I don’t circle around it, I don’t equivocate.  I say his name, I mention whatever-it-is and I move on. I want them to get used to hearing about him, and to begin seeing him as a part of my life.

This weekend, while out with my mom, I finally came clean on who this “W” fella really is to me.

My mom knows I am poly, and has known since I told her during my split with my Ex.  I knew that she had a lot of admiration for the Ex and liked him a lot, and I didn’t want our breaking up to destroy that. It’s too easy to want to attach all blame for a break-up on the partner that isn’t your family, and, especially as it was me that precipitated the split, I didn’t want my mom to think badly of him. So she knew that Ad and I have an open relationship, but she never met any of my other partners, or even heard about them. Why should she? I didn’t have any committed partners before W.

But it’s been three years now with W, and, frankly, I just wanted to not to have to mince around who exactly this “W” person is in my life. I wasn’t committed to telling her this weekend, I didn’t head out to visit her intending to come clean, but, when the opportunity accidentally presented itself, I took it.

Here’s the deal. My sister’s marriage is falling apart. Or has already, and the only reason they stay together is because they “can’t afford” to split up. Meanwhile, they buy cars, go on separate vacations, presumably drive up their credit card debt–and live in a  state of barely-concealed warfare, sniping and biting at each other, visiting petty cruelties upon the other and crowing about it behind each other’s backs, all the while acting like they are being “civilized” and doing it all “for their son’s sake.”  It’s enough to make me sick. It makes me so sad to see my sister so bitter and unhappy and to see that same resignation and joylessness reflected on her husband’s face.

And yet.

This is the sister that, when my marriage was ending and I told her about me being poly said to me, “Why do you always have to do things your way, Jade? Can’t you just be like normal people? Can’t you just have an affair??”

She truly thought that having an affair was morally superior to being in an open marriage or relationship. She also thought it was a lot smarter, since everyone knows an open relationship can’t work–and wasn’t I proof, as my marriage was a failure because of it?  (I could never convince her of the wrongness of that statement: I never considered my marriage a failure.  But that is perhaps for a different post.) Stay married and have an affair, and you don’t have to give up your big house, your fancy cars, your credit cards–your things.  But what about your soul? What about love and joy and morality and ethics and your sense of decency?

Uh-huh.  I see how well that worked for her.  Because that is why she and her husband are in the place they are.  She had affairs, he found out. She went to “counseling,” confessed her sins, swore never to do it again…and smirked about pulling the wool over his eyes as she headed out to another of her trysts. Well, it didn’t stay pulled, and now they are in the situation they are in.

What a sad, ugly life.

But what really bothered me was my mother going on and on about what a bastard my sister’s husband is for “throwing her out of the bedroom,” for “cutting her off” financially (he split the bills and she has to pay her own bills and he his) and for treating her “unkindly.”

Look, the guy is no peach. I couldn’t live with him. But I didn’t choose him. He never lied to her or cheated on her.  He may be as slow and dumb as a box of rocks, but he took care of her, he bought her ever-increasingly larger houses and nicer cars, he moved clear across the country, away from a hometown he had loved and never wanted to leave to be with her.  He gave what he had to give.  And she chose to lie and cheat and laugh at him behind his back when he didn’t see it.  And when he did see it, and he still wanted to be with her, to work it out, instead of either a) owning up and changing her behavior, or b) letting him go so that maybe he could find happiness with someone else that could be happy with him, she lied again and started it all over. Only this time she despises him for taking her back, as well; for allowing himself to be used.

She deserves every bit of contempt he levels at her.  And he doesn’t deserve my parent’s contempt.

But they only see what my sister has shown them; they can only believe the sob story my sister tells them. It’s repugnant, and…I finally got fed up with it.  I did something I am sure I will regret: I told my mother the real reason their marriage is on the rocks. Oh, not the fullness of my sister’s lies and infidelities. In fact I made no mention of her continued affairs. I only said that perhaps B had a reason to be “unkind.”  That she had had an affair (“an” affair? try dozens) and he had found out. That maybe my sister was skewing the story a bit.

I’m not sure how the conversation went from my sister’s infidelities to W, but it did. Maybe I was trying to juxtapose what a farce her “arrangement” was with something healthy, and vital, and good. Whatever my original motivation was (okay yeah, my motives may not have been pure, maybe I did want to show her up a little) by spotlighting a lifestyle that, for a 75 yr old woman, would have to seem untenable at best, immoral at worst. But she took it all in stride (she’s something else, my mama.) I guess having softened her up 5 years or so ago with the confession of being in an open relationship in the first place made it not such a shock to her. The fact that it has lasted 3 years was a bit of a shock: “You’ve been with someone for three years and never told me, never introduced me?!?” So I had to take my lumps for that.  But for the most part, since I’m happy, Ad’s happy, my kids are happy and she assumes W is happy–it’s all good.

Oh, except for one more thing. When I told her W’s name, she said, “This is a man?”

I’d forgotten I had also confessed to being bisexual at some point a couple years ago.  Oops.

Cruise Wrap-Up, Days 4-5

So where did I leave off, all those days ago? (I can’t believe the last time I posted here was, sheesh, June?  Seriously??  I’d apologize for being so lame, but, hell, that’s my life. Sometimes I am living too much to write about it.)

Anyhoo…there we were at Lamanai. (In case you forgot.)  And then…we were back on the ship.

And…hell, lots of things happened. But I can’t remember all of them now, because I was a bad blogger and I didn’t take notes.  (Sigh.)  I’d like to say I’ll do better, but honestly, I don’t know if I will. So I can’t promise. Instead I’ll just post some pics from the trip, with a few notes here and there, and we’ll call it a day.

That night was the only night we ended up on deck, oddly enough. It's windy out there, tho, so maybe that makes sense.

We played like a regular couple...

Except I was a couple with two men. :-)

Of course we had to play a *little*...

And maybe just a tiny bit more.

There were other ways to play, too. They wouldn't let me go up naked though.

The next day was a day at sea, and we hung out on the pool deck, naked, for most of the day. Not a bad way to spend a day. But I had to put clothes back on to climb the rock wall.

So did Ad.

Ad at the top.

Me ringing the bell.

Woot! I'm so freakin awesome!

I was pretty happy.

But now, seriously? Let me outta these clothes!

We also played other ways.

And played like pirates on Pirate Night.

The last night was Blue Night. The red dress was Ad's present to me at Christmas just for this cruise. And oh, yeah, the decor very much reflected the whole atmosphere of the cruise!

One last time to be "dancing girl" before we returned to "real life."

And finally--on the way home. We were sad, but we'd had a marvelous time!