It’s 8:00. I turn off the TV,  I turn on the light. The house creaks, The keyboard clicks The dog whines and shifts. I breathe. Turquoise shoelaces. White threads in my jeans. An empty water glass. Dinner dishes. I breathe. My watchband presses into my wrist. Too much food presses into my stomach. My eyes burn. My head tilts back. I breathe. It’s 8:07.

Every once in a while I torture myself by reading back over old things I’ve written.  When I go back 20 years, it’s… mind-breaking how bad my writing was.  But there seems to be a sweet spot where I go back just long enough that I’ve mostly forgotten what I wrote (a few months for blog posts) but I’m still close to the present day…  And I have a strange experience… I read my writing as if it was written by someone else (because I don’t completely remember writing it – especially if it was a one-off blog post that I didn’t spend a lot of time with). And every…

I heard once, in reference to undocumented immigrants, that the term “illegals” is dehumanizing.  That human beings can’t be illegal.  Human beings can be undocumented immigrants in a country, but human beings cannot be… illegal. I heard this and I understood it and I stopped using the term “illegal” and rigorously trained myself to use the term “undocumented.”  Because… humans can’t be illegal. But then my therapist asked me how I could be fired from my job for my sexuality… How could I not simply sue for discrimination if that came to be?  How can I be forced to live in the shadows, in fear, simply for who I am,…

Oh My God, blogoverse!  I just outed myself to two of my very dearest friends from college… Well, technically not, because, I outed myself when we were IN college.  But that was before I knew I was a sub, and before Sir and sub brother, and… before Michael and Ryan…and… well… a lot has happened. I’m going to share my blog with them. And now I’m panicking. But I’m glad, too. This might be the first post they see… so… Hi, C and D (if you ever find the Facebook message – sorry, I’m a coward!) I’m very stressed now. And Sir is making “We’re late for bed” grumblings. And…

I had spring break last week.  I went on vacation.  Now I’m back and I’m struggling to adjust back to normal routines.  This is a price I pay for traveling – a price I’m willing to pay because I like traveling, but a high price. An hour ago I was suicidal.  Not for any particular reason, my brain just thought that would be a cool look to try on for the evening. Things are a little better at the moment, but Sir is in a grumpy mood. I skipped breakfast and lunch today, then came home and ate a bag of chips.  He doesn’t like that. On my vacation I…

I’m trying to pull my shit together.  From all directions. I want to write more. I, ever so wisely, associate with a writer on Facebook who has a blog about writing, who is very responsible about updating regularly and maintaining a daily Facebook page full of writing conversations and memes and “You should be writing!” guilt trips. I like him.  He keeps me conscious of my art, even as it lies curled up in a dark corner doing nothing. He keeps me conscious of the neurosis that I try to run away from and hide and pretend isn’t there because it is so daunting for me to deal with. He…

I have been working up to getting a massage… for the first time in my life.  For reasons that are probably understandable, the idea of a stranger putting their hands all over me has always been disturbing, and then add being naked for all of that touching… just a big nope for me. But I have a fucking hard ass job.  I have a fucking hard ass life.  And somehow I’ve started coming around to the realization that maybe there are things that are worth getting past my fear of.  So I started thinking about massage. I’ve been talking to Sir about it… talking to my therapist about it… talked…

Sir has been… seemingly forever… trying to teach me the value of half-measures.  I’m not good at them. The way Sir thinks things should work:  Too tired to unload the whole dishwasher?  Unload half the dishwasher and then have only half to do tomorrow… The way I think things should work:  Too tired to unload the whole dishwasher?  Leave the entire thing loaded so I can be too tired to unload a whole dishwasher again tomorrow… We cleaned the refrigerator last week.  It was authentically stressful to me to, first of all, even think about cleaning the refrigerator (there was a leak so water had pooled on all the shelves,…

So… we had multiple momentous events this week and this weekend is celebration weekend.  Last night the three of us did our own little thing at home.  Today we met up with K and J and all went to Boulder for the day. It was a nice day.  Everyone got along.  There was no drama and no issues.  Which is unusual for us lately, K and Sir have had some weird ongoing tension for a while.  And K and I have always had a kind of edgy humor/banter relationship. The problem with living in edgy land, however, is it’s easy to step over the edge, and inevitably, for as fun…