#gratitudeNow: The heights

So I’m a busy guy.

This morning I was cleaning the kitchen, as Missy tasked me to do before work. (Task is an interesting word in this case. She told me to do it, while asking, so even though it’s not really a portmanteau, I’m treating it that way.).

As someone who is very goal-driven, who loves serving his dominant wife, and who craves the simplicity of being tasked, this worked out well for me.

I did in fact, get the kitchen cleaned.

So I grabbed my phone, and I wrote it down in WeMinder, and even snapped a photo and texted it to her.

She was pleased.

I however, was not.

Because as I was entering the good behavior into WeMinder, I noticed something wasn’t right with the look and feel of the screen.

After a bit of thought, it came to me. The height of the card wasn’t right, when the “behavior chip” of my 1 new good behavior was showing on the card.

It pushed everything down, making my brand new bottom navigation icons push too far down.

So I sat and reasoned it out for a few minutes.

I realized that a good fix for this problem was to reduce the height of the behavior list from “40vh” down to 25, 30, or 35vh respectively depending on if I were showing 1, 2, or no chips whatsoever.

Without getting too deep into the weeds of technical details, I figured out exactly how to do that, and got a hot fix ready, tested it, and deployed it into production in WeMinder.

It’s out there now, working just fine. I know, I checked just before I started writing this post.

But this post isn’t really about viewport-height. It’s about the heights of owning my own business, while also having a full-time job, while also serving my wife, while also being polyamorous, while also… the many other things I do.

It’s often really challenging. I have a lot going on in my life.

But honestly, that’s a blessing. My mind is pretty sharp. As long as I take good care of myself, I can maintain and even increase that sharpness.

This means I need to get decent sleep, allow myself rest, maintain good boundaries by often saying no to the things I can’t do, and practice copious amounts of self-compassion.

By and large, I really do, do that.

I’m 50 years old, and while sometimes that seems like a lot, it really isn’t.

I feel wonderfully in touch with who and what and where I am. I like the me I am, and the way I’m stretching myself to be more.

It feels good.

#gratitudeNow: The Reboot

This morning I rebooted several things. The kitchen desperately needed attention, so I did that. The cats’ litterbox drawer was full, so I emptied it, and wiped it down with some special wipes. I started tracking my calories again in earnest, too. I started tweeting again, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I caught up on a few episodes of Love in Brief (One of my favorite ageplay podcasts.)

And I rebooted… me.

Which I do each day, but sometimes with very careful deliberate action. I was talking to my brother Spacey last night, as I usually do most Tuesdays. We were talking about health things, and life in general.

And it got me thinking about What I Am Doing™, just my life in general. There’s a lot going on that I’m really quite happy with. But some things I’m not. The pandemic hasn’t been great for my health, specifically my waistline. I heard someone jokingly refer to pandemic weight gain as the “Covid 19.”

It’s not inaccurate.

I talked to my wife/mommy/bestest-friend-ever Missy about it last night too. And agreed that today is a new day, and I’d be starting fresh.

So this morning I carefully recorded my calories, using an app. That sort of journaling and staying under my caloric budget, combined with regular exercise has consistently worked for me before. I’m at it again.

I’m just a person, like anyone else, so I often lose sight of my mindful practice. I’ll get bogged down in regret, or worry about the future. But the awesome thing is that just like, say, cleaning the kitchen, or dumping out the cat’s litter, that departure-from-mindfulness can be undone, with a mental snap of my fingers.

Being in the moment, fully embracing it is a simple, profound, powerful act. I forget it often, and I’m always utterly gobsmacked by how good it is when I find it again.

#gratitudeNow: That's Just the Ticket

So tonight, I’ve got plans. I’m going in to the movies.

Yes, you read that right, in.

My sister-in-law, MB lives with us. She has a basement apartment under our house. She’s lived with us for years. She’s one of my favorite people, for a number of reasons. For one, we both share a fiercely protective love for her sister. But for another, she’s very, very thoughtful. She’s the sort of person who puts together parties, buys thoughtful and funny presents, loves to show her love very demonstrably.

I’m a fan of that, and I’m a fan of her.

So her latest thoughtful thing, something she’s done once before, but I’m glad to see return, is that she turns what my little calls her underhouse into a movie theater for us.

She shows us a film on a big TV she has, serves snacks (ice cream cones tonight, yay!) and even prints tickets.

Have I mentioned how much I love her?

#gratitudeNow: The Quiet Domesticity of Service

I’m an early riser. Even on my days off, it’s rare for me to stay in bed much past six. Today was no exception. I popped out of bed, thoughts of Project Longbottom swirling in my head. I got up, got my shower, got into training pants (as well as the rest of my clothes). Then I gave Mama a good morning kiss. We performed a private little every day ritual we have, then I tucked her back into bed and headed downstairs.

A few hours later, long past when I’d made my own breakfast, done a few hours of research, coding, and some chatting with friends, she trooped downstairs, and into a recliner for a relaxing late morning of video-gaming.

I hit a certain stopping point in my research, where I really decided I needed a snuggle, and maybe a cup of tea, and came out to the living room for the first of those. I sat on the floor by Mama’s feet, which she rested on me, as I sat my head in her lap, enjoying the closeness.

After a time, she asked me to make her some scrambled eggs. I got right to it. I decided to really do the job, using real butter, dill weed, some cheddar cheese.

I got them into a nice bowl, served them to her, and set about making my tea, a nice London Fog (sort of the cappuccino of tea). After which I showed it to Mama, to see if she wanted to try it. I said I wanted to get back to my coding, and said told me alright, and tried her eggs. Which she liked very much indeed.

She told me, grinning, that she thought I was very good to her. And I told her I’m her boy, and that I live to serve her.

Which is absolutely true.

The whole thing made me so happy I decided to write this post. This sort of thing, this is part of that greater truth I’ve been slowly discovering for months now. Yes, we’re kinky people, who enjoy scenes, enjoy play. Mama gave me a wonderful and very thorough caning at a party we went to back in February. That stuff was, is, and remains a part of our lives. But there’s this other part, the day-in, day-out course of living our truth.

It’s filled with learning, and with joy.

First there was the part where Mama told me, more than asked me, to make her breakfast. I love when she tells me to do things. I love doing them for her, too. For the briefest moment, my brain did the mental juggling of analysis, tagging and evaluating that “working on code” and “having some tea” were both not as important as “thing Mama told me to do.”

Once that was handily computed, and I did that task, it was like my whole body and soul were set upon it, and in the doing, I felt more myself. I was describing to some kink friends the other day how our dynamic has become a whole lot more m/s, how both of us consider me to be Mama’s property. I know this, but there are moments where I really, all the way down feel it. This was absolutely one of them.

Every single day, I feel like we’re both growing, both learning This Thing We Are Doing. We’re both getting more comfortable with it, and learning how it works.

It’s bliss.

#dailyThink: Breakfast Fear

It started this morning with the milk. Which is to say, we were running low. No milk means no cereal, and more importantly, no coffee with milk, no London Fog tea. Unacceptable! Instead of deciding to muddle through until I go pickup a grocery shopping order on Saturday, I decided I would be bold and go out for milk to the convenience store.

There it is, sitting on the front seat of my car. Hello, milk.

I felt like a rebel as I got in my car. I hadn’t gone for a drive like this in a while. For weeks now it’s been grocery store runs only. This felt decidedly weird, a combination of thrilling, odd, and slightly foreboding.

I decided, pulling out of my driveway, I would do like back in the old days (you know, a month ago), and even avail myself of the luxury of some drive-thru breakfast from McDonald’s. I whipped out my phone, ordered it up, and got on my way.

At the convenience store, when I parked I noticed a few other cars in the lot. Everyone I saw behind the wheel was wearing a mask. I definitely scanned the front windows of the place, to see just how crowded it was. There was a scant handful of people, less than 4, so I ducked in, went straight to the refrigerated milk section and then made for the counter. Where now there was a giant set of plastic sheets across the counter, hung from the ceiling. It was like a giant sneeze-guard at a salad bar. I paid quickly, using my watch to do so, so I could minimize the amount of touching of anything I was doing.

I got back in the car, and headed for the McDonald’s. Along the way I started to notice some things.

For one, not only were the local roads really, really quiet, but there was no traffic whatsoever on the highway. I could tell from the GPS in the car.

When I got to the shopping plaza where the restaurant was, it was like a ghost town. So eerie.

I went through the drive thru and quickly got my order. The drive-up speaker-signboard had several COVID-19 advisory notices about changes in hours, restaurant policy, and safety plastered on it, as did the windows of the store itself.

I tried to put it out of my mind. Tried. Of course I noticed how everyone I could see through the windows of the place had on masks, and gloves.

I collected my meal, and my bottle of water, and, trying to emulate something I used to do all the time, pulled around the side of the building to park, and briefly sit and enjoy my meal, while watching the early morning sky and traffic around me.

Try is the operative word.

As I sat and ate, I noticed how few cars were on the road. And I began to feel a certain horror, a creeping dread, as I realized that nothing in this world was quite the same, including me.

Something had my hackles up.

I figured out what it was a moment later.

Out of my peripheral vision I had caught a police car with its lights on, in the lot. It was slightly across the way, where something bad had happened.

I couldn’t tell exactly what, and at first struggled to see what it was the car was even parked by.

But as I munched on my McMuffin, it became more clear to me that it was a motorcycle, or rather the remnants of one.

I sat there, thinking about it. Was there an accident? Was the rider drunk? Did anyone get hurt? The rest of my brief short foray out snapped into a sharper focus. Everything was different now. I thought to myself if I had some small fender bender in this post-COVID world, how would I deal with it? Would I be too scared to trade insurance info with the other guy? What would going to the hospital post-accident be like? Even the notion of it felt ponderously heavy, and filled with extra complexities and complications.

I got out of there, and drove home. The closer I got to my house, the more safe I felt. When I parked in my garage, and closed the door, I felt almost normal again. Almost.

I’ve had some big, scary things happen to me before in my life. In college, I was mugged at gunpoint. Several years ago, I was in an accident that made my airbag deploy, and totaled my car. I’ve dealt with severe illnesses and surgeries of loved ones.

But this thing, it’s different. I feel like long after there’s a vaccine for the disease, this lingering fear and unease will be with me.

More than ever, I’m resolved to be kind to myself, and to others. More than ever, I see the need for my mindful practice. Because right now, it’s pretty easy to get freaked out.