#gratitudeNow:Garage to Garage

1 hour drive

over in moments

Last night I walked out of my office a little before 7pm, walked to the garage, and got in my car. Then I drove the hour or so between where I work and where I live, and pulled into my own garage at home.  It's a long commute.  But it went by like no time at all.

The reason for that is I was talking to Moliére.

We've been friends for years now.  I first met him through mutual friends of ours.  He knew of me through my work on the podcast, and asked some mutual friends of ours to introduce him to me.  I was up at their kinky bed & breakfast to teach a class.  He came to meet me beforehand, and we spent a long time together chatting and just getting to know one another.  I liked him enormously from the get-go.

That had to have been four or five years ago at this point.  

We're similar in many ways.  We're both techies, both love puns, have many of the same sensibilities for things in life.  We both have excellent taste in partners, too.  Did I mention he's my metamour?  Yep.

You know that song My Boyfriend's Girlfriend Isn't Me?  It's like that.  Oh you don't? Here.

So anyhow, back to Moliére.  We've been close for ages.  Our relationship, like all relationships, has had its ups and downs.  We've endured hardship, apart and together.  The part where we're metamours is relatively new, and it's not without adjustment.

That's not a bad thing though.  Last weekend we got together, just him and me, to talk about where we are, how we feel about one another, and to eat really good poké.  

We love one another, a whole lot.  We always have.  We're still figuring out all the various things we mean to one another.  It's a good thing.

So when I got in the car in the first garage, I decided to call him, just because I felt like chitchatting, spending time.  We joked around, talked about all sorts of stuff, laughed, did some insightful thinking about ageplay and porn, and just generally basked in the warmth of one another's company.

Before I knew it, I was in the second garage, the one in my house.  I really love him, and I'm so grateful he's in my life.

#gratitudeNow:Bionic Frubble

​So, if I haven't mentioned it before (I have), I'm not just a teensy bit polyamorous, I'm a whole lot poly. 

​What I mean by that is that I have a bunch of relationships in my life, of varying ages. I've been part of the Ghidrah for more than a decade, been married for almost that long, and have relationships that are deeply meaningful to me besides those, many of which go back for years.

Along the way I've learned some special guidelines and even new words that are useful in navigating the fulfilling but often complex life of being a polyamorist. ​

One of those is ​FRUBBLE​, a silly informal variant of ​​​COMPERSION.  ​That's the pleasure you get from when your partner is happy doing something that doesn't directly involve you. ​

​Another thing you learn when you are poly is to use tools, to help manage the finite resource of time, and facilitate communication, which are problems for ​everybody ​but most especially us non-monogamous folks.

Shared calendars are your friend. ​

I had this awesome frubble moment this morning because of another piece of tech, GeoZilla. ​

It's kind of like the Weasley Family Clock from Harry Potter, as a mobile app. ​

My girlfriend Squee, my wife Missy, and Squee's other partner Moliére (who is also one of my closest friends on earth, and whom I consider to be family)​, all use this thing.

Moliére is out in Chicago visiting Squee.  They're going kinky camping. This is a big deal, because their relationship is in this new hot phase, and there's a whole bunch of really great things going on that are good for them, and which in turn make me ecstatically happy. ​

Frubble.  It's awesome. ​

​Anyhow, I wasn't completely up on the details of when he was flying out. I didn't need to be, so no big deal. But when he landed this morning and checked in, I opened up GeoZilla, saw they were together, and instantly got this warm, schmoopy feeling of joy. 

Then I called them, and we talked all the way through my commute in this morning.​  And that might not have happened without us being bionically frubble assisted. 

Totally cool. ​

#365Gratitude Day 95:The Luxury of Dealing with $@#!

I was telling my friend Moliére last night that I'm feeling particularly blessed lately.  My relationships are great with my partners, things are going well at my day job, I've got not one but two side projects going, one I'm actively working on now, and the other I've got plans in the works to begin writing code for this summer.

All this activity and goodness does come with a price: I'm really busy.  I don't watch much television these days, take rare breaks for the occasional video game, and I have to watch my time management like a hawk.

It's not a code problem.. it's an opportunity to learn to do it better.

Case in point:  So this morning I'm working on the prototype for my business, which I just decided I will call Project Drummond here in the blog.  I started working around 7:30, and felt my creative juices really kick in about 15 minutes later.  I begin creating a new javascript library, refactor a function I used on a previous page to be more flexible, create a new controller action, realize I need to customize a modal before I can proceed further, and begin doing that, and then.. WHAM.

I realize I'm basically out of time to keep going this morning.  Why?

Here's the scoop - I can't not do this, if I want to be able to sit.

Well, first of all, one of my household chores is to clean my cats litter box every single day.  It keeps them happy and healthy, makes the downstairs/guest/cat bathroom a pleasant room to be in, and prevents the dreaded "angry-cat-potty-elsewhere non-accident."   I typically do that just before I get out the door.

I let that go some the past few days, and got a right hard spanking for it, which I well deserved.

Sitting in traffic is total shit.

Second, while I'm fortunate that my day job is pretty flexible about my time, and lets me set my own schedule, work variable days, blah blah blah, there's still this other shit I have to deal with: traffic.  It's pretty bad around here, and if I don't want it to eat my day, I have to get on the road, really, no later than 9:30am to have a decently scheduled day.

As I was lamenting this first-world-not-a-terrible-problem problem of mine, I got a nice big gratitude epiphany, like a lightning bolt.  These are wonderful problems to have.  I have to juggle taking care of my delightful cats, living up to the responsibilities my loving and discipline minded Mommy and Aunty set for me, so I can have the energy to go to my really terrific job, while balancing the work of my very promising side business.

It's not like I'm crawling on my hands and knees over broken glass for thirty miles to get a dixie cup of water to bring back to the village, so they can water our one remaining Yak.  

Yes, dealing with shit like litter (actual shit), and traffic (shitty), and time being a finite quantity (shitty truth) are difficult, but they're great difficulties to have.

I'm grateful.

#365Gratitude Day 84:Return to the moon

This past weekend I was at a conference in Baltimore.  I actually went to college there, got my first real job there, and lots of other big life firsts. ​

One of those big firsts was discovering the BDSM scene.  I joined the Phoenix Society, a local play and education group.​

Phoenix was a HUGE part of my life.  I used to basically live there on weekends. I threw myself into trying new things with vigor and wild abandon. My first night there, the educational session was about spanking. They needed a demo bottom. I volunteered, and minutes later jumped out of my clothes and onto a stage in front of about 30 people. 

They used to call me "slut boy", because I seemed to be up for anything. ​

After a year or so there, I even volunteered to be their membership chair. And I started to host a munch of sorts for people going to the party at the club on any given Saturday to have dinner together. ​

I called it the "Pre-Beating Meeting Seating for Eating."​

Phoenix is long gone, vanished into the dust of memory.  However, the very funky, ageplay friendly restaurant where we held the PBMSFE, that's still there. ​

It's called the Paper Moon Diner. I took my good friend Moliére there for breakfast on Saturday, because we had an errand nearby to do.  

It was like stepping back in time. I remember when the 'moon was brand-new. The same crazy, bohemian vibe is still there. There's a huge collection of pez dispensers on one wall. Toys hang from the ceiling. The place has vegetarian options, and foodie sensibilities.  

We ordered our breakfast and when it came it was as good as ever. My brioche French toast came with only one side, but the very best kind: dozens of memories. 

I texted my old friend Nullmoniker, who used to go there with me all the time, and we savored the shared memories even as I told some of them to Moliére. 

Sometimes I forget that my life is rich with history. It's good to get these reminders.  

#365Gratitude Day 1:It's a sweeter.

So I've had this sort of repetitive gag going for years.  

Every single time someone is getting a wrapped gift in front of me, I always say "Oh, I know what it is!"

And when, as inevitably they will, they ask, "Really? What?"  my answer is always the same.

"It's a sweater!"

I say this no matter what the wrapped package looks like.  It could be a tiny little thing you hold in your hand, a flat envelope, a giant TV-sized box.  Always the same answer.

Comedy gold, right?

You'd think this thing would get kind of old.  It does.  That's actually where the true comedy of the thing comes in.  Everyone who knows me well has heard me do this, ad infinitum.  People smile patiently, some cringe, some shake their heads.

One of my favorite Christmas presents of all time is this white sweater that our girl Rachel bought for me, then by hand "upgraded" to have a shark pattern needlepointed on it.  It's amazing, it's badass, I love it.

My friend Moliére and I are amongst the closest of friends.  We've been friends for several years now, and really consider one another family.  He recently learned about my sweater thing, and made it his own in this really (and literally) sweet way, when we were visiting him this past weekend.

Aren't these awesome?

After he gave them to me, I said that I wanted to have them with him, when he comes to visit us, down here.  I love sharing an inside joke, and love having such a close friend.  I love him lots.