#365Gratitude: Squee's selenite heart

On my last day of my visit to my auntie Squee, she had me hang onto something precious to her, her heart.

No, seriously.  Here you can see it.  It's a crystal heart, made out of selenite.  I took it in its little velvet pouch and stuck it in my pocket, warming it with my body as we went about our day.

She told about it as we drove around.  When she first got it the heart was flawlessly clear, not a scratch on it.  The thing about selenite is, it's a very soft, pliable sort of mineral, and can scratch easily.  After only a little while the heart was scored and scratch some, and she worried what to do about it.  A friend told her that wasn't a problem, and to just keep it in its protective little pouch, and she could keep it from harm.

I immediately got this.  And understood just what it meant that she was letting me hang onto it for a while.  I took it from the pouch, and held it in my hands.

After a time I put it back in the pouch, and just before our long goodbye at the airport, gave it back to her.  Mostly.

#365Gratitude: I've got special meeple in my life

While the Saturday of my trip was mostly about alone time with Squee, Sunday was all about connecting with Squee's husband, Kit, too.

We bopped on over to their house, and while the kids were still away visiting with other family, had quality time together.

These are "meeple" - you use them to play Carcasonne.  Specifically, these were my green meeple.

This means we hugged, and we played Carcasonne, and then we, to quote Sokka of the Water Tribe, "did an activity together", that activity being kinky karaoke.

Years ago when I first read The Ethical Slut, an amazing book about polyamory, having a few things jump out at me.  One of them was how often our idea of our partner's new partner can be really damn scary, but when we meet and get to know them, we see that they're just people, just a person, like we're a person, and that that makes everything better.

That was totally what Kit and I were doing on Sunday.  And it was awesome.  We talked, like a lot.  (Anyone who knows me well will tell you, getting me to talk is not a problem.)

Squee made us all breakfast, and we sat, and talked, and played carcasonne, and just... bonded. It was beautiful.  There was this funny moment when we first set up the game that he offered the meeple to me and I went to pick, and right away went for the blue ones.  (Because oceans, sharks, etc.)  He got this little look of "oh well" on his face, because he's always the blue meeple.  I immediately gave them to him, laughing, and said, "sharing is love."  The three of us shared a knowing, warm, funny smile over it, and he was happy to have them back.

Then he totally kicked my ass in Carcasonne.  Which was awesome!  So awesome he did it twice.  He's a genius at that game.  It, for him, is like Scrabble is, for me.  His big move is using the fields to do farming.  I'm practicing, so I can get better.  

Later on, the three of us went out to do kinky karaoke.  I've never ever done karaoke before.  In the car on the way there, we talked about what the place was like, and what songs they had.  I asked about show tunes, then sang a bit of Red and Black from Les Miserables, which is like my go-to shower song, just because.  It felt good to sing aloud in the car in front of people I knew and trusted, before going to a place to sing in front of total strangers.

Plus, we talked about kink in general, and getting out there and meeting people.  Kit's kind of a shy guy, and he's just beginning to make inroads into the kink community.  He's excited to meet people, connect, and see what's really out there.  We had this awesome talk about what people get out of wearing diapers, and I totally threw myself under the example bus talking about why I particularly love to be in diapers, or diaper other people.  

Steven Universe shirt?  Check.  Queen song? Check!

When we got there, I sang two songs, Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen, and Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by The Carpenters.  Kit helped me pick the first one, and I was totally prepared for it, so I rocked it.  It felt great.  The second song I didn't know as well (despite loving it) and was really in a much higher range than I can sing comfortably.  I stumbled a bunch, but Squee and Kit both cheered me on, and I got into it and I think, did a good job with it.  It was really fun!

Squee sang with some friends too, and did an awesome job.  Kit and I sat together with their friend Annie, and watched her, and felt good, and felt together.

What a damn good day that was.

#365Gratitude: Wet & Schmoopy

So one of the things I did with Squee in Chicago was go swimming.  When you're looking for a swimming vacation, I heartily recommend Chicago in February.  Well, technically, we were in Wisconsin, so maybe that was slightly more tropical.

Anyhow, my own snark about it aside, part of the purpose of the trip was to get to know and spend time with Squee's kids, who are all amazingly awesomesauce.  One of the ways we did that was hanging out in the very nice hotel pool together.

There's my cartoonified picture of Squee with 2 kiddos in the pool.  You can just make out my tattooed leg in the lower left hand corner there.  Lounge chair for the win!

A while after we got our swim on, Squee's partner, my metamour Veronica showed up.  That was awesome too.  We'd met before, at CAPcon, but she hadn't really been on my radar at the time.  In the ensuing months of Squee and I blasting off into relationship space, Veronica and I have become good friends and text-buddies.  We hung out in the pool and got our chat on, and spent time, and it was just nice.  

After the pool we all got together to play this game I'd brought with me as a present for the family, The Game of Things.  I love this game.  You get a card like "Things you should not call your children"  (my answer "That guy with the pants"), and everyone writes down their answer and hands it into a reader.  After they get read aloud, people try to guess who said what.  It's hysterical.  For some reason, the whole lot of us got obsessed with bacon in our answers.

After the kids got to bed, we hung out some more on our own, and in the morning, I awoke to find that Veronica had left us this little schmoopy gem.

See what I mean about the bacon?

What a good trip this was turning out to be!

#365Gratitude: Chicagoing easily

A few years back when I went to Chicago for CAPcon, I had pretty much The Worst Day of Travel Ever™.  It was filled with canceled, rerouted flights, delays, airport hopping, bad taxi rides, and lost luggage.  

That's why I was so happy when I had the exact opposite day traveling to visit my Auntie Squee.

Everything was smooth sailing.  I left the house with time to spare, got to my prepaid parking without incident, found an actually lovely restaurant by the gate at which I had a healthy, delightful salmon salad.  Then I boarded without incident, had an easy flight during which I had a funny conversation with my row-neighbor about being a pescatarian (which she had never heard of, and at first thought was perhaps related to being a Presbyterian).  I assured her otherwise, and said that maybe I might seek out some nice presbyterian food when I got to Chicago.  

Then I got off the plane, passed the cheese hats, and went right into the loving arms of my Squee.  That's a good day of travel, right there.

#365Gratitude: MOAR CUDDLES

Man, Yang is just really bringing it with the cute, lovey, huggy-touchy stuff lately.  He's always been a lover ever since I got him (when he was 10 weeks old), but now that he and his sister are eleven years old, they're both just so affectionate.  They love me, and they love Missy, and I love them.