Maya came to visit, and decided our kitchen pantry needed a reboot.
She completely reorganized and revamped the pantry, making it easier to find things, and giving us a whole new shelf worth of storage.
She rocks like that. Part of her love language is service. She loves doing generous things for other people.
I'm supertotal grateful for her.
I like people. What's really nice though is when I like someone who also likes me. The more someone likes me, generally, the more I like them in turn. Also, that works the other way around. There's a term for that in sociology (and many other ologies, too). It's called a feedback loop.
Feedback loops are just magical, where people are concerned. I'll give you an example: smiling.
You smile at someone, some random stranger, say on a train. It feels sort of good to do so. It's you saying to that other person, "Hey, dig me, I'm kind, I don't even know you, and here's this smile telling you that I'm glad I'm here, in this place, at the same time, as you. Whoever, whatever you are, I want to know about it."
So then, let's say our mysterious stranger smiles back. They're probably thinking, "wow, whoever that is smiling at me, that's just so nice of them. Time to return the favor. They're great."
What happens next is the best part. You keep smiling at one another, make even better eye contact, and start feeling good together. Maybe you strike up a conversation. You begin to get a sense of one another as people. Suddenly, you're an "us." "We" are sitting here on this train. They become, however briefly, your traveling companion, someone-you-know. You feel, however lightly, kinship with them. It feels great.
I see this same thing happen all the time in other circles, too. It happens at work, when I'm throwing code and working with another developer on $DIFFICULT_PROBLEM_X, and for a brief period of time, we're strategizing together, tackling the problem, a group more powerful than the sum of its constituent parts. I'll throw out a deduction, or a conclusion, only to have it validated or set aside by my peer, as we tackle the thing, together.
Feedback loops like this are especially great amongst my kinky peers. Just this morning, my babysitter Maya, who's up here visiting, sat with me, and we had this long conversation about the ways our various personality aspects and kinks mesh in complimentary ways.
There's this food metaphor I'm always going on about, about kinky relationships, called The Cake and the Icing.
Cake is the part that's vanilla, regular, dependable. It's picking someone up at the airport at 2am, or paying the electric bill on time, or being a dependable, honest, trustworthy person.
Icing is the sugary sweet exciting part, that includes getting and giving spankings, diaper fetishes, and tumbling over one another in bed, naked, until you're sweaty, and spent.
The two things go together. The funny, feedback-loop truth about that though, is that sometimes what's cake for someone might be icing for someone else.
There are things in Maya's personality which, for her, are Cake. She's particular. She likes order, and clarity. She's not afraid to tell you so, too. Sometimes she doubts herself about it, because she thinks she comes across as bossy.
What's her bossy Cake can be my dominant Icing. I'm very happy for her to tell me to do chores around the house, and get a warm, loving hug for doing them. I not only value her being that way - in a very real way, I depend on and need it. It makes my world simpler, in a way that's very emotionally validating to me.
It's really a great thing that we connect like this, and know it. Sometimes I struggle to understand myself, emotionally, and sexually. And then, to make those things I've figured out clear to someone else. It's really, really damn hard. But it's so worth it.
There are very few things in life more satisfying that getting into the tumble of a validating feedback loop with another person. When it's something as visceral, and deep as a kink like my ageplay, the power of that loop is just indescribable.
I'm grateful for it.
I'm one of those disgustingly cheery morning people.
I'm usually up before the sun comes up. That's when my energy is at its peak. I pop out of bed, excited to see what the day has in store.
This is often a thorn in the side of my wife, as well as my poly partners and intimate friends who have the "good fortune" to sleep with me sometimes. After a night of my laying all over them, trying to burrow into their body while half-asleep, they can look forward to my doing so while I'm completely awake, and they're still trying to sleep.
Sounds great, right? (Yes, that's sarcasm)
When I get good sleep (which is more often than not, when I use my CPAP, go to bed on time, etc.) I'm an early-morning-dynamo. It's not unheard of for me to get up, go running, do chores around the house, maybe even do some writing, all before I leave for work. It depends on how early I get up, what's on my plate at work, and what my commuting options are.
Today for instance, I took out the trash, changed the litter, made my bed, had a decent breakfast and STILL managed to make a 6:30-something train into the city for work.
I think if it were practical for me to do so, I'd wake up at 4:30 in the morning almost every day. As it is, I'm usually up a few minutes before my alarm goes off sometime between 5 and 5:30, depending on the day. I love being up to watch the sunrise.
When I do, I feel wealthy with time, fortunate that I've got a whole unpredictable day waiting to happen right in front of me. It's like having the center, front-row seat at the best show ever.
I'm grateful for it.
I've known my sister-in-law, M. for over 8 years now. We've been through a lot together. I remember when I first met her. Missy and I had driven down to South Carolina to spend a few days there with her, and her family. She made me feel welcome right away. She had a certain nurturing, take-charge nature that I immediately felt comfortable with.
She's very much a mother hen. She's at her happiest when she's taking care of other people. She and I often compete for the title of Champion for Missy. Sometimes, joyfully, I lose, too.
M. spreads that caretaking affection and energy to others besides her sister. Over a year ago she came to live with us, when she was leaving her now ex-husband. Not too long after that I came down with a big giant whopper of a cold, that knocked me out for days. She was an awesome caregiver, bringing me healthy, luxurious meals in bed, and treating me like a king.
A great thing about her too is that she's very open-minded, tolerant, and ready for new experiences. She knew long before I told her, that I was an ageplayer, and has never expressed anything but support about it.
In fact, one of the funnier experiences that arose from her moving in with us happened about a week after she moved in. She was still getting acclimated to living with us, and being in a part of the country she was accustomed to only visiting. It was in those raw days where she was still shaking off the trauma of escaping a bad marriage in what had become a toxic home.
She was really looking for ways to contribute to our house, so she did the things that Missy and I hadn't had the time to do since we moved in - she unpacked all our art and hung it around the house, and began to organize and optimize all sorts of things, including...
my diapers. Yep.
She made this whole "baby care" station by the side of our bed, repurposing a set of plastic drawers we had used to go to Camp Crucible. I came home to find it stocked with diapers, powder, wipes, and all the other miscellaneous paraphenalia that go into taking care of me when I am little.
I had two seperate-but-equally-strong reactions to this.
1. Awwww!
2. **SHUDDER**
That second one was because I wasn't used to my vanilla sister-in-law being so a part of, so inside, my kink life. Knowing was one thing, but putting away my diapers was entirely something else.
We both had a good laugh about it.
We've been through a lot together, M. and I. We've stood by each other through thick and thin. I'm glad she's family to me.
I'm grateful for my life, and everyone else's too. It's all too short and very precious.
