#365Gratitude Day 321: Can't you hear how I feel?

Feelings are complicated.

Sometimes it's hard to find words for them, understand your own feelings, or share them with someone else.  

This morning I stumbled across a tool that helps with that.  It's an iOS app called Cove.  Cove helps you create mood music that describes through sound, what you feel inside.  You place rocks in water, in layers, and it creates the sound of how you feel.

It's really neat.  I spent a few minutes playing with it this morning, and created this:

I have a few friends who struggle to express some very complex feelings that I'm going to recommend this to.  If you think you're one of them, you're right.

#365Gratitude Day 320: All the time in the world

In the past year or so, my friend Moliére has really become one of my closest friends.  We talk fairly constantly, about our lives, our feelings, our plans, hopes and dreams.  He's a wonderful guy.

He's come down to visit me and go to the munch, and even hang out at The Crucible together.

That stopped when he moved from the east coast to Colorado, sadly.

Then he decided to move to Fiji.

Yes, Fiji - the island nation on the other side of the planet.

Ironically, the father away he moves, the closer we seem to get.  We Skype constantly, and we're even starting an amazing web project together.  Now Fiji is between 16 and 20 hours ahead of my time here in Washington, DC, depending on daylight savings time. 

That can be tough to keep track of.  But luckily, my clever friend found a good solution.  It's this little app called Mach Clock, that shows the time in various cities, in a little window that stays open on your desktop.

It's very handy.  It makes it very easy for me to see just what time it is where he is.  Not that I'm going to tell him that just now, seeing as it's about 1:30 in the morning there.

#365Gratitude Day 319: Missy's Other Lover

Sunday morning Missy and I lay in bed together, just relaxing.  I do love a morning cuddle or three, so I moved into pre-hugging position and prepared to pounce on her.

Only to be denied by Yang, our boy cat.  He decided it was his turn for Missy love, and plopped himself down on her side, putting his paws protectively and possessively by her face.

You can't tell in the picture, but he had woken her up while he oh-so-not-delicately plopped himself on her.  (To be fair, I too have woken her up when I oh-so-not-delicately have done the same.)  She's got this wry little grin on her face as she pretends to sleep, just to let Yang have his moment of victory.

I love these little moments.

#365Gratitude Day 318: Pickledate

Saturday was the DC Littles Munch.  This time around Missy and I brought the cake.  We have this funny tradition at the munch of bringing a cake decorated with whatever goofball holiday it happens to be.

This time around it was National Pickle Day.  

I have been doing the littles munch for years now.  I love it for many different reasons.  Yes, it's great getting to hang out with old friends and new ones.  Yes, it's great to have an excuse to eat cake.

But the big reason for me that I love the munch is that it's an act of service.  The primary reason the munch exists is that it's a place where new people can come to talk to folks like me about what it means to be an age player.  It's an easy on-ramp, where we can share our experiences, answer questions, and assure people that they're okay.

Case in point, this new girl, E.  She had mailed me earlier in the day, wondering how to find the munch people at the restaurant.  I gave her the easy heads up about it and told her I'd see her there.  At the munch we sat down and had a long talk.  She was full of questions.  "Is it okay to not want to do the whole diaper thing?"  Yep, I told her, sure is.  "So it's okay to just really like teddy bears?" Absolutely, I told her.  "Do I have to pick a specific age?" Nope, that's just something people do, and you don't have to.

She looked happy and relieved.  I told her that when I first got started I had this very specific idea about who I was, what I wanted and needed, and how all those things have since changed.  I said that she didn't need to listen to anyone else, even herself, about the one right way to ageplay, because there's no such thing.  I said that she's in a great position, because there was so much good stuff coming her way, so many experiences and changes yet to happen.

She looked pretty relieved, and pretty happy about it.

Afterwards, Missy and I had a date night.  We went to go see The 33, about the trapped Chilean miners.  What a good movie.  

Along the way we stopped for dinner, and even did a little shopping.  (I finally got that Steven Universe t-shirt I have been wanting.)  Then we went to a super-fancy-reserved-seat-leather-recliner theater we like.  

Missy is a news buff, and she had followed the story about the miners back when it first happened.  So she knew everything about the story.  Every so often as we watched the movie, she'd lean over and whisper extra little tidbits about what was happening.  It was kind of like that thing Nickelodeon used to do with Avatar cartoons, where they'd show them with pop-up bubbles with insider information about what was happening on-screen.  It was awesome!  We both loved it.

I love these date nights with Missy.  They recharge our relationship batteries.  Missy is really good to me, and supports me in a lot of things I do.  She has to share me and my time with a lot of people.  I love getting private just-for-us time with her.  

What a good day that was.

#365Gratitude Day 317: Hats On

It's been a while since I put on a podcasting hat.

By a while I mean over 5 months.  Not that I was counting.  Which I sort of was.

It was a good recording.  Afterwards, the "after dark" part of the show went on a while.

By a while, this time I mean until about 2 am.

The next day I had such a sleep-deprivation-hangover.

Mostly, I didn't care.  I have missed this.