#365Gratitude: Someone gave me a ring

No, not jewelry.  I mean on the telephone.  I have this good friend, William.  He lives a few states up from me, and periodically I get to see him.  He'll come down to visit for the munch, and hang with me and my family.

He's really a cool character.  He's a great photographer, a skilled graphic artist, smart, funny, and kind.  I like him enormously.   

He's an ageplayer, like me, and a creative type, like me.  He's super-thinky, and shared my love of Pema Chodron. 

Our friendship, which is strong, is definitely on the rise, too.  Out of the blue the other day as I was on my way home, he gave me a call, and we spent my ride home catching up, and just sort of chit-chatting about all sorts of things. 

It was really nice.  I told him he could call me any old time, because I always love hearing from him. 

I'm really grateful for our friendship. 

#365Gratitude: MOAR little

Mako-kun cuddling with Broccoli

I'm little so much more lately.  And my little is so much more, too.  

That's a fairly confusing, deep, and ambiguous set of statements.  Let me unpack that a bit for you. 

For a long while now, my being little has been growing steadily more and more dissociative.  Mako-kun, aka Little Mako, is not entirely the same person as big me, the guy who's writing this lovely blog post you're reading right now.  We're not entirely separate people either. 

Think of a big tree that's split down the middle most of the way down, but meets at the trunk, and you've got the right visual for it. 

I wasn't, or maybe I should say, we weren't always quite this way.  Years ago, my partner Kacie first started talking to the littler me like he was distinct from me, and my brain-kitchen got busy cooking up the recipe, and ding out we popped! 

But it's taken years for us to cook all the way through or something.  It's not maybe the best food metaphor.  

Anyhow, lately we've been more distinct than ever, and at my Auntie Squee's gentle nudging, I've been more co-operative with Mako-kun, too.  He's out a lot more.  It feels really good.  

Just recently when our kids Katie and Leah were visiting he was out a bunch, and connecting with them in super lovey-dovey ways that were awesome.  Missy has told me on multiple occasions that she loves when he's out, when I/we (Whatever, pronouns, what are you going to do, right?) are little and she has time with us.  

I'll be dreadfully, terribly honest here - in the past my dissociation has scared me a bit.  I've carried around some internalized self-judgment over it, that maybe it made me a bit broken, or weak.  I don't want to be perceived as mentally unhealthy.   

But I'm really getting over that.  And it feels great.  Take it from me, and also from me. 

#365Gratitude: Oooh, long time.

Yesterday, I had the good fortune of an unexpected day off.

I used it to get together with my good-friend and book-editor-for-life, Lauren.

We did what we always do when we get together: have sushi and tea.

It was really good oolong tea.

I adore Lauren.  She's been my good, trusted friend for years.

She had recently bought a house with her partner, and I got to be the first of her friends to see it.  It's super nice.  

We are the sort of friends who trust one another with anything and everything.  She, for example, has seen my books when they're a jumbled, grammatically substandard mess, and helped me both tighten-and-dirty-them up.  

I, on the other hand, get to see her house when she's still putting it together.  It was actually really funny, she texted me shortly before I got there, to come on in, and right upstairs, because she'd still be cleaning when I got there.

She didn't happen to mention that she would also be completely naked, too, because she would be cleaning their enormous shower.  (Seriously, that shower is a thing of beauty that I very much want to use.)

I pop on into the house, call out to her that I'm there, and head upstairs.  She jumped, just the teeniest bit, but told me to come on in.  And we hung out, and talked books, and our lives, and just caught up.

While she was naked.  I did mention that part, right?  The funny, awesome thing is that it was no big deal.  Like, not at all.  It was nothing.  Because this is the sort of friends we are.  We bare our souls to one another.  

If you're wondering, yes, she's seen me naked too.  We have hung out together places where that's the general dress code. 

Maybe hung out is a poor choice of words.  Oh well.

Anyhow, then we went and got great sushi together.  She did put some clothes on beforehand.

This morning she sent me this awesome picture of a fish tank.

It's really nice having friends who get me.

#365Gratitude: Whose hand is that?

Sunday morning, I had a four person bed cuddle.  It was so nice.  Katie and Leah came upstairs, and got into bed with Missy and me for a morning of sleepy, huggy, cuddly goodness.

We snuggled.  We shared around my plushies.  We talked, drowsed, laughed, stroked, and petted one another.

This led to the very-funny experience of one of us asking all of us this question:

"Whose hand is that?"

Sheer bliss.

#365Gratitude: My kink family

My kink family is large.  It has members in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, California and Illinois.  (We're expanding, coming soon to a city near you!) Some of its members I see fairly often, others months go by, even years without my spending face-to-face time. (Which doesn't matter, because the second we're together, it's like no time has passed.)

There's a core part of this group I do see fairly regularly, although it's a bit like real-estate in Japan, no amount, no matter how big, is ever enough.

On Saturday, a bunch of us got together to celebrate our girl Rachel's birthday, at our house.  Rachel, her husband B, Katie, Leah, my vanilla-but-kink-friendly sister-in-law, Missy, and myself all hung out for the day.

One of the more fun things we did was play this videogame version of Pictionary called Drawful.

It was crazy fun.

We all kept making each other laugh, as we surprised each other with the goofy, off-center ways each of us think.

It was delightful.

Even more delightful to me was how all these people whom I love got together, to spend time with each other.  Not because of me, just because we're all family.

That's very special to me.