#365Gratitude: Now, Voyager!

For a while now, I've been binge-watching Star Trek: Voyager on Netflix.  I can't believe the series is 20 years old!  That's insane to me.  Way back when it first started, I watched about the first season and a half or so, and then just kinda lost it.

Missy and I began watching it together a few months back, and I keep going on my own in fits and starts.  It really, really gets good after Season 3, when Seven of Nine comes on the show.​

Sometimes, I'll admit, the show is like a breaded mozzarella stick, just stuffed with cheese.  ​

But more often than not, it's amazing.  There's great storytelling, characters you invest in, complex feelings, and tearful situations.  I'm a sucker for tearful situations.​

I especially love Neelix, and lately I've come to really love this little space girl he is responsible for, Naomi Wildman. 

Naomi's mom, Samantha Wildman, was pregnant with her when Voyager first got lost.  She asked Neelix to be Naomi's godfather.  (Mako-kun says it was a great personal favor she was asking for.  He loves that joke.) 

Anyhow, in the episode I saw that prompted this post, Once Upon A Time, you really get to see Neelix feel the weight of that responsibility.  He cares for Naomi while her mom is away, and possibly in a deadly situation.  It's both heartwarming and heartbreaking, at the same time.  

I'm really glad I started binge-watching the series.  It's really amazing. 

#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.