#365Gratitude: A School Day on Mars

On Monday, I was lucky enough to get to work from home (because snowstorm).  Missy, who does a medical-type-job in a medical-type-place (a hospital) wasn't so lucky.  She's what's known as essential personnel.  (This is not a surprise, she's always been essential to me.)

Anyhow, my car was the only one dug out, and I decided I'd "take her to school".  Getting out of the development wasn't so bad, but driving around the neighborhood, dropping her off, getting gas, and trying to find breakfast was just weird.  There were mountains of snow everywhere. 

If you look really carefully, you can see my Wawa Grammaw in the window.

I tried to go to our local grocery store but it had a line of shopping carts blocking the entrance, a giant, weird sort of NOPE THANKS FOR COMING GO HOME sign.  I eventually wound up at a Wawa convenience store for gas and breakfast supplies.

On my way in, there was this guy by the door, and we just struck up a nice conversation.  He said, "hey, be careful out there." and I wished him the same.

I thanked the checkout clerk profusely, who was this very nice lady who looked like she was someone's Nana.  She told me, "You stay safe, honey."

I made sure to.

#365Gratitude: Unbusted keister and carster

Sunday morning I got out of North Carolina early, intending to get home to northern Virginia without incident.  It was a dicey thing, because even though North Carolina didn't have the INSANE amount of snow DC did, there was still plenty.

Enough that driving out the side neighborhoods by Michael & Maya's was... adventuresome.

I found my way to a gas station, and proceeded to hang onto my car while I filled it, so as to not fall on the ice and bust my keister.

Once I hit the main roads, they were remarkably clear.  I was great until I got about 15 miles away from my house, and hit a traffic snarl caused by an accident.

A truck swerved on the icy road and jumped up on the shoulder, stranding itself.  

So we sat.  And sat.  And sat.

Eventually I got past it, and made my way home, reasonably none the worse for wear.

Whew.

#365Gratitude: A question of violins in the media

Saturday I went to a BlackViolin concert with my friends Maya and Michael.

These guys are amazing.  They're a "Violin Fusion" band.  Their music is intense, energetic, beautiful.  They're all about breaking stereotypes.  It was funny, the venue was at this sort of redneck'ish school, deep in North Carolina.  When we got there, the announcements made sure to tell us, "Sit down, and stay seated.  Don't use your phone during the performance.  DO WHAT WE SAY CITIZENS.  (okay that last part I made up.)"

As soon as the guys took the stage, Kev Marcus said, "Hey all, please get up when you want, dance if you feel like it, take pics and videos of us and post them all over the place!  WHO'S GOING TO STOP YOU?"

Awesome.

They particularly wanted us to record them "going freestyle" - just improvising. So I did.

See for yourself.

#dailyThink: The sauce of your own happiness

Years ago, several of my partners and I taught a class about kink and polyamory, for a kink group in Roanoke, Virginia. 

One of the cooler things we did was a sort of visual food metaphor I call Poly Spaghetti.

Here's how you do it.  

You get a bunch of people from the audience to hold different colors of rope, one at each end.  So you might have, say, Fred hold Rita's orange rope, because he's her daddy.  She on the other hand, is holding both that orange rope, as well as a blue one, linking her with Nancy, who is her slave.  Nancy in turn has Rita's blue rope, and a green one linking her to Norbert, her lover, and another going to Dave, her baby.  Dave is considering sharing a rope with Fred.   

Sounds awfully confusing right?   Let me help by asking some important questions:

Let's say that Nancy, from the example above, has a terrible day at work, takes a sick day, and has to then go into work over the weekend to finish a project, meaning she has to skip dinner with Fred and Rita, can't meet Norbert for coffee, and is going to need Dave to change his own diaper when he wakes up Saturday morning. 

Who is affected by Nancy's actions?  Who is she accountable to? 

The answers are:

Everyone Nancy has emotional ties to, or plans with are affected by her actions and choices. 

She's ultimately accountable to (and responsible for) herself. 

Power exchange, dominance and submission, and kink can make these waters seem awfully muddy sometimes.  But in the end, good healthy relationships start with good emotional health and well-being for oneself. 

Which is why this morning, many years later, I have an addendum to the poly spaghetti.   

I am the sauce of my own happiness.   

I'll throw myself under the bus for my own poly example.  I'm down at my partner Maya's house.  She's very not a morning person.  Neither is my wife, Missy.  I made the very sensible choice of not in-person or remotely-via-technology trying to wake them up.  What I did do was greet my partner Squee over Skype (who also wasn't up yet, but she actually wants me to do this), catch up my blog, and hang out with the lovely folks over in the Big Little Podcast slack.   

Later, when Squee was up, we connected and affectionately noodled with one another, and it felt great.  I feel wonderfully content, and emotionally self-regulated.   

Man, this is some good sauce. 

#365Gratitude: A distinct slack of friends

Not that long ago, Spacey and I started biglittlepodcast.slack.com, a private sort of chatroom system for the podcast.   

It's neat.  You can chat there from your phone, your tablet, or your computer.  (I suppose you could also chat there from someone else's phone, tablet, or computer, if you asked them nicely, first.) 

It was sort of an experiment, really.  How's it going, you ask?   

It's going awesome! 

Lots of folks have signed up.  (You do have to do that - send an email to slack.please at biglittlepodcast.com to ask for access.). I woke up this morning to over 255 messages worth of overnight conversation there.  People are hanging out, making friends, talking, being silly, being serious.  It's really knitting together into a little intentional community.

I couldn't be more pleased.