A Turkey of A Day

My mom refuses to cook turkey. So, while we are having dinner at her house tonight, I still have to cook the turkey and take it in.

My alarm went off at 6:00 so the turkey could go in by 7:00, but thing began going wrong before I had even tasted my coffee.

Better back up for a minute...You see, I have this awesome oven--you could totally fit two turkeys into it at the same time. Except it's not actually awesome because the door doesn't open up all of the way. In fact, it doesn't even open halfway, which is normally doable and just results in a constant burn on my arm that I have become immune to, but I'm getting off track.
At approximately 6:05, after turning on the oven, I realized that the rack would need to be lowered. Okay, no big right? I'll just take off the door. The problem is, the door then needed to go back on. After much whispered cursing, which my husband later informed me was more at a Chef Ramsey level of kitchen dispute, and some very quiet soft suggestions from our youngest that perhaps we should wake dad up and ask him to help, I got the door back on. Yay! All good, right?

Except for one minor detail--the turkey still had to go in, and the whole process becomes way more complicated when that door is 400 degrees.

I lifted my coffee cup to my lips, and just before that first glorious taste...."Mom! I stepped in cat poop!" Of course you did honey...

Then up popped my darling husband and Master, to inform me that I was not indeed behaving in nearly as stealthy of a manner as I had thought, and yes, I had probably better put the turkey in then let the oven come up to temperature.

Washed the child off, pulled the over door off again, shoved the turkey in the oven, replaced the door, got a drink off coffee before it miraculously vanished, and we're rolling surprisingly close to schedule.

Getting it out should be fun...

Did I mention that I had to go to the grocery store last night because someone who shall rename unnamed (ahem) requested pumpkin pie after I did my shopping reasonably early? Then I forgot to add the milk. Because new recipe. Because cookbooks packed.

Yep, it's turkey day alright.

I hope that you all have an awesome day, regardless of whether or not it's a turkey day where you live!

And the Cat Was Dancing in the Kitchen...

I've been awake since 2:30 AM. In my defense, I waited until 4 to get up and make coffee. I was tired, really. But I woke up to go pee (in the toilet even, tyvm) and...

Plus, the cat was dancing in the kitchen, and I have 99 legitimate things to worry about on top of a million illegitimate issues, so naturally there was no going back to sleep.
I'm sure there's something useful I should be doing, because there are never enough hours in the day, but maybe there is sometimes if you get up in the middle of the night...

I did find this:

 Not exactly productive, but still kind of funny.

I should say that I'm not a mess. And if I did say it, I should totally mean it, but I wouldn't really mean it, so I would totally be lying.

I worry about leaving my mom.
I worry about sending my kids to a school with a thousand students (this one's kicking my ass).
I worry about next month, what I forgot to do yesterday, what might happen tomorrow.
If it can or cannot be named, I worry about it.

 

Yep, that's me. If I was guy. And the hose wasn't frozen. Because winter.

Oh yea, found another good shot of my life (why do the boys get all the good pictures?)

Ooh, shots...If I pretend that I didn't go to bed, is it still too early to start drinking? I mean, after all, it is dark...

Meh

And that, my friends, is all I have to say today.

Okay, well maybe just one more...

And just so winter doesn't think she's off the hook...

Changing My Motto

I have lived in one place for far too long--it is becoming painfully apparent that my life's packing experience consists of throwing all my shit into the back of a truck in the midst of a knockdown dragout fight with some parental figure.

I'm changing my life motto...

Thank You

Normally, I spend Love Our Lurkers day roaming Blogland and saying hello everywhere. I didn't do any of my usual roaming this time, and there was even two days of opportunity! I'm sure I have valid excuses, really, I do! Yea...

I seem to lurk more often than not these days, and if you have a Wordpress blog, I'm always lurking--long story short, Wordpress hates me and will not allow me to open my big mouth at all. Ever.

Rambling on, I know. Getting to the point, I appreciate Blogland. I appreciate all of the blogs I read, and all the people who visit me here. Even when I spend my visitation time silently.

So thank you Bloggers--you have inspired me, made me laugh and cry, inspired introspection and thoughts that I normally wouldn't have had. You have made me feel...Not alone. And for that, I am deeply grateful.

And to my readers? You amaze me. Sometimes I think you're all crazy for sticking with me, but I'm not complaining. You have made this blog something it might not have been, you have given me a platform on which I am heard. I give you my secrets, my random insanities, my deeply held beliefs, my soapbox rants, and you listen (figuratively).

So, thank you Blogland.

I wish I could say that I'll be contaminating your dashboards with daily posts, and returning to the more regular posting schedule that I used to keep...But life is insanity. We're taking a huge leap of faith with our lives, and such things do seem to require an inordinate amount of time and effort. But I'll continue to muse and complain with some regularity, I'm sure. So for now, it's pretty much life as usual...

Lurker Love

It has come to my attention that it is once again Love Our Lurkers Day. A day dedicated to sweet talking silent visitors into speaking up and saying hello.

Oh, the lurker--someone who reads silently and goes on about their way, with only the trace of a hit on our stats that they have been there at all. I'll let you in on a little not-so-secret secret--you are the majority of my readership.

I am grateful and still surprised that so many of you come here. Being the curious creature that I am, I wonder what brings you here, who you are, what you have to say...

I am constantly amazed by how many of you silently grace the pages of this blog. Given that I really never thought anyone at all would read here, it's quite an honor to know that you do, even if you are quiet.

Here I share my mind, my thoughts, the random insanities that pop into my head. And, much to my surprised delight, you read them!
Would you be so kind as to leave me a word? Perhaps why you're here, a bit about yourself, or even just hello...I won't bite. Promise--its actually a rule.
If you've ever wanted to say anything to me, or leave a hello on this blog, today would be the perfect day to do so! I tell you my secrets, won't you give me a word?

And just to get everybody going this morning...

So Much to Say...

I have so much to say that words escape me.
My world is changing drastically, and I'm still in that place where it all feels like a dream. I keep waiting to wake up...
I have so much to say that the words they are choking me.
Leading to silence
falling behind miles of unknown road.

And I realized that I'm a junky, as such untrustworthy--anything to get my fix. I'll turn it off over and over again because I don't trust myself when it's on. I become a slave to my fix, the fix that only dominance can give.

The world is upside down and inside out, as the future stretches out before me, unknown and unseen. I almost took a little peek you see, but I didn't...There's nothing to be said for knowing exactly what's ahead.

I have so much to say that I am drowning in my own words.
Words unused on the path less traveled, as everything that was comes unraveled so that we may use the threads to make something new...

You are to Me

You are to me

like dust in the air

the creaky boards in the floor of an old childhood farmhouse

sunlight drifting through the cracks of aged wood.

You are to me, like memories of what was and is to be

a forest of trees long since forgotten

living on in my bones

like a whisper calling my soul home.

You are to me
eyes all seeing
a whispered dream
the promise of a moment vanished in the mist
and solid as a stone to call my own.

I remember you

like the music in my soul

ages long since forgotten

like sunlight drifting through the leaves

the gentle whisper of wind amongst the trees.

You are to me

time immeasurable
and you remind me
that

I cannot practice what I am

as I have become what I will be.

How Does He Take Care of Me?

I got a comment from Blondie, which I have taken the liberty of c/p to respond to in a post. There was also a related comment about addressing the issue of responsibilities in D/s relationships, but I'm going to address that one separately.

"I was always under the impression that the Dominant is supposed to care for his submissive, to know how to take care of her, how to make her feel safe and loved. And in return, the sub gives him herself, all of herself. She trusts him. But for some reason, with the pain and loneliness that you feel at times, I don't see that he is taking good care of you. Am I wrong about what I thought? Am I wrong about how I feel when I read your beautiful posts? You don't have to answer me if you choose not to. I will still be reading your very poetic and wonderful posts."

I think that things start getting very murky when we begin talking about what a Dominant is "Supposed to do". Sure, we all have ideas, but this is about his ideas of what he's supposed to do--I agreed to that a long time ago. Do I always like his ideas? Nope.

He's human, and he doesn't always excel at Dominance. Sometimes, he makes me want to beat my head against a wall. However, I'm no shining star of slavery.
Honestly, his hobby sucks. Seriously. I feel like it wreaks havoc on me--its his way of checking out, and I hate that with a fucking passion. Sometimes I feel neglected, and I don't like that in the least little bit.
Can I deal? Sure.

I don't think that he always takes good care of me, and I know that I don't always give him all of myself. Is that not, however, somewhat the nature of human relationships?

As much as I struggle with the extremes of my emotions, I am...An emotion junky. Pain, rage, joy, sadness, love, experience--they feed me. One of my greatest fears has always been complacency, numbness, distance from feeling. Ironic, given that I feel everything so ridiculously deeply.
Pain tells me I'm alive. Anger reminds me that blood still beats in my veins. Hurt...Hurt keeps me from hurting him. Control keeps me safe and chases my demons away.

He takes care of me by feeding my need. And sometimes that feeding is...Unpleasant. Sometimes he doesn't, and I don't like it. But that's part of being the one who isn't in charge.

And he's there for me. I know that no matter what happens in my life, when the chips are down, when the sky falls, and my world disintegrates into dust beneath my feet, he will be there like the rock that just won't give up. No matter what.

No matter what I am or what I become he will not abandon me--he might beat me and force me to change, but he won't give up on me.
No matter what I tell him or what I am capable of, he will still claim me, still keep me, still love me.

He knows the deepest, angriest, darkest, most twisted parts of me. He knows all that I am and what I have become. And he still wants me. He still keeps me. He still loves me. He accepts me for who and what I am. Always.

There will never be anyone else for me. Never. No other human being will ever step as far inside as he has. Ever. So we deal, and neither one of us is always ideal

There's a whole hell of a lot of something to be said for all that.

Taking care of someone is a subjective experience. Sure, I hate the fucking hobby with all my heart. But it's a hobby, not a deal breaker. In fact, there aren't any deal breakers from my end--that's part of the arrangement.

Love is beautiful and gracious. It is also messy and ugly. Love is peace and war played out on the ultimate battleground of the heart, and it's not always an enjoyable experience.

Like A Quiet Storm

He rolled in at 3 AM like a quiet storm. Sweeping the blanket off my naked shoulders, he reminded me in no uncertain terms of what we are.

I drank him in, resting at his feet as we discussed the future in all of its magnificent uncertainty.
The moon hung huge in the sky as we discussed humanity and the politics of man. A thousand miles to prove that might is not right, and anything worth doing is worth fighting for. And so he takes advantage of the knowledge that I live for a noble cause, I love to fight for the underdog, and we are the sum of what we believe to be true.
His hand stroked my head as he said, we know not what the future will bring, but baby I found something new for me and you. If I go, you will come with me and fight for what you believe to be true.

As the stars faded into the coming day, with a thousand miles behind him, he touched me like a quiet storm.
Slivers of light slipped quietly through the cracks in the sky as he played my body like an instrument of glorious sin.
My transgressions poured forth, confessions in the dark begging for absolution as he reminded me that I belong to him.

Image source unkown

Tracking Time

I have kept myself busy this week:

I took a razor blade to the bottom of my pans
I cleaned the desk *shudder--it's like checking the mail ten times in one day
I did the ever magically replicating laundry
I dusted my books and shined up chess trophies
I took down pictures and cleaned the backs and frames
I cleaned the keyboard--with a Q-tip
I pulled specials off of their shelves and dusted them down
I folded all of the laundry.

I realized that I keep time by his calls. My day is counted away by the space between rings, the moments of silence broken by his words...

And so I wait for my fix. Hours meaningless and defined by the feeling in my veins, the beat of my heart, the race for the phone. The sound of his voice from a thousand miles away...

So I drown in the tragic majesty of life, the beautiful uncertainty of being. As I track time by the space between his calls...

Religion, Absolution, and the Name of God

I make a conscious effort to stay away from two very touchy subjects on my blog--Religion and politics. Because yea, nobody likes to be yelled at. But ya know...Eventually, I was bound to say fuck it...I will no doubt get off track here, and possibly piss a few people off, but hey...A girl's gotta ramble when the inspiration strikes.

It was recently suggested to me, that F/m D/s and D/s without God are doomed to failure as these paths exist outside of God's plan and displease him greatly.
So maybe I lost my cool a bit at my fairly polite, very judgmental commenter. Human history is fraught with wars over belief, and so often God and his religions are touted as a reasonable excuse to persecute people with different belief systems. Many atrocities are, and have been, justified by holding forefront the edicts of religion.

In all fairness, I am biased on this subject--Alpha and I both see religion as a basis for power exchange between a man and a woman to be based on an outdated belief system wherein women are inferior to men. Now, that is just how we feel about it. Do we really care who follows that particular path and who doesn't? Not in the least little bit. What goes on in your bedroom is none of our business, your house is your own, and how you choose to live is ultimately of no consequence to either of us.
I believe that religious justification for our choices is a way of absolving ourselves of personal responsibility for our own actions.

The concept that church offers absolution if one conforms to the beliefs reached within its walls is...Disagreeable to me. I truly do believe that some people are beyond absolution. I also believe that how and who we choose to love is none of religion's business and should not require the absolution which is so publicly withheld from those who love differently than the norm.
Religion is man's way of attempting to interpret and speak for God, to define and follow the undefinable. And we are truly fallible creatures, prone to the interpretations we want to believe.

To me, God is a construct of the human mind. A construct we use to put a name we can identify with to a power greater than ourselves. We choose to follow the Gods we can feel close to. The name given to what we believe in is important only to ourselves.

In contemplation, I admit that I have spent a great deal of my life in prayer to something more, something greater than myself. I truly do believe in an entity beyond and of us all, and what you name that power is of little consequence to me.
I have spent more time on my knees begging for absolution than you average human being, but never thought to beg it of any God, only of one man.

The purity of God and man is held high with the power of offered absolution should we conform.
Interestingly enough, I have found purity in the darkest of places.
There is purity in the darkness, absolution in the rain, enlightenment to be found in pain, there is heaven at his feet, and there is beauty in things which God's church has often declared abhorrent.

I don't care if you're gay, straight, bi, kinky, F/m or like fucking in purple pansies at the end of the rainbow. I don't care if you worship in a church or in the dirt, or if your god is a man, woman, or something far removed from both. Your beliefs do not make you better, nor worse than me.

Gay love is no different than my love. And perhaps, just maybe, God is love so merely by loving something, someone, anything, truly and deeply....Maybe that is how we touch that which is beyond the constructs we create.

I see more absolution in one lustful gay kiss, one "good girl", in one cruel stroke of a whip, in one choice to be a good person, than my heart finds in all the halls of God. And there is more God on earth than could ever be contained in one religion.

Why?

I used to ask myself why. Why I was the way I am, as is one of the dark and unpleasant experiences of my past could explain this element of my present, this need to be Dominated, these dark fantasies, this deep seated need to be owned, which I so struggle against at times.

I don't ask that why anymore.

Now I ask why it is that I am incapable of having a romantic relationship with another human being without some element of D/s. There is only one person which I ever intend to be so involved with, and ultimately, it doesn't matter why I'm wired this way. An answer is not going to change who I am, nor would I necessarily want it to do so.

Yet still...I ask why.

Because I don't excel at it, this whole slave thing. I don't embrace it with open arms, reveling in the unique glory that comes only with that feeling of being owned.
I've never stuck with something I wasn't good at, and I am particularly fond of excelling at the things I choose to do. But when my biology, my heart, my soul, the very fabric of my being, whatever it is in me that makes me what  am; drives me to something which I, at times, feel I will never excel at, I question...Why.

Why I can feel no security without ownership.
Why I am incapable of truly enjoying sex without Dominance and submission.
Why I cannot happily tolerate another human being in my day-to-day life if they aren't in charge,
Why I so often superficially feel as if I want to be in control, when the reality is that his control is what makes me feel stability in my life.
Why I still fight so hard against the reins which make my life what it was made to be.
Why M/s is what I need to make me...Feel.
Why I'm Wonderland's version of the velveteen rabbit, needing M/s to make me real.
Why this is the only okay thing which truly touches me to the core of my being.
Why, why the fuck I crave that feeling which no words can name, the feeling which comes only with...
Why the need for that feeling eats at my soul, as if it's the only thing that could truly make me whole.
Why I cannot love the roses without the thorns.

Ultimately, why does not really matter, yet still I must ask, my obsession a compulsion...

On nights like these, when he's a thousand miles away, I sit and ponder the empty space on the couch, the things which go bump in the night, the cold spot in the bed, the void in my being. In moments like these, I know why it still scares me, this creature that I am, loving the man that he is...Because what he is defines who I am, I don't know how to be anybody else, and this life we live...She is a fickle mistress, prone to bouts of unreasonable tragedy and love stories gone wrong. Life writes tales which will make your soul ache, stories of love and love lost...Beauty highlighted by bitter torment.

I am what I am. I accept that. He allows me to experience that being. What I seem to have difficulty accepting, is that I am is so intrinsically dependent on him. Because by nature, he will not go my way because I want him to--he will do so if it happens to coincide with his desires. That nature is what makes us compatible. Yet...I struggle with accepting this reality, the reality I must live to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be me. Even now, after all these years...

I am afraid that one day life will take him away from me, that one day he will no longer feast his beast on my needs, that I'll end up living just one veil away from that which feeds the need within me.

"There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, even to yourself, words are useless."

~Sara Zarr

Just Like That...

Just like that...He looks at me, with that particular glint in his eyes...And I know. I'm all in. All his. Doubt disappears, and I know that it matters not where I stand, because wherever I am will be of his design.

Just. Like. That...

It's almost annoying, really.

On an unrelated note, I seem to be finding my life seriously lacking in good Dominant blogs. Any recommendations?