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Archive for the ‘emotions’ Category

Ten minutes ago I made an audio blog entry of me crying and talking about the wondrous odd sad sad sad pain of Rugaru leaving our house/saying goodbye at this stage. But audio blog/hipcast didn’t seem to care that I hit # and then 3 to publish and it ate it, instead recording and posting a minute of me sniffling and waiting for some acknowledgement that these tragic precious private moments had been captured.

Anyway, Delia is taking him somewhere. Safe, I hope. But probably not since they won’t tell me where it is because it would probably torment me. Probably it’s NOT safe. Probably it’s stupid. But I guess so was this whole magical experiment.

I have never conceived of the moment where there’s a break up with one person in a triad leaving. I never thought anything like this “triad” ambitious poly business would be part of my life or thought it necessary to plan for how to handle it. The strange intimate sweetness of it taking place with Delia right there, with knowing we’re okay and going on together and things will be awesome, and at the same time things being so so fucking sad and hard to let go of with him. But necessary.

I just didn’t know just didn’t know just didn’t know this would break cracks into my chest. When mere hours ago I thought it would be such a relief to have Delia and I back to ourselves. When I didn’t understand I was just being an asshole as a last ditch effort to make him prove . . . something. That can’t be proven or gained.

The way everything morphed. At the beginning of this I could never ever EVER have believed it would have shifted this way and that I would be crying for myself even more than for everybody else.

I’m 38 years old and so much of this has never ever happened to me before and I’m so glad it did. I’m crying with all of the love of nineteen and the acceptance of my warm mothering forties. And the patience that there is more. And I’ve already gots lots and lots of it!

Before my webcam show today:

My boobs pressed against the glass of the cabin door.

After my webcam show I went shopping for some Christmas presents for our nephews while Delia and The Hunter had some private time at home alone. A guy hit on me while I window shopped, but I was enjoying being alone too much to try to get a free dinner out of it (yes, I do think that way). Instead I treated myself to a solo Mexican dinner.

Christmas mannequin I saw tonight

All of these years that it was just the two of us — Delia and I — when I chose to spend time alone I always felt like we both missed out on sharing something together. One of the things I love about The Hunter living with us is the feeling of freedom I have to be alone, like nobody is missing out on anything if I eat out by myself or take a walk by myself or spend the night by myself.

Of course they are quick to point out that they are missing out on time with me, but I don’t care or feel I’m doing something stingy the way I did when it was just Delia and I. I was able to walk up and down and up and down and up and down the streets tonight with no regard for time or preoccupation with “what is my girlfriend doing now? Is she waiting for me?” No automatic decisions against doing something nice by myself because I would rather do it with her.

We did everything together. Barely spent any time apart, really. In lots of ways we were isolated together against the rest of the world. I wanted everything to be safe and stable and predictable and routinized at home with no surprises or discomfort. Experiencing that was important, for both of us, I think. But right now it seems important for us to grow relationships with other people and restore some of our independence from each other without growing apart.

I didn’t think I wanted or needed to spend more time alone and with other people, but The Hunter and his relationship with Delia and the upsetting of my soothing routines and space cushions have been catalysts for me to seize time alone and talk to other people more, including inviting a lady friend to go to the movies with us! Except for four couples we’re friends with as a couple, I really haven’t cultivated relationships with people as an individual. I felt like I only had energy for three relationships: my relationship with Delia, my relationship with work, and my relationship with myself with a tiny bit available for my family and the friends we have in common.

I believe in brain plasticity. I believe I’m becoming more capable and flexible by intimately sharing our space and time with a third person we care about. And on an observable level I can now see that I have more opportunities instead of less by our being in a close relationship with a third person. Not just any third person, but this particular third person and everything that he brings to the table.

I’m not adjusting to everything with the greatest of ease and I know I will never be a social butterfly or able to juggle work and a hundred relationships and home life with the kind of energy and skills other people do, but I do think I’m changing for the better even if I’ve had a handful of immature outbursts. I also can’t say that any one of us in this new triad has been devoid of jealousy, but I think it’s okay because we’re talking about it openly and it’s kind of exciting/stimulating.

I’d be lying if I said I feel 100% safe in our new relationships. What I do feel is wholly alive. Every day is different, like we’re kids who don’t know anything so every 24 hour period is crammed full of measurable huge growth. Like 25 new vocabulary words a day.

Check out this blog entry from Delia for some more background on The Hunter.

So happy to be outside naked under blue skies knowing that the days are now getting longer.

Nude outside in winter, welcoming the lengthening of days!

Night-before-last and yesterday morning held some sad, dark moments for me. Lightning Allie put the smack down on my ass when I acted like a rude, bratty shithead . . . that was pretty cool. Painful, but awesome. There are very few people that I trust the way I trust her.

Quite a few things right now are painful but awesome. Delia and The Hunter and I are all exquisitely aware that we’re growing.

Been awhile since I posted a “real” photo, so here’s one from the gallery I just posted for members:

Hair Pie for Thanksgiving?

You can join here if you want to see the whole set of 117 pictures. And here’s a less in-your-face preview pic:

*****

I’ve had a suspicious amount of clarity and excitement and storybook-shivery-fantasy-happiness since I woke up. Like everything is imbued with so much magic and possibility that I’m pretty sure there will be a major drop here in a few hours or tomorrow.

Fingers of clouds grabbing the blue sky to the south

Maybe it’s a weird altered state from having an allergy attack this morning bringing a feeling of deja vu I’m-a-sick-child-home-from-school-ness or brain rattled from sneezing and blowing. Maybe it’s the weirdness of the season or just the sun and how much new age music I listen to making me think I’m in my own fucking fairy tale. But I imagined calling the backyard kitty and him coming and it giving me this extremely pleasant feeling, but grossly exaggerated. A feeling not just of a one normal cat coming, but of a cat that I have a special telepathic bond with and a rainbow menagerie of all different kinds of spirit creatures would also come to cluster around me as I stand on the front step of the cabin.

*****

I didn’t actually imagine that or believe something like that would happen, but that’s the weird FEELING that I have inside me. Like I FEEL like that’s about to happen, all that and more.

My life, now with more spaceships and winged coyotes.

It makes me nervous.

We took a walk today – the only cardio I’ve gotten all week!

The best part: sniffing big barely-pink rhododendron flowers that smelled like traditional pink bubblegum splashed with watermelon.

Delia and I shared a mango when we got home and stretched a little. My hips are rigidly, unflexibly tight these days, even more so than usual, so I cannot get enough stretching (or massage). I also spent some time massaging my belly and other gutsy parts. AND THEN I POOPED!

Then I grossly underestimated how much time and energy it would take me to get ready for a shoot and execute it. Thanks to Delia’s loving, patient help and photography it was worth it, though.

Then I went somewhere and recognized how (over)sensitive I am to meanness.

Read the rest of this entry »

We got back home around dinnertime tonight after Delia took us to a little cottage by the seashore to shoot pictures for our sites. It was magnificent! Except for this (boring) stuff:

Many things conspired against us getting much done or even going at all; our last running vehicle broke down in the middle of a downpour Saturday night, for example. Rather than get charged for the rental cottage and not even go, Delia decided to rent a car (harder than you might think when you live at least an hour away from “everything”; she had to take a long walk and get on an early bus to go pick it up the day we were to leave, then wait for pick-up time and make the trek back to our house, then drive to the coast).

When we finally got to the beach it was 8pm. Then when we started shooting the next day I realized I forgot to bring the usb cable for our camera OR the card reader and we don’t have enough compact flash cards to hold all of the content we planned to shoot. So another long drive to my favorite depressing coastal town (Aberdeen) and back, cutting into shooting time some more.

You’re going to hate me for complaining about this, but it was also TOO SUNNY at the beach for us to shoot as much as we wanted to outside; the forecast had been for more cloud cover so I thought we could count on some fog and grey skies to even things out. Then shooting time inside the cottage with natural light was limited by the loud-ass landscaping/yard dudes hanging out right in front of our windows.

So.

We actually had a wonderful time, but I feel like I can’t just say that because people already seem to think our jobs are way too easy or something. Like I can’t tell you we took long walks on the beach and stretched standing in the sand. Like I can’t tell you I read a whole book! Like I can’t tell you I WAS GLAD we had no phone reception and only spotty internet connectivity when an unsecured neighborhood network  opened up. Like I can’t tell you we didn’t turn on the tv even once while we were there, because when I’m away from working-at-home I don’t feel so much like I need my escapist drugs of food-and-boob-tube. Like I can’t tell you I enjoyed myself. Like I can’t tell you about this morning’s Belgian waffle with huckleberries and maple mascarpone. Like I can’t tell you that almost as soon as we got home and I read some stupid emails I felt like crying and have been picking a hole into my head ever since.

Because somehow I have to make sure to convey that I love my work while having to remind people that is what it is: WORK.

*****

Delia said the whole trip and all the expenses were worth it even if we had only gotten her beach shoot done. The pictures are BEAUTIFUL! And when most people look at them they won’t even realize she was inching into hypothermia.

She did a good job so people will think the weather was tropical with a pleasant sunset breeze. They will wish they were with her in that look-so-warm water so they could suck her and suck her and suck her some more. They will imagine going on these “vacations” with us. They will say we should shoot on the beach all the time, but to have better lighting (insert know-nothing photographic advice here) and get wetter, please.

Right now I’m not even bitching about what I *want* to be bitching about . . . or about how miserable I feel about being such a bitch and Delia having to be near it when she deserves much much better.

Being cold made her eyes sparkle and her nipples hard. Her eyes are brown so sunset shining on them looks like flecks of warm honey in dark melted caramel.

Did I mention her nipples were hard?

*****

When we pulled back into town tonight, our vehicle was fixed (for a little less than $500). Tomorrow we have to take the rental car back sooooooooo there’s some more time and money we’ll be frittering away. The good news is we’ll have an excuse to go to one of our favorite Vietnamese joints when we do. The bad news is we’ve already spent way too much money this week on food. BUT FUCK IT ANYWAY I NEED MY GREASY PORK DONG.

Another week come and nearly-gone with poor sales.

I should start telling happy, good-feeling lies and not care when people act entitled and think stupid things.

No no no . . . I should just work harder at focusing on the bright spots. And forgive myself when coming home to work is hard. And work harder! And care less. Let it just be what it is: work.

This is the first month of the tenth year. It would be shinier if I had cared less, I think. I am tired of showing people how much I care. It has gotten me nothing but respect. The kind that vanishes as soon as you “get lazy”. I am tired of paying with my freedom and getting nowhere.

Don’t worry guys . . . I’m just being an asshole. Tomorrow I’ll be all smiles!!

What could possibly be more entertaining and pathetic than a moody, emotionally-unpredictable webwhore? I’ll tell you what: a “MATURE” moody, emotionally-unpredictable webwhore!!

I totally have a grey hair in my pubes. No joke!

I look totally gross from the side, but from the front and the back I sometimes look STUNNING. <<<This should be my new slogan.

I can’t believe that the days are starting to get shorter again.

June full moon at twilight

I should be happy that the nights are getting longer and darker again because I haven’t been sleeping well at all. Part of it is that Delia in her post-operative state is having a harder time than normal sleeping, but mostly my brain and body chemistry is torqued again causing the chaos in my head to be ratcheted up too many notches. I have really loud, disturbing, repetitive thoughts and dream WAY too much. It hasn’t reached peak nightmare state (yet), and having been through this a number of times now for extended periods AND BEING ABLE TO GET BETTER/recover with no symptoms I’m not too worried, just annoyed with myself for not maintaining my health better.

I have way more pleasant things to blog about, but just thought I’d throw out a photograph and make it a quickie.

The good news is that I’ve done a lot of camming the past couple of days including some private shows which was pretty thrilling – it’s been a long time and I really enjoyed it, especially the longer one-on-ones. It’s such a relief to be able to immerse myself in someone else’s fantasy and do a totally concentrated job on satisfying one single person and know I did it well. It’s rewarding to bring people pleasure and have evidence of that in their gratitude, compliments . . . and the immediate payoff. It’s a welcome change from putting so much time and energy into promoting our sites and doing nerd work where the monetary payoff is very very detached and delayed from the investment of work and time. On the other hand, I can’t keep up with blogging and site maintenance and promos AND do a lot of camming AND stay healthy recover my health.

Here’s hoping I catch up on my sleep tonight so I can do more webwhoring this week! I’d like to be able to afford some time to spend with my family soon. I feel physical grief to my core at not having seen my nephews in MONTHS. They grow so fast and change so much, I hate missing out on all of that time and all of those changes.

Gah! Sorry this post isn’t more uplifting. If you keep up with my twitter I *think* you can tell I’m not the constantly miserable sad sack I sound like here.

Nico was fifteen years old and people STILL frequently asked if she was a puppy — so pretty and smaller than people expect Siberian Huskies to be (even though she was normal-size for a female husky). But if they watched her walking from the hind end they’d understand she was an old girl. She started to look like an elderly woman hobbling doggedly with a walker, dragging her hind legs stiffly forward one at a time after reaching forward to brace herself with her two front legs.

Eat as Many Treats as You Want!!

There *was* a choice of whether or not now was the right time to put her to sleep. I’m aware that there are people who would’ve put her down a lot sooner and others who would have let this stretch out forever with doggy diapers and thousands of dollars in vet bills. I’m aware that we might have made this decision for ourselves as much as for her and that I’ve been able to absolve myself of any guilt because she was really Delia’s dog and her decision to make based on twice as many years with her and a lot more love. I’m also aware that Delia gave her a good life and that she’s a HUSKY, and she couldn’t do her husky things anymore – there hadn’t been ululations for a year or more and her sickle tail was permanently drooped into brush-mode. She was confused (at times heartbreakingly comically so, like when she would stand at the hinge of the door waiting to be let out of the bedroom when the door was already open INCHES away from where she’d fixed her gaze – it WAS funny, though sad) and her mobility profoundly decreased. She’d been losing her balance (or her legs just gave out) while she pooped and would often fall over then finish pooping while lying on her side.

Anyway, there was a lot of stuff and seeing blood in her gelatinous-with-mucous diarrhea Saturday night was the clarifying symptom that it was TIME even though it hadn’t been that many days since she ran through the house as much as she could, yipping both in pain and excitement, not able to NOT force herself to go as fast as possible even after wiping out twice trying to navigate the corner between one hallway and another. If it were any other kind of dog you’d think I was describing a very fit and healthy animal, but huskies are just that awesomely driven to RUN and defy every limitation imposed on them.

So we decided to make her last two days full of good things, like her last walk in the woods. It was very very slow and the smallest hills were like giant mountains to her. She even looked at one incline so wearily that she turned around, like “just take me back to the car because I’m DONE”.

Nico's Last Walk in the Woods

During and after making the decision I’ve felt a variety of emotions: excitement looking forward to freedom and possibilities, relief, uncertainty, guilt, confusion, sadness, loss, worry . . .

Our beautiful companion's fur, walking slowly

Two women came to our house to do it after Nico had two days of walks and lots of her favorite soft peanut-butter treats and lots of love and attention lavished on her. The vet and her assistant were loving and gentle and pleasant and thoughtful and smooth and patient and respectful.

Small and short-lived.

The hardest part was the hour before they got here when we were waiting. Everything was ready, Nico was totally worn out, and there was nothing to do except know that she was about to be gone and didn’t even know what was coming (I think Delia felt more confident that Nico did actually know and was fully prepared and welcoming – either way is actually pretty sweet).  I wouldn’t trade that hour of waiting for rushing around or not experiencing that weird duality of tranquility on the outside and guts churning on the inside, though.

Waiting for the vet to come

During the process I felt a fast cycling of emotions of calm, euphoria, gratitude and resignation sort of like when I was in a car crash and had a few seconds to emotionally prepare myself to die and then was elated when I survived. But with this there were also overwhelmingly intense guts-in-the-throat needing to bawl emotions like when I was with my dad during his death.

How beautiful and floppy and light her dead body looked wrapped in a blanket with her gorgeous face exposed and then her front legs tumbling out. The looseness and complete lack of worry. The weird exciting sense of potential like you could reanimate her, so fresh and ready with all of the soreness and stiffness she’d been suffering from magically erased. She really did look like new life (and none of these pictures are communicating the reality of any of this, or at least my perceptions and experiences of these days). She was so so so beautiful.

No more breath, no more heartbeat.

*****

Helping Nico die and being present for it helped me with my dad’s death, to process it more and remember it and grieve more freely and more fast. It’s been eight years, but I really didn’t know a lot about how to be with his death and my feelings about it so it’s been a very long and protracted experience. Watching Nico die — feeling her die, touching her dying and dead — I feel spiritually more at ease than I did when confronted with my dad’s final moments. Maybe my idea of peace is wider and simpler than I must have wished for back then. Maybe my expectations for myself are lower than they were then. I don’t know, but I’m glad for it.

I am an imperfect witness, not a bumbling guide stuck with the horrible responsibility of having taken someone I loved on a journey to a brick wall on a dead end. Maybe I’m getting to be okay with nothing being perfect and not being in control and just appreciating the long moments I’ve had to absorb the profoundly ordinary in all of its individual rarity and treasure it and bask in my blessings. My dad is one of a few people I’ve had telepathic experiences with (even if they were probably more accurately described as intuitive communication or whatever) so maybe I thought I failed by not knowing what he was trying to tell me at the end or that I failed by crying and possibly making him sad or worried during his last minutes of life. There’s a lot less pressure with a dog and it was more okay with me that we were all together but alone at the same time.

The Incredible Machine

Like with my dad it took a number of minutes for her to stop all the way. “She’s not breathing anymore but she still has a very faint heartbeat”. For like four minutes. When we were kids Daddy bought us lots of National Geographic books. One of my favorites that may have impacted my worldview more than any other was “The Incredible Machine” about how humans are all electrical and mechanical and stuff. I never absorbed facts and information the way my sister could (it’s amazing how we had the same books at home and the body of knowledge her brain constructed out of them is so vastly different — and more vast in general — than mine) so what I retained from it is just a philosophy that I might not find in it if I were to read it today, but that might have been the first book I ever read to give me a celebratory nontheistic way of looking at life that was deliciously SPACE AGE eighties-style, like 3-2-1 Contact and synthesizers and stuff.

While Nico was dying it started raining and we were glad it waited until then, not starting until after her last three walks and other quiet time outside. That night the smell of the evergreens after the rain was magnified to supernatural proportions and for a minute I enjoyed imagining that Nico bestowed an enriched sense of smell on us as a parting gift.

Then I stopped wasting brain juice on that and just focused on vacuuming up as much scent as I could with each inhalation, tasting wet green dogless walks in the future moonlight, just me and my girlfriend.

*****

Delia and I have been living together for almost eight years (the first time she told me she loved me was the day my dad died). It’s a significant chunk of time as far as human measurements go but also . . . brief. Losing Nico is another transition for our relationship and maybe I have the feeling like I will contribute more as a partner now. Nico was rooted in so many years of history and two other serious relationships for Delia so she was never really “my” dog; I don’t mean that in a bitter or unloving or detached way . . . it was my way of copping out of taking care of her fully so that I didn’t clean up as much poop or let her in and out as often or get her food ready. I’m excited that we’re entering another stage together and that it’s happening now.

Pair of Trillium

I can’t complain . . . I really can’t complain or regret this loss or wish for any of it to be different. I can’t say that I wish we didn’t have to go through this or that she could have lived forever. Of all the ways of dying and lives and chunks of years of experiences out there to be had, I’d say this death and these years and our lives have been blessed, relatively comfortable with relatively little pain, and filled with pleasure. Am I still bursting into tears? Yeah, but I can’t complain.

I totally have spring fever. We can go anywhere! Do anything! The light in our house looks different. The pretending-to-be-a-grownup feeling is back when I go into my office. Maybe just because everything is intensified after so many intense days? I don’t know, but this is the first time in all these years we can leave the doors wide open and not be afraid that Nico will run away. It’s not that a husky doesn’t love her people, SHE’S JUST PROGRAMMED TO RUN AWAY FROM YOU!!

*****

Check out Delia’s post with more pictures of Nico and background. Contrasting pics of her in her younger days really shows how much she changed physically over the years, plus it’s really interesting to read/see more about Delia!

*****

Note: I feel EXTREMELY fortunate we had a way to pay for her to be ushered out so gently with at-home euthanasia; not everybody is so lucky. Humanely ending an animal’s life is really expensive for most people and doing it yourself is something most people aren’t equipped for (and legally/socially is a prime example of some really interesting double-standards, misunderstandings and class differences in our country). Anyhoo, if you love your pet and can afford to do it this way when the time comes, I’d recommend it as being well worth the extra money (if you can swing it) to have that special time at home and is worth finding out in advance what vets (or other people?) can help you with this when the time comes. I also feel extremely fortunate that my dad died in hospice which is much more like dying at home than like dying in a  hospital, but better than dying at home maybe. I loved it, and think it’s hugely important to be able to spend time with your dead loved one for hours, if you’re lucky enough to have that option and the kind of death you get to see coming.