House Tearmainn

Bloody tired tonight. Today was full of ups and downs, mostly of the small (or at least temporary) variety. Everyone was tired from being up late last night, and none of the little ones function well when tired. I, of course, am a paragon of patience when over tired. *snort* I’m sure there was some angst and woe over the course of the day, but nothing that’s stuck with me so it can’t be that bad.

This upcoming week is going to be hell on wheels, and I’m looking at going into it with very little in the way of reserves. There is change and potential strife on every front. Kids start school. May not have daytime care for them until they do. Major project launch at work. May or may not get paid (check is already late over the three day weekend, asshats). Trying to get hired at my dream job (see last item). Friends having a heap of trouble, and they’ll need to decompress upon return from their travels. May be getting a dog. Having a birthday in there somewhere, too. Should probably plan a party.

Wrote some more on my anger post earlier, but I don’t have the brain for it tonight. In fact, I think I’m officially out of brain. Note to self: do not expect much from your posts this week.

Looks like another quick post night. Ah well, such is life. Today was better than yesterday, but still not great. School shopping and groceries this morning, party this evening. The party was fun, in a sort of subdued way. I’m sure there’s a full post around here about how my relationship with pais has improved my ability to interact in social circumstances, and my life in general… but today is not that day.

Today’s post is about the party. The folks throwing it were old friends of pais’ that I’ve met a couple of times and liked well enough. They’re “poly crowd”, it seems, and welcomed us both warmly. They are, however, uninformed about our lifestyle, which should be fixed very soon, but just didn’t seem appropriate to bring in to their party.

There was some casual, and not so casual, hitting on pais, which I was able to take in stride. It does bring up the old poly question, though, and now that I look at it I don’t think there is enough time to tackle it tonight. I guess I can scope the problem, though.

Are we polyamorous people? Yes, we both love lots and certainly have the capability of being romantically in love with more than one person at a time. Do we live a polyamorous lifestyle? Not currently. I think that poly as it is practiced by the people I know is necessarily egalitarian, and that’s not going to happen. I think that poly in the context of a single M/s dynamic is a different creature, and entirely workable. Multiple M/s dynamics is probably also workable. A mix of M/s and egalitarian… seems workable on the M side, but like a complete disaster on the s side.

About us, though… that’s a topic for when I’m less tired.

Yeah, that was today. I have kept an even temper through a world of shit, tackled several difficult discussions / meetings / happenings better than I would have guessed, and managed to maintain a mostly positive attitude on things. Even so there are still things I would like to do better.

My chief regret for the day is how I handled this morning. My job allows a fair amount of working from home, at least in theory. In reality I often need to make meetings or be in my much more efficient work space there to get things done.

I had planned earlier in the week to take today off, and told pais so. Things changed significantly enough yesterday that it was still in debate whether I could work from home as of this morning. This is never a good thing. Neither of us handles abrupt changes in plans particularly well at the best of times, and a plan change that causes us to be apart can be very upsetting for her. Above and beyond that, last night’s ritual went amazingly well, and with an extremely high level of connection between us. Not exactly the best way to go into a morning where I was going to be away unexpectedly, especially since in my dithering I had failed to even mention the possibility to pais.

Knowing how this goes, she asked if I was staying home a bit into this morning’s routine. I didn’t have an answer for her, strike 1. I tried to justify why I felt I that I needed to to in, strike 2. Then I dithered some more and had a minor freakout about her (really quite minor) negative reaction. Poor form, all around, and not exactly the kind of thing you can remedy in 5 minutes while rushing out the door.

I like to be needed, and get an absurd amount of joy from how much she needs to be with me. While I could certainly change her behavior to be more positive about my being away, I don’t want to. No, the fault here is mine and it’s a problem only I can fix. In truth my major issues dealing with this predate pais, but that is a story for another time.

I think that in the future I will not talk to her about any plans I may have to work from home ahead of time. Let it be a pleasant surprise instead of an expectation that can be bucked. Additionally I will try once again to keep my feelings of responsibility to work in balance with my personal life. I’m not always so good at that. In fact if I don’t work at it I take all of my responsibilities equally seriously, and manage to somehow short them all.

In closing I would like to state for the record that I an very glad this day is over.

Another short post night, due to ritual. There is a lot going on in my brain, as usual. I think a pensieve would be useful about now. Many of my thoughts are consumed by other peoples’ business, things that only affect me peripherally. Aside from that, I’ve also got plans which may or may not turn into Plans sometime soon.

Today was the first day of pais’ new life regimen and it went very well. Future days should involve less locking her out of the house. A couple of folks have asked what the new schedule is like. For the most part it is a formalized version of what was going on before, but with more focus on planning her time when I’m not around. I’ve found that pais generallyl works best when left to her weird way of doing things, which is incomprehensible to me but gets things where I need them so I don’t worry about it. So I plan in detail the things that I care about, or that have hard time limits, then block off a couple of hours here and there for doing cleaning chores, or working on projects for me.

The biggest change in things is probably even more communication. In this case that means communication of exactly which things from my approved lists will be done each day, as well as any special exceptions / impediments / etc that she foresees. Then there is one in the evening detailing what got done when, how long it took, which (if any) things that from the morning list didn’t get done, and why. With a sample size of one I can only say that it feels great having that level of visibility into the day right at my fingertips, and being able to see what she has been up to so that I can be specifically pleased by it. Sometimes I just don’t notice that the bathroom got cleaned or what-have-you.

She’s in a much better mood, as one might expect. I’m pleased, and there is coffee at 10pm. This should be a good night.

Aiming for a short post tonight, it’s late already and there are Wednesday Beatings to dish out. I had a lovely, long walk with pais tonight and we talked about many things, as usual. Often there is one big topic that either dominates the discussion or my impression thereof, and the one for tonight was adding more structure and control to her life while she’s job searching.

This has come up before, and I’ve been loathe to unleash my demons on the topic because I know the situation is temporary. What’s the use in getting us both on a yummy structured routine just in time to tear it down in favor of a random work schedule? Well, as it turns out there are a few. Work has not been forthcoming for her, and in the current economy may not be for a bit. This is ok, I can afford to wait for the right job… for now.

For the last few weeks I have been increasingly tossing around ideas as to how I would add more structure to her life, and how I could increase my visibility into what she gets up to when I’m not home. So tonight when it came up it seemed like a good time to engage some of those plans. A couple of hours later and there it is, a much more finely scheduled and transparent day, along with some new tasks, and the flexibility we need at this point.

In hindsight I really should have done this long ago, but in truth I didn’t think finding work would be so difficult. I suspect that if work is too long coming this will be hard to break out of, but at least in the meantime we both get to feel like she is being used closer to her potential.

I had written a fair amount about anger earlier. I suppose I’ll get back to it, but I’m not in the morose place I was earlier in the day. I watched Tron with the eldest and pais, which has greatly improved my mood. It also made pais wet. My kinda pervert.

Hmm. I haven’t talked much about the kids here, I really like to keep those spaces as separate as possible, but if anyone ever stumbles upon this I suppose they should have a little context. I have 3 kids, all between 4 and 12. I have both girls and boys. I have custody of them 1/2 of the time, which is in the process of being formalized in divorce.

I love them very much and want to give them every advantage in life. Part of that, to me, is both an open mind and as much modeling of healthy behavior as possible. At current that means keeping all M/s aspects of my life as far from them as I keep s/m (that being “very”). I am not ashamed of my lifestyle, far from it, but it is my firm belief that they should have as much freedom of choice in their lives as possible. I feel that modeling a lifestyle so obviously different has a very good chance of generating in them an increased feeling of separation from “normal” life. There is no lack of “weird” in their lives, but I think this would be so overwhelmingly different that it would have a significant chance of damaging their ability to choose their own lifestyle.

Their lives aren’t risk-free, and I would not make them so if I could. If they come to this lifestyle on their own, on either side of the dynamic, I can’t honestly say I’d be more or less proud of them. I would still love them, though, and accept their choice. As long as I know it was their choice and not some artifact of my own choices.

Of course there will come a time when the cat will be out of the bag, on my timeline or not. I can’t rightly say when that will be at this point. It’s years out, at least, but I often think about what I will say when the time comes. Should be an interesting day.

In the meantime, pais and I act quite overtly vanilla in their presence. She argues, contradicts, teases, and in all other ways behaves in an egalitarian manner. It’s humbling, and I’m grateful for that. She is never anything but a slave, however… just one that is pleasing me in a most bizarre and difficult way. I have no doubt that I could order her to do anything in front of the kids and she would comply after ascertaining that she understood what I was saying. She trusts me to refrain, and I do… just as I do on the train, at restaurants, around our families, at work, etc.

Some will undoubtedly say that this makes us something other than what we are. I understand the desire to draw boundaries around the things that define us. To say this is (M/s|TPE|24/7|etc), and that is not. I encourage others to question their views and definitions of those terms, I certainly do. In the end, for me, what constitutes a 24/7 TPE M/s relationship is the following:

A D/s relationship where there are no limits to the dominant’s authority over the submissive aside from those the dominant chooses, and those may change at any time the dominant chooses, for any reason the dominant sees fit.

That describes my relationship perfectly, and so I feel comfortable claiming that particular alphabet soup for us. That said, I’m always open to other opinions and I would rather have an accurate description than one that suits my identity/self-image/vanity.

It’s been a pretty quiet week on the mastery front. I’ve got a lot of half-percolated idea bouncing around upstairs, but not much that I’m ready to post about. I have some thoughts I can put down, though.

The last version of this site had a page devoted to style- the capitalization and protocol that I use in what I write here- as well as some comments as to why. I didn’t bother grabbing that page in the upgrade, and it should be obvious by now that I’ve got my own weird way of doing things (shocking, I’m sure).

I’ll start with this: I really don’t like offending people. If other folks wish to be referred to in a certain way I’m happy to do it, unless doing so seems like it would be an act of dominance over, or submission to, people I have not agreed to being in such a relationship with. For me, I’m happy with Brian. To pais I’m Master. She’s welcome to mis-capitalize my pronouns to her heart’s content, and I (obviously) enjoy doing the same. Other folks in the household might call me “Sir”. I still can’t decide if “household” should be capitalized so I flip-flop on that. I like both D/s and M/s, which may seem rather backwards from the rest of my style, but possibly less so when you realize that I spend a lot of time with weird acronyms in my day job.

I do get a little weirded out at the thought of being called “Master”, “Sir”, “Lord” or what-have-you by people I’m not in an agreement with, but I understand the convention and can live with it. I am fine with terms of respect, including the lower case “sir”, however. I am simultaneously flattered and distressed by people I don’t know acting overtly submissive toward me. I’m sure the flattery will wear off in time, since I know it is all about the other party and really not about me at all. I think that such a thing could be keen in a place where the rules of engagement were clearly understood, however I’ve never been in such a place and, since I do take the role of dominant seriously, I do not like being saddled with responsibility for some random stranger without my consent, no matter how cute or harmless.

Not exactly a revelation, but I like to take these things out and look at them from time to time. I should dig that old post out of the database, I suspect very little has changed.

This one has been a while coming. I’m finding it easy to write about M/s because it’s something I’m so passionate about it, but the idea of household structure has been a hard one to wrap my head around. Part of it is that I can’t tie myself down with rules just for the sake of having them, and part of it is that I don’t have nearly enough information about the people I’m trying to help with this, since I haven’t met many of them.

I need something flexible enough that it won’t chafe me, but tangible enough that it will provide that structure, clear roles and responsibilities, a path of advancement, and clearly let everyone know where they stand.

As I see it, there are five paths in my household: the transition into M/s, the transition between M/s relationships, the transition out of M/s, the path of becoming mine, and the path of mastery. I suppose those first three can be grouped into a larger “transitional” path, at least in terms of structure. Those are different enough that they each merit their own distinct structures.

Given that pais and I are the only ones on the latter paths now (and for the foreseeable future), I suspect I’ll be drilling down into that first group once I get there. For now, I’ve got a blazing headache and a very serious need to get to bed.

My totem issues seem to be resolved for the time being. Not that they ever stay that way. Wolf can’t stay with me on this path, but I don’t doubt we’ll meet back up again further on. There has always been a sense that he was with me because I needed him to be, I’d asked and begged all those long years ago, and in his kindness he had acquiesced. I was never claimed by him, though, not the way I was by Coyote.

I’m incredibly sad. It is like losing an uncle. I’m also more than a little relieved, though, and when I’m done grieving I think I will finally be able to move forward again. He will be missed.

Took the night off from posting yesterday because we went to our first meeting of the local M/s group! We’d heard about them at the MsC, and were finally able to track them down through Raven when we got back. The meeting was a great experience, and everyone was very nice. I was comfortable enough to speak up several times, which is quite a rarity for me in new groups.

Enough slacking, though. I’m back to having a myriad of things to post about, so let’s get to it. Back to Thursday’s thought…

I really, really hate not being able to help when there’s a crisis. Most of my unowned submissive friends are in a crisis or rough spot right now. I just want to bring ‘em all home, give them a good meal, and spank and/or talk with them until it’s at least bearable. Or, y’know, just keep ‘em.

This us where the trouble comes in. Why interject myself into situations that don’t, and by all rights shouldn’t, involve me? I may or may not be able to help from the sidelines, yet I have a great desire to jump in the middle and make everyone play nice even when it’s not my place. I’ve gotten better at drawing those boundaries over the years, but I find that with submissive folks I’m almost pathologically inclined to take care of them if they’re hurting.

Here, I think, is the ugly litlte secret about why I want a household. It’s a little world where I can make everyone’s world small enough that their biggest problems are tiny and solveable. Where I actually can wave the magic fix-it stick and make the people I care about happy.

I think that it can happen, can be made to work. Whether or not it will is going to largely be up to me, of course. I can only try to be up to the task.