House Tearmainn

Last night Sunday night was a long, but good, night. No post because I needed all available time with pais. It was definitely the right choice.

There is a lot in flux… we are both likely to be starting new jobs within the next week, and the hours on hers are going to significantly impact our one on one time. I am lucky enough to have choices of where to go, but any of them are likely to be more hours than I have been doing at my current job.

Plus the brief period of having violet in the household has brought a lot to light in terms of what our needs are and if/how they can be met in a household context. For all of the thought I have given this, we have still only been together 2 years and change. There is still so much to learn that I sometimes despair of ever being able to live up to my own standards.

Still, here we are. Yes, there is a lot to learn, and to do, before my full vision of the Household can be realized. Yes I am very limited in the things that I can offer to help people. That’s ok. The important thing is that we make progress, do good, and live with joy.

So where does that leave us? Well, as a household of two we’re doing fine. I’ll keep poking around, as I do. Maybe something will pop up that fits life right now, maybe not. Either way, I’ve got a path to walk and while the last couple of days has been well spent licking my wounds, it’s time to get moving again.

Life continues to be full of ups and downs and weird little turns. There are lots of interesting things going on, but nothing that seems appropriate to put up here. I intend to have violet start posting here since she enjoys writing and I enjoy reading her writing. I would also like to read what pais has to say, but her writing tends to be deeply personal and less appropriate for this venue.

I am, obviously, having some trouble staying on top of my various responsibilities. Priority shuffling hasn’t resolved the issue completely, but has made everyone feel neglected. It’s good to be consistent. I didn’t have a lot to cut back on to begin with, posting here has certainly suffered for it. Things are moving back towards a level of normalcy as everyone learns what they can expect, and I learn how to distribute my time and energy better. Everyone expected a period of adjustment bringing violet in, but that doesn’t quite make the transition itself pleasant.

The transitional period with violet is going to dovetail with more changes in the coming month as pais goes back to work, violet has various life changes around work and living situations, and I change jobs. Nothing is ever simple, though, and I suppose this will be good practice for us all in dealing with stress as a family.

Overall things are better, and back to “good”. One more good night’s sleep and I’m hoping things can creep back over the line to “awesome”. There is currently some discussion of how things will work when violet comes out to visit next month. I suspect this will be the topic of several upcoming posts, hopefully it will stay as positive and upbeat as it has been.

It would be irony if I was too busy writing about running a household to actually do it. I suppose it is better to be too busy running it to write. All I have to say on the topic is that I’m incredibly grateful to Google for their various apps, they make all of this so much easier for my detail-addled brain.

If I could get work to settle down (or, preferably, go away completely but continue to pay me) I would have a lot more to say about how I’m integrating violet. For now, though, I’ll just say that things are proceeding well on all fronts, and everyone seems to be happy. I’m very pleased and very, very tired.

I meant to post on this last night, but by the time all was said and done I was completely wiped out. Last night I offered a dear friend a position in the household as a submissive in service. Happily she has accepted!

Welcome, violet, we’re glad to have you.

Yesterday was meeting day, and WordPress for iPod ate my “not posting due to meeting” post so I gave up for the night. Tag Team is back again, though, with what promises to be a short post tonight. Transitions are much on my mind of late, but it’s a topic that is hard for me to get my teeth into at this point. I have a variety of household related thoughts, but they are also not quite ready for prime time. So what value do I have for my avid readers?

Not much today, really. There has been a ton of discussion with pais today about the long term plans for the household. For a while now the end game for us has been running a BDSM friendly bed and breakfast, training house, and emergency DV shelter. One of pais’ pet projects for a long time now has been building out the facility in Google Sketchup, starting with my bed and working out. So far the bed has taken far longer than the rest of the master suite put together, but since it’s the most important (and complicated) bit I’m not surprised.

Today’s discussions have leaned heavily toward the role of other slaves in the house, and how they would fit into the overall mission of the household. Discussion of other submissive members, even in the abstract, with pais is sometimes hard for both of us. What we have is fantastic, and neither of us wants to jeapordize the “specialness” of it. It’s inevitable, of course, that there will be more… that’s what the household is about.

In today’s discussion, she said something most excellent. We’d been talking about things a while and it came out that she had never doubted her own place in the future of the household. That she would be there, that in the worst case there would be temporary unhappiness, but that she didn’t have any doubt that I would be there to help her through it. It was so good to hear.

Another interesting topic for the day was having another M or M/s couple involved. It’s something I’ve thought about a bit, and an idea I’m more interested in than ever before. As I meet more M-types and get more comfortable in my own skin the idea becomes more and more enticing. For the right person(s) I would definitely consider it. I suspect that the opportunity will present itself somewhere along the line, after all it’s a long trip from here to the House and I hope to meet a lot of excellent people on the way.

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.

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.

Things are looking brighter today. A solid amount of sleep and some bright, fair weather certainly aren’t hurting. Lazing about the house reading undoubtedly helped, as did visiting some good friends this afternoon.

I’m still looking for momentum in several areas, but I’m overall happy with how things are going. One place I’m not pleased is in having let preparations for the rededication ceremony languish. Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t feel very rededicated! I hope that tonight pais and I can get a high level outline hashed out and regain some of that momentum.

However, one thing has come together pretty well… those mission statements I mentioned a few days back. Therefore the “About” page finally has a smidgen of content, including a first stab at those. I rather like not having a perfect mission statement. It just doesn’t seem like one of those things you should get to check off as “done”.

Now, back to that ritual…

I will forgo complaining about how miserable my work life has become over the past few days and just say that it is not unlikely that I will have a different employer soon. We’ll see.

In other news I had a boy over last night to discuss some household related things. It is always good to see him, and I hope that once I have a satisfactory household structure in place he will be able to join us in some capacity. He’s a good boy.

So… about that structure. I think it’s time to outline a set of membership levels, what they mean, and how to progress through them. I am not a dogmatic person, quite the opposite in fact, but I do believe that people can serve better when they’re not worried about these things and I’d like to keep all of the involved parties from making bad assumptions. Most especially me.

I think that I can make do with four levels of “membership”, for lack of a better term. For now let’s call them “free associate”, “associate”, “servant” and “slave”. Each level indicates a level of commitment, an amount expected effort, and the depth of submission. I think, also, that a certain minimum amount of time makes good sense.

I have now spent a fair amount of time trying to write up each level at a high level, but it’s become clear in doing so that my ideas are still a bit too rough for that. Fair enough, this day has been pretty frustrating all around and this is too important for me to rush through it. Anyways, it’s not like I don’t have a bucket of other things to post about while that percolates.

Last night was Wednesday, which is the day my kids go back to their mom’s house. It’s also walk & talk night for myself and pais, and last night marked the first implementation of a new weekly ritual… Wednesday Beatings. It serves as a re-affirmation of my ownership and a marker of the transition out of kid-time.

The walks are one of my favorite times of the week. They ensure a minimum level of communication, and provide a safe space to have those extended discussions that can be interrupted in other venues. If there is an issue, we tend to stick to that in the discussion, otherwise, on nights like last night, we range far afield. Covering things from energy work to “ice cream babies” (no, you don’t want to know) to the connotations of “leather household” to how best to structure House Tearmainn going forward.

Some of this, obviously, came out in yesterday’s post. What’s on my mind today is the household structure. In my searches yesterday about leather households I came across Master Alex Keppeler’s household site. I have a good deal of respect for Master Alex from the limited exposure I have had. He was a core participant in a very transformative ritual that pais and I participated in at the 2007 MsC, and was on one of the spirituality panels that we attended this year.

Since I found his site while at work, I forwarded the link to pais. On our walk she brought up some ideas that she liked from his site, including levels of membership, having those roles be tied to a focused level of submission, and having community service tied in. For the most part we liked the same things about the way he described his household structure and advancement system. Today I’m meditating on how I can best apply some of that underlying structure to my household, and the details of how I would like to integrate new people into the family.

It’s heady stuff, and surprisingly similar to when I was working with friends back in high school to create a shamanic group. Those people ended up being some of the best friends I’ve yet had, but I like to think that I can do a much better job of managing a group now. I’m extremely pleased with the way it’s going thus far.

One of the things I like best about where I am in my mastery right now is the return to the notion that “what’s best” or “what’s right” as a guiding principle, as opposed to “what pleases me” which I am ashamed to admit had slipped dangerously close to “what I want”. What pleases me is still the guiding principle of pais’ slavery, however the things I communicate as being pleasing have become more firmly rooted in my spiritual life, with very good effects. What pleases me most purely and deeply is to do the right thing and to feel good about the choices I make. I will try to do better at remembering that this time around.