First, how successful was I last week?

1) Stay hydrated. I’ve been getting awful dehydration headaches lately. So at work, this means that my goal is to re-fill my water glass every two hours. On a normal work day, this would mean four glasses of water. Definitely a good place to start.

I did okay at this. Definitely a good way to remind myself to drink water. My dehydration headaches were much less severe this week!

2) Complete a full GRE practice test.

Wahhh-wahhhhhhhh. Complete fail. I did spend all day yesterday doing GRE prep though. It’s happening. I promise.

3) Write a letter to my aunt, who really really appreciates gestures like that.

I did write her a letter. And she did really appreciate it. Yay for getting good family points.

4) Eat breakfast at home at least one day this week (weekend doesn’t count). After last Sunday, when I was throwing up all night, I’m starting to take much more seriously the idea that eating in the middle of a stressful situation is bad for digestion. I am absolutely convinced that the reason I got sick was that that weekend, every meal I ate was while I was working.

I ate at home on Thursday morning and it was a great idea! Toast and a fried egg. I was a bit late for work though. I’ll have to work on that.

This week, setting my goals is a bit trickier for two reasons. One, because one of my best friends from undergrad is visiting for FIVE DAYS (cue everyone CHEERING!!!!) from Wednesday through Monday. I’m so so stoked.

And reason two is still a secret. Well, okay, not a secret per se, but I will write about it at some point this week and it will all become clear. Posting goals about it right now will make absolutely no sense. So y’all will just have to wait.

(I know you’re all at the edge of your seats waiting to see what my goals for this week are. Ha!)

Mi’lady isn’t butch. (If she were, there’s no way in hell I would call her mi’lady.)

She’s not femme, either. Not particularly. Not the way I am. She doesn’t really fit into any sort of butch<–>femme spectrum at all. Maybe she’s androgynous, though somehow I’m uncomfortable with that word too to describe her. We talked about it a bit on Sunday, and didn’t really come up with a label that fit her precisely. But what she definitely is is a dyke.

I guess her gender energy is somewhat akin to Shane from The L Word. (Though I know Shane was commonly referred to as butch, I really don’t think she was, or at least not in the way that I understand butch.) Mi’lady isn’t quite the same sort of aloof player that Shane was portrayed as, and she’s much more outgoing and free with her emotions. Allows herself to be more vulnerable than Shane’s character. But she has a similar posture, a similar sort of slightly disheveled look, a similar style. Another stylistic reference would be Tegan & Sara — she’s got a sort of punkish female androgyny–tattoo, skinny jeans, chucks, indie t-shirts, black eyeliner.

And I wouldn’t say our relationship feels particularly butch-femme, either. It’s not that clearly defined. In some ways it does feel very butch-femme. I’m very much a nurturer, in that I’m constantly doing little domestic things. Cooking, tidying, grooming, both for me and for her. I’m a multi-tasker and I’m very attentive to detail. I like things just so. In that regard I can be a care-taker of her. Because she’s disorganized and rumpled and a bit chaotic and kind of messy. Not at all detail-oriented. She’s fantastically creative, and I help keep her grounded. In a femme way.

She is a nurturer too, in a different sense, maybe in more of a (dare I say?) butch sense. She’s always “big spoon,” and we almost always fall asleep that way, with her enfolding me in her arms. She’s very affirmative with words, telling me often how sexy or beautiful I am or how much she likes what I cook or how hot those heels look, in a way that affirms and strengthens my femininity. She was the one who pursued me from the get-go, bold and a risk-taker to my subtle flirting.

But in otherways, we’re not very butch-femme. Sexually, for example, we have great sex in which she’s more dominant and I’m submissive, and great sex in which I’m more dominant and she’s submissive, and great sex that doesn’t have bottom/top roles at all. I love strapping on and fucking her with a cock (she loves it too), and don’t particularly care for the reverse (she’s open to it if I want it but isn’t insistent on it). And aside from the ways I articulated above, there isn’t really any other way that our relationship feels gendered. We’re both women.

I wonder, in a way, whether I’m most suited to a butch, considering the extent to which I think I’m really femme. For example, mi’lady doesn’t really have (or at least hasn’t at any point articulated, to me or to herself) a matching and inverted fantasy of being a “protector” and having a “wife,” the way I’ve got this fantasy of having a protector and being a wife. But… I love her. She makes me laugh, she helps me move beyond details and be flexible, she motivates me to break out of my comfort zone a little bit and then gives me room to go back in, she challenges me. And really, I don’t think it’s necessary for our fantasies to match up. I think as long as we’re willing and able to work out the kinks and figure out our dynamics and make sure we’re both giving what we’re able to getting what we need, then we should be ok.

And, you know, she really does love it when I cook for her  :)

I got an email from a reader today that kind of surprised me. Maybe I just need to accept that, if I’m using the internet as a place to publicly air all of my most personal thoughts, people are going to disagree, criticize, or hate, or whatever, and I should just grow a thick skin. So chances are, I should’ve just ignored this email.

But I can’t quite let it out of my mind, because it wasn’t an email like “OMGZ UR SO STOOPID!!1!!@$!” It was a coherent, thoughtful email, and so I feel I should respond to it. I’m going to respond to it publicly, in case anyone else has been thinking the same thing.

You say, “if you don’t let your girlfriend read this blog, how can you live with yourself posting such personal stuff about her?” You say, “you’re airing her personal shit as well as your own, you should have her permission.” You say, “I would feel really betrayed if my girlfriend wrote stuff like that about me.” Etc.

So let me clarify a few things. I don’t blame you for saying the things you say or for judging, because I haven’t really explained this before and so you’re just running with assumptions that are as fair as any others. But it’s not really what you think.

First, this is my blog. I’m speaking for myself and only for myself. I actually consciously make an effort not to speak for her or say things that might be putting words or thoughts on her mouth. Sometimes, that’s hard to do, but in any and all cases, I’m writing from my own experience and my own feelings and thoughts. I’m pretty candid, but I am candid about myself.

Second, although she doesn’t read this blog, she knows I write it and she knows that she is a subject of it. And she is fine with that. She’s definitely curious, and I’ve told her that maybe at some point I’ll let her read it, but right now, I still need it to be mine. And I repeat, she’s fine with that. She knows I write about sex, she knows I write about my insecurities, and more often than not, posting here helps me clarify my thoughts and then I go and talk to her about it anyway. And she’s fine with that.

Third, this blog is anonymous for precisely that reason. My real name is not in any way connected to this blog, and I take steps to make sure there aren’t any dead giveaways. (The San Francisco queer community is, gulp, pretty small…) In that way, her identity is also protected.

Fourth, I want to acknowledge that internet publicity and anonymity is a tricky subject. There are gray areas, for sure. If at any point, this blog grows to a readership that feels more public (right now I’m getting about 100 visitors per day, which is a tiny, tiny tiny tiny drop in the bucket of blog readers), I will probably start password-protecting some of my more personal pages. Right now, though, I don’t want to do that. Mostly because reading other blogs, and often especially the most personal stuff, has helped me understand myself so much better. So I’m reluctant to make this blog private when I think there might be other quiet readers out there who might be too shy to ask for a password but who might relate to what I write and gain some sort of comfort from it. That sounds self-congratulatory, but really, when I started the blog, I could have started a journal–and I didn’t, I chose the blog format precisely because it’s interactive. So I’d like to keep it that way. And I think that as long as the people I write about know that I’m writing about them and are fine with it and are fine with the fact that I’m not showing them exactly what I’m writing, then I’m doing right by them.

And lastly, I just want to say that writing on this blog has been wonderful for me. It’s given me a space to go when I have thoughts swimming around in my mind that need to be articulated. It’s helping me create a space that’s all my own. It’s even in its own way helping me find community. So, thank you for reading. It means the world to me.

It was the best welcome home she’s ever had, she said.

After all my thinking and processing last week about my femmeyness, I allowed myself to just revel in it. I spent all day Sunday preparing for her to come home. I booked a Zipcar to pick her up at the airport when her flight came in at 6. (Typically we would just take BART, and I had told her I would meet her to help her carry her stuff home… the car was a surprise!) I got my nails done in the morning (fingers and toes!)–short, a little bit squared, bright red polish. Paraffin wax, so my skin was silky smooth. I’d gotten a fresh legs and bikini wax on Saturday, so that I’d be ready and smooth for her. I planned out Sunday evening’s meal, bought the necessary ingredients on Saturday, and brought them over to her place on Sunday afternoon to begin prep before her flight came in. AND, on Sunday morning after the manicure and pedicure, I went to my favorite lingerie boutique in San Francisco, Dollhouse Bettie (they specialize in vintage and pinup lingerie), to make sure her welcome home would be *extra* special. (Dollhouse Bettie’s website doesn’t have a link to the piece I bought, so I found a link to it elsewhere instead. It’s got gorgeous detailing, and I got nude seamed nylons instead of black ones because I really wanted the basque to speak for itself. With these shoes and my full-sleeve black leather gloves from Doncaster, this is a stunning get-up.)

And it was such a wonderful day, from start to finish. Waking up and knowing that I was going to be getting my nails done, going lingerie shopping, cooking, and seeing/fucking mi’lady for the first time in a week was such an amazing feeling. I don’t think there’s anything I’d have rather done on a gorgeous Sunday. Seriously. And it all went off without a hitch.

The only thing I think could have gone smoother was cutting the pumpkin. Pumpkin soup was one of my menu items (and as SOON as she saw it she was really, really excited… she loves pureed vegetable soups), but I’d forgotten how ridiculously hard it is to cube and peel a raw pumpkin. SO HARD. I wrestled with it for a good hour. But it was so ridiculously worth it. It was really, really good, if I do say so myself. And the recipe is really simple — really all that’s in it is pumpkin, onion, a tiny bit of garlic, bay leaves, a bit of orange rind, butter, vegetable stock, and a tiny bit of milk. I garnished it with fresh chives. And that’s it. The best part though? Was mi’lady telling me that the pumpkin soup she’d had earlier that week at an upscale restaurant in Boston with a client “wasn’t even half as good as yours. Well okay, maybe half. But seriously, only half!”

The other menu item was risotto with leeks, spinach, white wine, and a little bit of plain yoghurt. I love cooking.

The best part of everything was that she just felt adored. I love that. Love it. It turns me on and makes me stand up straight.  I’m doing what I do best, what I love to do. Fuck yeah.  From getting picked up by me at the airport in a car, to having dinner planned and prepared to the AMAZING fucking hot sex we had, it was the best welcome home she’d ever had. And I’m responsible for it :)

I know, I know. I missed last week. But one of my goals from two weeks ago was to post at least twice before my next goals post, and since I’d only posted once, I just decided to skip that week’s goals. PLUS, I had more interesting things to write about.

So, did I meet my goals from two weeks ago?

1) Cook a good meal for myself (others could be there too) at least once. Doesn’t matter which meal.

Check! When my friend A was here with her fiance, we cooked a delicious meal on Friday night. Tortellini with an apple, walnut and parmesan sauce. Stewed green beans. And baked apples for dessert! I LOVE cooking with apples.

2) Have sex before mi’lady leaves on Monday.

We had a few hours on Sunday evening, finally, which was really lovely. We went out to dinner first and had tapas — I’d been at work all day and she’d been working on music, so we needed to unwind and transition into relaxation mode. Then we went back to her place and had sex :) It wasn’t the best sex, though, to be honest — I was feeling queasy and tired (I worked 16 hours on Saturday and then 9 hours on Sunday), so I wasn’t in the best sex space. We went to bed shortly afterwards and I woke up two hours later and was throwing up for a few hours. I think from stress. :( But at least that explained why I was queasy during sex. Regardless, though, this goal was met!

3) Post here at least twice between now and next week’s goals.

I kind of cheated here by not actually posting last week’s goals. So I have posted twice (actually 3-4 times I think) since my last goals post, but I had to skip a week of goals in order to do that! Oh well, last week was so crazy busy anyway (work is KILLING me) that it was just as well I didn’t have any goals to focus on.

4) Be aware of my brow being furrowed and consciously take the few seconds whenever I notice it to relax my face — my brow, my jaw, my tongue, my eyes.

I did really well at this! And now I’m in the habit of checking in with my face and seeing whether it’s tense. Turns out it often is, but even just the act of consciously relaxing my brow, loosening my jaw, and lowering my eyes is sort of like a mini-meditation. Multiple times a day. It’s great. This will be an ongoing thing for me, definitely.

So, this week’s goals:

1) Stay hydrated. I’ve been getting awful dehydration headaches lately. So at work, this means that my goal is to re-fill my water glass every two hours. On a normal work day, this would mean four glasses of water. Definitely a good place to start.

2) Complete a full GRE practice test.

3) Write a letter to my aunt, who really really appreciates gestures like that.

4) Eat breakfast at home at least one day this week (weekend doesn’t count). After last Sunday, when I was throwing up all night, I’m starting to take much more seriously the idea that eating in the middle of a stressful situation is bad for digestion. I am absolutely convinced that the reason I got sick was that that weekend, every meal I ate was while I was working.

And that’s enough!

Reading the comments to my previous post helped me clarify my thoughts about this femme fantasy. So I thought I’d do it “out loud” here, too.

I don’t think the fantasy I described of being perfectly domestic, perfectly sexy, perfectly exactly for my lover is the only way I conceive of myself as a femme. I certainly have my own goals and ambitions and social life and tastes and enjoyments, and I certainly want to keep nurturing those and developing myself as a person. (As greg said in the comments, I absolutely need those days of knotting the hair back, donning the cracked boots and jumping in the jeep. Well, I don’t have long hair or a jeep, but that’s the general idea!) Writing here is one of the ways I do that; doing the rape counseling work is another; keeping in touch with my friends, applying for graduate school, playing piano, doing yoga… all of that is stuff I do to continually round myself out and build myself up. And it’s absolutely necessary for me to keep doing that, always. Always.

But the fantasy is there, and I want to explore it. Until now, I’ve been angrily pushing it away, thinking “no! that’s co-dependency! get out!” For example: I feel like baking. What do I bake? Into my head pops the thought: “mi’lady’s favorite is strawberry rhubarb pie…” and I get all warm and tingly and excited at the thought of surprising her with a warm homemade pie when I see her in the evening. But before I get too excited, I cut myself off. “Why do you always want to do what she likes? You don’t even like pie! Bake something you like!” And so I’ll probably end up compromising, I’ll bake something I know she’ll like but that I like too, and I make sure to bake it not with her specifically in mind. So when I see her, it’s “look! I baked cookies today! Have one, they’re yummy!” rather than “look! I baked your favorite pie today, just for you!”

It sounds so selfish. But I guess I’ve thought it to be necessary, as a way of coaching myself to pay attention to my own wants and needs, rather than always catering to other people’s. I think it has a lot to do with vulnerability for me, too. I get angry with myself for giving too much of myself away to someone else. I get afraid that the more I give away, the more I’m allowing her to hurt me. I’m giving her power. And maybe I’ve thought of it too as a zero-sum game — that if I give her the power to hurt me, I’m somehow lessening my own power to heal from hurt.

So, to continue with the previous example, when I bake mi’lady’s favorite pie, just because I know she likes it, I’m making myself vulnerable to her by doing something for her. It’s saying, “you matter so much to me that I’m going to bake you your favorite pie, just because.” And what if it’s not reciprocated? What if she doesn’t like it? Or doesn’t really notice? Or just says, “oh thanks baby, that’s so sweet” absent-mindedly. Clearly if I spend my afternoon baking her favorite kind of pie, then my afternoon was about her. But what if her afternoon wasn’t even remotely about me? What if I think about her more often than she thinks about me? What if what if what if. So stopping myself from baking that pie is a way of holding back, keeping things level.

And that’s what it is, it’s holding back. Because really? I want to bake that pie. I guess I have to throw those what-ifs to the wind. Because she does matter to me that much. And I want her to know it. I want her to feel it. That’s not co-dependent. That’s so far from c0-dependent. What it is is trust.

Love is not a zero-sum game. I need to practice believing that in how I go about loving. There’s plenty to go around. There’s enough for us both. And the main thing I am now slowly coming to realize is, if I do something for her, I’m not necessarily losing myself, or giving myself away. I could be, for sure, depending on the context. But I could also actually just be reaffirming myself. So the next step I guess? Working all of this into my relationship with mi’lady in a way that feels right. Stay tuned, this could be a wild ride.

(Updated to remove weird duping of the post? It doesn’t appear in my editor but I tried to just delete all and re-paste so we’ll see if that works…)

I’ve been learning, lately, how to pay more attention to the little voices in my head. The ones that say “yay!” or “boo!” to all the little things I do. The ones that have the answer to questions like, “do I really love playing piano, or do I just think I love it because I was supposed to love it growing up? because my dad wants me to love it?” or “do I feel like myself when I wear this [insert item of clothing here]?” These voices have been buried in me for a long, long time. Digging them out has been quite an interesting process, and I think they’re still mostly buried, but at least now I know they’re there. And whenever I feel up to it, I can keep digging a bit more, and eventually I’ll have unearthed them all.

There’s something that’s been peeking out of the ground for a while now, and I’ve finally dug it up. It’s a fantasy, and it goes like this:

I am a nurturer. More than anything, I want to take care of you. I want to support you and give you what you want and be your pillar. I want to stand next to you proudly, “I’m hers.” I want to cook for you, and bake your favorite sweets for you, and clean. I want to notice the little things that make you feel better, and do them for you. I want you to dress me, in whatever you want me to wear. I want to be manicured, and pedicured, and wax my arms and legs, and spend a half an hour every morning and evening on my skincare regimen. I want to wear four-inch heels with peeping toes. I want to iron your shirts and make your bed and stroke your head until you fall asleep. I want to plan little surprises and encourage your passions and turn you on. Making you tick is what makes me tick. So.

As I said, that’s been peeking out of the ground for a while. I kept ignoring it, thinking it’s just another indicator of my co-dependency. My tendency is to want to exist for someone else rather than for myself. And I’ve always thought that that’s because it’s easier to take care of someone else’s wants and needs than it is to take care of my own. (The responsibility of making myself happy? Huge.) So it’s been really easy to write off that fantasy as something unhealthy and something I need to dismiss, something I need to work out. I’ve thought of it as the problem.

But maybe the problem itself is the very solution. Maybe it’s not co-dependency, but in fact a valid form of self-identity. Can this be? I have a lot of feelings about this. Frustration – have I really been working so hard to discover what I really want, only to realize that what I want is, again, just to do what someone else wants? Fear — what does this mean? Will I lose myself even further? Confusion — but I thought I was ambitious and driven and independent! Worry — how on earth will my friends and family take it if I come out to them this way? Excitement — wow! So much to work (and play) with here! Weeee! Intrigue – what would this feel like, to actualize this? what worlds might this open up for me?

So, I think I’m going to try this on for a while. See if it fits as well as it does in my fantasy. I need to keep reminding myself, though, that I’m doing this for me. In the end, I’m not really doing this to sacrifice myself for her. Rather, I’m allowing myself to indulge a fantasy. I’m going for a dream.

Maybe I don’t need to find co-dependency support. Maybe I need to find femme support. How about a Femme for Dummies: How to Make Sure You’re Taking Care of Yourself While Caring for Your Lover (and Others).

Anyone out there? Femme bloggers who’ve written about this sort of journey? Any femmes who read here who want to pop out and say hi? Maybe there is a Femme for Dummies that I just don’t know about? Oh my gosh, I feel so thirsty. Is this what it feels like to know what I want?

(Disclaimer: For me, the word that works best to encompass all this is “femme.” I fully realize that many, if not most, femmes probably don’t share this same fantasy and wouldn’t necessarily identify this fantasy as being femme in nature. For now, just realize that yes, I acknowledge that, and I apologize if anyone feels that their identity is stepped on. As this is all coming to light I’m sure I will write more about this in the near future, because boy do I have thoughts…) 

There’s a mirror at the foot of my bed. It wound up there by accident — the movers just happened to lean it agaisnt the wall there back in July, and I haven’t touched it since. It’s not even hanging; it’s just sitting on the floor, minding its own business, angled slightly upward so that it appears to be looking casually at the bed.

The bed itself is low to the ground, and the mirror being rather large, what this means is that for the past few months, everything I do that happens in my bed is reflected back to me.

I fuck her doggy-style facing the window, so we can both look sideways and watch each other’s reflections in the mirror — she watches me thrusting, I watch her back arch and her breasts bounce. I sit at the foot of the bed, legs spread, as she sits back to the mirror and licks my pussy — I look down and see her face buried in me and her eyes swimming up at me, and I look up and watch my own pleasure, see her as if from behind, an observer of our own live-action porn. She rides me, the strength of my own core propping me up as I grasp her hips and help her pump up and down, and I’m thrusting too (the best work out there is) — and she faces the mirror while she rides me so she gets the same view of herself that I always get to see from this position, her body tight, her legs apart, her cunt wet and open and welcoming my cock. She squirts this way, she can watch herself squirt, and she climbs over my face and watches in the mirror as she comes in my mouth, and it spills out of my mouth and over my face and my hair because she keeps coming and it’s too much for me to swallow. And the mirror catches it all.

That mirror has made me see and made me believe that I look hot fucking. It’s like, wow, we look like porn artists! Look at us! Our bodies are  sexy and our faces reveal tension and beauty and ecstasy and lust. My slightly crooked spine? Totally not apparent. The small breasts I’m so self-conscious of? They look good. In a way, that mirror encourages me to break out of my mind when we’re fucking, because it can make me think, “what would I do now if I were in a porn movie?” and so the sex I have becomes the sex I’d like to watch. It helps me be less self-conscious, watching us in the mirror. Who’d've thought.

That mirror is amazing. It never really occurred to me (beyond perhaps the vaguest thought, not even formed enough to have words) to put it there before, and I am so grateful to the movers that they put it there. Sometimes I wonder whether they knew what they were doing, and knew they were doing me a favor by putting it there. Or whether they assumed I’d want it there. Probably they weren’t thinking at all. That mirror is leaning as if an afterthought. But I’m certainly not planning on hanging it up anytime soon.

Anyone else have thoughts or stories about sex and mirrors? I know I’m not the only one…

While I’m at it, I might as well procrastinate a bit more and do a This Week’s Goals.

Here are last week’s:

- watch my Netflix movie that’s been sitting around since the beginning of September (Million Dollar Baby, I’ve been meaning to watch it forever because I’m kind of obsessed with Hilary Swank… especially if she’s all tough. ::swoon::)

I did this! I did this! Yay! Thursday evening I had a “Me-vening” as mi’lady dubs them. I left work early(ish), put on my jammies, and popped in the movie. I haven’t watched a full movie in… I don’t know how long.

- finish reading the biography of Buddha that one of the attorneys I work for lent me

Didn’t really finish it, but read about as much as I was interested in. I was much more interested in how Buddhism originated, what brought the Buddha to the place of beginning his preaching, than I was in the actual preaching(s) itself.

- go to yoga again

:( Nope. Work got in the way. Sigh. And the weekends don’t have as many classes, for whatever reason. BUT! I did play tennis on Sunday with one of my friends! So I did get some quality movement!

- ride my bike to work one day!

Also didn’t happen. It will happen soon. But again, my work schedule didn’t even permit me the chance to buy a bike light, and since it’s often dark when I leave work, it’s absolutely imperative that I have a light and some reflectors. So until I get a day where I can leave at 5 or 5:30, this won’t be able to happen. :(

- finish preparing my grad school applications master to do list

Um, grad school? What’s grad school?

So, not so much success this week. But I think the most important things were the quality time (movie) and the movement (tennis), so all in all, I did do good things for myself last week.

This week’s list comes TWO days late. Ugh. But I need to be less ambitious this week since (a) it’s already well underway, and (b) I’m busy at work so need to be realistic about what I can manage outside of work.

1) Cook a good meal for myself (others could be there too) at least once. Doesn’t matter which meal.

2) Have sex before mi’lady leaves on Monday. (Okay this shouldn’t really be a goal, because it will obviously happen, but if I make it a goal hopefully it will be really good intentionally making time for it sex. As opposed to the spur-of-the-moment-it’s-kind-of-late-but-let’s-do-it-anyway sex, which is also great, but is overwhelmingly the kind of sex we’ve been having in the past few weeks. And which to me feels more rushed.

3) Post here at least twice between now and next week’s goals.

4) Be aware of my brow being furrowed and consciously take the few seconds whenever I notice it to relax my face — my brow, my jaw, my tongue, my eyes.

And for this week, I think four goals is enough. Let’s do this!

It’s been a rough week.

Back in July, I was posting nearly every day. I’d like to get back into that, because blogging really grounds me, especially when things are going badly, but then also when things are going well.

Things that have been hard about this week:

1) Coming out of my hormonal tsunami that preceded my period. The coming out is almost as hard as the going down, just because it’s coming up that I’m able to look around and see all the damage I’ve done. I really frightened mi’lady this weekend. I don’t want to do that anymore.

2) My training with the rape crisis center coming to a close. It’s a relief, because that’s 20 hours a week that I get back (well, not really 20, because 8 hours a week I’m now on hotline duty). But it’s also a loss, because in the past 6 weeks, I’ve started noticing the roots I’m putting down in my community. I’ll miss the structured time for that continued growth. And I think hotline duty will be very different. (Not to mention challenging. But certainly rewarding in its own right!)

3) I’m struggling with bringing emotions about my parents’ divorce to the surface. I don’t know how to have feelings about it. I wish I did. I know they’re there, because they reveal themselves indelicately. I’d love to be able to bring them up in meditations or something. Sit down in my room, put on Bach Goldberg Variations, sit on my bed with a cup of tea, and cry.

4) I’ve been working. Way. Too. Much. I have a looming deadline on Tuesday and an anticipated 70-80 hours of work before then. It makes me lose sleep out of stress, it means I have no time to do things like blog or read or play piano or have sex because all I do is work-come-home-crash-into-bed-toss-and-turn-get-up-shower-work. There’s some eating in there, but generally while I’m working. I can’t wait until next Wednesday, when some variety of normalcy (hopefully) returns.

5) Mi’lady is going away on Monday for a business trip and I wish I could just spend a full day with her before then to heal the damage I caused last weekend in my ill state of mind. I have a hard time even saying that I caused the damage, because it feels so unlike me. It wasn’t me. In fact it didn’t feel like anyone. I was gone. I started coming back bit-by-bit over this past weekend, and I did spend time with mi’lady on Sunday. And spent some much-needed time with myself as well. But we need to come up with strategies for what to do as a couple when my Self runs away. Maybe it means we don’t see each other at all when that happens. Also, we just need to spend some time together to have fun. Be lighthearted, laugh, move forward. But, with all my work, I’m not sure how that’s going to happen. I’ll miss her next week.

6) One of my good friends from college is coming to visit on Friday just for the night, and while of course I’m looking forward to seeing her, it’s hard for two reasons: (a) the timing is just really, really bad. I’m running out of batteries, I’m working too much, I’m stressed, and I’m worried I won’t be able to just enjoy being with her. And (b) she’s also staying for two nights previously to me with my Ex. My Ex, who I moved to San Francisco to be with, and who broke up with me two weeks before the planned move. My Ex, who this same friend hooked up with — while we were together. (Yes, for real.) I one day will probably write more about this Ex, but suffice it to say for now, it’s a little weird for me that my friend will be coming straight to me from Her. In fact, they are probably with each other as I write.

So, that’s what’s going on for me this week. I haven’t even gotten around to thinking about goals. But I will. I hope.

I think I’ll finish with something positive: I might get to go to Germany in a few weeks for work! That’s an exciting prospect. I hope if it happens that I can wrangle it so I can stay a few days longer and visit some of my friends there.