Quiet and Happy

It was only a matter of just over a year after we first started blogging when we figured out how to start tracking the statistics about how many people visited us each day. Our interest ebbs and flows, but it is a rare day when we don't at least check to see what our numbers are. The hits rise and fall according to a variety of influences and factors, and we've learned that, while there are things that we can do to drive our numbers in one direction or another in the short term. If we post "butt" pictures, the numbers soar with predictable regularity. Should we write about any sort of turbulence in our relationships, the stats increase -- people do seem to love a train wreck. If there's nothing much to talk about; if the time between posts lengthens, then the numbers drop off -- you can take it to the bank. More often than not, though, the numbers do whatever they do and we can't explain it at all.

I really try not to let what I say here be influenced by the ups and downs in the stats. This was never an exercise in building up a following or driving traffic. Still, I do feel pressure when the numbers begin to slide. For right or wrong, I am convinced that I have some responsibility to put things up here on a regular basis. It doesn't rise to the level of active worry; more a sort of nagging fussiness that just won't leave me be.

And that's a problem because in the last few weeks, I've felt less and less urge to write here. It isn't that there's anything wrong. To the contrary, things feel good in terms of our relating. We do surely have our stresses. T's mom and Master's dad both have their health issues. Keeping up with what the two of them need is a steady demand and drain on our family's energies and resources. But that is just life, and nothing that any of us really find any reason to complain about. All of us continue to be employed at jobs that pay us well and allow us to live in comparative comfort. On any given day, any one of us can be up against things at work that are worrisome or annoying or just plain exhausting, but that is a story that anyone might tell -- it is hardly news and definitely not particularly exciting.

The truth is that we are happy. Our lives are good. We have the great good fortune to be able to live together as a family. We do not have to manage long distance relating issues, and we are not constrained by "other" relationships or partners whose needs must be considered in the mix. We enjoy one another. There is little about our day to day lives that creates drama or angst or relational wrangling. We've settled in, knowing exactly who we are with and for each other. T and I manage the household together with hardly a hitch these days. She does my wash, I fix her meals. She stops by the store to pick up a few groceries, and I get out the bucket and scrub her floors. We balance and support one another, and take care of Him between the two of us. He and I spank when we have time and energy, and it is still a deep connecting between us -- satisfying to each of us in very specific and particular ways. Our sex life improves more and more as He loses the extra pounds that have burdened Him for so many years. It is not at all unusual, anymore, for Him to elicit gasps as He makes love to me with a virility that was unimaginable six months ago.

I read around the blogs as I have time, and I find myself less and less able to engage in the typically angst-y discussions I find there. I can't speak to topics like rules or protocols or tasks or punishments or maintenance spankings or good girl spankings or any of the rest of it. I don't see anything wrong with any of those things, but it all just seems too complicated and contrived. I read about partners messing around with orgasm denial and I wonder why anyone would ever do that -- since life will surely impose that requirement in due time. I read about those who spend hours and hours and enormous energy in working to modify the speech patterns of the submissive partner -- creating odd speaking requirements for referring to oneself in the third person, and avoiding the declarative statement. Those bits cause me to evaluate my own reality where the simple and overarching expectation is that I speak in a voice that sounds respectful and conveys my love -- it is perhaps more intentional than the communication between most partners, but for me, it is the way of things.

I live the life I could never have imagined. I might have spent hours dreaming this, but I'd have never ever believed that any of it was possible for real. I am so terribly lucky. I am well and healthy and loved beyond anything I ever expected. So, as the stats sort of putter along from day to day, sometimes up and sometimes down, it is partly a result of the fact that our lives have cruised into calmer waters. This has turned into a drama-free blog. Many a day, I imagine simple getting on here and putting out a sign that says, "Move along. There is Nothing to See Here."

swan