Old Relationship Energy

“Never regret thy fall, 
O Icarus of the fearless flight 
For the greatest tragedy of them all  
Is never to feel the burning light.”

~~ Oscar Wilde

Tom has taken to saying that we are experiencing a season of Old Relationship Energy -- ORE.  It seems to be an emotional habitat comprised of feelings of warmth, security, comfort, gratitude, and long-lasting love.  We are living in a space where we feel just amazed at our great good luck to have one another; to still be here in this place and this time, and still together.  We snuggle a lot these days.  We sit together and hold hands while we watch TV.  We play and spank, back and forth in our currently nebulous and highly variable power dynamic.  We chat online whenever we can during my work day.  We smile at each other like giddy kids in the first blush of love.  We share kisses, sometimes stolen as if they were forbidden.  We walk and talk … and talk and talk and talk.  We have finally healed from the hurts of our struggles and come to a shared awareness of and empathy for one another’s various and evocative scars.  It really is like waking up after a bad, bad dream, and finding the one you love above everything standing there smiling at you.  It is an enormous comfort.  

The truth is that we have aged.  We are older and, perhaps, wiser.  We know how absolutely mortal we are, and how close we, like Icarus, flew to the sun.  We got our wings singed.  Seriously.  And, we are still here, still in love, still able to live the story and tell about it.  It is a joy and a wonderment and an absolute amazement.  Perhaps, along with our heron, we will need to add a phoenix to our cast of bird totems.

swan

Faithful Sidekick

Robin the boy wonder did it for Batman, and Tonto did it for The Lone Ranger.  Ed McMahon and Chewbacca both played the role for their respective "main men."  Over time, lots of names have been cast in the role of "faithful sidekick:"  Barney Fife, Enkidu, Sancho Panza, Kato, Spock, Gilligan...

The sidekick is, most often, cast in a subordinate role to the main character.  Sidekicks generally do not make the rules or choose the goals or set the course.  Instead, they reflect the best of their "main man."  They provide a context, and act as a confidant.  They are simultaneously friend, guide, interpreter, voice of reason, conscience, fall guy, and straight man.

As things have evolved here, I have struggled to find the words that would describe my sense of who I am in His world.  Clearly the old language doesn't really work anymore.  No more of that sensationalized BDSM lingo:  Master/slave, or Owner/property.  We have shared history that will not allow for those designations to work anymore.  Somehow, though, in the last few days, I've heard my head whispering this "sidekick" idea in  my mind.  So maybe that is it...  Maybe I've graduated to being the "faithful sidekick."

swah

Spring Break

Tomorrow morning, the alarm will pull us up out of sleep at 5:30, and I'll take care of our early morning routines; showers, breakfast, lunches ... and be off and out on my way to school by about 6:50.  "Spring Break," will have come to an end.
For years now, we've traveled during spring break; driving 1200 miles over two days to visit in Denver with my children and grandson.  Generally, that allows us about three days to visit, and then two more days to drive back.  Every year, I head back after spring break feeling exhausted and completely worn out.  There are a number of reasons we did not make that jaunt this year, and the week has been, instead, sort of quiet, laid back, and restful.  Nice.
Coming into the week, I was looking forward to days of playing, spanking, and sex.  It didn't turn out that way...
We woke up on Monday morning to heavy rain, both outside -- and inside.  The window in our bedroom had lost its seal, and the rain water was coming in right around the frame.  We cleaned up the puddles, did our best to catch the leaking rain water, and called for help.  No messing around while we waited for the call back on the repair.  Another day, we were waiting for a package to arrive from FedEx -- one that we knew would require a signature.  So... another day through which we were reluctant to get into spanking knowing that we might be interrupted by the doorbell.  There was a doctor's appointment.  The window repair was scheduled on another day.  I had a teacher workshop that occupied all of Friday.  The days seemed to just melt away in a wash of stuff -- the stuff that life is made of.
We have spanked just a bit.  A couple of spankings for me, and one or two quick ones for Him, and yes, we've made love.  All fit in around the other parts of our life.
And tomorrow, I'll go back to school.  I'll plunge into the end of the year, the rush toward the ending that looms just twelve weeks away.  I will take with me some simple lessons learned over this spring break:

• Life is made up of all of the moments.
• Spanking and sex are part of life.
• It is easier to just go with what comes rather than railing against the fates.
• It is better to understand that I'm only human; He's only human, T is only human.  We are all doing the best we can.
• Things balance out in time.  The good and the bad.  
• Through it all, I can go gently and with less judgement.  Things will just feel better that way.

So, no journey across the middle of the continent.  Instead, a sweet and calm journey into who we are together.

swan

Angling

An angler is, most commonly, a fisherman.  Not here, however.  In our household, it seems that Tom has evolved into a full-fledged "angler."  "Angler" in this case refers to the alternative meaning of the word; the idiomatic infinitive "to angle for:"

to scheme or plan to get something; to "fish" for something.

Angling for ... what?  Well, more and more, around here, it is Tom angling for a spanking.  As things have lightened up around us and between us, He has gotten more and more "switchy."  Where He once chose to bottom once in awhile for the broadened understanding that it gave Him for the experiences of His partner, now it is really much more about a desire and drive that is entirely about Him.  He wants to get spanked, and His approach to that is not a simple and straightforward asking.  No.  He schemes and plots and manipulates and maneuvers and brats and hints broadly.  He is a shy and blushing bottom when He is in that place, and it is adorable... just very sweet and very cute.

The angling has introduced a new level of uncertainty and ambiguity into our power-based dynamic.  Now we have to not only negotiate the approach to a spanking encounter; we also have to navigate through the shallows and currents around WHO plays which role.  We are learning to try and balance the energy between us; keeping a sort of informal accounting of who got spanked last, or who is feeling more needy, or more toppy, or...

I'm not too sure what I think of all of that most days.  Not sure that He's sure either.  We are wandering along through a world that seems to have very few boundaries, where what was clearly defined now seems entirely movable and malleable.  Where we once "exchanged" power, we are now more likely to try and power balance.

swan

Kinky Kitty

Our Moonbeam Kitty (who you will remember came to us last summer while we were out for a late night walk) has grown to be quite a character.  She is amazingly social and friendly.  She loves everybody; especially, she loves her Daddy.  Moobie and Tom have become best friends, and He regularly remarks about how amazed He is to be so in love with a CAT.  It does seem that this particular cat is well matched to us -- or us to her, depending on how you want to look at it.
Not too long ago, around the holidays I think, Tom and T were out shopping at a local western wear shop, and they picked up a new riding crop.  After all, you can never have too many riding crops, and well.... the price was really good.  Or something like that.  I don't know -- I wasn't there.  I came home, and the new crop was here, and that was that.  We put it in the pile of toys on the headboard, and didn't think much about it.
Somewhere in the intervening weeks, we've discovered an interesting and amusing truth about the riding crop.   Moobie loves it.  I mean she really, really loves it.  She thinks it is a cat toy, and sometimes she plays with it like a cat toy.  She leaps and jumps and chases after it, and it is pretty funny.  But then, she also love the riding crop AS a riding crop.  If we use the crop to smack her with it, she will get all glassy-eyed, stick her tail up into the air, and fairly vibrate.  She'll stand there and let us whack her with the riding crop, over and over and over.  Yeah.  We have a spanko cat.  So, along with sending us a really sweet, really friendly, wonderful kitten, the summer moonbeam brought us a kinky kitty.  How perfect is that?

swan

Changes

It is still March, and still Question Month.  I have run through all the questions that people asked in the beginning of the month except this last one that Ordalie asked (If you have anything else you are wondering about, do please ask):

I sure am a bit curious but I marvel at the changing appearance of you blog:  photos or drawings, font...  Who makes all these changes?

Me.

I do it.

I get bored with things when they stay the same for too long.  Sometimes it is about making things look sort of seasonally appropriate.  Sometimes it is about my mood.  Sometimes, I stumble across a picture or a piece of art that I like, and that becomes the inspiration.

Sometimes I get crazy and make some wild change that I look at the next day and think, "What the hell was I thinking!?!?!?"  Those variations don't last very long.

It is really just a way of entertaining myself, of using up excess energy.  When I was younger, I used to do the same thing with the furniture in my house...  My kids used to hate it when they were teens...  They would go out in the evening, and I would rearrange the whole place.  If they didn't make it in by the time I turned the lights off, I'd hear them crashing around in the darkness trying to figure out what the new lay of the land might be.

swan

Why a Heron?

The last question in the current "pile" is one from sequoia about out "Heron" totem.  She writes:

Why the heron? Beautiful water bird.... but I often (change that: sometimes) wonder why it was chosen as your moniker? 

When we first "met," it was online.  We were members of the same listserv, 1HouseholdDiscipline, and our conversations there led to deeper and closer ties over a period of time.  When we began, I lived in a northern suburb of Denver, Colorado.  I grew up in the west, and most of my experience of the world is from that arid, high plains environment.  I grew up in a world that was occupied by blue jays and magpies and meadowlarks and hawks and eagles.  There were no herons that I ever saw, living in the Rocky Mountains.

Moving to Cincinnati, I found myself in a totally different world.  It rains here.  A lot.  There are four recognizable seasons here.  It is not at all like Colorado where we used to joke that there were only two seasons:  winter and company.  There's a lot of naturally occurring water here; lots of ponds and lakes and rivers.  And, there are great blue herons here for a good part of the year.  They often don't leave us until close to the end of November, and if the winter is fairly mild, they can return in the middle of February.

When I first came here, the appearance of a heron, standing majestically at the edge of the water, seemed magical and mystical.  Too, it seemed to me that at every major juncture of our transition from online acquaintances to friends to play partners to lovers to family, the herons would always appear.  I will swear that the herons come to us whenever we are worried or frustrated or frightened or just uncertain of the path to follow.  They land on the pond outside our doors, and they stand there, and they stare in through our windows until we see them, take note, and say to each other, "Oh look, a heron..."  Then, most often, the heron watcher will lift into the sky on those stretched out wings, and circle away into the blue.  It may not be any sort of magic, but it simply feels to us like the herons watch over us, and empower us, and cheer us on as we travel through this world together.  We've come to believe that, for us, herons hold some sort of power.

And that is the story of why we are "The Heron Clan."

swan