Time for Something New

It seems clear to me, finally, that this blog has run its course.  The life this place started out to describe has changed irretrievably.

I want to write what I want to write, and this isn't it.  I'm starting afresh somewhere else.

If you are interested, write to me, and I'll clue you in.

Thanks for all the good times.
Sue

Dust

We had friends for dinner last night...  Friends who are curious about BDSM and our collection of toys.  So, after dinner, we opened up the flogging frame, and began dragging out the toys:  floggers, and paddles, and quirt, and canes.

Almost everything was covered in dust, lots and lots of dust.

One friend commented to me that he thought I should have "cleaned the toys after we played with them the last time."

"I did."  I told him.

Interesting?

I've been reading The Mind Body Problem, by Rebecca Goldstein.  The novel centers around the relationship between two characters, Renee and her husband, mathematical genius, Noam Himmel.  Theirs is, from the outset, a terrible mismatch -- simultaneously painful and  intriguing.

At one point, the book delves into the question (from a philosophical and mathematical standpoint) of whether sex is interesting.  So, I've found myself pondering...  Is it?

There's the, more or less, ubiquitous set of sensations.  For all the variation among us; size, shape, color, temperament, appetite, belief...  the range of human sexual experience is pretty similar.  Those of us in the BDSM community tend, I suspect, to think we've concocted a wider and wilder range of sexual experience, but even with our kinky repertoire added to the mix, the sexual sensation catalog only has so many pages.

Once we have, ourselves, crossed the line that delineates sexual imagining and sexual fantasy from sexual experience, the extent of the territory to be explored is bounded.  From missionary position, one on one, penis in vagina copulation, through the realms of tantric pleasures, and on into the varieties of power exchange and sadomasochistic play, there are only so many sensations that can be wrung from the human frame.  We may pick from the menu of options.  We may combine the elements in a dizzying array of possibilities.  We may achieve orgasms, in singles and multiples, and in whatever order, individually or as couples.  We can wash, rinse, and repeat until we wear ourselves completely out.  And then what?  Once we've poked and prodded and stroked and wrestled one another into sexual delirium a few hundred or a few thousand times.  Once we know all the angles, and every nuance, and every single moan and sigh ...  is sex interesting?

What say you?

First Day

We are off!
Today was the first full day of school.
119 students between the ages of 11 and 14.

Temperatures were in the low 90's today, and the humidity was in the 85% range.
Wicked hot.
Outside.
Inside our nearly 100 year old building, with NO air conditioning, it was sweltering.
Death by sweat.
The forecast is for the heat to continue this week.
And next.
And then we should see a bit of a cool down.
I hope.
Until then, we just try and stay hydrated.
Suck it up, and forge forward.
Hot, hot, hot, hot!

School Starts

Tomorrow marks the beginning of this 2014-2015 school year.  I think that I am ready to go...

I have new school clothes and new school shoes.  The room is all clean and neat and organized (the ONLY time this year that it will be any of those things).  I have lesson plans and science labs all set and ready to go.

All that remains is to add kids.  They bring the whole business to life, create the questions, find the solutions, seek out the new ideas and share what they find.  In some ways, the work I do is about setting all of that in motion, and then trying to stay out of their way.  What I give them is the space and time to work and figure out what is out there waiting for them to find it.  I provide the assurance that they CAN do that, I encourage their efforts and cheer their attempts.  I help them mop up after failures, and I sit with them as they plan new ways of tackling problems that challenge them.  It is a mad, messy, chaotic, up and down endeavor, and I love it all.

I am in the remaining hours before we all come together to start a new year.  It is, for me, always a time of nervous, anxious, worried "what if-ing."  As long as I have done this work, I never seem to approach a new year without worrying about the beginning.  So, now I just need the kids to arrive.  I need us to start.  I need us to meet and smile and shake hands and turn together to walk into the new year together.

I just hate the waiting!

A Slow, Sleepy Summer

We've slept through a good bit of this summer.  We have.
Chalk it up to the reality that we are each growing older.  I saw my 59th birthday last February, and he turned 65 in April.  Neither of us are ancient, but we're not youngsters either.  Clearly.
I came into this summer break with more than the usual level of exhaustion.  A difficult ending to the last school year left me sad, worn, feeling drained.  I finished without my usual sense of elation at the ending.  And, it has taken me all of the long days and nights to get myself back into some kind of feeling of vitality and personal well-being.  We have simply slept and slept and slept, rising around 11:00 most mornings.
I've struggled mightily with migraine headaches this summer, seldom going more than a day or two without a monster headache.  Severity has been more of an issue as well.  Frequency and intensity and duration all part of a personal battle that has left me too often gasping on the shores of a sea of headache pain.
Tom has had a really tough month following the cardiac ablation in July.  The procedure itself was more difficult than we expected, and then there were complications to COMPLICATE things.  He has spent a month feeling pretty miserable -- worn out and in pain.  And so, when we have been able to get him to rest comfortably, we have... slept.
Maybe, at some level, we have needed all these long, slow, sleepy days to finally complete that transit through all the various challenges of the last number of years.  There has been no real drama.  No days of anger and bitterness.  We've simply curled up together and drifted along on a time of peace and calm.
Now, the days of summer are ending, officially.  According to the calendar.  Time for me to head back to the classroom.  In some ways, I feel like we squandered the opportunity to play and spank and wind ourselves

back into some sort of hot and passionate and kinky spin.  But then, I suspect that we will be better having taken these quiet, soft, warm days together.  Perhaps, this summer will become for us, the invincible summer that will carry us forward into and through the coming winter.  And so, in this last weekend before the whirl begins, I am glad for this long, lazy, sleepy summer shared with my dear love.

41!

I am one week away from the beginning of the week of meetings ahead of the start of the school year.  What a summer it has been.

Today, I did manage to finally go "over the top" with my summer "bag challenge."  I cleaned out the drawer in my kitchen where those plastic containers tend to accumulate.  Lots of them were without lids, and a lot of them were just tired and worn out.  I am down to just those that are decent and actually usable now.  The others were relegated to the neighborhood recycling bin.

The other bag today, was filled with old pants and jeans that I just don't like or wear anymore.  So those will be hauled off to the second-hand store later this week.

I am not done.  There are more nooks and crannies for me to weed through, but I am pleased to have done what I set out to do at the beginning of the summer.

We are still living with way more stuff than we really need around here, but it is less cluttered than it was when I started.  I'll take it.