and now, the weekend report

warning: this is really long.

i would like to thank our current implementation of ClearWaste for the time to bring you this update. i hear that soon we will be getting some time-saving enhancements, and i'm glad about that, although i will miss these bonus times.

this was an interesting weekend - mostly good. saturday we got going relatively early for my eye doctor appointment at cupertino family eye care, which i believe liz referred me to a billion years ago. at any rate, they were excellent - incredibly helpful, friendly and had pretty good prices. MUCH better than the place we've been going to at valley fair.

oh and had way too many frames to choose from, which made us almost late for seeing our therapist up in SF, since we had to get lunch first. i'd seen that there was a quiznos near there, but couldn't find it so we went to a bagel place across from one of the Apple buildings. very tasty bagels.

so, up up and away...we're less than a mile from B's place and she calls on the phone. oops, she said, forgot that you bring pearl, and one of my dogs is (better but) still contagious after its hospital stay. ack. so we rescheduled to thursday. but, what to do now?

we'd already talked about maybe going to good vibes, so might as well go now! it'd been years since either of us had been to a shop like that, so we had tons of fun browsing and giggling. finally got around to the book section and i found two books i'd been interested in getting: redefining our relationships and the ethical slut. while min checked out a VERY hot photography book, i tried to pick one of the two relationship ones. i was leaning toward the ethical slut when min said, 'i think our relationship is worth paying for both.' good point.

among other things we also got this game and finally tried it out last night. didn't make it to the end - she got too sleepy after all the massage i had to give her as part of the game - but nonetheless could tell it was a very good investment. :-D

ok back to saturday. after GV we just wandered down valencia enjoying the day, people and little shops. m started to want a snack but we weren't seeing anywhere good to go. we found this place i want to say was called little osmo...cute shirts, notebooks, handmade cards...very cool. we asked for a snack rec and got pointed to tartine a few blocks away. busy but yummmy to me (min wasn't that crazy bout it). and passed the women's building on the way, which has amazing murals.

anyway afterwards we started back towards the car, since min now felt she needed some real food, we'd look for somewhere for dinner. on the way we saw a hat store with entirely too many adorable hats. after much sampling she finally settled on a cute white one with blue/green dots. she's wearing it today, so adorable!

in the interests of not meandering too much for dinner, we wanted to go to eliza's, where we'd been before. very affordable, very tasty, and adorable decor. well all that was true saturday, but they were also extremely rude regarding pearl.

in addition to being adorable, pearl's also an assistance dog now so legally businesses are required to let her come in. most places, even if they have an issue at first, once min explains the law/gives them a handout, they shut up and are very nice. but not this place. i mean, they could have been worse, but they were very snotty the whole time. anyway we went home from there and min was pretty beat so we went to bed shortly after around 10. i was not sleepy so i started reading the ethical slut.

i guess you can't put a good slut down, because i made it 1/3 of the way thru its 270+ pages that night. i highlighted away until i realized my lines were getting too wobbly, so i gave up and went to sleep.

sunday we had no plans. i realized after i woke up that this was a good thing, because i'm learning that if min has a good day with lots of running around, the next day she has to rest. pretty much all day. i read my email, ate breakfast and thought...you know what i really want to do? finish reading that slut.

so that's what i did. read, highlighted, re-read, mused, then kept reading until i finished around 2pm. i have to say, at least for me it was a really good book. and not just about being a slut. i think this book is good for anyone either in a relationship, or who wants to be in one. it makes you think about what kind of things you want - for yourself, for your partner(s) - not only sexually but emotionally. what kind of relationship do you want to have? what things could make your relationship healthier? and my favorite - how to have more constructive fights.

fights, i am coming to realize, are a necessary evil. that doesn't mean i like them one little bit, but i do think that both of us are starting to handle them better.

good thing too because as i finished the book, min woke up. she asked me what i thought of it. i said it was good, but wanted a little more time to let it sink in. she said ok, and that she wanted to read it too - today. i thought that was great and handed it over. i was getting up to get her a different pen for making notes/highlights and she said, 'i want us to get a book about monogamy too. i don't want to think we can just read this book and assume with this we can make everything just fine.'

sure, sounds good to me, i said. let's be balanced about it. but what i thought was, great. where is this going?

sure enough the next several hours involved a lot of crying (both), talking, processing, not talking, and more crying. at one point she gave me this article about gay marriage she'd printed from The Nation. i read it while she was doing something else. later i came back into the living room and she was reading it. as she finished i said, that was a good article, thanks for showing it to me.

she said, 'see, this is what marriage is about. it's about wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone. being with them through everything, growing old together. it's not just about sex.'

i said, that's what i want too. i want to spend the rest of my life with you. i love that when you and i saw that there was a 4400 marathon on today, we both wanted to watch it. i want to be married to you. i think, it's just that you and i have different definitions about what that marriage could look like.

sounds rational eh? yeah whatever. what matters is, emotionally i'm saying that she alone is not enough for me. and - in a different way than she meant - it's not completely about sex. it's about there being different parts of me that don't really go well with her, and i have ALWAYS needed to either suppress or save for my friends.

the example i brought up is my extremely dry, mock-happy, sarcastic sense of humor. she does not appreciate this (she feels it's too harsh, and i get that), but unforunately is a rather critical component to my personality. since early on in our relationship, when we set this boundary, i've either had to keep that to myself or (as i can now thank NUTS for) sometimes share it with like-minded friends.

she said something about that not being the point and i said, actually it is. the point is, i've never been able to get all of my needs met with solely you. it's unrealistic and probably unhealthy to expect that to be the case. and so, thinking that i might need other people in my life, in order to get certain needs met, is reasonable.

there's that word again. reason. emotional well-being does not necessarily have anything to do with reason. just like my feeling like i never should have said anything in the first place (in april), but also realizing i couldn't keep it in anymore. and so, there was more crying. and agreeing to not talk anymore about this until we see B on thursday.

ok fair enough. the rest of the day was pretty quiet, with us both reminding each other that we loved each other and were going to keep working on this. then later, like i said we went to bed early and had fun with our new game.

since min was sleeping, i almost came out afterwards and started blogging the weekend, but crashed since i knew i had to get up early today - presentation at work! by yours truly! and i'm very happy to say it went fine, no problems, i didn't even get horribly nervous (i hate presenting). answered a billion questions and we all went on our merry little way afterwards.

unbelievably, ClearWaste is not done yet. wow! but, i am. get up, give your eyes a rest if you made it this far. thanks for playing.

update: it wasn't little osmo, it's little otsu. their main site led me to some other awesome online shops including some sexy, knotty work at buy olympia. i am SO going to be shopping there soon.