a tale told by an idiot

i know i like everyone to think otherwise, but i am an idiot. do not be fooled by my witty dialogue. do not be fooled by my diverse educational background or my beautiful bug fu awards.

because when it comes to what's important in life, i am an idiot. i don't know what i'm doing and should not be trusted with the emotional well being of others, to say nothing of my own. sure, at one point i thought perhaps i knew what i was doing. but i was very, very wrong.

in other words, things are not that great right now. there has been no new drama per se, just conversations crystallizing this fact for me. i hope that someday things will be better, but given my supreme ability to fuck things up, i doubt it. i don't trust myself to make a sound decision, want the right things, or keep my mouth shut about it if i don't want the right things.

i have to leave work early today because it's my last day in this half-assed cube. i'm going to miss this little half-assed cube if for no other reason than it's Not Across From My Boss. and - issues with my current boss aside - it's never low pressure sitting across from your boss. i guess, unless you're sleeping with your boss. or if you're your own boss. but neither of these things are the case today. anyway, i'm hoping that going home, not thinking about work for a while, maybe walking the dog or something, will help me clear my head.

then again all those things are just another venue for my idiocy.

thank you, ClearWaste

for yet another morning where i have to wait to work because of you.

last week was hectic at work, and this week looks to be the same. so it was nice to have a quiet weekend. i had the bright idea to try to get a last-minute hotel room down near monterey, but fate was not on our side. or at least not in our checkbook - despite a couple hours of scouring the internet, i couldn't find a cheap but nice room.

so midday saturday we decided instead to go bowling and have dinner using coupons from the entertainment book. why not try someplace new and save money? but on the way up, min started to get very ill so we had to turn around. at home we cuddled on the couch a bit i think. i definitely remember watching my date with drew which was a LOT funnier than i expected. if you like reality tv/documentaries and watching a dork go for a dream, check it out.

sunday we tried again for bowling. min started to get sick again but forged ahead and felt better a little later. we figured out there was something in the air (we went near a construction site) that was affecting her breathing. very odd! so we went a different way home later. anyway, we finally made it to our coupon-friendly bowling center, which was bigger than i expected. i think it had 60 lanes. we got there around 1pm so it wasn't very busy which was nice.

it had been 10+ years since min or i bowled so our games were pretty uneven. but we didn't care, we had a blast! there were some technical difficulties with the lane and we got comped an extra half hour. everyone there was pretty nice and the food at the little cafe was pretty good! both agreed we want to do that again soon, but probably somewhere closer to home. altho we'll probably go up there again too because hah, we didn't even use the coupon. they had a special on early sundays that beat our coupon price.

anyway afterwards min was hungry and we started looking for somewhere to get her a bite. i don't think we ever got her an actual snack but we did end up shopping at a little asian market and got many noodles, sauces, and fresh veggies for later consumption. we came home, perched with pearl on the couch and watched the rest of bloodwork, which we'd rented on netflix. and yeah, if you haven't seen that, don't bother.

ok clearwaste is done wasting my time for the moment. hope those of you still listening had a good weekend as well. :-)

mmm...beaver!

mmm...beaver!
Originally uploaded by heatherama.

here's the yummy cup i mentioned the other day. posted a few other pics too, mostly of pearl, naturally.

but man i love this cup. as soon as i saw it, i knew it had to be mine.

it is really really nice

to wake up to $ from your little side business in your inbox.

yes it is.

the truth is out there

apparently it's out there, because min and i have been going out a lot the last week or so. and the truth is that i am a lot happier. i think min is too, at least in some ways. in other ways i know she is sadder. i'm sorry that that's the case, but i'm hoping that's just short term as we're making things better.

so, since last monday: we've gone to bingo twice - and i won once! good cheap fun. last night was an anniversary of something so there was free cake. and OMG click on that bingo link and check out the shot of people playing. last night i sat next to the dyke with blonde hair, and the guy next to her in the polo shirt, he was across from me! wow. i mean, the woman looked like a veteran what with her 10 bazillion daubers. the amount in the pic - that has to be half of what she has now.

ok also this last weeked was a blast. saturday we went to el pollo loco for lunch, which i haven't been to in years. pretty good! and then we went to nickel city and won ourselves some candy, erasers, and a cute little clock for only $10 in tickets. also min got a cool tshirt and me two awesome glasses (one is about great tasting beaver, i will have to get a pic soon) at a head shop.

sunday…oh we went to mimi's café for a very late lunch then saw inside man, which was interesting but not stellar. did have the very sleek looking jodie foster in it though, and other good actors as well.

and in between and around all of this there has been an amazing amount of closeness. sure, there's been more processing and crying too. that's natural as we're trying to sort out where we are and where we're going (but also waiting for some things til we get to the therapist in a couple weeks). but meantime….man. let's just say that i have had several very excellent mornings in a row, including today. making me not even care that i'm having to wait on clearwaste (again) before i can do my work. FlagBouncingBubblesEnabled.

moving towards the truth, part IV

this is the last and most lengthy installment in terms of recapping my madcap adventures over the last week. and i would like to thank all those little technical difficulties at work for allowing me to finish this during the day.

monday morning. min was last seen exiting stage left. i finish in the bathroom and go out to find a note from min - addressed to lori - saying that she couldn't stay (they were going to go to santa cruz) and hoped lori understood. well that could mean anything so i woke lori up. she wasn't really sure either so i tried calling their sister wilma. turns out min had called, and had been asked to call our VM and leave current phone numbers, so that min could call her back. we took this as a good sign that she would be returning to the house (no remote retrieval). i decided to work from home that day so i could be there when she got back - and sure enough she did, around 1130.

thus begins the super high drama portion of the day. she wouldn't talk to me at all. ignored what i said. i kept talking though, following her. followed into the bedroom where she was packing up clothes etc for herself. then she takes two of our framed pictures off the wall and smashes them against the bed/floor/etc. also a pic of herself that i had framed. so there's glass everywhere and both lori and i are getting freaked out, because this is not safe. i take pearl away (put her in her kennel, took her out of the room) because i am NOT letting her hurt the dog. all during this there's lots of yelling. by the time i get back to the bedroom, min's running out of the house and takes off again in the car.

she came back about 10 minutes later. she is calmer now, but still very angry and hurt. wants to know if i intend to work things out with her, do i really love her. i said i want to work it out but that i really just don't know if we could. i can't tell the future. but i don't know if i have enough left to make it work.

she goes into the living room with lori and they start talking. there is more talking for about an hour, again me trying to explain that i am willing to try to work it out and not see anyone else for now. again her not hearing that, just hearing what i'd said *at the very beginning and not since*, which was that i wanted the open relationship and to be with this other person. and round and round we go.

around 1 they left because min had a dentist appt. meantime i got to spend over an hour cleaning up the glass so that no animals or humans could be harmed in the walking of the bedroom. if i remember right i also got an affirmative (re: dating) from AG around here.

anyway, i got the feeling lori and min must've had some good talks during their trip because by the time min got home around 530, she was much calmer. still upset of course but calmer.

she wanted to talk about what her options were. some options i'm not going to discuss, because believe it or not, there are things i'm not willing to share. but at any rate, the final option was actually trying to *fight* for me, for our relationship.

she said what is it about me that you love? then, don't love? like what's changed for you? i said, some of this is about long term issues and no change in you. but the rest, i realized after having a minute to think, is that i felt like she's not the same person i fell in love with. SHE had changed, withdrawn into this shell of a person. and i know why, it's because she's just hanging on, trying to survive her illness. but, she'd still taken an inward spiral towards less interaction with me. and sure, it's not like she never talked to me, or was never joyful, but mostly things focussed on her health, or cooking/house issues/puppy. i tried talking to her about other things sometimes, but often she just didn't have it in her, and so in turn, we didn't have too much to talk about any more.

and she got it. she's like, you're right, i have changed. i started turning into your parents (house-bound folks obsessed with their own ailing health). and i love you so much, i want to be with you so much, i can't believe i forgot to show you. and so she comes closer and starts to give me a kiss.

and she comes in with a kiss that was so great and so weird that i'll probably never forget it. it was great because it was just hot and led to a several hour sex bonanza. but it was weird in that within an instant i thought, oh…THIS is what it's like to kiss her like that! because it had been SO LONG since we had kissed so passionately, that i forgot what it was like.

a few minutes later i started crying because of that. and then she did, because she felt so horrible about it.

we talked about that some more between bouts of monkeyness and more crying. so much crying, on both our parts. but overall, the evening it was a good start to trying to be more honest, more joyful, and admitting what we need or don't.

a key issue was needing to spend some time working on getting our relationship better, going to a therapist, etc, before bringing others in. that's 100% fair and in retrospect, i feel like a complete fucking ass for bringing it up before we sought therapeutic help. or i guess to be more precise:

• since last monday, min and i have talked, laughed, cried, loved and gone out to do fun activities more than we have in a looooong time. more on that next time.
  
• despite what i said before, i think i do have enough love for min to work things out. in the last week, i have seen more of the min i fell in love with. and that it makes me really hopeful
  
• even though that's filling me up with so much more happiness - for both of us - that doesn't mean that i'm not sad about missing out on AG.
  
• and on that note, AG wrote to me earlier today to clarify it's not that she didn't want me, she just doesn't like the idea of having to share. ok fine, i don't like it but i can respect that. and even so, this changes nothing. there will be no dating of AG, probably ever. mostly i'm just happy to have not misread her as horribly as i thought. and i'm hoping that knowing this will help me to move on.
  

ok, that brings you up to date on the drama. next post will be about the fun i've had the last week. :-)

and now, the humor report

i don't know why -- i haven't seen anything egyptian, with steve martin in it, or SNL lately -- but this morning i woke up with this song in my head. it's rather addictive. and thank you internet for making it so real all over again!

moving towards the truth, part III

so my last serial had me, in january, struggling with a) maintaining a healthy relationship with min b) falling out of love with one woman and c) my attraction to AG. and if i may jump to today for a moment, may i say that i think i'm doing pretty well. things are going a LOT better with min, i'm totally not in love with that other woman, and my longing for AG is fading, or at least it appears to be.

ok back to the past. so i talked with AG quite a bit over the next few months. and by talk i mean innocuous conversation that periodically lapsed into mild flirtation. so by early april i was starting to get hot and bothered. i wanted to push AG for a serious answer - did she want me (rather, to try dating) or not?

this was the first time i had ever seriously considered taking that step with someone i was attracted to (while in a relationship with someone else). i started thinking about all the ways that AG was making me happy -- getting to know someone new; frequent, rapid fire talking +some flirting; and finally, the possibility of sex in my future -- and i came to several realizations:

1. that my relationship with min was lacking in almost all those things
2. even though i didn't think (then) those things could be fixed, i didn't want to leave min because i loved her and was committed to her.
3. that if our relationship was an open one, with rules in place, maybe i could keep min AND me happy at the same time, because
4. i'd get to be with both AG and min.

this sounded logical...in my head. reality is a little different. a fact i learned when, after carefully analyzing and documenting (for myself) the main discussion points for about a week, i finally decided to talk to min two sundays ago. april 8. and it was perfect timing too because - as would happen periodically when i'd go to an event without min - when i returned home, before long i was inevitably asked questions regarding my emotional fidelity.

doesn't this sound like the perfect opening? well, actually i've been meaning to talk to you about something related to that. yeah actually there is no good opening for this kind of conversation. especially when your relationship is already messed up and this is not really the way to fix it. because hey - turns out your partner was right to be suspicious.

anyway i launched into my presentation, and before long, i (understandably) had her crying and saying that she wanted to die. we called her sister lori - yes this is the same one we had the "fabulous" road trip with last summer - and she agreed to come over and spend the night. stay up talking with us, kind of like a mediator. lori actually did a great job. before long, i was saying i wanted to go see a therapist, try to work things out, and was willing to put nonmonogamy on hold until we had given us a fair chance to fix things. min seemed to hear that but also was quite intent on the idea of 'you're just going to have sex with this other woman and then leave me, and what's the point of sticking around for that'.

a very potentially valid point if i do say so. which is why i agreed not to pursue AG until we'd tried to fix us. around 2am we started getting too tired though and went to bed, agreeing to work on this more the next day.

monday morning. min comes in and wakes me up with questions around 7am. why did i stop blogging? was that about her? how did i meet AG? how far had things gone? what was i going to do about her? i answered her questions, tried to go back to sleep, but gave up a few minutes later since my mind was racing. i showered, and as i was getting dressed afterwards min asked if i had the car keys. earlier she'd been looking for the cell phone so i figured she was gonna look in the car for it. so i got her the keys and resumed getting dressed. and a minute or so later, min zoomed off in the car.

and if that isn't a great way to start the day -- and end another post -- i don't know what is. nighty night.

moving towards the truth, part II

ok so when your heroine left off... she was being an idiot for not talking to her gf about how she felt. namely that she still wanted said gf, but also wanted a new girl in addition.

this is where i think i messed up big time. the not talking. min says that if we'd talked then, maybe we wouldn't still be together. that maybe because we have the 9.893 years of togetherness, it gives us the strength, foundation to make it through this. that at 6 months or so, we might've just broken up for good. an interesting point but naturally a hard one to call.

but i didn't say anything, and so i've spent those 9.893 years struggling with these feelings to varying degrees. sometimes i'd go months, maybe even a year or so without too much trouble, and it was relatively easy to keep those feelings locked away.

however the last 3-4 years or so have been an exception. min and i almost broke up a few years back, i can't believe i can't remember why right now. but i do know we were fighting a lot, feeling like it was pointless to talk about difficult things because we felt we knew how the other person would react, so what was the point? well we tried to make agreements that we wouldn't assume we knew how the other person would react, to hear them out and to talk even if we were sure the other person wouldn't take it well.

that went...okay. it got a little better but didn't take long before it was back to usual, for the most part. i can't speak for min of course, but i can certainly attest to the fact that i was a big time offender in this department. it felt like both of us kind of pulled back a bit around then.

then a little over 2 years ago min started getting very ill. i have chronicled much of that in previous entries here. what i did NOT chronicle was the deterioration in our own relationship. like all slips toward damnation, it happened one day at a time. because of the extreme physical hardship min was under, she started retreating into herself, pulling away from work (and eventually left) and into a world focussed on her condition, going to see doctors about her condition, and the puppy. oh and me, although i only got to experience that for the brief time she was awake when i'd get home from work, or longer on the weekends. but still there was a lot of sleeping, not talking more than a few minutes at a time, and certainly almost nothing in the way of intimacy.

this is my POV naturally. at least to some degree, i believe this is how min sees it as well. but, because of all this, i suppose it was natural i'd end up enamored with someone new. i mean even if i didn't already have this tendency to get attracted to other people, this slow, quiet suffocating of our relationship probably would've led me down that path anyway. and so it was that i actually fell in love with another woman.

note that i did not say i was just attracted to her. i was full on in love. and note, i say WAS. i am not in love with her now, although i do love her as a friend. several times over the last year and a half i tried to force myself out of love with her. pull myself away, try to interact more with min, all those things i said before. in february of this year, i realized that i was going to have to take drastic steps about this if i wanted to keep my relative sanity. so i yanked back in the extreme. it took several weeks, and lots of little STFU-type reminders to keep me from ruining myself. i could feel her pulling away, and it killed me, but it worked - she drive me crazy no more.

and in the meantime, i'd like to say that in about january, i realized i was also getting attracted to another girl, we'll call her AG (anonymous girl). so for a while, i wanted min (well, to work things out), the woman in the previous paragraph, and AG. three at a time was new for me, but there you go.

and that's it for today because a) this is long enough and b) clearwaste has finished updating my view. tune in next time for another exciting installment of Heather's Wide World of Insanity!

by the way

anyone listening out there, if you're entertaining judgmental thoughts, things that you think might border on assvice...bring it. i'm not afraid of debate, and i certainly consider myself a work in progress.

and to those of you who've already shared such thoughts privately, thank you. maybe i didn't agree with you, maybe i did. either way i'm happy to have friends who care enough to be honest with me. :-)

moving towards the truth, part I

it's taken me a long time to admit this publicly, but after years of struggling with a very annoying internal dialogue surrounding this topic, i'm pretty sure that i am a polyamorous person. and by that i mean:

for most of my adult life, whenever i have been involved with person A, at the same time - or soon thereafter - i am usually interested in a person B or C as well. it has nothing to do with person A, although i can see the 'that person just wasn't right for you' argument. no, at each time when i was with person A, i've been minding my own business, feeling like everything's just peachy, and then BAM. person B or C knock me upside the head with their absolute charmingness. maybe they're just funny, maybe they're smart, maybe they're just hot, who knows. but whatever - i want them. AND i want person A, have no interest in letting them go either. i want both of them, separately.

so what do you do with that? well, when you're monogamous, you fight with yourself about it. you start doing your best to avoid person B. surround yourself with person A. suddenly find yourself daydreaming about person B. beat yourself up about it and start the whole cycle over again. with discipline, time and some luck, eventually the craving for person B goes away enough that you can actually feel ok around them without wanting to kill yourself.

when i first met min in our little lesbian feminist poetry usenet group (i love the internet) back in 1995, one of the things we ended up talking about was polyamory. at first, we were both involved with other people, so we just chatted as friends, but min had been in poly relationships before. as time went by and i grew more attracted to min, i became very interested in this poly concept. because even though things weren't perfect, i didn't want to leave laura (at the time, but she's now my ex, of course), and i wanted min as well.

the way i remember, min was ok with this. so i had the bright idea to talk to laura about being nonmonogamous. yeah that shit didn't fly so well. we went back and forth on the phone/email about it, and i even went to maryland (i was in tennessee) to visit once so we could spend some time talking about it and me reassuring her. instead we fought a bunch, had some awesome breakup sex, and decided the relationship was probably over. after i got home we talked more, but it really did end a few weeks later.

i wasn't really that happy about losing laura, but i understood where she was coming from. this whole concept was rather new to me as well. but my eyes were open to this new way of being, of harmoniously integrating this tendency to love more than one person at a time, and i didn't want to let it go. so when i trekked out to montana to visit min for the first time, the plan still was to be poly.

what happened instead was i fell harder and faster for min than i ever anticipated. and so did she, for me. and because of that, we decided to be monogamous. i mean hey, i proposed to her on the 3rd day! i know us dykes like to move fast, but that was fast even for me. anyway, i was so incredibly in love with her, that even though i had been VERY into the idea of nonmonogamy, i thought, well, i love her SO MUCH, maybe this time it will really work. maybe all those other times i just wasn't with a person that could fulfill me enough. yeah, it's not me, it's them!

and yet, about 6 months later, i was right back in the same boat as always. person B driving me batshit with desire. and person A (min) was still setting my mind, body and soul on fire in all the right ways.

…and that's where i'll stop for today, because this post is long enough. :-)

for the love of mammon

it's tempting to start my recapping with the most recent future since it's fresh (like me), but i want to back up a bit and bitch about $ and permanent disability, which min is applying for.

the process for permanent disability sucks. a LOT. mostly because you can't be earning any money while you're waiting for approval, and approval generally runs from 6 months (best case scenario) to over 2 years. that's right, YEARS.

so, when we found out that min's short term disability was ending rather abruptly (bout 3 weeks ago now), we went into a bit of a panic. because min made almost as much on disability as she did when she got paid. which naturally had us assuming that with that much money going away indefinitely, we were probably going to have to move to a cheaper place, cut back on all extraneous spending, and even then, still *hope* that we were going to have enough money.

well, that's where panic gets you. rational planning and analysis brings great things like peace of mind and the realization that you actually *do* have money for fun! granted, a LOT less than you did before, but that plus not having to move or get a roommate…well, that's just heavenly.

what's funny is that around this time, my parents - who had been at my uncle's place in oregon for about a week - were having major drama with my uncle and seriously considering leaving. but since they have even less fundus than we do, they weren't really sure what was next. then this disability crisis for us and we thought, wow, we could get my parents to move in and pay rent. that would help them AND us at the same time!

now i'm sure you're thinking, are you loco?? and i have to admit, some part of me thought i was too. but at the time (pre-rational analysis) i was desperate. so i called my mom. or tried, but she wouldn't pick up. fine, voicemail. she didn't call the next day. so i tried again - voicemail. another two days go by. now i'm starting to get worried. i try my sister - disconnected. brother in law - disconnected. some other numbers i forget - disconnected. i tried my mom again - finally i got her! made my offer, and wouldn't you know it but things were going a lot better up there in orygone. so she had to think about it.

a couple days later she called and declined. thankfully i'd done my rational analysis inbetween and figured out that we didn't really need a roommate anymore. THANK GOD. i have no desire to go back to those days at all, least of all with my parents who i'd just spent 3 months trying to get rid of. oh, we would've set down rules, expectations, etc, like for a regular roommate…but i know my parents. and me. it would've been tough to stick to them.

the week min's disability ended we'd been scheduled to go see a therapist to work on our communication problems (almost 10 years in the making!). when that happened, we talked about it but realized we needed to postpone til we had more mammon from on high. now that we're ok in the fundal department, i'm happy to report that we have a new date and i really hope that goes well. because the issues, we have them aplenty to process and discuss.

and the issues (at least the ones leading to the fiesta earlier this week), well i'll leave that for next time, maybe the few next times, because i think my ClearCaseWaste delivery's almost done and i need to get out of here. meantime i'm just….

bubbles, enjoying the old tyme religion theme

the un/godly truth

yes it's me! i know i said i wasn't resurrectable, that i wouldn't blog anymore, and you couldn't convince me otherwise. however just a few things have happened in the last month and a half, especially in the last few days, and after talking with min about it (her encouraging me to blog), i think i'm going to go ahead.

in case you couldn't guess from my last post, she was the Thing I Couldn't Talk About. she was convinced i was saying bad things about her, and it didn't really matter what i said to deny that (and it was NOT true), she just wanted me to clam up. or, get approval ahead of time and i don't work that way. thus, silence.

but a couple days ago she realized that i had killed this blog. and by extension, that action was primarily about her. and because of the other things going on with us, she really wanted me (both of us) to blog again because she's convinced it will be healthy for us to get everything out there, good and bad. i'm not 100% on that for myself, but i DO know that i love having my states documented, because i *love* to forget.

she created a new blog (actually her old one died). i don't really need another one, i like this one. and i'm sure you'll all love hearing this but during my absence i did in fact have a secret blog, one i'll probably keep just to have a dumping ground for unvarnished truth. here, i want to use at least a bit of varnish, or at least clarity.

there is no doubt that a lot of the...more colorful...things that run rampant through my mind have remained hidden during the history of this blog. but over the last few weeks, as we prepared to see a therapist, i realized that i could not hold these things inside any longer.

so, since easter is around the corner, consider this little corner of the web resurrected.

and now, some tidbits to titillate you until i have the energy to post more:

• my parents are finally out of my house.
  
• we did not see the therapist as intended, because:
  
• min's disability $ ended a few weeks ago.
• i finally admitted to myself that i've been unhappy with parts of my life for a long time. which on sunday led to:
  
• telling min i wanted to have an open relationship (incidentally, with a woman who'll remain publicly nameless as long as i can help it, and who has since told me, wait, she's not actually *that* interested -- so lovely), which means:
  
• the last several days have been some of the most exhausting in my entire life. that doesn't even count cleaning up broken glass.
  

trust me, i am going to post explanations and whys later. if you don't think you'll feel comfortable reading about it, fine. you didn't think i was going to write anymore anyway. ;-) this is mostly for me, then for min, and then for anyone else who might find my stories interesting or useful.

because believe me, there will be stories. and they will be the truth, ungodly or otherwise.