Damn You, Day Star!

Last weekend I took both of our girls and met up with Trina and her son at the beach while Susan was visiting Ryan.  My first time in Pacific waters, and holy hells is that water cold!  Kids all had fun and we went back to Trina's for homemade pizza and a round of Yahtzee before calling it a night.

During my trip to the beach though, I decided against sunblocking myself...including my neon white torso.  You know the sunburned beach dude from Lilo and Stitch?  I looked like a (thankfully) skinnier version of him after all was said and done.  By Wednesday evening, I'd started peeling on my belly, and as the skin came off, a horrible, horrible rash awaited underneath.  I now itch.  A lot.  Calamine has worked, as well as a spray, but damn...next time, on goes the sunblock.

Also Wednesday, Trina and son came over to have dinner (chicken and dumplings), with a game and movie afterwards.  Susan ended up going upstairs partway through the movie, about the time it was bedtime for our munchkins for school the next day.  Her son cuddled her for a while, then passed out and got placed into one of the kids' bean bag chairs.

Trina then scooted over next to me, then asked if she could lay her head in my lap to watch the movie.  And I let her, and we cuddled through the rest of the movie.  After movie was over, she went off home with her kid, and bed (and itches) awaited afterwards.

For someone who has professed to only wants to be friends, though, she sends some decidedly mixed messages...hinting strongly about wanting to break in new high heels, laying her head in my lap, playing footsie at dinner, along with some other stuff that Susan has seen and I haven't really picked up on.  The last time I was truly friends with a woman, in person, definitely did not have the same dynamic...that was much more of a sister/brother thing.

I don't know if she really is just wanting to be friends, if she does but likes flirting anyways, or if she's wanting me to be more aggressive in pursuing her...she has mentioned that she enjoys submission, and her mannerisms definitely back her up, from what I've seen.

We also discussed swapping babysitting duties; her stated reason was so that she could meet up with another guy she likes, for a date night.  That one brought me up short...not because of what she said, but because of my own reaction to it.  See, with Susan and Ryan, the only jealousy I had was that I didn't have someone to chat with, or meet up with, or whatever outside of Susan at the time.  I had no problem with their budding relationship, as a relationship.  I did, for an instant, feel jealousy that Trina wanted to meet up with someone else though...and that shocked me.

Then I realized that A) we're not dating anyway, so I have no leg to stand on there, and B) that's kind of how poly works.  I accepted that she is married, and her husband does exist and will be coming home soon (well, for varying qualities of "soon" anyways)...it just threw me for a loop that there was another party she wanted to be involved with.  Admittedly, some of that jealousy is most likely the fact that she has stated she does not want a relationship with me...we're kind of treading that line, though.  Anyways, once I worked through it all, the jealousy went away, and we've more or less agreed to swap kids for evenings out in adult company all around.  As Pa Ingalls put it, "All's well than ends well."

...And Course Correction to the Right Just a Touch...

Susan made some comments this week about Trina, stating that she thought she was more into me than I was picking up.  She pointed out her manner of dress, the fact that she had makeup on for a casual night of dinner at a friend's house, as well as some mannerisms.  Today Trina followed up with a text about getting new shoes, and wishing she could get out of the house to properly break them in.

So I invited her for an evening out, saying that Susan had already agreed to babysit so she could get a break.  The response back was as I suspected, a reiteration of "friends only" at this point, especially because I'm military.  Understandable, and I'm just glad the air is cleared.  The invite still stands, though, so we were trying to figure out what to do for a night out.

She doesn't drink much, and I don't drink at all, so for my purposes a bar is mostly out of the question.  Maybe for live music, but there needs to be another draw for me.  I looked up local standup comedy shows, but didn't like anything that was coming up soon.  Then she asked me about dancing...I told her I'd never danced before, and I needed something like ballroom dancing lessons to even feel remotely comfortable going out for a night of dancing.

Cue both of us looking up local dance lessons, and to make a long story short, looks like we found a place that does a lesson for an hour each week, followed immediately after by a dance for a few hours.  Susan has agreed, in theory at least, to watch Trina's munchkin weekly...we'll see once she has to handle the ball of energy for a full evening every week!

Hang a Left...Here!

So it turns out that I had actually missed a reply to a message I'd sent, this one to a girl named Trina.  She was one who was only looking for poly friendly people to hang out with, and that was the basic tone of what I'd sent her.

We had her and her munchkin over for dinner last Saturday; I made lasagna, and since I was making it and she doesn't like beef or pork, I just said "screw it" and made two batches.  Frozen leftovers for a while!  There was a bit of awkwardness there; her husband is out of the country for a while, so I couldn't get a sense of things from his point of view.  But we were able to overcome it; we introduced her to Ticket to Ride and she had fun with that.

The low point of the night was when her son, about 3ish, was swinging a bat we have for the kids and it hit our youngling in the face...she was okay, but the bat disappeared really quickly!  We ended up just sitting around the game board after all was done, chatting about various things until our daughter decided it was time for Trina's son to leave, because it was her bedtime...and then proceeded to strip down so she could change for bed.  ::sigh::

Susan and I had already decided to have her boyfriend, Ryan, down for Labor Day.  Maybe being around me an extra day would calm his quite understandable jitters.  So with that in mind, we asked Trina if she wanted to bring her son on over for the same.  We thought briefly about having Angie and Erik over as well, but with their need to smoke pot, and the extra kid around, decided against.  Besides, Erik and Susan have fallen out of daily contact for some reason.  So it'll be us, Ryan, Trina, and Trina's son for a cookout...if I can remember to get a filled propane tank between now and then.

The next day, I realized that I might have sent the wrong message by just inviting her for Labor Day, two weeks away.  So I followed up, made sure she knew she was welcome before then, and the fallout was that she came over Tuesday (last night) for dinner again.  We played Settlers of Catan afterwards, though Susan bowed out due to an unrelated bad mood and headache.  Kids played much more agreeably this time, though neither of the two youngest wanted to eat any part of dinner.

We settled in to watch Across the Universe, the musical set to a bunch of Beatles songs, and tried to put her son down in our youngling's room on a spare kid mattress.  The idea was to give her some time to relax, with other adults, with her kid elsewhere...but no.  Three year olds are three year olds, and within ten minutes of being tucked into bed, he was downstairs being all kinds of fussy...and of course, hungry.  And what was Susan making by now?  Cookies.  Sheesh.  So instead of getting some almost one-on-one time with her alone, in a relaxed environment, she was getting sidetracked by a fussy, hungry, sleepy three year old who wanted to ask a billion questions about the movie.

To her credit, Trina was MUCH more patient with her kid than I would have been if either of mine had been pulling the same stuff.  I don't know if it's just the difference between being a father and being a mother, or if it's the differences in her whole state of mind, but whatever it was, she was very understanding and patient with him.  She did eventually bail, though, about 45 mins before movie's end, since he obviously wasn't going to let up until he got home.

We texted back and forth today; Susan will be out of town this Saturday visiting Ryan and helping him deal with some personal fallout on his end (after three years of renting a room with another couple, he got told this week he had to leave by month's end...suck city).  So Trina and I have decided that we're going to take the kids to the beach together, and we'll probably go back to her apartment afterwards.

I'm not sure how things are going to end up.  She had initially posted looking for friends only, and we've definitely gotten there.  Susan thinks that Trina likes me a bit more than that, due to clues that I apparently looked right over, and on the plus side, Susan has already said that I should invite her out, and that she'd watch the munchkin so that the two of us could get some alone time.

I'm wanting to take it slow...her husband won't be back until late in the year, and she says that he is perfectly fine with things.  I have no reason to disbelieve her, but then I have no reason to believe her 100% either.  Even if he is perfectly fine with poly-ville, it'd be different if he was accessible, even for just an afternoon meet-and-greet.  But with him gone, and considering how I met Susan to begin with (not my finest hour, but it ended up alright...for us, anyway), I'm somewhat leery of intentionally provoking our budding friendship into a relationship.

I have a feeling, though, that I'm going to end up there.

Changeup

So this weekend, instead of feverishly baking and cleaning, I actually had a more relaxed Saturday.  Susan and I ordered in three games after watching them be played on the TableTop series on Youtube:  Settlers of Catan, Small World, and Ticket to Ride.  See, in most cases, Susan has always hated games...she didn't grow up in a competitive household like I did, so games have always been a rather "meh" thing for her.  There's been exceptions of course, but other than the very occasional game of Gin Rummy, getting her to play anything has been like pulling teeth.  Even as our older munchkin started to become of age to get interested in games, getting her to play Monopoly, or Life, or anything like that has always been a struggle.

I decided to buy Munchkin Booty a while back, and actually got both Susan and the kid to play, and then she saw that Wil Wheaton had a web series around games, and had to watch.  Now that she knows how to play those games, of course we had to get them!  So we ordered them, and they came in the mail yesterday.  Due to bowling (for me) and dance (for the youngling), we didn't get to play any of them last night.

So today I broke them all out, and did solo playthroughs to get the hang of them, then played all of them (and then Small World again after) with the kid to get her used to the rules. I'm sure we'll end up playing something tomorrow...most likely Ticket to Ride, and it'll be nice not having to start at ground zero for rules of the game.  It, um, did also give me a bit of an advantage, as I now have a better idea for what works in each game...but hey, that's what she gets for leaving me alone with unplayed games!

Susan was supposed to go hiking with Ryan today; from what I understand, they had to switch trails.  The one originally planned on is downhill to begin with, then back uphill to wherever the starting point was.  We went hiking yesterday since I had the day off, and found that she doesn't do uphill very well, especially in the middle of the hike...so they scratched that idea and went to another trail that ended in waterfalls instead.  She sent me a message afterwards; no bears munching on her and her knee held up okay, so all was good there.

I've sent a few people on the dating site I'm on messages to try and start conversations.  At the beginning of this I'd at least get a start of a conversation going...it might not have gone anywhere, but at least there'd be an attempt.  Lately, anyone I've messaged doesn't bother; even the ones who state outright they're just looking for poly-friendly couple to hang with visit in response, and don't bother leaving a reply.  I had Susan take a picture while we were out hiking yesterday...hopefully after I get that uploaded I can get a better response & visitor rate.  It's the only thing I can think of...since I'm too scared to show a plain image due to the whole military thing, I've got extreme closeups of my face instead.  I'll dump those and throw in the hiking image, make sure my face is somewhat shadowed, and toss that up...hopefully it works a bit better.

Can't do any worse, really.

Curveball

Earlier in the week, I had asked Susan if Ryan wanted to come over to our place tonight, and have basically a second evening of cuddles.  I bowl on Fridays, at least for another few weeks, and this would have been a perfect chance to get a bit extra time together before going back up to his place for all of Saturday.

He declined, since he was already planning on coming down next Saturday for dinner and gaming.  Which makes sense; and he can come a night early then and all will be well.  Then he ran into a hiccup in plans...he remembered that a close family member of his is having a birthday party that weekend.

He then asked if Susan wanted to come out and meet his family, knowing that he hadn't come out as poly to them yet.  She's not comfortable taking off her wedding ring (and the mark on the finger would be evident anyway), and she's a horrible liar.

She's already had issues with her own family about how we met and she became married to me.  Susan had previously been married to another military guy, who her family all liked very much.  The problem was that their marriage was already heading south when she met me, and I got to see firsthand some of the shit he pulled on her.  Manipulation, head games, verbal abuse, all were a part of the deal.  I had originally been very guilt-ridden about what I saw as poaching, since we met while he was deployed.  Until I saw some of his emails back to her, that is.  I still felt bad, but nowhere near as much after that.

To make a long story short, another year or so later, and he was gone and we were together.  I did give them space to try and repair things (she wasn't the only one who cheated in their relationship), but in the end it was doomed to failure.  She faced a serious backlash from her family, and I still feel a bit of an outcast every time I have to deal with them.  To be fair, I don't like most of her family either, for the way they treat her, but hey.

Looking at Susan and Ryan's situation from the outside, I mentioned to her that I would not feel comfortable, if the situation was reversed, in both coming out as poly with my current love interest at my side, to people I was unsure how they would take it.  My advice was to stay away from the family until he got a chance to talk to them on his own, and for him to take the brunt of any backlash from them by himself.  That way, if they are fine with it, okay; if not, then at least she doesn't get painted with the scarlet letter.  It's not very fair, I realize, but if I was in his shoes, that is how I'd want to handle it.

Besides, it's someone else's birthday.  Why bring up possible drama to ruin someone else's day?

Not Just Me

Susan came home yesterday, early afternoon, and before too long got the rundown of everything I'd done while she was gone.  Her first words after were, "Do we need to talk about why you're keeping yourself so busy while I'm gone?"  We did, later after the kids were gone.  Both of us agree that it's most likely boredom.  I did verbalize that I wasn't thinking about her with someone else, so she doesn't think the wrong thing.

I think if the kids weren't a factor, whether they were just older and could be left alone or we hadn't had kids, then it'd be a different story.  I could go off and go hike, or find some other outdoor activity to go do.  But especially with the youngling only being five, it's somewhat difficult to do things how I want to do them.

We've taken her hiking before, and she didn't like it very much...and she's five; her legs are tiny little things.  I'd take the elder munchkin off hiking, but again, that would mean someone would be available to watch her sister.

I'd like to go kayaking out on the water, but that's not a possibility either...not a risk I'm willing to take with kids out on ocean.  So it becomes a quest to find something, anything that can keep me occupied.  It's easier when Sa is here to find some way to pass the time, but even with her here I'm still bored.  I don't play MMOs anymore, I've read all my books that I want to read, I'm not in the mood for TV or movies lately...I kinda get cabin fever no matter what's going on.

On the plus side, Susan absolutely loved the cheesecake, especially with the homemade blackberry sauce I made tonight to ladle over top of it.  Hooray for cheesecake!

Harness the Power!

I have noticed a trend in Susan's excursions to visit Ryan.  And no, it's probably not anything you're thinking.

I get busy.  Last weekend it was cleaning out some of the pile of boxes we had in the garage, and cleaning our room, and then making muffins.  The week before was yeast rolls.  I've made homemade pizza, cleaned the kitchen, and just generally have found ways to keep busy.

This week, I took the kids out to a restaurant supply store in the area (my own version of a toy store), and since I wanted to do that, we needed to go elsewhere and get a second booster seat for the youngling.  Kinda hard to go anywhere with the car seat in Susan's car two hours away.  Oops.

At the supply store (which was more of a warehouse looking place), the one guy who worked there had a dog roaming around.  My kids freak out around dogs, and this one was no exception.  And of course, he had to be big.  But he was an old softy, so didn't really pester them or anything, just kinda flopped on the floor and lay there.  Didn't stop the kids from being scared and whimpering though.

I came away with a batch of the wide-type of mixing bowls, as well as a three-pack of different size of springform pans.  Well, since I had those in hand, only one thing to do...make cheesecake!  So off to the store we went to get what I needed for that, then to home.

Once home I finally dealt with the youngling's disaster area of a room.  It gets cleaned out about twice a year, and she did actually keep it clean for a few weeks last time...and then I went off on a long underway and of course it wasn't kept up in my absence.  So this time I went in there, shoved EVERYTHING out into the hallway, gave her a basket, and told her to fill it with toys and bring it to me for sorting.

I ended up with a bag full of toys that she didn't want anymore, a bag full of trash, an absolute pile of stuffed animals she didn't want (including some that I just know will make Susan cry), and a cleaned up room.  And since she was the one who actually put stuff where it belonged, I know she can do it and knows where everything goes now.  We'll see how long we can keep floor visible in her room now.

After that it was time to make dinner, which for once I cheated on and just went with frozen pizza.  Once done, it was time to turn my attention to the cheesecake.  Made the crust, made some strawberry sauce while I was waiting for that to cool, made the filling, baked it off, and made sure the kitchen was completely clean.

All in all, it was a very productive day, and I wonder if I would have been anywhere near as productive if Susan hadn't gone up to meet Ryan.  We get into that whole cycle of "I'm not doing anything because you're not doing anything because I'm not doing anything" and nothing ever gets done.  Not quite as bad as all that, especially lately, but we do feed off of each other's inactivity.

I'm not exactly sure why I get super productive when she goes off on her trips.  I was thinking about it last night, and I came up with a couple of reasons why it could be...all of which would have to be subliminal, because I don't feel that way on top for any of these.

A) Escaping reality.  It might have something to do with keeping myself so busy that I don't think about the two of them together, or the fact that she's not there.
B) Mating display.  Showing her that I can do a bunch of things really useful around the house, as well as making her gooshy food. (Term shamelessly stolen from Two Lumps webcomic, meaning anything yummy and delicious...cake, muffin, pie, you get the idea.)
C) Protecting the kids.  This one's kind of an odd thought, but showing the kids that even if Mommy's not here that day, that I'm perfectly capable of acting in that mommy-type roll.  Kinda blurred since I'm the cook in the family, but still a thought.

Those were all options I mulled last night, but nothing trumps option D) I'm bored.  Might be something else mixed in with it, of course, since I don't get this active when she's here, but let's stick with K.I.S.S. and go with the obvious!

Difficulties

I'm going to preface this with admitting that we have only been active polyamorists for the last couple of months, and only seriously searching for a couple of months prior.

That said; damn, it seems like women have all the edge for poly lifestyles!  OKC has been our main access point for trying to find friends and potential partners, and she gets an average of anywhere from 30-60 visitors per day; last time I checked it was 2, and none at all in the last couple of weeks.

I feel at times like the teacher in the original Wonka movie, who was trying to teach percents using Wonka bars: "How many bars did you open?"  "Two."  "So two hundred..." "No, just two."  "Wha?  I can't figure it out with just two!"

To be fair, the profile pic is not the best; I am military, and they don't like people straying out of their marriages, regardless of consent of spouse.  Since that's the case, my profile pic doesn't show me very well.  But still...such a low number that it's kinda crazy.

I've also looked, just for S&G's, on Craigslist.  In our area, the number of guys looking for women was multiple pages for a single day; the number of women looking for men was multiple days per page.

Even Ryan said as much; he had been completely single for three years prior to meeting up with Susan.  I guess this is one aspect of poly that will have to take some time in order to experience.  The necessary discretion from having the job I do isn't going to make things any faster, either.

Murgle.

So as I said last time, on Saturday we invited Susan's boyfriend Ryan over to lunch, as well as another poly couple that she knew from online, Erik and Angie.  In return, they invited us to their place along with other people.  Now, to be fair, it was one of those cases where the hosts just invited anyone they knew and see who responded.  They way it got filtered to me, though, was that there was a couple of people invited from Angie's support group (she has medical stuff on the side), and several poly couples.

I was somewhat leery of going anyways; I (and Susan as well) are completely drug free, and neither of us smoke tobacco either.  Angie actually has legitimate medical reasons that allow her to procure and smoke pot, and has to do so quite regularly.  Because, and only because, of the medical stuff, I was willing to give it a pass in the pursuit of friendship...had she been a recreational user, I wouldn't have been willing to go that far.

The food was good.  I'll give them that much.  They also did do a lot to clean up and de-funkify their place from the pot smoke as well as the cat they have.  Neither was very noticeable when we got there, so yay.  And since kids were along, double-yay.  Unfortunately, that was about the extent of the good side of things.  We got to talk a very little bit about poly before the other guest arrived (notice the lack of a plural there), and we did get warned that the other attendee was one of the med group people, who was known to chatter about their shared problems.

In the end, Angie and the other guest talked nearly non-stop about their issues, which in some ways is understandable...it's their lives, after all.  But any attempt we made to try to steer the conversation to neutral territory was swiftly shifted back on the course of medical stuff, and in the end we were glad that the kids were along.  By the time we finished eating, the kids were both all over our laps, and we were able to use them as an excuse to bail.

Of course, once we got home we realized how much pot smoke was still in their place, because we'd taken a fair amount with us, ingrained into our hair and clothes.  We ended up having to give our older kid a quick shower before her bedtime, and Susan had to get up extra early to make sure the younger got the same before school in the morning.  All the clothes we were wearing, as well as the younger kid's sheets had to take a double trip through the wash.

In the end, while Erik and Susan get along fairly well online, I don't think we'll be going over to their place anymore.  We may invite them to us, but the atmosphere of their place is just not viable for us.  Both of us were also rather disappointed as well; we were hoping to make more contact with local-ish poly people, and it ended up being a total bust.  Back to the drawing board, it seems.