Roadblock

The topic of finances came up last night, after I came home from a localish coffee shop.  Last year, we were able to save a fair bit of money (for us, anyways), and while we splurged from time to time with some of that money, it was never really a big deal.  This year, we added on an allowance for our older daughter (don't worry, the youngling gets hers starting in 2015, when she'll be old enough for a chore list of her own.)  I also added on weekly bowling sessions in the spring and summer, and that showed me how close to the line we really were.  I elected to stop bowling after the season was over so that we could have that amount back in our finances.

Then, Susan met Ryan, and considering the distance, she's done far more driving on the weekends overall than he has.  At first, I attributed it to a combination of a desire for her to get out of the house (completely understandable) as well as a mix of life events on his part, which has also been true.  His long time roommates gave him a harsh deadline to hit the road so that they could use his room to foster kids...not because they like kids, necessarily, but because they can fit two kids in there and get well over $1,000 from the state to do so.  I'll refrain from commenting on my thoughts on that, but in the end it meant that there were a few weeks where he was apartment hunting, or packing, or moving, or whatever.  Then there's his local poly group's meetings, which are on Saturdays once a month, which both of them like to attend, then his family member had a birthday, then then then then.

Earlier this week, Susan told Ryan that she couldn't really afford to come up, and Ryan offered to pay her gas money for the trip...and she felt squeamish about it.  She has her own childhood reasons for it, but it meant that there was a choice of accepting money or not going.  I tried convincing her to let him pay half, and she admitted that it was a good compromise, but it still didn't sit right with her.

Fast forward to last night, where we started talking about needing to cut out part of our cable, at least, in order to make ends meet.  In the middle of a review of where we were financially, it came out that Ryan doesn't really like coming down here, because it feels like he's interrupting...something, I'm not sure.  Also something about not feeling like he has enough time with her alone...which I can kind of see.  After all, if she goes up there, he's got about 24 hours of uninterrupted time with her, while down here the kids are roaming around, I'm here, etc., and it throws him off.

As soon as I found that out, my perception shifted.  If he's not willing to come down here more often, then hell yeah, let him pay for more of the gas.  It's especially important considering that starting in January, Navy pay rules mean that I'll be taking a pay cut for the first five months of the year (long story, not going to go into details here) of probably a couple hundred bucks a month.  It adds up.

The easy solution would be for Susan to find a job.  It would solve a couple of issues, like her lack of social activity as well as our money problems, but would mean that we would need to find non-regular childcare for our youngling at least in the rather frequent "vacation" periods of year round schooling we have.  It also means that we'd have to have someone able to pick her up from school even when she is occupied during the day.

What makes it harder is not only that she hasn't worked in more than nine years, but also that she has a mild cognitive disability, which affects short term memory.  She has to have a job that has a set routine, otherwise she runs into all sorts of complications.  The one time she tried working after our older daughter was born, she ran into just such a job, where she lasted two days (though I blame the company for not giving her a longer chance...after all, it's not every day that a bloody hurricane shows up in the neighborhood...)

I'm hoping she can pick something up by the new year; it'd be nice for us to build something up for a change.

Mirror, Mirror

Trina is off to another state for the next couple of weeks.  Ryan is dealing with stuff at home, and with finances the way they are, Susan is home this weekend.  Which means that the two of us are home this weekend, with nothing going on.  No visitors, no babysitting, no dancing, just us.

We should probably be doing...something?  But for the last few weeks Susan has projected a very "blah" image at me.  Both of us have had to deal with minor illnesses, she's had a couple of migraines (and has one now, as a matter of fact), and we've both been tired early.

I think I'm starting to realize that I feed off of whatever's going on around me more than I thought.  You know how some people say that they reflect the energy of those around them?  I'm somewhat the same, though that only applies to those I've let in my life.  I also do the same thing with books, too.  If I'm reading something fairly morbid or depressing (such as Robin Hobb's books...man she tortures the living hell out of her characters!), I tend to be very dark and thoughtful.  If I'm in a non-social mood, a friend who wants to do something will usually be able to convince me to do something.  But there lies a problem...there's almost no one I interact anymore that I can call a friend, and I really, really don't know how the hell to make them anymore.

I keep people at a distance at work...I see them enough anyways, and it really doesn't pay to be friends with people you may have to give orders to or receive orders from.  I'm relatively new to my area (three years or so), and while that may seem like more than enough time to get entrenched, for someone like me who just doesn't meet anyone except cashiers at stores, it's no time at all.  So how the hell does someone who's generally anti-social meet people who can help them be anti-social?  I really hate that catch-22 sometimes.

Luckily, the next couple of weeks should provide some measure of sociability.  Next week is a game night put on by someone on FetLife...only one of us can go, and I offered to watch the kids so Susan could get a chance to get out some as well.  Kinky people, yes, but in a vanilla-ish setting, so she said yes.  She's susceptible to changing her mind though, so I might end up going to the event after all.

I discovered that there's a dungeon far more local than the nearest big city, which is a couple of hours away.  They're having a two-night event...an open house followed by an actual play party, and Susan has given me the okay to attend that...as long as I give her all the details when I get home!  I'm somewhat leery of going.  While I'm far more interested in BDSM than I have ever been, I'm still one of those people for whom it's a bedroom activity, and not the only possible one, rather than a near 24-7 lifestyle.  For my area, that seems to be the people who show up to both poly and kink events, from all I gather.  We'll see.

Finally, I actually got my first response from a potential match on OKC for the first time in months.  It was someone who I'd seen visit me, so I knew she got the message...and then no response.  Days later, she finally replied with something on the order of "I'm not looking for friends right now, and I'm probably too slutty for your comfort as far as STIs are concerned."  If she's saying that, probably...though that is what protection is for, but at least I know why I'm being rejected for once.  It's kind of a refreshing feeling, really.

Fear

Yeah, yeah, third blog post in a waking period.  Anyway.

I finally bit the bullet and put up a real photo of myself on OKC.  Make that two; I put up another one from Halloween of both Susan and I.  I've had an eyeball as my photo ever since I made my profile, mostly due to my fear of someone I work with or have worked with recognizing me and making life hell for me in regards to the military.

I've been in for almost fourteen years now; I'm eligible for retirement at twenty.  I'm committed through to almost seventeen years; I've spent too much of my life involved with the military to feel blase about the possibility of losing my retirement.  I'd be much less worried if I knew what I wanted to be when I grow up...I've waffled over the years of being a teacher, owning my own restaurant, going to school for computer programming, and a whole host of other ideas I've long since forgotten.

Lately, the more realistic idea of continuing to work for the government post-retirement has sat in the pole position.  It'll be reliable, sure, if I can get the job.  But I'm not sure I'll be in a position to get that kind of job after I get out, and I'm also not sure it'll be any kind of enjoyable if I do.  After this long of working simultaneously the easiest and the hardest job I think I could ever do, I really would rather not touch anything even remotely connected to the military in my second career.

If I've learned one thing, though, it's that you don't paint yourself into a corner; allow yourself options instead.  Burning bridges may keep you warm and toasty for a bit, but it's a long, cold walk to the next crossing.  So I keep around the idea of retiring, then getting a civilian version of whatever job I'm doing when I get out.

But all that's at risk if I get booted unceremoniously.  And that's what I fear; options being removed, security taken away.  If it was just me, I wouldn't worry so much.  Even if it was Susan and I alone, we would muddle through somehow.  But it's not.  It's Susan and I, and our kids.  It's their future, in a way.

In one world, the world I'm hoping for them, they only have to move a couple of times more in their childhood.  They'll be able to live in safe neighborhoods, go to good schools, have their own rooms with plenty of room to be themselves, maybe make one or two lifelong friends, have plenty of real food on hand, a snug, tight roof over their heads.

In the other world, the one I fear, they're living the life their mother led for a while, bouncing from place to place to place.  They're not getting the education they need because they're never really settled into their school.  Their parents are on food stamps, and having to choose between paying the lights or paying the water.  And I know that plenty of children come from those environments, and they use that as a drive to push themselves to excel...but I'd really rather avoid that experiment if I could.

So I fear, and I worry.  But really, as has been pointed out to me, there's nothing the military can do to me right now.  I'm not really dating anyone, and they can't boot me for my profile.  It says I'm looking, not that I've found anyone.  My profile and Susan's are also linked, so it's fairly obvious that she's pretty accepting of whatever it is I'm looking for.  So tonight, the real photos went up.  I wonder if I'd had it up from the beginning, if I would have had a much better response to messages sent, or if I would have struck out just as much.

I guess we'll get to see now, won't we?

Got Off My Ass

I did end up taking the munchkins out to the beach this afternoon.  I made sure I took a ball so we had something to do while waiting, and it was a good thing.  We ended up waiting about fifteen minutes or so...and I got to just play catch with both of them.  They really enjoyed that a lot.

They were happy to be at the beach, happy to be out of the house and somewhere they could do mostly what they wanted.  I made sure to dress them warmly, and they needed that, though it was a bit warmer than I had thought it would be.

My youngling was decidedly less happy once Trina showed up with her kid in tow...she had an attitude towards him all afternoon.  We ended up walking about a mile down the beach, took a look at a small river that feeds into the ocean, played around in it for a bit, and then took off back for the cars.

When Trina showed up, we were both quite happy to see each other; she even cuddled into me for a minute, which she normally doesn't do.  Conversation was odd, though...we found things to talk about for the most part, but at one point she asked what I was up to, how my life was going...and I just didn't have anything to say, other than "fine."  The last two weeks, I've been at home every day, mostly online reading blogs, trying to figure out how to make my own bondage frame (which admittedly, I didn't even think of when she asked), making chainmail keyrings, watching sports when I can, failing at finding connections online, and not much else.

It's just...hard to talk sometimes.  We mesh well, we really do...but we also disagree on many topics.  Parenting, functions of laws and rules in society, pot usage, more parenting.  We've had several spirited discussions that really were discussions, not arguments, but we've also had to realize a few times that we just have to agree to disagree.

I do enjoy when we find topics to chat about though.  Most of the time, they're about whatever is going on in her life...which is almost always a lot more than what happens in mine.  I really need to find a way to do more that takes me out of my house.

Lethargy

Trina and I haven't seen each other in almost two weeks.  Susan was down hard with a migraine, and I didn't feel it was fair to leave the kids, including Trina's rambunctious munchkin, with her for it.  We'd just come back from the poly pool party up north, and so we'd already had a busy weekend.  It was a good day all around to chill.

She was busy up until late week, when she made a trip up to her hometown with some friends...so that knocked out all of last weekend.  We've texted a few times since, a couple just kinda laid back, and a couple with more depth due to some stuff going on with her life.  We're going to meet up today, with all the kids in tow, to go visit a park and let them blow off steam, but for the first time ever, if she called and said that she had to cancel, I really wouldn't mind.

I'm an introvert by nature...I need a LOT of alone time.  I don't like being around people in general.  Persons are good, people blow.  Which does put a crimp in my ability to find dates, understood.  It doesn't help that it actually feels like fall finally here, and yesterday was a fairly blustery day.  Today's sunnier, but clouds are still there, it's still chilly, and it's a good day for me to stay inside and do fuck all.

I am wondering, though, how much of it is realizing that Trina will only ever be friends with me.  I'm perfectly fine with knowing that, and I like having someone I can chat with, but the conversation she had with me almost a month ago, where she said that she didn't know if we'd ever have sex again, is finally starting to sink in.  I don't blame her, it's not like she was untruthful at all...it just feels like a shift in my own mind.

It also makes me feel like an ass.  I did offer to just hang out when we met; I did tell her throughout that if she didn't want to have sex, that was fine; I didn't initiate our first encounter...well, kinda.  I'll just say that I responded and up the ante.  But the whole time, I was hoping that she'd even with her foibles about "dating", that she'd want that FWB connection.

It's the whole "nice guy" syndrome, and the only solace I take is that I only had a mild case of it.  Yeah, I was hoping, but when asked, I was pretty honest with what I wanted, and what I felt.  And that hasn't changed.  All I can do is keep on top of that mindset, and make sure it doesn't rear its ugly head worse than it already has.

Complications

I'm used to treating women like men, for the most part.  Certain people are exceptions of course, but only those I have allowed to look at like they are actually women.  Like my wife, for instance.

Except for those limited cases, though, I have trained myself over the years to not make a note whether a woman is pretty or not, attractive or not..and this goes quadruple for the women at work.  I treat them just like guys...what do I need from this person?  What do I need to do *for* this person?  Some small talk at work, ignore once the day is over and I'm at home.  That's it.

I'm now working in the same division as a woman the same rank as me, who is flipping triggers I had thought long dormant.  She's doing nothing really overt, she's just...I don't know, it's little things.  In addition to our job, we also work on the same committee for fundraising and the like for our command, and even though eight other people are supposed to be doing stuff for it, it's really just the two of us for the most part.  And it's the holiday season, so we're both heavily involved with setting up the command's holiday party, so there's frequently a need for us to be chatting together about plans and actions needing to be taken, etc.

It's really nothing, and I know it is.  She's also very happily engaged to another service member, and has shown no real sign of attraction to me, just a bit of mutual respect.  And I do respect her; she and I have worked at the same overarching command for the last few years together, though in different areas.  It's only been in the last few months that I joined her part of the command.  But she's never shown anything but true competence in her job; she's one of the many, many, many women out there who put the lie to the theory that women can't serve well in the military.

But for whatever reason, she's hit my radar.  She doesn't know that I'm polyamorous; I've not spoken a whisper to anyone from work about it.  I have no plans on acting on any attraction, especially since there's no hint of reciprocity.  It's just something I have to deal with; I wasn't expecting to have to start consciously saying to myself, "No, you can't have her.  Bad Sailor, no grog for you."
________

In other news, Susan has a new date tonight; no name for him yet.  Let's see if he survives tonight before he gets an alias!  She's been down hard with a cold for nearly a week; she's feeling better but is still all sniffly.  He's also two to three inches shorter than she is, and she has a decided preference for taller guys.  Since she's rather tall herself, that means anyone of "average" height ends up being too short for her...but we'll see.

He's also a bit of a complication himself; he's in the military as well, same branch as I am.  Neither of us knows what his rank is yet, so I'm not sure how to look at him. I'm hoping to find out from her when she comes home tonight; she figured it'll make for good dinner conversation.

When I brought that last paragraph up to Trina tonight; she responded somewhat negatively to us(me) wanting to know, because she equates "So what is your rank?" to "How much do you make?"  I disagree...I'd never take it that way, especially for someone who's made it far enough to retire.  Bare minimum, he matches my rank.  I only want to know because there is a difference in how to treat him, even if he is retiring.

He also lives 45 minutes away...closer than Ryan, by a fair bit, but far enough that a spontaneous visit really is somewhat of a hassle.  Which, admittedly, is looking far down the road...but then again, not really all that far, if you think about it.  We'll see what tonight brings, maybe I'll get to name him later this week!

Doldrums

Susan and I have had sex only once or twice the last two weeks. Not for lack of desire; more that life has gotten in the way. It started last week with the shift in clocks...it meant that by the time kids were shuffled off to bed, we were both ready to pass out ourselves. Trina even found out, and gave me kind of a verbal slap to the head.

I'd intended to take care of things this week, but for one reason or another, we just haven't been able to connect. It doesn't help that Susan had even specifically asked for pain, which means I need to get in the right mindset. And that just hasn't happened lately, for whatever reason.

The  this weekend started up. Trina was off visiting extended family for the weekend, and Susan and Ray weren't meeting up in either location. So for the first time in a few months, it was just the two of us...with no outside pressures. No birthdays, no anniversaries, no events...just us.

So of fucking course Susan gets sick. Whoever's in charge of script-writing my life needs to be introduced to the business end of a shovel.

Repeatedly.

With great vigor.

DIY or Bust!

I've been looking for DIY plans for a bondage...stand? Tower? Frame?  Not sure what the hell to call it...anyways, I hadn't really liked anything I'd found.  Most of the plans either require tools I don't even own, let alone know how to use, or else look extremely shaky.  I'd finally hit on the idea of just taking a 4"x4"x8' beam and, using hinges, attaching 2"x4"s about 5' up the side, so it could set up as a tripod.  Then I drew it out...for the stable platform I wanted, the full 90° angle, the legs would have been humongously long!  Oops.  That was all rough free hand, so I might have been off by a foot or two, but still.  Taking it to a lesser angle would have been better, but the ensuing stand didn't look sturdy enough.

So last night I went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and found this post at Spiritual BDSM talking about using a Cypress Swing Stand as a bondage frame.  The stand is lovely to look at, a true work of art, aaaaand just a teensie bit out of my price range.  Even with tax return season coming up, there's other things we can spend that kind of money on. But it did start me looking at porch swing stands in general, and while there are some out there that would work, affordable ones either look clunky or else have reviews talking crap about the assembly/directions/parts/durability.

I think in the end I'm going to make my own after all, albeit it much less decoratively than the inspiration, and just mirror Michael's Cypress Stand and let it overhang our headboard.  We definitely have the ceiling room, and the only issue we might have is that it might get in the way of our nightstands.  If that's the case, I've already checked and it'll fit in front of our bedroom window; we can hang fake plants or something off of it to disguise it for our kids.

Edit: Should have noted, my goal is to have this done by Christmas...I have initial plans drawn up (thankfully, Excel can make great graph paper if you set it up right!)  I just have to price materials and go from there.