Midnight List

I have a lot to be grateful for right now. Definitely tops on the list is:

o THIS BEAUTIFUL WEEKEND! Oh, goodness, it was so, so nice out. Sunny and hot and tonight it wasn't even cold out the way it usually is in spring after a clear day. This is July weather, nearly. The sky was so clear and the sunsets were beautiful and I spent the weekend outside, which brings me to...

o The greenhouse! I have a greenhouse. Wanted one forever, knocked one together with the Juggler this weekend. :> I am going to have a lot of tomatoes this summer.

o Of course, the greenhouse is only a small subsection of my really cool, really wonderful garden that's starting to come together after months of being a mess. Just the back garden is shaping up, but it's gonna be really nice!

o The cool people that love me and do stuff with me always deserve a mention...

o Especially my mom and my brother, visiting Japan, who email me regularly. It's cool to learn about people in a new medium (email vs. face to face talking) and see what they think about things.

o My rats, who are always there for me and never mind being that way.

o My work, which allows me to flexibly schedule things the way I need to.

o The world, for sometimes just working out really well when you don't expect it and really need it to. Thanks, world. ;)

Wonderful Weekend, and Really Summer?

I hope we're over the last frost. I really don't know when it is, actually. It felt like really summer out though, this weekend -- I got a sunburn through sunscreen on one side, so I think it may be malfunctioning sunscreen, but that sunburn really does mark it summer. The greenhouse is essentialy up, it nbeeds to be pushed into the soil and the doors stapled on.

I read a really bad book called /The Crosstime Engineer/, which was sort of like one of those wish-fulfillment fantasy books written as a textbook case by an author who really had no wishes to fulfill.

The eggplant, ground cherry, and squash (delicata, pumpkin, buttercup, and zucchini) seeds are sown indoors. The jerusalem artichokes are sown. I need to find a place to get (possibly moldy?) bales of hay or straw in Vancouver.

I have lots of dates with cool people coming up, two of them tomorrow. :)

Had some good reassurance from the Juggler on Friday night, which I really needed. Hopefully I won't need more of that for a bit.

Back to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it, actually, quite a bit. Friday felt good to do. Saturday wasn't bad either, though it was just meeting a new client and not actually work.

Oh, I needed to ask polypagangirl if she could help me out over the summer? *grin* Livejournal, the contact medium. Sandra's going fishing, and I need someone to work with me on friday mornings. Are you up for that?

Relationship Musings

It's another day. I really need something to do in the mornings when everyone's asleep. The bed, where I usually play with the rats, is occupied, so that one's out too. I could always go garden, I suppose, or get work out of the way early...

Instead, I've been thinking about the idea of couplehood.

A couple is very definitely an entity, a Thing unto itself, as well as a pair of very complicated unique individuals. When someone tells me something to tell to an SO, or they tell me something and are surprised that the SO doesn't know it, that's a sort of acknowledgement of that bond.

But, what is that bond? It's fascinating to look at couples, both people I know and people I don't, and think about what holds them together. It takes a lot to hold a pair of people together, because being together with someone just isn't that easy. I always think, you know, why them? What do those two particular people do for each other, that others can't?

I do think the most binding, steadying thing in a relationship like that is a shared positive history, either a shared history of good times or a shared history of sticking through the bad times. Familiarity of that sort breeds comfort, which allows us a little space where we're not lonely and also not too worried about attack when our walls are down.

It's a joy to watch people who have been together awhile do things together. They share each other's thoughts, just a little, and so sentences are abbreviated, plans are discussed in shorthand. Not every detail is discussed, because there's some knowledge of each other to guide the couple's actions. Sure, there's miscommunication sometimes, but that's not unique to old, comfortable relationships.

I think that's what NRE is about, really. It's about driving people to build up a store of good memories, really fast, so that the relationship will continue along on that base when things get tough.

One of my favourite things is being in a situation where I'm doing something with the SO and I think, I remember doing something veyr like this six years ago with him. I love that sense of continuity. I hope I get there with the other relationships in my life. It's starting, just around the edges, but it does take a long time to come.

A lot of polyamormous people are accused of being NRE junkies, going from new relationship to new relationship for that beginning jolt while always keeping something in the wings so they never have to be completely without. Some do that, no doubt. I'm of the opposite breed, though. That beginning, stomach-clenching jolt of hormone isn't nearly as fulfilling to me as a closet of what-we-did-last-years.

Hm. That's not to say a relationship necessarily has to be the same over the years, or that it has to remain as a sexual relationship. It's that I like them to continue, no matter what, with a fondness between people. I'd like to be able to say to someone, remember when? And have them around, and have them smile, or frown, on the weight of the memory.

Thus is richness in my life created: new layers building on old foundations. Too many new relationships feels like a repeat of the opening credits of the same movie again and again.

So I suppose, in my semi-search right now for more-but-casual relationships, that's what I'm going for. Continuity, whether we have a date a year or a date a week, is what attracts me. And obviously I can't tell whether any of that's going to happen on a first date, or a second, so there'll be a lot of... well, not hit and miss, but maybe bullseye and outer ring sort of things going on.

Building the greenhouse was really fun. It'll become one of those remember-when things with the Juggler. Last night I was in their kitchen, and I thought at TOW (but didn't say it), do you remember when the sink was broken and we rinsed things in buckets of water in here?

It's coming. :)