Hope for the Aged

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There’s hope yet for us ancients. In Manchester United’s yearly endurance test Ryan Giggs, ancient for a soccer player at 34, won over all the younger guys. Not that I’m 34 anymore, I wish. But I guess I can kick a ball around for a few more years yet.

 

Damnable Budgeting

Today, aside from coding quite a bit at work, I spent a good deal of time working out our bill payments budget. Rather a boring task for an M/s Master, you might think? Shouldn’t I be having fun playing around (if only psychologically) with my two slaves? Or planning our next trip out with friends in the scene? Or, well, anything but budgeting? Especially when, as I will fully admit, I am hopeless with money.

Well the first problem is that neither of my slaves is all that good with money either. Give them a strict budget and they will follow it to the letter, give them an inch of slack and they will spend every penny E and I can earn <grin>.

So I seem to have worked out a viable plan for the next 3 months or so. The next two weeks will continue to be tight as I don’t get a cheque from work until the end of this month, but after that it should be relatively easy to live within our means and catching up on the outstanding debt load we have.

So then we can get back to the fun of being in an M/s relationship.

 

So Far So Good

Well, I’ve completed and presented the first design for the current subproject I’m working on. So far so good, I received compliments on the design and a host of good ideas on how to actually implement it. I did a mock-up of the screen and that helped get everyone’s creative juices flowing.

On the downside I’m unused to being away from emmie and mitda for so much of the day. I suppose it will become more routine as I get into the project but right now it’s hard being away from home for 10 or so hours (including travel time) each day. We talk on IM (and I’m going to setup a secure IM server tonight, given what we talk about) .

We’re all going to the site of the upcoming party picnic on Saturday to assist in pre-picnic cleanup. Our host there is one of my favourite people in the scene and it will be great seeing her again. She invited us to bring kidlet but there will be chainsaws and other noise not really that conducive to an autistic kid.

 

Looking forward to August

With August comes a new, more interesting job, a big community bdsm party with guest speakers from all over, the beginning of a volunteer career coaching soccer, and hopefully a renewal of the joie de vivre of life at house Daedalus.  

Not that the girls have been anything but wonderful, but this extended period without work has worn on me, especially the financial aspect.  And E has been going through some burnout of his own with work, school and our social schedule.

Now E will have a few weeks off school between semesters, I have time to shake the rust off my developer boots and emmie, mitda and I some time to prepare before we start coaching soccer together.

It’s gonna be fun!

 

Birthday to Me

mitda and emmie, with the help of a few of our friends, threw me a wonderful suprise birthday party on Sunday.  mitda prepared English style food and a surprisingly high number of people from our social circle showed up, especially given it was a Sunday night.

It helps to remember things like this, and all the responsibilities that go with my lifestyle, on those days where it seems like 40 years is enough time to have utilized the planet’s resources for one person.  Disappointments come and go, along with celebrations, but responsibilities remain, and unlimited responsibility is something I have taken on and endeavour to fulfill.

 

Trust or Detente?

“The most important thing about the malcontent, is that he is malcontent—unhappy, unsettled, displeased with the world as he sees it—not at ease with the world in which he finds himself, eager to change it somehow, or to dispute with it.”

Unfortunately, like any community, ours has a few malcontents.  People who are simply dislikable and therefore disliked, and who then get upset that they aren’t considered for leadership roles etc.  Most of our community is based on trust, trust that we are in this scene together and therefore won’t fuck with each other’s lives, but with these malcontents trust has to turn into detente, where the only trust is that if you fuck with my house I’ll bomb the shit out of yours.

 

Happy 1st or 4th

Yes I’m wishing a happy July 1st to those in Canada and 4th to those in the US.

We’ve been rather busy of late and I haven’t kept up with any blogging whatsoever.  Last weekend we went swimming with a couple in the scene, their kids, and emmie’s son.  It was interesting doing something so vanilla with people one knows primarily in the kink scene.  What does one talk about when kids are around?  The night before that we attended a party at a small ranch (quite a pretty one, with orchards newly planted).  emmie was a little sad that she and I didn’t get a chance to play but we somewhat made up for that last night at a friend’s apartment.

Good friends of ours are thinking of leaving the scene, after having their names etc. posted to a public forum by people with a axe to grind.  I hope they decide to stay but I can understand their reasons for deciding to be more private.

 

First Song Written

I finished up doing the basic arrangements on the first song mitda and I have written together.  The arrangement is very basic, just enough to wrap around the lyrics, but the sound is unique and quite a layered medley of synths.  Damn am I having fun with the new studio.

 

M/s and Privilege

E is working on a paper for a diversity class, which has engendered much conversation around our interracial, polyamorous, bisexual, kinky, bdsm and  M/s household.  In one sense E is very much, as are we all, involved in diversity issues, however like myself these are chosen ways of being, not inherited issues such as being  black, or female, or such.  emmie of course knows both of those, being a black female, along with the not-so-popular (especially in the black community) choice of becoming a consensual slave to (ahem) a white male Master.  This was pointed out at the MAsT meeting as well, where a (black) owner of a black slave said he had had issues seeing a black consensual slave with a white Master at first.  mitda is white, but female, and also a consensual slave, something that is amazingly fully accepted by her strongly feminist mother.

E and I share inherited white male privilege and the expectations that go with it, which in general is a positive thing for us but can occasionally be negative.  Being sensitive to those who don’t have such privilege a priori is a difficult but worthwhile effort for both of us and I’m glad his paper has caused so much conversation in the household.

 

Busy in our Own Way

Well, we’ve been pretty busy. We attended a Central Texas Kink event with a formal dinner party served by the slaves/submissives. We also attended a MAsT (Masters and slaves Together) meeting. As well we have our regular Thursday kinky coffee which for the last two weeks has turned into a small play party at someone’s apartment. Going out in the scene is comfortable for mitda and emmie and I, and I suppose it is for E as well, although likely he’d be more comfortable had he his own slave.

Are we isolating ourselves from the vanilla world? It could be argued that we are, much as other subcultures avoid subcultures that would not look kindly on them. If we have found a place, a topoi to survive in then it is fine, just as long as we don’t actually look down on other subcultures and other groups that are doing their own thing in their own way.