Sparkles

Today is my very own personal New Year, people.

That’s right, bitches, it’s my birthday. No, I’m not going to tell you how old I am. Didn’t your momma raise you better than that? I’ll tell you I’m still a 30something, just like I was when I started blogging almost three years ago, but that’s as good as you get from me.

I’ve spent my entire day doing the one thing I absolutely never, ever do – I’ve completely indulged myself all day long. I watched 842 episodes of my latest guilty pleasure, Gossip Girl. I did absolutely no dishes, laundry, or housework of any kind… even though our poor home front looks more like Normandy the morning after D-Day than it does our family’s refuge from the outside world’s crazy. I went and got a mani-pedi, and read 11,000 blog posts and tweets, and ate dinner at one of my favorite-all-my-life restaurants, and put in my beautiful new sapphire earrings (to go with Santa’s amazing sapphire-and-diamond pendant), and did nothing that had anything to do with real life or responsibility all day.

It. Was. Awesome.

In fact, I’m sitting on the couch in my pjs, wallowing in the end of my day, eating a chocolate orange with my feet propped up on my dog. The awesomeness has not yet abated. I wrote for CCL, I responded to approximately 84,000 emails – it’s been an all-Jolie-all-the-time 24 hours.

I also got an amazing dose of reality today in the form of the wonderful people who took the time and energy to send me birthday blessings, wishes, and even just the little acknowledgements that it was my birthday at all. My hubby called me at 11:01 MST, which happens to be 12:01 CST, to get to be the very first person to wish me a happy birthday last night. My dearest, sweetest FFG called me at the, in her words, ass-crack of dawn this morning to sing me a patented Marilyn “happy motherfuckin’ birthday” this morning. My momma texted me not long after, and then repeatedly throughout the day.

My Facebook page frankly exploded with cheer, well-wishers, and random people with whom I graduated high school (and have not, I might add, spoken to since).

This one day, and last year’s birthday, has gone one hell of a long way toward making up for the other 20+ birthdays of my life that taught me to approach this day with a healthy respect… Not to say dread, of course.

So the biggest thanks ever to my wonderful, sweet, amazing husband, who bought me sapphires (again) and took me to dinner and chauffeured me to the salon and waited the two and a half hours it took to make my fingers and toes beautiful. And who gets stuck with Christmas in December, my birthday in January, and Valentine’s Day in February and so very much deserves your sympathy.

He’s quick to point out that he does get a two month break after that, which gives him more than enough time to prepare for Mother’s Day and our anniversary within two weeks of one another in May.

Anywho, Rhett gets all the credit for making it a special week, not just a special day, with my crowning moment and Black Forest cake to come on Saturday. For taking the kid Momma-shopping again, which involves wrangling a 9 year old in a jewelry store. For bubble baths and footrubs and hours of spousal therapy over birthday jitters.

And the rest of you get the credit that’s leftover for making it an absolutely wonderful day. I can’t tell you how much it means to the heartbroken 15 year old Jolie who was fairly convinced that no birthday would ever be magical again.

I love every single one of you. You’re there no matter the silence, no matter the crazy, no matter the family drama or life pressure that brings me down, leaves me wordless, or sends me spiraling into loops of mania that render me babbling for endless paragraphs (much like these).

Thanks for the birthday magic. Thanks for accompanying me into what will be, at the end of the month, my fourth year of blogging on TSOC.

Happy birthday to me, and happy upcoming birthday to TSOC! Stay tuned!

Sweet

Sometimes, everything just comes together and feels exactly right.

We’ve had a tough few months since school started for Sharkman. He’s not happy there, and it’s affecting all of us. To be honest, it’s been a grueling fall.

But tonight, the kid and I went grocery shopping after we dropped Rhett off at his truck. He won’t be with us this year for Thanksgiving (ah, the joys of divorced parenting). It works out okay though, because he’ll be home Sunday. Due to ridiculous work schedules dictated by the transportation industry and Black Friday, we aren’t doing our little dinner until Saturday. Translation: Sharkman gets to be home for every single day of awesome holiday leftovers!

Anyway, we were at that place that I fondly refer to as the Fourth Circle of Hell, aka the grocery store, getting all the fixings. Well, except the turkey, which I got earlier this week after much prompting nagging reminding by Rhett. Aisle after aisle, we bumped into Sharkman’s buddies from football, coworkers of mine, family friends, and fellow moms with kids in tow.

It reminded me of how much I love living in a small town, around those moments that I hate it.

Then, we went to unload the cart in the pickup, and looked up to see the last glowing moments of a truly spectacular sunset. I smiled, and pointed it out to Sharkman. We chatted on the way home about how fun it was to people-watch and run into so many people who hugged us in the middle of the aisles.

By the time we got home, I had texts waiting for me from extended family that I don’t get to see, ever, and don’t get to talk to nearly often enough. While we put all the holiday yummies away, I got to talk to my sister/daughter/friend and hear about her life, and her beautiful baby girl (whom I miss every minute), and catch up on happenings that I hate missing. We made a Skype date for later.

Once we hung up, I had more texts waiting for me from a new friend who really seems like she’s going to be a good one, wanting to make plans for the kidless moments over the weekend that I won’t be working. We’re going to go do girl stuff, I think.

Dinner and laundry and loading the dishwasher later, I kicked my feet up on the couch to watch the finale of Dancing With the Stars. (Shut up, it doesn’t count as reality TV because I watch as a former dancer.) I listened to Sharkman bopping around the house, singing Gaga’s Born This Way, which made me smile. And then, two dances in, I got to see our Lady Antebellum performing with professional dancers.

This, my lovelies, is a damn good night, and a damn good life.

What an awesome way to be reminded to be thankful.

Letting Go

I’ve only had four and a half hours of sleep, and I have to get in the shower to get ready for work in about twelve minutes, but WordPress was being fucking retarded this morning so this post has to go up now.

BTW, WordPress folks? I’d appreciate the hell out of you figuring your shit out so that it doesn’t take five attempts/twenty minutes/excessive swearing to get a New Post page to load. K? Thxbye.

Anywho. It’s that time of the year again, where New Mexico does her very best impersonation of fall for half an hour every morning. The sun is shifting positions on the horizon, the sky is a crazier blue, and I need a sweatshirt until 9:00. It’s the time of year where all of my nesting instincts come raging to the surface, and I want to stay home and bake and do laundry and clean out the pantry and rearrange my furniture and make quilts.

I know. I just threw up a little in my mouth, too.

This is the time of year when I want to take random hooky days from work (one planned for tomorrow, in fact) and do something sweet for my boys and myself instead of being trapped in a stoopid office. I don’t know what it is about fall, but it gets under my skin like an itch that you can’t reach and can’t get to go away.

It being fall, and my inner Barefoot screaming to be let out of the closet, combined with what’s been going on at work lately is causing some interesting side effects in our sex life.

I’m feeling very, very feminine and female (different, dontcha know) lately, and it’s making me very, very bottomy.

The more I find myself in situations where I have to make all the decisions (work) with none of the authority, or in situations where I’m the only adult present to decide on food/clothing/furniture (home, but only because of Rhett’s stupid work schedule), the more I find myself wanting someone else to be in charge whenever possible.

And since my poor husband is usually only home long enough to sleep, eat, and bang, that means he’s getting to call the shots in bed pretty much full time. Not just the usual top-calls-the-shots – I mean that whenever I get the chance, I’m just rolling over and dropping into my happy little white noise subspace and checking the hell out of the responsibility of either of us getting a happy ending!

It’s getting to the point where, when he’s home, I just want him to decide what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, and how we’re getting there. I don’t want to pick what restaurant we’re going to, or what event we’re taking the kid to do, or even when we’re going or when we’ll be home.

I was reading smut the other night, and found myself really attracted to/turned on by/in tune with some surprising things. The stories I liked were all either straight oriented, or stone-butch-top oriented (the straight part of that is kind of new) and they were all stories that revolved around some kind of authority figure in the masculine character. Daddy, professor, boss, that kind of thing. Stuff that, two years ago, would have made me heave. Stuff, now, that makes my body tighten and my breath catch because it seems so much simpler to let him lead.

I think that kind of thing is extra appealing to me right now for a couple of different reasons. One, our life is so hectic between work and school and football and Scouts that I’m constantly on the go and accountable to other people that the idea of being cared for and gently directed for my own good sounds like a vacation. I’m burned out from making a million small daily decisions; someone else telling me “Here’s the answer, now go do it,” seems just heavenly.

Two, because even when the authority figures in those stories is “mean,” it’s “for her own good.” I’m going through this phase where I want someone else actively doing things for my own good, because I really just don’t feel like I know what’s best for me right now. My instincts all seem to be screaming contradictory advice, and I’m sick to death of the inside of my own head.

This is manifesting in big and small ways all through our lives at the moment. For example: I took a three-week vacation from Janus recently. Rhett took over all communication and interaction. It wasn’t ever going to be permanent, but for those three weeks, I didn’t have blood pressure headaches from dealing with that particular pain in the ass. Now, I’m dealing with him again, but it seems so much easier to cope after the break.

For a much more fun example: Rhett and I figured out, about a year ago, that he can make me come on verbal command. It ebbs and flows – sometimes it works better than others, sometimes I can fight it off or do, even if I don’t mean to. I have a couple of different triggers, but it’s a full-blown orgasm regardless of which one he uses. Fun stuff! Except that it’s kind of weird to have no one touching me, sometimes no one even in the room, and be thrown into spasms and end up having to change underwear.

I really can’t think of anything more submissive than giving someone else that level of control over your own body. The thing is, though, that I trust Rhett with me completely. Which circles back around to giving him more and more control over things I never thought I’d hand over. Which circles around to this bottomy-submissive thing I have going at the moment…

For the first time in my life, I find myself wanting to let go. I want someone else to make the decisions. I want my big, strong man to tell me what to do, and even sometimes when to do it. I want to be led, rather than leading. I want to be petted and cosseted, not respected and deferred to. None of it really makes sense to me, but it feels good right now, so I’m rolling with it.