Thanksgiving

What a great weekend! So much to be thankful for this year, so many wonderful new experiences, so many good old friends, so many new friends! Even the rotten and uncomfortable parts of the year have lead me to be a stronger woman and have helped me to grow.

Master and i spent the Holiday with NYbOL, it was great to get to know the guys a bit better and the food! OMG! Good Goddess, can those boys cook! What an excellent group of people - good looking, good cooking...how can you go wrong?

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent doing some major cleaning, revamping and redecorating in the Household. Master was a huge help and over all great co-ordinator. This is a continuation of all the decluttering going on in our lives. It started in the studio and it's spreading though out the house and in to other parts of my life. It's a nice, lighter feeling for me. i wasn't a big believer in Feng Shui, but i'm starting to see that a lot of it's principals apply to my life. Either way, the holiday tree and lights are up, most of the house is decorated, most of the house is clean and shiney again. i feel great about that, YAY!

We even fit in a great time at Paddles on Friday. An awsome thigh caning, hung Kyle & friends :-) PLUS we got to meet up with the Pride Household - it was great to see those guys. i miss seeing the old gang regularly.

We had a 2nd Thanksgiving meal today. i usually cook a rack of lamb for Master for Thanksgiving so we had that today along with some turkey and butternut squash & apples, Pommes Anna.... now i'm stuffed!

Master gave me permission to register for ARTiscape, which is a 4 day artist's retreat. It's in May, shouldn't conflict with any leather events. So, i picked out my classes and booked my room. The host hotel is the only hotel in the U.S. that's a Botanic Garden - BEAUTIFUL! i left some space in my schedule to walk the grounds and relax. i am so excited to go there! i signed up for all the banquets and parties - very unlike the old me to go anywhere by myself, much less to a dinner or party alone. i am getting to like the stronger me.



i'm headed off to clean up the kitchen and take a much needed bath. But i will leave you all with my favorite Tanksgiving picture this year - Wild Turkeys, caught on security camera, trying to board a NJ Transit Train!

BUSTED!

Exhaustion

my poor Master has been absolutely brutalized at work. The powers that be keep demanding more and more work from fewer and fewer people - all in the name of the all-mighty dollar. Watching Him get up to leave at 4:30 am, to fill in for people who have been down-sized is really breaking my heart.

He works so hard: because He's got that amazing work ethic, because He is an amazing provider, because He wants to be sure that He can provide medical insurance for me in case i have a relapse.
And this Man still goes to the gym every day after work and puts most people to shame with the energy that He gives to His workout. Yes, His workout - the one that He does to make sure that He's in the best shape ever so He can take care of business and take care of me.

Then He comes home and has to do yet more work from home. Then i get snappy at Him that He fell asleep on the couch instead of having conversation with me.... Oy, what a rotten slave i feel like!

All i can do is say "Thank You" and try to do as well at my own job and in the service that i give to Him. Sometimes, and this week is one of those times, what i give to Him just doesn't feel like enough.

So, this has been a rotten 2 weeks for us and i blame the down-sizing of corporate America.

11/17

On 11/17, when i was 15 - i went to see the Circle Jerks, False Prophets and A.O.D. at the Reggae Lounge. (i'd run away from home, for the last time, about a month earlier - escaping from an abusive situation and beginning a cascade of legal events which ended in me having my own apartment by the time i was 16. Which was much less fun than you'd imagine it was!)

i went to the show with a bunch of friends (Sir Larry included) Some how, thru much finagling, i got another friend of mine to hold on to my glasses, asked Sir if He could hold my hand and take me up front to be in the mosh pit... since of course, i could see with out my glasses, i needed an escort.

The rest is history. He stuck with me thru all those freakin' HORRIBLE days in court, while i had to testify against my glaring, threatening family. We've been together ever since. It's been 24 years. We've gone from those crazy punk kids with the crazy hair, to those crazy Metal heads, with the crazy hair, involved with many, many bands along the way, to the crazy Master slave couple - still with the crazy hair.

i couldn't have asked for a better life. i am a damn lucky woman!

MAsT D.C. joint meeting

Tuesday Sir and i presented for MAsT DC, a joint meeting of the Men's & the Pan groups. An uneventful, quick trip to Master Taino's. (great directions!) What a beautiful home, such a gracious host. We were so well taken care of by Master Taino and slave david. What a great dungeon, i wish we'd had the time to play down there. Maybe next time! :-)

A great bunch of people at the meeting, Awesome to see Master J, Master Tallen, Master Wes, slave andew, and many, many others. Excellent questions from them all - the presention hinges on audience participation (as most do!) and the quality of the audience's questions makes the presentation sing. It's interesting that, like life, you get out of a presentation exactly what you put in to it.

Sir and i stayed overnight and then up at 5:30 am to return home to our angry dogs. Taybor and LiLu were happy to see us, i ended up giving them an empty box to tear apart so they could vent their frustrations. Between cardboard destruction, some new toys and a lot of wrestling they were asleep by 10:30 as were Sir and i. i love traveling but nothing beats coming home to my own little bed on the floor, next to Sir's bed where i can hear Him snore.

GMSMA Leather Fest

NYbOL logo In M&M'S! GMSMA leather fest was a blast, we got to spend more quality time with NYbOL - what an awesome bunch of guys. Sir Larry & i ran off to the Leather Man so He could get fitted for some new pants, which we'll pick up on 11/18.

Some how i ended up getting hugged and flung up in the air by one of the NYbOL's..... wel, that made me feel like i was just a tiny girl! :-) Funny!

organized Chaos

So, i've gotten my studio space fairly organized... enough so that if i have a free 15 minutes i can dash in there and do some art or sewing. It's very nice.
i have had 2 problems.... the first one is that my work table is low enough or my dog is tall enough that he can reach my work in progress. Which has resulted in: paint on nose, glue on nose, paper glued to dogs head, various pieces of assemblage art (i.e. anything that has any organic pieces in it) being picked apart & eaten, etc, etc.

The other problem is that things still go missing. It used to be that they were simply buried under the rubble of untamed art supplies and piles of things that had no businesss being in the studio. Now however, things are gone and.. well, i don't know what happened. The most annoying missing thing is my Artist's journal, which had some watercolors and collage in it. Gone. Missing. Doh. It's not that the work was so astonishingly great, it really isn't. And i don't care that it was bad, or not so good (or a sign of my progression, i suppose i should say!) It's the fact that it was a mostly unused Moleskine notebook. Yes, i have a Moleskine fetish. (tribute givers, please keep that in mind..) i really was being good about keeping it with in easy reach so i could just throw it down and do some work immediately.

It's frustrating when things like this hamper my progress. i feel like i can't get out of my own way. Sigh.

blogging guilt....

i hate it when i get behind in my blogging and then... Well, i get overwhelmed. Do i go back and blog all the stuff i missed writing about? Just pick up from where i am now? Then i procrastinate and don't blog at all, a vicious cycle!

Between my last entry and now i served as the Judge's girl for Mr & Ms NJ Leather. That was fun. i got to spend some time with a few of the Judges that i already knew, which was great and also met some new people who were awesome! All the contestants made a great showing and the Winners were Chuck for Mr NJ Leather and boy robi for Ms NJ Leather. i am really proud of both of them. Chuck's had a heck of a year and i am just so proud of him stepping up and entering the contest. boy robi kick butt also and looks damn good in formal wear! :-) i'm sure they'll represent NJ well and do a lot of good work this year.

i set up an ancestor altar this year at Samhain to celebrate the lives of my dearly departed. Samhain wasn't as festive (it is my new year, after all!) as it usually has been for me in the past but instead was more introspective and quiet.

i've spent an unusual amount of time on the road for my clients, things are looking good business wise and i may end up having to travel out of state a few times a month. i'm looking forward to more money because of that but i'd really rather be here in NJ serving at home! Seriously, i try to live simply, more money just adds up to more gadgets and somehow the money, no matter how much there is, finds a way to get spent. i'd rather have more time than have more money.

Master and i presented for DSF on Friday, that went pretty well. Lots of people had questions afterwards. i am starting not to judge the response to the presentation until it's done and we're wandering around... then i count how many people come up to ask questions that they didn't want to air in front of the crowd. Which is fine by me, i know that sometimes i have stuff that's either too personal or perhaps doesn't fit the "theme" of the presentation exactly and i'd rather ask later. Or ask via email It's all fine to me!

In keeping with my big "search and destroy" anti-clutter mission in the studio, Master and i have embarked on either starting or finishing a ton of Household projects that needed doing but have been neglected for quite some time. We installed closet organizers in His bedroom, whihc resulted in a major purge of old crap. There's now plenty of room to actually walk in to the walk in closet AND all Master's leathers are hung in one place.

We finally figured out how to display the fabulous pillows we were given at the M/s conference. With the unruly canines in the house, they couldn't be displayed on the couch or on Master's bed, so i sewed some chain on to the corners and we hung them from the ceiling. Yup, pillow bondage! i love the way they look like that. They make me smile.

That's my update for now, signing off before this becomes tooooo long.