Happy,

That's what I've been feeling lately. The last couple of weeks have been pretty good. On the 14th I went with my girl* C and saw Debbie Does Dallas:The Musical. It was a bery fun play, we laughed our asses off through the whole thing. I also thought it was really cool that someone I know was a cast member. I would have stopped and said hi after the show, but had to go before she came out of the dressing room. We had dinner before the play and had a chance to catch up as we hadn't seen each other in a while. It was a pretty good evening. On the 20th I saw A(another of my girls*) and we had a pretty good night with each other hanging at Rue 13(my favorite sushi bar). While we were out we hung out for a few minutes with our friend AH and her guy and chatted. A and AH pointed out that it might be a good idea to schedule my birthday party at Dave & Buster's a bit earlier so that me and those who attend would have more time to enjoy the evening and to allow those who might have to leave early time to come, enjoy my company, and leave early if they need to. so AH and her guy left and me and A hung out at Rue for a while longer just talking and having a good time. By the way I don't care what anyone says, there is nothing more heart warming than having someone you care about fall asleep in your arms. On the 23rd I was able to hang with my best friend who I hadn't seen in far too long. We weren't able to hang out for long but the little bit of time we did hang out was fun and we had some laughs and caught up with each other. On the 24th I went over to my girl* M's house. We had a very fun night. We talked and caught up, among other things. I had to get up extra early and head home in the morning only because I had to work and had quite a ways to travel. That was more of a last minute planned thing, otherwise I would have been better pre

This last week or so made me realize a couple things: 1.) My definition of love was way too ridgid and had been causing me really stupid angst for a long time, 2.) I fealize that I am loved. Not only in the romatic sense either (although that is a pleasant bonus). It occurs to me that I've had my head up my ass for quite a while now; now that I've pulled it out I've realized the world is a brighter place than I realized.

So I'll be moving into a new apartment next week, I'm looking forward to it. It's been three years since I lived by myself and it will be nice to get back to that. Don't get me wrong I've enjoyed the last three years at my current place I just miss living by myself. My new place is going to be several blocks from my current one and I'll be on the 21st floor. I decided to get movers to move my furniture and stuff for me. I've had some friends offer to help me move which is really awesome but(at least this time) I've decided to be lazy and let someone else do all the work. I'll probably throw some sort of house warming party once I'm settled in and am confortable in my place.

I've also been making some new friends lately, which has been really cool. I even apeared in one's blog. In my opinion that is way awesome because to me that means I've become someone worth mentioning lol. I like making new friends and getting to know people; it's part of the reason I've felt these last 4 years have been amazing.

Right now I am enjoying life and feeling very happy. I don't know how long it will last but I plan on riding this wave for as long as it does.

*when I say "my girl" I mean one of my lovers. They are very important to me and when I mention them, I figure that makes it easier to have it come across who I'm refering to. Also I feel saying "My lover so and so" sounds really abnoxious and would rather just say "My girl" instead.*

Attractive

Before I get into the meat of this let me start off by saying that if you are one of the friends this is sort of directed to, I consider you a good friend and always enjoy hanging out with you and I definetly hope you don't take this blog badly. Now, with that said(and I mean no disrespect when I say this):


FUCK YOU!!


I am really getting tired of the joke that folks like to say to me in regards of who I find attractive/date/fuck about how I like anything with a pulse that moves. Yes, I admit that I find a lot of women attractive. Tall, short, slender, bigger, large breasted, small breasted, whatever; I find women attractive. I don't really care if you agree with who I find attractive, because in all honesty it isn't for you. It's for me. Everyone has different things they find attractive in a person. There are things I'll find attractive in one person that I might not find attractive in another. If I point out to you a woman I think is cute/hot/fuckable I'm not doing it for you to approve, I'm doing it to express my opinion of what I find attractive. I get the fact that you might disagree with my opinion but unless you are planning on (if you are male) finding me someone or (if you are female) fucking/dating me yourself I don't need to hear it. If I only dated someone based on whether you found them attractive rather than what I thought I'd hardly be with anyone. I also acknowledge that I'm not the hottest guy in the world so not all the women I find attractive will find me attractive but I don't care. That doesn't change my opinion or my willingness to express it. I would hope that as my friend(s) you would at the very least accept that I like someone, even if you don't agree. There is a saying that "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one"; well I prefer "Opinions are like genitals, you can share them with whoever you want but in the end they belong to you." So while I appreciate the fact that you might disagree with my choices/opinions on who I find attractive I don't appreciate you feeling the need to act as if I should not like what I like because you don't.

That's all I wanted to say really. Admittedly in the grand scheme of things in life this isn't a super important thing but it's something that I just needed to get off my chest.

Me and Polyamory

It's amazing how a lover can point something out to you that you've been avoiding even if you didn't realize you had been. So for a long time now (about a year or two) I've been thinking about Polyamory and how it relates to me. For the longest time I've been saying that it's not my thing and that I couldn't handle it. After some things said to me in a conversation I was in Saturday and talking to her last night I realized I've been running from the idea for a while. "Honey, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you're poly" That one sentence put a lot of things in perspective. As some of my friends know I've been talking about poly for a while now and asking questions wondering what I'm missing about the whole thing trying to understand. If I'm honest with myself I was really hoping for some simple answer. To be fair, there is no such thing. The main reason she said that to me is that:

1.) I currently have three lovers that I get together with on occasion two of whom are poly themselves and one who is ok with me having other relationships.
2.) With the exceptions of a few times I've not actually been monogamous(the women I have been monogamous with are still in my fb friend's list though)
3.) As much as I would say I couldn't handle it, as long as I was aware of it upfront I actually have had no problems with it.

Honestly, she wasn't the first person to have ever suggested that to me over the last couple of years but she is the first to make me realize what I had been doing. I can't put my finger on the reasons why I've been trying to run from the idea of poly. Maybe it's because of sociaty, maybe it's because I tend to be stubborn, or it could even be that I've always had an idea in my head of what relationship I'd have and that does not fit. Then again (and this is the real reason) it could be all three. You know it's amazing how easy it is to lie to yourself. I guess it's because of all the people we know in life the one person we want to trust more than anyone is ourselves. Of course that's the one person we shouldn't trust.

One of the hurdles I've always claimed I had was jealousy, if I'm honest with myself in reality it's envy. Admittedly it is a thin line between the two, but there it is. I've always been envious of my friends who seem so happy in their relationships and I've wanted that happiness for myself for a long time. I've always tried to tell myself that I was going to find one person that would be everything to me as far as a relationship goes and in all honesty that is pretty much impossible. No one person can be everything to someone. As one or two people I've been involved with in the past have told me, there is no way anyone can actually live up to that sort of pressure. Hell, I can't even live up to that sort of pressure. I've come to realize that it is impossible for me to be someone's everything as I've come to realize, I don't want to be. The thought that it was what I wanted goes back to believing that that's what I was supposed to want. While I do believe that I can find true love I also realize that a.) I fall in love rather easily, b.) I'm ok with someone I'm with having other partners as long as they are upfront about it, and c.) I've got to stop confusing jealousy with envy.

Now while I'm able to admit this to myself(and I guess the world now) I'm not going to just start trying to form a relationship with any and every woman I can. I'm not ready for that at all. However, when I am ready to start dating or looking for a relationship again I'll be honest about this upfront. Both with myself and a potential partner. Does this mean I'm going to look for more than one partner when I start dating again; no, but I also won't be so closed off to the possibility of being involved with more than one person.

I realize this seems like a big backpedal or contradiction after one of the posts I made a couple of months back but looking back I realize I was ok with it then and I just used it as an excuse for not feeling as strong as I thought I should have felt.

As I said at the beginning of this post, it's amazing how a lover can make you realize something about yourself you didn't want to admit before. It's funny how admitting this has made me feel a lot better about my relationship past as well as be a bit less stressed about my relationship future. Alright, well I'm off to bed as I'm getting sleepy. All of this introspection is tiring after all.

Thoughts

Before I type this let me admit I'm rather drunk waiting on food at the moment.

Why the hell can't life be as easy as we want it to be. If it was up to me I'd be happy in a relationship enjoying someone's company hanging out with my friends and having a good time. Instead I'm doing the same things single which is very fun, but there are times where I wouldn't mind having someone to share it all with. Mind you this is not a depressed "Woe is me" sort of thing but more of a simple observation. I'm fast approaching 30 (two more months to be exact) and the fact that a lot of my friends who are younger than me are either in happy realtionships or planning marriages kind of makes me long for the same thing. I'll admit I tend to think about this a tad more when I'm drunk as opposed to when I'm sober. Why can't fining that special someone be as easy as everyone I know makes it seem. I don't know a single person who's story goes "After more than a decade of looking I finally found 'the one'" that would go a long way to making me feel a bit better about my single status. One thing I've come to realize is that I don't think I want kids of my own. Step kids are fine but I'm not really interested in having my own little rugrats running around that I may have to try and keep up with. Ok, post done. I'm sure my food will be ready soon and then I'll go home, eat , and then sleep. Night all have a good one :-)

It seems I'm not a Vulcan after all

I like to think that I have a good handle on my emotions and how I react to stuff. Unfortunatly I've come to realize that as much as I want to I can't seem to control them. I always seem to find myself at one end of the spectrum or another. Either I don't feel as much as I should or I feel way too much too fast. Most times it doesn't cause any problems but when it comes to relationships I'll be dating someone (or starting to anyway) and I'll either not feel enough or fall head over heels for them, without any real transition in between. A friend who I was intimate with once told me that when I seem to fall head over heels for someone it can be intimadating because apparently it makes someone feel inadequate when they don't feel as strongly. They then feel bad because they feel responsible for my emotional state. I wish I could say that I knew why that happens but I can't. I sometimes feel like a frakking teenager, which sucks. One thing that sometimes bothers me is how quickly some of my emotions can switch off. All it will take is one action, sometimes even one word, and they'll shut off as if they never were. It makes me wish I had better control of them but writing this I realize that may be the problem. I spend so much time trying to control what I feel and when I feel it that I've possibly thrown myself off somehow. I realize I've frustrated some friends in conversations talking about how stuff people do sometimes confound me because there seems to be no logic in it. I've heard more than once "You can't always look at things logically", and I've argued that you can; but part of that is due to me trying too hard to control my emotions. Maybe I should learn to let some of that control go. Maybe if I do I'll find a much better balance within myself. I don't know, I might be weird or I might just be an average guy who is putting far too much thought into who he is and how he thinks and acts. Either way I hope I can reach a point where I'm not either ruled by my emotions or block them off completely. I will say though, that I'm glad for the friends I have who accept who I am regardless of how I might annoy them. They've gone a long way towards helping realize things about myself even if they don't realize how much of a help they've been. Well I'm done talking for now. Back to internalizing and spending too much time thinking about stuff.

Dumped

So on Wednesday July 13th 2011 at 1 pm I got dumped by my girlfriend. It was done while I was at work and through text message. I've got to say that really sucked. From my perspective this came out of nowhere. There was no fight, no big disagreement that led to it. We had just seen each other that morning and went to breakfast together as a matter of fact. She said she realized she wasn't as ready as she thought she was, which sounds a lot like "It's not you, it's me" to me. The worst part is as hurt and saddened by it I am I'm not angry. I really did care about her and saw a future with her in my life. If she called me tomorrow and said she wanted to get back together I'm not entirely sure I would turn her down. Most times when a relationship I'm in ends I can usually point to a reason, one that makes sense; but I can't see any real reason for it. The worse thing is the next day I see her add a guy as a friend on one of the social sites we share and I can't help but wonder if she really broke up with me because she is interested in that guy. It's possible that my mind is just grasping for some way to make sense of it, which is why I haven't gone all psyhco and messaged her asking who that guy is and accusing her of just being a coward and not being honest with me about her reasons. I know some people would say that a month is not really that long to be feeling so bad about a break up but I don't care how long it has been when you've formed a strong emotional connection with someone it still hurts. Ironically enough I had just gotten to the point where I didn't really care if I met anyone and was ready to delete my okcupid profile when she messaged me telling me that she liked my profile and was interested in getting to know me. Looking at the whole thing I can't help but feel like I was the test subject for an experiment to see if she could handle being in a full fledged relationship. I mean she messaged me first, she was the one who suggested us being bf/gf, and while I was the first to throw out the L word she seemed to feel the same and had no problem saying it too me. So I kind of feel like I was her equvalent to dipping her toes into the water to see if she was ready to jump in. I know it's probably irrational to think those things but I feel I'm allowed a little bit of irrationality at the moment. I have realized though that my ability to bounce back from heartache has improved. It probably helped that a good friend of mine MS went out with me and listened to me talk while I got drunk. I don't care what anyone says alcohol does do a good job of helping you feel better when bad shit happens in your life. So I'm back into the single world and am ok with it. I guess it was good I had finally reached the "I'm ok with being single" point before meeting her because I don't feel the need to reactivate my okcupid profile. I had deactivated it around the same time she deactivated hers thinking this was it and I was done lol. What I do plan on doing though is just living my life and enjoying myself. I'm going to party with some friends tonight, see Harry Potter this weekend, and try to go to a burlesque show next week where some friends of mine will be performing. If I meet someone new somewhere down the road cool, but for right now I'm not going to look for a relationship. Although I will say I could use a good fuck, after all, that works way better than alcohol in making somebody feel better about bad stuff.

There has been at least one good thing though. Actually it's seperate from the whole break-up thing. I got approved for a new apartment that I'll be moving into on the first of September. I like the building it's in. It's a one bedroom apartment in a high rise downtown that has a rooftop pool. That's actually my favorite part lol, with the way this summer has been I'm sure it will still be rediculously hot when I move so I'm totally looking forward to jumping in the pool. The only downside to this place is that fact that I've got to go back to paying to do my laundry. I haven't had to do that since my first apartment building. Looks like I'll have to make sure to keep some change around. I've had a few friends offer to help me move which I think is really cool and appreciate but I'm going to go the lazy route on this one and hire some movers. I'm doing that because I don't want to have to do any moving of the furniture myself. Like I said, the lazy route lol.

So was I hurt by the situation yes, am I going to let it keep me down, no. I do believe her when she says that she wasn't ready for things despite my bouts of irrationality and I hope that I'm wrong on that whole "dumped me to be with someone else" thought that's in the back of my head at the moment. Overall, I'll be fine, I'm still aliive after all. Which is probably good because I'm pretty sure I'd lose some friends if I were a zombie. Apparently people don't want to spend eternity as an undead rotting corpse that does nothing but eat flesh. Ironically enough though, spending eternity as a perfectly preserved undead corpse that drinks blood and can't go out into the sun is just fine though. ;) lol. Alright well my shift is about to start at work so let me get that over with so I can go hang out with friends, get drunk, and watch some hotties wrestle in olive oil. Ok, that sentence right there is one of the reasons that despite getting dumped I still love my life :-)

St. Louis Ren Faire

So this past Monday, for the first time, I went to the St. Louis Ren Faire. I must say I had a blast. I rode out there with my friends J and R and got there a little after 12. After walking down the hill we got to the area where it was being held and it was like walking into another world(well more like another time to be honest lol). As soon as I walked in I already started seeing people I know. You see I have a bunch of friends who actually work the Faire. As a matter of fact all but a few of them do.

The first booth I stopped at was the booth for Dracosinister Blades. I know the man who runs it and I always like looking at what he has for sale. While I was there I said hi, shot the shit a bit, talked about the party that's being held in July that I plan to attend. I soon noticed that J and R was walking to a different spot and left to catch up with them. I rode with them after all and didn't want to get left behind. We walked up the hill stopping to say hi to folks here and there; when we decided to check the schedule to see what all was planned. We happened to notice that the band Musical Blades was going to be playing soon so we decided to head that way.

Let me stop for a second to mention that there was this really cute mime that stopped us as we were walking up the hill. It took me a minute to realize it but she was telling us that J was beautiful(no argument here) and that either R or myself should buy her a rose. I've got to say that that mime was so cute I wanted to take her somewhere and see if I could get her to make a sound or two ;). So back to the blog post.....

On the way to watch Musical Blades we happened to stop and watch a guy doing a show, pretty much caught the tail end of it but it was still cool as he was on a tightrope juggling torches. While I was standing there I happened to notice my friend MO's booth. I decided to go over and say hi because she's cool and I always enjoy hanging with her. She happened to be a bit on the tired side but still good company. We chatted for a bit before me, J, and R headed towards the show. After a while we noticed that it was close to show time so we moved a bit faster to get there.

It was a really good show. I'd seen these guys perform at The Crack Fox before for Subversion: Pirate Booty Edition and I really like their stuff. This show was exceptionally good because for this first show there wasn't a lot of people there so they decided to perform it right where the audience was instead of on the stage I have to say that that was really cool. It didn't hurt that I was in the next aisle enjoying the show. While we were sitting there we were enjoying a skin of mead that J and R had brought(J had the mead and R had the wineskin). Not long into the performance our friend AH came over and joined us. AH is pretty cool. I've hung out with her on several occasions and have always had a good time, today was no exception. We shared the mead with her and she pretty much joined us as we walked around Faire.

So after the show we decided to go check out the jousting on our way there J was approached by a woman who is a fan of hers(J happens to be a performer) it was really fun to watch as it was a total fangirl. Me and R joked about how we felt like we were hanging with a famous person and how we wanted our own fangirls.

Right before getting to the joust I happened to see my friend MS, who also happened to be working Faire.I decided to go say hi and she proceeds to give me a hug after having just gotten soaked with water to help her cool off. I had just seen her get wet so I shouldn't have been surprised. It was pretty funny. I will say having my shirt wet felt pretty good because it was a nice sunny day that was getting pretty hot. As we were talking MS noticed that I didn't have a hat on. She admonished me for not taking precautions to keep myself cool in the heat. So she wets a scarf and gives it to me to wear. I tried to argue but I've learned over the years not to for too long. To be fair it was a good thing I gave in because that wet scarf on my head did a pretty good job of keeping me cool for a while. Not long after that she had to take off as she was working and I couldn't keep her for too long. Luckily the joust are was right there so I didn't have to go far.

The joust was pretty fun to watch. I wound up cheering for the English guy as his opponent was a French guy(the setting for the Ren Faire was 16th century France after all). It was very fun to watch especially the actual jousting. I had tried to take some pictures of the moments when they clashed but unfortunatly my phone had a slight delay and I always missed it by a couple of seconds. So after the joust was done I went to find J, R, and AH who were standing over by a tree. I was curious as to why they moved and they told me about this asshat who got a bug up his butt because J happended to say crotch near his kid. We were getting ready to leave the joust when we noticed CM stanging nearby. He was selling pickles and we decide to go say hi. I forgot who mentioned it first but there was talk about how another friend of ours, AO, could suck the inside out of a pickle. I bought the first pickle and thus begins the hunt to find a straw and AO.

J, myself, and R were so interested in seeing this the first thing we did was go hunt for a straw as one was needed to make this stunt happen. On the way we ran into more people we know. I stopped at another weapons shop and wound up buying this dagger that I thought looked really cool. We eventually made our way back to the booth where MO was and guess who was there but AO so we told her how we wanted to see the pickle thing but it turns out the pickle we had was too small. We were ready to give up on this when lucky us CM happened to show up with his bucket of pickles. It was on now. So a straw was produced and AO proceeded to try and suck the inside out of the pickle. Unfortunatly it didn't quite work out as the second pickle that got picked wasn't big enough either. While we were standing there laughing and talking I noticed someone was selling roses. I decided to buy three of them and Gave one to MO, one to AO, and one to J. I must say, big beautiful cleavage is a perfect place to hold a rose lol. It was definetly a gorgeous site :). While standing there I noticed MS had shown up and I went and chatted with her some more as we hadn't hung out in a while and it gave us a chance to catch up.

Not too much later we decided it was time for food as we had been drinking for a bit and had gotten hungry. On the way to food though we became distracted by belly dancers; three of them with my favorite being the tall, busty , brunette who looked stunning. After the belly dancers there was a guy who twirled fire. He was cool but the one I thought was the most entertaining was another friend of mine S. She was performing her own fire performance that was funny and cool. I even got added as part of the show. She used me as the unknown "member of the audience"(doubt anyone bought it but I think that was the idea lol). It was really cool because she twirled fire inches from my face and I could feel the warmth of the flames. By the way I've got to say watching someone do a fire performance without music in the background is really cool because the sound the fire makes as it twirls and spins is awesome. So after saying hi to S and chatting for a bit it was off for food.

We didn't have to walk too far as a food stand wasn real close. On the way there I ran into another friend KW who I had run into earlier and was really interested in the shirts he said he had. After seeing them I really wanted to buy one but unfortunatly I did not have enough money to buy one. R had the same problem but I know that one of these days I'll get one hopefully before Pirate Fest. At the food stand I happened to run into T. The same T from my Conflation post. We shot the shit a bit and I asked him if he was going to the party I mentioned earlier. He said yeah and I asked if I could ride with him and he said yeah so I was like woohoo.

After eating we went ahead and watched one of the ending shows they were having for the day. There were two and the other one was at the other end of the park. The one we chose had another performance by Musical Blades which was cool. There was also some humor, a guy playing on an instrument I don't quite know the name of, and overall good entertainment.

After all of that it was time to leave as Faire for the weekend was over. I looked at my watch and realized five or six hours had passed. You know you've had a good time when that much time has gone by and you didn't even realize it. On the way out we stopped at one more booth and chatted with some more friends. We chatted with TM(CM's wife), her mom AC, and KG. S also stopped by and we all just chilled and hung out for a bit. I bought this cool mask that I would love to do a costume with if I can figure out how to wear it and still be able to see. This mask does not work with my glasses lol. After a while we left as we kind of had to. It is really cool knowing a bunch of people who work the Ren Faire because it makes the experience even more fun than just going as a patron.

So that was most of my day at the St. Louis Ren Faire. Admittedly I didn't talk about everything this is mostly the highlight as there was quite a bit of walking around and just standing and talking but it was all fun. I will say though I am very glad I have good legs. This is definetly not something to do if you can't walk very well not without a wheel chair or something. So after Faire we all went over to another mutual friend AS's how and hung out with her and G for a little bit before going to eat at Hibachi Grill. The food there was really good. Once dinner was done they dropped me off at home and that was the end of a really great day.