Fweee!

The benefit to overtime, as I've mentioned, is that I get lots of extra money in the paycheck. That means that I have money left over after I pay rent.

Better yet, I also got a $500 bonus from work this week, so I have tons of money left after paying rent.

That means it was time to go shopping.

I've wanted to refinish my table for a long time. I got it for free from a close friend of mine, who absolutely did not have room for it in her apartment. It's pine - the top and seats of the chairs were shellacked, and the legs and chair backs were painted Wedgwood blue. Now, I like blue, but Wedgwood? I'm not so much in to that. And neither is the Mission furniture I have in my living room.

So, I've been planning to refinish it, well, since I got it. It also needs a little work; some of the legs are coming loose on the chairs. So finally I was able to buy the supplies I needed for it. Vinnie and I went to Home Depot, where he stood with the cart in confusion as I first picked out stains, then grabbed all of the supplies.

I'm planning on keeping the same style - stain and color - but it's going to be all stains, no paint. The original shellacked parts are going to be a light red oak, and the colored parts are going to be a navy water-based stain. It fits a lot better both with the decor and me - I don't so much do anything pastel-ish.

So tonight of course after I cooked dinner for the menfolk, I put down the dropcloths, took down the glasses from their racks, and started stripping the table. Honestly, I'd forgotten how much of a fucking pain in the ass this shit is. I'm trying to remind myself that after I'm done, I'll have a beautiful table. But I got most of the table top finished, and barely one of the legs, and I'm fucking tired. Admittedly, it's the end of the day, and really, I only worked for about an hour, but JEE-zus.
Scraping old finish and stripper off really works up a sweat, and I can think of many things I'd rather do to work up a sweat.

Perhaps I'll have to engage in some of them tonight. Sex raises endorphins, right? Maybe that'll help my sore back.

And the Girlies Wanna Scream

Gods, got back from my parent's yesterday and I want nothing more than to turn around and go right back. Which is the first time that's ever happened, as I recall.

Vinnie and I had an absolutely fabulous time. We didn't even do so much of the touristy stuff - which we were thinking about, as Vinnie's never been to my hometown - but instead pretty much sat around the house, slept, ate, and completely ignored any and all worries. I needed that. Desperately. We played video games, watched my brother's DVDs of Family Guy and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, ate far too much of my mother's food, and slept at random times in random places.

The only problem was that Vinnie and I were so relaxed and slow-moving by the end of our week, we wound up missing our flight back here - well, the plane was still there when we got to the airport, except that they'd already locked out the flight and we had luggage to check. We got put on the next available flight, which left at 7 in the morning, and called my mother to turn around and pick us back up.

In our infinite, mature responsible adult wisdom, Vinnie and I decided to stay up all night, because we had to be at the airport at 5 the next morning. I was sick with a lovely sinus infection resulting from allergies, so my brain wasn't working too well. That's why I agreed. We flew back here and finally got back to our house at about 11 in the morning.

It was pretty good - sure I was tired as fuck, and sniffling and in slight pain, but the house was all cool, despite the sweltering heat. I'm figuring, awesome, we'll just run to the bank a minute, then come back here and go to sleep in the excellent coolness of brick and tree-shading.

But see, then I walked into my bedroom, to find the week's newspapers scattered all over the floor, and the desk covered in glasses and food wrappers. Then I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water for my dehydrated self, and was greeted by a sink full of dishes, with satellite settlements on my counters. Being full of sick and tired and hormones, I burst into tears.

So no, I have not jumped Jay's bones yet, which I had been planning on doing all week. About all I have done with him is cry and yell and be bitchy, because it is beyond me how in over a week it could not have occurred to him at all to maybe put the papers into the bag in the living room so conveniently set up for that purpose, or to maybe wash a dish or two because he knew his flatmates were coming home and perhaps they'd want to cook. That level of blatant disregard of other people's needs and concerns is just foreign to me - especially when it comes to people I'm relatively fond of.

I'm not entirely sure he understands why I'm so upset either. Okay, sure, it is amplified in part because I'm sick and emotional now anyway, but even without that I'd be irritated. It really would have been nice to come home to a place that was around the same level of clean as I'd left it. He said "sorry" to me last night - not "I apologize for messing up the place and being an inconsiderate boor" but just "sorry". I asked why he had said that. He stared at me. I'm one of those people that thinks that if you're apologizing, you should know what you're apologizing for. Kind of gives it more meaning, you know?

He continued to stare at me as I started crying my eyes out again. I find that helpful, the staring at me. It really does a lot to make me feel like a worthwhile human being with thoughts and feelings of my own, as opposed to some machine that has started malfunctioning for no apparent reason and with no apparent way to fix it.

We've discussed this in the past. We've also discussed how I can be a very scary person even when I'm a good mood - I'm not a small person by any stretch of the imagination, and I know how to throw both my physical and emotional weight around. But what Jay doesn't seem to realize, no matter how many times we go through it, no matter how many times I tell him, is that just staring at me - essentially ignoring me, which he has also done - just makes things worse.

When I am angry and hurt, the best possible course of action is to have it out with me, and let me vent. Then we can get through the argument and get back to the sexing. The worst possible course of action is not responding to me, because that just screams "I don't care" to me, and that hurts worst of all.

Unfortunately, that is Jay's strategy for everything - back away, leave it alone, don't say anything, let it go away on its own. And in four years together, with the occasional fight to prove the points I articulate to him on a regular basis, this has not changed one iota. It makes me want to take my dullest wooden spoon and scoop out his entrails via his eye socket.

So I am pissed and hurt and frustrated, and as I said earlier, I want to turn around and get back on a plane to my parent's house, despite my general tendency to want to stab people after a week there. My mother has food, she has central a/c, and she knows how to pay attention to people when they need it. Maybe instead I should send Jay there for a month, so perhaps he will finally learn something.

Queen of...

Talked to Vinnie last night, long-distance for now. Words cannot adequately express how happy we both are that he's moving back up here to live with me (and by extension, Jay - but mostly with me).

See, Vinnie is my Primary Fag. He knows this. I know this. I am Queen of the Fag Hags, because I know and befriend gay men like it's going out of style, and Vinnie is my First Knight of Gay Men.

I'm sure most of you have heard the expression "a gay man is a woman's best friend", and gods, it's true. I usually befriend men easier than women anyway, but gay men are better than straight men for a few reasons: they like cock as much as I do, we can discuss men's asses and no one gets uncomfortable, and they understand my obsession with Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Payless Shoe Store, Williams-Sonoma, and Yankee Candle, among others. On the rare occasions I have to explain why I want to buy something, they comprehend quickly. I love Jay, but sometimes he just doesn't understand why I need that specific pair of black high heels with the ankle straps, when I have a perfectly serviceable pair of black classic pumps, even if I try to explain for two hours straight. Vinnie, on the other hand, when we found that they weren't in stock at my usual shoe store, immediately asked for directions to the store that had them and whipped out the keys. How could a girl not love him?

Vinnie's probably the closest out of my three closest friends right now. I talk to him the most often, and we talk about a wider variety of things than many others. I've had hints in the past that he knows a bit more about kink and BDSM than most would expect, and last night I got a definite indicator.

M, his new boyfriend - who is also a friend of Jay and myself - is staying with him this week, to escape the boring condemnation of living with his family for the summer before he goes back to college in the fall. Vinnie of course is giddy, and after we'd discussed his plans for the impending move I got to hear all about how wonderful M is, and how much fabulous sex they have, and how cute M looks in a collar, and how he needs to learn that when Vinnie pulls on the collar, his head has to follow.

Oh, well hello.

I laughed and offered to have a talk with M about that, to which Vinnie replied "that sounds like a pretty good idea." I get the impression that he thinks I'm the top, like he is. Little does he know, mwahahaha. Sure, I switch. Sometimes. About once for every six times that I'm the submissive. Maybe.

Anyway, for the rest of the conversation I had a little thought process in the back of my mind that was saying "Hmm, M just came out of the closet... he and Vinnie have been dating for about a week - although talked extensively before that - I assume he lost his virginity to Vinnie... does he really know what he's getting in to?"

Then I reminded myself that a collar means one thing to some people, but it doesn't mean it to all people - didn't I just write a huge thing about that? Oh wait, I did. Plus, M is above the age of consent and I have to admit, he's no slouch in the intellect department. I have to assume that everything they do is completely consensual, just from knowing the parties in question. It'll be fun to watch when they're both up here though!

So now I feel like I have this great responsibility to explain the world of BDSM to M when I talk to him later this week. I'm a little bit tweaked; I don't know what, if anything, I should explain about D/s, if I should just explain the BD aspect of it, the play aspect... I just don't know. I suppose I'll do what I usually do, which is play it by ear, and listen to what he says about it first, and then just answer whatever questions he might have. That way I don't overwhelm the poor boy, and he finds out what he really wants (and, perhaps, needs) to know.

I do have a reputation among the group of friends from which M hails as being particularly knowledgeable about, shall we say, "alternative sexual practices". None of them, though, have had any solid indicators about the status of my relationship with Jay - except that we've been together for four years and most of the time are pretty damned delirious about each other. I've jokingly called him "sir" in public before, but it was obviously a joke, given our expressions and the context. Otherwise, we're as vanilla as Madagascar beans.

My problem, then, is two-fold: what do I say to M (if anything), and do I really want to come out of the kink closet? I know for sure I don't want my parents, or anyone from my hometown knowing. But my friends and associates out here are a bit more cosmopolitan, and more likely to take such revelations in stride. To my knowledge, M's revelation didn't faze any of them - mostly because the majority of us knew anyway, so it wasn't a surprise. This, I think, would be a surprise to most of them, Vinnie probably excluded. I'm just not sure how they'd take it.

Sure, sure, "if they're really your friends", and I do consider them that. It's just easier to keep my mouth shut and not disturb the pond when I don't have to - not make demands on the friendship unless it's necessary.

The subject will probably come up in this apartment anyway, given who is going to be living here. I guess this is just one of those things I'll have to deal with when it comes up. Joy.