Settling In

I realized today that I've been doing something extraordinary for the past ten days: settling in.

I think my time in Houston never felt permanent enough to feel like I had settled into any kind of pattern. I remember a stretch of four days where I felt a calm sense that I knew what to expect, and I didn't have any looming, unknown, massive tasks. Four days out of seven months is not a fantastic record.

But we plan to be here in the great plains of central Illinois for at least a couple of years (where the sunsets have, I must admit, been far more spectacular than I remembered... I think it's a ploy to lull me into a sense of welcome. It's working.). Hopefully, we'll be in this same quirky, slanty, cozy house with the nice neighbors and the gorgeous trees.

So now that most of the functional unpacking has been done, as well as enough decorative unpacking to make the place feel like it's ours, I'm finding a pattern emerging:

* Early mornings on weekdays, since the hub has to get up anyway, he feeds the dogs and lets them outside, then puts them back in their crates to let me wake up on my own rhythms. On weekends, the dogs get morning routine from whoever can't sleep through them whining at us anymore, or from whoever needs to get up to go to the bathroom first

* When I wake up, I've continued a thing I started in Houston, which is: snuggle time on the couch with the dogs. I set aside about an hour to wake up slowly, sipping caffeine, making a coherent to-do list for the day, playing iPhone games, and giving the dogs the freedom to choose the activity: I always say yes to tug, fetch, and tummy rubs during snuggle time, and eventually I am rewarded with two dozing lap-warmers. Snuggle time ends when they inevitably bound off the couch to investigate a neighborhood noise and I need to stretch my legs and get my day started.

* My days have been mixed. I've tried to group together times when I had to wait for return phone calls, service or repair people, or freecyclers to pick up our packing boxes, because waiting on things like that means it's impossible to log in for phone sex. When I've had appointments (between 10am and 4pm Central time), I've given the pups rawhides and left them safely on the other side of the baby gate in the dog-proofed downstairs, while I head upstairs to The Red Room (aka the Fuckatorium 3.0) to lose myself in delicious fantasies.

* From 4pm to 8pm has become family time: the dogs need dinner and an outside break, the hub gets home for an hour or less of domestic chores, then we have dinner and unwinding together time, possibly mixed with more snuggle time on the couch, and then I lose him to his very steady girlfriend The Internet, with all her fun things to learn and ridiculous memes to giggle over, or to his primary lover Video Games, with all her things to build and strategize and shoot, and I head back up to The Red Room to log in. Eventually, sleepies overtake me and I stumble downstairs and crawl into the bed he's been keeping warm for me.

It's a lovely rhythm. It feels sustainable and calm. It protects enough time and energy for my primary romantic relationship, provides enough affectionate touch to keep me sane, and yet leaves plenty of time and energy for all my other connections: friends, family, and the gorgeous lush playgrounds where I luxuriate with callers.

And luxuriate I have... I've discovered a distinct advantage a roof-slanted room: when I'm lying on the couch, I can anchor one foot against the wall-ceiling angled above me, which lets me buck my hips up in a really interesting way.

Ooo, and I had an extraordinarily happy re-discovery of my Feeldoe: it was the only "dildo" I could find one day on a call before I unpacked my sex toys, so I used the long end of it to fuck myself while using the short egg-shaped end to press against my clit (that's the side that is inside me when I use it as it was intended, as a strapless strap-on). And holy overload, Batman, the sensations are an amazing mimic of the pressure against my clit during missionary fucking if a lover is grinding his pubic bone into me. Which I love. A lot. It's my new favorite thing to feel when I'm masturbating.

The room seems perfect to hold my sexual energy, the couch and desk chair offer lots of options for comfy positions whether I'm typing or fucking, and the glare-free lighting is easy to spend time in. It seems perfect so far.

Welcome to the next season of my life. I think it's going to be wonderful.