Amor Fati.

As I sit here starting to write, I look up and there’s Clifford the Wonder Dog on high alert. Clifford’s dad was an on the farm working Border Collie, and it shows in Clifford. We’re on the front porch, enjoying the cool dry air that’s pouring off the mountain; sunset was about 15 minutes ago. I was suspecting a raccoon was the reason for the alert, in years past they came from the creek across the road about this time of day. I think it was a deer tonight. I saw a flash of white as a car passed by; either way, Clifford remains on watch.

This is shaping up to be one of those weeks, which is layering on top of a couple back-to-back one of those weeks. I got short tempered and pissy with Kate earlier today, that’s one of my least favorite things.

We’ve each been sick in the 10 days or so, some sort of stomach bug. Kate was knocked out for a day first, I thought it looked like so much fun, I followed suit 4 days later. I’m not sure when I last puked, but I know that this was the first time since I’ve been sober, so at least 10 years, probably more. Turns out I didn’t miss it it all. We each spent a day with it coming out both ends, and then another 2 or 3 decidedly under the weather, but at least not puking.

There’s a good bit of stuff going on in our lives at the moment, and each of us being down and out for a few days didn’t help at all.

Well, for all of us. There’s always something going on. Some periods of time are denser than others it seems. We’re in an extra dense period right now. Not a great time for us to be on the ropes for a week.

We don’t talk much about our day jobs in here, and that’s not going to start now. All I’ll say is it’s been a grind for each of us for for the last few weeks, longer for Kate.

When last we did a post like this, there were a couple things mentioned as being part of our full plate. Good a time as any to give an update.

Kids first. The one who had the word Cancer told to them by a doctor has since found out it was a false alarm. Still had some surgery to go thru but is nicely on the mend. Another was staring into a big unknown legally. That’s been resolved, and we’re all now coming to terms with the changes that have taken place in their life. On the bright side, their head will remain on their own pillow at night. The wedding seems to be in hyper speed now. The shower is in the rear view, as is the big-ticket stuff for Kate and I. She’s got an awesome mother of the bride dress, and I’ve got a spiffy new gray suit (still need to find a tie to match Kate’s dress). Interestingly, the hotel we’re staying at for the extended wedding weekend is just up the street from Kate’s boyfriend, James. Stay tuned…..

Finally on the kid front, the uniformed one will be home in a couple days with their family. They’ll be staying with us for a few nights; 2 grandbabies are involved. It’s going to be a trip to have the 2-year-old living with us; I can’t wait to see him and Clifford running around in the backyard.

(Here’s the skip over it if you already know us / introduction to us paragraph. Kate and I (Sam) are a married couple in our 50’s whose relationship is Ethically Non-Monogamous (ENM). We’re swingers, our marriage is open; we have sex with other people. We’re in a committed relationship, and somewhere on the polyamorous spectrum; Kate has a boyfriend and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met in an AA meeting; we’re each more than a decade sober now. If you’re curious about how this all works, we talk about our relationship in varying degrees of depth in other posts. We have an email address listed in our “about” page if you like to contact us.)

There’s a significant amount of weight right now with family stuff. I’ve seen it said that you’re only as happy as your saddest child. I agree with the sentiment but think it’s a good bit deeper than that emotional binary. I suspect it’s more like your degree of inner peace is determined by the heaviest load one of your kids is carrying. There’s some tonnage being carried at the moment. It’s impacting us. There’s not much bandwidth leftover for other things.

There are prices to be paid, daily, with being long term sober. There’s a percentage of your mental processing capacity which is dedicated to staying sober. This always must come first. Period. That’s nonnegotiable. When you’re newly sober, that’s a significantly bigger chunk of the bandwidth. Over time, the amount of energy and effort required tends to lesson, but it’s still first.

When there’s a lot of shit going on, and everything is demanding its own chunk of the processing, this becomes more difficult. Just when you need your sober overhead to be as low impact as possible, the opposite happens, and what it needs increases.

The easy days are, well, easy. The hard days tend to get logarithmically harder.

Lurking way down deep is the oiled smile that’s my addiction. It’s very patient and doesn’t need much of a crevice to spill out. Of course, there’s low grade smoke seeping out all the time; similar to steam from a volcano. That’s what the the daily headspace price takes care of. When there’s more smoke, ya need more headspace. If you’re not mindful, this extra processing can let too much oxygen in, and the smolder can pop a flame to life.

Stuff gets cumlative, and as it does, you’re more likely to loose your shit over a broken shoelace or someting trivial. It can be a grind at times.

A dear friend of Kate’s was killed a couple weeks ago in an ATV accident. This person had significant addiction issues; get a certain substance in them and they became batshit crazy. While it wasn’t an OD, and won’t be listed as a drug death, it 100% was. Another well known person locally got a hot shot (bad drugs) the other day and was dead right there. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of reminders about why we need to keep first things first.

A good sober day is when not much happens and you go to bed sober. A great sober day is when the shit hits the fan, you struggle and deal and get thru any way you can…..and you go to bed sober. We’ve had some truly great days lately.

Lifestyle wise it’s been a little bit quiet lately. Not a dry spell, more a lack of time due to outside influences. We still gotta work, there’s the aforementioned headspace stuff, as well as other family commitments.

Kate will be spending some time with Cliff # 1 in a few days. A second date with Kate typically means there’s going to be horizontal naked time, I’m confident that’s how this will go.

With the coming of Memorial Day, our favorite local-ish lifestyle event starts back up: pool parties at club in the York area called The Korral. We’ve had some fantastic experiences there the last couple years and I’m guessing we will this year as well. I think we’ve mentioned those pool parties in the past.

Kate and I have had our ups and downs over the last few weeks. This is the way of the world. At the end of the day, we treat each other with compassion, love, and decency; we each want the best for the other. It’s a significant point of gratitude for me that I have Kate by my side as we go thru life’s adventures, good and not so good.

Thanks for reading!!! Be kind to yourself and others!!!

Sam & Kate