Nothing’s Static For Long

We held off for as long as we could. We gave in yesterday (well, last weekend now). The propane fireplace (our main heat source) at Casa Da Sam and Kate has been lit.

It wasn’t horrible at all yesterday, flirted with 70 (f) and the sun was in and out of clouds early. There was a front coming in and with it much lower temps as well as predicted strong winds; made sense to have it lit in case of a power outage. I suspect that yesterday will be the last time we see 70 till sometime in March next year.

The Chow Hound Cat, all three of them, will soon be making the annual migration from living outside to curled up on the couch closet to the fireplace. The 2025 migration is complicated by the arrival of a now 15lb piranha / velociraptor disguised as a suspiciously cute puppy.

Billie is totally enamored of all 3 Chow Hound’s, alas, 2 of the 3 are somewhat less than thrilled with her.

Fluffy Chow Hound has found the Zen / Tao of Billie and the two of them have an almost bizzare snuggly relationship, well, at least when Billie’s not trying to hump him. Not all the way sure that’s what’s happening, but it’s in the neighborhood. Fluffy Chow Hound is by far our most tolerant cat, he channels “The Dude”.

Momma Chow Hound (she’s Fluffy’s mom) lost at least 2 of her lives when she poked her head in the other day without realizing that Billie was right there. The briefness of that chase was not at all in sync with its intensity.

House Panther Chow Hound is the most likely to eventually knock some sense into Billie. He’s the most athletic and the most “cat” of the three. He’s tolerant of puppy energy to a point; the day is coming where claws will be out when he bitch slaps Billie. House Panther went on a weeklong walkabout a few years ago, we thought he was dead for sure. Thankfully he’s not. He’s my favorite. I think Kate, slut that she is, splits love equally among the other two.

If you’re reading us for the first time……Kate and I 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 and cuckold spectrums; Kate has a boyfriend (or two) and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met in a 12 step 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 would like to contact us.

Similar to the House Panther, the day has arrived where we’ve decided to take our foot off of the lifestyle / ENM gas pedal. Along these lines, I’m no longer in a “must have a post every week from Sam & Kate” place.

That’s 100% NOT us saying we’ve seen the error of our ways and are now sliding into the mono-normative phase of our life. I mean, do you even know Kate????

More of an acknowledgment that our energy with lifestyle stuff has been evolving over the last several months. We remain open to most things that would happen organically, but are hopping off the always one more, your’e never satisfied bandwagon.

Probably more of a change for me than for Kate. I’ve always been the driving engine for getting out there and meeting new lifestyle people; it’s me (like all husbands) who drives our presence on the various sites. That’s evolved this year for sure; we’ve dropped / canceled SDC and Kassidie. We’re still on SLS and I pop on every now and then to look at the calendar.

I’m close to being exhausted with dealing with people on the sites. I’ve found myself being short tempered on occasion and that’s something that points the lense of observation squarely back at me.

Something that I noticed fairly early on in my sobriety journey is that dogs are an excellent barometer of my headspace. The dog’s that have been in my life have all been great, and with the notable exception of the current fur piranha, typically do next to nothing on the “bad dog” side of the coin. If I find myself being short with Clifford, there’s a 97% chance that I’m the problem and doing nothing more than lashing out at her.

That holds for most things and is a truism of being sober; when disturbed, when there’s something that isn’t how I want it to be, the problem is with me. Sure, there are things that are out of my control, I can however control (well, on a good day or a good moment) my response and reaction. Most likely I’m the one in a situation that’s going to have to change. The tax man is gonna tax man, it’s not on him how I respond, it’s on me.

The juice isn’t worth the squeeze for either of us at this point with playing the online / swinger site game. That game isn’t going to change, so, I have to make the pivot.

For the Sam & Kate side, there’s a couple things. First, we’re just not as active in the lifestyle now as we were a year ago; not as much going on to write about. This has never been a porn blog, and I have zero interest in turning it into one. I’ve written a few times about hotel parties and what goes on there; I don’t feel the need or have the desire to chronicle our every coming and going. I don’t want to do porn, and I don’t want to do repetitive.

Kate and I haven’t had to do much (any?) heavy lifting lately with our relationship and how we deal with ENM. There’s only so many times and ways that I can communicate more or less how we’ve operationalized what’s written in “The Ethical Slut”.

I’ve tried to keep Sam&Kate conversational and with more of storytelling than lecture vibe; not a whole lot of new or different ENM stories lately. We’ve been there, we’ve done that, and we’ve probably written a post about it. When something new or a different take on something pops up, I’ll write about it.

Along those lines, I’m committing to getting some type of index up. Not sure how that’s going to look, gotta figure it out. Maybe do several posts that are themed and have links to the stories about a given subject. One could be lifestyle travel and events with a bunch of links in the body. Time will tell.

What I’m sure of is that we’re going to be leaving Medium.

We’re up and running pretty solidly now at samnkate.com (tho I’m pretty sure I never posted the last story there) If you’re interested in what comes down the pike for us, that’s where we’re going to be. Now’s the time to wander over there and hit the subscribe button.

I gave Medium a fair shake after they went off the rails late last year and early this year. If anything, they’ve doubled down, and the platform looks more like an AI infused infomercial hawking memecoin or Mar A Largo type furnishing / wallpaper than anything I want to continue supporting; it’s gaudy. It’s a damn shame that the Medium management folks have turned a flourishing corner of the internet with a vibrant writing community into the dumpster fire that it’s become.

I certainly don’t feel that I’ve said everything I want to say about ENM, or that we’ve gone thru everything that being an ENM couple has to offer. We’re not done, just shifting gears.

Kate and I are solid. We’re enjoying the changing seasons. We had a snuggle party with Clifford and Billie last night. Cliff was a little perplexed; she’s used to being ushered out of the bedroom when horizontal time is on the menu. It was great, Billie is right at home.

As always, thank you for reading and be kind others and yourself!!!

Sam & Kate