Christmas (and birthday!)
Wow it's been days since I posted. That's rare. Anyway holidays have kept me predictably busy.
My out of town sweetie came to visit over Christmas. Woo! It had been months since we saw each other, and would be possibly months more before the next opportunity, so this was really good. Every time I see him I am reminded that the distance doesn't matter; love lasts anyway. We have something really sweet and special and I am glad we found each other. It's been two and half years now together. I am also glad that ddbrown welcomes my other relationship. It all just... works. Happy.
I also really enjoyed being home with ddbrown. We've usually had Christmas with his family, largely for the little girls (nieces); this time we didn't travel and had a quieter Christmas ourselves.
We visited aabassplayer and poppins17 and talked and played Rock Band and that was fun. I traded off with ddbrown on guitar, once he got tired. I also got to show my other sweetie Wii bowling, which was a nice introduction to how the wii controller works, and in the second game he beat my score. Hah. :) I enjoyed being able to be with both my loves for Christmas, and being able to just relax and play and be.
We came home for the evening and Daniel and I started to build a fire. That turned out to be an "entertaining" task... two inexperienced fire builders, some wet unseasoned firewood logs, and no kindling but newspaper. When the first couple attempts failed, I sent Daniel out to get fallen deadwood from the front yard tree, and made kindling, though it was still somewhat wet and slow to take off. I did manage to get it going eventually, and then nurtured the tiny flame for about an hour before it finally got big enough to be self-sustaining. I didn't really see any shortcuts - it being Christmas, all the stores were closed, so no way to get already dry wood. So this was lots of work, but somehow it felt right to be spending my evening time on that. Very primal, very simple and real.
Though I have no pictures, one of my favorite moments was sitting in front of the fire, after it was going solid, with both my loves, just sitting quietly and enjoying the moment. I'm not sure how to put into words the joy I feel sitting with both together, or why it's so special to me. But it is. It's special and beautiful and makes me so deeply happy. It amuses me in retrospect that with three people present, two of whom were photographers with cameras on hand, none of us thought to take a picture. Too distracted enjoying the moment.
Today was Daniel's birthday, so we got him good food and had a fire again. This time we learned though - bought a pack of seasoned firewood (dry!), and the hockey puck size fire-starters. Much less kindling was necessary, and the fire took off nicely using just one dry log in with the wet ones. Also, gifts from family had arrived by mail, which included "pointy sticks" for roasting marshmallows and things. Apparently my nieces remembered Thanksgiving where we had to cut wood sticks to roast stuff as we had no metal cooking stick. So they got us cooking sticks. I'm happy to say they work great. :) And this time I remembered pictures.
I love how peaceful it was this year. I've missed that since I had quiet holidays when I was young. (Yes, even children can have a relatively quiet Christmas. :) Some children, anyway.)
My out of town sweetie came to visit over Christmas. Woo! It had been months since we saw each other, and would be possibly months more before the next opportunity, so this was really good. Every time I see him I am reminded that the distance doesn't matter; love lasts anyway. We have something really sweet and special and I am glad we found each other. It's been two and half years now together. I am also glad that ddbrown welcomes my other relationship. It all just... works. Happy.
I also really enjoyed being home with ddbrown. We've usually had Christmas with his family, largely for the little girls (nieces); this time we didn't travel and had a quieter Christmas ourselves.
We visited aabassplayer and poppins17 and talked and played Rock Band and that was fun. I traded off with ddbrown on guitar, once he got tired. I also got to show my other sweetie Wii bowling, which was a nice introduction to how the wii controller works, and in the second game he beat my score. Hah. :) I enjoyed being able to be with both my loves for Christmas, and being able to just relax and play and be.
We came home for the evening and Daniel and I started to build a fire. That turned out to be an "entertaining" task... two inexperienced fire builders, some wet unseasoned firewood logs, and no kindling but newspaper. When the first couple attempts failed, I sent Daniel out to get fallen deadwood from the front yard tree, and made kindling, though it was still somewhat wet and slow to take off. I did manage to get it going eventually, and then nurtured the tiny flame for about an hour before it finally got big enough to be self-sustaining. I didn't really see any shortcuts - it being Christmas, all the stores were closed, so no way to get already dry wood. So this was lots of work, but somehow it felt right to be spending my evening time on that. Very primal, very simple and real.
Though I have no pictures, one of my favorite moments was sitting in front of the fire, after it was going solid, with both my loves, just sitting quietly and enjoying the moment. I'm not sure how to put into words the joy I feel sitting with both together, or why it's so special to me. But it is. It's special and beautiful and makes me so deeply happy. It amuses me in retrospect that with three people present, two of whom were photographers with cameras on hand, none of us thought to take a picture. Too distracted enjoying the moment.
Today was Daniel's birthday, so we got him good food and had a fire again. This time we learned though - bought a pack of seasoned firewood (dry!), and the hockey puck size fire-starters. Much less kindling was necessary, and the fire took off nicely using just one dry log in with the wet ones. Also, gifts from family had arrived by mail, which included "pointy sticks" for roasting marshmallows and things. Apparently my nieces remembered Thanksgiving where we had to cut wood sticks to roast stuff as we had no metal cooking stick. So they got us cooking sticks. I'm happy to say they work great. :) And this time I remembered pictures.
I love how peaceful it was this year. I've missed that since I had quiet holidays when I was young. (Yes, even children can have a relatively quiet Christmas. :) Some children, anyway.)