A post in which I completely waste a Saturday, except the evening

Well I would love to tell you that I was responsible and worked in on my hat today. Or worked in the yard. Or indeed did anything productive, but that would be a lie. Well I did wash one of my winter coats so I could put it away. That’s it.

I procrastinated today, and wasted time online. I talked to a couple of guys, but I had a message on Bear411 from a guy named Al. I had looked at his profile before, and was going to message him, but then didn’t. I don’t remember why now. Anyway, I had winked at him or something last night, and had a very sweet message back from him today that got the dialogue going. We ended up spending most of the day today instant messaging back and forth. He’s a really nice guy. And he’s good looking. And he’s funny, which I love. And he seems to think I am the bee’s knees.

But being me, I had to find out what’s wrong with him; which I did. He works - compulsively, and apparently all the time. He is a manager for a drugstore, and they seem to feel completely justified in preventing any kind of personal life. No weekends off. Mandatory six-day weeks for management from the last week of November through December. Geez, and I thought Michael’s schedule was bad. Since the GM is on vacation this week, he apparently has to be there pretty much when he’s awake.

But it is nice to have some hope on the horizon.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, George is giving me fits. Fits, I tells ya! I am getting a lot of practice at my Western grip.

I got a text from Billy around 6 or so, inviting me out to dinner with them. Since I had just been wishing I would get the ^&%%^$#!!~ out of the house, I was thrilled to accept. We went to Miyako for sushi, and I have to say I think their food just keeps getting better. I think they are better than Irashai was, even in the old days when they were in that building. Of course, since they have moved, Irashai is awful now.

So we had excellent sushi, and I got some quality Russ and Billy time in. I love them so much. It had been too long since we just hung out. After supper we went back to the house and just visited and talked until late. Russ and I made plans to go to the flea market tomorrow, which effectively kills Sunday for getting anything done, since I made plans with Jeff and James for tomorrow.

In other words, next week will be insanely busy. But I don’t care right now. I’m enjoying being able to spend some time with my friends too much.

A frustrating Friday evening*

It was a pretty quiet day today. Alan was out, the monthly reports were done, and so I just had me regular job to do, which was a refreshing change.

After work I would love to say that I went right home and worked on my hat, but I did not.
I rode by my friends Randy and John’s coffee shop to see them, but they weren’t there.

So I went on home, got stuck in online and wasted the entire evening there. I tried to fall into the Manhunt vortex, which was really where I felt that I needed to be tonight, but no dice. I got stood up twice.

Eventually I did have a buddy show up for a very short visit. Prolly shouldn’t have done it. But I felt like I needed to. After that I went to bed. But it was a frustrating waste of an evening.

A post in which I have Spring Fever

Pretty badly.

This afternoon I suddenly had an indescribable craving for coconut cake. I mean I just went bestial. I could have squatted over one and dug chunks out of it with my hand, grunting "Cake. Good." But apparently I have just lost control of all of my appetites.

I was feeling very irresponsible when I got off work. It was raining, though, which kept me from going out to find a place to roll naked in the grass or something. I ran by Publix to get some coffee, since I was almost out. The bottom dropped out just as I pulled in to the parking lot, of course. I decided not to get out in that madness, but I wasn’t about to leave without my coffee. If ever I doubted my coffee addiction, it was proven today. I sat in the car and waited for it to slack off a bit, then promptly stepped into a four-inch deep puddle when I got out of the car, drenching my feet. Nice.

By the time I got home, though, it had almost stopped. I went on in the house to responsibly eat my homemade food, but got on the computer and just pretty much fell into it. I went on Manhunt and chatted, but didn’t get drawn into the vortex (despite efforts). I also went on Bear411 and chatted on there for a while. The guy from CO has stopped messaging me. Just as well I guess.

I talked to Gurry, a guy I knew years ago who is back in touch. I also started talking to a younger guy named Sean. I had looked at his profile, and he’s cute, but he’s 25, with all the inherent difficulties. Old movies to him are from the 80s. The 1980s. He subscribes to the 'cult of masculinity' culture that swept the gay community in the 90s (and is fairly defensive about it). He does read though, which is a plus. So I’m chatting with this guy and trying to find something in common, and really he’s cute and all, but it’s so not working. He’s so much younger. He still goes to bars. But at least he’s local.

But all I can think about is men. Well, men, food, and sleep. I can’t seem to get caught up on sleep from last week, but I have incessant hormones and appetite to deal with too. I just want to throw some guy down, smear food on him, eat it off, fuck the daylights out of him, and then throw one paw across him to prevent his escape and go to sleep.

I also talked to a guy named Allen. He owns a hotel up near Asheville, and we’ve been virtually sniffing around each other for years, but things have just never fallen into place. I would really like to go meet him though.

Of course, since I was on Manhunt, two married guys were talking to me. One of them I've known for a while. He's unhappy with his lover, but not really willing to do anything about it. The other is new to town, and apparently really wants to cheat on his lover, but can't admit it to himself. As a consequence, he's trying to set up assignations with 8,700 'ground rules' so that he can justify to himself that it isn't really cheating, before just not showing up at all. Geez. He was easy enough to get rid of. I just called his bluff and he went screaming into the night (or at least away from his keyboard).

So I spent all evening on the computer chasing men to watch them run, or pining over long-distance guys, and basically just feeling like I’d like to connect with someone again. It would be nice to have a date.

Yeah, so officially so much for the fading libido of an aging lothario, which is what I thought was happening around January. George has awoken from hibernation with a vengeance, and he’s pretty much giving me no peace. Sigh.

I did no hatting tonight. Bad, naughty, wicked Steve. Lighting the Grail-shaped (or perhaps phallic-shaped) beacon and all.

I’m officially sick to death of babying this tattoo. It’s been almost two weeks now, come on! I'm like heal up already!! There is one place that got scabby, and it just will not turn loose, plus it’s itching like crazy and I can’t scratch it. I love having them, but man do I HATE taking care of them while they heal!

Basically, I'm just discombobulated and unsatisfied.

A post in which I finally receive a visit from the Muse, and begin to Hat

It was a strange day today. Good, but strange.

I’m still trying to lose weight, so I’m hungry a lot. I have this Hat Party coming up, and no real inspiration, plus I have a service date coming up with no menu planned, and the Atlanta trip to see Myz Shay is waiting on Rhonda, who I think I’m going to have to chase down to try to be good to her. Usually when I have this kind of thing going on, I feel all frazzled, the psychic ends flapping around me in a jumble like a mental frustration pencil. But I don’t feel that way. I feel like everything’s gonna work out and be just fine. I feel calm and pleasantly optimistic. I never really knew why people said someone was ‘collected’ before, but that’s how I feel – collected; as if all the ends were tucked in, and my mind was just a neat, cool, self-contained package.

Unusual for me. Wish I knew where this was coming from, I’d like to get used to it.

I did make some calls today to ask some pretty amused people if I could buy a pith helmet from them, but no dice.

After work today I decided that I was going to suck it up, go to Wal-Mart, look around for a bit, and hope that inspiration would strike. Sometimes you just have to court the Muse a bit. I had a bunch of beads and stuff I bought for my hat (the theme this year is Mardi Gras), but really had only the vaguest of ideas what I was going to do with them. And no hat base – which is really key. I hate going to Wal-Mart, but they have a craft section (although it is now much smaller and more poorly stocked than it used to be), a garden department (garden hats, plus you never know when you’re going to find some odd container that might make a good hat base), and I figured they would just have some plain ole hats too (they did, but not the kind I wanted).

Inspiration did indeed strike in the lawn & garden department. After a quick Felliniesque moment walking around with a piece of garden equipment on my head, I had my base. And yay, finally. It was good that inspiration struck rather quickly. I had to get home to pay Khavis, the very nice boy who cuts my grass. He was coming today, for which I was very grateful.

As luck would have it, though, I got struck by inspiration again on the way home, and had to stop off at the Kmart for another hat element. I hate the Kmart near my house. As much as I loathe Wal-Mart, and will indeed shop most anywhere else, I dread going in the Kmart near my house. "Why?" you might well ask. Well first of all, they stock some shelves once every 6-8 months, whether they think they need it or not. Generally, they just run out of stuff and then just never have it again. Also, despite the season, day of the week, or pending hurricane, they have *two*, (and only TWO) checkers on duty. Occasionally during Christmas they’ll have a couple extra, but generally be it Monday at closing or Saturday afternoon, they have two. Period. One of them is always caught up in some kind of dispute, or about to go on break. That leaves One. Line. Open. Almost always with 87 people waiting to check out. Tonight I had a choice of the 87-person line, or the one with a woman who had some kind of issue. I chose the issue line, so of course it went on forever. The woman had found some coupon that was apparently from the late Triassic, but was supposed to still be good. The evaluation took quite some time, involving a leisurely stroll to the service desk, a protracted perusal by both the checker and the manager, and the manager’s return to the register with the checker to actually ring in said coupon, followed by the inevitable wrestling with the cash register which, access code or not, was having none of it. This is how I spend my off hours.

At any rate, I did eventually get home, to find my grass mowed. Lovely. I really, really love having staff. I don't know what I'm going to do when he goes off to college, but I'm not borrowing trouble. He's such a nice kid, and really seems to care about doing a good job - so rare these days. I called Khavis and paid him, but in truth I just couldn’t wait to get started on my hat. So I did. It went well; I have to say, better than I had anticipated. I didn’t finish, of course, but I made some good headway and was pleased.

By about 8:30 I was tired of doing that, so I decided to take a break and read for a while before I went to bed. It was a good evening. I am SO glad that I have a start on my hat. It looks like I should be able to finish it by next weekend, no problem (crossing fingers), which will free up next week for me to prep for my service date. Apparently that confident feeling was justified after all. If I can just avoid public retail space for the next week or so, things will be dangerously close to perfect…

A post in which I am naughty and idle

OK, with next week shaping up the way it is, I really, really need to get stuck in and get my hat done. But I’m having problems with my base (usually the hardest part), and having a hard time getting motivated. I was supposed to shop for bases on the way home today, but all I really wanted to do was go home and read. I was also starving.

One of the vendors brought in “school lunches” for us at work today. Sloppy joes, mixed vegetables, tater tots, and ice cream cups. So I had mixed vegetables and tater tots for lunch. The ice cream cups were surprisingly rather tasteless. I think they were better when you used to eat them with those little wooden paddles. Anyway, by the end of the day, I was fairly ravenous.

I decided that I’ve been good enough over the last couple of weeks that I could go out to dinner tonight if I wanted, this despite having 87 pounds of egg salad in the fridge to eat. I called Anna to see if she would go to dinner with me, but didn’t get an answer. I thought about calling Kimbley and Laura because it’s really been too long since I’ve seen them, but it seemed like a big rigmarole to get into. So I just went on home.

The yard guy came by today. I had been meaning to call him, since the grass is like knee-deep, but he saved me the trouble. He’s going to come tomorrow and take care of it, which is lovely. I just haven’t really had the time to fool with the yard this year, but I need to get some things done. The bushes really need trimming. I’ll get to it. Neither of the neighbors have cleaned up their yards so far, so it isn’t critical yet.

I ate dibs and dabs out of the fridge. There were things in there that needed to be eaten before they ‘went to the bad’, as Grandma Shumate says. So I ate them. I had bought two kinds of chips to go with Miss Kat’s guacamole, so the bag she didn’t choose was in the house. I ate some of them. I had gotten a prize of milk chocolate figurines for my second place at the egg dying party, so I ate some milk chocolate for dessert.

Myz Shay called as I was finishing up, and we talked for a bit. She was asking about dates for me to come down, but Rhonda hasn’t gotten back with me on her thing yet, so we’re kind of in limbo. I’m going to give her a day or two longer, and then call her to rattle her cage about it.

When Myz Shay called, I had turned off the television, and I just decided to leave it off. I finished Narcissus in Chains today, and it was better than I was expecting. Maybe the Anita Blake series hasn’t jumped the shark after all. So I started the next one tonight, Cerulean Sins, which is actually a fairly heinous title, but which started rather well.

So I just read, with the windows open in the fresh air and the cats walking all over me. It was a nice, quiet, relaxing evening.

But if I don’t get going, I’m going to reap the whirlwind next week.

A post in which it is a fairly quiet Monday

I was up before the alarm this morning, which was good. I needed some coffee and gather-my-wits time. I was tired at work today, but I’ve certainly been in worse shape and still come in.

I took the day off for the Monday after the Hat Party. I’m doing dinner for Lady Beth the night before, and then the Hat Party on the 18th, so that’s going to be a very busy weekend. I’m going to need a day off. It should be fine, as long as I can get my hat done this weekend. I want to be able to plan menus, iron napkins, pack china, etc next week.

I had a very nice email from Lynn today with all kinds of helpful hints for my service date with Lady Beth, which I very much appreciated. I wanted to be sure to include her in this process. I didn’t want her to feel jealous or hurt in any way. It is the Domme’s prerogative what they do and don’t do, but that doesn’t mean that the submissive doesn’t have feelings. I would much rather her feel included and part of this then left out. She has been welcoming to me from the beginning about my pledge, and was lovely to me about this request for help also. I hope I get to cook for them both some time. But yeah, I need to concentrate on getting through the first service date for now.

On the way home tonight I was thinking about making egg salad. They sent all the eggs (all the ones I didn’t break, anyway) home with me from the party yesterday. I had 22 eggs left to use up (having eaten two for breakfast this morning). Egg salad is great, but I wanted something different. I first thought I would make the egg salad taste like deviled eggs (I adore deviled eggs), and then I thought, even better, fancy deviled eggs. I have this great recipe that I got on line from a wonderful website that is no longer up (the guy that ran it was a gourmet, but he was all about the fat and had a fairly serious heart attack, but I digress), but I haven’t made them in a while. The reason is that when I do I have to beg people to eat them.

These eggs are absolutely scrumptious, but they have non-traditional deviled egg ingredients in them. When I tell most people about them, they get the scrunched up “picky face” that many southern people get when you describe basically anything that their grandmothers haven't been making for at least six generations. Sigh. So I got sick of making them and then begging people to eat them. It's tiring being Sam I Am. Plus I really, really hate peeling eggs, so I just quit taking deviled eggs to parties.

I ran in the grocery store to pick up the couple of ingredients I would need to make my eggs, only to find myself in the End of Days or something. There were 8 million-bajillion people crammed in the store, all apparently buying provisions for simultaneous Arctic expeditions. So I'm standing there thinking are we running out of food? Did someone call for snow tomorrow? What the hell is the deal? The woman in line behind me noted my confusion and helpfully pointed out that it is the first business day of the month (Good Friday having been a holiday) and that food stamps and Social Security checks had arrived today. Well that explained it, but I sure didn't like it any better. The self-check was of course 50 deep - sometimes you can get out faster that way, but one woman was checking out a mounded cart full of groceries, despite the clearly placed sign that said '20 items or less'. So I got in the '10 items or less' line with a checker. I would have gotten through faster too, if my usual luck hadn't held. Of course the register broke. I don't think it's just me at the hateful BiLo near my house. I think they have registers specifically designed to malfunction at the worst possible time. So I stood there and tried to think of England (as opposed to running amok) while the checker and the manager wrestled with the stupid receipt printer for ten minutes. Sigh.

Fresh eggs are very hard to peel. It used to be fairly easy to find eggs that were a bit stale, but not these days. Apparently the eggs that James got to dye came from someplace where they had a guy poised under each chicken’s ass with a catcher’s mitt. After the eggs were caught, they were sent by individual courier to assure that they were only minutes old when purchased. The involved chickens also apparently had a measure of super glue in their feed. These shells were Stuck. On.

By the time I had finished peeling enough of them to make the egg salad; I vividly remembered why I stopped taking deviled eggs to parties. Michael actually bought me one of those Eggstractors at one point for my birthday – I’m sure you’ve seen them on television. I promptly named it the Eggsploder, because it really just blew ragged egg chunks all over the place.

So I finally sat down to my dinner of a piece of toasted sourdough bread with egg salad, and a bowl of potato salad. I thought I had tons left, and was actually trying to give it away at work today, but when I dished it out tonight I realized that there really wasn’t that much of it – just a bit more than I needed for suppers this week. I packed the rest up to take to Terry at work tomorrow.

I ate my delicious egg salad, and reflected on the fact that at times I feel very much like the protagonist in Babette’s Feast. I knock myself out trying to make great stuff for people who would really be just as happy – or happier – to live on nothing but deep-fried chicken strips and honey mustard. I also kind of feel like Squidward sometimes, trying desperately to cultivate a little appreciation for the finer things while living among folks who could really care less, and in fact think I’m odd for not being exactly the same way.

I felt kind of lonely tonight. I called to talk to Myz Shay, since I owe her a call from last week, but couldn’t reach her. I also called Jason. He would have eaten my egg salad and appreciated it. I miss him. I didn’t get him either, so I left a message. I fooled around online for a bit, and ate some more of my heart out over the gorgeous guy from Colorado I’ve been chatting with on Bear411. I also talked to a new guy on Manhunt for a little bit tonight. Capping the evening though was a lovely email from Lady Beth. I responded to her, and was content.

A post in which it is the 2nd annual egg-dying party

I was up at 7am this morning. Ordinarily, I would have lazed around. Sunday morning just is the perfect time to be lazy. Must be the devil’s work.

But today I had stuff to do. I got up, stripped the bed, put the sheets in to wash, and put fresh sheets on. I went in the kitchen and finished making over some Chinese vegetables I had in the freezer to make them edible for lunches this week. In the process I used up some noodles I had picked up at the Asian market that had been languishing in the cabinet for some time. I did four loads of laundry.

I got a 45 minute nap in so I would hopefully be fresh for tonight. I always end up staying too late at Jeff and James’s house.

I evaluated my potato salad. Usually I make the sauce too thick so the potatoes soak it all up. I tried to compensate by making it kind of soupy, and in the process had gotten it too soupy. So I ran out to the store for more mayonnaise to hopefully thicken it back up a bit. While I was out, I hauled off the recycling, and went by to get some potting soil to mix in with the regular dirt so I can put my tree out.

I bought a little Japanese maple last year, and didn’t get it in the ground last fall as I had intended. I’ve left it a bit too late now, since it’s already putting out leaves, but it needed to be set out. I really need to do some work in the yard, but I decided I might be burned at the stake if I started doing yard work on Easter Sunday. I thought I might be able to get away with putting out the tree, although I could hear my Grandpa Shumate’s voice in my head telling me that it wouldn’t live. Put out on a Sunday was bad enough, but put out on an Easter Sunday was just the death knell. I watered it in well, and went inside to get ready.

I had left myself plenty of time, which was a refreshing change. I took a leisurely shower, did my nails, and basically just made sure I did what I wanted to do before I left the house. I went down to my summer beard today. Thanks to the new clippers it was a cinch. I’ve lost a little weight now, and so I’ve kind of lost that porcine look my face was getting. I decided I looked pretty good.

I headed for Spartanburg, and the drive up seemed to take no time. I felt relaxed when I got there, instead of flustered the way I usually am when I get some place. I was glad I hadn’t gone to the flea market this morning so I had plenty of time to do what needed doing.

Jeff and James put out quite a spread. There was ham, boston butt, potato salad (from yours truly) (as predicted, servings consumed - 2.5), Parker house rolls, broccoli salad, oven-roasted asparagus, deviled eggs, and stuffed salmon. There was homemade banana pudding and a blueberry trifle for dessert. We had easily twice as much food as we would eat, I knew. After admiring the new deck (we dined al fresco this evening), and tucking in, we were all feeling pretty lazy.

Justin and Jeff had done the final prep on the dinner, and after straightening up a bit, Justin started putting the egg dye together. That’s where things went a bit wonky.

Last year, we had some commercial egg dye, and some that was just the food coloring kind. The commercial dyes work much better and yield much brighter colors. After last year, I just figured we would have al commercial dye this year. But Justin was in charge of the dye, and he’s old school about that. It turns out the commercial dye we had last year was some that James had brought. Although the party this year was at Jeff and James’s house, Justin was “in charge”, and I think there was a bit of a breakdown in the division of labor. When Justin brought out the dye for the eggs, it was all homemade food coloring dye, which no one was happy about. That pissed him off, which I can understand. He had put a lot of work in to the party, and had made the dye himself, and we were bitching. James had also thrown out the egg cartons so we had to improvise somewhere to put the dyed eggs to dry. We also didn’t have a clear crayon to make designs with, etc. So there wasn’t a bunch of stuff to dye and decorate eggs with, and it was kind of hard to get motivated anyway since we had eaten so much. Also, two of the prizes this year were Peeps, which no one wanted, since they’re pretty much inedible. Since Justin had bought all the prizes, I’m sure that rankled a bit too.

Amanda is a trooper though. Once she finally got interested in dying the eggs (she always wins), she scrounged around the house and found stuff she could use to make her eggs fancy. They turned out about fifty times better than everyone else’s, as usual. The rest of us would just kind of throw an egg in the dye, and then go have a cigarette and talk for a while. Jeff and Chad (Justin’s new bf) didn’t dye any at all. So it just wasn’t as much fun as last year. My eggs, just because I left them in so long, did have pretty good color to them, so I got second place for “eggs most likely to help children learn their colors”. James got third place for participation even though his eggs had fingerprints all over them from him handling them while they were wet. They didn’t last long anyway, because he set them on a table that wobbled, and when I moved it they fell all over the deck.

As good as it was to see everyone, I think Justin wanted this year’s party to be just like last year’s, and unfortunately you just can’t control that type of thing.

Anyway, we finished up the judging, and then went inside and blew up the Peeps in the microwave, which is about all they’re really good for.

Justin and Chad left pretty quickly after that, Justin citing school work he needed to do, but I think he was pretty disappointed.

I stayed on to visit. We hung out and just enjoyed each other’s company. I told stories to make James laugh. I love to get him tickled. I had intended to leave about 10pm, but when I checked the time it was 11:45. Ugh. I have to be up for work in 6.5 hours! I got home and got into bed as quickly as possible, but tomorrow is still going to be a rough day.