Breakfast Cookies for Russell

Russell likes food a lot. Making food is love. Whether he makes it for someone or someone makes it for him, if you want to pay in to the love bank, enjoy food with Russell.

I am not as much about food, but I did have a Christmas tradition with my mom for several years. We would bake up a whole bunch of cookies and then deliver them to our friends on Christmas Eve. Food in general may not be love, but cookies are definitely love. And, bonus!, I know how to bake cookies.

But, bummer, Russell can't really have very much sugar without his body crashing and doing weird things. And so a few months ago I turned to the internet. I needed to find a tasty cookie recipe with plenty of protein and fiber to balance a little bit of sugar. Enter the hearty breakfast cookie recipe that I modified for better Russell enjoyment below.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup almond butter (because then I can serve them to my partner Adrienne)
  
• 1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup low- or non-fat milk (because it's tastier than water)
  
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups quick cooking oats
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• dash nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 cup dried cranberries (because they're more special than raisins)
  
• 1/2 cup raisins (to keep things sweet)
  
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts (but don't tell Russell)
  

Directions

• In a really large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together butter, almond butter, brown sugar, and vanilla until creamy. Beat in eggs and milk.
• Mix together flours, oats, wheat germ, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda. Mix into almond butter mixture. Stir in cranberries, raisins, and walnuts.
  
• Drop by heaping tablespoons 2 1/2 inches apart on greased (or non-stick) cookie sheets. Flatten slightly.
• Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 8-10 minutes (maybe a little more). Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks. Store in an airtight container.

I get about 22 cookies out of a batch, (ymmv). They fit nicely two to a sandwich-sized Ziploc and then they become little take-along baggies of love. I find it helpful to build informed consent before people bite into these cookies. They're super tasty breakfast in a desert-like shape. However, handing someone a "cookie" and having them bite in expecting chocolate numminess tends to result in disappointed/betrayed expressions.

I just finished baking another batch for Russell this afternoon. I was feeling a little off kilter earlier today. Despite the clear and overwhelming evidence, my brain was having a hard time believing it was loved. These things happen. Rather than asking for more external evidence, since that didn't seem to be helping, I decided to create some internal evidence. Clearly, if I'm baking cookies for someone and doing other good things for the people in my life then there must be a lot of love there to be shared around. Whacky logic, but hey it worked. By the time I'd finished eating the sample cookie, I felt all kinds of love. Not so much because more was coming in, but because I was letting more out. Russell's delighted expressions probably helped too.

Poly Go-to Strategies

I recently had a friend of a friend referred to me for advice and support on her new Poly explorations. Below is part of my reply:

Here are my go-to strategies when I hit bumps:
Self Inquiry

• What feels like love to me? What does your partner do that helps you know you're loved? What do you do to show her love? I find the five love languages quiz is a good place to start: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/
• Are my actions, beliefs, and attention encouraging or discouraging expressions of love? Are you holding your own loving actions back for some reason? Do you believe there is room for all of you here? Do you believe that your partner is the only source of love for you? Are you carefully cataloging every time you feel undervalued and possibly missing the little expressions of love in-between?
• NOTE: The questions I almost always find unhelpful to ask directly are What is at the core here? and What needs aren't being met? That's not to say that I don't ask them every time (some lessons are learned more slowly). In my experience though, the answers to those questions point fingers at surface illusions and don't lead to good problem solving. It's like describing the monster under the bed before actually looking to see if there's a monster at all.

Communication

• Start from a place of genuine compassion and gratitude.
• Try to describe the experiences inside your heart without making up stories about what should or shouldn't have happened.
• If you get to the point of making action plans, remember that these are experiments and having things go wrong is sometimes more helpful and informative than having them go right the first time.

Intentional time

• Sometimes, I just miss my partner and the world turns right again after we have a good date.
• This is different from the problem-solving communication time. This is time you write on a calendar and do something you're both likely to enjoy together.
• It can be on a comforting activity that happens on regular schedule. It can also be hidden gems of time when you break out of your routines and find something new together.
• Google calendar is my friend. All the people in my world are very very busy (Seriously, who isn't busy these days?) and sharing calendars helps me find those little spaces to slip in and enjoy one another.

Things to love about my life

I just felt the urge to send a little love text. I typed it out on my not-smart phone. I went to select recipients. The top 5 most recent correspondents are automatically at the top of my list for easy communication on the not-smart phone. Every single one of them merits a late-night love text. AND I still had one more that I needed to search my contacts list for because there are 6 (SIX!!) people in my life that I love in a late-night love-text kind of way.

My life is AWESOME.

Oh and... Bang 4 the Buck is tomorrow night. If you identify as female, get your butt down there! Kaylee and I have an... arresting number prepared.

What's This? A Post?!

When one goes for more than a month without posting, things (a.k.a. huge fucking deals at the time) get boiled down to bullet points. In no particular order (not even chronological) here's my list:

• I'm exploring a whole different kind of loving with an amazing super-wonderful couple full of joy and wisdom. It isn't exactly NRE for me, but the kind of peace and pleasure I feel when we make time for one another is no less delicious.
• I just (as in moments ago) sent in an application to a job 800 miles away from where I'm living now. I'm especially enamored of the idea of this job. I've decided to put off the realities of moving until it's actually time to worry about it.
• I've now done two different dance performances at LRS. It's a lot of fun and if you are female and want an encore of my most recent performance with Kaylee, you should come to Bang 4 the Buck.
• About 6 years ago I started attending a local New Thought type church. I've been attending ever since with varying degrees of commitment and regularity. This whole time I've been avoiding "drinking the kool-aid" and taking their foundations class. I just went to the first session of that class tonight. There's a lot more to this and it will likely be a source for longer blog entries in the near future. Prepare for the "Woo-woo"
• I had some bumpy spots in some of my poly relationships over the course of the last two months. They pretty much all boiled down to: communication, logistics, and invalid comparisons. Again, there may be more details later.

Various and Sundry

It seems like I should post again so here you go:

• I'm thinking of changing the focus of my posts for the next year. I'm more than a year out from surgery and frankly it just isn't that big a deal in my life anymore. (Hence, I'm not posting so much) That said, I want to keep stuff archived so people looking for shared experiences have somewhere to turn, and I'm always open to questions on old posts.
  
• The poly parts of my life are definitely taking center stage in my personal growth plan right now. There are a lot of moving parts in my world of relationships which means there's rarely a dull moment. The tricky part of adjusting the blog to this emphasis will be in relaying genuine experiences without stirring up undue drama.
  
• I haven't stopped being kinky either--though the realization of these desires hasn't been quite as prominent as playing the poly balancing act. I would like to take at least a post or two in the near future to try to put into words what I get out of all this and what I'm still longing for.
• Performance/theatrical art has certainly made a come back in my life and I'm quite happy about that. I'll be dancing in an upcoming show at Little Red Studio here in Seattle. Rehearsals are going well so far.
  

Gym=Blogging?

When I got home from the gym tonight and sat down to blog, I realized the last time I sat down to blog was also one of the last times I'd been to the gym. I don't think this is actually a causal relationship. I think it's more about the number of nights when I've had enough time and energy to do more than basic needs self-care. That's not to say that I've been all work and exhaustion for the last month. It's just when one has four key relationships to maintain in addition to adding another 20 hours a week in extra-curricular activities, time to reflect and focus on body awareness can slip to the side.

Good news is; I have more time now (including a 4-day weekend that starts tonight).

My life is Awesome!

Okay, overall it's just about as awesome as most other people's lives. BUT the past weekend was particularly demonstrative of my life's unique flavor or awesomeness.

The week was stressful at work, not all bad stress, mostly high-intensity, "this is what we spend all year getting ready to do" kind of stress. Still Russell and I managed to have a nice dinner before Grind (the beginning of my weekend). Then, because I didn't have any actual responsibilities at this particular Grind, I went home to consult my closet about the night's costume.

I wasn't sure whether Tony (formerly known as Mr. NRE) was even going to attend Grind, so I approached my closet looking for something fun, but that would not be so cool as to be disappointing should he miss the opportunity to appreciate the outfit. Much as I wanted to go with a low-risk standard, there was a costume piece that refused to be denied any longer. The boots. As in my platform-heeled, lace-up-the-back, zip-up-the-front, I've-fallen-on-my-butt-more-than-once-while-dancing-in-them boots. I figured I had at least a couple more weeks before they demanded to be worn since I did take them out on a short test-run at SEAF. But NO these boots can get down-right bossy and demanded a serious high-femme outfit to set them off that night.

So I quickly sent a irresistibly tempting photo message to Tony hoping to insure he would show up, put myself together and out the door I went (with boots in hand because while they're bossy they were no where near convincing enough about their comfort and stability to keep me from wearing back-up shoes).

The boots did make it out on the dance floor. I did not fall on my ass. Tony did show up. And he was mightily appreciative of the outfit.

With the exception of a being a little extra cautious when the floor got crowded, it was almost as if I'd never had the surgery. My back didn't even get sore after all that dancing and balancing with a weird center of gravity.

That's all very nice, but here's where the awesomeness really starts:

On Saturday morning, I got to share breakfast with Max for the first time in much too long. He's been out of town and I've been a little tougher to schedule lately. Fortunately we had the good sense to share breakfast in private so we could enjoy each other and "what-not" without trying to maintain a vanilla exterior.

Oddly though, by the time I got home after sharing breakfast with Max, I was perhaps even a little more hungry than I was before breakfast. So Russell and I went out to lunch together and made plans for the way we wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon. Things didn't go exactly as planned but we really didn't mind. Honestly, what's not to like about an afternoon spent on very focused snuggling and "what-not," reading out loud, and sharing a pizza dinner while still naked in bed.

Then it was time for Russell and I to be on our separate ways. I was off to see opening night of a show that Tony was performing in. The show went quite well and Tony and I wrapped up the day with still more focused snuggling and "what-not."

That was significantly more "what-not" than I pack in to any given week on a regular basis, much less a single day and guess what... My back feels fine (my girl bits are a little cranky, but hey, there's a price for everything). Russell, Max, and Tony all spoiled me rotten on Saturday which is just what I needed to be ready to jump back in to the craziness at work today.

Seriously, my life is awesome!

Where'd Red Go?

I don't have any big events to prepare for.
I don't have any major health struggles.
I have plenty to talk about.
Where the hell have I been?!

Three little letters explain so much: N.R.E.
It's a delightful mental illness which all the experts say will eventually pass on its own without significant treatment.
It frequently manifests symptoms like: sleeplessness, exhaustion, manic episodes, obsessive fixation on communication devices, and characteristic eye rolling in bystanders.

In poly circles especially, NRE (new relationship energy) can be... volatile. There's the fantastic joyful high that can spread out and run all over the other partners resulting in (among other things) more fun sex for everyone. But there's also the high potential for all parties to communicate poorly and make stupid mistakes. Failure to properly manage NRE has been the death of many many poly relationships.

So what am I doing to keep the good and mitigate the risks?
Awareness: The first step is to recognize that this is infact NRE. It's not suddenly finding the one true thing I've been seeking my whole life. Nor is it a casual friendly flirtation to be down-played.
Communication: I'm trying to err on the side of overcommunicating with existing partners. Even with that goal, I think I'm still falling short a little. I'm also trying to pay attention to what my partners are saying (and not saying) about their comfort levels with the situation.
Quality time: I'm making intentional time with my existing partners doing the things we like best or that feel special and unique to our relationships.

So far, so good.

Public Engagements

I just got home from speaking at a local university psychology class about being a kinky poly pervert (wearing my new favorite Pepper Potts suit just for fun). The class had good questions. A couple of people even dropped by afterward to ask for my blog address, so if you're stopping in from that class, hello and welcome. This may not be quite the content you're looking for, but follow some of the other blogs in my list at the bottom of the page for people who post more fun stuff.

In about three and a half hours I'll be leaving for another public appearance... at Norwescon. I'm not attending the con itself, but Tonya of fetishwear.net asked Kaylee and I to model a set of matching suits for the fashion show tonight. I'm a Norwescon virgin, so this should be an interesting new experience at least.

It wasn't so very long ago that I would have shied away from both of these opportunities. I thought I needed to stay "in the closet" to protect my career and social status. I did adjust my career a little to make more space in my life for these things. Russell brought something up in the presentation at the university though that reflects pretty clearly my new prospective on these things. Society as a whole just doesn't care all that much what I do with other consenting adults. It's that vocal minority that we all live in fear of. The best way I've found to deal with them is just to be myself, happy and harmless.