Monthly Archives: March 2005

With A Lot On The Mind

I haven’t been sleep­ing well late­ly. At night I wear an anti-brux­ism splint (made of ther­mal active mate­r­i­al to elim­i­nate met­al clasp­ing), and this pre­vents the occlusal sur­faces of my teeth from wear­ing down. Unfortunately, this does­n’t pre­vent the actu­al act of grind­ing, and some­times I still wake up with lock-jaw.

Ever since the begin­ning of the year, things have been along mov­ing quick­ly, both good and bad. On top of that, most of it has been hap­pen­ing all at once, leav­ing my emo­tions in a rather unset­tled state.

Everything feels like it’s some duo­tone greyscale.

It’s not that any­thing is wrong, but there’s been a lot on my mind, espe­cial­ly with the upcom­ing move. I have to get the walls trimmed and washed before paint­ing them. I have to get the locks changed and dim­mer switch­es installed. I have to find the per­fect desk and reclin­er for my room. I have to make sure that the phone and cable is installed. I have to adjust to a new set of month­ly (some­times bi-week­ly) pay­ments for insur­ance, hydro, heat, con­do man­age­ment, mort­gage, and prop­er­ty tax. I have to relax and take one thing at a time.

Hopefully, things will be set­tled by mid-April.

The Keys To The House

Thumbnail: Keys to my house

The trans­fer of keys is the very last step in buy­ing a house. Aside from all the steps involved in actu­al­ly pur­chas­ing one, to get a set of keys means the com­ple­tion of many things. A con­sol­i­da­tion of one’s funds (deposit­ed in trust, post­ed on file, ver­i­fied by accoun­tants). The pay­ment of all par­ties involved (lawyer for legal fees, gov­ern­ment for land trans­fer tax, insur­ance com­pa­ny for title insur­ance, as well as the sell­er for the full amount of the house). A record in the munic­i­pal min­istry of the trans­fer own­er­ship (once the lawyers of both par­ties involved have paid for an exe­cu­tion clear­ance cer­tifi­cate).

The keys sig­ni­fy that the deal has been closed, and noth­ing has gone wrong between the time of pur­chase and the day of trans­fer. Usually, I wor­ry about things going wrong, even when there’s only a mar­gin­al chance, and I have a com­plete under­stand­ing of this fact. When some­one shakes my hand after an inter­view to con­grat­u­late me on get­ting the job, I’ll wor­ry for days, right up until I get my name on the con­tract. This was no excep­tion. Anything could go wrong — sell­er chang­ing his mind, hid­den law­suits or liens, or even a fail­ing of the final inspec­tion — from the day I made the bid to the last min­utes of the clos­ing date.

Yesterday, I walked into my lawyers office. I car­ried with me a cer­ti­fied cheque that was most­ly my down­pay­ment, but also includ­ed his fees and tax­es (I’m for­tu­nate enough to not have go into my line of cred­it to pay for the lat­ter two). I signed sev­er­al doc­u­ments, received my sta­tus cer­tifi­cate and con­do papers, as well as oth­er let­ters of con­fir­ma­tion.

Today I picked up my keys, and now I own a house.

Fatness In Stereo

Thumbnail: Large Dolly in stereo

I’ve tried many times to cap­ture the actu­al size of Dolly’s cur­rent girth, but the cam­era does­n’t real­ly do a good job of it. I fig­ured that the only way to accu­rate­ly show how large she’s got­ten is with stereo­scop­ic images. That way, one can actu­al­ly tell how much Dolly is com­ing off the couch with a bit of depth per­cep­tion. It’s nev­er easy to take stereo­scop­ic pic­tures of a cat. Usually they’ll move or twitch when the alter­nat­ing pho­to is being tak­en, so it almost always has to be done while they’re asleep. Even a twitch of the cam­era strap, or a shuf­fling of feet will be enough to pique the curios­i­ty of a cat

Dolly’s head looks small in com­par­i­son to the rest of her body, but her head is actu­al­ly nor­mal for a cat her age, and it’s her pot bel­ly that’s grown out of pro­por­tion. Every time some­one comes over, I usu­al­ly get a com­ment on how much she’s grown. Outward.

It's A D/s Life: Life After Loo

I haven’t writ­ten about this sub­ject in a while now. I need­ed to take a break, to dis­tance myself in order to gain some per­spec­tive. Now that I’m here, I feel com­fort­able enough to talk about it again.

But before I go on, a lit­tle expla­na­tion of my poten­tial bias is need­ed. I’ve always been one to believe that a sin­gle bad expe­ri­ence should­n’t turn some­one away from any­thing for­ev­er. I try to keep this belief in my head when I catch myself asso­ci­at­ing the D/s lifestyle with pain (ha! get it?) and frus­tra­tion. The only hands-on expe­ri­ence I have being a dom­i­nant was with a per­son who would repeat­ed­ly hurt me and bring me down.

However, I don’t believe that this was a con­scious char­ac­ter­is­tic. It was a per­son­al­i­ty that was wide­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal, mean, and extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to deal with, but all of this fit the “type” of sub­mis­sive that she was. I saw her as a tremen­dous, effu­sive force that, when wield­ed cor­rect­ly, could be used to great advan­tage. The only prob­lem is there are only few with enough strength and patience to tame and guide such a force, although some­one who could accom­plish such a task would form an unbreak­able bond between mas­ter and slave. I knew that I would even­tu­al­ly have the strength, but I cer­tain­ly did not have the patience to be deal­ing with what con­stant­ly felt like a per­son work­ing against me.

So it’s with this cau­tion­ary step that I pro­ceed to explore the D/s branch of the BDSM umbrel­la. My sub was depen­dent on the lifestyle; she required it in her rela­tion­ships, and her only means of relax­ation was being a bot­tom at a par­ty. I knew the risks of get­ting involved. One of my biggest fears was that I would grow depen­dent on the lifestyle as well. After all, what greater ela­tion is there than to feel as if one owns anoth­er mind, anoth­er soul, anoth­er per­son.

As of yet, I don’t feel some tremen­dous urge to go out and find a sub to abuse. I’m not expe­ri­enced enough as a dom­i­nant to do that. I know, how­ev­er, that D/s is some­thing I’d want to explore in future rela­tion­ships. I con­sid­er it a basis of open­ness, trust, and accep­tance. Exploring the lifestyle (as a female sub espe­cial­ly) would lay the ground­work for a lot of oth­er things.

Many of which I have yet to dis­cov­er for myself.