Sunday morning

Definitely rare to wake up at the house on a Sunday morning -- not at the condo where I have to clean up a dozen lube-covered toys and do dishes and take trash/recycling out before I can head back to the house for lunch with T and then games with Steve & Friends.  And then a nap.

Today I have stretching & running & dishes & bathing Dax on my plate, will try to fit in games also.  It would be helpful if I could do an hour or two of work tonight, my Maids Monday would be easier then.

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Went to bed so full again last night, because T made ANOTHER dessert on top of the two meals he cooked (dessert is unnecessary, LOL).  It seems he loves to cook and bake for B.  Way more than he does for me, heh.  Obviously he (still) loves B in ways he doesn't love me (anymore).  And that's OK, we've done a fair job of getting along during Quarantine, and it is clear to me that T doesn't have romantic or sexual feelings for me (anymore), despite often describing me as his "husband" or his "partner".  I'd wondered whether the enforced closeness and social isolation over the past year would cultivate something deeper between us, and the answer is no, T would generally rather play video games by himself than hang out with me.  Eating meals together and watching new Star Trek together are the only important exceptions.  He hasn't played one board or card game with me in 12 months.  And that's OK!  I like knowing where I fit in.  I fulfill my needs in other ways, or not at all.  And I expect to move out later this decade, no rush.

Imagine if I lived with Steve instead of T, how many board games we'd have played together over the past year, and how many times Steve and I would've snuggled together.  Sometimes it is a mystery to me why T doesn't interact with me more, because I'm right here!

Way back when T and I were in couples counseling, I also had solo sessions with the counselor to discuss my goals for therapy.  My main goal was getting along better with T given his raw grief following the breakup of the triad and T's anger toward my continuing relationship with K.  If we could also rekindle our sexual relationship, that was a plus, but not a requirement, I said, because I love T either way.  It became clear near the end of couples therapy that T was not interested in rekindling our sexual relationship, and it is still clear.  He can't forgive me or trust me in that way.  I'd only wondered whether the prison-like nature of Quarantine would change his mind, like straight guys who have sex with men in prison, and it didn't.

I have trust issues with him as well, but I was willing to work on them together with a counselor.  T wasn't.  He's the one who ended couples therapy when his more limited set of goals were met.  So there we stand.

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The pain in my arm is all gone, on schedule.  Now let's see whether I caught COVID while inside the York CVS, heh, a couple more days before that incubation period has passed.

I know I have no immunity to COVID yet, but now I've got a three-day head start on immunity should I be exposed to COVID today.  In another week I should achieve 80% immunity.  Stepping on a Metro train on Friday will push it a bit, but B has been riding Metro even before his first shot because he doesn't have a car and Metro feels safer to him than Uber (and spending two hours in traffic picking him up or dropping him off is unsustainable).

But, again, not 100% immunity.  And COVID is starting to show up in some people more than 14 days after receiving both their shots.  Most prominently, the President of Argentina just caught COVID despite having received his second shot in February.  His symptoms are mild, but presumably he's still contagious and should isolate.

An important aspect of the COVID vaccines is that in addition to providing a level of protection against infection, they also provide protection against serious symptoms or death if you are infected.  There have been hardly any deaths from COVID among those who have been fully vaccinated.  This is the most important factor -- protecting people from dying.  An immune system that has already seen faux COVID spikes will protect you much better from the real thing, and will almost certainly save your life.

So as my immune system races ahead of the starting line, I'll be safer, but I can still catch and spread COVID.  This knowledge will temper my lunge toward freedom.  Yes, I'll return to Metro, I'll get a haircut, I'll return to the dentist, I'll start going on dates again, I'll plan a trip to see K (and MAB) in Portland.  But I'll try to keep things small and limited.  I don't want to become a superspreader ;-)

Books of the Moon!

After my silly vocabulary flutter over "biweekly", Anais suggested "fortnight" which is not a video game but an Old English derivative meaning 14 days.

But the Wikipedia page for "Fortnight" suggested something similar -- lunar half-months, each 14.77 days. I could have a Book of the New Moon, followed by a Book of the Full Moon, etc. So I've got until 10:30pm on April 11th to finish my current Book of the Full Moon :-)

Every two weeks makes sense. It's better than what I was doing before.  And this more relaxed pace will allow me to explore the topics raised by the books I'm reading (especially the non-fiction works).  If I read a book more quickly, that's OK also.

And now I have the Fleetwood Mac song playing in my head: Sisters of the Moon,

Intense silence
As she walked in the room
Her black robes trailing
Sister of the moon

more comment (re: wage labor is "slavery lite")

Slavery has become one of those “cancel” topics in modern American arts even though slavery was nearly ubiquitous in human culture prior to the industrial age and usually had nothing to do with race (and race is a made-up category here in the US that doesn't map well to the world's underlying ethnic group distributions).  It’s weird that it remains fundamentally OK to RENT somebody’s labor so long as you don’t OWN their labor.  Slavery was not abolished because everybody suddenly got woke, it was abolished because it is cheaper for capitalism to rent labor than to own it.  If you rent labor you aren’t responsible for it after the work period has ended. You don’t have to take care of its children, or provide for its old age.  You don’t need to whip the labor into shape, you can simply fire it.

Firing people is more depraved and nihilistic than slavery ever was.  You wash your hands of them, they were not adding sufficiently to your capital accumulation, they're no longer your responsibility.  If they starve or die without income, that's not your problem.  The market will provide.

As though the market has replaced God.

our bad example

We LGBTQIA+ started this mess, instead of sticking with a one-word description for non-heterosexuals like "queer" (or "non-heterosexuals") we had to give each member of the sexual minorities their own letter in a concatenation of letters and then stick a "+" on the end just in case we left you out.

So now BIPOC and AAPI are joining the concatenation party, because we have to give each member of the racial minorities their own letter.  The word "colored" fell out of fashion long ago, and now the strangely-less-offensive term "people of color" is falling behind as well.  I'm waiting for somebody to be the first to squish these two racial minority concatenations together --> BIPOCAAPI+.

There are not enough letters in the Roman alphabet to describe all of us!  There are hundreds of ethnic groups!  Someday there will be a backlash, as the future teenage kids of today's woke liberals speak truth to power about how ridiculous this alphabetizing became.

Don't lump the first letter of my identity in with a bunch of other first letters in this way, presuming that I have anything in common with them.  There ain't even an "N" for nonbinary in the LGBTQIA+ list and I'm OK with that.  A letter in a string of letters is not "visibility", damn it.  Living my life in front of other people is visibility.  And that's my responsibility, not yours.

weekend ending

Tomorrow is a Maids Day, so I'll be heading to the condo before 8am, still via car, will switch to Metro next time.  Trying to tidy up stuff tonight so we aren't scrambling as much in the morning.

B went back to his apartment, T took a nap, I played a game online with Steve & Friends.  I did the dishes.  Earlier I stretched, then took Dax to the playground, and then ran 4 miles.  A full day.

But I did not cut my hair yet, also didn't squeeze in a Dax bath.

I'm going to shower before bed so I don't feel the need to do that in the morning.  I may stretch and do yoga at the condo when I get there.

I was glad to see T & B enjoying each other's company.  I tried to give them plenty of space -- for example, when they got into the hot tub I did not join them, when they went on an outing I did not join them, when they were in the master bedroom I avoided intruding.  I'll be ready for Time to Self next weekend, though!  But it also sounds like I'll get Tuesday night to myself at the house, yay!  They2 are really spending more time together.

Sir Ben says we can have our first post-vaccine date on or after May 6.  K is now eligible for a shot in Oregon, so he's begun the hunt for an appointment.  As for other local guys, I just need to decide when to pull the trigger, April 11th (80%) or 29th (90%).  Part of me wants to let Sir Ben be my first.

I want to get my pro haircut two Saturdays from now.  I may call to set that up later this week.  If I'm truly getting a pro cut in 13 days I don't want to cut it myself again.  But my hair is long for this warmer weather.  We'll see.

OK, time to tidy up a bit more, then shower, then crawl into bed for the night.  Oh, T caught up with the bills, he's 100% caught up as of this minute.  I didn't even have to ask :-)