What's up here?

I have been thinking a lot in the past few days about what to do and where to go with this blog. It is mine so I reason I can go anywhere I want with it … and if you don’t like it, then you are certainly not obligated to read it, right?

I feel that I have been sharing too much of myself…or maybe just too much of the wrong parts of myself, here. K knows what I write, and has never openly expressed anything negative about it…but I am beginning to feel like maybe I should keep parts of OUR life, between us. More private. Not just out there for the “whole world” to read.

This is sounding oddly like lalana’s post in her own blog.

I feel as if I have given too much, way too much of my life, and my time to this blog and blogsphere. Maybe that sounds crazy to you, but there have been days, more than I’d like to admit, where I have spent literally hours pouring over blogs, reading, commenting, and writing myself.

Oddly it has been easy for me to talk about my sex life here, but I think it will be much harder for me to talk about my demons. The ones I am struggling with on a daily, or almost daily, basis.

I realized that the season of Lent is upon us. There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting and other acts of penance. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigour during Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In my traditon some people give up a vice of theirs, add something that will bring them closer to God, and often give the time or money spent doing that to charitable purposes or organizations. I have been mulling over what to give up. What I can give up that would be meaningful, not giving up something like hang gliding …which is what my Grandfather always said he gave up!
I have decided to give up blogging here for Lent. Use that time to get back on track with my family and my life. I have quite the obsessive personality, and it’s time for me to step back and reorganize my priorities.
I may check in on your blogs here and there, but not daily as I have done in the past and when I come back after Easter, I will have a summary blog for you that recounts the past two? three? years here for my new readers as well as some idea of the “new” direction of this blog!
Happy Lent and Happy Easter!
xoxo
holly

you people!

first...do you understand "maybe"???? its a hiatus...for a bit. don't give up ..i'll be back in some form...Keep a weather eye out!

and Becca had a good point..i hate unfinished business, hmpf! so here you go:

Day 20...i love Rob Bell...google him if you need to..he rocks!

Day 21...I love Sage and all his straight talkin'...especially the politics

Day 22...I love those of you who have become friends to me and not mere comments.

Day 23...I love pizza.

Day 24...I love my house. It is all but perfect and I am so happy and lucky to have it.

Day 25...I love SM and the marks it leaves *grin*

Day 26...i love my BFF who i could NOT make it though life without. She knows everything about me, maybe even more than i have figured out about myself yet.

Day 27...I love that my kids are at their grandparents almost every Friday night!

Day 28...In the words of Toby Keith "i love this bar...its my kinda place." only instead of bar, it's this blogsphere and the people i've been touched by.

that's the end of the DOL.

xoxo

holly

is this the end?

Maybe.


i love you all. i love blogging and i love the flirting and attention. i love reading about you and hearing your tales.

however, i have to step away.
Being here is not helping the reality of my marriage.
Being here is not helping me want sex any less, which is what i have to do now. I have to do what is best for him and for our marriage. I have to find the path that leads back to where i was three years ago. Mostly sexless.

I think that is the only way i can survive. Wanting things i cannot have hurts too much. hoping things will change is insanity. I am sure i'll be back but i dont know how or when.

take care and i wish you all the happiness and great sex in the world!

xoxo
holly

therapy stuff

ok so if you do more than look at the photos here you know i am in therapy. Tons of it. I really should be scary and damaged, but i really am not, i just got sick of my life being how it was and decided i needed to get off my ass and do something about it.

(yay go me!)

ok so my most recent "class" is about eating and food disorders. I was reading today and came across this. I thought it was very powerful so i wanted to share it and maybe someone out there will read it and it will help them out. Oddly this is from Marthaswewart.com first published may 2008. Here goes:

At the heart of Cameron's classes is a technique called "morning pages," in which you rise early and write three longhand pages of absolutely anything -no thinking, no worrying, no dieting. Although Cameron instructs her students to write freely, she says people often use morning pages as an emotional outlet, one they were accustomed to finding in food. "you take a look at your fear, anxiety, and nervousness directly instead of eating something to squelch it, " she says. "you don't need to focus on it; it will just come up. Morning pages are remarkable in how they get to the underside of what's bothering you. "

And the more you give voice to your emotions, the less you'll need food to keep your real feelings quiet. "When you do morning pages, " says Cameron, "you start to take your likes and dislikes a little more seriously. It helps with speaking your mind."

uncomfortable

i am uncomfortably numb. actually not so numb but filled with the emotions that i don't deal well with . The ones i usually stuff down and ignore with food. The ones i deny. I don't even know their names i have run from them so often. I do know how they feel. sort of empty and hollow in my gut...i guess that is why i want to eat, to try and fill that spot.

is it frustration? desperation? loneliness? depression? i'm not sure. what is it that this emotion is trying to tell me? if i don't eat to cover it up, then what do i do? how do i deal with this feeling?

i don't like it. Its uncomfortable.

Sixteen things about me. Right now.

1. I still have a sick kid. She gets better and then worse. i can't plan anything because i don't know from day to day what's going to happen. This makes me crazy.

2. I desperately need to get my hair dyed again but ...see number 1!

3. I have watched Mulan two times today in bed with my sick kid. Girls rock!

4. I had a GREAT night with K on Friday night...and he is amazing.

5. i am making Tacos for dinner.

6. I have a few blogger friends who i really like...you make me smile everyday!

7. I love Coke Zero. I love it too much.

8. My house is a wreck and i need to be getting things ready for various projects...but i am just not motivated and ...sick kid wants me in bed with her all day...its not a hard sell.

9. I see way too much Hannah Montana and Suite life for a person who is 35!

10. I love Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty.

11. I am bored.

12. i have nothing to say.

13. Why is this so hard?

14. How do the 100 things about me people do this?

15. It is almost time for me to do carpool...yeehaw!

16. I miss my Daddy. Is it time for him to be home yet?

Friday with food!

OK so today is the lovely, talented and Charming ASM's virtual cookie exchange.
I will share with you today...the most amazing cookie recipe ever! People will beg you to make these and ask for the recipe!

I got this recipe from Christmas with SouthernLiving 1997 so yes, its been around for a while!

Heavenly Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2 cups plus 2 Tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup butter or margarine
2 Tablespoons instant coffee granules
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 large egg
1 pkg semisweet chocolate mega (or any size you like) morsels
1 cup walnuts halves (or pecans)

Combine first 3 ingredients; stir well.

Combine butter and coffee granules in a small saucepan or skillet. cook over med-low heat until butter melts and coffee is dissolved stirring occasionally. remove from heat and let cool to room temp, but don't let butter harden.

Combine Butter mixture, sugar, egg and egg yolk in a large bowl. Beat at medium speed with electric mixer until blended. gradually add flour mixture beating at low speed just until blended. stir in morsels and nuts.

drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. bake at 325 for 12-14 minutes. let cool slightly on pan and remove to wire rack to cool completely.

yield 20 cookies.

ok, i make mine "regular" sized and always get about 3 dozen. trust me...these are good!

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Happy Thanksgiving

more thoughts from an email...

"OK, so now we move on to the BDSM portion of the show. I know that you love attention and feeling adored and all of it....for the most part, who doesn't? I feel, however, that it's a problem, not in your mind, mind you, that it's coming from outside people & not K. I also realize that if you were in Obama's shoes right now and the whole damn world just loved you to bits, it would not be enough. If I were in your shoes, I'd be thinking 'yeah, that's true...but why is that?' ...."

yes, i am a self proclaimed attention whore. Yes. I admit it. My name is holly and i am addicted to attention. Yes, i also realize that getting that attention from other men...men other than K. is harmful to ME. I am not saying that some people can't be poly and healthy or swingers and healthy or whatever...but yes, i agree, that FOR ME, it is not healthy to seek or obtain sexual attention from someone other than K.

there, i've said it!

That does not mean that when it is placed in front of me, i will not accept it or that i won't actively seek it from time to time. There are times when i think i can handle it, when i think i have got it in a box...and then later realize that i don't. I mess up, i fail, i cause a lot of my own problems, i am human and i am learning. I realize that my low self esteem and my lack of appropriate emotional boundaries are WHY i can never have enough attention. I am working on 'fixing' those things. it is a slow process.

"...I think part of the BDSM thing is that pleasure and pain/pleasure from pain is along those same lines of experiencing extremes. To you it's 'vanilla' to do anything else. I would venture a guess that if you try to figure out the extreme emotion thing, part of you is afraid you'd lose all these other things that come with the extreme back-n-forth (e.g. the lifestyle, the attention). I suspect that might even cause you to back away from working on that part of your life. "

I will agree that the SM part and the objectification part of my BDSM play does have to do with the extremes i crave. It also has to do with giving up, or even being "forced" to give up, control for a time. It is an escape. It is a 'happy place' where i can just exist and be and release a lot of pent up emotional crap...and feel better afterward.

I have said before, and think that it has happened to some degree already, that the more i get my self together the less i will NEED the D/s stuff. If i feel good about myself and feel competent then i won't NEED someone else to control me all the time. does that mean i won't still enjoy it or still crave it from time to time? No, i don't think so. Honestly it is like a drug...like some of you crazy running people...you get a runner's high. I get a high from bottoming, from being submissive, from playing in a SM and/or D/s way. Just because i am not sure what's at the other end of the rabbit hole, doesn't mean i am going to stop mid way through. I have come too far to turn back now.

"...I also noticed, in one of your responses to coquette about sub-drop, you got very defensive. However, I must tell you I feel awful when you're so down it's scary, when the negative doesn't seem like it's nearly enough negative for you...."

I went back and looked at that specific comment and my response. I don't feel it was defensive. It at least was certainly NOT meant to be. I was just trying to point out that sub drop is not something that happens to everyone, or every time. I don't want my sub drop stories to keep anyone from exploring something they are interested in. In two years, i have had really bad sub drop twice. I have learned something valuable from each of those experiences. That is all. Coquette, if i seemed defensive, i am sorry girl!

"...I want you to experience what you consider vanilla because you deserve to be happy and content...busy but happy & content. You mean so much to so many, I feel, from what I read on your blog, that you're looking for something you can't seem to find...you think you've found it but then it's like 'oh, no, never mind...that's not gold...just some sparkly rock...' I know that some of this is due to your childhood as not only an only child but also with nothing of regular happiness to use as an example, as you've said"

Hmmmm. i do feel like i am chasing a rainbow at times. I feel like i don't live intentionally enough. I don't see what is right in front of my face. i am rarely content. again, things i am working on. I do mistake sparkly rocks for gold at times, and yes, it is disappointing but at least i haven't become so cynical that i don't think there is any gold left out there!

I am an only child, and i think that has a great deal to do with the person i have become. I do not recall ever saying that my childhood was not happy. I have struggled a lot because i can't think of anything traumatic that happened to cause me to be who i am now. i wish there was some definitive thing i could point to and say "THIS is what caused it..." but i can't. It is more work than that. It is hiding. I have to uncover it and discover what to do with it.

"As you've mentioned as well, I think your expectations of many situations in life, but most specifically the things in your sex life, are very high. You have 'in your mind' how things will unfold and you feel a need to control something you shouldn't even be remotely thinking about controlling it. You can't let go, you can't enjoy, you can't let K just be himself. I read about the situations with OKB & TEO and seriously, I want to scream at you. I get that in the BDSM world, the marks and the highs and lows are apparently something to aspire to. I'm not condemning it I'm simply saying that I do not like it when any of my friends are hurting in any way. "

yes, my expectations do get me in trouble. I am trying NOT to have them. I am trying to roll with the punches and go with the flow. I am trying to take what i get and be happy with it instead of always wanting more, bigger, better!

the marks are amazing and i could write a whole post on marks and how they make me feel. they are reminders of fun had. Proof that it happened. The highs are something to aspire to as well, who doesn't like a little endorphin rush? ...and the lows, are just a part of it. We do all we can to avoid them, but as it has been suggested recently, why not just embrace them when they do come as part of the whole. Instead of trying to reject them and feeling even worse for having them, invite them in, sit with them, learn from them and take them as a chance to pamper yourself for a bit until they pass. See them, like the marks, as a continuation of the scene. change the way we look at them in order to handle them better.

As far as the downs go, yes, they do hurt..but why is hurting always bad? Don't we learn a lot from our pain? Why is it that our culture is so afraid of pain and hurting? why do we focus on making it go away instead of focusing on what it is trying to teach us? maybe if we sat with it and learned the lesson it was trying to teach, it would leave us quicker, and return less often than when we just freak out and try to shoo it out the door like an unwelcome guest.

always

holly

Celebrate Monthly....

And don't forget to powder your nose and look your best!

Remember

I was only a week from delivering my first child. My best friend had 3 month old twin boys. Her parents had just left to return home 5 hours away. I was going over that morning to hang out and to help her with the boys. I heard something going on as i was listening to a radio show that morning, but i couldn't really tell what it was. I am not a person to watch the news or morning shows. I basically live under a rock in my safe little corner of the world. I pulled up in her drive and went inside. I think Sesame Street was on "for the boys". "Turn on the news" i said to her, "something is going on. I think a plane just flew into a building in NY."



I sat and stared at the t.v. all morning. It was almost like it was unreal. Living in the deep south, i was hundreds of miles away from NY or DC. It seemed almost like a foreign land this was happening in to me. Yet rationally i knew, this was here, my country. WOW. I knew i would know people who knew people who were in the midst of this. What if they hit Atlanta? That's not so far. I thought to myself, i will never ever forget this day.
Where were you? What were you doing? did you loose someone that day or in the days that followed? What's your story? Tell it. Tell your kids. don't ever forget what happened on September 11, 2001. I wonder if more people died that day or if more babies were born. i wonder how many people were late to work so they weren't there. How happy their families were to know they weren't in the buildings.
Take a moment. Remember. Pray that this never happens again. Pray for our President and for the upcoming election. Pray for our Military and our first responders. Pray for us all.
always
holly