The spritzer is a high use Item again

It's Christmas time again and Satu has made the house seem like a wonderland. The wise squirrels are out. The silver llama are mingling with the reindeer heard and Satu's little iron Christmas tree is starting to get some small gifts at its roots. Amdist all the usual family coziness there is a new creature stirring.

His name is Barnie, which is short for Barnacle. In the foreground you may notice that the blue bottle of discipline has made an appearance again. It has only been used for hydrating cigars since Josie passed, but now it is a high use item again. Not only does Satu spritz the cat off of the window sills and out of the trash, but she has started to spritz me when I get a little too sassy too. It's pretty effective for turning whatever I was saying into a giggle, but I find it so funny that I want to sass more often.

Thanksgiving this year was wonderful. We met with Kirstie and friends at their lakeside house and then went straight to Nick and Cat's house to have friendsgiving with them and their kids. I love the family time that we sometimes get over the holidays, but truth told, I feel most happy and settled when it is just me and Satu. 

When Satu is with me, everything just seems right. When she holds my hand, I am always amazed at how she can make me feel so connected with the slightest amount of pressure. Right now she is siting on the floor gluing little plastic bits back on to 40 year old Christmas lights. Later we will cook something fun together and watch terrible Christmas movies in front of the fire. I love my wonderful life with her. I love that I can start a sentence with "Guess what," and she can immediately finish it with "Dollly Parton's America." 

Let's look at lights this year and every year together. Lets make a point of listening to Christmas music and cooking together. 

Satu, I love you so much every moment of the day that I am never not thinking about you in some way. I can't wait to start this new year with you. 

Fall down seven times, stand up eight

Recently, Satu and I joined a local Aikido Dojo.

When I was in my late teens and 20's, I practiced with a great dojo in Florida. Though I didn't get to stick with it for more than a few years, I always felt like that kind of training made me feel more like myself. Your brain can't worry about other stuff, and you get to just focus on trying to learn something and piece together all these little lessons about your body and movement and connection and balance. There is no room left in my brain to feel insecure and everyone's body and skill set is so different that I don't feel competitive or compared to anyone.

Satu is an introvert and completely new to Aikido. For her, learning this new thing is full of emotional sinkholes you would never know are there. I think it is just the way dojos teach this art. There aren't that many core techniques, but there are endless variations of the same interactions. She wants to know if the left foot goes first or if the right foot goes sideways or back before she can move on. That would work for Karate, because there are forms you have to learn and definite ways to do them. In aikido, you can spend decades doing different versions of the same technique and always be learning something new for each interaction.

Half of whether something works has to do with your partner. The other half is how you connect with your partner. You will not ever get it right the first time you try it, but that has to be okay. You have to not get embarrassed by where you are on any given day. No one ever expects the new person to get it right, they just want to show you a little piece every time and eventually you can start putting those pieces together in ways that feel more natural. It forces you to practice learning things that you don't know you are learning like how to absorb motion, where is the floor in relation to the rest of your body, how to hang on without anticipating what you think is going to happen and how to not feel embarrassed when you have o try again and again.

I hope that Satu can put down her expectations of herself and enjoy the art long enough for us to have some new ways to learn the world together, but I do remember how frustrated I was in the beginning. The techniques are long and confusing. No one told me on my first class that we would clap when we bow in.  People had to tell me to sit down or get lower when Sensai decides to break in and teach something. The first time I took a test, I ran off the mat as soon as it was over and all the black belts laughed at me and shouted for me to come back and bow out.

That was kind of embarrassing in the moment, but everyone has those moments and remembers what that feels like. That's why experienced people try to work with the beginners. It's not actually a drag. Learning to break down the complex moves helps you understand and be more intentional about what you are doing. No one gets every interaction right.

I don't know how to help Satu through the feelings she is having, but I feel like if she finds her way to enjoying the art and the people in our dojo, it will change her life in a good way. Maybe not, but that kind of emotion doesn't just spring up for no reason.

New neighborhood social

Recently our neighbors have started a kind of loose social club called the Gridley Rd Hoppers. It's a great excuse for all the neighbors to sit outside on a warm summer night and have a couple of drinks and tell our old stories to new people.

Satu, for some reason, always ends up as the child magnet. She spends 90% of the time drawing on the sidewalk and rescuing 2 year olds from eating bugs. It makes me wonder if it really is too late for us to adopt a child. She has such a warm heart and she is so patient and kind to kids. She may be the only grown up who still remembers what it is actually like to be a child. It opens her endless imagination.

She catches lightning bugs, chases frogs, talks to squirrels and never abides by bedtime rules. She is also funny, playful and curious. I can't until the locusts come out again this year and we have Halloween adventures at our local pumpkin festival. Being in love with Satu often reminds me of how happy I felt as a child learning about the world with my best friend. With her, I feel safe, loved and fully myself.

How lucky we are to have this summer together, to be safe and to be loved.

Yay!! She quit her job!!

Step 1: Stop going to a place you hate everyday.
Step 2: Take a big chance because you deserve to be happy. If you are never famous that's okay. If you never sell a piece, that's fine. If you are never happy, that's what's not okay.

Not every day is going to be awesome. Some days you are not going to feel like it, some days you will go to work and not be satisfied with what you make. But, you may love it. You may finally find your stride and if you stop being hard on yourself , you may realize you are exactly where you want to be at a pretty good time in your life.

You are not too late as long as you have ideas in your brilliant head and the willingness to put yourself out in the world.

I hope, hope, hope with all my might that you find the passion and confidence that you deserve. You will always find me on your side, every single step of the way.

Congratulations on leaving an unhealthy place. You deserve better.

The dog is sh*&tty and the day is sh*&tty

Gimmie just farted audibly next to me on the couch. Our day started last night when yesterday became today and we were not sleeping. Every few minutes Satu and I had to either get up and let him out or fret over him, or just wake up to pet him and make sure he seemed okay. We spent the morning at the emergency vet where they found no reason that his butt faucet has been on blast for three days.

From the vet, Satu left for physical therapy and then straight to the corporate office where she was called in by the company president. Then from there to go fire two people, deal with the cops and manage an unending wave of asshole customers.

I know there is nothing that I can say to her that will wash away all this stress. Being a manager sucks, it is almost 100% soft skills which leaves you open to constant insecurity and drama. You are distrusted by the people that you spend all of your time trying to support and you will never know when you've done the right thing. You just never know. Everyone will have an opinion about what they would do, but sometimes you just have shitty choices and all you can really do is wish people had just not fucked up in the first place.

Sometimes you have to save yourself and limit how much of your sweat, tears and time you can give to a place because any place in the world will drain you if you pour everything you have into it.

Tomorrow will be a better day.
Hopefully the dog will have a solid poo and you won't have to fire anyone.

Satu,
I love you for being the kind of person who will spend the night at the vet with me and still face the shittiest day in the world. The 100% you gave that place is enough. Come home to us and be where you truly belong, are loved and seen.

I don't know how to spell lingerie

I had to google it, and I still got it wrong twice in the title, but like porn, I know it when I see it.

This is go to lesbian sleepwear. It's not the kind of thing you usually see in glossy magazines, it's definitely better (I also don't know how to spell definitely, thank you spell check.) The thing is, I feel as though I am the luckiest person in the world. My wife is beautiful and she's real. She's funny and sexy at the same time. She rocks a tank top, so the only thing that would actually make this outfit more sexy to me is if she was also in a tank top.

My wife worries all the time about everything, but often lately, she worries about her body. I totally don't get this at all because she has a healthy, beautiful, strong, perfect body. She is a force of nature in that thing. She can summon the power of the world in her strong hands and use them so carefully to show me the kindest, most real love in the world.

I especially love her beautiful square feet. They seem impossible to me since I've walked on my giant misshapen flippers my whole life, yet there they are planted firmly wherever she stands or sometimes both aloft at the same time chasing after the cat.

Then there are her legs, which grow the finest, softest hair and usually have some mysterious bruises on them. You can not imagine how fast she walks on those things. She walks with purpose because she has fire inside her body.

Her arms are small, but deceptively long and strong. I love to be wrapped tightly against her chest and smell her smells. It's instantly calming to me. I can't wait for her to come home and just hold me against her chest or her cheek.

I also like to watch her show love to our animals (even though it makes me jealous sometimes.) When I pet Gimmie, I want him to know that I love him, but mostly it's because I get to feel love and to be connected in a way that soothes me. When I watch Satu pet him or the cat, I can tell she is being careful to pet them the way they want to be loved. She wants them to feel loved and will pet them when it is boring for her or when she thinks they need to feel more connected. I know she shares her body with me that way too. I don't think she feels as comforted by a hug as I do, yet she still makes time to put herself in there for me. That perfect, beautiful body is not really the point at all. It's amazing, but mostly because of the way she drives it.

I think of all people as trapped inside a body that is mainly just a shell, yet you are never in the moment without also being in your body. I have been in a love hate relationship with mine my whole life feeling shame about what people might think of the body that I drive. As I get older and softer, I try to remember that I am not this shell. Yes, I'll try to make the most of it, I want it to be clean, healthy and as attractive as it can be for my wife, but I'm more. Everyone is more than the body. We are all more than we seem.

To me, Satu is her body, but she is so much more. She's all of her. I wish she loved everything about her as much as I do. As we get older together, we will weather, but her hands are the only ones I want to hold. Her square feet are the only ones I want to rub (but not right now okay?) Her shoulder is the only place I want to rest my head when I need comfort, and her voice is the only one in the world that makes my heart jump like that. What a perfect thing.

Dis my new computer!!!!

So, today is a great day in our household. I have been avoiding spending the money on a new computer for about a year. My wife has had to suffer through my bad moods every time I had to interact with the old one. It would take an hour to boot, sometimes turn itself off an finally refused to connect to our wifi. Finally she pulled the trigger that I wouldn't and bought me one.

Since she knows me, she knew that the way to get me to agree was to just to give me two choices and say "which one?" Then we talked about it for 5 minutes, which is the max amount of time that I ever want to spend shopping, and she bought it! Now I'm blogging on it because it doesn't make me angry just to turn the computer on.

Other good things about today:
I hid 8 Easter eggs around the house and Satu found them all before dinner. I like to have an excuse for a fun game like that. I love how Satu is always down for a funny face or a game of hide and seek. I love being with someone who doesn't hide her curiosity or her joy. She is easy and kind.

Satu had a good day at work because the team sang happy birthday to one of their own and all the customers clapped and cooed. I can imagine how the mood lightened there and how people felt connected.

Today was a day full of laughter and happiness.

I am currently not having a panic attack and it is almost 7 o'clock. Prime fretting time.

Spring happened tot the front yard, but not the back. All the front yard bushes made pretty pink flowers between the time we left for work and the time we got home. Kind of like we got robbed in reverse and came home to find that our home got decorated with spring flowers.

I don't have to work tomorrow, so I get to have a cup of coffee with my wife in the morning. Mornings with her are probably my favorite thing in the world. There hasn't been any chaos in your day yet and you  can really be together without distractions. Also, she seems so harmless when she's asleep and doesn't squirm when I snuggle with her.

We are having a quiet, stress free night at home. No cell phones, no fuss, just two women in love. She's my best friend. She's the person I never get tired of and the only person that I always feel like myself around.

I hope the rest of our lives together is filled with these wonderful, completely normal days. It's what I live for.

I feel like we are dating

I have battled with anxiety and depression for most of my life. Why are they connected? Are they connected? The only thing I know for sure is that they are connected in me. I have a soft spongy heart. It feels empathy for everything alive and everything that has ever or will be alive. That's just me. It's the me I am used to.

Oddly, it is when things are the best that anxiety kicks in and I worry that I don't deserve my beautiful wife or that I am at my best moment in time and will never feel this lucky again. What if I miss this? What if I'm not good enough?

As difficult as my brain and my weird chemicals can be, as crippling and uncomfortable, I understand them. I know myself like this.

Right before I left the Marine Corps, I started to have terrible, night time panic attacks. Partly, I think it was the stress of more responsibility at work, partly it was the helplessness of being stuck in a terrible squadron and partially it was finding a life that felt like me and mattered for the first time in years,

Today it is spring in Ohio. The first flowers (crockus) showed up overnight and announced themselves. I felt like me again. Not the sad or panicky me, but the me that felt optimism and pleasure just sitting in the sunshine. I began to think maybe I could just not take any anxiety medicine.

Maybe I could just hold on to this spring day in my heart and be the emotional, but predictable person that my wife fell in love with. Maybe I can experience sex again and the way that my body used to buzz with desire.

Then I crashed. I put food in my body which always makes me feel tense lately and then the sun set. When Satu came home I was already starting to feel a little swing in my mood. The beer I started in the sunshine felt like a celebration when I opened it, but felt heavy before I finished it. Instead of being fun for Satu, I cried. Then I felt selfish and stupid for being sad in front of her.
When I started this post I felt like I did when Satu and I had first started dating and I was waiting for her to come over. My heart open and excited.

Why doesn't that feeling ever stay now? The happier I feel during the day, the worse I feel at night. I hate having to sneak off to a quiet room to get my shaking under control. Right now I feel like Satu deserves someone less complicated and I am worried that I am blowing it.

I took the medicine this morning. I hope it works. I just want to feel like myself and not be the kind of complicated person that you'd rather avoid. I also need to sleep. Last night was the second, almost completely sleepless night. The more of those I have, the farther I feel like I get from my real self.

Satu, please just stay in love with me long enough for this boat to hit the smooth water again. It's going to be okay. These crazy emotional storms are kind of like when we were dating though. I'd be working my boring job and suddenly get overwhelmed by an un-anchored emotion. Then it would wash away.

How do I get back to a me that feels right without coloring over all the blue skies  and the spring flowers that feel so good and without being a see-saw when I see the one person I love more than anything? I don't want to keep sleeping alone while she is lonely in the house too. 

Mid day pick me ups

I just thought I would take a second to record how grateful I am that my wife loves me and keeps connected while we are apart. Lately she has started sending me little clips from instagram and pinterest while I am at my very emotionally tumultuous job.

The pictures and videos seem curated to remind me that there is good happening somewhere in the world while I am trying to keep afloat in a storm of opinionated, bossy men at work

In this video, a turtle pats another turtle's face. When I googled this it turns out to be the way these particular turtles flirt with each other. Then I imagine flirting with Satu like that.
She definitely would not be receptive to that kind of two handed face touching. I imagine her scrunched up nose being sucked back into her shell,
Satu likes pats, but she likes them the way she likes them. Usually the best thing to do when I want to give her attention is to rub her feet. She doesn't know the inside of her foot from the outside and won't get it right no matter how many times I correct her, but I know which side always needs attention.

Lately I've been entertaining this fantasy of squirreling away as much money as I can, selling the house and just moving to a very affordable little town with Satu. Somewhere where I don't have to have a high paying job or be stressed by work at all. Maybe I could do inspection somewhere just to keep bills paid and the insurance current. We could build a forge in the back yard and Satu could make art and I could make some other things like inventions and blobs of accidental metal. Maybe we could live close enough to my sister to help with Sam.

Maybe we could have two days off together every week someday.

I actually do like to work and I like to work hard, but whenever I feel stressed and like I am failing I just imagine this nice little house on a hill grassy hill somewhere. It's spring time and I miss the sound of bugs and wildlife. It seems calmer to move toward that kind of life eventually.

There is a difference between jobs that I can do and jobs that I am happy doing. As it turns out, I would kind of like to just do regular old hard work sometimes without being the boss or having a boss. I want to live near bugs and have a king bed some day.

I don't want to know about people who get shot in the world for no reason or read the racist comments that heartless assholes write about innocent victims of violent crime.

I don't want to know any bad people who can't connect or care about others.

I want to ignore the circle of life. It is the only time I wish that people weren't as smart as we are. How much less stressed would we be if we didn't know about death.

I feel like I could hole up in a little country house with Satu and never turn on the news and never have to face the real world again. I like my bubble where my sweet wife could just laugh with me and pat my face with both of her hands. Then we could sun ourselves on a rock and maybe chase some fish around the pond.

What do you say girl, lets live a simpler life some day.

Weekend adventure

Satu and I have needed an escape for a long time. Her work is full of stressful people who don't care and my job is full of backstabbing, incompetent ass holes. For valentines day I got us tickets to see a live show of our favorite podcast and we went to Pittsburgh to see it. The show was great!

As far as I can tell, the only good thing about Pittsburgh is that Satu was there this weekend and it has a great geological collection at the natural history museum. It seems like a really craptastic place to live. Super unhappy people living in expensive, dilapidated homes right next to their unhappy neighbors listening to each other fight for entertainment.

We did find a few silver linings in the city like the White Wale Book Store and the little diner where Satu had some runny eggs and I had some hard fried ones for breakfast. We saw some art that was great and some that was really just losers wanking off and turning it in late and making it into a museum by some weird tornado of luck. This gave Satu a really fun cursing spasm, I hope it also made her re-remember what she has always known; she has more to offer than most and needs to get her talent out in the world with less self-judgement and fear. It is too late for regret and counting the pages that you have turned, but it isn't too late for a major plot twist. All of those pages you turn are part of the story of now.

This was my favorite part of the weekend:

Nice wine in hotel paper cups with the woman I love more than I ever imagined possible. In fact, being near Satu is my favorite part of every day. We had popcorn for dinner, but a nice wine before bed. It doesn't matter what the experience is, it's better with Satu. If I see a funny show, it's funnier if she is laughing next to me. If I hear a sad story I want to know what she thinks it means in the context of the lives we live.If she sees a video of a pig eating ice cream, she shares it with me and it means more, it seems more connected to the world. 

I hope there are more adventures to come, even in cities we never would want to live in. Even if there is a mouse in the room. Even if the car is too cold to sleep in. Even if the next adventure happens at home. I can't wait to experience it with the most wonderful woman I have ever known. 

What's going on in studio 12?

More fire than usual in studio 12. I have been hoping Satu would start to feel a little more like the artist that she is and we have recently acquired a lot of new dangerous things for future projects. My wife us currently in the studio putting dairy products on chicken skulls in the hopes that she will get he beginnings of a nice mold patina.

All of her art scares me even though it is beautiful. But what is really exciting is hearing her talk about new ideas and look forward to being a part of the studio's success. I think we have a real shot at being a part of the creative community here. Satu is the right person to bring her design skill to the interior of this old school house and make it feel more like an artist community. She also has the right presence to make the downstairs workshop and gallery appealing to serious artists. I can already picture it in my mind.

Satu's first show in a decade was a really great success. It was a small enough venue not to be overwhelming, but had the right type of traffic to look carefully and consider the work seriously. I hope that she develops some new contacts here in Cleveland because I think that she will feel more connected when she is around other people who work in art.

I honestly can't wait to see what's next for her. I hope that her next show brings some new work to the world and I am thrilled that she has done a couple of projects on paper as well. She usually avoids anything that doesn't make a shadow, but it's interesting to see her bring that sensibility to paper. Her recent paintings were full of different depths brought out of the wrinkles by oil and metal dust.

I am ready to move away from my career to support hers whenever we have an opportunity. Our family is really the only job I can be truly passionate about, so if I had an opportunity to live a whole life by supporting her in that way, I would consider it the most worthy pursuit of my life.

Everything all at once,,, Occasionally on fire.

The last two weeks have been a blur of hopeful possibility and incredible stress. Satu has a show at a small community theater in Westlake that opened last night. It's a small lobby, but gets a lot of traffic, and some of the right kind of traffic too. She has spent the last two weeks full of ideas and running to the studio to work on some new pieces to round out the show. It's been great! I see her real self peeking back out and looking hopefully at the future for the first time in a while.

I was worried she would give up art when our own studio idea went beyond what we could do to get it off the ground. Now she's back to herself putting amazing images together and presenting herself like the talented artist that she is.

We've been talking to the studio owner at the place that she's been working at about being more involved. That conversation wouldn't have even happened if we hadn't been there working on the show. Now we might actually change our lives. What I'm worried about is losing that momentum now. It is clear to me that Satu needs to be in her studio working in order to be the version of herself that she's most proud of, but what if the investment doesn't work out? How do we stay the course and keep her working?

I am willing to spend the rest of my life scavenging bronze ingots and glass from wherever I can get them if it means that she is doing what she does best. I'd like for us to be a part of the community there, but more than that I want to keep seeing my wife talk about ideas that really matter to her. I want to see more text messages with business cards on them and pictures of ideas for new art. I want to talk about how toxic her bone art could be and how the fact that it is scary to me is part of the point.

I am so excited about where the next few months will lead us now that my beautiful wife is energized to make more work. I don't care what the business details are really as long as it includes a life that she finds meaningful and makes her as proud as she deserves to be.