This weekend included copious doses of grilled food and Steven's mother playing with her granddaughters. Also garlic scapes. I have more garlic scapes than I quite know what to do with at the moment. Same with key limes, as I keep buying those big netted bags and then using a handful and then what?

The preschool sent home the most deadly cute giant board books filled with pictures and art from during the school year. Come on by and take a peek.

Get them here :3

Backyard life, so sweet.



Earlier the previous day, my dad and I took Charlie swimming at Hammond Pond.

I've been reading all of the talk around 50 Shades of Grey, & noting how often developing a BDSM relationshionship in romantica/erotica is written as though sex comes before trust & then running into convos on & offline that center around the idea that kink is something white women do. That being sex positive is a movement that requires you to discuss your sex life with all & sundry & be white to boot or you're a problem & not a person. Somehow the fact that WOC not only have kinky sex, but enjoy it is a hard concept for some folks to grasp. And things get more complicated when you factor in our high rates of sexual assault, violence, & cultural norms that mean our sexuality is often something we share with partners but not with the public for our own safety. WOC can figure as props in the sexual fantasies of others, but people seem to think that we don't deserve any agency over ourselves for our own pleasure. And that makes conversations about sex in general & kink in specific really hard to have, especially when it comes to kink, how WOC may choose to engage in it & whether or not we utilize the same spaces for connections as white people. Our voices are erased from so many media outlets (see the casual moments of racism in 50 Shades of Grey and how little has been said about that), and what we speak of when we do speak to each other is often not for public consumption. But not talking to or for outsiders isn't the same as not talking at all.

So, let's talk about what it means to stand at the corner of Madonna/Whore as Mammy/Jezebel & how that impacts our expressions of our sexuality. Let's talk about why sites like Fetlife being underpopulated with WOC doesn't mean WOC aren't interested in kink. And let's talk about what a cultural history of being unrapeable legally might do to the idea of sexual freedom. If we're seen as whores from birth regardless, what do we do to own our sexuality? How do we navigate kink in our minds & with our bodies? How do we find partners & what do we disclose & when? For those of us in kinky relationships, what does it mean to play? Do we attend munches/classes/parties? Are those environments safe for us? And what about things like race play, how do we reconcile ourselves to that if it is or isn't part of our kink?

Last night I finished the copyedits for The Inexplicables, and kicked everything over to Liz - so now that book is, well, if not put to bed ... then it definitely has its teeth brushed and its jammies on. This frees me up to get back to work on other things. Or rather, it now removes my last excuse re: not working on other things that need working on.

Like Fiddlehead, which I still haven't started yet. Never mind the short projects I have in the queue, and the other things I'd love to start.

But today was an errand-running and cleanup day, which I gave myself permission to indulge without second-guessing, since I produced Tangible Work Results last night.

Therefore, I visited a new salon and made an appointment, and went to the home improvement store for an assortment of small odds and ends that had been piling up on my handy-dandy list. Then I came home and used some sticky reflective letters to label our recycling bin (you don't need a special bin, but you're supposed to designate whatever you use); I cleaned up a positively epic tangle of overgrown daisies in the back yard, for they had become utterly unmanageable; I pruned, trimmed, and watered/fed/insecticide-ed a rose bush/tree that's in bad need of TLC; babied our other roses and trimmed up the herb garden, which had also become epic in its fluffiness; used my brand new hose reel to manage 200 feet of garden hose which was previously strewn about behind the bushes; and hauled out some paint to do second-pass touch-ups to the iffy places indoors.

I'd halfway thought about trying to catch a matinee of Dark Shadows today, but now I'm too gross, tired, and sweaty to make the effort. And yes, I know. It's bound to be a terrible movie - but if you think that'll stop me, you probably haven't been reading my blog for very long.

The husband and I did catch The Avengers the other day, and we enjoyed it quite a lot. But other than that, we haven't much left the house on non-house-related errands.

(We aren't really reclusive hermity-types, I swear.)

In other news, it'll be suppertime here before terribly long - and merely typing that big fat paragraph up above has made me hungry. I'mma go make a sandwich. Then maybe I will play some video games or take a nap. Then tomorrow: it's back to writing work in full and proper force.

You just watch me.

Originally published at Dylan Meconis. You can comment here or there.

Tiny paintings! These are the ooooonly ones left from nearly twenty that I made for sale at conventions this year. They’re all 2.5×3.5” (artist trading card size) watercolor originals.

Wouldn’t one of them look nice on your desk? For under $20? Yes. Yes is the answer. They’re in my Etsy store now!

So at my last (as in: final) session of Mysterious Ladyparts Therapy, I got to bounce up and down on a trampoline. For my health!

I know that home trampolines equal Danger Danger Danger. Still, I cannot tell you how tempting it is to buy one and set it up in the back yard for the kids. Maybe one for me and one for the kids. OK, maybe one for each of us. We'll bounce the summer break away! I'll make them wear helmets.