Dinner was burritos bigger than our heads from Peppers, along with Say Anything (his favorite movie that I had never seen) plus a lot of Star Trek TNG and a little Terminator and Being Human.  But have no fear, luvvies – except for Say Anything, we didn’t watch an entire episode of anything straight through.  There was far too much physical catching up to do.  (Have I ever mentioned how good at catching up Kyle is?  Damn.  No, really – DAMN.)

The evening drew to an end as I showed him one of the couples’ line dances I’d learned (Black Velvet) and he played Shawn Mullins’ “Light You Up” and we were back to a lot more sexy, slow catching up again.

As we were lying down to sleep, LC (Casey’s younger side) got frisky and kept me up for another hour or two.  It’s amazing to have hours to touch, feel and taste my lover, to be covered in their scent, my face and fingers slick with them.  And a bonus?  All the weights I’ve been pulling to get my shoulders ready for double-flogging are paying off in unexpected arm strength, so I’m able to go longer and deeper than ever before.  Without getting tired.  At all.  (Yes, it’s true, I’ve become quite the god of fucking – you may worship me now.    )

********

So I’m sitting here typing this not 10 feet from Kyle, who’s working from home, and suddenly the room smells like sex and I have to make a choice:  concentrate on a good ending to this post or jump his bones…

Y’all have a good day, y’hear?

And so it was phenomenally perfect timing that I’d get to spend this week on the coast with my kids.  I love the overcast, grey skies, the cold, damp air, and the sand between my toes as I watch waves crash onto the beach.  I found a local Peet’s where I can sit with my laptop and chat to my heart’s content with Kyle and Casey for the cost of an iced chai and scone.  I walked around downtown, snapping pictures of flowers and buildings and art, soaking in the beauty and simplicity.  After a summer of 24/7 parenting, it was bliss to have a few hours to myself with no one tugging at my attention.  Casey and I spoke on the phone for an hour about inspiration and love, and I laughed without worrying who might overhear.  I read – pages and pages – without interruption.  I got to pet a lot of goats.  And, yeah, this was all on Monday, between 10 and 2.  I swear, give a mom a moment to spare and she can build an empire.

And Tuesday was even better.

Nothing really changed, of course, except that I got a moment to breathe.  An hour to remember what I’m like when weasels aren’t pulling me in fourteen different directions at once.  A day to see the world around me…in silence.

Soon enough we’ll come back to the house and deal with the dishes and the laundry and the bits of marriage left lying around.  I’ll mow the lawn and work out how to start up the grill and read bedtime stories and tuck weasels in.  I’ll get ready for a new school year for them and for me.

But for now I have salt and sand and cold that seeps into my bones

just the way I love it.

He smiles like summer sunsets, and swaggers like a cowboy, and he holds the door just to watch my ass as I walk through.  By all rights, he never should have survived to ever meet me, but here he is – in my bed, in my life, loving the hell out of me for seeing things that other people don’t.  He’s strong and brave and sits through 6-hour girly concerts just so she can sing romantic songs to his girlfriend.  He’s sweeter than he’ll admit, and wiser than he knows, and the way his eyes go dark when he’s feeling wicked leaves me weak in the knees.

She giggles and stares, wide-eyed, amazed at me, not ever noticing I don’t always know what I’m doing.  She lives pure joy, and loves so fiercely sometimes it leaves marks.  She cries and I would pull the moon down out of the sky to make it better.  She is beautiful, like we all were when we were new and shiny, and she doesn’t even know it.  She is cloud watching and stargazing and pressed flowers under her pillow and I love her more than I can say.

She, he, she…they…so miraculous, so wondrous, I catch my breath just thinking of our time together.

It’s a miracle how well I’m loved.

“Thank You, Sir,” i whispered.  He smiled at me and nodded, and i curled up at His feet, both arms wrapped around him, with my head resting on His knee.

It was pure, clear bliss, like a cold running stream.  A perfect moment.  A map to part of me I was sure we’d lost.

His girl.

Most of the time, I choose plants and flowers for their smell and taste – lavender, freesia, tuberose, buddleia, honeysuckle, strawberries, tomatoes, apples, cherries, mints and thyme – but right now, the roses are the ones getting all the attention.  Thanks to a lot of rain this year, plus a lot of talking (I believe wholeheartedly that talking to my roses is what gives them their shiny coat and intoxicating scent, even if it is only that extra hit of carbon dioxide as I exhale in their direction) and gardening with my bare hands (my roses are extremely fond of blood sacrifices – cue the theme from Little Shop of Horrors,) my roses are even more stunning than usual.  I have more than a dozen out front, and quite a few more in the backyard, and here are a couple of my favorites:

Honey Bouquet:

Probably the prettiest bloom of all

Peace:

Mother to hundreds of varieties, this one sets the bar high

And, the one with the most amazing fragrance, Gertrude Jekyll:

As I head off to deadhead and weed away a few more hours today, I’ll offer this blessing to you -

May your garden overflow with the bounty of the season

and

your hands heal quickly.

Yesterday I had a lot to do at the weasels’ school coordinating a big luncheon for the teachers and Kyle decided to use that time to write out a love letter to us – the next installments in the love affair between Jude and Kate.  Jude’s a hired hand on Kate’s family farm, but neither of them had acknowledged the feelings they had for one another until one fateful night in the middle of a rainstorm.  Since then, Kate’s been away at college again, and so they haven’t seen much of each other, but another rainstorm brings them together again.

Besides the romantic location (Kyle grew up on a farm, and I’ve always adored them,) it’s exciting and sexy to see so much of us written out into fiction.  The things Jude and Kate say are things Kyle and I say…and the way they make love is ours as well.  In the third installment, Kate feels Jude’s real cock, and it startles her – just as it startled me when I first met Kyle back in January 09, and we made love without silicone or plastic between us.  I don’t know how to explain it, this magical combination of love and imagination that creates flesh out of desire, but we can both feel what shouldn’t be there, but is.

It’s exciting, but a bit scary, to be put out there in all of our raw realism, even under the mask of fiction, but Kyle is a gifted writer, and I love the way he brings us to life together, even as we’re so far apart.  Kyle is just as strong, sexy and rugged as Jude is, and I love that he sees me as a romantic heroine, considering that, in real life, I’d not only fall off the horse, but trip the poor thing up as well.  That he imagines me racing gracefully across a meadow with my hair flowing behind me is a wonderful leap of imagination, and a beautiful gift to me.

So, if you’re looking for a romantic fantasy break in your day, check out these stories.  They’re sweet, funny and very sexy, and they give a little peek into how amazing making love can feel.

Part I – Thunder

Part II – Rain

Part III – Rain, Part II

(It’s unbelievably easy to take good pictures in Yosemite – these are all straight off the camera, no fancy photoshopping at all.)

These last two aren’t technically of Yosemite, but from the drive home:

Where the road crosses the creek, there’s a 3-foot wall where you can look down to see the water if you’re tall enough, and we’ve been going there on walks ever since they were tiny.  With some difficulty, I lifted my now no-longer-toddler weasels up onto the wall so they could look down into the water, and we all searched the mirrored water to find the ducks that looked like inky black blobs in the fading light.  The elder weasel excitedly pointed out a robin that was almost-perfectly camouflaged against the ground, and the younger weasel followed her gaze and found it as well, both of them chattering excitedly and very proud of their accomplishment, and of course I praised them both for having such sharp eyes.  The sun was setting, and they laughed at me for being nervous that they might fall in (long ago they discovered the difference between what mothers and fathers will allow, and more than once I’ve been gently dis-invited from adventures with their father that I might foolishly ruin with my ridiculous attentions to “safety” and my requests that they not get blood all over the inside of the car.)  As my weasels squealed and enjoyed themselves, wriggling under my hands, I watched the sun slip behind the horizon and the moon start to glow, and I thought to myself that, despite the year we’ve had and the troubles we’ve seen and even the way the night air had gotten a bit too cold to be standing there in just a sweatshirt…there probably hadn’t ever been a more perfect moment in the whole history of the universe.