Still hammering

polyamory, polyfidelity.

Brief explanations, full of content.

I love Adam. I could get to like Sabrina very very much. Sabrina thinks that if Adam had to make a choice between us, he'd choose me. I really don't know.

I just remember the evening with Shawn and Hope and the sweetness of those stolen moments. The room was so silent with our breathing, the stars looking in through the window, the warm feeling tingling in the air, expectation, a ritual in progress. Those moments were sacred, sanctified.

when three witches meet in love...

Pure magic. Silence speaks louder than words.

Baby, check this out, I've got something to say, but it's so loud in here...

(no subject)

the "no, after you" dance between two women willing to share... and a man willing to be shared....

Oi gods.

First of all, crisis safely past.

Second of all: ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Crisis 1: The Waking

Normally I like to wake up to my alarm clock, the happy loud siren sound that generally wakes me within the first instant, or within the first minute.

This morning, I wake up half an hour before that to the sound of Votania screaming, "Azz, get out here RIGHT NOW!!!" It's the sound she reserves for natural or unnatural disasters: hurricane, fire, invasion of ickies from another dimension, kid unconscious and not breathing, earthquake. I barely grab a blanket (I'm wearing underpants and perhaps my glasses, I'm not sure) and scramble for the door --

-- to be confronted with one of the more mundanely appalling disasters I have ever seen.

Crisis 2: The Torrent

Ever been rudely yanked from sleep, to find that the ceiling is spewing hot brown water into your house? It's not fun. Water. Hot. Brown. Yuck.

I dropped the blanket on the floor to form a barrier between my room and the worst of the water, then dashed back to my bed to grab my two trusty body pillows, and laid them out as dams. A few more blankets and pillows, and the tide was blocked. Buckets! Where? Trashcan. Yank out bag, set on floor, put trashcan under hot shower. More buckets.

Votania and I looked at each other and started giggling.

"Well, you finally got me to see you naked!" she said.

There are some things that override modesty, and natural disasters are among them.

for the geek/Hunter S. Thompson fan crossover crowd:

http://totl.net/Dome/

Crisis 3: The Source

Having gotten the flood more or less under control, we began to think of things other than the immediate danger of having our living room and bedrooms thoroughly swamped by noxious water.

I lugged buckets. "It's the fucking air conditioner again!" I shouted above the splashing roar of the downpour. "The pipe must have blown, and now all the hot water from the A/C for the entire fucking apartment complex is draining into our apartment!"

"Dammit!" Votania said. "What should I do?"

"How about a fucking anti-rain spell for just this bloody apartment?" I said, stomping and splashing, still wearing only my glasses and my underpants.

Votania collapsed in laughter.

"What?" I demanded, schlepping the next bucket, a tiny three-gallon one about to overflow.

"Oh gods," she said. "It's my fault. It's my fucking fault. I knew I shouldn't have done that ritual. Shamash spilling the water on the VCR was a warning, and I completely missed it!"

"You low-down, no-good, bow-legged, bald-headed, two-bit daughter of a bleep bubble out of your bleeping mother's bleep-infected bleep during Bitchy Witchy Week," I cursed at her good-naturedly, mindful of the eagerly listening ears of Nephew, who was perched safely out of harm's way on the top bunk of the bed in Votania's room, cheering and clapping. "Bleep you!"

Crisis 4: Contact

"Let me get this," Votania yells at me. "You call the office. Get Maintenance here."

I decide that this is a good idea, and ransack the phone lists. Nothing on the paper list on the wall. Nothing on the paper list on the other wall. Nothing in the directory in the telephone.

"Dammit!" I say, and go skittering through the living room, moving more potentially water-damageable things out of harm's way.

"Did you call them?" Votania asks.

"I'm still looking for the number!" I yell. I finally find it in the caller ID log of incoming calls. I dial, and it rings forever. I get the machine, and write down the emergency pager number from the message, and dial.

I leave the apartment number on the pager, then dial again, and leave our phone number and the apartment number as well.

"I paged!" I say, and take another full bucket of water from Votania. The bathtub is not draining as fast as I would like; there's brown rusty water everywhere.

"It's too damn hot in here," Votania grouses. I open the patio door and close the screen. "Woman, go and put some clothes on," Votania adds.

I run to my room and pull on a pair of shorts and the first t-shirt I can find, then continue transferring water from the apartment complex's A/C to the sewer system, via our floor, a couple buckets, and the toilet.

Crisis 5: The Waiting

Votania and I kept lugging water from the downpour to the bathrooms, listening for a knock at the door. "I hope they get here soon," she said, as she staggered under the weight of a 13-gallon trash can full to the brim with mucky rusty water.

"So do I," I said, and shoved another bucket under the uncovered leak.

"The carpet's going to be ruined," Votania observed.

"They have a steam-cleaner."

"They're going to need it. I'm glad this is an apartment -- stuff like this is their responsibility, thank the gods."

"Yeah."

"Do you think we should cancel the Yule party? The apartment's going to be thrashed."

I glared at her. "If it doesn't stop the US Postal Service, it's damn sure not going to stop us," I told her.

"Point. ...Are you sure you paged them?"

We waited for a very long time, dragging increasingly heavy buckets of water through inch-deep water in Votania's bathroom to dump them. Finally the phone rang. Votania barely heard it over the pouring water; I was singing "Flood" too loudly to hear it at all.

Crisis 6: Rescue

I gained the presence of mind somewhere in there to turn the climate control to off so if anything worse happened, it might not be so bad.

The guy from maintenance showed up on our doorstep a few minutes later. We welcomed him in, and he swiftly unscrewed the access panel and yanked the shutoff valve.

The outpouring trickled to a halt and stopped, with just a few drip - drip - drips here and there, where not all of the water had poured out of the ventilation system yet.

The chick the guy had brought with him looked around. "Yuck," she said, at the brown water soaking everything.

"No shit," Votania said.

We moved Nephew out of the bedroom and sat him down on the couch, out of harm's way.

"I'll go get the steam-cleaner to suck up the water with," the guy said, and he and the chick left. They returned with a great huge machine. Votania and I tidied the floor as best we could.