Two minutes on the phone with Darkside. Waiting that extra few seconds after the "Working," is almost always worth it. Gives us both a chance to connect. Gives him a chance to vent briefly.

Bond's been flickering in and out. Hoping it'll stay on. We're of the needing it right now.

figment0 called late in the evening, and we giggled on our respective cordless phones while the storm raged outside. He's a good Figment, he is.

I chatted with jdllama about the current e-mail angst I'm having. What it looks like is there's a bad routing table somewhere between me and http://mail.yahoo.com, and that just sucks. When I next talk to Qwest, you can be sure that my opinion of their IVR will be even lower than usual in comparison to the friendly and helpful stuff from a competitor's tech support fellow.

It seems, now that I've been awake long enough to have my defences go down utterly and completely, that I've been resisting perving over the Cute Desk Guy just as hard as I once resisted perving over figment0. This, however, seems to be somewhat more successful than the resistance against figment0, for a few reasons.

First, I don't feel an incomplete bond hanging around. He's safe. That means whatever happens between us -- indifference, friendship, gods know what else -- is between us (well, and our respective deities) and not due to something larger than us looming. It's such a relief to not have that hanging over my head, unspeakably wonderful. I don't have to balance Destiny against practicality, and figure out how to lower a figurative stack of fragile and explosive items gently to the ground. What we build is up to us. We're not picking up after anything.

Part of the difficulty in balancing Destiny, I must admit, is my silly habit of making plans that override Destiny, and wanting to stick with them. If I just let it all loose and let it balance itself, would it work? Somehow, I don't think this society is set up to allow much of that, not any more. You need money to make that work, or ability to be accepted in public as some form of shaman in tune with the Universe, or something.

Second, the Cute Desk Guy is actually celibate. He mentioned, and then I confirmed with mutual friends, and -- celibate. He's got his reasons, and I'll definitely respect that, and I won't be smacking myself into a brick wall. Besides, someone of the same social group already registered an interest in him with me, and while they may well be extremely incompatible (laid back to the extreme vs. brittle high-tension) it's still not polite to muddy up a social group's romance eddies by cutting the queue. Never mind that to jump into that queue, I'd be jumping out of a more important one, and that's a place I can't afford to lose.

My romantic interest in figment0, now that other things are getting out of the way, would be more aptly termed a disinterest. I can socially flirt with him because we are close enough friends so that I feel all right with this, but any actual interest is ... just not there. And I'm quite all right with that. Wax and wane; this is how my seasons are. Only Darkside has been a constant.

Oh, I fucking did not. Except I bloody well fucking did.

*sigh*

When my bondmate had to make a very important choice, back in January of 2001. I fiddled with probability. Swung the scales. Made sure the choice would be a free one. Diverted attention from my own goddamn self.

GUESS WHO FORGOT TO TAKE THAT OFF????!!!


Figment has chastised me thoroughly.

...ok, he says "slightly."