poly Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

Find the Happily Ever After that Works for You

At the gym, at the women’s luncheon, hair salon, I’ve had a variant of this conversation often:

A woman in the locker room at the gym is obviously upset, so much so that she needs to vent. She and I are probably about the same age, so she sees me as a potentially sympathetic audience. She starts by saying, “My ex-husband . . .”

I admit that I, too, am divorced.

It’s a common story, we both married college sweethearts, and after sixteen years for me, and over twenty for her, the marriage ended in divorce. She goes on to talk about what seems to bother her the most. He’s married to a woman that’s over a decade younger than he is, and that much younger than she is. Sometimes the age difference between the ex-husband and the new spouse is closer to twenty years, but the story doesn’t change much except for that.

The woman is attractive, the gym workout shows, but she goes on to compare herself to the young new wife, and talks about how no one in their forties, or fifties, can compete with someone in their thirties, or twenties.

I’ve gone quiet, just letting her talk, because I’ve learned that’s my best alternative, but she finally says, “You know what I mean? We give them the best years of our life and then they leave us for some young thing, and we’re supposed to be out there dating again, but this time we’re up against the same twenty-year-olds that our husbands left us for, how unfair is that?”

I smile, trying to avoid answering, but she presses, they usually do. She wants me to stamp her ex-wife card, but I can’t.

I finally say, “Actually, I left my husband, and I’m remarried to a man that’s twelve years younger than I am.”

The look I get is never friendly at this point. The women never seem to know what to say, they thought they had a kindred spirit and somehow by me bucking the stereotype it’s like I betrayed the sisterhood. I have yet to have any of the women be happy for me, or say, “Way to go,” nope I’m suddenly lumped in with the bastard husband and the sweet young thing that stole him away. The women suddenly don’t want to talk to me anymore, because I found dating after my divorce easy, once I started dating younger men. I agreed that men in our own age group were confusing, but then I found them equally confusing in college when we were dating them in the first place.

I had the same problems with them in my thirties that I’d had in my twenties. They expected me to be a kind of cheerleader for them, their goals, their ambitions, and their careers. I’ve never been big on the rah-rah, and my own goals, ambitions and career has always interested me more than anyone else’s. By the time of my divorce, I was a New York Times bestselling author, and I actually had men totally panic when they found out, as if they had no box for the fact that I was at least as successful in my field as theirs, or more successful. Rather than seeing it as a good thing that we both had great careers, they seemed intimidated by it, or at least less interested in my job, than I was supposed to be in theirs. For the most part they bored me, just like they had in college. I perplexed them or left them looking for someone who would be a bit more adoring, again just like in college.

Men about a decade younger had usually been raised in households where both parents worked outside the house, or by single moms. They expected everyone to work and have a career of their own, in fact your job was part of what you brought to the relationship and the possible future, because it was expected to need two incomes to get to the same place that one was supposed to take us back when I was in college. The new attitude worked for me, and I had no trouble dating once I moved a decade younger.

I admit to being a little weirded out about the age difference at first, but it just worked for me. I was thirty-eight and Jonathon was twenty-six when we married. We will be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this year and unlike the last time I closed in on this mile marker, I’m happier now than when we first married, which is pretty awesome.

I’ve had women who are still married, or who have never married, be happy for me, and ask how I managed to marry a younger man, but never one of the women who tell me their story and find out mine is the reverse of theirs.

How did I do it? First, I wasn’t looking for someone to take care of me, not in college or a decade later. I wanted a partner, someone who would work with me, not work for me like some kind of salaried slave. I know that the women who stay at home and invest everything in this old-fashioned scenario are just as trapped, because they often haven’t had a job since soon after college, so they’re out there with no work history and are ironically competing for jobs against the very same demographics that their husbands are successfully dating. But if you listen to them talk about their ex-husbands, and the men they are trying to date, it’s like it’s all about the man’s earning potential. I’m told that the male version of this is that the woman is valued for her looks and how she being on his arm can help his career or his reputation with the other men. I’ve never bought into either mindset, so this really is second-hand information for me. It’s funny that in my fifth decade I finally understand the mystery of why I didn’t fit into my own typical generation.

In first grade I was the only child who’s parents had divorced. Now, it’s about half of most classes, or more, where children are dealing with a divorce, or maybe their parents never married, and don’t plan to, which I’d never heard of as a kid. My mother went out and worked to support me, while her mother, my grandmother, stayed home and took care of me. Again, it wasn’t the typical arrangement when I was in elementary school. By the time I was in second grade my mother had died in a car accident and it was just my grandmother and me, which again made me odd kid out. I still remember one of the little girls teasing me that my mother was dead. Anyone who says that childhood is sweet and carefree, doesn’t remember what it was really like, or their childhood was much different from mine.

I realized just a few years ago that my attitude is literally decades younger than my actual age and I now believe it is that my childhood was much more typical of the generation after mine, than my own. Is that what has made me open to the new technology? I’m just as likely to be on my smart phone as the people I’m with, and I wish my friends that are my age, or older, would text more. It’s a great way to keep up with people on a daily basis. I love sending and receiving pictures and little notes, from friends and lovers. I also keep discovering new music, new bands, and most of the people in my age group seem to have stopped at the decade they graduated from high school, or college. I totally don’t understand that, but I was raised with almost no music in the house, so I have no affection for my high school, or college, sound track. In fact, I don’t have a much of a musical reference for those years of my life. I discovered and really grew to love music after college when I started writing my first novel. Music will forever be entwined with writing for me because of that. Jonathon brought a lot of music into my life. Now, we take turns finding new music to add to our shared iTunes list. Jonathon took me to my very first concert, and yes, I was in my thirties before I ever went to a concert of any kind. I was too busy writing and trying to establish my career when I was in my teens and twenties to waste time on concerts. I was driven to succeed, that didn’t leave a lot of room for fun. Other people that we dated brought more music into our lives. New bands, new singers, and we began to make friends with some of the musicians like S.J. Tucker, or Kimberly Freeman of One-Eyed Doll. Jonathon finally learned to play the bass and, no surprise, he’s good at it. I can finally say that I’ve dated a musician.

My first marriage I earned my big white dress and thought the idea of never being with anyone but my husband a great idea. I bought into the traditional story, and when that didn’t work I threw out the storyline, because it hadn’t been true for me. I thought, if society could be that wrong about that much, then maybe what I’d been raised to believe wasn’t the only truth out there. So, in my thirties I went out into the world and tried to discover some truths that did work for me. Those of you happy in a traditional marriage, I’m happy for you, I’m only saying it did not work for me. I found that nearly everything that society expected of me didn’t work for me. I’m the major bread winner in a career I love. I make a good living at a job that is traditionally not a secure field, but I’m twenty years and counting, so I think I’ve found my career path. The men who thought I was too aggressive and masculine in my attitudes in college, can keep their own attitudes; I’ve found that men and women, a decade or two, younger than them and younger than me, are fine with my drive and ambition. When I first started dating Jonathon some of my acquaintances, and even a few friends, thought he was my boy toy, my fling after leaving my first marriage. When I decided to marry him, some of them didn’t understand. I was marrying someone the age of their children, which was a little weird even to me. You have a fling with the younger man, you don’t marry him, and he certainly isn’t your happy ever after, but it has been for me. Our girlfriend Genevieve has been part of that happily-ever-after. We will be celebrating our fifth anniversary of dating this year. Now, she’s brought her wonderful husband, Spike, into our lives. He and I will hit two years of dating later this year. I have restrained myself in all those conversations with other ex-wives in my own age group because I could have added that I’m also living with a beautiful young women in her twenties, just like their ex-husbands. I didn’t set out to date any woman, since Genevieve is my first girlfriend ever, but the fact that she was literally half my age when we met, is just another part of the wonderful weirdness in our lives. Spike is twenty years younger than I am, for those who are wondering. The four of us are living together and it works for us, but to get to this happy place I had to throw out almost everything society told me I was supposed to be. Was it scary? Yes. Did I get my heart broken along the way? Yes, several times. Was it all worth it? Yes, very yes. Could it all have blown up in my face? Hell, yes. A few times it did, but I was still happier out, than in.

I guess what I wanted to share from my own experience is to not let age, or society, stand in your way. If you like someone, date them. If you love someone, marry them. Don’t let age, or the stuff that doesn’t matter in the end, prevent you from finding happiness. Be yourself, no matter how weird that may seem to others; it’s your life after all, not their’s. It’s alright to be afraid of taking big chances, but don’t let the fear stop you from taking the leap. I know for me, that if I’d stayed where I was behind the safe walls of my first marriage and a corporate job, I’d still be miserable, that wasn’t going to change. How sad that would have been, and oh, how much I would have missed.

What Polyamory is, and What Polyamory isn’t

Since I came out as polyamorous I have been getting a lot of questions, so here’s an attempt to answer some of them.

What exactly is polyamory?

Ans: It means to love more; to love more people at the same time. The only rule that all poly people agree on is this: you tell the truth to everyone involved. That means that everyone involved in the relationship, or relationships, knows about everyone else. I’ve negotiated with several wives about relationship parameters with their husbands before certain boundaries were crossed because to do any less than be totally upfront beforehand isn’t poly, it’s cheating, and true poly doesn’t cheat. If anyone is telling you they’re poly but they’re sneaking around behind someone’s back, then it’s not polyamory.

Some people allow sexual partners outside of their main relationship but no other emotional ties, others see all relationships as serious only, no just sex allowed. Some close their poly at three, or four, or however many. Closed poly is also referred to as poly monogamy which is just like regular monogamy except it includes more than two people. Some people who are part of the BDSM community will include long time play partners as part of their polyamory, even if that play partner is strictly kinky dungeon time with no actual sex involved. Others see play partners as more casual. Many poly people are not part of the bondage community and many in the community aren’t poly.

How do you bring up the topic of poly to your spouse or special person?

Ans: I’ve never had to do this, so I honestly don’t know. I can tell you how Jonathon and I brought up the topic to each other. Jonathon and I married with the idea that we would not be monogamous as a married couple. Since we’re celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary this year, it’s worked for us. We’ve managed to raise a great kid who’s now in college. Our empty nest turned into a decidedly full one when our girlfriend of four & a half years moved in with us and brought her husband along, so that our couple became a fourple. Again, it’s working for the four of us but your mileage may vary. Here’s a little bit of how we got to this happy multiple arrangement.

More than fifteen years ago when Jonathon and I realized we wanted to marry each other, we both had reservations; not about our love for each other, but what the next step was in that love. He’d never been married before and I’d just gotten out of a sixteen year marriage. That had convinced me marriage wasn’t for me and monogamy was definitely not something I wanted to try again, but I was in love with Jonathon and he was in love with me.

One day he said, “I’m not sure I want to tie myself down to just one person forever.”

I replied, “I’m not sure I want to be monogamous with anybody ever again.”

We sort of looked at each other, and if we’d gone the traditional route the relationship would have been over right there, because we were both so not ready for a monogamous relationship like traditional American marriage. I suggested that we marry with the possibility of adding other people to our sex life down the road. We didn’t have a plan for how to do it, and we didn’t know there was a word for what we were trying to accomplish. It was a fan at a signing that first introduced the word, polyamory, to us. We knew monogamy was not what we wanted, so we set out to find something else, something that worked for us as a couple.

I really can’t tell you how to bring up the idea of polyamory into an already existing monogamous relationship, because I’ve never done it.

One thing I do know is that polyamory isn’t a fix for a marriage that is already in trouble. If you’re relationship is in trouble, go to a marriage counselor, or to your local clergy. Go to someone that can help you work on your issues both as individuals and as a couple, because what I’ve found is that a couple’s issues are usually a mix of individual issues that have never been addressed and problems within the couple itself. This holds true whether it’s two, four, or more, involved in the relationship.

Poly is not a cure all for failing marriages, in fact, if the base relationship isn’t strong enough, poly can be the death knell because often the couple isn’t poly at all, they’re just unhappy. Poly won’t fix what’s wrong in the initial couple’s relationship, that has to be strong to begin with to add other people into the mix. Strength builds on top of strength; a weak foundation will bring down the house that’s built upon it, so first your foundation needs to be solid. Only then can you add more weight, and extra people, extra relationships, are more “weight”. You have to be ready for that weight, or it will crush you.

I’m being so adamant in the above because I get far too many people asking me about poly as a “cure” for a marriage that isn’t working. People say, they’re bored and want to bring up poly to their spouse so they can add spice to their marriage. Poly isn’t about adding spice to your relationship, poly is a lifestyle choice. It is a way of dating, forming a domestic partnership, making a family. It is not just an addition to add to your life like date nights, or lingerie.

I know this doesn’t answer all the questions we’ve been getting about polyamory, but I hope it at least answers some of the basic ones. I also hope that it puts to rest this idea that people have that poly is an easy fix for a flagging relationship, or that poly is some fancy word for cheating on your spouse, because it is the opposite of cheating and it is far from easy. Think about the time, effort, and work it requires everyday in any marriage, now think about multiplying that by a factor of two, or more, and that’s what polyamory is. Its totally worth it for those of us who are wired this way, but it’s not a choice to be made lightly and there’s nothing easy about adding extra people to any relationship. Good, solid relationships whether monogamous or polyamorous, are not for wimps.

The picture is of the joined hands of our foursome; Jonathon, Genevieve, Spike, and me.

International Women’s Day

I really hate this day because I’m not sure why we need a day to remind us that woman are important. We’re over half the human race. There are almost always more girls than boys born every year. We out number the men. Yet, here we are reminding people that there are women scientists. I knew that as a child. I read about Madame Curie and Jane Goodall was a personal hero of mine. There are women in every branch of science and mathematics. Why is that still a surprise to anyone?

There are women athletes, police officers, soldiers, politicians, weight lifters, firefighters, every job that men can do we do, except sperm donor, and there the men have us, but then we are the only egg donors. It takes both of us to make a new life, a new human being, of either sex.

If all the above is true, then why do we need an International Woman’s Day? Why can’t everyday be a celebration of women and men and whatever sexual determination in between, that exists or may exist in the future? I don’t know, but I do know that I’m still getting asked, “Why do you write strong female characters?”

I’ve asked the male writers I know and they’ve never been asked, “Why do you write strong male characters?” They’ve never even been asked, “Why do you write weak male characters? Or, caring male characters . . . or why do you write male characters?”

It’s 2015, and I think it’s time we all understood that women can be strong, men can be caring, and that whether you make a good stay-at-home parent is more about your personality than your gender. That whoever is more career driven should go out and pursue that career, regardless of whether they are male or female. Just be you – whoever, whatever, that is for you.

I’m tired of things that divide me from the rest of the human race. I’d like to embrace what brings us together, what makes us love each other, not what makes us hate each other. I’m tired of the male bashing and I’m tired of catcalls from passing strangers. I’m just as tired of the women who are cruel and belittle other women because of some misguided idea that somehow by cutting other women down it makes them look better, it doesn’t, as I am of the men who belittle women simply because they’re women, as if that matters. It’s not a question of gender, it’s a question of respect for yourself and for others. If you don’t respect yourself, it’s very hard to respect others. I have female friends and male friends, and anyone that tells you that the genders can’t be friends with each other because sex gets in the way is full of shit. My best friend on this planet is a man. We’ve seen each other through divorces, second marriages, career changes, you name it and some things you probably couldn’t name. We are each other’s 3 AM phone call, when the rest of the world has gone black.

I spent the day with my girlfriend Genevieve shopping for the last few things we need on the remodel of our home. I texted with my daughter Trinity, because she was at a convention with friends this weekend. She’s turned twenty, which still seems odd, but on International Women’s Day is seemed like talking to my daughter was appropriate. Of course, we talk and visit when there’s not a special day celebrating women too. Jonathon visited his mother today, not because it was International Women’s Day but because he loves her. Spike, Genevieve’s husband and the other man in my life, is the one cooking dinner tonight because he’s awesome that way. He’s masculine in the best sense of the word, the traditional ideal of a good man, but he certainly doesn’t see cooking as women’s work or men’s work, it’s just part of running a household. Tonight he cooked, tomorrow it may be Genevieve’s turn or Jonathon’s turn. It’s rarely my turn since I am domestically challenged. They’d rather have dinner well prepared and timely than let me take a turn. At our house, everyday is International Women’s Day and International Men’s Day. We try to celebrate each other’s skills and strengths and work around our weaknesses every day. There’s no woman’s work, or man’s work, there’s just work and we try to find the best person for the job. If it’s heavy lifting beyond what I lift in the gym, it just makes sense to use the men’s upper body strength. If it’s sewing a hole in a beloved pair of jeans, you want any of the other three of my partners, but not me. If you want me to write a book or short story, I’m all over that, but sewing is not a strength for me. Jonathon is better with a rifle than I am. Spike is better at hand-to-hand. Genevieve is the best organized of us all. She’s also the tallest and I’m the shortest, so everybody gets to, “come be tall” for me, unless they want me climbing the cabinets to reach the highest shelves.

So, happy International Women’s Day, but here at our house we don’t need a day to remind us that women are great, or that men are great, or that everyone is special regardless of gender, race, or nationality. I wish the rest of the world seemed to know what we’ve learned at home: that we are stronger and happier together than we are apart.

On Sunday, March 8, 2015, Laurel K Hamilton <lkh@laurellkhamilton.org> wrote:

New Blog – When I grow up I want . . .

From the time I was twelve-years-old I never planned to marry. I would live on an island with lots of animals and write my stories, because writers could live anywhere; right? At twenty-one I left my grandmother’s house to marry my first husband. I never owned my own apartment, never lived alone, and then suddenly I was part of a couple. It had been just my grandmother and me, and now it was just my husband and me. It seemed not that different, and yet entirely different. I think if I’d come from a bigger family that I might have had more trouble transitioning to this two person system, this couple, but two seemed familiar, seemed right. By the time we celebrated our first anniversary we had one Yellow-naped Amazon parrot, a hand fed luntino Cockatiel, and a canary that would come out of its cage and play on the parrot playground. I was writing and trying to sell my stories when I wasn’t working in corporate America. We’d moved to California, so I was at least by the ocean, I was part way to my island.

Fifteen years later we were living in St. Louis, Missouri, the middle of the country, and I’d almost forgotten that island dream. I was a best-selling novelist and I was separating from my soon-to-be ex-husband. I got my first apartment that was just mine. I was able to pick out a kitchen table and chairs without consulting anyone’s opinion but my own. It was GREAT! I reveled in the freedom of just me. Well, not just me, because one room of the apartment was for our daughter, Trinity. I let her pick the color and the decor. She was five-years-old and wanted a totally pink room. At her age, so had I, and she wanted a pink canopy bed, and so had I, so who was I to argue with her? Besides, I’d already told her she could pick everything, this would be a promise that I would never make to a child this young again. The pink paint was called Candy Pink, or something equally innocuous, but we, the painters, the people who delivered the furniture, all of us, dubbed the color Eye-Bleed Pink, because it was so bright it made us nauseous to be in the room too long. One of the men who delivered her pink and white canopy bed declared the color made him dizzy. But Trinity loved her room! The rest of the apartment was mine to decorate as I saw fit, and I loved being on my own. I was never going to marry again, it hadn’t worked for me, monogamy with the wrong person is a trap I never wanted to fall into again. My ex-husband got to keep our remaining parrot and I got the two dogs; we shared Trinity.

Six months later I would be engaged to a friend I’d known for eight years, Jonathon, and we’d be planning our wedding. My first husband swept me off my feet in a gentle, geeky kind of way. Jonathon and I snuck up on each other, just friends until the moment we realized we weren’t. I’d done the big wedding once, but he hadn’t, and what my sweetie wanted, I wanted to give him, so we did it up big. Trinity and her best friend were our flower girls and they got to ride in the horse drawn carriage at the end after we were pronounced husband and wife, because if you have a little girl and you have a horse drawn carriage they get to ride in it too, that’s just a rule somewhere, or should be.

Jonathon and I celebrate our thirteenth anniversary next Monday. We are happier now, more in love now, than when we started. Having been through a marriage where ten years in, that was not the case, I value this love and our life, all the more. Trinity is happy, healthy, and off to college. We have three dogs and about twenty koi in the pond. We still live in the middle of the country, so no closer to that island I wanted at age twelve, but I am now a #1 New York Times Bestselling novelist (my agent always insists I write it that way *waves at agent*) so part of my childhood dream is on track.

Four years ago, Jonathon and I were in love with another man. He was our third, and I’d hoped he might be a live-in third someday, but the situation was too complicated. No one’s fault, just not enough honest communication and grownup straight forwardness, I think. But our ex-third introduced us to a woman and her partner. The woman was Genevieve, and her partner doesn’t matter much to this story, because two years later he would be an ex for both of us. But Genevieve would be my first girlfriend ever, and she dated both Jonathon and me. Even more than our ex-third she loved us both, equally, and I hadn’t realized how much I, we, needed that until we had it. She was states away, and we settled into a long distance relationship, LDR, most of our polyamorous relationships have been LDR. She met another man. We knew all about Spike from the beginning, because poly has only one hard rule: that everyone is honest. Spike would talk to us for hours as he planned her engagement ring. Who knew her better than we did, after all we’d been dating her a year longer than he had. We were part of the party where he planned to surprise her with the proposal. I got to help distract Genevieve so that when I turned her around he was just down on one knee with the ring held up to her. It was wonderful and we’d worked as unit to pull it off.

Next week, just after Jon and I celebrate thirteen years of wedded bliss, Genevieve and Spike are moving in with us. They are bringing their two dogs, and yes we have introduced our packs with the help of a local “Dog Whisperer”. Genevieve will also be bringing her fifty-five gallon aquarium of fish. She and I have already talked about a possible lizard, and more fish. Both Spike and I are terribly allergic to cats, and that is a blow to her, but she loves us both, even enough to risk never owning a cat again. I am getting shots, and hope to find a way, someday, for her to have her beloved felines again. She has also asked about parrots, but I am allergic to feathers, which was one reason I had to give up the parrot to my ex-husband. I miss having birds, very much, and hope to find one type I am not allergic to. I’m the writer I dreamed about being, and we will soon have as many dogs as I envisioned as a child, and I hope, nearly pray, that we may add more animals as time goes on, now all we need is that island. Some place tropical, Genevieve?

Happy Summer Solstice Harvest!

Happy Summer Solstice! Blessed Litha for my fellow pagans! Today is the longest day of the year. More sun, more light, more warmth, and tomorrow there will be a touch less, as we head towards autumn. This is a harvest festival for us, because it is traditionally when serious bounty began to come in from the fields, back when we couldn’t just run down to the grocery store and buy strawberries in January.

So, what good is a harvest festival in modern times where some people don’t even know that tomatoes grow on vines?

It’s true that the closest some of us get to a field is an apple picking afternoon at one of the local orchards, or the local organic isle, but harvest isn’t just about the stuff that feeds the body, it’s also about what feeds the heart, mind, and soul.

Harvesting means you’ve chosen what you wanted to grow, so you could get the right seed and plant it. You found out how much sun, how much water, and how many days until it would mature into a yummy vegetable. Pick something you want in your life, a better job, new couch, water garden, a family trip to Yellowstone, a romantic trip to Paris without the kids, hike the Appalachian trail, get pregnant, own your first designer watch, once a week date night, eat a more balanced diet, exercise more, take horse back riding lessons, take some college classes, be happier, love yourself more, knit your first sweater, finish your first novel, finish your 33rd novel, find a girlfriend, find a boyfriend, spend more time alone – whatever you want to bring into your life, that’s your seed.

Now that you know what you want, you need to figure out how much sunlight and water it needs, because some things need more shade, more solitude, others need bright sun and for you to reach out to more people for help, or instructions, or just to get them on board with the plan. The trick is to decide what steps you need to take, or things you need to do, or not do, to bring your harvest in before the end of the year.

For me, I want to finish the latest novel I’m writing by Thanksgiving day of this year. That’s going to require serious dedication to putting my butt in a chair and typing out pages on a regular basis. The light and water needed to finish the book is time, consistency of effort, and faith in myself and the book. On a good day, I’m so sure of myself that I’m unassailable in my certainty. On a bad day, I’m equally convinced I’d be killing trees to no purpose if I print the pages out. Oddly, I took today off from writing, to pursue two other things I wanted to bring to harvest in my life. I wanted koi for our water garden. I accomplished that by putting my name on the waiting list at the local pond store, because the fish go fast, and the big, pretty ones go faster. The fish were so gorgeous I was giddy with their beauty, and spoiled for choices. I began to laugh out loud as the clerk caught the fish I pointed out. I helped some, and was quickly splashed from glasses to sandals with water. We had one fish leap completely out of the tank to avoid being caught. I’d never seen such energy and fight in carp. It was so much fun, that I came home laughing and smelling slightly of clean, well-cared for fish. Watching them flit through the water in our pond made me smile a lot.

I also talked to the other half of our poly foursome today, and that feeds into another harvest goal, that I want even better communication to make sure that everyone’s needs get met, and most of their wants.

Jon, my husband, and I also got to visit with our friends, Sam and Eric, and since one of my goals is to see more of our friends, more often, that was perfect for today. They got here in time to help with the adventure of acclimating the koi to our pond, thanks for the help guys. What do you want to accomplish? What are you willing to put time and energy into so that you can harvest it by the end of the year? Think on what you need, what you want, and make it happen.