Every other weekend, I get up early and leave the house and everyone/thing behind.  I get an iced mocha, a couple of pencils, and one of my countless spiral notebooks.  I think I've got like 5 or 6 them going at once right now.  I don't go back to the house until I feel like it.

When people ask me what I'm doing or where I'm going, I say, "Oh, I've been at ... school."  Yup.  That's what I say.   And sometimes I even believe myself.  Everyone believes me.  I wonder at that.

But it is true.  I have been at school.  In fact, this weekend is a School Weekender.  Today, I went shopping at Macy's (oh, God! those new Jezebel bras are so sexy hot and cute!) and found a great pair of Alfani knit slacks that are tight and well fitted, wrote an erotic poem thingy that I liked quite well, lazed about in the bright and warm Autumn sun and marveled at how my life is once again ... ONCE AGAIN ... undergoing a massive structural change.

Mike and I have decided that we now have an "open marriage."  As if two Freedom Lovers ever had a "closed" marriage.  But what is surprising is how we have silently negotiated, with the fewest words possible I imagine (5 contracted to 4), the terms of our relationship's next stage.  It's been 24-1/2 years for us.  I always say that I don't know how I got here.  I have been rather insane for most of it (okay, it's a NORMAL state of mind for me); I marvel at his fortitude!  Courageous or ... ?

So, I've been at school.  Creating my own curriculum, designing my own assignments, submitting my own ideas, and grading my own efforts.  I give myself a "B" for Being.  I can't grade on the curve ... otherwise, I'd automatically give myself an "A" to Advance, but that wouldn't be fair because then it would be like Summer School where you just take an abbreviated accelerated course and chuckle at getting a full grade.  Oh, wait!  It WAS during the summer ... does that count?  No?  Well, it didn't hurt to ask.

My latest assignment:  Map out my marriage/relationship's new framework.  I wonder where this is leading us?  I can't say no to it (and heck, why would I want to?  I didn't even consider it) because I've known this is where we've been heading (almost since the beginning).  But it was when he said the EXACT WORDS, in the EXACT TONE, that I heard/felt/remembered from my own self not a week (or maybe just a few days) prior, I felt the recognizing shiver up my spine and I swear, a flower bloomed in my mind.  It was finally here.  It was Now Time.

So very, very interesting.  And intriguing.  Yep, I'm being schooled ... at my own school.  Heh.