Really, I should have titled this post “Gifts.”  i’m sitting here in a delightful Airbnb, burning the meditation candle that jade gave me, looking at the beautiful stone that is supposed to help me be more in touch with my own intuitive self (pictured below with the little pouch she gave me to keep it in.)

Sitting here thinking about the many gifts that I’ve gotten from blogging – from the process itself, but even more so from the community of wonderful people I’ve gotten to meet.

But that’s not what you want to hear about  – I know you want to hear about my visit with Monkey!!

It was wonderful.  There is nothing like being with someone who can talk about the mundane and the kinky in the same breath and be comfortable with it.  And for many of us, that’s a rare treat.  On top of that –

Monkey is everything I thought she would be – beautiful (full disclosure, we both have curly, red hair so I might be biased.  And she wears cute glasses.)  Interesting.  We talked all day. Not obsessively, not like silence would have been awkward, but just comfortably chatting.   She took me to see amazing sights – I saw mountains and canyons and a gorgeous beach, all in the course of a day.  We had a lovely lunch – mine was made almost entirely of ingredients that I was not familiar with, aside from the albacore and avocado, and was delicious.

I can say that Monkey has just enough domme in her that we didn’t have that submissive girls cliché where we’re both going, “But what do you want to do?  No, whatever you want.”  But really we also know that submissive women can take charge beautifully when it’s helpful for someone else, and she had a fabulous day planned for us.

We talked about blogging and the blogging community and how much fun it would be to have a get-together.  We talked about all the people we wanted to be on the list – yes, YOU were one of them!!  We talked about where we could have it – Boston?  Atlanta?  Where would you come?  (That’s a really bad sentence – “where would you come?” but you know what I mean.)

Ok, I guess that probably won’t happen.  We can still dream.

So getting to meet Monkey was a gift from the universe.  Meeting her nourishes that part of my soul where i’m most essentially myself, and i’m grateful for that.  I will tuck our day together away in my memory box, right next to the one with jade and Sir Raven, with ‘nilla, with… other bloggers i’ve gotten to meet over the years.

Thank you, Monkey, for being who you are.  And thank you, Gentle Reader, for helping create a community of acceptance for us all.