Time for a Snake Den Meme

Yes, I know…I haven’t really written in a LONG time….did you miss us?

Let me just be honest.  No one would have wanted to hear from me in this sexy space the last Thisdays (that’s what I named the endless day after day of sameness).  You might be surprised to hear this but I am a control freak.

beach-vacation-sand-summer-88212
Photo by Zukiman Mohamad from Pexels.com

YES!  Really.  I know it is a surprise and I hide it so well.

So, being that control freak, everything out of my control has not been a pretty picture.  I have ranted and railed and sulked.  I pulled back from most social media because more news just wasn’t helping.

That said, life is starting to have little shoots of green around here.  We’ve been out to a couple of really small restaurants that are being safe and are local favorites for date night.  I want to say that I’m the easy-going person who can dress up for a date in the house with delivery and make it OK when I really want to be out.  I’m not.

Writing just wasn’t really going to flow and it wasn’t fun like it should be.  So, I backed away and took some time.

But, it is time to restart things.  I am not, however, a person who writes well without a spark to get me going.  That’s where the meme comes in.

We will be starting an A-Z meme aptly named the Snake Den A-Z.  Clever, huh?  Each month will be a different prompt.  For August, it will be Summer.

What are the rules?  Put the badge on your photo, poem, fiction, article, dissertation or anything else that says summer to you.  Want to start with X?  Go for it.  Only want to do one for the entire month?  Go you!

I am not promising that I will do every letter or do them in order.  They might be tied to another meme so that they jump around.  I MIGHT even repeat a letter.  You never know how crazy I’ll get.

So, by Friday we will have the badge on the site and you can grab it.  And if you are on Twitter, use the hashtag #SnakeDenAtoZ.  Link to badge

Hope you will join in the fun!!!

Choose Freedom

Freedom is one of those words that seem to have as many meanings as there are people in the world. I think each one of us has our own definition and how it fits into our life.

Absolute freedom doesn’t really exist in my view. There are always things that impede on that even if you are alone. Eating is kind of important to me and I like indoor plumbing. That said, I decided to focus on freedom as it applies more to our blog.

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Where Would We Be?

It’s hard for me to look back and see another path because Snake and I always tend to look forward more than back. Yeah, we have the regrets that everyone has, but we try to take what has happened and make something else of it. And realizing that the other path wasn’t really what we wanted anyway.

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Unmentionable Lifestyle

One of the things I really dislike about all of the things we collectively tweet and write about is the fact that we have to hide behind alternate identities, alternate contacts, and be protective of our IRL lives.

In fact, for many, malicious exposure would damage or destroy careers, families, etc. – because “that’s just weird.” Uh huh. Sure.

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Finding the Way Back


“I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them … in time, and space. A message to lead myself here.”


Russell T. Davies

Forgive me if you aren’t a Doctor Who fan because the above quote might seem a bit Little Red Riding Hood. But I found my Bad Wolf shirt this morning and it resonated.

When Snake and I started this blog journey a few years ago, it was bright and shiny and new. Writing was easy. Things flowed. We wrote about everything because it was a constant discovery.

After that initial burst, it’s harder to keep writing the same way. I suppose that it is possible to keep going bigger and MORE all of the time.

Unfortunately, life has a tendency to keep the fantasy 24/7/365 at bay. And it begins to feel boring to write about the same play and the same toys and the same games (Yes, I still love to torment him with Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit).

[Snake:] …and yes, I still typically lose. Over. and. Over again. I mean, seriously. you’d think I’d learn how to form more words or learn more trivia, but I think she has this uncanny way of finding trivia questions that I just have zero clue about… then making them the topic of whatever challenge. It’s just wrong. WRONG!

Then “piriformis syndrome” struck the house. I spent about a year with my wonderful chiropractor and stretching and exercising and recovered. The funny thing is, logically, when something hurts, you stop moving. Sit still and wait for it to heal. Not so much with this–at least with me. The less I did, the more it hurt. Working through the pain made it go away. Kinda blows your mind, huh?

And we started back to doing pictures and stories on the site. Snake and I are in a great place together. EXCEPT…my playful side got put aside while we worked on my recovery. Less play means less to write about. Less to write about means I think about it less often and it is a vicious circle. Writing is a habit that needs nurturing to keep it going.

I’m healed though and I want to find all sorts of new ways to torture and tease Snake. SO…it’s time to create myself again. Find my words that I scattered around and lead myself back to Charmer in all of her glory.

[Snake:] me? I’ll just be hiding. Over here. In the corner. Oh, and whimpering. Likely a lot. Maybe I’ll start memorizing wikipedia or a dictionary. Or both. But then again, she’ll find something else.

Healing Waters

The prompt today is essentially “heal.”  We’re on a mini-vacation to the coast for a couple of days on the front end of a family trip – and as I was sitting here, peering out the windows at the grand sight below, I could just feel the harsher stuff of life peeling off.

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Rock Climbing… and Sex and Anonymity

I love rock climbing.  I have a great group of friends who really enjoy rock climbing too – but they like different things about it.  It seems like we’re always discovering new techniques, new tricks, new things that are fun.  I love hearing their stories too – things they’ve done and experienced, things they try and either succeed or fail at.

One of the things I really love about rock climbing is the adrenaline rush.  When it comes to a new challenge or a new technique, it’s so much fun to try with with toys, from rope to clamps and even special rock climbing clothes we find.  It adds a lot to the overall fun of things and can really help the rock climbing experience.

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Crossing the Streams – and Turtling

I have a fairly public persona that we actively protect when it comes to stuff “here” and “there.”  It drives me a little nuts.  When both of your personas are almost entirely online, not getting any kind of bread crumb between the two of them is, if we’re being honest, nearly impossible.

A slipped reference, a missed login… and, if we’re going to get technical, even speech patterns and style suggests enough, over time, to draw lines.

I hate that it’s a problem.  I have to actively change my writing style.  I have to work to use different browsers for different types of work.  I have to hide my phone, then encrypt it, then password it, then put locks on applications that then prompt for logins.  It’s absolutely ridiculous.

This whole thing of anonymity and not crossing the streams is just over-the-top silly.

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