Tonight is our celebration for Deb's birthday, which is tomorrow. She's cooking her own dinner; we don't know what yet. She's going to go to the farmer's market after her massage and pick up whatever looks good to her, I think. And I'm going to try to make cr�me br�l�e instead of cake. Can you say butane torch? Wheee-ha! The girls gave Deb a kitchen torch for Christmas, so we get to try it out tonight. Should be fun.

There's a totally serious discussion on one of my listservs about whether the MINI is a "chick car" or not. I think you could paraphrase "He's not gay, he's just British" to apply to the MINI and its "chick car" factor.

This weekend we're headed out to St. Mary's and Cumberland Island for Deb's birthday trip. It's a long drive down there, so we'll be spending most of Saturday and Monday on the road. I don't know if Deb has picked out anything to read aloud yet, but I'm thinking the new Sweet Potato Queens book, "The Sweet Potato Queens' Big Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner," might be a good choice.

On Saturday night we're staying in the cheapest motel I've probably ever stayed in since the 1970s when my family used to take trips up to New York to see my grandmother. I got the $36.95 Internet rate by saying I found them on the website. I actually heard about the place from Deb's brother, but I checked it out on the website. It doesn't look skanky at all. We'll see.

Sunday night I sprang for a B&B. I think we'll have the whole place to ourselves. There's an indication that there might be something of a tacky factor to the decor, but we'll mostly just be sleeping there, so as long as the bed's not lumpy it should be okay. The room I reserved has a walk-in shower, and that's pretty cool. I'm more concerned about whether the breakfast will be any good. The B&B will also pack a sandwich lunch for us to take to Cumberland Island. Don't know how much they're going to charge for that.

Monday morning we'll be back on the road to Atlanta. Tuesday evening we've scheduled our next family meeting.

Meeting? Did I say meeting? Yes. Yes, I did.

And by the way, if you want to help the folks who've helped us so much, and maybe do yourself a little good in the process, go visit Greenery Press, publishers of "The Ethical Slut" (and so many other fine kinky books), and see if they've got a book you'd like to buy.

And speaking of Greenery Press, Haptotrope offered to send us Dossie Easton. Hot dang. I think we sure could use her. I mean, we got off to a really good start last night, but hell, Dossie is welcome to come visit our little attic any ol' time she wants. That goes for Catherine Liszt, too. I'm not sure what kind of strings (or other bondage media) Hap has to pull that off, but I wouldn't look a gift-top in the mouth, if you know what I mean.

Okay, back to the meeting.

I knew late Tuesday afternoon that I still had a combative, protective shell on and that I needed to ditch that fast or there wouldn't be a point to meeting at all. Thanks to some great support from my family and from friends and readers, I was able to get in the neighborhood of a proper positive attitude. Of course, once the meeting began and it was my turn to say something, I only got out about three words before I started crying. That's so fucking humiliating for me, but I always push on and just cry, otherwise I'd never get to say what I want to say.

I got to hear some things I needed to hear, like Jake explain why she never shows any emotion when we have talks. I mean, I mostly knew why from previous experience but I'd gotten to the point in recent months where I wasn't even sure she was aware of it.

I got to hear Deb say things that she's said over and over to me that she's needed to say to Jake, like that she needs to hear how Jake feels.

I owned up to stuff I needed to own up to and let go of it. I'd developed a very unhealthy Us vs. Them hostility that had been gradually building, but I think it really sank roots when elements converged to create the Jersey Blow-Out of 2002. Wow. Looking at that diary entry it's just amazing how I glossed over where that came from, how hard that was and what an impact it had. It was kind of like a little mini volcano eruption that let out some pressure just before lava started flowing in a steady stream to destroy surrounding villages and ecosystems.

Another thing I owned up to was my need to make, have and follow rules. We're trying to set up guidelines that provide structure without rigidity, and it's so hard for me not to make it into rules�not only in my own head, but as applied to everyone else. When stuff goes wrong, I want to blow the whistle, go to the rule book and start pointing at the relevant pages. That's one of the things I need to stay conscious of.

So, we've scheduled family meetings for every Tuesday night for now. Once-a-week, like therapy, until we get our most pressing issues cleared up. Because that adds to our combined schedule, we've reduced Sunday breakfasts to just Bacon Day breakfasts every other week. And one of those Bacon Days may become Bagel Day. That's not a reflection on bacon or an implication that bacon has offended us in any way, it's just that Jake and Sara have this 12-free-bagels-a-month coupon.

We're sort of starting slow, not wanting to jump into the deepest ravine first, so our next meeting will be about diaries. I didn't realize we needed to meet about diaries, but apparently we do. It's only a small-to-medium issue, so it won't be something massive to start out with. Deb and Jake have both stopped reading diaries, by the way. Also, I'm planning on moving date reports back to here.

I don't really have any issues with diaries that I need to bring up myself. I think it's going to be more along the lines of the entity my diary has become, what it has wrought, what part each of our diaries plays in our relationship, possibly use and abuse issues. We'll see. I know that I'm way more likely to step on somebody else's toes or "stuff" with my writing than vice versa. I will say that I try to write about mostly me and how my life is influenced by the people around me, but I certainly don't succeed all of the time. I do think I do a pretty good job of revealing the good, bad, and dorky sides of me, but don't ever think that I'm not putting my own spin job on things. Here you're reading the world according to Badsnake. No doubt about it.

Next on the meeting agenda, I want to talk about relationship agreements. What are our agreements with each other? That's going to be a big one, but I want to do it early on. That's not a set topic on the agenda, though, so it could turn out to be something else.

We also agreed that we could start wrapping things up at our Tuesday meetings with poop jokes beginning at 9:30. Maybe you had to be there.