Out On My Own

Ok. So, since Christmas there has been three days and four dinners at the Cabin In The Woods with a dear friend and his dearest. These included venison and mushrooms in a soy-balsamic sauce, with potatoes and the beans from Christmas, a big fat roast chicken, brined for two hours before hand, stuffed with cloves of crushed garlic and bruised rosemary, with potatoes in the roasting pan frying in the chicken fat. I think we had something green with it, but I cannot for the life of me remember. There were lamb shanks braised with more rosemary and garlic and canned whole organic tomatoes, served with mashed potatoes. There was pasta with with bolognese flavored with dried wild mushrooms. There were pears poached in mulled wine and something made of whipped cream and chocolate wafers, there was lots of cider and eggnog and cheese and crackers and chocolate, and the whole thing ended with potato-celery-leek soup.
Then there were three days at Boy's parents, full of time in the shop and absorbing stress and then working it out and then absorbing some more. A poor-to-fair dinner at what I wanted to be a decent restaurant, some potstickers that I made which were well received by all (but not quite to my taste) and a dinner of such strange and epic proportions that it will either not be discussed or have its own post.
Now we are back at school, our rooms twin messes of failed unpacking, our diet vegetarian in deference to Mischief and Estra, and our thoughts taken up by about 50/50 work and play. Classes don't start up for over a week. We are here to get a head start on our thesies and hang each other in the air.
All of which would work a lot better if Boy didn't have a bloody wedding to attend on Saturday. He'll be hopping a plane tomorrow and hopping another on Sunday, during which time I will not see him, he will not get off and he will very very much not be accompanying me to the newly relocated Fetish Flea.
Bugger.
At first I thought I just wouldn't go, and two years ago, I wouldn't have. Because two years ago, I'd have been going alone, and I wouldn't have seen anybody I knew there. But this year I will be going, without my Boy but not alone. I will be going with Mischief and Estra, or with a friend we'll call Darla, or by myself. But even if I drive myself there and back, alone in my car with my music, I'll see friends. I'll walk around with friends. I'll say hello to Monk and Alex, and there might even be a glint of recognition in their eyes when they say Hi back. And I can hold my own in the bondage lounge, and I'll even survive in the whip lounge... I wouldn't hit anybody with a single tail yet, but more practice would be nice, because someday, I'd like to.
It's nice to have friends in the Scene. It will be a fun thing to do. But Boy'll be in my thoughts every second. What little I buy, I'll buy with him in mind. If I learn new skills, they'll be to use on him. If I go to lectures, I'll be taking notes for him. I can't imagine a better way to jam the maximum of missing him into such a brief separation, but it'll be worth it. There are, indeed, purchases I need to make, and I do, indeed, want to learn new things for him. And it will be an interesting experience to be out there on my own.
I never have before.
I'll miss him.