As seems to be usual for me, after having a couple of days to chill out about it, I suspect I was too harsh on Master in my last rant.  I feel this even more as I spent yesterday at home due to a snowstorm that shut down our office, but basically got nothing done. Except napping and being emotional -  did a fair bit of that. I think I probably hurt Master’s feelings by writing what I did, and I’m sorry for that. I hope he isn’t still upset with me, but it’s hard to say.

I’m still sick, I can’t seem to shake this sinus infection I have. I don’t want to go to the doctor, but maybe I will. Master is really frustrated with me for being sick so much. I wish I knew what to do because I get my feelings hurt when I feel like crap and he is annoyed with me for not being productive, but I know it is frustrating too to have plans and no way to achieve them.

Things feel really off between Master and I. Nothing earth shattering or relationship breaking, just off. He’s been distant and preoccupied. We had the kids this week and it seems that both of us were on edge and tempers were near the surface. Sometimes I think our parenting has suffered the worst blow in this divorce.

The little guy has been really clingy and sad lately. I feel bad dropping him off at daycare, I feel bad putting him to bed at a normal hour because we haven’t had much time with him. I feel bad leaving him in the room to fall asleep by himself because he wants someone to stay with him. Basically I feel bad constantly because I can’t be there for him the way I like.

Then there are the twins who make life extremely difficult. They are rude, they are destructive, and they don’t care. I know this is a boy thing, and that’s life.  I know every parent goes through it. But it makes me so angry, and I feel like a total failure. We only get them every other week now, and half the time it is a relief when they leave. Then I feel guilty for feeling that way and sad that I don’t enjoy them more when they are here. I lose my temper,  at times, and yeah. I just worry constantly that I’m ruining them, that if we could have a better relationship everything would work out with them.

What I want is for us to snuggle up, relax, have lots of sex, whatever with Master. Try to get back on the same page and feel connected. Master frequently does not feel the same disconnects that I do, so he may think everything is fine, I dunno.  I just know I’d like us to be in a good place before we get the kids back again.

Every time I think I am going to focus more on service I fail. I want so much to be a service oriented person. I want to make Master’s life easier.  Yet usually I feel like I make it harder. I can’t really tell if what I need is to sleep for two days straight and then try to kick ass while being well rested, or if I just need to get over myself. I think Master mostly thinks I need to get over myself. I would say that’s not fair, but obviously I judge him too at times, so who is to say.  How do you make yourself stay productive while fighting exhaustion? I dunno.

I had a nice talk with CC yesterday. She said she still loves us and I told her we still love her.  She says she wants to find a way for us to be closer, just that she didn’t feel it was sustainable how it was. I don’t really know what to say. I am so up and down and back and forth on that. I want to be closer to her too, but I don’t know what options are available to us anymore.  I wish I knew what to think or feel about all this.

Master is seeing a new girl, J.  I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but I really like her. I think I like her so much because I relate to her. She doesn’t have any poly experience before us, and she said she was really nervous to meet me after spending the day with Master. He made her stick around even though she wanted to bolt, and it was fun. We played card games while Master watched hockey.

She’s since brought over cupcakes and bought me Halloween socks! I can see a great friendship developing if nothing else, and it’s nice to have another woman around the house once in a while. Sometimes I think the best way to do poly is with inexperienced people because they don’t come with a lot of expectations about it. I guess time will tell there.

What else? I’m having another one of my periodic freakouts about merging my faith with my lifestyle. I wish Master was willing to marry me, it would make like so much simpler. I understand his reservations and they are all perfectly valid. He doesn’t agree with marriage to begin with for policital reasons. He is concerned that if we get married he won’t be able to marry anyone else he sees and that’s not really fair. He feels the church doesn’t really accept me. Yet, I feel like doing this is between us and God, and it’s noone elses business in the church what other relationships we might have. If we were to be married it would be about he and I, not anyone else. Maybe I compartmentalize too much, I dunno.

I highly highly doubt there are any other Orthodox Christians who lurk here, but if there are, advice is welcome.

I guess that is all for the time being. Master and I are going to a Haloween party tonight. Hopefully it will be fun!  My costume involves a mask, I have a feeling I won’t be wearing it for all that long.  This sure was a jumble of thoughts. Stream of consciousness at it’s best or worst, dependning on how you look at it. Thanks for reading.

In the interest of not nagging Master, I am going to take 30 seconds and complain here instead. I hate to have to do disclaimers, but for anyone who wants to tell me he is an ass and I should leave him if I’m not happy, I’ll just say that this is not a reflection on our relationship. Just a rant.

WHY oh WHY is it unacceptable for me to relax on the weekends, or be sick (which I am, again), or otherwise have a “break” day without it being insinuated that I am not dedicated to doing the things he cares about,  but when he has a list a mile long of things that need to be done around here, he can spend hours on the computer and playing with the kidlets?

The List:

1. The little guy is depending on him to finish his Halloween costume.  It clearly is going to come down to the wire and that is really annoying when I know several hours work and it could be finished today, or mostly finished.

2. Our garbage disposal has been jammed for a week.   It is making it a huge pain in the ass to deal with cooking and cleaning. He was going to fix it yesterday. Now he “doesn’t have time” to get to it this weekend.

3. He was going to go into work today to catch up on backlog.

4. Our washing machine is still broken and he didn’t call on it all week despite my begging him and reminding him every day.

Finally, every time I leave the house  it is a risk.  I can’t leave the kitchen clean and come home to it clean because nobody in this house knows how to pick up after themselves but me, I guess. The living room is also on the trashed side of things despite my cleaning it yesterday. So, I just spent 3 hours off doing laundry at the laundromat because of the above mentioned washer, and I’ve come home to a worse mess than I left.

That’s just a few of the more glaring things. None of it matters. I guess that’s why I am the slave and not him. However, I am still annoyed today. Maybe I am having my not-period. I don’t bleed anymore since I got my IUD, but I still get emotional periodically. This feels like that.

For the record, so far this weekend I have:

Cleaned the living room and kitchen.

Sorted laundry for 5 people

Done laundry for 5 people

Planned meals for a week

Gone grocery shopping (and hauled a propane tank)

Chased three children around a hockey rink for two hours while Master played hockey.

Cleaned the litter box.

Cleaned the kitchen again.

Cleaned the Living room again.

Cooked meals for the whole family multiple times

Reorganized the freezer.

All while fighting off a seriously angry set of sinuses and exhaustion due to my lovely cold.

Is it my most productive weekend ever? No, it’s not. Does it annoy me anyway? Yep.

Yeah, Master is I am sure doing plenty more than I am giving him credit for. I am probably being totally unfair to him. But right now it’s me who wants sympathy before I go off on him in a totally unslavelike manner!

Bah Humbug.

searching for, “Help! I’ve never done laundry.”

I am sorry. I suspect this was not what you were looking for. Good luck!

My Master is going to beat me.  I don’t know exactly when, and I am not even 100% clear as to why. Yet, it has become clear to both of us that this is what is going to happen. We both need to clear the air.

I’m terrified. I haven’t been seriously beaten in a very. long. time.

It makes sense, our dynamic has more or less taken a backseat to the events of the last couple of years. First, Master and CC were changing and having issues and most of the focus was there. Then, they were splitting and the focus was there. It’s really been at least two years since we’ve been focused on each other and our dynamic in any real way.

There are a lot of things that are different now. I am not sure we will ever be back to that “pure” Master and slave dynamic we had in years past, but it’s certainly a goal of ours. Running a household and supporting each other through a painful breakup has changed things in ways neither of us would have guessed.  It put a huge amount of stress on each of us individually and on our relationship. There have been moments when I was not at all sure we were going to make it together.

I’m not there anymore, though. We are finally in a more stable and pleasant place. The future looks positive rather than bleak.  We are moving forward and building our new lives together. Even the financial issues that seemed bleak and overwhelming are beginning to resolve themselves, albeit slowly. But, we still aren’t totally satisfied with the way things are.

Our dynamic has become far more confusing. It used to be very clear. In our poly dynamic CC and I were slaves to Master, and wives to each other. She served more of a spouse role for him as well, mostly by virtue of being the mother and running the household.  I occasionally felt some envy that I could not be his “wife” but as I integrated fully into the household most of that dissipated as CC and I developed our own separate dynamic as wives to each other.

Now, I have many needs around having a wife and being a wife. I need a life partner in the more conventional sense. My wife is gone, and therefore so is my identity as a wife. Master also feels that void, but he doesn’t really want me to fill it.  Yeah, I have to do a lot of the things that she did as his spouse. I have to run the house. I now am the only female parental figure in our home. I am the one who goes to public events and is recognized as his partner. But it’s never what he’s wanted for us in our home.

He wants and needs a slave, and I’ve always filled that role well. I want both, and haven’t figured out how to strike the balance with only one partner. But as we continue to explore this it has become clear to both of us that we will never reclaim our M/s identities without taking specific action. We’ve talked about it, and we both want this. I want to feel the comfort and security that comes with serving *and* letting go of control. I want to put Master back in the drivers seat and live my life under his direction rather than grabbing onto small areas of control with a stranglehold so I won’t feel so afraid of life without CC.

I say I want these things, but I am filled with fear. And, Master is frustrated. He says he often feels I no longer put him first,  or that I ignore the small things he asks of me. I don’t ignore him, but my focus has definitely shifted. I feel like now my focus tends to be on the big picture of our household and the kids and … everything. I think he may be right that he is falling through the cracks now when what he wants is not in line with how I see the big picture.

So, my  Master is going to beat me.  I don’t know exactly when, and I am not even 100% clear as to why. I am terrified, but also filled with hope. I think we are finally onto something with each other, and I can’t wait to see where we end up.

Cross posted from the Punishment Book.

Friday is our sixth anniversary. We went out to dinner last night to celebrate because we will have kids that night. I feel a lot of things, but I am not actually sure how to put most of them into words.  So instead of writing about that, I am going to write about my journal.  You know, the book that I write in filled with paper pages.

I’ve always kept a journal for Master.  From the first time he came up to my dorm room and took me out for pizza and a spanking he has expected that I will write in it about my feelings. He  used to assign specific things to write about, “How did you feel when I did this?” “How are you feeling after your punishment?” etc. etc. However after a while I sort of took it over and wrote whatever I felt like.

Initially I did this on a special website he’d created just for the purpose. It was like livejournal, and all of his girls had one. Ultimately that site went away, and for a while I used email.  Then I stopped writing all together for a while because I felt he never read the emails and it didn’t feel much like journaling anyway.  It was only a couple of years ago that he gave me my first paper journal.

There is one exception. The first Christmas I was with him, he gave me a journal. It was a religious devotional journal and he had gone through and read every single meditation, then put marks next to every one that he thought could apply to M/s relationships as well as religion. For the next year I went through and wrote responses to each of the marked passages.

The only one I did not write about was the final one which talked about God being “Master” “Lord of my life” “Head of our home.”  I told him I did not want to write about that hypothetically, and I would fill it out when those statements were a reality for me. Last summer when Master finally collared me and I started referring to him as “Master” (although he had been my Owner for several years prior to that) I dug the book back out, but I still couldn’t fill out that last page. Now it feels wrong. That book represents a version of me that is in the past now. I was young, virginal (yes, really), fresh. I had a lot of ideas that don’t necessarily match up with the me of today. It feels wrong to insert my current incarnation into a book that documents the me of yesterday. So it is still sitting on my bookshelf with one marked, empty, entry.

The last journal he gave me was at Christmas a couple of years ago. We had all been going through a rough time, especially he and CC, but he and I as well. I think the journals were his request for more and better communication between us.  That never really happened with CC, but I have diligently worked to fill the pages of that book even though there are at times long pauses and at times negative entries.

It seems the longer I am with Master the harder it can be for me to write. I don’t really understand all the reasons for it, but I have some guesses.  First, the novelty has worn off. Initially I could write tons of entries and think deeply because everything was new.  I wanted to get my head around what it is I was doing and think deeply about everything. Now, things are not so new. I am used to the feelings I feel from living this lifestyle and I don’t feel such a need to analyze everything.

Also, Master and I have gone through a couple of dark periods with my writing. My journal has at times become a place to write the dark things that are too difficult to say. It became a way to communicate any negativity I was feeling without ever having to confront him about it. But, the problem with that is that it is easy to get tunnel vision, and using the journal for that single purpose is very damaging. It means Master no longer wants to read it, and we lose a lot of essential communication that way.  If he does read it he may get the wrong impression or think I am always unhappy (as some readers have done on this blog, too) and he has become very discouraged at times from my writing.

As a result of this darkness that has pervaded in my writing, and also because of the events of the last year, I have been very reluctant to write in my journal lately.  Then, over the weekend I was at the bookstore looking to spend a gift certificate I got for my birthday when it hit me.  I wanted a new journal.  It all made sense. Master and I are starting our lives together over in many ways, and we are certainly going forward in a new direction. I wanted to acknowledge that by opening a new book, literally. So on impulse I bought a journal and wrote these same sentiments in it.

Yet, even as I was writing I began to feel sentimental about the book he had given me. I really wanted to fill it up. It was a gift from Master, and the thoughts inside of it are all intimate pieces of me. So, I thought perhaps I could re-purpose it.  That was my feeling when I gave the new journal to Master to read, that the old one would make a good punishment book, or maybe a place to write him letters directly going forward.  I asked Master for his input on how best to use it as well.

However by last night I had decided not to do either of those things, but to put the new journal on hold.  I wanted to fill the old one up and not reject it or give up on it. So, imagine my surprise when Master told me he didn’t want me to do any of those things. He didn’t want me to keep using it as a journal, nor did he want me to do anything else with it. He told me to leave it and just start using the new one.  This small order made me cry, and I told him, “I want to finish it.”

“It is finished.” He said, “Just because a book has blank pages doesn’t mean it is incomplete.”

So, on to the next book and chapter of our lives. Happy Anniversary Master.

Master is working from home today because our kids don’t have school. Around 12:30 he sent me the link to a set of pictures. Yes, we’ve owned this cat less than 48 hours. What have we signed up for I wonder?

P.S. Doesn’t Master’s butt look good in those jeans?

We have a new member of our family. His name is Basil.  Basil is a year old cat that we just adopted from the local animal shelter. How did I pick his name? I don’t know, it sort of came to me in a flash, and Master agreed.

One of our previous cats was named after the god of mischief (Loki), and he lived up to his name. It remains to be seen if Basil will live up to his saintly title. I hope so!

Picture time…

Yeah, he’s that cute! I do sense a minor power struggle between he and Master, though.  Last night Master told me that the cat jumped on his bed. Master told Basil it was his bed, and Basil explained that everything in the house is his.  Tonight, Master was innocently watching TV on the couch when the cat came and whacked him and ran away. I will be following all developments closely…

Sometimes I can’t tell if Master loves me or hates me. Yesterday we got home late due to a meeting we had to attend, and discovered we had a problem. Master had locked the house up tight, but our house keys were still at his office. So, he went around back to see if anything was open and eventually came through the front door.  “You didn’t lock your window” he said. By my window he means the one directly over my bed on the floor. He wasn’t mad though because it did allow us to get into the house without an extra trip to his office.

There was still a problem for me, though. He got leaves and dirt all in my bed. Yuck! I tried to brush most of it away, but when it came time to lay down I could still feel it and it just icked me out. I will need to wash my sheets tonight. So I told him I needed to sleep in his bed. He let me, but started making fun of me for being afraid of a little dirt. Finally I said, “I think you should lay down with your naked body in that bed then and see how it feels.”

Well, he took me up on that. He brushed even more dirt out of the way and didn’t seemed bothered at all. In fact he said my bed was very comfortable and he didn’t want to get out. Then things got *really* weird.  About once a year he has to do this to me. I think it’s the worst kind of sadism there is!

Master pretended to be my slave, and wouldn’t give it up. He asked me if I was going to chain him up. I told him no, so he put the chain around his own neck. After a while he locked it. Then he started snuggling with my animals and pretending to play with himself. Actually, he was pretending to be me playing with myself. I don’t think I make the noises exactly the same way he did them, though… I have to say it was pretty funny, but also extremely disconcerting!

Also, he had told me earlier that I *could* play with myself so I attempted to achieve this with my extremely exciting hitatchi. However he kept pulling on the cord and trying to tickle me, so I didn’t get very far with it.  He also continually stuck his tongue out at me and at one point told me I was a mean Mommy! Finally, since I didn’t have any luck in ordering him to get out of my bed and into his I told him that if he wanted to be a slave boy I was going to spank him. He said, and I quote, “I’d like to see you try.” Hmm. Apparently the role play only goes so far.

Ultimately I settled for taking a picture. I’d post it here, but he says I will get ten swats for every person I show it to.  I am afraid this blog has too many readers to make that deal worth it (even if it’s not that many compared to some).  You’ll just have to wonder! But, he does look pretty cute with the chain around his neck snuggling with my stuffed animals.

He did eventually unchain himself and get into his bed. I was releived, to say the least. That’s the kind of mind fuck that really sticks with a person. He makes a good brat though, I hope someday someone braver than me will try that spanking thing…

Well, I am officially home from the Shadowlane party although my brain is still there. I am very bummed and missing all of my friends already!

For Master and I everything started Thursday night when we packed up the car and started driving to Vegas.  We left around 7:00 (later than we wanted) and drove until 11:00 or so. Then we picked an appealing rest stop and slept in the back of the SUV. That is a weird experience, let me tell you. It feels a bit like living in a fish bowl. Still, starting the drive on Thursday had the effect of making the trip relaxing and although we were both tired we were more rested than we would have been if we’d tried to do it all in one go.

We had lunch in Utah with Master’s mom and his sister. We surprised them! Unfortunately they had a surprise for us too -  his mother was going to Vegas for the weekend too. Apparently she was seeing a concert.  Cue very uncomfortable perverts hoping not to be asked too many details about their own trip…

I am going to put this behind a cut because it is shaping up to be a novel.

When we arrived in Vegas we had a short wait before we could check into our room, so we hung out with Fireman Chris. I was feeling really little and excited, and I guess this is a side of me that Chris had never seen before. I guess it is true that Master brings it out in me more, and I was more excited than most parties because he was there.

Unfortunately, when Master took my phone away from me I became very pouty and tried to get him to give it back. I was kidding, but I guess I took it too far. I kicked the table we were sitting at and dramatically it slid about a foot with a very large scraping noise. Master says he doesn’t believe I was kidding. I don’t really know what to say there. I can’t make him believe me, but it does hurt my feelings to be doubted a bit. Either way he says the reaction was too extreme, and that was the first spanking of the weekend – it wasn’t the fun kind I was hoping for.

I later heard that Chris was considering offering Master his room key. Hmmm. For once this weekend my friends seemed to uniformly agree with Master, so I bet that was nice for him. Even if this particular incident made me sad. What a way to start a fun party – in trouble. The punishment itself was not severe, mostly symbolic but it still took a while to shake off.  Blah. Anyway, on to more interesting things…

The theme for the vendor fair was “Back to School” and predictably there were many schoolgirls in attendance. I haven’t been so into the schoolgirl themes lately, but I decided to go ahead with it because 1. Master likes it, 2. I didn’t have to do the British schoolgirl, and 3.  I convinced Master to dress as a priest!  I’ve gone to several Shadowlane parties and I’ve never seen anyone else dressed as a priest, ever.  I thought it was be incredibly hot, although to be fair he does look more like the young hip priest than the traditional strict priest… However, this party there were THREE priests! I couldn’t believe it. Someone had a psychic wavelength.

At any rate, he wore his Roman collar and I dressed in a plaid jumper. Our new friend Mystery Minx braided my hair and we headed down. The London Tanners were in attendance this year, which is good because it seems the vendor fair is dying. I am sure it is a sign of the Economy, but it made me really sad!

After saying hello to all my wonderful friends I realized I was starving and convinced Pablo and Mija to go with us to dinner. We all stayed dressed up, and I suspect we confused our waiter slightly. However, I was starving and it was really good! We closed down the place, and went back to the hotel. We spent the rest of the evening with Mija watching a spanking video that also happened to feature a priest, and then I crashed out and we went to bed. So much for suite parties… it was a good plan.

The next morning I wanted an orgasm. This happens frequently. Although I always have to ask, usually Master says yes. However this time he told me I could only have an orgasm if I took ten hard swats. Hard by Master’s definition. I really debated, but ultimately my desire for selfish pleasure won out.  I was crying by two. The orgasm was *wonderful.*  Mmmmm

There was a suite party in the afternoon that Master and I went to. I did a really fun scene with M which started out fairly straightforward (I bent over, he spanked me, I said oww) but ended up with me getting a bit angry and fighting him. We wrestled quite hard and I almost got the better of him a couple of times, but ultimately I lost and ended up with a sore bottom after all.  We generated quite a crowd, and I have to say I was quite embarrassed because it must have been very obscene the ways I was twisting my legs and body when I was trying to escape.

I learned a lesson at this party, though.  Actually I already knew it, but my enthusiasm got the better of me. I tried to set Master up with a really sexy lady, and it didn’t work out. He just ended up annoyed with me, and I suspect she did too. I think they both forgive me, but it was really a bummer for me. I should have known it wouldn’t go well.  Apparently Dominant men don’t like to be told who to play with. Who knew?

That evening we found ourselves in the ballroom enjoying “Prom Night” with tacos. Yeah. Interesting food choice, but I liked it well enough. Mija was not impressed. I dunno how others fared. I made a date to play with the lovely Cassandra, but we never found each other again. I have a huge crush on that lady though, especially after seeing her partner in a priest’s collar. Some day she will beat me, and I will probably cry. Cause she is scary. And hot. Mmmm..

The other person I got to speak to at dinner was M’s lovely wife Iris.  Although I am not much of a top, I love spanking her and she is actually one of the first people who ever bottomed to me. She is sort of a heavy bottom and I think she was deemed one of the people least likely to be scared away if I messed up.  Anyway, now I usually beat her once a party or so, but this time there was a complication. She’s pregnant and basically wasn’t playing for the weekend.  I guess I am just special because she agreed to make an exception for me, and after dinner we all found ourselves back in Pablo and Mija’s room waiting for the crowd to assemble.

Iris doesn’t like stingy implements. In fact she hates them. Canes are her worst enemy. Usually I use a heavy strap, and this time I did that again.  However, I really wanted to use a cane be cause I enjoy it a lot and don’t get to do it very much. I asked her if I could, and I could tell she didn’t want to.  Still, she said I could give her a few as long as I didn’t do it too hard.

Well, I gave her a couple moderate ones. Then a couple harder ones. I asked her how she was doing. She said she was happy and I could keep going. Hmmmm. Really? Ok.  I used the cane for a long time, but decided she’d been a trooper and I would go back to the strap I know she likes. After two whacks she turned around and said, “I can’t do that one, it’s making me tense my stomach.”  So how is that for pregnancy cravings? Apparently she likes stingy pain now. I wonder if it will go back after the baby is born? Her husband was also appreciative and gave her some cane strokes of his own. Amazing!

Also, before I get any hate mail on this I’ll just let it be known that she did consult her doctor about playing during her pregnancy.

One embarrassing thing that happened to me before we went to spank Iris happened in our room. We stopped to buy a bottle of wine and also to change our clothes. When we got back to our room Master threw me on the bed, and I thought he was going to fuck me. He did, but not how I expected. Instead I found the freezing cold wine bottle inserted into my personal places. I was so embarrassed and hid my face, but it didn’t stop the pain or the embarrassment either. It was an unopened bottle, and of course we cleaned it off, but I still really relived when nobody really wanted any at Pablo and Mija’s room. I think I would have died!

After I let Iris up the conversation quickly turned to discussion about my wrestling match with M.  Master thought it would be a good idea for me to take on new friends Zille and Mystery Minx, and Zille’s partner agreed. Mystery Minx and Zille went first, and I was told I would take on the winner.  I ended up paired with Zille and yes, I got my ass kicked. Master says I made a decent showing, but all I can say is ouch! I would love to take her on again, so she had better come to more parties.

I also got a caning of my own, although it was over jeans and mostly left me hungry for more.  I was hoping Master would spank me in the suite, but he ended up doing all of his play privately.  Still, I think a good time was had by all.

It was wonderful to meet some new people. I especially hope that Zille and her partner will stay in touch. Their presence is officially required at parties moving forward. Also Mystery Minx turned out to be a lovely girl and quite good at bratting. I’m glad I never got anywhere near her squirty chocolate.

Finally, I will desperately miss Pablo, Mija, Fireman Chris (and his wife Sparkle who didn’t make it this week), M, Iris, and everyone else who makes this party so special every year. Seriously guys, we can’t keep waiting until Shadowlane to see each other. Who wants to come to Denver?