I timed myself out.

So, my Owner is angry with me right now. And She has a right to be.

She walked away. Is taking a bath. She didn't time me out, but I realized very shortly after I heard Her running the bath, that I clearly needed one. So, I toddled up to the bedroom, away from distractions, to think and write and consider.

I had just a couple days ago posted about being a bad listener and wanting to work on that. Yet, when my Owner tried to tell me that's exactly what I was just doing, I was SURE I wasn't. So sure. Much more sure than I had any right to be given that I am aware that listening is something I need to work very hard at. If my Owner is pointing out that I'm not listening... then I need to trust Her.

And I wasn't.

I assumed I had it all figured out. Once again, I was so sure that She had me all wrong.. that She was so far off. Yet, is She ever?

*sigh*

Not usually.

No, usually She's right on. And, while I don't want to think I was trying to take over the conversation by asking a question to clarify - it may be true that on some level I was trying to "steer" or "control" the conversation which is an unconscious impulse that I am aware I sometimes do. Old programming and past abuse stuff. And who knows me better than anyone? She does.

*hangs head*

So here I sit, ashamed of myself for once again behaving badly because... once again... in the moment I was convinced that I was right.

Lifestyle D/s is more than collars and cuffs. More than rules and consequences. It's more than "yes Syr" and "please may I?" It's trust. It's trust so deep that you go to it before you fall back into old patterns. It's trusting even when everything in you says "noooo you must be wrong!". It's faith.

And I falter in this area, regularly. I trust my beloved Owner more than I've ever trusted any other human being on this earth. More than blood relatives. More than my closest friends - though I trust them a lot. I trust Her with my breath and my body, and even most importantly - with my mental health and my future.

I need to remember this trust when I start to get angsty and irritable. I take on this snotty know-it-all personality in these moments of absent trust and it's not a pretty side of me, folks, let me tell you. Not pretty at all. She called me on it and I shot back with something really unpleasant.

And here I sit, ashamed and bummed out that I let that uglier side of me get the better of me once again.

Trust, faith. By Goddess, She has earned these from me. She has proven that She can be trusted with the most tender and vulnerable sides of me. She has earned my trust and my love through personal hardship and working with me through so many very difficult and challenging things. She has never betrayed my trust in any way, ever.

And yet I betray Hers when I fail to recognize what She knows... and what She sees.

More things for me to think about, I see. And much more for me to work on.

Bad listener

I am starting to realize that, in general, I am a terrible listener. A combination of poor communication skills, short attention span, hyperactivity, and occasional insecurities seems to make me try way too hard to be heard. The unfortunate result of this whole trying too hard thing is that I end up dominating conversations with repetitiveness while managing to feel misunderstood at the same time. This creates a whole lot of unpleasant pitfalls for whomever I am trying too communicate with.

I wish I could push a button and instantly be better at this. I would do well to just talk a bit less. Sounds easy, but it always ends up being so hard.

So after thoroughly frustrating my Owner, and a 15 minute time out where I have to disengage.... NOW I get the point She was originally trying to make.

There is value in learning to shut the fuck up. Gotta work way more on that than I have been.

Sunday Devotional

It's been an interesting week!

For the most part, things have been fairly quiet and calm. I am still blowng off the last vestiges of the ick that got me just before last weekend. I have had a few nights of rough sleep. But most of my days this last week have been really good. When I reviewed my state of mind spreadsheet, it looks like the first half of the day was a bit rougher than the second half and that appears to mostly be because of still feeling physically under the weather.

The second half of the week was AMAZING, at least partly because we had some really ... really.. fantastic sex!  

One night, Syr put me on my knees in front of Her and ordered me to close my eyes. I didn't know what She had planned. I knew She wanted to fuck me, but I didn't know there was anything else in the works. But She really surprised me! When I heard the gloves being pulled on, I knew and I have to admit that my eyes fluttered open, mostly in surprise. Syr found that amusing and I think She enjoyed my nervousness when I saw the box of needles, and alcohol swabs, and the sharps container.

She put a few needles in each breast, not a lot. And then She fucked my mouth with Her cock. I was floaty from the needle-induced endorphins and that was so erotic. The way She tangled Her hands in my hair and held me where She wanted me so She could slide Her cock in and out of my mouth while I gripped Her thighs, digging my nails in. She ordered me up on the bed and left the needles in when She first started to fuck me. They started getting in her way, though, so She took them out after just a few minutes. They were in Her way because She just COVERS me when She fucks me. Her whole body engulfs me. She wraps an arm under my head and presses her body into mine and drives me wild with crushing kisses while She drives into me again and again. So needles in my breasts would have just gotten Her poked! ;)  It was amazing and it had been a while thanks to the stupid medical issue. But it was wonderful to feel so thoroughly taken again!

The very next night, at our usual bedtime, She came up to get into bed but I wanted Her so badly I started begging. She started it, really, because She laid along my back and was grinding Her hips against me, making me relive all those delicious moments from the night before. So I begged... and begged. And She gave in... and I was so grateful!  Believe me!  We had a wonderful and ridiculously intense quickie (not sure sex that good should even qualify as a quickie!) and then She put me to bed.

And it was only two nights later that She teased me in the grocery store about taking me home and putting needles in my back!  Needles in my back is something I've only ever done with Her, and it's very scary for me. It's partly scary because I can't see anything as it's happening, and because I can't distract myself with watching what she's doing or just looking at Her like I can when She puts needles in my breasts. So, my senses are heightened I think and I know I just have to lie there and be still. She put in the most I've ever had at a time - 12.  It may not seem like much to people who do needle play a lot, but for me, that was intense! I'd tended in the past to have usually 4-6 at a time. And with them going in my back it seemed especially intense. Once they were all in, I wanted to float on the sensations for a while, so I asked if She could leave them in for a bit. Since I was up to leaving them for a while longer, She got out some embroidery floss and weaved a pretty design around the needles. It was gorgeous!  She had a nice time. Afterward, there was no sex for me. My Owner was sleepy and it was time for bed.

So three realy intense and wonderful experiences this week have left me pretty little for most of the week and far more aware of my behaviour than otherwise. I'm really grateful to my Owner for giving me so much of Her attention in this way... it's made me feel really wonderful.

Cranky Girl

I'm a cranky girl this morning.

My annoying medical issue is even more annoying lately and to top that off I came down with some kind of cold/flu type thing that has just been kicking my butt for several days, now. I'm not feeling well and my nerves, the physical and the emotional ones, seem extra sensitive.

I do think I'm starting to get better because my head feels a little tiny bit clearer but the clearness seems to be coming and going. I had my appointment this morning and when I got home I came fairly promptly upstairs with my cup of tea and put my Owner's collar on and folded the laundry and picked up a few little things in the bedroom, which did seem to ground me a bit more.  I'm hopeful that I can stay mindful throughout the day and not let my bad mood get in front of me when I speak to Syr. I find I have been getting a bit snippier this week already and I'd hate to see that get out of control. So, I'm going to do what I can to be extra mindful today.

Other than that, I don't really have a lot to report, because the last week seems to have been mostly about just not feeling very well!

What a week!

It's Sunday Devotional time...

Syr and I talked about me using part of this time to review my last week of my "State of Mind" spreadsheet. I don't know that I've talked about that, here, but I will now so that I have some context to explain what I was reviewing.

So, Syr realized that a lot of times I don't seem to be aware of the patterns around my moods - what affects good and bad moods, what affects my headspace and most of all - that even days where we have an argument aren't necessarily horrible days in and of themselves. She came up with the idea - mostly because I have such a linear sort of mind - that I should create a spreadsheet to track each day and the things that affect it. The spreadsheet has been going on since January and my routine generally is that I get up in the morning before Syr and go downstairs, spend some time with our bird and update my spreadsheet for the previous day. This tool is primarily for me, not for Syr - so She just expects me to do it and believes I will start to notice patterns - what things seem to happen on "good days" and "bad days" so that I can see the relation of these things to how I perceive how good or not the day was...

The first couple of months I would rate my work day and my 'at home' time using a "good" "bad" "average" sort of rating. Then I had a bunch of columns of possible things that happen on any given day (good and bad) and would just put a Y for yes that thing happened or a N for no it didn't .... so as you can imagine... the spreadsheet got HUGE. And, because I'm linear, I noticed that I only thought about the stuff in the columns. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to add columns (or remove them) so I got sort of locked in to the options I saw. Also, I noticed that I never really wanted to call a day "bad". I tend to have an optimistic personality so I never used bad and found myself slanting everything slightly positively.

So, I asked Syr if it would be okay if I changed it up a bit, She was completely fine with it - surprisingly what i found I needed was a *less* Linear type spreadsheet. The new one gives me a space to rate (from 1-10) my time at work, my at home time, and my overall day. I find I'm more honest with this numerical system and have logged a day as low as a 4 or 5 whereas I would have called that "average" before. Then... instead of columns with preset 'things' that could have affected my day, I just have a bunch of columns that say "affected my day" and in each I'll type something I THINK may have affected my day for good or bad - anything significant or memorable. I like this new format and feel like it puts me in the position to really think about what contributed to how I saw my day, good or bad.

So now my job on Sunday's is to review the last week of entries... and I highlight the days that seemed particularly good (in green) and then highlighted in green the things I noted that affected my day that i think contributed to it being an especially good day. I also highlighted the days that seem particularly bad (in red) and highlighted in red the things that I think contributed to that day being especially bad.

I found this review process really helpful this morning - and it's the first Sunday morning I've done it. I noticed that the only two days I rated a 5 or lower, I was TOTALLY hormonal, having serious cramps, and just generally cranky - PLUS on one of those days I got some unpleasant medical news (I'm fine but dealing with a medical issue that's been inconvenient and annoying and found out I will be dealing with it for at least the next couple months, probably longer). So of COURSE my mood would be off.

Amazingly though, there were no fights between us to make note of. I found that interesting because I would have noted it if we had had even a minor disagreement where I felt tense - and there were none. This is especially cool because we've both had an unnusually stressful week. I got my medical news AND was pmsing like you know what... and my Owner was dealing with some crazy work drama that had the potential to be VERY stressful.

So, I'm actually feeling pretty proud of myself this morning. I obviously handled my moods appropriately for the most part and didn't take things out on my Owner.... and She obviously also took into account the things affecting us and was probably more patient with me overall as a result. I love seeing all this proof of the healthy ways I've learned to deal with life in general. Feels pretty good.

I have been noticing that I've been really craving some intense D/s time lately, though. Our sex life has been negatively impacted in a big way by my annoying medical issue - but I'm craving that sensation of being little in the slavey way vs. the little girl way. I don't know that I'm craving any specific manifestation of that energy. I would love a good beating, or some intense edgey play but I don't feel fixated on anything specific.

Last night, just before bed, my Owner was standing over me, Her hands on my throat and face, in my hair.... she ran Her fingers along my lips, parting them slightly teasing me but not letting me suck on Her fingers... She covered my mouth and nose and took my breath from me, twice.... and whispered low in my ear that it was bedtime. Perhaps this moment reminded me how much I have been missing moments *like* these ones - and the longer scenes and playtimes together as well.  In that way, the moment was a big tease! But I don't think it was entirely unintentional on my Owner's part to tease me in just that way. She does quite enjoy when I am wanting and aching for Her....

Sunday afternoon - Brief Thoughts

I needed to do my devotional later in the day, today, than usual because my Owner was still in bed until it was time for me to run a necessary errand. So, here I am, early Sunday Afternoon - wearing my Owner's collar and contemplating my place. ;)

I have to admit that while this week has been a whirlwind of a bunch of different things, I have noticed that the effectiveness of the "time outs" are really noticeable. For example, twice yesterday we started to get into some unpleasantness. My emotions were getting out of hand and my tone was off during a disagreement so She sent me up here for 15 minutes on two separate occasions. BOTH times, when I came up to the bedroom, I was furious. BOTH times, I felt calm and settled by the time I returned to Her and we were able to continue our conversations normally.  It is really noticeable what a difference a little bit of quiet time to breathe and calm myself can be. I become so much more rational and reasonable!

It's helpful to know that She has a Toppy tool She can use subtly (when privacy is an issue), to keep things from getting out of hand and to allow space for a reminder for me to be more mindful of my behaviour. I'm really grateful for it.