Good Gravy

It had been a lazy, slow, uninspired weekend and one of the results was that I did not write a menu, did not buy all the fixins for making any kind of planned meals. Yes, there was the usual steaks and pork chops in the freezer, the proverbial bag of taters in the cupboard, we weren't gonna starve, but without a battle plan, the idea of making dinner gets increasingly anxiety provoking as I am driving home.

So on Monday, it had been another cold, windy, wet and dark day and I needed something warm, filling and comforting and I decided I wanted meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy. So I swung by the local Safeway to grab the few things I did not have. Primarily the meat and the gravy mix. Now, I am normally not the kind of person to use premade anything, but meatloaf is a tricky thing. There ain't no drippins, nothing to use to make the tasty base of gravy so I tend grab a package of Lipton beef and onion soup and use that with some beef broth to make gravy.

But, typical for any last minute plan and very typical for my dysfunctional relationship with the local Safeway... the place on the shelf that holds the Lipton soup was empty, zip, blank, nada... shit. Right next, just two steps down I see shiny jars of "GRAVY". I glare at them, I can already hear Master's criticism of many of my attempts at homemade gravy. And the seductive, (lazy) voice in my head is whispering... "Somebody made this gravy and thought it was sooo good they bottled it and are trying to sell it. How bad can it be?" I should have not listened to that little voice.

The meatloaf was good, the mashed taters were awesome... the gravy was horrid. Master bitched me out... as usual. I get stubborn. I remember all the times my homemade gravy got analyzed and found lacking (conveniently 'forgetting' the dozens of times he mmm'd and snarfed up the good gravy). I pout and whine that he never likes my gravy anyway so I might as well just buy the crappy kind. (This is totally inaccurate. I have a bad habit of forgetting compliments and carefully archiving away each and every criticism.) He got really mad. And I got snarky.

We spent the evening giving each other the piss eye. All over gravy.

In the end he made me come into the kitchen and "helped" me clean up. (Translate help into micromanage and pinch and spank and harp and bitch). I remember one time grabbing two clean plastic butter tubs and trying to stuff them under my bra. I mean I was needing some protective equipment. It didn't help much. But by the time we were done, we were both laughing. I mean it was just gravy after all.

Quack....

Mannnn....

I have been tired when I get home. I am totally zonked. I have not really been working all that hard, I just have been so stressed. When things start to go wrong, things put away in the wrong place, other people not doing their job right... things left undone... I start to stress. I way over react. I try to fix everything. I want predictability... I want CONTROL. I get biiiiiiitchy. I irritate people. I don't even like me at times like that. So I have decided that I am a duck.



I am not in control. I am not the queen of the whole fucking school. I can't fix things. I sure as hell can't control things. I am a duck. Stress is the water that rolls off my back. I can keep busy, do my job the best I can, help and support people when they ask... and not BEFORE they ask.

I can be a busy duck...



See the busy feet... yet serene... all blue water and happy feet. Yes I am a duck. In fact just about any time during the school day, you will see me going "quack" quietly, serenely or even frantically. Quack.

So speaking of cheese... You regular readers may remember me commenting once about poisoning the ants that have been eating my house.



Look what those little fuckers did to my house... MY HOUSE!!!!



Now Master has to fix it.



I know, not the most flattering of angles, but I am a little mad at him... well, a LOT mad at him.

I was in the kitchen, making cornbread to go along with the delicious left over vegetable beef soup we were having for dinner. He was walking back and forth, up and down the stairs. I was not paying a whole lot of attention to him. MISTAKE!!! BIG MISTAKE... BANG!!!



He hit me with this.

It was like a bomb going off in the kitchen. It lifted me right up off the ground. I peed my pants. It scared the holy living fuck out of me. It hurt, but it was not the pain, it was the complete, total, absolute shock and subsequent terror. I cried. He laughed. I cried some more, blubbering in incoherent outrage. He laughed and laughed and laughed. I got MAD. There is nothing that shakes my resolve to be good than being scared and then mocked.

I was shooting daggers at him. I lifted my hand to hit him. And he lifted a brow, shut the front door and bent me over and caned my pissy ass. If I was allowed gratuitous ass pictures I could put up the rosy red result. And I am still mad and if I don't watch out...



...my goose will be cooked.

Stepford Slave

Someone asked “Have you ever lost your place? Or lost your submissive way? i want to know what makes other submissives out there forget their place as a submissive? What makes you 'lose your head' and all of its unquestionable devotion??”

And I answered her, “What makes me lose my place, wish I wasn't his or at least was his equal so I could make him???”

“It is this house and fixing things. He is a control freak... he will not allow anyone else... me, a friend or a professional do what needs to be done, but he just doesn't have the time or the energy to do it himself. I am not allowed to discuss these things with him.”

“I get totally farking crazy about it. I want to tear my hair out... I want to tear his hair out... I want to scream... lie... disobey... manipulate... I want to fucking do SOMETHING!!!!”

“(Thank you for listening. Rant over. Pant. Pant.)”

“Okay... most of the time I can just look the other way... forget about it, tell myself that my relationship with him is more important than the roof over my head... and a lot of the time I manage to succeed.”

But this admission had loosened something inside me… reminded me of this very tender issue.

So I had come at him… with all these pieces of information… talking fast in a tense voice… that the insecticide does not seem to be working… can I look into hiring an exterminator??? …that I had researched cleaning up spilled fuel oil and all the experts say that the only way to get it out of concrete is to demolish the concrete and haul it away… and that I had talked with someone at work and they had suggested listing the oil tank on Craig’s list with a “at your own risk”, “as is” clause… and magically someone would just appear and carry it away and we would not have to worry about how to get it out of the basement. (That mother fucker is HEAVY… and Master has some really inflated ideas about how strong I am exactly. I have these disturbing images of me ending up on the floor with about four hundred pounds of dirty leaky oil tank on top of me.)

He just stood there looking at me with this pursed up lips, something tastes bad, look on his face and I ran down and looked at him expectantly… slowly coming to the realization that he did not think any of my ideas were good. I blinked and said, “um… you are pursing up your lips.”

He just said… “You talk too much.”

I sucked it up… (fucking monkey balls!)… and went into the house and slammed dishes around a while.

And it was true… I was talking about a bunch of things all at once, flooding him with information.

And it is also true that Master cannot ‘let’ anyone else do anything. He cannot even let anyone help other than me. He can’t work with other people… he can only do it if he is complete control. I mean COMPLETE control… where you hold your hands… where your feet are… the fact that you are not allowed to speak a single word while he is thinking (or even make large distracting movements)… each step carefully choreographed and directed. And it sometimes seems he can only work with someone he can scream obscenities at.

And that is how it is… the house seems to be decaying… a slow, imperceptible decent. Little things… the gutters leaking… making the sill damp… inviting insect infestations… the smell of a slow leak from the old, unused oil tank slowly getting worse and worse… now clearly detectable in the laundry room… and it about knocks you over if you go into the store room. The internet says the only way to get the smell of fuel oil out of concrete is to demolish the concrete… and carry it out of the house… the branches of the big oak tree grow further over the roof each year… the floor here… the wall there… a hundred little things that add up until you open your eyes and blink and stare about in shock.

But he can only think about one thing at a time… and if I push or nag or even just plaintively mention that I worry… all I get is instant stubborn resistance. And instead of working on one thing, all that happens is he is working on none things.

And now this afternoon, he came home… And I approached and greeted and as I knelt at his feet and asked him how his day was… I got an earful… and earful of how my worry and mistrust had impacted his day… how he is trying to save us money by doing these things himself and I had to choke down the protest that he hasn’t done them, isn’t doing them.

Oh, yes, of course… the fucking oil tank. He is working on the fucking oil tank. And it is something that needs to be done. And hopefully we will eventually get it out of the house… but what to do about the smell… the fumes. People say they are hazardous. I don’t know, maybe they are… he just makes PFFFTTT sounds and rolls his eyes, like I am talking to nuts on the street corner.

He saw me doing some research, reading about cleaning up fuel oil spills in your house and now reading about stuff like that is “counter productive. So I am not allowed to do that. I guess what I do not know, won’t make me sick… or think… or worry. All that does is send all that stuff deep inward… and I feel hopeless. He has even said no pouting… fuck me with a sharp stick. I am now expected to act different than I feel.

He sat and watched me… making sure that I really had stopped reading EPA oil spill recommendations… and saw me go back to writing… spewing all those angst ridden doubts into my journal… and he said no more writing.

So here I am… forbidden to talk about it… told to stop thinking about it… ordered to stop worrying about it… to stop moping and pouting… HOW THE FUCK IS SOMEONE SUPPOSED TO STOP THINKING????? Okay… okay… what I can do is act like I am obeying. Fake it… it can’t be any harder than faking an orgasm. Big Stepford Wife smile pasted onto my face.

I went about my chores… grinning like a scary clown doll. I can only imagine how ghastly I must have looked… eyes brimming with tears and frustration… a corpselike rictus grin fixed permanently to my face. He grabbed me and wanted to hold me, probably to snuggle, to somehow soothe me and I stood there absolutely still, not rigid, not pulling back but not engaged. Every minute or two I would ask permission to continue to work on making his dinner. He kept saying no.

Finally he started to talk about the ants in the foundation… and I gave him this glassy eyed look… and mechanically said… “I am not allowed to think about that. Perhaps you would prefer a baked potato with your dinner?” (oh so passive aggressive… but it is where I retreat to when given no other outlets.)

He just said… “I want to talk about this now.”

I said, “Oh I am sure it will be fine. My Master will fix it. I don’t need to worry about that. In fact there are no ants.” I turned and walked down the stairs to find a potato. The next thing I know he has a vice grip on the back of my pants and I am being propelled backwards at breakneck speed. He threw me down on the bed and I very cooperatively arched my back, shoving my ass up high. And when the cane hit me I just yelped and then in my best sweet submissive voice said, “Thank you Master. That was nice.” He yanked my pants down and hit me a lot of times and you know… I felt so centered and calm… and strangely aroused… and I said thank you every time.

I got dinner all ready to put on the grill and he barked through the kitchen door that when I got that all done I was to come out and ask what he wants me to do next. So while the salmon grilled I was running and fetching lumber and sawhorses, sharpening pencils and finding tape measures. He did not tell me what he was doing and I chose not to ask.

We worked on this mystery project until the salmon was done and had a fucking fantastic dinner… (even in Stepford wife mode I am an awesome cook.)

After dinner it was finally revealed that we were building a ramp and a cradle to hold that monster oil tank. And we did manage to do it… to lever that huge heavy thing up… slide it down in a hair raising semi-controlled rush down the ramp onto a wheeled dolly (…as opposed to the inflatable kind… yuck, yuck… joke brought to you by my Master.) It took another hour or so of fighting and levering and shifting and lifting and fighting some more but that fucking horrible giant stink monster is OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!! And you know Master did listen to me now and then when I had a good idea. And he did need me to do it. And I think the Stepford wife slave was a hell of a lot easier to work with than the doubtful, worry wart I had been.

And you know, I did manage to stop worrying about it… even though I did think about it a lot. I find it amazing that he could conceive of that level of control that he wants to control even my thoughts… I find that daunting and yet at the same time very exciting.

Tonight he asked me if I wanted to go to the hardware store with him… I said no, unless of course he ordered me to go with him, then of course I would love to go.

He snorted and said, “You are sooo funny. But he went to the hardware store alone.