Flirting

I have this friend at work.  Well almost at work, he is at the school next door so I run into him every once in a while and he is the warmest, friendliest, most lecherous rogue you ever met.  He never, never passes up an opportunity to flirt, to leer, to go for the innuendo.  He always makes me laugh.  He always manages to make me feel sexy.  

He is younger than me and wonderfully handsome.  A big guy, well over six feet with some of the hugest feet I have ever seen.  I mean HUGE... the kind of feet you stare at and wonder.  And if his roguish comments carry any kind of truth, the rumors are true.

Well yesterday he was talking about a kid that kept demanding special treatment, who wanted someone to actually go out and purchase something different than what was offered in the school lunch.  I laughed and said, "Oh I never say no to those kind of requests.  I just say, 'It will cost you fifty bucks and may take a couple hours."

Well true to form, my friend's eyes lit up and he grinned devilishly.  "What did you say?  Only fifty bucks for a couple hours with you?"  Then he leered and made a sexy growl.

Not one to back down I bantered back, "For you special deal."  And growled back.  We both dissolved in laughter.

Then somehow he managed to turn it around... somehow it was me paying him the fifty bucks... and I gave him a disbelieving look... "Pay YOU????"

He lifted up one of those size 16... 18, 19, 20? (somehow in those moments they mysteriously seem to get larger and larger to my speculative eyes)  ...gunboats and propped them up prominently on the desk and gave me one of those looks... a wide grin and a challenging, leering wouldn't you like to know looks.

I could not help but step back and shake my head, retreating into prim older lady.  "Oh no.  We are so not going there."

But it was a great moment in my day.  We both know that it is not going to go any further than that.  He is happily married, has the names of his wife and children tattooed over his heart.  But it has been said, if we outlive our spouses... oh yeah, we are so definitely going to take off those giant tennis shoes. 

He has shown me the handcuff key he carries on his key ring.

Work Rant...

Warning, step to one side to avoid direct blast, dawn protective goggles....

Sometimes I just need to exhale.

And lately, at work, it seems like the warp and weave of the place is coming unraveled.  Nobody really seems to be aware of what the other people are doing.  Meetings are scheduled but no one knows about it until five minutes before.  Rules change and the memo is never sent.  Schedules change and calendars are not sent.  And it is so pervasive that there is no one to point fingers at.   

And a lot of crap is happening, people not doing their jobs, people falsifying their work hours… everybody irritable and tired… and the kids are picking up on this and are acting worse, which makes all of us feel worse which makes the kids feel worse… you get the picture… a never ending descending spiral into a hell of screaming spitting hitting incontinent madness, with your coworkers taking longer and longer lunches. 

It makes me grind my teeth to see someone get in their car and drive away at 3:00 and when I sign out at the end of the day, see they signed out for 4:30 just like all the rest of us.  And then see them do the same thing the next day and the day after that. 

Hmmm…. hour and a half at the end of the day… hmmm…. Counts on fingers… 1.5 hours a day?????  Times five… 7.5 hours every week?  Times 4 weeks a month????  Over thirty hours… Almost a week off a month… paid… while the rest of us are working our asses off trying to find some kind of strategy to work with these increasingly difficult children.

I wrestle with the temptation to keep a tally of all those early leavings, a total of what they are stealing from the taxpayers, from the kids we work with… and ultimately from the rest of us that take their jobs seriously.  To take this tally and present it to some higher up the chain mucky muck who will do something.  I think the only thing that keeps me from doing such a thing is the knowledge that any consequences that slam down on the slackers will filter down to the rest of us, that the possibility of working in a place where we will all end up being treated with distrust and perhaps have our work hours reduced because obviously there was not enough to do to keep us there???? Like the slackers weren’t walking away from jobs undone and others like me (and for every slacker there are ten of us working our asses off) aren’t stepping up and doing their jobs for them.

I am a smart ass.

So it was a busy, busy day at work. I started out filling in for a coworker that had to go to a training. I raced through her job and headed for my own, never once slowing down all day long. In the middle of my lunch the walkie-talkies all started buzzing with a apb about a kid that ran from staff and I had to walk away from my nice warm chili and search the entire building and then the grounds in driving ice cold rain. Sweet... we never found him, but he was one that knows how to walk home. Crazy kids, it was nasty wet outside.

Then when it was finally over, the last bus driving away in the fading gray day and I sat down and took a long deep breath, my boss walked in and said, "Don't get comfortable. We have a bus coming back." Groannnnnn.....

The kid was all, "I didn't do anything." And we were all... "Whatever... Now we have to figure out how to get you home." When one of the options being tossed in the air was wait for his dad to come get him in two hours he let out a deep exasperated groannnnnnn... and I laughed, "You know that was the exact same sound I made when I heard your bus was coming back."

I ended up driving him home in the school van. Typical, I am the only staff person that has kept their driving credentials current, so I am the go to person to schlep the little monsters home when they can't follow the bus rules.

***

Tomorrow is the work Christmas party and Master has given me permission to be home late. When I got home, I threw together a quick recipe of coconut cookies. On impulse I chopped up some candied ginger and dumped that in with the coconut. Master is not a big fan of ginger so I thought it would be fun to try something different on my coworkers.

When Master came home he headed for the cookies and I warned him, "Those have ginger in them."

He gave me a puzzled look. I shrugged and said, "Yes, I am cheating on you. I have started baking for someone else." As I got down on my knees for our ritual Master is home greeting. Suffice to say, the normal few happy to see you swats were replaced with a nearly unbearable flurry of blows with a handy spatula. I was soon squealing, "They are for work, the Christmas party. Please, ouch, I will make you cookies, ouch, ahhh..."

He finally stopped and after a humiliating order to pull down my pants he touched up the glow here and there and finally stopped. I knelt there, exposed and asked, "Do you want cookies?"

"No."

"Then why did you spank me so hard?"

"Because you were being a smart ass."

I could not help but protest that the "cheating" statement was a joke, that I was not being a smart ass. I was trying to be funny...



...and got another series of swats. I ended up howling, "Yes, I AM a smart ass, I AM a smart ass, I AM a smart ass!!"


He ate a cookie and said they were perfect, not too gingery. I ate one bite and they are double yummy.



I am a smart ass... or at least my ass smarts.

Damaged goods...

That little bruise on my nose??? Has turned into a lovely black eye. Master says I am like an add for Lucky Strikes. And repeats "Damaged Goods" under his breath now and then to make me flinch.

Public disclaimer, this is a work injury. Master did not punch me. I had a head on collision with a violent kid. I regret to say he does not look any worse for wear... while I... well you will see.

Yesterday I was talking with Master about how a coworker forced me to eat cheese cake (he did literally... he brought it and said "if you don't eat this I will just go get you another piece"... I mean with pressure like that how could I refuse?) (Master has not forbidden me to eat cheesecake. All of my dietary restrictions are self imposed.)

Anyway I was talking about that and Master grabbed me and squished his hand onto my face, growling... "Did he do this?"

He was not careful and caught my sore, sore nose in the mock force feeding. I squawked, "Not the nose!" "Not the nose!!!! Jesus Christ man, anything but the nose!!!"

He apologized.

Later that evening he dragged me off to the mall for a sort of a wander and peer into store windows kind of stroll rather than a real walk. (It has been frickin cold, wet and dark... no walkies outside in ages.) And when I was just a bit uncooperative with the hand holding he threatened to go for the nose.

I said that for the first time I had a hard limit and it is this swollen bruised and painful honker. Last night the black eye grew and darkened. It has turned out to be my first real shiner.

I have been humming "I feel pretty under my breath". When people at work ask me how I am feeling, I answer "smarter".

Not much...

The fact that I have not posted in a while has been nagging and nagging at me. But it seems like not a lot has been standing out from the chaos.

This weekend was kind of a bust... Master did not deliberately wake me when he woke up and got out of bed, but those little invisible bonds are well forged and I did my usual roll over into the warm place he left behind and stretched and snuggled it luxuriously and then slipped from the bed and did all my morning things... peed, made the bed, straightened up a little in his room and gathered my yesterday clothing and wandered up stairs. He was nowhere to be seen, in the bathroom or out smoking, but the coffee was about halfway done making.

I went to my room and got dressed and it was only about when I was pulling on my slippers that I noticed that it was 2 fucking thirty in the morning. FUCCCKKKK!!!!! Fail, total fail. I was up. My head and body said "morning"... grrrr... Master wandered in and gave me a double take. Apologized for waking me up. Then the fucker went back to sleep. I ended up taking two naps during the day and getting nothing done. I did not even make his breakfast.

No spankings beyond a swat here and there, no bondage, the weekly sex has been routine, predictable and satisfying if somewhat uninspiring. He has been fighting a cold and hasn't been very energetic.

The weather has been gray and wet and the shorter days have sapped even more of my energy.

Yesterday at work I made a stupid mistake, a big kid, autistic with severe self harm behavior patterns was violently banging his head on the floor and I moved to put my hand on him... to stop him before the skin on his forehead splits open once again and he lunged up and grabbed me and head butted me right in the face. It HURT. BAD. I am totally pissed at myself. I should not have tried to do that alone. I knew he does that sometimes. I should have been more careful. Now my nose is swollen and has a bruise right on the top. It hurts like a fucker.

Master has been sympathetic. Though he keeps telling me that I am damaged goods now. But the irritation at making a such a noob mistake and the pain have combined to make me even less ambitious.

And I have ton of stuff to do. My parents are coming to visit next week and I have long list of things to get done before they get here.

I have not been writing much. But I am almost done with a rewrite and edit of my last novel. Then I think I will go back to the "The Vanishing." I have some good ideas for where I want to go with that. If I can remember all the delicious stuff I think about as I drive to work.

So there it is... blah... uninspired... tired... sleepy... with a big sore nose. (It was big before... I hate to think how much bigger it looks now.)

Passiveness

At work, there is this position, a one rung up the ladder step up in authority. I could have had it. I could have been the "lead". But you know I did not want it... at all. I know that there was a time that I could have done it, perhaps better than any of the others that are eligible for the job. But now, more and more, I am becoming uncomfortable with confronting people. Even when I am totally convinced I am right and they are wrong... even dangerously wrong... I would rather not say anything.

I think it is a mix of cynicism, the fatalistic belief that any effort on my part would be futile, would not be listened to. And part, not wanting to take on the weight of being right. And part... a big part... the fact I am changed. He has changed me. I am not so invested in being right. Less convinced that there is even a right or wrong way to do things.

It has spread through my thinking. It distorts my perspectives... I watch my peers do things totally against policy, things potentially dangerous and counter to all my beliefs and training and when I ask... "why are you doing it that way"... and they make rationalizations that carry no weight with me. And then I just blink and shrug and say, "Okay." And walk away.

Sometimes I do a reality check. I will ask someone nominally in charge, "Has this policy changed?" And when they tell me "no", I nod, blink and shrug and walk away. It is just slightly disorienting to have the rules changed or have them disregarded around me. I know that I, on some very basic level, am compromising my values. And by my passive acceptance, am made culpable by my very awareness that others are not following policy and my inability to confront them leaves me standing there doing nothing.

I wonder about this. Is it just the sense of leaderlessness that seems to have taken over the whole school? Is it really that Master has finally, finally softened me, found and exploited my submissiveness to the point that I am uncomfortable with assertion? Is it just the resurgence of dark and rainy weather? Is it the story I am working on, the girl so depressed she cannot think or talk or even notice the passage of time that has taken up residence in my head? Or is it just getting old?

One Hour a Day...

So far I have been sticking to it... the instant I walk into the house I set the timer... one hour.

Last night I was so tempted to put in 45 minutes or even just 30. I was dragging ass... I had spent a couple hours kid wrastling. We have this cuuuuute new little guy, as uncivilized a child found raised by wolves. He won't sit still, he is up and moving every ten seconds, he has no sense of boundaries, getting into all the cupboards and cabinets, he grabs stuff, he runs out the classroom door and zips down down the hallway at top speed... and if you block him, say no, say wait, say "first lunch, then..." his beautiful brown eyes widen, he opens his mouth wide and shrieks and ATTACKS. He pinches, he bites, he hits, he kicks... he is little but SQUIRMY and his family has left us with a directive that they do not want us restraining him. Yeah, right, just let the little darling bite the fuck out of me... NOT! I was dripping with sweat by the time I got someone else to take a turn with him.

Anyway I was one tired kid wrangler when I got home. But I was good, I put on 60 minutes. And I got lots of stuff done, ran the dishwasher, folded three loads of laundry, dusted, swept, put a couple coats of finish on my new spreader bar, set some mouse traps... (the big hole in the wall, the one Master made when he was working on the insect damage, seems to have let in some squatters... lots of little mouse poopies showing up in that room).

I was still working when Master got home. He is learning, he looks at the timer. After throwing myself down onto my knees, my forehead respectfully on the floor the minute he came in (no delays today) and I got some happy greeting spanks and then a big hug. He sat and watched me putter around the house for the last ten minutes and then told me to go sit down.

I asked him if he was happy with my new resolution, and he said yes, but he did not require it every day. He said he knows what it is like to come home tired from work. Erk... I wish he had said that it was a rule, an expectation, a DO IT, BITCH... it is so much easier to be externally disciplined rather than internally. Pout...

I need to check my trap line before I go to work.

Eclecstacy

Nothing big, just a long series of little things. October is finally here. Livie's pumpkin plant that started out like this...



...turned into this...



And if you peer between the leaves you will find...



Livie already picked it and took it home. It was a great experience for all of us. There are about six other big pumpkins that will be ready to pick in another week. Dunno exactly what I will do with all of them... but I might put to test my father's theory, that if you leave something in the teacher's lounge it will get eaten.

****

I spent all afternoon doing battle with a nasty excel program. I finally think I have the bugs all worked out... but I do remember that near the end I sent an email to my boss telling him that if he finds me unconscious from beating my head on the desk... DO NOT RESUSCITATE.

****

I have started a new resolution. Everyday when I get home, I set the oven timer for one hour. I do NOT sit down for one hour. I do house slave crap... laundry, cleaning, cooking... work, work, work. Master found me making a nice big pot of clam chowder for dinner. I was so absorbed in my busy bee mind set that I did not promptly kneel down... mannn when I finally got round to it... the spanks were not happy spanks. Yike, yike, yike. The soup was nummy though.

Hopefully this new resolve to get something done around this dump will result in a neater nest. (Lucky for me that controlling bastard does not automatically equal neatnick or clean freak... Master seems just fine with the clutter and cobwebs).

****

I am slowly but surely making a spreader bar. Master has uncharacteristically been hands off with my little project. When I get done with it... I will post a pic.

****
I posted the last two chapters of Demon Child on Lierotica, I will put up the more intense alien abduction thing I have been writing lately on the "what is she writing now" page pretty soon.

****

I found this thing on youtube. I really don't know who this Osho guy is... or if I even really agree with everything he says, but somehow this thing sort of tickled me, his accent, the way his hands move... warning it is kinda long but I enjoyed listening the whole time.



And love making is sort of magical at times... as long as there isn't too many vegetables involved.

Hard day at work... can make for a hard night at home.

What a bitch of day... work just sucked. And to make matters worse, I took a bitch of day and managed to have to eat a plate full of shit at the last part of it.

Now you need to remember that I work with disabled kids... all kinds of disabled kids, developmentally disabled kids, autistic kids, crazy kids, angry kids, violent kids. I get name called, kicked, hit, spit on on an almost daily basis... and you know that does not bother me, because I have this thing called rational detachment. I remember that these kids are what they are... pick your label... and it is not me. It is them. But when I get pissed on... even just metaphorically by my coworkers I just get livid. No fucking rational detachment there... I fucking expect them to act professionally... to be nice... to fucking understand we all want the best for these little fragments of protoplasm that are other people's children.

Take today... I had a kid... a singularly crazy kid (crazy in the clinical sense). He kept running away from his classroom. I think because he did not want to do work... but I never got a clear sense of what work or why. Anyway, he was running away... but not from school... just from class. He would run all the way to the play ground and then climb to the top of the tallest monkey bars and sit there. Okay... fine by me... let him sit. He knows that eventually he will have to come down... I know he will eventually come down and when he does he will be calmer, we can sit down and figure out why running away and climbing up on the monkey bars might not be the best solution to his problem. And I am cool with waiting until that time.

But my problem is the other staff person that is not cool with waiting. This staff person was circling the monkey bars and demanding that the kid come down... amusingly the kid did not even say "no", he just sat there and ignored. Other staff person continued to demand, threaten with dire consequences (many of which weren't entirely legal... like "you won't get lunch" or "you will get suspended" or "we will come up and get you") Let me tell you, that kid was not presenting imminent harm to himself or anybody else. We do NOT just grab and wrestle kids because we are pissed at them because they ignore us, especially when they are high up on a set of monkey bars. And face it, if an obviously angry adult was at the bottom of your tree snarling and barking at you, would you come down? I know I wouldn't. I tried to get the dumb ass to please stop talking, that I had things well in hand, that he could just go in and deal with less frustrating pupils. But you know... that staff member was so involved in winning this power struggle that he was as about as responsive to my directions as the little lump on the top of the monkey bars.

Anyway, this crazy kid managed to get talked down off his perch no less than four times, coming in and then running away again FOUR FUCKING TIMES. As you can probably guess the angry staff person was starting to foam at the mouth. And I can sympathize. The kid was a royal fucking pain in the ass. But nobody seemed to be asking the question, "why is this kid doing this?"

Anyway, I got called away to deal with other issues... and other than hearing chatter on the walkie talkies I was out of the loop for the last two runaways.

When I got off lunch, I wandered up to that end of the school, to the "room" that is reserved for dealing with kids that need to sit and contemplate their transgressions. It is called a calm room. You go there to calm down. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it just makes things worse. Anyway, I need something from there, a label maker and when I walk in, there is this scene, the principal has said "crazy kid" sitting on the floor beside him, holding his hand. Said kid is writhing, complaining and trying to hit or kick but the principal is calm and cool, and has good reflexes so he just deflects the blows and keeps trying to calm the kid down. But the angry staff person is still there, still stalking around, still making demands and threats. Then he stands close, only a three or four feet from the two people on the floor and begins to do this thing, he swings his hands, clapping them behind his back and then swings them forward and claps them in front of his body. He is a tall man, his arms are long, the tips of his finger tips are just inches from the kid's nose.

Kaboom, kid stops squirming and making small swings and kicks, he explodes. Um... duh... talk about poking a frantic person with a sharp stick. He ends up locked in a seclusion room. Last resort... but I cannot help but think that it could have been avoided. I ended up being the one dealing with this, putting that kid back together again in time to catch his cab to go home. (Yes, he is that crazy, we cannot put him on a school bus.)

It took that kid a long time to calm down. He hurt himself trying to beat the door down, nothing serious but I am sure he will have bruises on his feet and knees. I barely got him coherent. I did not try to do the "what happened/what could we have done different" conversation. I just soothed and distracted. And then when the cab came, I called down to the classroom... "Bring up this guys personal stuff, please so he can walk directly to his cab."

And when the person came with his things, just a back pack and the kid's shoes, they were still wanting to win, to somehow make this kid regret what they had done. They held the shoes just out of this kids reach and demanded to know if this kid knew he had to do homework... the very school work that started this whole fiasco... I reached for the shoes, just wanting to get the kid out to his cab without another explosion. And they pulled the shoes just out of my reach.

And you know, I just snatched those shoes from them. I was tired of the way they were just making things get worse and worse and worse. I did not care if that kid ever "got" what a dumb, crazy pain in the ass he had been all day long. I just wanted him out of there.

Long story short, that staff person transferred every ounce of frustration from the kid right onto me. I guess I should have realized. Snatching those shoes was not the smartest thing, but I was just done with the torment the kid game. He was crazy enough without their help.

Long story short, I ended up saying to the person that I was sorry that I had "disrespected" them. And they were right, I should have tried to get the shoes in a more professional way. I ate the shit warm with a big spoon rather than have a coworker all pissy with me for the rest of the school year.

And longer story short, I was so engrossed in getting this whole thing spewed out, regurgitated, that when Master walked in, I hardly noticed he was in the house until he was standing in front of me. I tried to stand up, to cower at his feet and he just knocked me down, hard back down onto the couch. I did a serious face plant onto the couch, twisting and compressing my neck. Something actually made a crunching sound. I was experimentally turning my head to see if I was really broken as he was laying into my ass with the cane. I grumbled that he was not being fair... that he had not stopped at his normal stop and unload his pockets place and I would have gotten up... I really would have... though I don't know if I would have... this day was seriously crappy, and I was not in my right mind.

And to make matters worse when I told Master about my day, he told me that I was too nice to my coworkers, that I should have gotten up into their faces. He was angry with me that I had not been more assertive. He says things like, "You should have said, "okay you dumb son of a bitch, get the fuck out of here and let me do my job."... yeah like I can talk like that at work and like people ever listen to anybody that talks like that.

Okay... I know I listen to him when he talks like that... in fact it sort of turns me on... but at work... pullleasssse.

But speaking of cheese... Master's big TV was not working. And I just suggested to him... "Have you tried whacking it on the side?" And you want to know something fucking cool... he did... and IT STARTED WORKING AGAIN. I am awesome!!!!

Vacation Over

Last night as I knelt at Master's feet and reviewed my day and spoke of tomorrow the main topic was the fact that my June break was over and I am going back to work. Master commented that he will miss me making his breakfast. (He always goes to McDonald's for breakfast when I work. Yuck.) This having me make his breakfast is a new development... he never used to let me do that for him and this admission of liking it better was wonderfully reinforcing.

I impishly suggested he could "order" me to quit my job and I would be here alla time to cook for him. (I wisely did not point out that it is entirely possible that he could "order" me to get up earlier and to stop fucking around with my computer and watching morning news shows and make his breakfast before I go to work.) I do love my slow lazy mornings.

Anyway back to the suggestion of him "ordering" me to quit my job... It is a hawt fantasy, but he and I are both completely aware that I would get pretty fat and lazy without a lot of structure... fat, lazy and poor. I commented that if I was a stay at home slave he would have to work hard to come up with things for me to do all day. Master being the mental sadist he is, said, "Yes, I would have to keep you naked, tied up all day with things stuffed up your orifices." Suffice to say by the time the whole sentence was out I was humping his leg enthusiastically.

The sadist thing is... the chances of him actually doing anything like that are between slim and none. He and I are both completely aware of that as well. He just likes to watch me drool and then squirm in frustration.

And I don't mind working... I do have a really nice schedule... I work for a public school, so it is not quite full time. I work eight hour days but only about 190 of them a year, but I don't have the summers off. I get a week or two off about ten months of the year and lots of holidays. My job is challenging and for most people heartbreaking but I seem to have the right personality to manage to keep a good amount of personal distance. And the paycheck makes it possible to have cool new recumbent tricycles and trips to Seattle to see burlesque shows... and a trip to Alaska this August. Live is good... and I like my job, even when the kids kick me or throw chocolate milk in my hair.