hmmmm...

I can't decide if the bruise is from his teeth or the flogger...
Either is melty and wonderful, of course.
But secretly? I'm hoping it's teeth.
I feel just that little bit more taken that way.

A "Things About Me" Quiz!

OK. For each category, there are 4 true statements and 2 false.
See which answers you think are NOT true.
Put your guesses in a comment -
top score gets some sort of highly significant prize.
(to be determined...)

1. Things I've Injured:
  a- I have broken my arm
  b- I have broken my leg
  c- I have broken my hand
  d- I have broken my foot
  e- I have broken fingers (multiple)
  f- I have broken toes (multiple)

2. Klutzy Things:
  a- I have fallen through a ceiling
  b- I have fallen off a ladder
  c- I have fallen out of a tree
  d- I have drawn blood with a downspout
  e- I have walked into a wall while gawking at a man
  f- I have required stitches

3. Risqué Things:
  a- I have had sex on the floor of a teacher's room
  b- I have had sex in the stacks of a research library
  c- I have had sex in an active construction site
  d- I have had sex in a car
  e- I have had sex on the beach
  f- I am a member of the mile high club

4. Things I've Done:
  a- I have been locked in an embassy parking garage
  b- I have defaced my mother's wedding dress
  c- I have gone au naturel on a nude beach
  d- I have been in a threesome
  e- I have danced on top of a bar stool
  f- I have sold T-shirts in Honolulu

5. Things I Haven't Done:
  a- I have never flunked an English test
  b- I have never unlocked my car door with the clicker thingy
  c- I have never ridden a horse
  d- I have never been drunk
  e- I have never flown a plane
  f- I have never hooked up my own DVD-VCR player

Bonus Question:
     Which are there more of in my house - vibrators or computers?

Jane Austen and BDSM

rose wrote a really wonderful post the other day about the need for people in the lifestyle to remember that we are all living, breathing individuals, and that BDSM is NOT a "one size fits all" practice. There is no One True Way, there is simply what works for you and your partner. I applauded.
And a quote from Jane Austen sprang to mind…

Shortly after that, Little Monkey wrote about her belief that you either are a dominant (or submissive) or not, that it's not something you can learn. (A One True Dom?) I do not disagree with her at all -- but I did see a caveat. (Who defines "real"?)
And a quote from Jane Austen sprang to mind…

Interestingly, however, it was the same quote for both responses:
"Lizzy, you do not make allowances for differences of situation and temper..."

A while back, Vesta offered the lovely observation, "I have it on good authority that men with dominant personalities like well trained girls. They enjoy the ease, the quiet and the pleasure of it. They find pleasure in the uninterrupted control. A girl who knows her place and enjoys her place is very fine company."

I read that and, for a brief moment, glowed in communal pleasure and pride. Then I recalled myself and thought, "Oh, poor BG...!" (This was around the same time I decided it might be best to just change my name to The Recalcitrant Bitch.)

Ease, quiet, and grace are not, as you may recall, my selling points.
And I know that to many dominants out there, I am absolutely out of the running as a submissive.
And yet … I still have a Dom.
One who values the contributions I do bring to the table.

I certainly agree with LM that there is a core inside us that either is or isn't dominant or submissive. Clearly, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
But I also think that people sometimes rush to judgment -- that when a person doesn't fit our perception of what constitutes a certain "thing", we tend to dismiss them out of hand. We disqualify them as real.

I think this is where rose's reminder of the Many Ways is so important.
We get so caught up in our own realities that we forget to allow for other's.

Vesta, rose, little monkey, me…
A fairly disparate collection of submissives. Yet all have found a dominant who appreciates them.
"Differences of situation and temper" notwithstanding.

Quote of the Week

"Oh sure, get all exegetic on my ass first thing in the morning" - SP

Is it any wonder the magic between us has never died?
;-p

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Peeves...

Hi, I'm Jz and I have pet peeves.
Some of them are fairly reasonable, many of them are not. One or two are even absurd. I know this, and I'm about to share anyhow! :-)

1- My nose curls at the smell of roses.
I hate it. Hate. It.
So I'm always cranky for two weeks in June, when the wild roses are in bloom. Every-frickin'-where...

2- I want to smack people who lean into their grocery carts.
The clearly aged or infirm are exempted here. But the hale-yet-torpid? Seriously. Are you man or sloth?
Stand up. Just ... stand up.

3- I have no patience with dishonesty.
Granted, none of us are perfect in this respect. The odd fib can make things go smoothly. But I see too many who make such habitual use of the little white lie that they have lost their perception of truth. The small lie "doesn't count." Then it's the bigger lie. Soon they can't speak without some sort of lie, even using lies to embellish a perfectly acceptable truth. They have become exemplars of bullshit.
Do not expect my trust.

4- I am driven to distraction by improper word choice.
Yes, malapropisms can be amusing - but I also firmly believe that if you aren't certain what a word means, you shouldn't use it until you are. 
Google is our friend.

5- I loathe being told I'm beautiful.
(see peeves 3 & 4)
There are plenty of good, complimentary, non-bullshit, accurate words out there. Please choose from among those instead.
Thank you.

6- Considerate lovers make me nuts.
I'm floating, I'm soaring, I'm flying, I'm ... almost, I'm  ...
"ARE YOU GOING TO COME FOR ME?!?"
*BAM!*
I'm on my butt on the ground, looking ruefully back up at the clouds.
I hate Twenty Questions during sex. Do you have any idea how hard it is not to smack the "considerate" person that does that to you?
I love that you care.
But let's just let the chips fall where they may, OK?

Summer Reading List

My local library has a killer book sale every year and I am now Stocked for the Summer. (Well, sort of. I only got 34 books, after all…)
But as I sat on the floor of my living room, happily sorting and cooing over all my purchases, I got thinking...
One of my favorite podcasts has listeners send in their summer reading selections and it's a fun way to pick up some good suggestions. Pygar paved the way with his recent post about the book he read on vacation, but I thought it might be fun to take it a little further.

So here are a few titles from my summer reading list.

Why not play along and list some of yours, too?!?
Email them, post them in the comments, or on your webpage.
Let me know and I'll even put up a link.
The more who participate, the more suggestions we all have!
(How's my wheedling?)
**************************
Shadowfever - Karen Marie Moning
     This one I've finished already.
It's the conclusion to the five-part Fever fantasy/paranormal series. Complex but it wraps up almost every loose end - and the one remaining dangle was intentional. So … these long years of suspense are finally over!

Elizabeth's Women - Tracy Borman
     The subtitle says it all - "Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen"

Brick Lane - Monica Ali
     A novel about a Bangladeshi immigrant living in East End London.
(Short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize)

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
     A biologist's proposal as to why Western civilization became hegemonic. (hint: it's all in biological resources.)

Play for a Kingdom - Thomas Dyja
     May, 1864- A Union company from Brooklyn encounters an Alabama company while on picket duty after the Battle of the Wilderness and proceeds to challenge them to a series of baseball games before all hell breaks loose in Spottsylvania.
"an entertaining novel about humans tested under the strain of war -- revealed through baseball…" 

For Your Eye Alone: The Letters of Robertson Davies
     One of the most flippin' brilliant wordsmiths of our time.
     In his own words.
(And if you've never read The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, add that, too!)

The Geographer's Library - Jon Fasman
     Alchemy! Smugglers! Romance! Suspense!
Mixed reviews but I'm intrigued…

The Empty Chair - Jeffery Deaver
     Lincoln Rhyme vs. Insect Boy
     w00t!

The Romance Reader - Pearl Abraham
     The story of a young girl's coming-of-age in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic home.

Vicious Grace - MLN Hanover
     Another urban fantasy/paranormal series I got hooked on - The Black Sun's Daughter. I love a fun yarn, and if you can write it well on top of everything, I'll keep buying the installments!
    
Ghost Rider - Neal Peart
     Peart, the drummer for Rush, recounts his 55,000 mile cross-country motorcyle odyssey of grieving, thinking, and healing following a year of personal tragedy.

**************************
C'mon…
How about yours?
Surely someone can recommend some good zombie lit?  (*ahem*)

Deeper?

As those of you who've been reading for a while will know, BG and I are decidedly not 24/7 types. He's not Master, he's Sir - at the appropriate moments. Otherwise, he's BG. This is his directive, although it suits me, too. We chug along quite nicely at this level of interaction.

A while back, someone asked me if I thought I'd ever want to take it farther, to go deeper into myself, deeper into D/s. I've considered that on and off over the months and I still have no good answer.

As I've mentioned before, the stumbling blocks that BG and I face in our relationship do not revolve around TTWD. Rather, our issues are the normal, mundane problems of dating, specifically of dating someone who really hasn't achieved satisfactory closure from his crumbled marriage. (Yes, I do know better but the apple was sooooo tempting!)

We get along marvelously and our approaches to BDSM are remarkably well matched as well. (Although I expect we'll eventually stub our toes but that's a bridge for another day.) So we're generally pretty much in accord about how to proceed with TTWD. I don't have that sub angst one reads so much about. You know, where the sub wants to beat her dominant for not taking her far enough, fast enough, or where she can't stop pushing her own limits in a preemptive strike against the possibility that a situation might someday arise in which she wasn't already perfect. (Y'all really need to be kinder to yourselves, btw.)
I don't doubt the real dissatisfaction that seems to push these subs, but I just don't react that way. Instead, I find myself content to follow his lead.

Not that I've tried everything I want to try. (See annoying friend's crack about my arrival at the Pearly Gates here.) But those things are more like expanding the range of play, not switching playing fields entirely. I'm just not jonesin' to jump out of the kiddie pool while the water's still refreshing.

I suppose that could be me protecting myself in an uncertain situation, but I also suspect that submission is simply an organic process for me. I want it to be with him and for him, so if a greater depth is to be achieved, it will come from our relationship deepening, not from my psyche gnawing away inside me.

Again, this is my wiring, not anyone else's. But it jibes with my approaches to love and lust, too. I'll go without love rather than have it with the wrong person. And as far as scratching that itch, well, I've got two perfectly good hands, a toy box, and a vegetable crisper... You need to bring a lot more to the table than just a functioning dick.
(and flogger) ;-p

So, yes, I'm open to going deeper at some point, if it should happen.
But otherwise, I'm quite happy where I am.
Maybe this makes me a more shallow submissive than most.
I will admit that my lack of angst does give me pause on occasion, like I'm missing some intrinsic point that everyone else seems to get.
But that seems a silly thing to fret over.
So I generally don't…

Rest and Responsibility

I read a rather flippant comment the other day in which a non-submissive speculated about a possible reason for the appeal of submission.

The remark was made in jest but it was sufficiently foreign to my version of reality that it caused the Inner Contrarian to raise her head.
"Nooo... that's not why I do this, …"  and off I went!

(Ever notice how getting caught off guard by an inaccurate comment can sometimes cause you to cough up hairballs of previously unrecognized truths? Yeah, one of those...)

So, why DO I do this?
Absurd though this may sound, I find D/s restful.
Like Sookie Stackhouse hanging with her vampires, I enjoy the break from mental noise. For however long that I'm in a scene, my brain shuts up -- and that is a rare gift. When I'm with BG, all imperative to thought flies right out the window and I simply am. Worries, concerns, speculations, musings, distractions -- gone. There's no room in there for anything but his hands and his voice.
Heaven.

Mind you, it's just a break. I couldn't easily handle giving up all responsibility, all the time. I'm far too independent for that. But thankfully, that's how BG likes me. He doesn't want to carry the weight of my world, he wants me to stand on my own two feet.  
Except when he has them tied above my head...

Asking For Directions

Recently, a couple of lost souls have pulled into my yard and asked me for directions.
Wouldn't it be GREAT if we could do that with our lives?

"Hi. I'm kind of lost. How do I find happiness?"
"Straight ahead for 3 miles, hang a left, it'll be right in front of you. Can't miss it!"
"Super! Thanks!"

Sadly, however, it doesn't work like that. We each have to find our own way -- and my particular internal compass seems to be one of the quirkiest ones ever put on this earth. I'm honestly not convinced it's pointing me toward anything at all. Rather, it's primary mission seems to be to lead me around by the nose, ignoring all other input, no matter how logical or well thought out.
(So even if I did find somebody who could positively tell me the right way to go to find guaranteed happiness, I'd have to take notes, then knock myself unconscious and have a friend drag my limp form along the given route, otherwise I'd never make it!)

It just seems that I am fated to a life of flying by the seat of my pants.
Which I suppose actually kinda suits me, so I'm not complaining.
But there are times…

Times when I feel wistful over seeing people who have carefully thought out plans. They know, by golly, what they'll do, what they won't do, what they'll put up with, what they won't. They have created a very solid structure they can work from -- and I think there must be great comfort in that.

So I have tried to create a similar structure for myself. I have even on occasion come up with a splendid Flow Chart For My Life.
It's just that the putting it into effect part always trips me up. There is always some mitigating factor or unexpected input that I am constitutionally incapable of ignoring - I have to fit it into the plan. Which then changes the flow chart, which means redrawing, rearranging, and generally dismissing of all my previous labor…*sigh*

And meanwhile, my directional instinct gloats.
Anyone know where I can get a good deal on a GPS…?