idle musings

I started the new job today and I think I am going to be awesome at it.

Sir spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights with me, which will probably never happen again ever, but K was out of town and his truck broke down, both of which meant he stayed with me longer than he normally would. It was wonderful but I am also looking forward to having my bed to myself again tonight, and having Maia to snuggle with. He loves both Maia and Bosco but he is allergic to dogs so while he will snuggle them all day on the couch (after taking medication), he draws the line at sleeping with them. I admit that it is a little hard for me to lock Maia out of my bedroom when he is here, but since it’s usually one night of the week at most, it’s not as hard as it would be if it were more often.

We went to a play party on Saturday and did a whip scene. His leather whips that he ordered months ago had finally arrived and he was very excited to try them out on me. Apparently I was shrieking so loudly that the dungeon monitors came over to check that everything was ok (ie still consensual) twice. I have no recollection of this at all, being somewhat distracted by pain at the time *grin*. I did get my endorphin high but it wasn’t as long as previous times; I think this was because I had to take an ativan earlier in the evening in order to not have an anxiety attack. I’m doing much better than I was a few years ago when I couldn’t even socialize in small groups with very good friends, but clearly I am still not past the hyper anxiety in large gatherings. I’m not sure right now what the best way to deal with this is – manage it with ativan, or up my daily medication. Sir wants me to look into therapy but I’m really not stoked on the idea. I hate the thought of telling someone my deepest darkest secrets. It’s like, who the fuck are you and why should I tell you? At the same time, I don’t particularly like the idea of upping my meds either, and I prefer to use ativan sparingly.

I finally got my passport in my hand so I went over-the-border shopping with a girlfriend of mine. She’s actually my agility instructor but we have been becoming more close over the past couple months, which is awesome because I think she is fabulous. We went down to the outlet malls in Washington state on a whirlwind trip because she had a date that night and needed to be back in good time for it. I wanted to get some clothes to wear to my new job, and boy did I! $400 later but I came home with a whole bunch of stuff. I fell in love with a Coach bag, not because it is Coach but because it is beautiful supple purple leather. I didn’t buy it but I can’t stop thinking about it, so I may end up getting it after all on our next shopping trip. Because yes, we have already decided that there will be another trip in the fairly near future.

Two of my other dog girl friends (I think of my friends as belonging to either the ‘dog’ group or the ‘kink’ group) have started walking their dogs super duper early in the morning to get it out of the way when it’s cool, and so that they can just relax when they get home from work. Tomorrow I am joining them at 5:15!

Quick recap:

Lola ended up getting adopted into another family because just after I decided to keep her, Maia decided that she wanted her dead. She started staring at Lola and stalking her, and pinning her down and making her scream if I didn’t intervene in time. I did the ‘crate and rotate’ thing for three days until I realized that this was not a problem I was willing to invest time into when clearly Lola was miserable and Maia was completely stressed. The family that Lola went to lives only about five minutes from me. They have another dog already that they wanted a companion for, and apparently they totally get along and hang out together all the time. They have two little girls who are head over heels in love with Lola, and the parents are very dog-savvy. I’ve been to visit her once since she went to live with them, and the girls had drawn me a picture of Lola to put on my fridge. I’m not into kids but holy frick was that adorable.

I’m still seeing the trucker and things are going well with that. I wish that he was in town more but c’est la vie.

I finally, after almost 13 years, quit my job with Starbucks. (That’s the first time I have ever written their name on my blog.) I’m going to work for the local transit company, starting in their call centre but hopefully getting my foot in the door to move into another position after my probation period is over. I took two weeks off in between my last day at Starbucks and my first day at the new job, and I am half way through that time. It’s been really nice to just relax for a few days, although I have also been getting things done around the house that I had put off.

I’ve been looking after my friend’s dog, Justice, since last Monday and while she is a great little dog most of the time, she is noise reactive. And she makes Maia noise reactive. I have spent more time this past week with barking dogs than I have the past month. I keep threatening both of them that I will debark them with a rusty spoon but so far no one seems to be taking this threat seriously. Justice goes home tomorrow and hopefully Maia will relax after that. We need to get out and do some counter-conditioning recapping – she’s getting really bad at going ballistic when she sees another dog/a cyclist/a person in the world and while she does somewhat remember the ‘look at that’ game, I need to put some more time in to her, to keep her stress level down at a manageable level.

I leave you with a very badly shot but hilarious video of Bosco playing with my exercise ball. This dog has come so far from the dog I brought home from the shelter, and it makes me so happy to see him bloom.

One of my hard limits was no scarification, no cuttings, and no brands. I don’t have any tattoos or piercings and I had no desire to carry anyone’s mark on me for the rest of my life. M has had huge success getting inside my brain and making it his playground, and he managed to change my mind about brands and cuttings within the space of a single conversation, mostly by making me realize that I get to choose the design and it’s like body art. Plus electrical brands and cuttings don’t tend to be permanent and since I have skin that heals incredibly quickly and is intensely hard to mark in the first place, anything that gets done to me is even less likely to be permanent.

I seem to be in a place right now where I want to experience everything at least once so I said yes to an electrical brand. I chose to have a hibiscus flower in the middle of my shoulder blades, and one of the girls from work drew it on for me so all M had to do was follow the lines. I think it turned out really well:

It has already faded a lot – this was taken the following day when it was still really red. It’s more a pink now, and will continue to fade to white lines eventually and then nothing. But I really like it and may end up wanting to have it permanently.

And because the first question that everyone always asks is ‘Did it hurt?’ I’ll just answer that by saying no. *lol* I do have a very high tolerance for pain and I am what’s known as a heavy bottom because a top can play very heavily with me – I can take a LOT of sensation and pain before it becomes too much for me to process. But this was more like a stingy buzzy feeling and it was very quick – only a couple of minutes. The only thing that made it more difficult was that I breathe deeply in order to process pain and that was making my back rise and fall so M made me hold my breath when he went over it the second time. But still, really not a big deal.

Electrical brands are pretty cool to do. It’s done with a contraption called a violet wand that is used for electrical play. When doing the brand I held onto this piece that basically electrified my body. I didn’t feel any different although when I accidentally bumped my elbow into the ex-pen I got one hell of a shock! M held a small tool that has a metal point to it and when that got close enough to the skin, the electricity jumped from my body to the tool. Hold the tool there long enough (as in, half a second) and it burns the skin, creating the brand.

I also got my ears pierced today. I had tried when I was about 10 but I have a metal allergy and had to remove the studs, and it never occurred to me that there was anything else that could be used. M pointed out to me that there are wood and bone earrings and that it’s probably quite possible to get pierced with something that wouldn’t cause an allergic reaction, and I know he likes earrings on girls which did play a partial role in my deciding to get it done but it’s also something that I have always wished I could have. I got in touch with a well known piercer who is also active in the kink community and who conveniently has a shop really close to me, and he told me that we can pierce with plastic so today I went in and had it done. It didn’t hurt at all, and I now have earrings made up of a plastic shaft and titanium balls. They haven’t hurt at all today – in fact, I have forgotten that they are even there! So I think it’s safe to say that I am not going to have a reaction to them. Yay! Now I have to wait until they heal a bit and then I want to stretch them out because the earrings that I found that I want to wear on a daily basis (made of dark wood and they are spirals – so cool!) are a 6 gauge and right now my studs are only 16. If I had done any research ahead of time I would have asked to be pierced with a lower gauge right from the get-go but that’s ok. I’m sure that with my pain tolerance and quick healing abilities I’ll be able to stretch quite quickly.

I met The Man at the first play party that I went to since coming back out into the kink scene recently. They had had an auction where people had put themselves up for sale for a scene to raise money for the group who runs this particular play party, and he had ‘bought’ my friend Lisa. Lisa and I played together that night – she has topped me in the past and I felt that going to a play party and knowing that I was going to play would make me more comfortable, which it did. While we were waiting in line for the suspension frame, he came up and did his negotiation with Lisa about what was in and what was out, in terms of limits and what-have-you. I was instantly attracted by his very toppy attitude and his negotiation with her, and said straight out that I wanted to get me some of that. He put my info into his phone and said that that could be arranged. I then watched his scene with Lisa and was incredibly impressed with his focus and his skills. Yeah, I definitely wanted me some of that.

He emailed me within a few days and we started emailing back and forth, which then turned into texting, which then turned into talking on the phone. He’s a long-haul trucker so he’s out of town six days a week and has lots of time to talk. Things were getting more and more intense on the D/s side (Dom/sub – power exchange) which has been really, really awesome. I love to play, I love sensation and beatings and I am totally a masochist but holy shit had I forgotten what it is like to do D/s with someone who really gets it. And I freaking love D/s.

Anyway, we made plans to play at the next play party and that he would come home with me afterwards. He’s poly, and has a girl here in Vancouver and another one in another city that he goes through regularly on his truck route, and he also does casual stuff with whomever catches his fancy, and at that point I was figuring that we were just going to be play partners and that was fine. But the D/s stuff kept getting intense and he brushed past a few of my so-called hard limits (which is not something that I recommend for anyone else but it worked within the contexts of our conversations) and by the time we played on that Saturday I was so high just from the anticipation. Thank goodness he lived up to my expectations and we had a fantastic scene. He did a partial rope suspension – chest harness, one leg up, and my hair attached up also – and then used just his hands to brutalize me. He has really good knowledge of the pressure points on the body, and had me screaming and squirming and fighting back (albeit not whole-heartedly). Afterwards he came back to my house with me and we played a bit more and then had amazing sex. I don’t usually write too much about my sex life but seriously it was SO GOOD.

Things have been trucking along (haha joke intended) nicely for the past few weeks. At some early point it morphed from being a casual play partner thing to him including me when he talks about ‘his girls’. He has some major commitment issues and likes to pretend that he doesn’t get attached to people but the truth of the matter is, he’s been with his other two girls for over a year with each of them. The trick is to not push him on it and just let things be. And as it stands now, I have the same privileges and rules that his other girls do; the only thing I don’t have is any kind of public standing. They are both up on his profile on the kink site we all use as his submissives, and they both have their own collar from him that they get to wear to events and such that mark them as belonging to him. When it came up in casual conversation about adding me to the site as one of his submissives, he made it clear that he is not willing to do that right now. And I am ok with that – it has only been a couple of weeks and actions in person are more important that cyber-space. I know I’m one of his girls, he knows it, and so do the other two.

And speaking of them, I have become close friends already with K who lives about 30 minutes away from me. We have hung out just the two of us and also with him too and it’s good – I love her and it’s not awkward or weird at all. His other girl came into town last weekend and I got to meet her and all of us hung out, and that was also good because I wanted to feel comfortable with everyone in this circle.

And I still have a casual play partner, who I haven’t managed to meet up with very much in the past month because I have been so busy and so has he, but we will continue to play, and I have my very occasional sex buddy who comes into town, emails me, comes over and we have sex, and then he leaves. No messy conversation, no emotions, no nothing but great sex.

So yeah. I am in a surprising place as I never considered myself to be poly, but I am very comfortable and very happy. Realizing that I’m never going to find everything I want in one partner and allowing myself the freedom to take what I want from one relationship and keep options open to find other relationships that can meet other needs has been a step I needed to take in order to feel comfortable re-entering the world of relationships and kink and play.

The coolest thing was I went with him in his truck last week on one of his runs. He has had D in his truck when he brings her into Vancouver, and he’s invited K to go with him but it has not happened yet, and he mentioned it to me that I could go with him if I wanted, and I jumped on it! I may be getting a new job (interview on Thursday – fingers crossed!) and won’t be able to leave town at the drop of a hat anymore so I made it happen now. I got my shifts covered and I went trucking. And let me tell you that I have a new appreciation for truckers now – not only do they have to be very skilled in their driving but they drive for so many freaking hours in a day and they do that for days on end. We drove for 5 hours on Monday only because it took so long to load and get out of Vancouver, but we then drove for probably close to 12 or 13 hours on Tuesday, and then about the same on Wednesday, and then came back to Vancouver on Thursday morning. We obviously spent a lot of time together in close quarters and neither of us got sick of each other’s company. We joked around, we laughed, we debated, and he beat on me. Oh, it was excellent. I was completely exhausted by the time I got back to Vancouver, both mentally and physically, but I would totally go again.

So yeah. I haz a man, and I haz a happy about it. *grin*

So Lola, the little Mexican street dog, has found her forever home with me. She wormed her way into my heart, the little demon! She snuggles with me like a cat would, which is lovely since I have missed that kind of snuggling since I gave my cat to my parents’ when he wouldn’t come out of the closet anymore because Maia wouldn’t stop chasing him. I didn’t blame him – she’s scary when she’s in prey drive, especially if you are only a fraction of her size, but I have missed having the kind of comfort that comes from a small snuggly bundle sleeping on top of me. Lola fills that niche.

Once Maia stopped pretending that Lola didn’t exist, they started playing together. Bitey-face between the two of them is so adorable because Maia lies down on the floor or couch so she is the same height as Lola. And half the time Lola squirms around on her back, open mouthed and tail wagging. I haven’t been able to get a good video of it yet because my camera is never close enough to me and as soon as I move, they stop.

I hadn’t planned on keeping Lola but when I took her to meet a family and see how she got on with their dog, I realized that I wanted her to stay. When I told Emma, the one who brought her up from Mexico, that I was going to keep her, Emma started crying. This was at agility class and Emma was snuggling with Lola, and said to me jokingly that I should keep her. I said I was going to and she just stared at me in amazement and then started crying. It was really cute. She was just so happy that she is going to be able to continue to see the little munchkin.

She doesn’t shake the way she did when I first brought her home. She used to shake if she went outside for even a minute, and now it’s only if I make her walk in the rain. Her coat was very coarse and Emma and I both thought that was just what her coat would always be like, but it is really soft now. Her tail is getting some curlies on it, which is adorable. She is starting to get a recall – well, barely. And only because I have the BEST food in my pocket lol. But she’ll still turn and eventually come running when I call. I don’t make her drag a leash anymore out on the dykes because I don’t need the drag line. She loves to sleep on my pillow if she can get away with it, or right up next to the pillow beside me.

The pack is now complete. (Although only because I’m not allowed to have more than three dogs licensed to me in Maple Ridge.)

I have been too busy to write anything, but as a quick recap, I am keeping Lola, I have a man and I’m over the moon happy, and I got my first body modification on Saturday. Pics to come soon. *grin*

Finally, pictures of Lola:

Self portrait on my couch.

Sniffing around like the big dogs.

“I do not understand what this ‘come’ word is you keep using.”

Isn’t she SO CUTE? I took her to visit Emma yesterday (who was the one who brought her back from Mexico) and she said, “Can’t we just keep her? We’ll share her, one week on and one week off!”

I really need to bust out the camera tomorrow and get some pics of Lola. She played with Maia today! It was almost proper doggy play – Maia was playbowing and tail wagging, and Lola was sort of trying to do bitey-face but she wasn’t really sure if she was playing or not. It was so cute and I need to get a video of it.

I met a guy for coffee yesterday who had messaged me from bondage.com. I hadn’t been on that site for literally years but I clicked in a few weeks ago to check a quote I have on my profile and that bumped my profile up the list in terms of ‘last logged in’. So this guy emailed me and we chatted back and forth and yesterday we went for coffee. He’s new to kink in terms of being out in the scene and admitting that this is what he wants but he says that he has been ‘sneaky kinky’ for ages, in terms of wanting certain things and seeing if he could get those things from vanilla girls. (The answer is no. *lol) He was nice and we had a good conversation, and I invited him to come to the rope bondage workshop on Wednesday that I am going to with Lisa again. I need to see him again to know if I want to explore things with him or not.

I had asked for an extra day off this week because I need some time to just relax – it’s felt like every day off that I have, I’m driving all over the city for one reason or another, and I haven’t had a good chill out day. Of course work called me today to see if I could come in this afternoon. I ignored the message. *shrug* It sucks being shorthanded but one of the reasons I stepped down from managing was so that I did not have to go into work every time someone called in sick. Tomorrow I’m going to pretend that today I left my phone at home all day and went to North Van to visit with my parents. My extra day off is Wednesday and I am looking forward to sleeping in with no alarm, and then getting some stuff done around the house.

I didn’t take the dogs up to the dyke today, so I waited until after 10pm and then took Maia and Bosco around the neighbourhood. I had Maia on her martingale but I brought her Gentle Leader too, just in case. She wanted to react to some loud trucks that went by but I got her focused on treats and I tried something new: targeting while the scary thing was going by. It worked! She had uppy ears and a relaxed mouth, and while she did turn her head to look at the trucks, she focused right back again. Bosco of course was just sitting there, wondering why we were stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to practise targeting but happy to oblige for cookies nonetheless.

Gosh I haven’t posted in forever.

Lets see. In the past month and a bit, I had Seven come stay with me for a week and Farley the Labradoodle stay for two of those nights, bringing the total number of Hounds Abounding* to four. It was a crazy chaos, especially since Seven and Farley decided they were bestfriendsomg and wanted to play bitey-face the whole first evening, but after Farley went home we settled right in.

I love Seven so much, it’s like he’s my dog too. He fits right into the household routine and he’s such a snuggler – he spent every night under the covers, curled into a Vizsla-ball against my belly. After he went home I missed his hot-water-bottle-ness.

Speaking of which, when Emma came to pick him up, she brought the two dogs she flew back with her from Mexico so that I could meet them. Seven was all, “Hi Mum! Hi Mum! Hey, there’s other dogs in the car …” and that was about all the greeting she got. When I stopped by her house a few days later, he went completely out of his mind bonkers to see me, knocking me over and trying to climb into my arms. Emma was like, “Um, he wasn’t that excited to see me when I came home after a week!” Yeah. Sorry. I have that effect on dogs. *grin* The good thing about that is that Emma has not a qualm in the world about leaving Seven with me, and will be doing so again when she goes back to Mexico in October for another speuter trip.

As for the two dogs she brought home, one of them is currently curled up next to me on my couch, blissfully asleep with a full belly. Emma said she was caught in the round up on the first day, along with her approximately three month old puppy, and Emma immediately claimed them to come back to Vancouver. Her puppy is being adopted by Emma’s brother, and Lola is fostering with me while she gets accustomed to being house trained and living in a home. She was a street dog before this but you’d never know it to meet her, unless you have food. She is a scrounger of food and has a one track mind where it is concerned. But other than that, she snuggles everyone she meets and she is just absolutely delightful. I need to get some pics and post them!

* trigger warning for bdsm*

I know I have some people on my f-list on LJ who I have become friends with through dog communities and the like. You probably don’t know that I’m kinky, and out and open about it. Guess what? *lol* I’m getting back into the community and will be writing some stuff about it, which I am going to filter because I know that there are people who are bothered by such things. If you want to be filtered out of such posts, please leave me a comment (they are screened). You don’t need to tell me why, obviously. I will say, though, that everything that I take part in inside the kink community is completely consensual, even if it seems awful from an outsider’s point of view.

I had posted a profile on FetLife a few months ago and had really forgotten all about it, until I received a notification from them that I had a message. I started emailing back and forth with this Dom** and eventually we met. And wow. WOW. I was initially looking only for a play partner to ease me back into the swing of things, SM-wise. I was not expecting to meet a Dom who does D/s exactly the way I like it. We have clicked like nobody’s business, and it’s fabulous.

Because of certain reasons that I am not going to post out here on the wide web, we don’t get to see each other very often – usually just once or twice a week, but we keep in touch with email and text messages. It’s the perfect amount of connection for me right now, as I am just starting to get my social feet back under me after being a hermit for a long time. I guess I finally am at the right levels of my anti-anxiety drug!

The other thing that I did was go to a MVK play party on Saturday night. Lisa topped me in a short fun session that was more about the two of us feeling our way through it so that we would know if we want to continue playing together. She hasn’t explored her top side in a long time, and I haven’t played at all in even longer. I certainly had a good time. I also got to watch a very hot scene between her and the sadist who ‘bought’ her in the auction MVK holds once a year as a fundraiser. I was so impressed with his negotiation and the subsequent scene that he and I have opened up a conversation about us playing together at some point in the future. Even though he describes his play as being hit by a bus, and Lisa described it more as being run over by a steamroller, I am looking forward to it.

It feels really good to be back out in the kinky world. I had become such a hermit in order to get my anxiety under control, and thankfully I have wonderful friends who took me at my word when I asked them to not give up on me, that I knew I wasn’t going to be in this place forever, and to please reach out to me, even if I continually cancelled plans for a while. I still have some very good friends in the kink community and it’s so awesome to be able to welcome this part of myself back.

As I posted on Facebook a few days ago, I’m starting to feel a lot less broken.

* Hounds Abounding is the name I have chosen for my dog boarding business, if I ever get it up and running.

** Dom = Dominant; SM = sadomasochist; D/s = Domination/submission; MVK = Metro Vancouver Kink

I can’t believe that the Conservatives were rewarded for their CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT with a fucking majority government. I’m embarrassed for my country.