VACATION (Part 1)

NOTE NUMBER THE FIRST: This entry has a lot of non spanking related photos in it. Know why? Because I'm on vacation. Kthnx.

NOTE NUMBER THE SECOND: Go ahead and play this in the background while reading this blog post. I've been kind of humming it to myself for the past few days. :)

NOTE NUMBER THE THIRD: The end of this gets mushy. You were warned!

I arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday. R. picked me up from the airport and drove me back to my old apartment. It was lovely to be back in a place that was so familiar to me for a long time. I had an immediate sense of belonging as we took the Chinatown exit and R. slapped my thigh with gentle excitement. I was overjoyed to get to cuddle my kitties again, too. It's hard to have a long distance relationship with a pet. :(

Gizmo DID miss me! He snuggled me from the first minute I walked in the door!

We spent some awesome time "catching up" and visiting and then went to a favorite Japanese restaurant in my old Little Tokyo stomping ground. Before the meal, R., Zeki, and I played a game of hangman. Those two know me pretty well: they got mine without missing a single letter and it wasn't even in real English.

 I went into the market there and checked out things that were once common parts of my life, but because I'd been away from them and living in a culture where they are not normal, had become novelties. I took photos like a tourist in the place where I once did my grocery shopping. I was jumping around with joy as I remembered just how common place adorable things are in Los Angeles.

The amount of cuteness just overwhelmed me!

I DIDN'T buy a Hello Kitty Bunny Ice Cream Cone keychain because I'm trying to spend money like an adult!

I did, however, decide that I'm going to go back for eye makeup that's specially formulated to run when you cry. It seems like a worthy investment in my line of work. This package advertises that it produces "120% More Tears!"

Engrish is even MORE AMUSING than it was before!

I spent Thursday with Maddycake and had a wonderful time. Los Angeles is having beautiful weather and the plants know that it's spring:

We went to the zoo where we ate kettle corn and saw the only bear in Los Angeles.

I mostly took this photo for Heather, because she loves elephants!

We had a lot of awesome conversations and shared feelings about spanking, modeling and submission. I love being with people who can relate to me on those levels and getting a variety of viewpoints. I also just love Maddy because she's the greatest.

I know it probably makes me sound a bit whiny, and it's surely a First World Spanko Problem, but I really miss Malignus. I feel a lot of nostalgia for the time when I first met him and we lived halfway across the country from each other. I don't mean that I preferred the way that things were back then, or that I even miss it, but I feel a warm happiness at the memory of a time which was very different but also very good and extremely influential to my life. I did, however, have a "you can't go back" kind of moment: the particular corner in my old bedroom (since R and Zeki still live in the apartment that we shared, but with different roommates) which I spent a considerable amount of time in under Malignus' will now has an L shaped desk in it. I wanted to go back into the space where I did a lot of thinking, learning and developing. Since I was unable to do so, I ran over many greatly influential moments in my mind. I learned long ago that a thing or a place does not hold memories: one does in oneself.

Being here, though, makes me very aware of the path that our relationship took and makes me both proud and happy that things came to the place where they are now. Sometimes, I get bogged down in our work schedules and the dirty dishes and things that need to get done and the small conflicts that inevitably take place when one lives with another person.I don't lose sight of how important my relationship with Malignus is, nor how much we love and mean to one and other, but I occasionally need to take a step back to be reminded that I'm living my dream life when it comes to the really important stuff. Being given, essentially, a tour of my previous life reminds me of the growth and changes that have occurred in the past year and a half.

Honestly, in nearly every way, Los Angeles is superior to Sioux Falls. The ways in which it is not are pretty simple: the price of things and the traffic. Being in LA has made me aware of all the things that I miss from here: In-N-Out Burger, a variety of Dungeons, kink groups and BDSM stores, cheap and delicious ethnic food, the Pacific Ocean, the fog making Malibu Canyon into another world, Amoeba Records, a wide variety of people who have read the books I've read and wish to discuss them, Archlight Theaters, Little Tokyo, hot girls in bohemian dresses, beautifully crafted tattoo work, creperies, cup cake shops, gourmet food trucks, four Sanrio Smiles stores in one city, pretty much every store ever, the Santa Monica Promenade, gay bars, rock clubs, organic burger places, the Gold Line train and the Chinatown flea market. The list goes on and on. Los Angeles is pretty freaking amazing (if hella expensive!). When I'm catching up with friends and meeting those who joined my cliques while I was away, I'm always getting asked why I moved to South Dakota and whether or not it was worth it.

I look around at all this stuff, all this glittery and gloriously entertainment, the libraries full of books, the museums full of paintings and photographs, the parks and the theme parks.

Am I happy without all this? Yes.

I'm amazingly happy to visit Los Angeles and would love to do so frequently. But at the end of the day, I'm looking forward to getting back to a place where I can drive without worrying about causing an accident that kills 80 people, where I can afford to go to dinner and a movie without feeling guilty about spending so much money, and far more importantly, where I'm with Malignus nearly every day. Spending my days with him and Heather is a greater joy than I ever expected to know.

Ready for Something That Doesn't Make Sense?

Have you ever mistyped a URL? One day, Malignus did. When trying to get to my blog, he instead typed www.alexinspankingland.blogpsot.com

Two switched letters. Go ahead and click that. The result?

Mega Site of Bible Studies and Information.

The site is really poorly made and ugly and contains a bunch of information for conservative Christians about the Bible and other such things. It's certainly NOT about consensual adult spanking and photos of my butt.

I've been meaning to point this out for about six months now but I haven't remembered to do it. Malignus reminded me rather forcefully to the past couple of days, so there you have it!
I'm just two letters away from Christianity. Seems a lot farther in the real world. :P

I'm heading to Los Angeles tomorrow and will be there until Easter Sunday. Expect to see lots of photos: I'm primarily modeling. And shopping and living it up with my people out there. This is one of the only times when my life might sound glamorous. :P

The point is, I shall be continuing to blog but shall not be posting any videos to Spanking Tube this week or the week following. You'll live. :P

Review: Rods by Rane Acrylic Rods

When Heather, Malignus and I were in Los Angeles, we attended an event called Bizarre Bazar. There were a bunch of vendors and lots of fun, kinky events. At the vendor fair, Heather picked out her first personal implement: a green, acrylic cane made by Rods by Rane, an implement seller local to California.

Photo from Rods by Rane's site

The cane is very pretty, and it seems to vary intensities quite well. It's also a good mid-length cane: a bit long for OTK, but easy to get locational accuracy and use in smaller spaces. Because it's acrylic and not particularly long, it's one of the most "stern" or rigid canes that we've used (aside from bamboo and thicker lexan canes). It has a deep, penetrating, straight-to-the-bone kind of cutting, thuddy pain when used with a lot of force. When the Top wants it to be, it can be one of more intimidating implements. When used lightly, it can be relaxingly percussive or fall into the area of "almost nice".

Here's a photo after 30 strokes I received from Malignus:

The bruise on the left was caused by a paddling I received the day before.

As my good friend Maddy can attest, (since she has a rod from them as well, affectionately known as "the blue thing") these canes are killer when used on thighs.

Heather's original cane broke when Malignus was giving me a beating with it, but when I emailed Rane about it, he was extremely personable and friendly. He sent a replacement piece, along with a thin, more flexible, stingy cane in pink acrylic to make up for the trouble. The thinner cane is ridiculously stingy. It takes minimal effort for a Top to snap it back and forth in a way that makes it look like little is happening, but feels like you are being stung by a lot of bees.

Photo from Rods by Rane's Site

We used the green cane in our St. Patrick's day caning video. I'd absolutely recommend the 1/2 inch canes for anyone who wants a nice, mid length, versatile acrylic cane. The color selection is great and you can find ones that fit various holidays or themes like we did in the video. The thinner, 3/8 inch cane needs to be used properly to be effective: using it like a heavier cane or with too much momentum would probably cause it to break. It doesn't require much effort or force, but would be ideal for Tops with finesse in their spanking style.

Rods by Rane's site also sells acrylic bundles to be used for sensation play and spiral canes. I've seen these "Unicorn Horn" style canes a few places and I've been curious about them, but I've yet to give them a try. They're very pretty to look at, though! It's a very specialized store: they only sell pieces made of acrylic and they only sell rods/canes/bundles. No paddles in their line up. It's not exactly one-stop-shopping for all your beating needs, but if you're looking for what they offer, it's definitely a place to check out.

Submission Topic: Polyamory and Submission

When I started this blog, it was my intention to do a combination of writing about spanking, DD and D/s topics. I touch on the latter two every now and then, but they are rarely the primary focus on a post. I'm going to start trying to include a Submission Topic every week if I can. I always have a lot to say about it anyway. :)

So, here it goes!

For the entire time that I've been in my primary relationship, I've had submissive feelings and limited actual submissive behavior towards people besides my partner and Dominant. This has never been any kind of a problem. I'm mostly poly in all situations and Malignus is nearly perfectly poly. There are times when he's more comfortable with the idea of me exploring things with other people than I am. Because it was always natural and accepted for me to explore and talk about submission with other people, it seemed to follow that I eventually would enter into a second D/s dynamic. At present, Malignus has five submissives, and he manages that with few problems. So when scotchgrove and I realized that we worked quite well together in terms of D/s, we began to take the steps towards making that happen.

A lot of people were very surprised by this. Apparently having a lot of submissives is fairly normal, but a submissive having multiple Dominants is not. Thinking about this brought up a few interesting points.

The most obvious reason why having multiple Dominants might not work out smoothly is that there might be conflicting rules or instructions. The question that my friends have asked me the most when finding out how things are working for me now is "What do you do when they want you to do different things?" So far, this situation has come up rarely, almost never. There's usually a clear level of importance between two tasks: things with real world time limits have to come first, as do grossly more significant things. Unless something of those natures comes up, I take care of the things that I committed to first before committing to something else. If everything is equal, I tend to err on the side of Malignus' wishes because he invests more in me. He's there with me on the day to day and he's been giving me time, energy, love, affection, violence, care, education and more for over a year now.

This is system is really no different than the way that we balance social commitments in any other situation and is mostly based on common sense: if I'm working on research for Malignus and scothgrove wants to chat, I finish my work first. That's no different than what a responsible person would do if they were doing research for school and a friend from outside of a power exchange dynamic wanted to talk. If I'm hanging out with Malignus and scotchgrove needs to speak to me regarding something of importance, I talk to scotchgrove. The only difference is that I don't just do these things: I seek permission to do these things. That's also pretty easy and mostly just a way to be respectful. Because both Dominants are aware of these arrangements, they tend to be fine with things.

scotchgrove doesn't usually make rules for me because he's aware that those needs are already being met by my dynamic with Malignus. If he does, it's for things that I don't have rules about already. If both of them were to make a rule about the same thing, I'd talk to both of them to come up with something that worked for everyone involved. Basically, if everyone is on the same page, it works out really well.

There is, however, a reason why the idea of having multiple submissives makes more sense than the idea of having multiple Dominants does: that's the flow of power. This is a concept that has been kind of hard for me to articulate, but which I've been bouncing around in my head for a while. I made the following really shitty diagram in Paint:

As you can see, in the Top paradigm, each relationship flows away from the shared partner. This represents the fact that while time and energy are invested, the end result doesn't accumulate. In the bottom paradigm, all the energy is flowing onto the shared submissive. This represents the fact that the submissive is receiving things: instructions, assignments, rules, punishments, structure et cetera, from two different sources. Where it is very possible for a Dominant to become overwhelmed by GIVING too much, there's a very different mindset required to be open to RECEIVING an overwhelming amount of new information, material, concepts and other things. I think that this has a subconscious influence on how people view multiple partner relationships in terms of D/s.

I know this is one of my less articulate posts. I've been mixing my energy to a lot of places recently: preparing for my trip to Los Angeles, settling some emotional issues, getting parts of my home life that needed to be in order all squared away and planning some exciting new developments to my spanking life. I hope it made SOME sense to you none the less. What is your opinion on the difference between a submissive having two Dominants and a Dominant having two submissives? Did my graphic make ANY sense, or was I just screwing around in paint aimlessly? Post your thoughts in the comments section. :) 

Quick Update From My Car!

Hey Blogland!

I've been kind of a busy bee this past week, and I haven't had a lot of chances to get blogging done. SAD FACE! Right now, I'm sitting in my car on a break from work, writing this while eating blackberries and almonds for lunch.

Heather and I got A LOT of positive response to our first few publicly available videos. It's been really lovely to here that people now consider themselves our fans and that people are looking forward to more videos from us. We'll certainly be working on that over the next few days: we have A LOT of great ideas for videos of all sorts. I was really excited to have this piece about me include on The Spanking Resource and to be listed on Barely Pink's Tuesday Tingles.

I also received an awesome "Thank you" package from Cane-iac, thanking me for sharing some of my writing on their site. They sent me a Twisted Delrin Loop and three new items that aren't available on their site yet. They're all serious business implements, and two of the new ones are colorful and beautiful. All of them are excellently made. I haven't done any hard play recently because I'm trying to remain unmarked for my trip to LA (I'm heading there primarily to do modeling and I thus far have seven shoots booked. Gotta keep that skin pristine!) but I'm looking forward to getting murdered with them when I get back. I'll be doing a full post about these awesome new things next week.

Speaking of packages, I sent one to my bestie, ellee, because I found pretty much the best spoons ever in a kitchen store in Sioux Falls:

Like this post, this photo comes from my car!

They only had one puppy one, so I got it for myself because I am greedy, but I got ellee the kitty spoon! It's kinda too bad they didn't have a bunny one. :P The kitty spoon quickly spiraled into a full out care package because buying cute gifts for cute friends is just fun. I then decorated the box and sent it to her husband's work address. I'm very proud of my coloring skillz so I am uploading some box photos:

I know this isn't "Alex in Coloringland" so you probably don't care that much, but I think that I'm awesome.

Finally, I recently purchased a whole pile of different types of bathbrushes to start a "battle of the bathbrushes" series of posts where I find out which ones are the best/worst. I haven't started this yet because I haven't had the right combination of bravery and free time. Malignus did, however, hit me on the inner thigh with one of them. He then used a wooden spoon to make "ears" because he was trying to make a Mickey Mouse shape (since the bathbrush mark was perfectly round). It then looked "too much like a kitty or other cute animal" so he "erased it" by hitting me a bunch more times with the bathbrush:

Poor Alex!
I need to go do my job now! Bye!

Does This Hurt?!

I realized that I left a very important announcement off my blog: Heather came back!

In case you haven't been following along, Heather is one of my best friends and a fellow spanko bottom. I met her through Malignus over fetlife, and she was actually the first person outside of LA that I met from the internet when we visited her in Northern California on my way back from visiting a girlfriend up there. The two of us got along swimmingly, and a friendship that I hope I'll have for the rest of my life was born. She came to LA to help me move to South Dakota, and because of changing situations in her life, she ended up staying out here with Malignus and I for two months. Now she's back, and she'll be with us for a few more months. It's VERY nice having her here. We have a lot of fun together, she helps me with girl stuff, we get spanked together and we decided to start making videos together.

Long before I ever thought I'd be a spanking model, Heather and I made a video in which she spanked me with celery stalks. It was the first video of a spanking I was ever involved in. We did this because it was a weird train of connections and inside jokes and we're just strange girls like that. We've since then talked quite a bit about other videos that we could make that included strange implements. You have to remember that the two of us go through pretty much any store and find things that we think could be used to spank someone. It's like a hobby for us.

From these ideas, we created the idea for "Does This Hurt?!" It's a mini-series of free spanking videos in which Heather and I will spank each other with strange pervertables to see which ones hurt and which ones don't. We've only filmed the first episode thus far, but you can expect things ranging from the "almost normal" to the "0_0" (but nothing gross. Don't worry!)

Our first video is entitled "Trout" and features a cutting board which was purchased at a Sioux Falls area thrift store. I can't tell you why, but I think that it is the most freaking hilarious thing ever. I can't stop saying the word "trout."

Please enjoy the first video. We're aiming to release one per week.

Shamrocks and Sjamboks!

This post is, as my holiday and special occasion posts tend to be, slightly belated. Oh well! Happy St. Patrick's Day, Blogland!

St. Patrick's Day is a holiday that I primarily stopped celebrating after I graduated from college. In Los Angeles, I first lived in an extremely hispanic neighborhood, then in Chinatown. Not a lot of Irish going on in those parts. I also greatly decreased the amount of getting excessively intoxicated that I was up to after graduation, and what kind of fun can be had on St. Patrick's day without getting totally plastered?

The answer is spanking fun. The whole thing started with a shirt that scotchgrove got me which reads "Spank Me I'm Irish." To get the question out of the way before I get into it, I'm only a quarter Irish. The rest of me is English, Polish and Panamanian. I'm still Irish enough to get spanked for it, as far as I'm concerned! This is my second spanking related t-shirt. This one, however, is plain looking enough that scotchgrove encouraged me to wear it in public. I set my mind on doing so.

On Friday I had the day off from work. Malignus left me with a list of things to do, which I affirmed that I would accomplish. I then took a nap (because my sleep schedule had remained disturbed) and when I got up and got ready, I decided it would be a good time to take some photos with the t-shirt and a pair of St. Patrick's Day panties that I picked up. I set up my laptop's camera and did a mini photoshoot in the bedroom by myself. I then figured out how to make a photo collage online.

Shortly after I completed this, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find the UPS man standing there with a very long box. There aren't nice things that come in boxes like that. Besides, scotchgrove had been threatening me with more murder-presents (horrible implements as gifts) for a while. The title of this post gives away what was in said long box: it was a sjambok of my very own. It was hard to be appreciative.

Now, as a general rule, I don't talk about disciplinary things on my blog unless they're part of a larger point. This is because I don't want to glorify my bad behavior (or sometimes even share something like that publicly) and because discipline is a very private and personal part of my life. I'm going to deviate from that standard for a bit because this story is entertaining and very worth sharing.

Imagine that you're a girl in a D/s or DD relationship (perhaps you needn't imagine at all!). Now imagine that you've just received the worst implement imaginable as a gift when you were at home waiting for your partner to return from work. You have a set of things you are expected to get done. What would you do?

If you have half a brain and don't like getting hit with sjamboks, your response would probably be something along the lines of "get my chores done before doing anything else."

scotchgrove described the situation the best when I told him ex post facto: "For such a smart girl," he told me, "you can be pretty stupid sometimes."

I figured I could spend more time on the internet and talking on the phone and doing other unnecessary stuff before I needed to get everything done. It's not a good skill to have, but I am kind of a pro at hustling chores out at the last minute.

That's pretty much me.

My confidence got the best of me and I ended up wasting the day away. I was still at the grocery store when Malignus got home from work. Going to said store was the first thing from my list of chores that I had done all day.

On the way home, my brain could pretty much be documented like this:

ijsdhusiuhgdiufhiudfhidufhbifubiufgisgfaiygfayiufgisyfsjambokpishidhudhgiudfhdiufhgdiuiudfgsjamboksdiufsiudhfsiufhiudgidgwaygauwydfgauysjambokiusghusefghiuseg8wygriuwrgw97rtw97efgiesufghsdiustupidstupidstupidstupidstupidsdfshfuisdgfisufgisdfgissjamboksjamboksjamboksuhisuhgirugew7yt7wtywe7ythg. 


My powers of deduction and ability to predict events were rather flawless. Upon my return home, I promptly confessed that I had not completed my chores, and Malignus promptly provided me with clearly required discipline using (SURPRISE) my brand new sjambok.

To my credit, I lay still through the approximately 20 strokes I received like a boss. I guess that's not really to my credit: it's not that hard to submit to something when you know that you were REALLY dumb and REALLY deserve it.

None the less, I was clearly extremely contrite when my correction was complete:

My sad face didn't stick around too long. We had a really nice rest of the evening, and I got everything done that I was required and more.

Meanwhile, Heather and I were inspired by my little photoshoot and decided to do something that we'd long talked about but never actually done: start making videos. Heather went out and got us matching green panties. I dug out all our green implements. We both found green t-shirts. We had a plan and we were ready to execute it the next day.

On St. Patrick's Day proper, we filmed a series of three videos that have our "signature" lighthearted, friendly nature to them. We're still getting used to making videos, so there are some imperfections, but all in all, I think you'll enjoy them. Here they are:







I want to add that this is my first experience uploading things on spankingtube. I was pretty intimidated because I've heard a lot of horror stories about people being assholes on that site, but so far I can't complain about how we've been received. I'd be down with higher ratings on my videos, but I know that they aren't perfect either.

Shameless Self Promotion and Meme Day 2

You know what a blog is great for? Shameless self promotion. I shall now direct you to two lovely things.

First, a piece of my writing (an edited version of this post) is now being included in the "Great Reads" section of Cane-iac's website! I'm thrilled to be included here. I haven't been asked to endorse them or anything, but I must say that the people who run the company and site are just lovely, that I've gotten the best customer service imaginable when ordering from them and that their implements are of the highest and most painful quality.

Secondly, Pandora Blake (for whom I have a kind of excessive spanko/intellectual fondness) has included my post "Tips for Newbies" in her recommended reading on her blog.

Additionally, I'm working on a few minor ways to improve this blog. Changes may be appearing as early as tonight, but I'm not making any promises. Thus far, the only visible differences appear to those who view my source code.

Those of you who follow me on fetlife know that I had a fairly rough day yesterday, and I'm still kind of recovering from that. I basically had insomnia the night before and didn't sleep at all, and then had a few stressful things happen and then had stress induced insomnia until about 3 AM. I then got up and went to work, but I was able to come home early and get a refreshing nap in. It was seriously some of the best sleep I've ever had in my life.

That's my "I just woke up" face!

I shall now be continuing on to Day Two of the Ten Day Journaling Meme!

9 Things About Myself:

1) My legal name is extremely long and includes two hyphens.

2) Before the onset of her Lupus, my mother was a professional ballerina. I was therefore forced into taking ballet for ten years. I was horrible at it and no one liked me there. I then took ballet in college to try to prove to myself that I could be good at it. I was horrible at it and no one liked me there. So I gave up.

3) I almost never wear a bra. The size and shape of my breasts don't require it. I'm kind of enamored with my own boobs. Like, a lot.

4) I am pretty sure I will never stop wanting to buy more pervertables and underpants. Every store I go into, I look at them.

5)The longest time that I ever spent in a corner was two and a half hours.

6) That popular quote is wrong for me: my deepest fear IS that I am inadequate.

7) When I was sixteen, I could buy alcohol without being carded. Now, I frequently get mistaken for a minor. It makes me really uncomfortable to think that I've gotten younger looking in the last eight years.

8) There have been days that were more significant or "greater," but the happiest day of my life was when Malignus took me to Bear Country USA. Looking at baby bears with a person who I'd recently realized I was in love with while I had a ridiculously sore bottom from having gotten a ton of spankings the week before is pretty hard to top. That was the day that I truly understood what it meant to allow myself to feel and focus on only good things for a little while. Also, the baby bears chewed each other's ears and smelled like puppies.

9) I love being in school. I wish that being a professional student was practical/possible.

Ten Day Journaling Meme

I like memes. Examples of memes that make me happy:

Yes, I *did* just upload three random photos from my "LOLZ" folder, thanks for wondering.

There's another kind of meme that I don't enjoy as much, though. Those are the kinds of memes like "put this on your profile!" "Make a note that says this!" "Answer this series of questions!" et cetera. This probably comes from the fact that I've always seen myself as a bit of an outsider and I find following "the crowd" to be a bit distasteful. This are the kinds of things that are leftover from an earlier existence. I used to be truly outside of modern society. I was put there against my will, but I refused to leave entirely once I had the ability. I was always proud of the ways in which I was not like everyone else. Some of those, like my higher interest in learning and the arts, *are* things to be proud of. Others, like the fact that I almost never used to wear clothes that matched or do my hair beyond basic brushing before going out (or even to work) and my refusal to do things the way that "everyone else" does them have turned out to be hindrances to my advancement in society instead of points of pride. Essentially, the lesson that I've learned is that "everyone else does it" (argumentum ad populum) is never a valid reason for doing something (and is a logical fallacy). That does not mean, however, that "everyone else does it" is a reason to NOT do something, either. That's just as fallacious of a statement (even if I don't know a Latin phrase for it).

The point of this is that after reading the 10 day journaling posts over at my very excellent friend, Naomi's blog, I decided that I wanted to do the same over here, regardless of the fact that I told Malignus that it seemed "pretty stupid" when he showed me a mutual friend's series of posts over on fetlife. So I'm going to. Today is the first day of this meme. These won't be my only posts: just little supplements. (This will, however, be my only post today because it actually is of some substance.)

I hope no one thinks I'm lame. :P

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now. (Random order).

1. I'm sorry I don't call or skype you. I never know what to say anymore. We both moved to new places with new men and seem to have lost the common ground that we used to share. I promise to work on it. I do love you.

2. I used to be terrified of you, because I think you're cooler than me and more successful in just about every way, but now I'm really glad that I had a reason to get to know you more.

3. I like you a lot, in a "let's have lesbian sex and talk about geeky stuff the entire time" kind of way. I'm just super scared that I'm not good enough for you, and that you think that I'm awesomer than I really am.

4. IS IT CAN BE HUGZ TIEM NOW PLZ? I can't wait to see you!

5. I've been really impressed with how well you've been dealing with things in your life recently, as well as your drive and motivation to try new things. You're such an important friend to me.

6. Ever since I met you, I've been thinking about how much more awesome every fun thing that happens would be if you were doing it with me and how much less sad every sad thing would be if you were there to give me hugs and snuggles. My new daydream is living next door to you and your family.

7. Please, please don't this to me. I know you see it as doing it for yourself, but it's also being done to me.

8. I wish you would get over yourself enough to come visit me out here. You're allowed to be a regular person sometimes. In fact, that would probably make you feel amazing.

9. I'm glad that you're my friend now! I really like hanging out with you. It make me super happy.

10. Trout.

The Struggle

For the past few months, I've been working on a particular skill within the realm of submitting to spankings. I'm very, very good at taking hard spankings with the right atmosphere. The atmosphere, however, has always been highly important for my success with these things. I generally experience these things as if I am being "guided" to a particular headspace and then kept there. I think this is partially because my early spanking experiences were highly directed and I never learned how to create a headspace for myself and partly because when it comes to physical things, I'm far better at passive submission than active submission. Recently, we've been working on my ability to give myself over to a hard spanking without direct assistance.

It is way, way more difficult than it sounded to me in the beginning.

No atmosphere means no phrases of comfort or reaffirmation, no "good girl"s, no questions that focus my mind on submission like "to whom does your body belong?" or "do you want this spanking?" It turns out those things go an extremely long way towards creating a submissive headspace for me.

It also means no warmup. This is the biggest difference between the kinds of non-punitive spankings I was used to getting and the kind that I've been getting recently. A warmup eases me into a scene both physically and mentally. The mental side of it is what's the most important for me. It gives me time to accept the fact that I'm being spanked and slowly start giving myself over to the spanking, suspending my sense of self preservation and surrendering my free will for the time being. It's like slowly inching forward to get wet in a lake before going swimming (this analogy is particularly effective for me because I have a strong fear of water so preparing to submerge myself is far more mental than physical, but I'm sure that it will make at least some sense to others). You take one step, then another step, then another and at first every step makes you gasp from the cold but eventually, you put your head entirely under the water and then you're ready and can swim for however long you want.

Without a warmup and with few words of guidance or correction, I'm more like a cat who has just been dropped into a full tub for her bath than a swimmer slowly preparing to enjoy the water. The first smack hits my bottom and I pretty much immediately start crying out, rolling back and forth on Malignus' lap, yelling in the style that Naomi would call "like a dying monster" and being entirely incapable of keeping position. This is relative to my normal ability to be extremely still: I've seen other girls who simply have to be held down and pinned in place to take a spanking, and recently, I saw one of my friends climb over a couch when her arms were being held down and she was trying to escape swats. The logistics of that maneuver still befuddle me. To my own credit, I will add that I've never put my hand back during a spanking, that I've never gotten off the Top's lap, that I've only kicked a Top in the face twice and that it's been over three years since that time that I broke a lamp. Basically, I'm not horrible, but I try to cling to my resistance as much as possible and relaxing and giving myself over to being spanked isn't the first thing on my mind. In fact, instead of thinking about how much I want to be spanked and how I never want it to end, I find myself latching onto thoughts of how it's too hard, it hurts too much, I can't be still for it and I want it to be over. Not very productive.

That's my brain, basically, when I'm not doing things right.

I've been working on this for a long time, and that's not to say that every spanking I receive is done in this method and intended to work on this. Malignus had told me that I'd been making progress but I personally was getting frustrated with myself: I knew what things I should be doing during a spanking and I just never brought myself to do them.

Last week, we obtained a new implement. Peachy Keane sent it to me as part of a gift box. I've talked about Jenny before: the wooden spatula that Malignus loves and most girls hate. Here's a photo of Jenny, in case anyone wasn't sure what it looked like:

This is Ben, the new implement that scotchgrove had Peachy send us:

At first, I thought it was another Jenny in a different color. They do look the same!

From that angle, they look exactly the same aside from the color difference and the fact that Jenny is well worn. From other angles, the difference is far more noticeable:

Ben is about 1.5 - 1.75 times as thick as Jenny. This was EXTREMELY noticeable the first time I was spanked with it. Jenny was my "warm up" (this was quick and very firm) and then he started to hit me with Ben. I kicked and bucked around and screamed and could barely be kept under basic control. I'm pretty sure that the spanking ended earlier than intended because I was taking it with so little grace and dignity. But geeze! That thing is HORRIBLE. It's the epitome of an awful spoon (you can tell because scotchgrove calls his "the perfect spoon." )

The other day, I got into a mood and I started having a really awful attitude while Malignus and I were trying to get things done in a limited amount of time. I'm really ashamed of the way I acted. I was scolded about my attitude and just a minute later, he asked me something and I responded rudely and immaturely. He then started to scold me very, very harshly. I snapped out of my funk immediately and began to cry guiltily. I was suddenly aware of just how badly I'd been behaving. A minute or so later, he called me into the bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed holding Ben. I felt a mix of terror and relief-- despite my extreme dislike of that implement, I knew that I deserved to be disciplined for my behavior and I wanted him to spank me very hard. Once I had bared my bottom and gotten over his lap, he gave me another stern scolding and then did just that. It felt as though he really laid into me with it (I say this in non-concrete terms because the way that I experience pain during a disciplinary spanking is different than usual and often much more severe). There was no denying the fact that he spanked me very thoroughly, but because of my mindset at the time, I lay quite still and did nothing but cry submissively into my pillow. The spanking finished with corner time followed by a long, comforting hug and a chance for me to behave better. I spent the rest of the afternoon focusing on being cheerful and getting things done, and I was successful at both.

Later, when we were driving in the car to go out to eat, Malignus noted that I had been very still for my spanking. It hadn't even registered to me that I had: I had been focusing on other things. This was important for me because it had reminded me just what I was capable of. When I want to, I can endure anything. This had stopped being a reality for me when I had continuously failed at my earlier attempts to fully submit. That night, Malignus gave me a bedtime spanking with a different spoon. My bottom was still sore from my discipline earlier that day, but I know he didn't spank me as hard or with as fast a pace as he usually does. Still, I was able to channel the same feeling of wanting to be spanked and I successfully gave over to the spanking. I was very proud of myself, indeed, and Malignus told me that he was proud as well.

This post has too many words in it! It needs one of these!

Since then, I've only had one other spanking, which was also with Ben. I took that one similarly well. It's exciting to feel like I'm on a roll and finally mastering something and making real, measurable progress.

Tricky Pervertables

I've often daydreamed about a world where spankos took up enough of the market that pervertables marketed themselves towards us. Imagine a world where you could read the blurb on the back of the a hairbrush and have it point out that besides having high quality bristles for hair brushing, the spanking surface on the back is made of durable wood for an excellent combination of sting and thud.

Alas, this isn't the case. No one seems to want to admit why, exactly, people prefer wooden spoons to the plastics and silicone coated one (I'm not even ALLOWED to use wooden spoons in the kitchen!) and the world seems to think that there are people who wash themselves with brushes in the shower (weird).

There is, however, some marketing being done to spanko bottoms in a very tricky way. The people who make pervertables are trying to sell more by subtly convincing us that they won't be so bad. The first time I noticed this trend was when I saw a particular bathbrush show up on several people's fetlife profiles. I recently purchased this for five dollars at Walmart:

The sticker reads "Soft and Cruelty Free!"

No. Incorrect. I haven't been hit with it yet, but I know for a fact that bathbrushes are neither of those things. I don't think someone could make a bathbrush spanking nice if they tried.

I noticed the next one in a local cooking store and made a very scrunchy face indeed at the false advertising:

The brand on this wooden turner is "SoftWorks." This doesn't even make sense. It doesn't have a soft and cushy handle. It isn't meant to be used on something soft. It's wood, for the love of all that is reasonable! Wood isn't soft. I suppose wood chips could be soft, the kind one would use to line a rabbit hutch or something, but that's the only time that wood can ever be described as anything other than hard.

Finally, my spanko-sister, PeachyKeane, sent me this as part of a care package:

I understand that this is a plastic hairbrush, but that doesn't make it ouchless. If I've learned one thing in my spankolife, it's that anything with a handle can be used for spanking and anything that can be used for spanking can be made to hurt. Even things that technically can't be used for spanking (like a dishtowel) can be made to hurt. Don't fall for this trap. I bet it can still be ouchful.

It's a pretty clever method of increasing sales, though. A female bottom in the market for a brush for her hair could very well want to pick one that can't also be used on her poor, innocent bottom. In the past, I've avoided this by choosing pink and girly hairbrushes that Tops wouldn't want to touch. I've heard that other girls enjoy those entirely round brushes that have no spanking surface at all. Now that I've purchased four bathbrushes, when I put them all next to each other, the one that tells me it's cruelty free DOES seem a little less terrifying. I'm not buying the "soft" wood, though. Screw you, wooden spoons. I've had more than enough of you recently! (Does this attitude come from a recent experience that has left me with residual soreness? Why yes it does.)

First Party: Final Chapter

A couple more stories from the party, then tomorrow, we move on to other topics in Spankingland. Besides the sjambok, another one of the "scary" implements that was brought to the cabin was TNSpanker's cricket bat. I was offered a go at being hit with it on the first night, but, as previously mentioned, I was liquored up and I'm not permitted to play with people I don't know when I've been drinking . This rule is especially important when the fact that I'm a lightweight (in terms of alcohol) is considered. Because of this, I only drank on the first night, and on the second night, I was ready to experience the cricket bat. It had to be located first, because apparently my request to be hit with horrible things interfered with some of the other girls' plan to hide horrible things. I wasn't given that memo and ended up getting them (mainly Megan) in a boatload of trouble later on. Anyway, TNS hit me with the cricket bat a few times and it was kind of awesome. It was just thud, and the thrill of being hit with a large, blunt object hadn't gone away just because I'd been beaten with a tree earlier in the day. I actually really enjoyed it. Then Malignus hit me with it three times and I screamed a lot. Then he hit my thigh with it and I think I stopped having bones for a minute and collapsed into a pile of mush on the back of the couch until he hugged me back to life. Don't worry: the whole thing happened under a doctor's supervision. The risk of SBD was managed!

Yep: I uploaded the same photo twice. You guys can deal. Anyway, the cricket bat was like a paddle that had been taking the same drugs that the cane that grew into the sjambok took. When I told Serious_Face that I'd been spanked with one, he was a combination of excited and pissed. Apparently it was something he'd always fantasized about doing to a girl but had never actually done because he thought it was "too extreme." It's not, by the way. It's extremely scary and extremely awesome, but not "too" anything.

Later that night, I went downstairs with Drlectr to have a quiet conversation (because there was a lot of spanking going on in the main room and spanking distracts me quite a bit when I'm trying to talk) and it ended with me asking him to spank me. It was an incredibly nice scene. I think about it and my eyes get kind of glossy for a second before I say "it was niiiiiiiice." It was fairly long (I think: I lose track of time pretty quickly under these circumstances) and it was all hand-spanking on my bare bottom, which is my favorite of all possible things. He was really good at what he did: he varied speed and tempo and intensity in a way that made me simultaneously relaxed, happy and chock full of endorphins.

Most spanko girls who hang out with me have probably heard me bitch about the fact that I don't usually experience the endorphin side of things unless I'm getting positively murdered, and even then, I don't have a traditional subspace experience. I did once after Malignus gave me an extended hand-spanking after I'd had a very thorough spanking indeed a few hours earlier, and another time, I got kind of "high" from a fairly gentle spanking and walked around with a pillow in my mouth after like that was normal. But my normal experience involves me crying and wailing a lot during a spanking and only feeling typical "good" feelings while basking in it afterwards. This time, things lined up right so that I got a lot of endorphines. A lot. I made a lot of noise during the spanking, but it was pretty much just moaning. I'd imagine that it sounded pretty sexual to anyone listening. It wasn't sexual for me, but I don't really have a word for what it was. It was really, really enjoyable. It hurt in a way that didn't feel like pain, even though I was aware that I was in pain. I drifted and had a very loose connection with my body and with reality. It was very lovely indeed.

At the end of the day, I was very sore and very warm and happy.

Malignus gave me a bedtime spanking shortly thereafter which only heightened my snuggly spaciness. There was only one thing not right with the world as I fell asleep with my head against his chest: the next day, ellee and YS were leaving. We were all technically supposed to be leaving, but Drlectr and Megan had arranged for us to have the cabin for an extra night and quite a number of us were staying.

The next morning, I slept in pretty late. It was glorious: I'd been a little sick this entire time and I'd had trouble sleeping. I even slept through Malignus giving ellee a fairly hardcore caning not that far outside my door. I've clearly made some progress with being freaked out by hearing other people being spanked. :P Soon, the reality that ellee and YS were going home soon was being drilled into me by YS scolding ellee to get her stuff ready and into the car. SAD! There was something that I wanted to do before ellee was tragically pulled from me by circumstance.

ellee is really good at comforting. One of the nights I had a temporary episode of "teh sad" and I ended up crying to her about something (once in a while, I can be a woman. Sue me.) and I was kind of amazed by how awesome she was at making me feel better. When she was hugging my head and being a warm and affectionate presence, I was able to quickly cope with the stuff that was making me have said sad and get back to being all happy-faced. So, once I was awake, I asked Malignus to quickly do a science experiment and see if I was well enough to be spanked (between the soreness and the sickness). This science was conducted with that big-ass spoon in the above photo, which is named Fluffy!® I was really, really sore: about halfway through, Malignus asked me if I wanted him to spank my thighs and I gave a very genuine "YES" that wasn't driven by submission in the least. It was because they had gotten much less abuse than my bottom had during that particular weekend. The thigh swats actually hurt A LOT less than the ones on my bottom had, and that's impressive, because my thighs are very pain sensitive (all that constant hitting hasn't made them any less) and I still have more self preservation about them than most other parts of my body. The science proved that I was still spankable.

Once that was established, I asked Malignus to give me a spanking like he would at home. As a general rule, he doesn't give out "real" or "full" beatings at parties: it's not the right environment for it. Besides, a girl is going to want to play more and doesn't want to be so sore she can't move (except maybe me. Because I'm insane like that.) The thing I wanted, however, was for ellee to give me moral support during the spanking. It sounded like it would be awesome. Both Malignus and ellee agreed to this.

This was hanging in our room in the cabin! So appropriate!

So, Malignus spanked me crazy hard with a feared and detested wooden spoon named Jenny and ellee snuggled my face and told me what a good girl I was, and how submissively I was taking my beating and how much everyone loved me. It might sound kind of dumb, but it was totally awesome. Her praise and comfort lifted me up and made me want to take more and take it well. I'm not going to lie: earlier today, when I was getting a spanking for saying that we could use magic to turn HeatherFeather's dog into a cat, I started thinking about that earlier scene and the way ellee made me feel and it helped me to not focus on processing the spanking as it was happening and therefore allowed me to take it with less resistance. Basically: I love ellee and everything to do with her.

Eventually, though, she and YS had to leave. I started suffering from ellee drop right away. Fortunately, there were other awesome people still at the party. It was during this time that I got spanked by Latte. That was very enjoyable and had several particularly cool things about it. For one, she's left handed. I've always wanted to be spanked by a left handed top. Besides the fun and excitement in something being different and in facing the other way while over her lap, there's the fact that she favored the opposite side than everyone else had, which helped to even out the symmetry of things. She was also a very good spanker: she spanked me with "good girl" implements at a nice pace for quite a long time and it was really relaxing and enjoyable. I sometimes mock lighter implements because I've always kind of assumed that if someone was going to give a "kind" spanking, they would use their hand. I kind of neglected the fact that most Tops hands eventually become tired and sore. I also sometimes forget that Tops can feel pain. :P

A little while after Latte had finished spanking me, Megan decided that she wanted to do so as well, and let me know by pulling me over her lap.

I didn't know if Megan wanted her face shown or not, and it was late at night so I erred on the side of caution.

Megan's spanking alternated between being nice and relaxing and hard and very stingy. You can see in the photo that I'm all kinds of marked up- you can even make out the sjambok bruising on my thighs. She actually made me tear up a little at one point, while making me coo and relax at other points in the same scene. It was all kinds of fun.

That night, we watched the Oscars and The Tree of Life didn't win anything, so I became sort of irate and yelled quite a bit about how Terrance Malick is a god among men and the politics of the Academy are corrupt and dumb. Also, somehow, this happened:

Poor, mistreated Alex! The night then went on to include a lot of chilling and some unforgettable ridiculosity, sponsored by Malibu.

The next morning, we got up, cleaned out the cabin and then went to take a walk through the surrounding town and get some breakfast. The meal was enjoyable, and the town was adorable! Megan bought me some candy in a chocolate store, we had a really tasty meal, I got to hug this stuffed dog:

TNSpanker finagled things so that I got to see this bear:

Ten and I learned about what makes a good belt when we visited a leatherworker's shop (I am still pretty sure the answer to that is that you season it with the screams and tears of many girls):

I look kinda awful here. I was pretty sleep deprived and sad that the weekend was ending.

and I thought this sign was funny:

After sad farewells in the parking lot, Malignus and I hit the road for what turned out to be an 18 hour trip home. Just in case anyone was wondering, an 18 hour car ride isn't exactly what one wants to do when one has a really freaking sore bottom. Ugggggh. It felt like it lasted forever.

So, I've finally finished telling the tale of my adventures. It only took me a really long time! I'm sorry a few days passed between posts because my life got a bit busy, and I'm sorry that this post is so hella long: I wanted to get the rest of the story told in one post like I said I could!

Regular programming begins again tomorrow. Stay tuned!

First Party: Chapter 3

Sometime after what shall forever be referred to as "The Bunny Incident," YS, Ten, Drlectr and Malignus were hanging out with ellee and I in the downstairs common area (AKA "ellee and Alex's Coloring Area") and more spanking fun was had. I have trouble identifying the order of events at this point, but there were several very fun scenes: at one point, ellee, Ten and I were in a row bent over the pool table as Malignus and YS spanked us with their belts. They both have very well-worn belts, and they were using them in a most enjoyable way (that is to say, not murdering us!) and as one of them worked their way down the line, the three of us yelped like some kind of cute musical instrument.

I think next was when Ten spanked ellee, taking her "being spanked by a girl" cherry. That was an adorable scene, and I really enjoyed watching Ten's toppy side. She was supposedly spanking ellee for taking 90 seconds too long to get YS a beer earlier in the afternoon, and she made her count to 90 strokes, but she kept losing count and those in the audience kept tricking her into saying lower numbers. At one point, Ten started over from the start. I like spankings with "audience participation" like that. Lots of fun. Plus, ellee is seriously the cutest spankee I've ever seen. She squeaks and squeals and wiggles and I am in love with her butt.

Observe!

Cutest ever! Photo of ellee used with permission

Malignus also demonstrated the horrors of Jenny to all the girls (you can see the marks on ellee above). Here are mine:

Aaaaand here's my favorite photo ever! Look at Malignus in the background being all full of sadistic pride and joy! That horrible thing in his hand is Jenny, btw.

Later, we attended a wedding that was held in the cabin and officiated by Megan. It was a really moving ceremony, and included "You may now spank the bride!" I look forward to when the day comes that I get spanked in my wedding dress. In the meantime, it was awesome fun to attend a wedding without putting on pants.

Later that night, I got "caught up with" regarding the bunny incident. I got a short but thorough caning. There was something really enjoyable about hanging out with friends and then being marched downstairs into the other room to get spanked. It felt like the world was right: we all knew what we did and no one was judging us. In fact, they were listening at the top of stairs as I was crying out and yelping. When I came back up they were laughing and smiling and such things. For some reason, that was the time when I was the most aware of this feeling in the cabin.

That evening, I got to have some topping fun with ellee:

She was wearing her famous Nintendo panties and I was wearing a Miffy shirt and we both had bows on, so you can rest assured that it was the cutest scene evar.

Later that night, YS spanked Ten for a long time and it made his hand explode horribly! I'd only seen this happen to this scale once before, and it took like, a week to get there.

It was a good thing it happened on the last night, though, because otherwise it would have been sad rest of the party for him. It did mean that I didn't get spanked by him as much as I'd like to, but I'll be visiting them in the future and I'm sure that will mean lots of spanking time. :D

There's still a little more to be said for what happened that night, but I'll hopefully be able to finish the rest of the stories tomorrow in Chapter 4. I hope you're not bored yet!