A Real Vacation!

I'm very behind on things again, unfortunately. Time for a little catch up.

At the end of September, I organized a cabin party in the mountains of Colorado. I'd been planning this for a long time, and it had caused me various sorts of stress. Finding the right cabin was extremely difficult: we were originally planning on having a group of twenty people, so we needed a big space, and because it was a spanking party, we needed a place that was secluded enough for us to thoroughly enjoy the great outdoors. My very dear friend, Amoni, was priceless in helping me with this, as she lives in the area. She went around and checked places out for me during the planning stages. Finally, we found one that was perfect: big enough for everyone, beautifully designed, chock full of amenities and, most importantly, in the middle of nowhere. I'd assembled an all-star group of friends to come out, including Amoni, Lily Starr and Robert Wolf, Heather Wayland, ellee and YoggSothoth, Whooperine, WearYouOut and LilLawBrat, -lostkitten and locals and newcomers to my friends group, JoeDimWit, DarkSteven and DarkStevensGirl. Obviously, there was also me and Malignus. :)

There were, of course, lots of other people I would have liked to have there in addition, including BradD, who was scheduled to come but suffered from medical problems and needed surgery during the party, which was incredibly disappointing for everyone, but also Ten Amorette and Drlectr and Beth Eisley, who all had other engagements that weekend. The group we did have, though, was just awesome. Everyone got along. There was no drama. The only tears were caused by spankings. People bonded and made new friends. I felt kind of like a huge winner for bringing everyone together.

The first night that we arrived was surprisingly relaxing. I gave people tours of the cabin as they got there, and we located and hid in the SECRET ROOM that had been advertised on the website and which we had all chatted about in advance quite a bit on our google group where we got to know each other. This was actually pretty easy to find, but I was still pleased with it. There was also a copious amount of hugging that first night. I was just so overjoyed to see everyone. I was constantly bouncing around. When ellee and YS arrived, we exchanged some presents that we had collected for each other, because we're the kind of besties who get each other cute things. ellee is really good at buying presents. I was overjoyed. In the middle of mini-Christmas, though, YS came into the room with an implement and a semi-serious look on his face. Heather, ellee, YS and -lostkitten had carpooled from the airport together, and they had taken longer than I determined acceptable, so I got a little beyond my bounds and sent a text to Heather scolding YS for getting everyone lost and taking too long. This was about to catch up to me in the form of my first spanking of the party. My sense of self preservation must not have been unpacked yet, though, because when he said "You got a little mouthy there, Alex" I responded with "My mouth was not involved! I was texting!"
Surprisingly, this did not save me, and I got ten firm swats, followed by a very nice hug and more presents. Have I mentioned that YS and ellee are pretty much my favorite people ever to live? Yes. That.

We grilled a variety of burgers and hot dogs for dinner, went in the hot tub and enjoyed the pleasure of one and other's company for the first several hours of the evening. Then, later, we moved to the downstairs and the spanking began in full. A lot of this took place with girls bending over the ping pong table (which I suppose is appropriate, because it *is* designed for use with paddles!) and a lot of the play was done fairly publicly. That first night, someone was showing off a London Tanner's strap of some sort and Malignus decided that he wanted to try it on me, so I went over the table and experienced that rather thoroughly. I scrunch my face at leather. It is not my favorite thing. There's something undeniably nice about getting spanked in front of a bunch of people who like you, though. There was a lot of moral support, praise for being a good girl and holding still, and general "awwwwww"ing, especially when I shed a few tears. Shortly thereafter, Robert got Lily in the same position with a number of straps and he made her more colored than I'd ever seen her before! It's really fun to watch Robert spanking someone who isn't me.

ellee had special markers that allowed us to color on the windows and then just wipe it off, so there was window coloring, and therefore much rejoicing. Then Malignus found this stupid plastic snake that we have in our implement bag. I bought it as a joke for a potential "Does This Hurt?" video with Heather Green a long time ago, but we promptly discovered that YES, THIS HURTS. It's a mofo, no other word for it. Stingy and weight bearing. It leaves these little lines of agony where it lands. Malignus got most of the females in the room with it in various locations. Stupid snake.

It's actually incredibly difficult to write a chronology of the weekend, because a lot of things happened at once, it's been a little while, there were 15 different stories being told at once and because many things happened that were very personal for me. I'll just be skipping around a lot.

We had a lot of great times where a bunch of girls would glomp on the girl who was getting spanked at the moment and hold her hands, stroke her hair, snuggle her, et cetera. It was a sort of house-wide version of the Moral Support Spanking from the last cabin party that I went to, where ellee snuggled me while Malignus spanked me very hard. During these moral support sessions, Amoni frequently called out "You got this!" to support the spankee. It has since become "a thing."

Sometime on the second day YoggSothoth got me pretty thoroughly with a rawhide switch (which I hate) that WearYouOut and LilLawBrat (who I love despite this) somehow thought it was a good idea to bring with them. Afterwards, my skin was a little nicked up, as is sometimes the case with switchings, I get. Fortunately, ellee is a doctor, so after her husband finished creating my wounds, she easily tended to them and had me back in perfect playing shape (besides being super sore, of course).

Post switching marks!

We also had lots of fun times in the hot tub at night, including exciting adventures in Alex taking her shirt off. This lead to me getting spanked in the hot tub (go figure) and one night, upon my return inside, I discovered a group of Tops sitting around talking. Apparently it had somehow become "a thing" that girls returning from the hot tub were to receive a round robin style spanking from everyone in the living room. I was all dripping wet and kind of cold, so I was a little hesitant about this idea. None the less, the circle began with the switches: LilLawBrat and Amoni double teamed me while I lay over both laps at once. Then I moved over to Malignus, who, obviously, spanked me very thoroughly (this *is* my boyfriend that we're talking about here). Immediately after that, I was over Robert's lap, at which point I was building up tears. The circle finished with WearYouOut, who has the hardest hand of anyone who has ever spanked me. This broke the tear barrier, which made Robert say "Mmmmmm!"

Photo by Amoni. You can sort of see where I'm patched up in one spot. You can also see that the color goes so far down my thighs that it basically goes out of frame. :P

The next morning, ellee, YoggSothoth, Robert, Whooperine, PTL and myself decided to go on a little nature walk. I was kind of okay with the fact that Malignus was sleeping at this time, since the last time I went on a nature walk with him at a spanking party, this happened:

Yeah, he's spanking me with a tree.

We stopped at a cable spool so that the ladies could take turns bending over it while YS spanked us with his belt. Here's me:

It was a most enjoyable outdoor spanking, and I really enjoy the way that YS uses a belt. It hurt without being a "this is miserable" kind of hurting. Having amazing underpants that were a gift from ellee didn't make things worse, either! This particular set of spankings was also noteworthy because PTL got her very first outdoor spanking! I said it was like getting an achievement on PSN. Outdoor spanking unlocked!

We traveled on and came across a series of small, young birch trees. The area that I chose to get a cabin in happened to, entirely by chance, be largely without deciduous trees, so this was a bit of a rarity. As we viewed them, the Tops pointed out that they were very supple and swishy looking and would make excellent switches.

"Oh darn!" I exclaimed. "No one has a knife with them. What a shame. I guess we can't have any switches."

Robert pulled a knife out of his pocket. If life was a comic book, there would have been a "SNIKT" sound effect. My face looked like this: -_-.

Shortly after a large number of switches had been cut, we climbed up to a small tree house. We got inside and ellee and I received treehouse switchings. The joy of being in a treehouse and being spanked while viewing an incredible landscape almost took away the sting. Key word: almost.

In position

ellee got spanked a lot at this party :P

Once we got back up to the house with the switches, of course, Malignus got me with one, as well.

Photo by Amoni again :D

This post is getting very long and filled with stories and photos. I have more of them, of course, but I feel like this a good stopping point for now.
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A Lesson in Passivity

Sleep has always been an issue for me. I began dealing with serious insomnia when I was in preschool. Although no one has ever come out and said that the two things are related, I also began to suffer from migraines around the same time. Getting to sleep has pretty much been a constant battle in my life. The other day, when I last wrote a blog post, I was writing after having been awake nearly all night. Malignus had gone to take a nap. I mentioned in my last post that we were going to a friend's birthday party that night, and the idea was that we would both nap before we went to this, so as to be perky and enjoyable people. I never got my brain slowed down enough to sleep. It just didn't happen. When Malignus got up from his nap, I let him know that this was the case. We talked a little and did a few other things, then, before I started getting ready to go out, he turned to me and said "Where's your hairbrush?"

Being a very suave and non-awkward girl, I responded with "Under the bed. What did you ask?"

Malignus told me that I was an awkward penguin before sitting on the edge of the bed and beckoning me to bring him the hairbrush.

I basically save my good lines and seamless transitions for when there's a camera

Once I was in position, we began a conversation about me being passive. Our very first few conversations about submission had focused on the differences between it's active and passive forms, and our earliest D/s interaction was about something very similar to what we were about to revisit: me making myself passive, vulnerable and comfortable in order to sleep. This is something that does not come naturally to me. Because I spent so much of my life before Malignus in a state of constant hypervigilance, I somehow ended up with the idea that because I am far more relaxed than I used to be on a regular basis that I was doing "better enough" at this and I therefore wasn't focusing on it enough. Honestly, though, my inability to be comfortable being passive has caused me three large problems:

1) I don't sleep because I spend about three or four hours (literally) thinking about things instead of letting my brain fall asleep. I basically fall asleep only when my body reaches a sufficient point of exhaustion, and I often end up getting so over tired that I'm prone to emotional conflagrations because I am just so tired that I start crying all over the place.

2) I don't experience "headspace" or "subspace" with the amount of frequency or ease that other submissives seem to. At the time we're discussing in this story, I'd only had a proper subspace experience twice and both times were after I'd been frequently and fairly severely spanked over the course of a weekend before the spanking which put me into subspace, so my resistance had been slowly but surely removed over a period of time.

3) I don't find many traditionally relaxing experiences relaxing. I actually had to take a freaking class on relaxation in college, during which they taught me ways to actively relax my body, probably because they had given up on me just doing it. Massage used to make me tighten my muscles that much more in response to the stimuli, and my mind kept working pretty constantly even during things like hot soaks or yoga.

Anyway, Malignus gave me a series of instructions about being passive to the spanking he was about to give me and to be aware of these things for the future so that I could use them to sleep. Other times, I'd struggled against the idea of being passive. It seemed too hard for me. This time, I wanted to be spanked, I wanted to be obedient and, most importantly, I wanted to learn what I was being taught. I was tired of hindering myself, and I just let go and passively accepted and reacted. Most importantly, I let my brain go. It was awesome. I got into a circle of gratification, because the more I took passively, the better I felt about myself and the better I felt about myself, the more I was able to take. When the spanking was over, I was quite sore, but I felt a strong sense of accomplishment, and the wonderful sense of closeness that I feel with someone after a spanking which was purposeful and communicative. I can feel their investment in me literally radiating through my body, and that leaves me feeling incredibly loved. I got really good sleep that night. I just chose to do it, and then I did it and I woke up feeling like an awesome person.

I've kept this lesson in my mind recently, and I've discovered its usefulness in other situations, such as the aforementioned subspace problem. This past weekend I attended a cabin spanking party (more details on that in an upcoming post) during which I found myself able to choose to be passive during some of the spankings which I received, and as a result, I floated off into nice, safe, snuggly parts of my brain with great ease.

I haven't slept enough recently, but it's been due to external stimuli and the burden of constantly traveling, but when I have slept, it's been high quality, sweet sleep.

It turns out that feeling relaxed is a very nice thing.

I'm off to do some more of that, since tomorrow I'm going to Disneyland with Lily Starr and Robert Wolf. Fuck. Yes.