SURPRISE!

On Saturday morning, I woke up with anxious excitement. I casually cleaned some things up, although I was distracted. I kept my phone in hand no matter what I was doing, and made careful observation of the time. I had told Malignus that on this day, he'd be getting his birthday surprise, and I know that he was aware that this was the cause of my vigilance. Still, I tried to be as relaxed as possible, and I paced myself as I killed time.  Finally, I decided to take a shower and get dressed. After that, I figured I might as well throw some makeup on-- I wear makeup about half the time, and while I hadn't originally been planning on it, my skin was a bit broken out and, more importantly, doing that would take up more time. I was halfway through doing so when I got a call. ellee had arrived.

Unbeknownst to Malignus, ellee, PTL, Heather Green and I had been planning the greatest surprise that I'd ever planned for someone. We'd been working on it since October, and after many ups and downs, things were finally coming to fruition. The original plan had involved having all three girls secretly travel to Sioux Falls to visit, but PTL had to drop out due to the constraints of her responsible, adult life.  Planning this had been incredibly difficult, mostly because I'm not used to having anything going on in my life which I'm not discussing with Malignus. It involved a lot of sneaking around, which I'm not used to. I had to start taking phone calls outside to discuss logistics, and that meant being cold a lot. Not being able to get PTL out was a big blow, and I couldn't explain why I was disappointed that evening. Both Heather and ellee got sick right before they needed to travel, and I couldn't explain why I was so nervous when that happened. Heather's flight time changed, and the plan regarding picking the girls up from the airport in Omaha (which is a much more economical airport to fly into than Sioux Falls, but is three hours away) got very screwed up and I had to figure something else out while walking around the neighborhood in the cold at 10 PM talking on the phone. But most days, I just felt like I had an overly excited bird in my chest whenever I thought about things. I'd never been so happy to do something for someone else in my life. I kept losing sleep due to this excitement. I grew paranoid that I would accidentally do something which ruined the surprise, and I very nearly did once. But finally, the time had arrived. ellee had landed earlier that afternoon and rented a car. She had finished driving to our apartment and was in the parking lot.

I got my shoes and coat on and ran down to see her. We had a lot of hugging and bouncing with excitement, and then got her things out of the car and prepared to go in. We finally came in and announced the surprise. Malignus didn't respond in a way which suggested that he was startled or anything. He just had his most happy face on. He and ellee hugged for a long time, and then I gave ellee a tour of my apartment, as it was her first time visiting, and I introduced her to my guinea piggies, Tesla and Newton. After we finished with that, ellee went to get changed and Malignus gave me a big hug while he thanked me for this. He was clearly super happy, and he didn't know that he had only gotten half of the surprise. :D

Meanwhile, Heather was on her flight to Omaha, and would be arriving in a few hours. Because she is not of the legal age to rent a car without having to pay an incredible amount of money, I needed to go pick her up. I told Malignus that I wanted him and ellee to get to spend some one-on-one time, since they had only previously hung out during parties and hadn't seen each other at all since he began the process of becoming her Dominant. This isn't a lie-- I wanted them to have that time because that's incredibly important. It was also a convenient way for me to make my exit to go speed (er... drive exactly the speed limit) off to Omaha to gather up Heather.

Apparently ellee and Malignus had a great time while they were on their own and Malignus didn't suspect what I was actually doing. One thing which is great about him is the fact that he doesn't really pry. If I say "I'm doing something right now," he often doesn't even ask what, exactly, that something is. He just trusts that if he needed to know, I'd tell him. So when I told him that I wouldn't be getting to dinner until around 7:45 instead of the 7:00 we'd planned on, he didn't ask me why. He just enjoyed the extra ellee time that he was getting. Meanwhile, I arrived at Omaha, found Heather, hugged her madly and jumped up and down some more. I haven't seen Heather in a few months, and it was really too long. Malignus hadn't seen her since June, and I knew that it was really starting to get to him, and I couldn't wait for him to find out that she was here. After taking a quick second to look around and reminisce (as the passenger pickup area of the Omaha airport is where, accompanied by Heather and a similar amount of excited butterflies as were in my stomach at the moment) I first met Malignus in person just a year and a half ago) we were off. The drive went by much more quickly when I was with Heather (who was kind enough to take the wheel and give me a break), and we chatted about a whole plethora of things. We kept coming back to the fact that Heather recently became engaged, though. It's a pretty exciting thing, and I'd been waiting to give her an enormous hug ever since I first heard about it. I may have even hugged her while she was driving, which I don't think you are technically supposed to do.

Finally, we made it to Sioux Falls, where Malignus and ellee had just arrived at the restaurant where we'd be eating dinner. It was fortunate that a table for three is always actually a table for four. Snow was falling in big, fat flakes, and the wind whipped around us coldly as Heather and I rushed from the parking lot to the doorway of the restaurant. I was so excited that I kept forgetting to breathe. We made our way in and were pretty much immediately greeted by the sight of the two them at the table. Malignus saw Heather right away and exclaimed "Oh my god, you too?!" There was a lot more hugging, and we explained what, exactly we'd been up to. We also explained about PTL's intended involvement but unfortunate lack of presence, and we all agreed to skype her once we got home.

Oh hi! We love you! Heather, Malignus and ellee (who is hiding her face, but totally smiling, too!)

The dinner was just incredible. It was one of the happiest meals ever. There have only been a few times in my life that I was so happy that I experienced a certain kind of derealization, a sense of shock at just how good my life was at that moment and difficulty accepting that this was really the case. I felt that way when I was accepted to college, during my first spanking, when I first flew on an airplane, when I visited England and Japan and the first few times that Malignus and I were together. I basked in that feeling now, beaming with pride that I'd really been able to pull this off. Malignus never stopped smiling during that meal. Everything was perfect.

We spent the evening hanging out and enjoying each other's company. Gifts were exchanged and cuddles were given. We went through our collection of implements, telling stories about many of them and giving out "test swats" with a number of them. After that, we spent some time chatting with PTL on skype. It was sad that she wasn't there in person, but due to the miracle of the internet, we were able to have lots of fun with her, too. We went to bed really late, and I slept incredibly well, not having the nervous excitement of this upcoming event to keep me awake.

The next morning we got up and went into town. We had no particular plans, but Malignus wanted to take ellee to see our local Butterfly Sanctuary, since she'd never been there before, so we did that after brunch. The butterflies were very fond of ellee, and kept riding on her. One got particularly attached and clung to her for most of the time we were there, even laying five eggs on her. Butterfly eggs are small and iridescent. I had never seen them before.

ellee's BFF hitching a ride.

After the butterflies, we stopped to stock up on supplies and then went home to hang out for a while longer. During this time there were plenty more spankings, including a demonstration of something which has been a nemesis of mine for a while now-- towel snapping. Malignus is very proficient at hitting me with dish towels. He can make bruises and welts with a dry dish towel through my clothes. He started off by giving each of us a number of snaps with the towel over our clothes as we danced around, but this was so enjoyable that he decided to wet the towel to make it more effective and have us take our skirts off, so that he could hit us on our bare bottoms and legs. Due to the fact that we were just standing there and squirming, and because the "implement" weighed basically nothing so there was no risk of damage, there was a lot of hitting on the fronts of thighs and flank areas. Also, there was crying on my part. Stupid towels! So much sting!

Another "fun" activity involved Malignus hitting us on the fronts of our thighs with Twizzlers, something which I have only experienced while messing around with Beth Eisley and PTL. Malignus hits harder than PTL (yes, we already knew this). I still have some licorice shaped bruises, and ellee's bloomed into something that could easily be mistaken for cane welts. The policy became that if one of us wanted to eat a piece of the candy, we had to be hit with it first. I feel that if all junk foods in my house could somehow adopt that policy, I'd have reached my trimming-up goal a long time ago. :P We still have a nearly full bag of Twizzlers. :P

We went back to Sioux Falls for dinner, and then returned home to watch movies and have more spanking fun. I didn't get any "full" spankings during the weekend, and that was basically the right way of things. The private, one on one time was dedicated to the girls that Malignus doesn't get to see most of the year, and I was just filled with compersion for everyone involved. After dinner, though, I did get a number of swats with various awful things, as did the other two girls. The focus seemed to be on things which make weird marks, like a heavy plastic spoon with a hole in the middle that leaves an eye-shaped mark, the evil pasta measuring device with it's several large holes and a twisted, delrin loop.

Marks!

I also got hit with the rubber tred paddle that Malignus has named Old Glory a few times. It's a challenging implement for me, because my first real experience with it was during a very hard disciplinary spanking, so I always associate it with hurting basically the most out of everything in the world. It *does* hurt an incredible amount, and I was slightly shaken after just six strokes with it (I originally got four, but I asked for two more because I wanted to do a better job of taking them calmly for my own personal reasons ^_^).

Post scary implement hugs tiems!

The evening finished up with movie watching and lots of banter. ellee had to leave in the morning, but Heather was staying with us until Wednesday, and I think that breaking up of things made the separating a little more bearable for me.

ellee, selecting movies without having to actually sit down. :)

The next morning, Malignus and ellee spent lots of time alone and he gave her tons and tons of spanking to hold her over until next they met, and to ensure that her trip home was very uncomfortable. :D Heather and I hung out during this time and started to fall back into the routine that we had when we lived together and spent lots of our time just chilling. I love that about Heather-- even if we aren't always in contact, as soon as we are, we just pick things up without any awkwardness or difficulty transitioning. When ellee opened up our front door to go put her bags in the car after things were finished, she found that there was a package waiting for me. Apparently my Christmas gift from her husband and my Dominant, YS, had arrived. She encouraged me to open it then. I realize in retrospect that I wasn't sure if I was supposed to wait until Christmas to open it or anything, and I didn't ask, but ellee was being really cute about it so I just did it then. -_-

He got me basically the cutest bear in the whole world. It has curly fur and a bow and a cute but sort of serious face. I've never had a Dom who bought me stuffed animals before, and it made me feel very snuggly and loved. I've been doing a lot of bear cuddling ever since. :D

BEAR!

As ellee was leaving, I decided to give her my stuffed Tux penguin to take with her. This way, she can cuddle it and fill it with ellee love until we see each other again, when I'll get it back from her until the next time we see each other when she'll get him again! I am very glad that ellee gets to have some time cuddling him, because obviously ellee really loves Tux (once, when a friend was complaining about something in Linux, ellee whispered the admonishment "Tux can hear you! You'll hurt his feelings!").

It was hard to see her go, but Heather and I had big plans for the day. Malignus gave us two simple things that he wanted us to work on that day: going to the storage locker and messing around with some hooks on the wall so we could hang up some Christmas lights which ellee had brought for me. In true "Heather and Alex together" fashion, we ended up getting neither of these things accomplished (it was sort of not our fault) and instead went to the mall and indulged in lots and lots of girliness while Malignus was at work. Because of some kind of birthday miracle, we managed to not get in trouble for this, either. Ten points to Heather and Alex. After we finished hanging out (I was going to say we were good because we didn't buy anything, but I guess that the other information included in this paragraph kind of cancels that out) we met up with Malignus and went to see The Hobbit. I'd already seen it once, on Friday night, but I was happy for a repeat viewing and it was Heather's first time watching it. Everyone enjoyed it. :D

Because Heather had to leave our house to get to her flight at 1:00 AM on Wednesday, Tuesday was the day during which we wrapped things up and got ready to say goodbye to her. It was pretty hard to see her go, but I know that we will be with her again, soon. I spent today cleaning and feeling kind of mopey about not having company anymore, coupled with taking care of Malignus, whose "ellee and Heather withdraw" symptoms are manifesting like a mild case of the flu. Still, I know I'll see her again soon, and that many amazing adventures are waiting for me around the bend. When one ends, it's always just the turn of a page. Who knows what's waiting in the next chapter?