A Quickie to end the month ...

I am working on a couple of longish, related posts that I may not finish this week so I'm posting this quickie to end the month of February ... and our first month here, in the land of ttwd/dd ...

We were having a 'what are you watching on Netflix' conversation with friends last year when we first heard about the series, Outlander. I'd never read any of Diane Gabaldon's books or heard anything about the show at all prior to that conversation. Our friends told us, if you can get your head around and past the time travel thing, it's a great series. So we started watching and we were instantly hooked. 

When we got to 'the scene' ... yeah, I know you know the one, especially if you're a Spanko ... and if you don't, well I'll include a link to the clip, if I can find one ...

.... anywhooo, right before IT happened, and before I realized or even had a clue as to was happening, Frank, very casually, said, 'he's gonna spank her' ... me, quick head swivel towards him and then just as quick back to the tv ....

 ".... 'whaaat?' ... 'ohh wow! ... Ohhh yeahhh!' ...."

See, as I told him last week, my man Frank has instincts he just needs to tap into ... 

I've put this clip on repeat a few times ... how about you? 

Spankingly Outlander (Subtitled)

Slowly but surely ...

 ... is it Friday yet?! ...  it's been crazy time in our household this week between a couple of daycare days for kiddos, coordinating a big project for my work and a household project or two we, (ok, mostly Frank), have decided to tackle. 

Consequently, we've both been very busy, up and at it early, each doing our own thing. By the end of the day, I often found myself grumpy and out of sorts, feeling a bit disconnected from Frank. I didn't want to bug him as he was tired and just wanted to chill. I'd find myself questioning ... are we still doing this thing we do, together, or are we back to our old 'normal'? Frank would notice, ask what was wrong (and caution me that I needed to be truthful) but I found it very difficult to explain what I was feeling so any conversation about it didn't go too far. 

Regardless, when I get like this, I have to try hard to remind myself, that we agreed, and I must remember, "we are doing this slowly and making it our own" ...

On the positive side, spanking exploration, when we can fit it in, has been tons of fun. Who knew, maybe I am a spanko, one who got sidetracked along the way to ttwd :>)) I find the 'in the bedroom D/s kink' I used to look forward to, not at all on my radar. Instead I look forward to what we're calling JFF (just for fun) hand spankings going on any morning we are able to have our special morning time together.

Another positive ... we are still talking whenever an opportunity arises. The other day, in the afternoon, a sit down was at Frank's suggestion ... "Grab yourself a glass of wine and let's talk", he said. And wow! ... he shared - a lot ... 



First, that he is very much liking ttwd; he appreciates there is a community of like minded people out there providing support and guidance - thank-you again, all of you out there and a special thanks to Meredith and Ella! He emphasized that he doesn't want us to follow anyone else's road but wants us to make 'what we do', our own. 

And he likes reading my posts (he had the blog open on his tablet) ... we had a good discussion about the two Girly Girl posts from last week. It's his opinion that I am overthinking how people will see me which may be true as overthinking is one of my specialties :>)). Overall he really likes the changes he sees in me (with note that some of that change started last year, but I'll save that for another post). 

Then he laid a big one on me, saying there have been times in the not too distant past, he hasn't liked me very much. So much so that he was almost ready to call it quits, but at the time, he didn't feel like there was anywhere he could go so he stuck it out (gulp!) ... I vaguely remember the time period but not the specifics. I am guessing it's not something particular I did but more because I own a pretty mean 'word sabre' and know how to use it. He on the other hand, has a tendency to pull back and avoid confrontation. 

Also, a big share here ... Frank has had more than his share of health issues over the years and I readily admit I make a horrible nurse ... I'm sure there were several times when, instead of a hug and a 'what can I do for you', he got an eye roll and a 'here we go again'. That is until 2015/16 when he had a really serious health crisis and I realized there was a possibility I might lose him ... gut wrenching when you stare that feeling in the face - 2015 was a mind bending year and it carried into 2016 for a few months. When he brought up his wanting to leave yesterday, all I could do was acknowledge it with an heartfelt "I'm so sorry".... and thankfully, we moved on ...

He shared that he gets the theory of ttwd and he believes mentally, he won't have a problem getting his head around HoHing (his Dad was quite HoH ... we don't know about behind closed doors of course, but you certainly knew who had the final word in their house). However, he said he is struggling a bit with sorting out the whens and the hows. He said he has conversations with himself trying to figure out when he should act and what exactly he should do. He is also worried about hurting me or upsetting me and asked for my assurance that I will let him know when something is too much. I assured him I would. In the end, as he was standing at the sink rinsing his wine glass, I put my arms around his waist from behind and pressed my face to his back and said .. 'Remember these 3 words ... 'follow your instinct"

and a PS ... Ella gave me a wonderful book suggestion How to Give a Spanking - Advice From the Receiving End. We've started doing some bedtime reading (me to him) and this is the reading we've started with ... 

and a PSS ... the new bed arrived. It's higher than our old bed ... after a couple of christenings, Frank claims it's a perfect height for ... ahemmm! ... many things :>))

.... thanks for listening ... nj ... xx

Girly Girl Part 2

I realized as I lay awake in the middle of the night and rethought and reread my post from yesterday, I didn't quite get to the source of my angst.

What I failed to explain is I have already fulfilled many of Frank's girly girl fantasies ... in the bedroom. I have a lingerie collection that I am sure rivals many. For many years of our married life I have planned and executed in great detail, annual 'hotel sex' weekend getaways, usually around about the date of our anniversary (now that I think about it ... some of those trips are his most favourite memories and are mostly likely how his girly girl preferences came about). We still have bedroom dress up time.

As talked about in earlier posts, ttwd for us, is a way to bring our bedroom dynamic into our everyday life. I now realize that's the source of my concern ... the everyday life part. That is exactly where Frank was going with this, as he already gets to have his his girly girl out of the public eye. He is hinting he might want more of that girl, in our everyday life. 

I think I would happily give it a go if we still lived in big city 'Strangerville' but we do not. We live in small town 'Everyone Knows Your Business', which includes a fair number of immediate and extended family members. I think at its most basic, my worry is how to manage the change that others might see in us, in me, as we progress in this ttwd world.

And yes, I need to remember the 3 C's .... Communicate, Communicate some more and Compromise

Thanks for listening ... 

Not a Girly Girl

Gahhhh! .... I just knew this was going to happen! 

Yesterday I sent Meredith's blog post on "Leaning In" to Frank, telling him it was an explanation of the leaning in comment I made in my A Spanko or Not a Spanko post. I can't remember my exact words but the gist of my verbal explanation as I sent the link, was that 'leaning in" represented my submission, my leaning into his will. I think I actually heard the light bulb go on in his brain! 

With a teasing smile he picked up my fingers in one hand and gently ran his thumb over my nails and said "hmmm .... do we want pink or do we want red?" .... my response to him was the opening statement in this post ... "Gahhhh! .... I just knew this was going to happen!"

You'll need the back story to this tale of woe .... I grew up in a family of boys in a neighbourhood of boys.  There was not a girl my age to be found until I was 9. I ran with all the boys and could climb a tree, swing on a rope swing, build a tree fort, wrestle, fart, spit and swear. The only thing I couldn't do was win a 'how far can you pee' contest ... which peed me off, pun intended :))

Being in a small town, buying clothes meant you shopped using those old faves, Eaton and Sears catalogues or someone made it for you. I remember having to wear itchy,  scratchy dresses with too much lace, when all I wanted were the jeans and a red and white checkered shirt from the catalogue and no one wore jeans in those days except the cowboys of my dreams. I know I must have worn dresses to school but to be honest, I can't remember a single detail about any of them. 

We moved to the big city when I was in my mid teens. I was a bit overwhelmed by the idea of malls, clothing stores and the like. I still knew very little about or ever wore  any makeup and I had never been allowed to pierce my ears. My hair was long, straight and half way down my back, as was the style. Luckily for me, casual dressing in cords and jeans was then the fashion.

This is the me my man fell in love with. He loved and demanded my fresh, no makeup look (he really was an HoH when we met). He had some reservations when I decided to pierce my ears. He was devastated (and not happy) when, not long after we married, I cut my hair short without consulting him. 

I did eventually find my style .... classic .... a lot of long slim lines, business suits, pencil skirts, light makeup and subtle jewellery. That lasted through my working life. In our life now, I almost always wear jeans or yoga pants and tees unless we are going out and then, I rarely wear dresses. Jean skirts and leggings are about as close as I get. I don't do nail polish because with my retired 'work' my hands are constantly in water. I am pretty much back to the attire of the tomboy I was years ago. 

Now I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line, Frank evolved to expressing a desire to see me in flowing or flouncy dresses, with eye makeup, lipstick, nail polish and such. My response to these requests over the past few years has always been ... "I don't do girly. If you wanted a girly girl, you shouldn't have picked me!" 

I think this might be what he has in mind ....

On the drive to town the other day, he didn't say anything but again with a small smile, he picked up my hand and ran his thumb over my nails ... yeah, yeah ... I'm not going there! 

Now you see my dilemma ... Frank is teasing right now but my fear is, as we get further into the ttwd world, the teasing might turn into a more serious ask. So in anticipation of this, I'm asking ttwd blog land friends .... does your HoH make demands of you that you consider to be outside his ttwd domain and if so, do you submit to those demands? And when you do, how does it affect you?

Tangled Up in You

For many years, it was our tiny house, our tiny bed, where I learned to sleep ....

Tangled up with you

Moved on to a bigger house, needed a bigger bed, but it was still small enough that I could be ....

Tangled up with you

Soon everything was super sized, including beds ... a King moved in ... strange how easy it was, to no longer be ....

Tangled up with you

 A new day, a new journey .... what do you think, babe? .... I think I want to be ....

Tangled up with you

..... we're off bed shopping today ... and we're downsizing ....

Very soon, again I will be ....

Tangled up in you 💘

A spanko or not a spanko, that is the question ....

As we go through these early stages of adopting ttwd, I question my spanko-ness. I have read/am reading, end to end, the blogs of three self professed spankos. I've never considered myself as such, although spanking is very much a part of my earliest memories of my sexual self. I saw this movie when I was quite young. It certainly made an impression!

As did this classic I 'borrowed' from my parents' hidden sexy book stash, furtively read by the light of the streetlight outside my bedroom window ...

Things diverged when I read this in my late teens/early 20's .... I have no real memory of its acquisition or how old I was at the time. I think it was post Frank ... I still have the book ... but not this pretty cover as mine is a very old version, bought second hand. 

Suddenly it was about much more than spanking. It was all about the dominant, submissive dynamic, of which spanking or impact play, was a component ... I have a natural submissive bent ... so far, in the bedroom only. I have never struggled with that concept of self. It is simply a part of me.

Consequently, I 'came out', as I've heard the term used, to Frank about it, ~20 years ago. He was happy to accommodate my kink and ever since we've had what I like to think of as a D/s Lite relationship ... it's occasional kink - light bondage, toys and impact play and all in the bedroom only.

D/s for me does not translate well outside the bedroom ... I think it's because there is a theatrical or playacting side to D/s that does not work for me once the passion of the bedroom has passed. My real world, strong personality had me giggling any time Frank tried to take it outside the bedroom. He would ask, how could I think I was submissive if I never listened and did as I was told ;)) .... in the back of my head, my lizard brain was saying ... "ya gotta make me, baby ... use your voice and words" (I give a nod and a thank-you, to Ella's Sam, in the blog Ella Ever After, for his lizard brain post) 

So for me it's more about my deep down physical and mental reaction to the dominant male .... posture, presentation and tone of voice, than the adoption of a specific discipline action (i.e. spanking). A recent example of why I know this, is not too long ago, we were eating at a restaurant with friends, I was being a little loud after a couple of glasses of wine (I've been told I have a big laugh :)). The waitress asked me if I wanted another glass of wine, at which point I happened to glance over at Frank. Amazingly, I got 'the look', a slight shake of the head and a firm, low 'noooo, you're not' .... I don't think I'd ever been at the receiving end of that look before ... don't think I'd ever heard that tone of voice before (or at least one that registered like that). Not even sure how I recognized 'that look' and tone ... my brain didn't need to ... be still my south of the border lady parts - they were in full recognition! .... finally! ... a real life 'out of the bedroom' dominant move by my man ..... yummhmmmm, my lizard brain hummed! Funnily, I did talk to him about it later and he had no specific recollection or realization of what he'd done. 

I am a long time getting to my point, I know .... so here goes ... the immediate fascination I had when I first read about DD a month or so ago, was that it is a lifestyle, and can't be broken down into just a bedroom practice. I could see it working in real life as it seemed to be a much more normal lifestyle than what one would find with a fulltime D/s relationship (although in thinking about it further, the dynamics are close in concept and I could see how the lines between a D/s and DD relationship could cross or blur). In my mind, with DD we could still be Nora Jean and Frank albeit with a secret side to our life. Finally, the most important factor for me, is the practice allows for the transformation of the HoH partner to a more confident, dominant personality. The kind of personality my inner self yearns for Frank to be .... if I can give him this 'leaning in' (thanks, Meredith and Jack) , then maybe both of us can have our cake and eat it too. 

Now we're back to figuring out what that looks like for us ... 

Chuckle for the day ...

I think my man is finding his HoH mojo ... he shared this scenario with me this morning .... 

He was in a public space yesterday, waiting, when he over heard a couple talking. The woman was snarking away at the guy. He said the immediate thought that came to mind, was to say to the guy ... "If she were my woman, she'd be over my knee and I'd be giving her good spanking" 

He didn't say that out loud, of course, but I think he surprised himself that he thought it at all!

Colouring Inside the Lines

With clearly drawn lines of accountability and subsequent consequences for not meeting the mark, I can colour inside the lines like nobody's business - be it succeeding in a demanding career, organizing and hosting everything from small dinner parties to large gatherings of a 100 people or so, or managing a group of volunteers on a project. Whatever it is ... I am gettin' 'er done! However, without those lines my life drawing looks like this ...

I am messy, disorganized and the worlds worst (or maybe best), procrastinator.

Retired life very often lets me scribble all over the place. Frank is the kind of guy who has his daily to do list at the ready by end of breakfast. He lays his clothes for the next day out before he goes to bed, he sets my underwear out for the day every morning (that is something he has done for many years ... he's a bit of a lingerie freak ;)) and the coffee pot is set up after supper to go on automatically the next morning. I often tease him by telling him he's OCDish in that he has a daily routine that he rarely ever wavers from.

With the introduction of ttwd, Frank is more than happy to be given an opportunity to draw those lines of accountability for me ... and provide the consequences when I colour outside them. We started very small ... 2 rules ... you will not leave dishes in the sink and your clothes will be picked up and put away - not left hanging over chairs and dressers (funny that ... his two pet peeves solved in one fell swoop :>)). He has since added an 'up and at it, showered, dressed and ready to greet the day by 10 AM' rule. It's a late time because we have in bed coffee, paper reading, reading reading and often sexy time in the morning after he finishes exercising and letting the chickens out. He tells me it's going to become an earlier time as our daylight hours return. Next he added no pleasure use Ipad or reading between the times of after breakfast and after supper unless it's while taking food breaks. And yesterday morning he suggested I write down what I was going to accomplish for the day ... Yup!, my man is liking this!

On the consequences side, we're still working on that. He is not quite comfortable with the spanking side of things ... we've done it in play for many many years so it's not a new concept ... we both are playtime spanking fans. However the idea of non play spanking as discipline is new. He's willing to go there but we're still trying to figure out limits, pain thresholds and the like. In the meantime non spanking DD has made its debut ... 

Yesterday morning I decided to have a bath instead of a shower. We were chatting while he was shaving when he turned around and looked at me and said 'you know you only have 10 minutes left' ... I replied that I would be ready (oh yeah, we need to add 'concept of time' to the box of crayons I use to colour outside the lines). 

By the time I was out, dried and had my underwear on, he had me by the arm, leading me out of the bathroom, where he plunked my butt in a chair he had sitting in the middle of the bedroom. He walked out and into the kitchen where he set the microwave timer, announcing I could get up when the timer went off ... and then he left.

I am taking this seriously. I approached him with the concept of DD/ttwd so it is my responsibility to do my best at taking it seriously. I sat there and pondered 'this thing we were doing' and where it is taking us. He was back in the bedroom just as the timer went off. He pulled me up up, hugged me, kissed me and asked me how I felt. I explained my serious thinking. Later when we talked more he mentioned how quiet I was at the time and asked if I knew why. I confessed I'd felt a bit teary. Not sure why ... I just did. 

Whence We Came ....

I think it really was love at first sight. Me, a tall (5'8"), skinny 16 yr old with big boobs; first Socials class of the year, in a new school, in a new city. I was sitting with a friend I'd met over the summer, when in he strode, books under his arm (I've always loved his confident walk). He was/is not very tall (5'8") but so good looking ... dark hair and full moustache ... not a boy but a man. I slowly turned to my friend and asked, big-eyed ... 'who is that!' 

Turns out he really was a man ... he was almost 21, coming back to school to pick up a class he hadn't completed. Later in the day I saw him casually leaning up against a railing in a stairway, chatting with someone. As I passed my visceral reaction was to slip my hand around his waist. I did not, of course, but by next class I'd moved across the room to where he was sitting. By end of that class, he'd asked me out and within a week we were 'going steady' and by the end of October, he said he wanted to marry me ... and in a little less than 3 years, it was so ... we've been together for 47 years this fall and married for almost 44 of those years. 

And and yes, he was a boob man which I'm pretty sure is how I got his attention. I say 'was' deliberately because over the years, he's turned into a bum man :)) ...