School canings and a Communist Colin Firth

Just finished watching a brilliant movie, Another Country, set in a British public school during the 1930s. I figured with that sort of setting, there's got to be at least one good caning in it, ya know? And there is, though the way in which it was done - a sort of peer imposed discipline - didn't quite work for me (though I had that most bizarre of spankee thoughts -- hmm...I wonder what it would be like to get caned that hard...wait, no, don't think that and for gawd's sake don't say that to A.!).

What did work for me was Colin Firth as a moralistic, self-righteous Communist spouting off about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat throughout the movie. OMG! Can there be a more dreamy toppish character? ::swoon:: I keep trying to put my finger on just what makes Colin Firth so hot. I mean, he's fairly plain when you compare him to other hot guys. I dunno. I really think it's that he emits some sort of spanko vibe that even non-spanko women find unwittingly appealing and makes those of us who are spankos simply drool.

Spanking and a Communist Colin Firth aside, Another Country really is a great movie in exploring class (again, set in a British public school so class is going to be a central issue) and sexuality (you know, boys having sex with boys but for heaven's sake don't ever get caught). Rupert Everett plays Guy Bennett, a gay schoolboy who later goes on to betray his country as a spy for the Russians (don't worry, I haven't spoiled the plot, you learn that in the first five minutes or so). The film, as the stage play before it, explores the psychology behind how Bennett, based on the real-life Guy Burgess, could come to a point where he would chose to be a traitor.

Interestingly enough, his affair is with a character played by Carey Elewes -- you know, Westley from The Princess Bride. Actually, Another Country is about four years before his "as you wish" days so he's just this cute, freckled-face lad. And being the bad Catholic that I am, I thought it quite apt that he's played both a gay schoolboy and the future Pope John Paul II.

It's funny because movies or books set in lavish school settings always bring out the Lisa Simpson in me. There's more than one scene of Everett and Firth reading or talking in a wood-paneled room with a bay window -- my idea of academic nirvana. Indeed, I remember when I read Catcher in the Rye, I had a hard time finding Holden Caulfield at all sympathetic because all I could think was, "oh boo hoo, you only have access to the best education money can buy and a family home next to Central Park! Gawd it must suck to be you!" (I think you can see where a Communist Colin Firth would be so appealing to me...)

Which reminds me of my last post. I think the reason my spanking life is so unlike spanking fiction is that I'm both "Natty" and Lisa Simpson stuck in the same body. LOL -- hell, that's probably why I'm so sick...

Anti-spanking fiction

Earlier today I was taking the Five Factor Personality quiz that Mija had posted on her blog from awhile back (I'm sooo behind on my blog-reading) and had to kind of laugh at my results on the second factor: conscientiousness.

You have high conscientiousness.
Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life.
Most things in your life are organized and planned well.
But you borderline on being a total perfectionist.

It's especially funny as just last night I was thinking about how A.'s and my spanking life is sorta anti-spanking fiction. He's the more disorganized, unstructured, "bend the rules" sort, while I'm generally the neat, obedient, anal retentive control freak. I mean, sometimes I'm late for appointments. I can procrastinate at times, which probably contributes to my being late. Well, that and trying to cram way too much into too little time. Every now and then I still get willful when it comes to respecting my physical limitations. But when it comes right down to it, I'm just not really that naughty. Granted, I'm bedridden most of the time so it's not like I really have the opportunity to do much that's naughty. But even when I'm healthy, I'm generally a very good girl.

It's hard to be a good spanko when you're just not really very naughty, ya know?

I dunno. Would I be more naughty if I wasn't sick? Would I have been more like my Allie/Natty alter-ego if my health and childhood environment had been different? There is something in me that innately longs for discipline and yet, in most respects, I am fairly self-disciplined. A part of me that longs to be rambunctious and willful and naughty, that wants candy and ice cream, but another part of me that likes watching PBS and making nice Chinese herbal soups and resting. Was I just my own parent for so long that both the child and the parent are now innate parts of me?

I do know there are naughty aspects of me that I suppress. My inner smart-ass, for instance. Or normal self-indulgence. I'm tactful and empathetic because those were vital survival skills growing up. Yet I do think that I suppress them far too much. Being a bit of an ego-centric bitch would probably be handy at the doctor's office on occasion. However, if I need to stop suppressing them, getting punished for expressing them probably wouldn't be the best course of action. Hmm...maybe I should get punished if don't express them. Maybe knowing that I'm going to be spanked if, say, I'm not assertive with my doctor would be a good thing.

Might have helped me last week when I should have insisted that Dr. H check me for a type of bacterial infection I strongly suspect I might have but instead remained silent because when I mentioned it before he looked at me like I was completely crazy. I was really annoyed with myself later. Even more annoyed with myself a few days after that when the acupuncturist asked why I just didn't insist that he do the blood test. I mumbled something about the test requiring a lot of precautions and stuff, to which she simply shrugged and said it's not that big of a deal for him to manage, which I knew was true.

Believe it or not, I'm actually a lot more assertive than I used to be and that's in large part because of all the health problems since my ill-fated surgery seven years ago. I mean, I actually ask questions now.

But, well, being spanked for not being enough of a smart ass would still make for odd spanking stories.

Primate spanking?

A. and I were just talking and he wondered if primates spank each other. A quick Google search didn't yield much beyond "spanking the monkey" references. Any biologists out there who could provide an answer?

A whole book

Ah, my poor spanking blog has been neglected of late. My DSL was out of service, my nieces came to spend the night and wore me out big time, and I've been distracted by a lengthy, decidedly non-kink discussion over at my vanilla blog regarding the Pope, Islam, and the nature of violence.

Yeah, it's soooo time to get back to spanking.

Since my phone doesn't work when my DSL is down, my mom had to come over last Saturday so that I could use her cell phone to call Qwest. When she did, she brought all five of my sister's kids over, along with her own husband and my 21-year-old brother with Down Syndrome. It made for a full house, or rather, studio apartment. Keeping twin five-year olds quiet was a bit of a job. At one point, my mom's husband was sitting on my bed and looked up at my bookshelf.

"You kids better be good. Your aunt has a whole book on disciplining and punishing."

The book in question was Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.

I laughed.

"Yep," he said. "I bet there's all kinds of punishments in there."

Yes. Yes there are. If drawing and quartering is your sort of thing. Well, okay, there is an illustration of a spanking machine.

However, for a history text with juicy spanking details, I prefer Phillippe Aries' Centuries of Childhood. There's a whole chapter on school discipline.

My nieces and nephew hardly needed any disciplining or punishing though as they were nearly perfect angels while I was on the phone.

Really. :)

Random

I swear this assortment of spanking implements on my kitchen counter ended up there in completely random, non-kinky ways.

Really.

The pancake turner I took out last week to lift an omelette off the gridle -- for which is was woefully ineffective. We bought it at the Dollar Store in June, despite A.'s suspicion that its bark was worse than it's bite. He was right. It's also woefully ineffective as a spanking implement. It is helpful, however, in killing cockroaches, which is what I've been using it for lately.

The flyswatter I've been using to kill cockroaches elsewhere in my apartment. Not sure how it made it into the kitchen. If you were able to zoom in on it, you'd see that the top of it is broken after I was spanked with it when A. first found it last summer.

The wooden spoon started out in the toybox/craft box under the bed, then made its appearance in this post when A. broke two of my kitchen wooden spoons on my back side. It was laying on my desk in the kitchen afterward as I tried to decide if I wanted to leave it in the kitchen to replace the broken spoons, or return it to the toybox. The other day I decided to clean off my desk and placed the spoon on the counter during the process.

And then last night I was printing up some photos and grabbed my twenty-four inch ruler, which is always next to my desk, to measure the various frames. It too made it to the counter when I was cleaning up the debris of cutting up pictures to fit into frames.

See. Totally random.

I've been trying to tell everyone...

You Are a Good Girl

You are 80% Good and 20% Bad Generally speaking, you're a very good girl. (But you don't have us totally fooled!)

Are You a Good Girl or a Bad Girl?

Natty's wish list

Nathan Rysher on the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup posted today about a children's book he had come acrossed called John Patrick Norman McHennessy: The boy who was always late. So, I went to Amazon and found it and thought it would be a handy thing to put on my wish list. Except, I thought it would look pretty odd among all the academic stuff I've got listed. And then it hit me: why not make a wish list for Natty?

So, this afternoon/evening I've been doing just that. I created an account for Natty and set up a wish list and put all kinds of books and pervertibles on it. If only Ian at The London Tanners or the kind folks at Adam and Gillians had some way to put their fine wares on my wish list...

I've been in my Natty mood big time the last couple of days and this gave my Natty self something to pass the time. It's been a long time since I was in this sort of a mood. Probably close to a year. I was starting to think she'd disappeared altogether until I started to feel her around a bit in May. Then I had the PE and went back into health crisis mode.

Not sure I'm all that keen on being spanked yet. My coccyx/pelvis/sacrum is still really achy. But then, part of being in my Natty mood has been about feeling very willful and not at all interested in that will being checked.

The Pinto of laptops

I have decided that I have the Pinto of laptops.

Since buying my Averatec 3150 over two and a half years ago, I have gotten quite a bit of mileage from it, but also a lot of problems. It had a virus right out of the box. The bottom heats up very quickly so that it often has to shut down in order to cool off. Indeed, it heats up so quickly that it was confiscated by security at Ben Gurion airport when I went to leave after attending a conference in Jerusalem. I got it back four days later with a piece of the grating over the fan missing.

Then there was the broken LCD screen. That was fixed almost a year or so ago, but it still goes dark frequently when I turn the computer on in the morning.

And now my ethernet port is broken. Though there is free WiFi in downtown Portland, my laptop's built-in WiFi sucks and the heat fries any WiFi card. If I take my laptop out onto the balcony I can get a decent connection, but I'm not strong enough to sit up for very long so I haven't been doing much more than reading email and a little bit of news.

However I think I've finally figured out how to MacGyver it, as my grandpa used to say. I've duct taped the ethernet cord to the bottom very tightly and that seems to allow me to keep a decent connection for the time being. So, hopefully I'll be able to get back to blogging.

But one of these days I soooo want the Toyota Corolla version of a laptop.

Sloppy spankos

Lordy you'll never guess what my caregiver discovered as she was vacuuming under the bed this afternoon: a cane. Granted it's a small one that was originally a proper one but was broken during shipping. She picked it up and showed it to me with a puzzled look on her face.

"Oh, yeah...that's something that broke," I said as she handed it to me, and I placed it on the bedside table. She didn't say anything. Just went back to vacuuming. I didn't say anything else either.

Thank god she didn't notice the riding crop on the floor underneath the baseboard heater. Or the longer cane against the wall next to the bedside table.

We really do need to keep our toys picked up better.

Yellow light

Yesterday the base of my spine started hurting exquisitely again. At first I figured it was the apparently unknown infection in my pelvis acting up again since I'm not on antibiotics at the moment. But the pain is slightly different than normal. It's just my right leg and it's more sciatica-like than it usually is. And the pain is particularly sharp right in the middle of my right buttock.

It's feeling a bit better today after I put some ice on it -- thank God! Especially as I was starting to worry I'd have to go to the emergency room and explain all the marks on my ass and listen to them be aghast that I'm getting spanked while on anticoagulants. Though I have to say the bruising really isn't all that bad. I've bruised a lot worse in pre-Coumadin days.

But it does leave me feeling rather concerned.

Resistance is futile...but fun

After doing nothing but thinking about spanking for the last two weeks, I finally felt up to getting a half-decent thrashing this afternoon.

It started innocently enough. I was laying on the bed taking a rest. Sleepy but not really sleeping. A. was out on the balcony smoking and also sleepy but not really sleeping. I tend to sleep diagonally but the more I snuggled on the bed, the more my backside came into better and better view of the balcony. Which, um, may have been somewhat on purpose.

Not that it worked immediately. I expected A. to smack my ass as is his Pavlovian response when greeted with a unhindered view of my backside. Instead when he came in from the balcony, he came around to the other side of the bed and sat down next to me. Ah, but then the Pavlovian reflex kicked in: he patted my ass. But before I knew it, he grabbed my shorts and gave me a wedgie.

I was a bit surprised. However, I've been toying lately with the idea of resisting a spanking and indeed tried it out a few days ago when we were both feeling frisky. It turned out to be fun and so I decided I'd take it to the next level today.

"You're mean!" I exclaimed with a scowl after my mock gasp. He responded by giving me an even stronger wedgie and several hard smacks. "Owww -- now you're even meaner!" Immediately my shorts were digging even further into the depths of my crack. This time I reached back and started pulling my shorts out and over my cheeks. It was A.'s turn to let out the mock gasp before pinning my arm down in the small of my back and letting loose a torrid of sharp smacks.

I was not deterred as I continued with my other hand to try and cover my bum. However, he had me pinned down at an awkward angle and the best resistance I could mount was in the form of trying to move my bottom out of the line of fire -- without much success I might add.

"Right, over my knee."

I glared at him and did nothing. Which, of course, resulted in another torrid of sharp smacks followed by a repeat of the earlier command. I glared again and tried to move my bottom but, alas, no luck. He repeated the command a third time and after glaring briefly, as well as assuming he was expecting me to simply lay over his lap from where I was positioned on the left side (meaning he'd be spanking with his left hand rather than his dominant right hand), I decided to take my chances with the left-handed spanking.

It wasn't too bad except that was just the warm up.

"Lay down on the bed," he said as he reached for the strap.

Again, we played the glaring game. I even pulled up my shorts. I considered telling him to "make me," but wasn't sure I was quite strong enough for a wrestling match. With a scowl and a huff I obeyed.

"This first part will be for hesitating when I told you to lay down." He pulled down my shorts. "Then we'll get to the real spanking."

Ugh. I suspect rolling my eyes and groaning didn't help matters at that point. And my oh my is he getting proficient with that strap. Especially right along my crack. Ow.

In fact, I was approaching the tears horizon when he suddenly stopped. Apparently there was a pimple on my bottom that started bleeding. God bless -- I mean, damn those blood thinners!

Not to worry, there are other implements available. He picked up the little cane, aimed it carefully and whipped me along the same spot over and over. At first it wasn't too bad, but the strokes -- and the pain -- accumulated quickly. I tried kicking and wriggling out of the line of fire, but that just seemed to make him annoyed as he went into the kitchen and fetched a wooden spoon.

"Fifteen on each cheek. Count them please."

Now, there are wooden spoons for the kitchen and there are wooden spoons for spanking and the first kind are not necessarily recommended for the latter. Three strokes into the spanking the spoon broke. I cracked up laughing, then whined about how that was my best mixing spoon. A. returned to the kitchen and fetched another, slotted one.

"We'll start from the beginning --"

"Hey! That's not fair!" I turned around to see A. shrug.

"As Newton pointed out, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore your ass clearly broke the spoon. And whenever you break a spoon, the spanking starts over."

"Nuh uh! My ass didn't do anything, it --"

"Newton was a genius. No arguing with geniuses."

"Newton was also a fucking alchemist." I turned around to find A. shaking his head and putting his finger up to his lips motioning that I should be quiet. Rolling my eyes, I turned back to my pillow.

Five strokes in, the second spoon broke.

"Would you just use the damn spoon under the bed instead of ruining all my kitchen spoons?"

What the hell was I saying? That spoon is heavy and hurts like hell!

A. dug through my under-the-bed craft box that has also become our de facto toy box and took out the big heavy spoon.

"Okay, we'll start at five."

That was fair. And then it occurred to me that frequently during a spanking A. will comment on the appropriateness of an apology. Well, why not do it before he asks? And who knows? Maybe I'd get some mercy points...

"I'm sorry."

"Well, I should think so. "

He was at about ten or so when he stopped again because of that bleeding papule -- this time, blood was splattering slightly.

"I'm not sure about this," he said.

"Oh I so cannot be asked to make the decision about whether or not to continue during a spanking," I half joked.

"Oh you're still getting spanked, I just have to figure out the best way to go about this." He paused. "Maybe I'll give you a one-cheek spanking."

"Nooo!" That would just suck way too much. "Can't you just spank lower, or..." I stopped myself before saying on my thighs. Oh my gawd, shut up now!

He figured out how to spank around the bleeding spot and finished off the thirty strokes. Then it was cuddling time.

"You were so overdue there lady."

I was indeed. In fact, it's been a long time since I had that post-spanking glow that has now melted into bruises that I feel every time I sit down. Even that last one I got a month ago didn't mark me much.

A. also suggested during our cuddle that the thrashing I got would teach me not to be so bratty. Actually, I think it's just whetted my appetite. ;-)

No spanking? Isn't this the nineteenth century?

I've been curled up in bed watching Anne of Green Gables tonight. A.'s been paying attention off and on, despite finding out that there isn't any spanking in it. Though it's not for lack of Anne getting into trouble. At one point, Anne is caught reading Ben-Hur during class and told to stay after. She apologizes profusely to Miss Stacey and after saying "I won't touch Ben-Hur for a week as penance," A. laughed.

"It's like, what do I have to do to get a spanking? Isn't this the nineteenth century?"

We both agree Marilla would make a great strict aunt or nanny, though in the book she was rather uncomfortable with spanking. If only she could be converted to the spanko side...

I never read the book until after I watched the Kevin Sullivan movie on the Disney Channel when I was 18 or so. And I remember sort of gasping when I heard Anne say to the train station attendant that she preferred to sit outside because there was "more view for the imagination."

Oh my gosh, somebody else thinks like that? Followed a moment later with, Oh but you're not supposed to say stuff about views for the imagination and sleeping in cherry trees out loud!

What I've always loved about Anne was knowing that I wasn't the only one who lived in my imagination. Who catches the bus a few stops down where there's "more view for the imagination." Or is so often filled with awe at beauty. Or conjures up scenarios of great pathos and romance. Even created my own alter ego with her own wonderful, happier life. Anne was such a kindred spirit.

And yet, just like Anne, the older I got, the more I favored pragmatism over romance. I mean, the world so rarely measures up to my imagination. It's simply easier to be practical rather than be disappointed all the time.

In fact, at times I've even felt frustrated with Anne of Green Gables. How can this girl who was so abused for the first thirteen years of her life end up so unscathed once she moves to Prince Edward Island? Real life is not that tidy. Indeed, it certainly wasn't that tidy for L.M. Montgomery, the woman who wrote the Anne of Green Gables books and herself suffered through depression and an unhappy marriage.

But sometimes it's just nice to escape real life for a few hours on a Saturday night in bed. To live vicariously through Anne and imagine a life of bosom friends and kindred spirits and various predicaments while adorned in dresses with puffed sleeves on an island of stunning physical beauty.

Even if there isn't any spanking.

Brains and bottoms

My brain so wants my bottom to be spanked.

My brain wants to be bratty. Wants me to dress up in my pink dress and pigtails and throw a temper tantrum and be pulled over A.'s lap kicking and screaming and spanked until I'm sobbing.

Or maybe outfit myself in my school uniform, which now includes A.'s old school tie and patch (for real!). And show up late for class and without my lessons prepared so that A. bends me over the desk and canes me severely.

I just wish my bottom -- or rather my body -- would cooperate.

Do any of you ever get like that? Where the spirit is willing, but the flesh is, well, so very weak? Or maybe the other way around?

Back in business

As you can see, the center-aligned problem when viewing this blog through Internet Explorer has been fixed. Thanks to sparkle for steering me in the right direction as to its cause.

No spankings to report as I've been down with another round of infection that acted like a urinary tract infection but this time wasn't. Something appears to be infected down there, but God only knows what. And my GP and I sure wish He'd let us in on the secret.

I have been thinking about spanking, though. Well, at least starting a couple of days ago. Hopefully I'll start blogging about those thoughts soon.

Oh, and a big welcome to all of you visiting from Spanking Blog, where Dan was recently bemused by my being transfixed (briefly!) by lint during a caning. Yes, I admit it. I'm hopelessly neurotic when it comes to a tidy home (well, when I have the energy to be). To the point of getting in trouble.

Technical difficulties

I generally use Mozilla Firefox but today I've been using Internet Explorer only to find to my horror that this blog is center-aligned. Ugh! I'm afraid I'm too drugged up at the moment to figure out what's up (more UTI fun), but I apologize to all of you on IE.

Btw, how long has it been this way?

My inner pain slut is back

Yup.

The day before last A. was waving a moxa stick over some acupuncture points on my low back as instructed by my acupuncturist. Since it was hot, I was only wearing a white tank top and my red cotton panties with the white flowers on them. It's funny because while I own all kinds of thongs, velvet, satin, sheer and crotchless panties, this red cotton pair always makes me feel sexiest.

At any rate, after we finished with the moxa, A. flipped through the channels and settled in to watching First Blood on AMC. I was still laying on the bed in my tank top and red flowery knickers. As we watched John Rambo jump off a cliff and booby trap his way out of the woods past the sheriffs, A. began smacking my ass. At one point I started to move.

"I wouldn't get up if I were you." So ominous. So sexy.

I giggled a little and lay back down. A. tucked my panties in between my cheeks and continued smacking. The big knife and glistening pectorals got the testosterone pumping because during one of the commercials A. stated as he went out to smoke, "when I come back in, you're getting a Rambo spanking."

I thought he was kidding until he started piling up the pillows on the bed upon his return.

He started out with some good hand spanks to warm up. Then moved to the strap. After one cheek got a disproportionate number of smacks, he'd move to the other side of the bed and make sure the other cheek got its fair share. The whacks hurt, but didn't quite feel as overwhelming as before.

But it was during the caning that I realized my pain threshold had come back up. He was slicing away and at one point I realized there was something black on my clean, white sheet. For a moment I became totally transfixed by what turned out to be some sort of lint, oblivious to the fact that a stingy, whippy rattan cane was searing my ass.

Later I even asked him to try out the riding crop.

My blood vessels must be robust indeed as I barely have any bruising at all. Just a little on my right breast from the riding crop.

I kinda want to try out the hairbrush or the paddle next. But then again, not sure if I want those to be allowable again. ;)

Inspiring saints

I get daily readings from the Greek Orthodox archdiocese each day in my email inbox. It includes the epistle and gospel reading of the day, as well as the apolytikion and kontakion (types of hymns) for the saint whose feast day it is.

And -- lordy I'm going to hell -- frequently the biography of the saint so sets off the spanking fantasies for me.

Consider yesterday's - St. Marina:

This Martyr lived during the reign of Claudius II (268-270). She was from Pisidia of Cilicia and was the only daughter of a certain priest of the idols.

On being orphaned by her mother, she was handed over to a certain woman who instructed her in the Faith of Christ. When she was fifteen years old, she was apprehended by the ruler of Olmbrius, and when asked her name, homeland, and faith, she answered: "My name is Marina; I am the offspring of the Pisidia; I call upon the Name of my Lord Jesus Christ." Because of this she endured bonds, imprisonment, and many whippings, and was finally beheaded in the year 270.

You do kinda wonder if whoever put together the lives of the saints had a bit of a BDSM thing going.

Le vice Anglais

T. on the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup was playing around with the Google trends function, in which you can see who (i.e. what city) is doing the most searches for a certain topic -- in this case, it was "spanking."

Eight of the top ten were from the UK. Number eight was from Ireland and Number ten was Philadelphia.

They don't call it "Le vice Anglais" for nothing.

And when I typed that phrase into Google, this interesting social history of our kink was at the top of the list.

Though I really wish they would have referenced the bold printed terms. Or just avoided the whole bolding of terms altogether.

Natty's guide to spanking and blood thinners

So you've just found out you or your partner are going to be on blood thinners for awhile. Or even worse, if you're like me you're on them for life. Is it okay to be spanked when you're on blood thinners?

Anticoagulants are not a death sentence to your spanking life, but they do sorta put you on parole.

1. Take your INR into account. Obviously if it's high -- as in 3 or above -- spanking is probably not a good idea.
2. Age is a factor. The hematologist explained to me that the older one gets, the weaker one's blood vessels and the greater the chance for uncontrolled bleeding. As I'm in my early 30s, I'm a bit better off than someone in, say, their 60s.
3. Make sure you're getting plenty of Vitamin C as a lack of it will make your blood vessels more fragile (though be careful not to take too much as that can affect your INR).
4. What works for me may not work for you and what works for you may not work for me. I've been playing for several years before starting anticoagulants again so my backside has had some time to toughen up. On the other hand, seven years ago when I was on anticoagulants, I was bleeding and clotting in ways medical literature says I shouldn't have been. Bodies react differently at different times. If you've never been spanked before and are taking Coumadin, don't start out with a caning or a paddling because you saw that someone else managed it alright. Even if you have been getting spanked for years, it doesn't necessarily mean that a cane or a paddle will be okay. Every body is different. Don't expect yours to be the same as someone else's.
   
5. Remember that Warfarin interacts with at least 186 different foods, drugs, and herbs. Arnica, for instance, is a common herb spankos use that interacts with Warfarin. I don't know how much would be absorbed through the skin in a cream, but again, everybody reacts differently, and it can affect your spanking play. My INR, for instance, shoots through the roof just from drinking a cup of Tension Tamer Celestial Seasoning tea that has some herbs that are theoretically associated with anticoagulation -- licorice, cinnamon, chamomile, ginger. My anticoag nurse thought that there couldn't possibly be enough in a tea bag to make a difference, and unlike their Ginko Biloba tea, there is no warning on the box about drinking it while on anticoagulants, but apparently I'm that sensitive while others are not. A list of drugs and herbs that interact with Warfarin can be found here (another handy site can be found here). My point is that if you've had several glasses of wine, eaten a lot of garlic, red chili peppers, and pineapple, then took some Tylenol for your headache, a heavy spanking session could land you in the emergency room.
6. There is always some risk of uncontrolled bleeding. While it didn't happen because I was spanked, I have hemorrhaged in the past and it was NOT fun (it was in my knee joint and involved IV morphine every twenty minutes and three days in the hospital). The risk of uncontrolled bleeding in the buttocks is substantially less but still there on some level, though you're more likely to develop hematoma nodules (I have some on my belly right now from a month and half ago and while they're not dangerous, I can't imagine wanting to sit on them for a couple of months). Depending on how hard the spanking, and how much (I know a lot of spankos in long distance relationships have a tendency to play a LOT in a short period), you are traumatizing the body to some degree. The more trauma, the more chance of bleeding. Tops have a lot of responsibility in watching what's happening to the bottom they are spanking. Likewise spankees will have to alert their spanker if something out of the ordinary starts happening.

The "cover my ass" note: I'm not a medical doctor and this post should not be construed as medical advice. It's a fricking spanking blog for gawd's sake!

At any rate, here's to many safe and happy spanking!

(This post was inspired and reviewed by Doc Tsai, who has a great spanking site of his own.)

And the window slams shut again

Spending the last three days in bed has reminded me of the following equation:

"Great, rough fucking" + CFIDS/ME = Days of feeling like icky, icky shit

Don't even want to think about sex right now. Not even all that keen about getting spanked either. Though cuddles kick ass.

Guess maybe I need to listen to my nurse more when she talks about me being fragile.

Actually, her comment hit a particularly raw nerve for me. While I'm glad that being on anticoagulants is not affecting my spanking life as much as I had feared, it's still been hard for me to accept that I'm going to have to take this medication for the rest of my life. It is literally rat poison. While the potential for bleeding isn't necessarily as bad as everyone makes out, it's still there and potentially dangerous. Warfarin interacts with 186 different medicines/foods/herbs so that I'm always having to think about what I'm eating, or be very careful about any new medications, herbal supplements, Celestial Seasonings teas, etc. I have to get my blood checked frequently (once a week right now, and then once a month once I'm stabilized -- which, at the rate I'm going, God only knows how long that will take) so that they can titrate the drug appropriately. I'm supposed to wear an ID bracelet stating that I take this medicine so that if I ever, say, got hit by a truck, the paramedics won't start cutting into me. And it makes my complicated health situation REALLY complicated now, especially in regards to treatment. Knowing that it's going to be like this for the rest of my life (and I'm only 33!) is still a bit hard to swallow.

Being so sick over the last several years has meant that I've been made to be painfully aware of how fragile I am. Spanking has been that one thing where, at least when I'm not too sick, I can forget about it for awhile. Indeed, sometimes I look at spanking as an act of defiance, a sort of "fuck you!" to pain and illness. And, of course, there has always been the hope that one day I will be better and not be fragile anymore. Yet now I'm going to be fragile (at least on some level) always.

Ultimately, though, I have to honor that part of me that is fragile. Too often I'm too focused on trying to forget about it rather than integrating it into who I am. It made me wonder about my post last year about spanking and being whole. In a way it's like I've brought spanking to the painful parts of my life, but I haven't really brought the painful parts of my life to spanking. I suppose this is simply a variation on my "letting Natty get spanked" thoughts. It's hard to bring my vulnerable, fragile side to spanking. Frankly, when I'm not ignoring that part of me, I just want to lavish it with lots of cuddles. But is there a place for that fragile part of me within my spanking life?

Hmm...think I'm just sort of rambling tonight.

At any rate, I will say that I love my anticoagulation nurse. She's that perfect mixture of sweet but bossy. On the one hand, she'll teasingly scold me when my hands are too cold or feign sternness when she asks if I'm going to be good today and give her a therapeutic INR. And she always gives me a hug when I leave. Not sure that I really have any spanking fantasies about her, but she does have a lot of those qualities I imagine in a good nanny.