W and I revised our system (rules, consequences, stuff like that) this week. This was a planned revamp, because we discovered things need to get tweaked on a regular basis, and we had hoped it would work better to plan to do this, rather than just waiting until things jam up and then fixing it when it's in a mess.
The title of the post is my face-saving way of saying that in spite of knowing that 1, W has gotten fairly consistent with enforcing the rules, and 2, that the new consequences could easily be far more severe than W would get on her own, I still felt the need to break rules this afternoon.
We added some new elements to the system this time around. Among them, I am now responsible for getting things set up if I'm going to have a spanking. We also finally got around to writing the weekly checklists (these are in addition to daily checklists, which we've been doing for a while). And, after some discussion sparked from a thread on This Thing We Do, I am now supposed to wear a skirt, with nothing under it, when it's time for a punishment (this is both to help me get into the appropriate head space, and to make it that much easier for W to give me the spanking).
Oh, right, and I remembered having downloaded a spanking generator, and W had me alter the offenses and consequences to reflect our system. Yes, I am the one who plugged in the consequences, and none of them seem to have been "J must spend the next week doing nothing but playing Sims 3 and eating bon bons." Why is that? :-P
So you'd think that I would have been positively angelic, knowing W is going to be more on top of the rules when she has just reviewed them, and knowing the range of consequences available, and how much less they rely on the punishment strap (painful while it's happening, but it wears off quickly). No, not so much.
It started with getting ready for the Sunday session of "Establishing Authority." (W's authority, that is!) I had put off filling out the Sunday checklist, because the easiest way for W to read it would have been for it to be filled out but not yet submitted (it turns into a spreadsheet when I click submit, so it's handy for looking at overall trends in my responses, but not so useful to look over any single response). And I'd forgotten the kinds of questions on it (including things that require me to have filled out my daily checklists, and then to look those up to get the answers for the weekly checklist, which W checks).
So I had gathered all of the things I thought I was supposed to bring into the living room, tidied it a little, shooed out the cats, put on my skirt, set up the music, and went to my portable computer to fill out the checklist and couldn't get online. Time was ticking down, and before I could get the computer to recognize the wireless network, time was up and W was in the living room. I think, had I been prepared to answer the questions easily, this could have managed, because this was the first time we were doing the new system, and my usual checklist takes me about a minute to fill out. Unfortunately, the new one takes longer than I'd thought, particularly if I don't have the answers to the questions!
Meanwhile, W realized I had *also* forgotten to bring The Book (the notebook where we have paper copies of the rules, the pages of lines I've written, and all of the other written process stuff about our system). This would also probably have been forgiven, had it not been for the debacle with the checklist. After I finished filling out the checklist, and brought in The Book, W sent me to the corner while she looked things over.
When my first round of corner time (8 minutes) was up, she called me out, and looked at me very sternly. "If this checklist had been a test, you would have flunked." So she used the punishment generator to determine the consequence for not being ready on time. I can't remember what the generator had decided on, but W changed it to 12 minutes of corner time, this time with my hands on my head, and 20 with the bath brush.
So back into the corner with me. Let me tell you, standing in the corner is boring, and mildly uncomfortable (I'm far-sighted, so the close focus really is uncomfortable), but it's nothing on standing there with my hands on my head. Ouch. I was nearly in tears of regret about four minutes into it.
Since the punishment generator is a new part of our set-up, W hadn't noticed the line for "establishing authority" so instead, she generated punishments for the rules I'd broken earlier in the week, and reduced and combined those to come up with the Sunday spanking. I've learned from experience that it's best not to stick my nose in and tell her a different way of punishing me at that stage of the game, because she's more likely to add punishments. And as it turned out, I got less with her system, so all was well.
But this STILL added up to 52 strokes with the strap (part of the punishment for skipping a meal) and 15 lines (part of the punishment for not texting her to tell her about my meals). I was glad that she reduced the punishment, because it does seem really unfair to have gotten punished for both of those on Wednesday, and then again on Sunday. But she reduced the punishment from the original, and as it turned out, it was less of a punishment than I would have gotten had she used the "establishing authority" choice on the generator.
Still. It was 52 strokes with the strap, hard ones, followed by 20 even harder ones with the bath brush (why, oh WHY, did that thing EVER get used as a spanking tool?!?!) and then 15 lines. You would think this would have made me shape up, but not so much. I think a lot of it is knowing myself, and knowing that I'm probably heading into a phase of more testing, but trying to keep things in check because (shhh) I love W and want to make her life easier. Making her life easier isn't consistent with breaking rules because I need limits, particularly not in the middle of two incredibly busy weeks at work.
So in my post-spanking journaling, I mentioned that I was feeling the way that indicates I probably need more of a spanking; W decided it was best to see how things went. And I did agree that a just-because spanking was not really going to meet my needs in the way that a punishment spanking would. So I was getting a little stressed over that--knowing that I not only needed another spanking, soon, but that I needed the kind of spanking that results from me breaking a rule. The kind where it's clear that W has things under control, and if I slip up, someone is there taking care of things.
Being the imperfect person I am, this came out in steadily increasing "attitude." (Attitude is like porn: perhaps you can't define it, but you know it when you see it.) So around 5, when it was time to start thinking about dinner and the rest of our evening, W decided it was time to deal with the attitude. Back in the corner I went, hands on head, to be followed with 36 strokes with the bath brush (the *generator* told her to use the strap, but she was feeling particularly strict). She started with 12 minutes in the corner, but the attitude had ramped enough that I wouldn't stay still. I was fully prepared to point out that twisting my dreadlocks could be done with my hands on my head, following the letter of the punishment. W added 3 additional minutes of corner time, I continued fidgeting.
W went back to the punishment generator, and decided that I would get an additional 18 minutes in the corner, hands on head (this time, I stood still. I am capable of learning!). The generator told her to do 12 strokes with the cane, but W hasn't practiced with the cane, so she TRIPLED that to 36 more strokes with the bath brush, meaning I was about to get SEVENTY-TWO strokes with the evil bath brush.
For the spanking, I had to repeat "I must respect W's authority" after each line. (After 42 strokes, she changed this to "I will improve my attitude" for the final 30 strokes.)
And then I had lines: I must improve my attitude (18 times) and "I must respect W's authority" (36 times).
Let me tell you, sitting on a firmly spanked bottom, having repeated those lines to the tune of a heavy wooden bath brush smacking down on my bottom, I truly felt I had learned my lesson by the time I was writing them down. I wrote as neatly as I could (given that the part who was present doesn't have the neatest handwriting in the world), and I didn't fuss or fidget or deliberately insert wrong words, as I've been known to do.
Writing this, six hours later, my bottom is still sore even though I'm sitting on my very cushioned desk chair. Heck, it's still sore when I am walking around the apartment, and I'm glad I won't need to sit on a hard seat until tomorrow!
