Living in the Future

I forgot how to use a bank teller. I mean, I understand how to use a bank and to bank with an actual human, but I haven't in maybe five or six years. I use the ATM and I do everything else online. But I had all these singles and a roll of quarters from a yard sale we had and I was actually sitting on the couch wondering how I was going to deposit the cash.

I had to refresh my memory about how to use the bank. I filled out a deposit slip and everything and I still had a mini panic attack while I was there that I had done something wrong and the woman was going to tell me I couldn't deposit my money (I don't know in what parallel universe I just thought the bank would refuse my money, but it was a niggling thought).

It made me start to take into account the way life is today. We have a lot of technology at our disposal. We communicate and build friendships over social media and the internet. But in the process have we forgotten how to do everyday things?

Mr. McKay and I went out for a bite to eat recently. We sat at the bar because the restaurant was crowded and we were starving. A woman across the bar looked vaguely familiar to me, while I was trying to place her and act like I wasn't staring, she waved and smiled at me. I froze for a few seconds like I didn't know how to act like a human. If someone says hi to you, you should say hi back. Even if you aren't sure where you know them from or what they want from you. After a few awkward moments, it clicked that we had gone to high school together, but the embarrassing part was I'm friends with her on Facebook and had chatted with her recently. Yes, it is understandable that I didn't recognize her right away, but I could have been a little less weird about thinking that I knew her. 

I prefer to buy things online. I hate traffic. I hate going to the store. I hate shopping. At the food store I'll opt for the self-checkout. I have no patience for the person in front of me who decided to use the self-checkout but then needs to call someone over to help because they don't know how to ring up their own produce. This is not making my shopping experience quicker!

But when did I become such a jerk? When did the world turn into a bunch of jerks who don't have enough time for human interaction? 

I work in retail during the hours of my boring day job. 80% of the people I encounter don't speak to me in complete sentences. They don't make eye contact. They huff and sigh when the credit card machine doesn't work quick enough or my register runs out of receipt tape. Most of the time they don't end their phone call while they try to speak to me and the person on the phone simultaneously. It's annoying and frustrating.

My favorite time of day to work is early in the morning. On a week day before 10am, when the senior citizens come out. They ask me for help in finding things. They take five times as long at the register because they write out a check (who uses checks anymore?). They make eye contact when they speak to me and seem genuinely surprised when I strike up a conversation with them. They apologize for being slow and thank me for my patience. When did the world turn into a place where you have to thank people for not rushing you? I tell them I don't mind because I get paid by the hour (old men think that joke is hilarious). They tell me to have a good day and I actually believe that they mean it. 

It reminds me that it's okay to talk to the person in front of me at the self-check out. I know where the button is for cubanelle peppers so why wouldn't I share that information? And it's okay to ask the bank teller if I filled my deposit slip out correctly, even if I am a little embarrassed that I'm in my 30's and seem to have forgotten this life skill. It's okay because she's a human and I smiled and said thank you. And I told her I liked her earrings because they were cute. My laptop never wears cute earrings. 

I might forget once in a while, but in between rushing from point A to point B, I'm going to try to remember how to be a human. 

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A New Month Begins~ Have I Gotten Any Wiser?

At the beginning of last month I did a little "Things I've Learned" wrap up of the month before. I decided to do it again, because after all 30 days have gone by and I do hope I have learned something.

I don't know if I was just not paying attention or if November was a boring month, but I had a hard time coming up with 5 things I learned...

Here goes, as boring as they may be:

1. I do not like pumpkin flavored anything. Apparently the new trend is to flavor everything with pumpkin spice- from coffee to beer (two of my favorite beverages) and I find it all positively disgusting. Please, for the love of humankind, stop doing this Beverage Makers!

2. A ganache is a fancy word for melted chocolate chips. I made a cake this month and did not have all the ingredients to make icing. Upon a quick google search I found a simple recipe to make a chocolate ganache. Who knew it was just chocolate chips and cream? I didn't.

(2a. A side note to the above fact- making a premixed, from the box, cake and covering it in a homemade ganache is a fantastic way to get back into your husband's good graces after you turned all hosebeast on him following a phone conversation with a family member. Displaced Anger+ Guilt Ganache= Marital Bliss)

3. You can't change the way people are, but you can control how you let them affect you. To be honest, this is something I knew in theory before this month- and it is easier said than done. But I feel like an instance in the past few weeks was one of the first times I successfully stepped back from a situation, recognized the craziness of the other person, and chose not to let it affect me. 

4. I cannot rush a story that is begging to be told. This month I tried and failed to write a shorter story to get out quickly. I mean I achieved writing it, but it felt wrong, like I was cutting off my best friend right before she told me the good parts in the story. Thankfully I have some good friends who told me I was selling myself short.

5. Cheap olive oil is sort of gross. Mr. McKay and I love Aldi- do you guys know of these food stores? Everything is super cheap and they have the best cheese. For reals! Their "Specially Selected Age Reserved White Cheddar" is fan-freaking-tastic! Pair that with some cracked pepper and olive oil Triscuits and I am a happy girl. Anyway, we were there cheese shopping and buying tortilla chips, just your basic essentials, and we picked up a small bottle of olive oil. Now olive oil can get sort of pricey, but this small bottle was very reasonable. We thought nothing of it because we had bought some there before, I guess the mistake was we had always cooked with it. On this fateful night I made some dressing with it for a pasta salad. It was gross, to say the least. I guess olive oil- especially when used for a dressing- is not something you want to skimp on. Lesson learned.

There you have it 5 (more like 5 and 1/2) sort of boring things I learned this month.

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I'm Still Learning Things...

I realized this past weekend that I did not post one post between Saturday Spankings. That's a little odd for me, did you guys miss me?

You don't have to answer that!

Anyway, it is a new month. November is here, and I am not quite sure how that happened- I was still waiting for one more beach day after Labor Day hit. Now I am ready to turn the heat on in the house!

I feel like I learned a lot of new things this past month. Maybe not so new, maybe some things just dawned on me and I was all- oh, right, time to pay attention!

1. I am allowed to say "No".- This is mostly about not stretching myself so thin. I don't have to be everything for everybody and I feel like I can say no without being a bitch. Most of the time at least. Sometimes I am still feeling a little guilty, but there are only so many hours in the day!

2. I need sleep to function.- Crazy, right? Why had I not figured this out before? I wake up extra early in the morning so I can write before going to my day job. I started to realize if I went to bed too late, and then got up super early- I couldn't function. I was getting nothing done, plus I was cranky, overwhelmed, and just tired! I've been more conscious about getting more sleep and I have been a much happier person.

3. Getting your fingers run over is no fun.- So this might not apply to most of the population, but I am sporting a pinky that is three different shades of purple because I didn't tuck my fingers in when I took a spill on the roller derby track this past week. All I can think is, thank god I didn't break any fingers! It would be hard to type with broken digits.

4. I am more productive without the internet.- I took some vacation days at the beginning of the month and me and Mr. McKay were staying at a hotel without internet access. I wrote half a book in three days! Just in the mornings before he woke up. I think it was because I wasn't distracted. No email, no facebook, nothing shiny drawing me away. It's just an observation, I'm not actually doing anything with this little factoid I discovered.

5. Theodore Roosevelt would have been medicated if he grew up in present day.- So this is not a fact about myself, but it is still something I learned. We have been watching the Ken Burns' documentary on the Roosevelts and it is way more interesting than I anticipated. Teddy Roosevelt was a crazy man, I mean, for reals. He was a crazy kid, who definitely would have ended up medicated and in therapy if it were present day. But back then they were just like- hey! play a sport, go kill some bears! And then he became president.

That was fun, right? Maybe I will make this a monthly occurrence- Things I Learned This Month.

Probably not, as I am terrible at starting any kind of series, but this was fun at least.

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We Forgot How to Have Vanilla Sex...

Something happened in my house on Sunday night. We had terrible sex. It could have been the culmination of a lot of things and I guess when you are in a relationship for a while every single time you have sex won't be a knock out of the park home run. But, it was particularly bad.

The last few times we decided we were going to fool around, something seemed to happen. I had a migraine, my husband tweaked his back, we both ate too much at a barbecue-- you know, just unsexy everyday life things that can put a damper on the sex life.

I am always horny and ready to go (I think it's an occupational hazard with what I write), so I usually initiate. It is a rare occasion that I am not in the mood and my husband is. Sunday was one of those days.

He had just gotten into bed and I had only been laying there for about ten minutes before him, but I was already well on my way to sleeping. He reaches under the sheet and strokes my thigh-

"You have pants on?" (A rare summertime occurrence, as I get hot and sleep in my underwear most nights)

"Mmrph," is my response.

"Are you asleep?"

"No." (Lies all lies.)

"Can I take your pants off?"

Now I'm awake! My eyes pop open at that and my husband proceeds to go down on me and give me an earth shattering orgasm. The poor guy had to work for it too, because like I said, it was that rare occasion I wasn't already in the right mindset.

I proceed to collapse back onto the bed like a pile of goo and my eyes start falling shut.

"You going back to sleep?" he asks me, sounding mildly amused.

And here is the thing about my husband, and maybe perhaps why I love him so much-- if I had said, Yes, I am going to sleep now, because you woke me up and started this and I am tired. Goodnight. That would have been the end of it. He would have kissed me and told me he loved me and let me go to sleep.

The tiny, selfish part of me wanted to take my orgasm and go directly into a restful slumber. But the rest of me rallied to wake back up and see this thing through.

I raise up on my knees, ready to return the oral favor, but my husband takes a left turn and pulls me on top of him.

Oh? Actual sex? Like vaginal intercourse? For some reason this has fallen out of our sexual routine. We're usually trading oral pleasures, or we go at it doggy style- bent over the arm chair in the living room, or bent over the bed for some anal action. But just straight up intercourse? A rarity as of late.

Now I am on top, looking down at my husband and I'm trying to remember how to do this. Is this all I do? I know- this sounds kind of ridiculous, but I couldn't even enjoy myself because I kept thinking I was doing it wrong. And he clearly was not finding it too awesome because he was making no sound. Nothing. Our bedroom was filled with the sounds of the bed squeaking and occasionally smacking into the wall-- but no one making yummy, dirty sex noises.

I am transported back to when I was a shy and inexperienced virgin making love to my husband (my then boyfriend) for the first few times. I was self conscious, I was over thinking, I was obsessing so much about what was going on that I was not in the moment. And I was so insanely worried that I was doing it all wrong I was getting upset.

Hours later (okay, probably minutes, but it felt like forever) we are both covered in a sheen of sweat, my hips are aching, and I am not sure how much longer I can keep this up-- my husband taps the side of my thigh and goes "Oookaay."

Just like that. Like, this is not our night, we're good. I am done with this.

I climb off and lay beside him, looking into his eyes, "Was I doing something wrong?"

"No, no," he rushes to assure me, "It was me. I'm a little off."

We talk for a minute about what could have been throwing off our game. He admits he was thinking we were going to fall off the bed as we were very close to the edge. I kept thinking I was going to hurt his back as I was sitting on top of him. So neither of us were focused on the task at hand.

I also brought up the fact that there had been no foreplay. No spanking, no toys, virtually no lead up. We never let ourselves get hot and bothered, reaching a point of combustion. Maybe this is why married people sex is such a joke-- do people live their lives like this?

I'm not saying we need to break out nipple clamps and butt plugs every time we fool around. But apparently I need some sort of sexy lead up. Even if he's teasing me while we stand on line at the grocery store check out. Something to ignite the fire before we get down to it.

Here we were thinking we have awesome sex all the time, we can just skip the preamble and bang. Well, nope, that was a terrible idea.

There is a good ending to the story. I gave him a blow job and he achieved his screaming completion. We cuddled up and slept like logs and continued our conversation the next day about how maybe we just forgot how to have vanilla sex.

Maybe it wasn't the vanilla sex at all that was the problem. I mean I'm sure it hits the spot with millions and billions of people. But for now I will just say-- sorry Vanilla Sex, it's not you, it's us.

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We Need a New Maid

I joked in a post last week about how my husband asked if I was planning on wearing a french maid outfit to do some cleaning. Here is the thing about that, the french maid thing is so my fantasy. Well, not exactly a fantasy as I like the little skirt of the dress and I think it would be a cute role playing scenario. You know sassy french maid spanked by the rich lord of the manor? Except, we don't role play, but I bought the costume on sale online, so I break it out every so often.

Anyway. It was a sunny, gorgeous Saturday afternoon. We had the windows open. We were sitting on opposite couches relaxing. That's when Mr. McKay brought up the french maid thing. I jump at any chance to wear it, so it really didn't bother me that it was the middle of the day. It didn't bother me until I realized we could still hear all the neighborhood kids even with the windows closed. The sexy afternoon of kinky sex and parading around in a french maid outfit was accelerated and turned into some fingering on the couch followed by a blow job. It was quick and dirty, nothing out of the ordinary, but it was still fun.

The thing I took away from it though was my silly husband was honestly trying to get me to clean. He was kind of teasing me, but I feel like when you know someone well enough you can tell when the teasing has a hint of truth behind it. I begrudgingly got out the Pledge and dusted one of the end tables, really just so I could shake my ass in his general direction and he seemed visibly disappointed that I stopped there. But really? My idea of foreplay does not include cleaning the house.

Last night, a mundane weeknight, we had eaten dinner and were relaxing in the living room. I went in the kitchen to get a drink and realized there were some leftovers that needed to get tossed. Then I noticed something had spilled in the back of the fridge. This snowballed until I had the entire contents of the refrigerator strewn around the counters and I was on my hands and knees scrubbing some kind of petrified, sticky substance stuck to the bottom of the refrigerator.

45 minutes later and a request for a blow torch, I am a sticky mess. Somehow having gotten the mystery substance on my arms- I am hunched over, kneeling in yoga pants and a ratty t-shirt. I'm using a Brillo pad, bleach spray, some kind of stuff I found under the sink that smells like paint thinner, and my hands and fingers are throbbing, but I am almost done!

Mr. McKay comes back into the kitchen (he had been visiting occasionally to ferry things out to the dumpster, pop the kitchen window open so I didn't kill us all with the fumes, and just to give his general moral support) I hear him sit down in a chair behind me. A few minutes pass and he says, "I'm just going to sit here and stare at your ass."

As I am furiously scrubbing, my ass is wiggling around, so I am sure it was quite the view. But again, covered in random stickiness, I am not feeling super sexy. I roll my eyes at him and try to think of something witty to say, "Well my hands are throbbing, so no hand job for you." (Not my best retort, but it was late, don't judge me.)

He smiles at me and says, "Nothing's wrong with your mouth, right?"

It was a 50/50 split between laughing or throwing a disgusting Brillo pad at him. But damn if that didn't turn me on. If this were one of my books we would have banged right there on the kitchen floor. It is not a book though, and my kitchen floor is gross. Also, I was in need of a shower, and bleach- not the sexiest smell.

The thing I find funny from all of this is- my husband clearly finds it sexy when I clean. Which is weird, because I am not much of a housekeeper. Neither of us are. He says we are "messy creative types" and I am not lying when I say we have a tendency to lose things after we clean. If it is out I know where it is, lord knows where things disappear to after they have been squirreled away.

I am thinking if I want to get some this weekend I will have to organize a closet or something.

All this time I was thinking I was the one with the sexy housewife fantasy. My friend Claire Colingsgrove has a wonderful blog that caters to this fantasy. You know, cute little apron, some heels, nothing on underneath. The house is sparkling clean. I get spanked and fucked for all my hard work. Only, I don't really want to put in all that hard work...

I think Mr. McKay really does have this housewife fantasy, only he doesn't care so much about the clothes as he seemed to want to jump me in my yoga pants and sloppy t-shirt last night. Maybe he would settle for a writer wife who sells enough books to hire a maid?

We all gotta have goals!

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Smut for Good- A Curvy Pin Up

Welcome to the Smut for Good- Curves Rule Blog Hop!

I heard about this blog hop through facebook. It's celebrating smut and curvy women and also raising money for Parkinson's Disease. 

Please be sure to click above for the main link and check out all the other blogs participating. There are ways you can donate and you have chances to win prizes!

I am giving away a copy of any of my books to one lucky commenter, so stick around and then leave me some love :)

We were asked to post something about curvy women, and while I mention in most of my books that my heroine has curves (it is spanking romance- there needs to be something to grab onto and spank!) I don't actually spend too much time talking about body type.

So instead, I am sharing with you a blog post I read recently about America's Forgotten Pin Up Girl (click to read the original post).

I have an unhealthy obsession appreciation of pin up girls and just the pin up style in general. They tend to be of the curvier sort. Big boobs, curvy hips, but yes, often times, tiny waists. A look that is hard for most to achieve without some sort of form fitting undergarment. Or really trying to trick the eye with say a belted dress that flares out at the bottom.

But upon reading this blog post over at Messy Nessy Chic I was enlightened to find a pin up girl named Hilda, a creation of illustrator Duane Bryers, who graced the pages of calendars for over four decades.

In all of her pictures Hilda seems carefree and confident in her body. I think the confidence is what brings the sexiness.

She seems a little goofy, but carefree and fun.

And what isn't sexy about that?

Smut for Good: Curves Rule is a blog hop with prizes galore to raise funds for Parkinson’s UK as this is Parkinson’s Awareness week. To find more curves, and seek out further prizes please visit http://smutters.co.uk/smut-for-good and if you can take a minute to please visit the Smut for Good: Curves Rule Just Giving Page at http://www.justgiving.com/curvesrule and donate whatever you can to help us reach our target of £100 to raise awareness of Parkinson’s and to support the charity Parkinson’s UK http://www.parkinsons.org.uk/ who help those with the disease learn to cope with the challenges, give out information and search for a cure.

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