We're at that end of the summer when life gets to be just about unbearable. Since about the time of my last post the house has been full most of the time and for me any sort of play is way off the agenda; even thinking about TTWD is a no-go area.
Younger daughter is around all the time as her friends are away on holiday. Older daughter is back from university and has her boyfriend here - I suggest trips, but they seem to want to do nothing but lay about watching TV all day.
To make mattesr worse, me and SO had a blazing row a few days ago and it has never really been resolved. A lot of it was down to my brattiness and under normal circumstances it would be sorted out in the bedroom with The Hairbrush playing its UN Peacekeeping role.
However, doing just a little bit of darkside blog visiting last night I came across a post at A Voice in the Corner that set my nerve-endings a-flicker like the bulbs in a string of faulty Christmas lights. I'm not sure if I totally believe the story of Bristol's Victorian disciplinary B&B, but it had my imagination heading off in all sorts of directions.
At £100 a year a stay with Mrs Smith sounds like excellent value for money, and I like the sound of the ethos of her establishment. I can recognise my own failings in Mrs Smith's opinion that "some girls are idle constitutionally, this must be cured; others have a
superfluous amount of energy, this needs to be well directed".
I manage to idle and to have too much energy at the same time. I'm sure Mrs Smith's birch would have straightened me out. If she were still in business I'd be tempted to book myself in - at least until term-time starts again and private time is an option once again.
No, I couldn't go. SO was adamant that I was not invited to the friends' camping trip, which meant that I'd be on my own all weekend.
Which made me grumpy. The kids are away on holiday together at the moment, so I had assumed the weekend was for our playtime. And having experienced weeks of spanklessness I was very, very hungry for TTWD.
But I need 'a little chat', I pleaded in a whiny kind of way. Nothing doing. It will have to wait until Tuesday, I was told.
Then the door slammed shut and I heard the sound of our old VDub camper firing up. I was mad, and bratty. I spent the weekend eating too much, drinking too much and looking into corners of the webosphere that I promise not to go to...
But SO wasn't there to see any of it, and doing it all just made me more itchy for some serious sorting out. It didn't help that I did a lot of fantasising around the idea of what campsite punishments might be like; birches, switches, my big bare bot and other campers looking on, you know the sort of thing.
SO got back late, tired and in need of a bath and sleep, and seemingly oblivious to my cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof mental state. I felt even more neglected.
However, it turned out that SO hadn't been as out of touch with my state of mind as I thought. The 'it will have to wait until Tuesday' hadn't been just talk. As I was babbling on about my rule-breaking weekend and my thoughts around campsite correction it dawned on me that my poor behind was about to suffer.
Now I always get to a point where I so much want what we call 'my discipline', but when it's actually about to happen I go really cold on the idea. Who in their right mind would want that pain and humiliation?
My pleading was all of a sudden about letting me off, but to no avail. Reader, I got the hairbrush, and then me (and my red bum) got sent outside to cut a switch. I have to say the way a length of willow marks my thighs is quite something to see...
