For each one she is taping one of the chocolate hearts to the cover. Next week, the school district has closed on the 12th and the 15th for President’s Day and an in-service, but never fear.

Her first-grade teacher has planned a big Valentines bash for February 11 and all the children are expected to exchange Valentines with each other. The event will be complete with “teaching centers” run by parents who are expected to do Valentine’s crafts, cooking and reading with them.  I can see this is all meant in good fun and for good times, and for my pinkie-child, it’s like a dream come true.

But.

A little checking has demonstrated conclusively that the other first-grade classrooms are not having Valentine’s Day parties, and the schedule in part was meant to facilitate the absence of such “celebrations”. They are not in school on that day anyway.

The princess is already drawing her own conclusions about the ‘holiday’. The chocolates, marketed to children and parents for Valentine’s treats, have little sayings printed on them in the old-style hard candies all Americans know.

Except they’re not such old-style sayings anymore*.

I read through them with her, and we ended up sorting them into piles.

LOL
Sweet
Be Mine
2 Cute
One & Only
U R Cool
4 Ever
I’m Yours
True Love
Wild 4 U
Hottie

After I had to define the phrases hottie, Wild 4 U and LOL, she looked at me and said quite seriously, “Mama, some of these are not appropriate for school.”

“I know,” I answered. “Would it feel awkward to give a candy to a boy that said on it True Love?”

“Yes!” she said absolutely, then clarified, “Except if it was B—-, because he’s going to marry me. He said so.”

“He did?” I answered, pretending surprise. “Is he back from his trip?”

“Yes!” she returned happily. “He told me today at recess that we’re going to get married when we grow up.”

“It’s good if you love the person you are married to,” I returned. “But what about I’m Yours? Is that going to be appropriate for your classmates?”

“No!” she returned absolutely and hotly.

We ended up separating about half of the candies out as ‘inappropriate’. Even so, she’s still having trouble with who to give the Be Mines and the One & Onlys. Indeed, she’s coming up against the very reason that have caused the other first-grade teachers to avoid Valentine’s Day altogether and celebrate President’s Day instead.

Valentine’s Day should – is – a time to celebrate love with loved ones.

But not everyone has a love, do they? I detested Valentine’s Day as a child for much the same reason, cringing and being so choosy about what valentines I would give to my schoolmates (by expectation, not desire) as to drive my mother crazy. “Just pick one!” she’d say.

I’d read them carefully and say, “I can’t give that to C—!”

Then again, I did feel a lot like the female version of Charlie Brown as a child. The first Valentine’s Day I ever actually celebrated was with Chris.

So this meandering, wandering tirade can be summed up by the following:

1.  Being told I love you by your parents and your siblings and your spouse is fine. Exchanging little special joys is good. Having an excuse to buy chocolate is excellent.

2. Getting and giving inane little cards to your classmates with expressions of life-long devotion on them when you are six is creepy. I say so.

Nevertheless, this is how we’re spending our weekend. Cutting out, writing on, pasting together and decorating pink, red, white and purple hearts. I will be so glad when this holiday is over. Bring on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll take leprechauns any day over this nonsense.

[* The packaging did not list all the sayings on the chocolate hearts, and it was impossible to preview them without opening the bag. I would have picked a different sort of candy if I'd known I would have to tell the princess what hottie means. And she did give one of those away... to someone who reads this blog. If you get it in the mail, smile! ]

It’d been about a week, because of one thing and another, and I’d sorely missed his time and attention. In addition to my own woes, I was under a work deadline (finished 2:30 this morning, yay!, waiting for feedback now). And I have a bit of a cold coupled with a nasty cough. Chris has just started another semester of graduate school and the subjects addressed in these courses promise to be of a pertinent and absorbing nature for him. He has a new toy and is busy getting iTunes behaving properly instead of me.

And, he’d been to the gym that evening.

You know, in and of itself, that’s not a problem. Except his particular fitness facility is filled with college co-eds, most of whom have been worshiping at their own altars since puberty and are exceedingly conscious of how they look. Everywhere. I’ve seen them.

So he comes home and tweets this sentence while grilling dinner: “Saw a great pair of shorts at the gym today. Well, wasn’t so much the shorts as what was in the shorts. Or rather partially in the shorts.”

For some reason, it hit me the wrong way, you know? Now, I’m not a jealous person, normally, although I’ve had my moments, and my jealousy tends to focus on things rather than people (i.e. that video game, that volunteer opportunity that takes 40 hrs of your week outside of work, that iTouch you’re playing with when I’m in the room trying to have a conversation with you, etc). And, as Chris pointed out later, I’m generally just as likely to point out that cute bum before he even notices it. Generally.

Continued at The Punishment Book – Listening & Leading (or sometimes, topping from the bottom is okay) … please leave your comments there if you are so inclined. Thanks!

She took herself off to her room, closed the door (a rarity), and occupied herself by playing Bendaroos.

She occupied herself by creating masterpieces like this one. She didn’t call it art. No, when I asked her about this poor girl, she shrugged dismissively and said, “Oh, I tied her up like the others.”

Like the others?

She said the definition of oral sex was “too explicit.”

Now, parts of Riverside County are quite conservative. And, to be truthful, we are talking about elementary students. Fourth and fifth grade elementary students. Students who have been receiving state-sponsored “age-appropriate” sex education for at least 2 years, possibly three, from this same school.

I can’t speak for those who read this little ramble, but I learned to use the dictionary (and a lot about the alphabet) by looking up words I wouldn’t ask my mother to define. In fact, I still have my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary – a Christmas gift from said parent in the fifth grade. I kept it because I had the habit of marking the entries I looked up.

Let’s see… a brief sampling of marked entries…

anal
anus
asinine
ass
chemise
copulation
corset
cunnilingus
fallopian tube
fellatio
fuck
heterosexual
homophobia
homosexual
ovarian
ovary
panties
panty
penile
penis
prostitute
prostitution
queer
rape
ream
rectal
rectum
sex
sexual
sexuality
sexy
slut
slutty
spank
spanking
stockings
tan (as in “tan his hide”)
thrashing
underwear
uterine
uterus
vagina
vestal
virgin
virginal
wanton
whore

Oddly enough, I never looked up lesbian. I don’t think I knew or ever heard the word until I was in college. Still, you get the idea. I didn’t want it to become my mother’s spelling handbook. So I kept it, took it to college, moved it to California.

There is a lot of outrage about this current brouhaha, much of it due to premature “reporting” (blogging, buzzing, twittering, digging, etc) on the Internet. For example, this article at CarnalNation was written before the school board reviewed and returned the dictionaries to the classroom. It was also not updated, so the comments include a lot of ranting about the district for succumbing to the complaints of one vocal overreacting parent.

In a calm attempt to give said parent the benefit of doubt, perhaps it did not occur to her that someone gave said child the idea to look up “oral sex” in the first place. Who was that? If it was another child, perhaps it is time for some good old frank discussion about how the body works and what makes it happy. If it was not another child, perhaps she ought to be pursuing that route instead, if she is so worried about what her children are learning.

You see, every fifth-grader I’ve ever met – even when I was a fourth-grader – had a fascinated interest in sex and everything to do with it, even if they don’t talk about it with their grandparents or public officials. My twin cousins – boy and girl – at age 11 stole their parents’ condom supply from the master bedroom, took said condoms to another aunt’s wedding, blew them up, and tied them to the happy couple’s car. Their 7th grade sister drew happy smiles on them with a Sharpie while my brother laughed hysterically and took secret pictures. (Their mom and dad found out who did it when they went to get a condom and they were missing.)

So what did happen? The school board ordered the books sent back to the classroom after a board-approved committee (off-site) looked at them and deemed them age-appropriate. This is the process put into place to review instructional materials to which parents object, and it worked perfectly. Simply put, everyone (except the parent) concluded that if you take the dictionary off the shelves, what’s next? The School Board president called it “absurd.”

They did permit parents to opt out of having the book on their child’s desk, and those children now have a happy copy of McGraw-Hill’s dictionary, which also contains definitions of sexual words (although shorter and apparently less explicit). I’m willing to bet not very many parents made that change.

Or maybe they did. It is Riverside County, after all.

Somebody remind me to buy the princess a copy of Merriam-Webster in a few years, please?

Except when I think about it, then I think about my rear end. And then I remember the dull knife that is being slowly twisted through my uterus, inexorably tugging my ovaries out of place and down into that deep pit of agony and despair.

I hurt a lot when the princess was born. For awhile – for a long time. But I had nice, happy, painkilling drugs then too.

Seriously, what’s with the cramps? I’ve had some, but not this bad for many months, until yesterday. Then – promptly twenty minutes after a negative pregnancy test* – they started, and progressively got worse over the day.

By last night, I could barely function. My body was shutting down, and I really did feel somewhat numb. I have a bit of a cold on top of everything else, so when I dropped my flannel pajama pants and stood me and my blue and white polka-dotted panties in the corner, I just prayed fervently he wouldn’t leave me there shivering for very long.

He’d seen me struggling already, of course. He’d done the dishes. He’d set the table. He’d let the dog outside and made sure she came back in. He’d listened as the princess read to me and perhaps heard her say, pity in her voice, that Mama did not have to read. “I’m tired, too, Mama,” she said, pulling the blanket around her and rolling over into her pillow.

So there I was in the corner, thinking of my open laptop upstairs and literally trying not to fall asleep standing up when he said, “That’s enough.” I turned around, he smiled at me and said, “Now, go to bed.”

And all I could think was…thank you.

Sometimes simple instructions are best. He could have kept me up to help – he had to wait up for a very-late conference call for work. He could have let me go upstairs, where I would have stared blindly at SimCity for an hour and nodded off at the keyboard. He could have made me stand there. He could have waited to see if I had gone to get in my bed of my own free will, which I might have done – but I also would have turned on the television.

So I looked at him and said, probably looking as pathetic as I felt, “I need Daddy.”

He held out his arms, held me, and sending me to bed became putting me to bed.

It is a very good bed.

——–
[* Yes, I'm on the Pill to regulate my progesterone production. But it was Day 5 of that week, which is about 3 days late. I didn't want to buy another month's worth if by some miracle I got pregnant on the Pill. But, as I said to Chris, Oh the irony of it! Going on the Pill to have a maybe-pregnancy!]

Standing in the corner, bare-bottomed.

Again.

I will say, though, that absence makes (at least) the cock grow fond. Cornertime did not, as per our normal custom, turn into spanking time. Ah, no. No, his mind and hands were otherwise occupied, at least until I stopped touching him. Then, and only then, did he flip me over on the bed and smack my backside until he couldn’t wait any longer.

I don’t like being away from Chris. It somehow seems wrong, especially when it is me going away instead of him. I have this odd feeling of desertion, as if I have left him to fend for himself – as if I have prioritized my own self over his. And yet undoubtedly he needs his own soul-time away from me and the exuberant princess. And she needs family time, with her cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles. The princess and I had many good reasons to go for the weekend, and the reasons to stay home were mostly the ones that link my heart to Chris.

So yes, I went to bed willingly. And stayed in bed after he left it, wishing he was still holding me.

If that sounds pathetic and dependent, so be it. I’ll accept cornertime if I must, if it means I get him.

[Apparently, I have been in the habit of designating him as the Nighttime Story Reader when the chapters come up in Little House In The Big Woods where Laura gets spanked. And Grandpa gets whipped. It was purely unintentional, I assure you! He has decreed that strapping me shall henceforth be called the "Laura" treatment. I maintain the reason for the strapping had to do with leftover frustrations from dinner.]

It’s been an adventure that has not included the Internet which could not be accessed by phone (i.e. twitter and limited vanilla facebook).

I am behind on my work, scheduled to leave on a trip tomorrow morning with the princess, and somewhat stressed. So it’s brief.

We ended up in Palo Alto and shared lunch. He went to one shop, and I to another, and sat outside under an umbrella on a concrete patio. Cars whizzed by and parking lots hemmed us in two directions, while the row of mini-mall restaurants were at our backs. It was also chilly, if not snowing or raining and we chatted about friends and our calendars and what we do that day.

So, with hours upon hours of freedom before us, we did what any old married couple does.

We went furniture shopping.

Actually, we haunted Ikea until we found an elusive wall cabinet that we could sit on the floor in the landing at the top of our stairs. It makes a great bookcase. And, we bought a coffee table. We’ve never owned a coffee table. Never. There have been the occasional side or end table, or a two-drawer Malm Ikea cabinet with a lamp on top of it.

The princess summed up the dilemma of a coffee table this morning by being excited about having a place to do art projects and build Lego masterpieces while at the same time saying, “But it’s sort of sad that there’s less space to play in the middle of the floor.”

Anyway, since these fine examples of Swedish manufacture are from Ikea, we had to carry them indoors through the sprinkling rain and then contemplate putting them together. Or, rather, Chris had to contemplate putting them together. Me? I went and took off my clothes. He followed. And what happened then had nothing to do with furniture assembly but everything to do with two adults who did not have a child to supervise them. We went to bed and did, well, those things that married people do.

If you don’t know what those things are, let me be more specific. He spanked me a lot and then he took of his pants.

Then we behaved like real grown-ups and debated the wisdom of going to bed at 6 PM. After determining this outcome of the evening to not only be lame but actually embarrassing, Chris did put together the furniture.

At 9 PM on Saturday night, we found ourselves contemplating dinner. At 9:15, I slid into the passenger’s seat wearing only rain boots, an old yellow piece of fabric that might have once passed as a dress but now might be referred to as a house dress, and a jacket. No underclothes. We picked up Chinese – I waited in the car.

At 10 we popped a generous gift from Northern Spanking’s Lucy McLean into the DVD player. She sent us a copy of Strictly Come Spanking last week after I had twittered that I’d never seen a spanking video that didn’t make me laugh (and that my amusement with them wasn’t always appreciated in all corners of the universe). In fact, I don’t think I’ve watched more than a few minutes of any spanking video since before we were married. We own some, of course. They live in one of Chris’s dresser drawers, at the high end, but they rarely come out of hiding when I’m around.

This one, Lucy said, was supposed to make me laugh.

Actually, it made both Chris & I laugh.

Now, we received the British version of the film, complete with European PAL encoding. Our DVD player would not play it, so we ended up connecting my laptop to the big flat screen via VGA cable.

Even with the shortcomings of laptop sound instead of surround sound, it was exceptionally funny. The video mocks British television show Strictly Come Dancing, which might resonate with Americans who like Dancing With the Stars. Honestly, I’ve never watched either show, but I still enjoyed this interpretation with Amelia Jane Rutherford, Leia Ann Woods, Amy Hunter and Syra Garcia. (There’s also a special appearance by Irelynn Logeen, heh.)

As far as we can tell, this film is not (yet?) for sale in the U.S. ShadowLane sells several Northern Spanking videos, but this new release is not yet among them. However, when or if it is available on our side of the great pond, I definitely recommend it to those who do not expect to use it as foreplay.

We went to bed at midnight, still wondering whether we’d have to confess that with our free time we’d done nothing more interesting than go to Ikea.

Beginning with coming home from his parents’ in early January, my new rule was to present myself to the corner (or a wall, if no corner was available) in whatever room he was in. This rule was to be in place whether I could bare my bottom or not. Indeed, the only time my attire has been corrected is when I didn’t remove anything.

This rule is one of those prime examples of something which I could enjoy in a sort of masochistic, submissive way while still actually detesting the actual experience of shivering half-naked in the corner while he chats on Twitter or lies on the bed and reads or wanders out of the bedroom and leaves me silently behind. I do enjoy it in that abstract, theoretical way. I enjoy knowing that I do it. I don’t enjoy doing it. I realize there is not much of a distinction, but a distinction there is.

Now, to be fair, he doesn’t leave me there for long periods of time. But still, it’s boring. And, you know, it’s cold. And I am not good at standing still, so I end up leaning my forehead against the wall. The purpose of this exercise is for me to wait for his convenience. It is not to insist on his immediate attention. I do not want him to feel that he’s rejecting time with me if he’s momentarily occupied (for all kneeling is sexy and submissive, I have bad knees and he couldn’t really make me wait long).  Nor is it about his control or keeping me on a tight leash, although it might be a little bit about my deference.

Nearly ten years ago, the notion of a corner sent me into a frenzy of panic and near anxious meltdown. Now I stand in one every night.

Times change.

Daddy sat on the floor on Friday night and willingly spent a good ninety minutes building a little police car from his imagination while the princess constructed various pieces of furniture to go in a little Lego brick house that was also under construction. In those minutes, a bond was formed. The princess suggested that Daddy, too, spend his stocking money on a Lego set, and an appointment to go shopping together was added to the list of things to do on Sunday.

She decided to spend her tooth fairy money on a Lego set, though it had previously been designated for Zhu Zhu pets and she’d previously SPENT the money in her stocking on an extra pseudo-robotic hamster named Pipsqueak. But now – now – the allure of squirming, squiggling hamsters has been replaced by utter and intense devotion to this new occupation.

Now, the princess is by nature single-minded… At 7 AM on Sunday (previously designated as a shopping and errand day) she woke me up to say it was morning. At 7:30 she was dressed – with her shoes on. At 8:00 she wanted to know why I hadn’t woken Daddy. By the time we left the house at 9:30 she was nearly manic about getting out of the house.

Toys ‘R Us didn’t open until 10:00.

Toys ‘R Us, in its post-Christmas detritus, didn’t have any Lego sets. Really. The aisle was EMPTY, except for Bionicles, and she could care less about those. Oh, wait. There were two sets – both of which were already spread out over the fireplace at home.

As we left, she shuffled her feet in disappointment. And almost stomped. What kid wouldn’t?

It turned out that there was a screw in the sidewall tire of my car, which we discovered in the Toys ‘R Us parking lot. The next three hours we spent at Costco, having warranty work and eventually a new tire put on. She did get to eat Costco hot dogs for lunch (we couldn’t drive anywhere and this particular location has nowhere convenient within walking distance). We meandered the aisles and she got to try out a children’s recliner shaped like a soccer ball with a matching foot stool. As we checked out, we stopped by prior promise in the food corner again to get her a berry yogurt sundae.

The vanilla yogurt machine was being repaired. “Would you like to wait?” the man asked kindly.

We shook our heads, and promised one later. We still had to find a Lego set, so we were headed to the mall and the ice cream there is more expensive but better. Plus I might get Jamba Juice instead.

We had to stop at home and put away the Costco groceries before piling back into the car and heading off to the (distant) mall. Once there, and now 5 hours into our shopping trip, the princess found one – ONE – ONE Star Wars Lego set at Target. It was a Darth Vader TIE fighter. She looked frustrated but it was in her price range (under $30 – the link shows the Toys ‘R Us price on the same item, again proving that Target is significantly less expensive). She’d have preferred one with Luke or Leia or Hans in it, but I think she was desperate. Perhaps justifiably so.

Daddy found one too – a fire boat from the CITY series. It was one of the few items left on the shelf, too, and the only one of its kind. Clearly Lego’s supply of toys in the Bay Area is in need of shoring up from the local warehouses or container ships. All of the Lego sets left in that store were either $70+ by the time we left. By the time we checked out and Daddy took our purchases to the car, the princess and I were planning dinner and a treat and waiting happily in the elevator foyer for his return.

The fire alarm promptly started blaring.

We waited outside perhaps 10 minutes and finally, when we heard the fire trucks approaching, knew we had to leave. The poor little girl.

By the time we set down to dinner much later, I didn’t even ask if she wanted a treat. I only checked on the color.

The strawberry milkshake helped.

She fell asleep in the car on the way home, her head on the Lego set as a pillow.

And last night, as Daddy was walking through the front door in his gym clothes with two bags, the mail and his assorted accessories, she was squealing, “Daddy, we’re building Legos tonight. We are, we are!”

And, after a shower and dinner sitting beside Daddy and clearing the table with Daddy – another eternal wait – they did.