Back here again...

I may be getting spanked this weekend. This is my frustration: The house is rather a mess, and I know this, and I've even had good intentions all week. But I kept getting sidetracked by one thing or another. My mom would call and keep me tied up, or I'd sit down to have breakfast and get engrossed in a show, or I'd lose track of time cuddling with our daughter, or I'd think, "I'll just finish this article, then I'll get to the dishes."

The frustration is that I know better. I know that there are only so many hours in the day, and over a third of them are eaten up by work and commuting. And I know that any spanking I get will be easier to take than knowing that I've let Nick down.

He works 5 1/2 days a week so that we can make ends meet. I work 5 myself, but I do have Saturday mornings off without him, and our daughter (a night owl like me) usually sleeps till he gets home in the afternoon. That means that Saturday morning is my time to do some uninterrupted housecleaning. I usually do pretty well. Most weeks, the entire downstairs is clean by the time he gets home. Today it wasn't. I wasn't even quite finished with the kitchen.

He didn't say anything, but I brought it up later in a vague sort of way, and he told me that I most likely had a spanking coming. Jokari may have been mentioned. I dread the spanking, but I also know that if it doesn't happen, in a very real way I will feel unfinished. I disappointed him, and I need him to work that out on my butt.

Sometimes I really feel like a failure as a submissive wife, because I just can't seem to get a handle on the housework. But I am definitely better than I was pre-DD. Once upon a time, I just didn't make an effort. And it took more than just his heavy sighs to make me feel guilty. It took him yelling and screaming and throwing things (not at me) for me to really see what a horrible job I was doing. Then I would decide to do better. But my resolve always faded with his outrage. That's definitely no longer the case.

Now that he spanks me, not only are there physical consequences to deal with, but there's also healthy communication. When he gives me a spanking, he always takes the time to sit down and discuss with me what we need to do to prevent the next one. Not just what I need to do. What we need to do. And it really helps. Maybe that's why I get housework spankings maybe once a month or so, as opposed to the weekly to daily explosive arguments we had pre-DD. And maybe that's why the spankings don't leave me angry and hurt like the arguments did. He's not just asking me to care about his needs. He's showing me that he cares about mine too.

And as I possibly face another spanking for the same old screw up, I want to thank him for understanding that the fact that we're here again does not mean that it's not working. The fact that I can count on being here again as a means of acknowledging and dealing with my imperfection is the reason it works as well as it does. I know that I will never be Martha Stewart or Bree Van de Camp. But what keeps me striving for the ideal is knowing that I don't have to do it all on my own. When I inevitably fall short, Nick is here to give me a shot in the arm (or butt) and get me back on track.

And I think he's learning, as I am, that going easy on me or letting me off the hook completely doesn't do either of us any favors. I need that reminder that he's the boss and that there are unavoidable consequences, and he needs the reminder that he doesn't have to put up with less than obedience. My Lord, what a meandering road this is sometimes.