By:
In: Lion's Journal

I still have a couple of sore spots. Based on Mrs. Lion’s post the other day, I appear to be in for another spanking. The consensus is that I am not listening properly. I am not patient enough. I get it, or I will get it. Mrs. Lion has her own communication style, and by now, I should have figured it out. Most of the time, I can. My internal copy editor has a hard time with unclear references, especially now that I am writing almost full time. I have a wonderful grammar checker. It’s called Grammarly. There is a free version that helps with glaring errors. The paid version is like having a live copy editor sitting next to me.

Another program I use a lot is LightRoom by Adobe. It lets me organize my images. I have a lot, over 7,000. Many of them got lost when I switched from a version that stores my computer images to one that uses the Adobe cloud. I learned this yesterday when I got a warning that I needed more cloud space. Going up to 1TB would raise my monthly bill to $59.95. I can’t afford that. So, I decided to go back to the version that lets me store images on my computer (I put them in the Microsoft cloud). When I opened that version (LightRoom Classic), I found many images, not in the cloud. After a long process, I managed to combine the images. Now I am classifying the ones that weren’t included (2,500).

I’m finding lots of wonderful pictures that I had no idea that I had in the process. A bunch of years ago, I scanned many slides. Many of the oldest ones didn’t get classified. Fortunately, they survive in the cloud. It’s fun rediscovering them. I even found one black-and-white paper print I scanned in of me sitting on Santa’s lap in a department store. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old. I wonder if Santa remembers.

The second book is moving much slower than the first. Based on my recent research, my plot is still too weak in the beginning. My confidence as an author is not very high. Sorting photos has given me a bit of a break. Now, before I do more sorting, I will do more writing. This isn’t my sexiest post. Sorry.

By:
In: Communication

It may be a huge oversimplification, but I’ve heard that when women tell men about their day, men try to fix it whereas women just want to vent. I’ve been sitting here wondering if that is part of the problem with our communication lately. Lion has trouble when I use nonspecific pronouns. When I was telling him about my boss creating a form, I was careful to say who “she” was. The problem this time, however, was not the pronoun. In his mind, the story was about the form and what could he solve about it. That’s what I think happened at least. It didn’t matter that the form wasn’t really the issue. He was focused on that form. What program? What does the form do? My boss should do X. I thought I had been careful, when he interrupted the first time, to tell him that the form itself or even which program was used wasn’t the hero of the story. I think he was already off and running so he didn’t hear that part.

I can’t explain what happened with the coffee pot. I thought I framed the conversation as fact one, fact two and fact three. I lost him somewhere between one and three. Is it that Lion isn’t really listening? There’s a difference between hearing and listening. Does he not hear it at all? Or does he hear it and glosses over it because he’s thinking about fact one? Maybe I need to pause between points to make sure he’s following me to the next point. I might think I’m being very clear, but if he’s stopped to smell the roses along the way, he’ll miss something.

Another possibility is that I’m not communicating as well as I think I am. Maybe I do leave gaps big enough for a bus to drive through. Maybe we need to record conversations to review later. Did I actually say what I thought I said? Did I say it the way I thought I said it? Did Lion not hear what I said? Or did he hear what he thought I said? Too many variables. It’s a wonder humans understand each other at all.

The only thing I can think of is for me to work on my communication skills and for Lion to work on his listening skills. I’m sure we each need to work on both points. I’m certainly prone to hearing things very differently from the way Lion said them. I tend to take his observations as criticisms when they weren’t intended that way at all.

I’m willing to wipe the slate clean this time even though our misunderstandings happened so close together. I may not be so nice next time.

By:
In: Punishment
More red, less black and blue with the lighter paddle. Hurts at least as much as the spanking spoon.

Monday night Mrs. Lion gave me a 2-offense DWC spanking. She set the timer for fifteen minutes and went to work. Instead of the heavy spanking spoon, she used the ferule paddle. This tool is made of bloodwood with a long handle and a small, round face. Before getting the spanking spoon, this was the most vicious paddle in our collection. It’s much thinner than the spanking spoon. It has considerably more sting and creates more red and less black and blue.

By the time the 15-minute timer went off, I was more than ready. Mrs. Lion wasn’t done. The spanking went on and on. I hated every second of it, and it hurt when I tried to find a comfortable sleeping position. It’s no picnic sitting at my desk. I hate sting much more than the deeper thud. Perhaps Mrs. Lion might want to try some of our paddles with a larger hitting surface and lighter weight. I have to admit that Monday’s spanking was very effective. I’m going to be much more diligent in getting chores done and eating neatly.

ferule paddle.

Mrs. Lion did not punish me for interrupting her. Of course, it isn’t too late. I think it is important to help me learn to be more respectful when we talk. I’m sure she will get to this when she is ready. Now that I’ve written this, she may decide she is ready now. We had what might have earned me a growl or spanking on Tuesday morning. Our coffeemaker, yes, the one that got me spanked, died. Mrs. Lion was trying to explain what was wrong. I was lost with her explanation. This sort of confusion happens a lot. Mrs. Lion uses a lot of pronouns without a clear connection to nouns. She was telling me about “this” and “that” and “before I was lost.

I stopped her and explained my confusion. She looked annoyed. She always looks annoyed when I can’t follow her context. She often tells me that if I let her finish, I will understand. So far, I don’t. I find it hard to connect all of the indefinite conversational dots. I suppose I could nod and pretend to understand. Maybe if I wait long enough, it will come clear. I like to follow along but can’t without nouns to reference pronouns. If she punishes me for annoying her, I will learn how to manage these conversations better. At least I will learn how to stop pissing her off.

By:
In: Punishment

First of all, Lion got a very long spanking last night. He started bleeding fairly early on so I got a warm washcloth to wipe him off. He wasn’t bleeding bad but it was making the paddle stick. He suggested Band-aids over the spot but I would have needed one giant Band-aid. I decided to put the washcloth across his butt and whomp through it. I think it was somewhat effective. Sometimes, as the washcloth lost its warmth, I figured the coolness would feel nice so I wiped even if I didn’t have to. That’s not to say that I was holding back on the swats. His butt was on fire, I’m sure. Today, he says it hurts to sit.

As I showered, I wondered if I should apply some sort of lotion to his wounds. The skin was broken so protecting it seemed reasonable. I don’t think I should necessarily do it right after. He needs time to recover mentally. (Actually, my first thought was that IcyHot would burn much more after an evil spanking like that.) In addition to making the skin feel better, applying lotion could signal that he’s definitely forgiven for whatever he did to earn the punishment. Sort of a we’re-done-here or this-hurts-me-more-than-you moment.

Ironically, part of his punishment was for forgetting the coffee pot for Monday morning. Yesterday, the coffee pot started making a weird noise but I managed to get it to work. This morning, the weird noise was back but I couldn’t get it to work. Lion says it’s dead. I think it died in sympathy for Lion’s butt. If there’s no coffee pot to set up, he can’t get in trouble for not setting it up.

Now, on to the problem of the past few days. I know Lion gets confused when I use a lot of non-specific pronouns. He loses track of who “she” is. I’ve been trying to get better with it. I’m not even sure that’s where the problem occurred. To me, it seems like Lion just doesn’t listen carefully. I was trying to tell him something about my boss creating a form. We’re setting up Microsoft Office with Teams and apparently there’s a long process to do it. Management has decided each boss is responsible for a certain number of things so there isn’t this big crunch to get things done all at once at the end. I told Lion my boss made a form, I wasn’t sure which program (meaning Word or Excel) and… he asked who “she” was. My boss. So the form is for… he asked if it was in Word or Excel. I told him I already said I didn’t remember which program. So the form… he said he thought it would be easier to use Word. Okay. So the form… he said he would use Word. Okay. Then I remembered it was in Excel, even though it really didn’t matter in what I was trying to tell him. So she set up the form… he said Excel would be better because then she could do X, Y, Z and tell her not to do this certain thing that he’s done in the past and was disastrous. At that point, I lost it. It didn’t matter what program was used. I didn’t matter what the form was for or how it was set up. All I wanted to say is that I don’t have access to any of it because it’s not set up yet (a bone of contention at work) so I can’t use the damn form anyway! I growled at him and that should have been the end of it.

However, this morning, the coffee pot issue caused some grief too. I made sure I told him the noise the coffee pot made yesterday, and that I got it to work yesterday. I made sure I told him that it made the noise again this morning, but I wasn’t able to get it to work so I had to make the coffee in the Keurig. I was clear. I was precise. And he still told me I didn’t tell him the coffee pot didn’t work this morning. Is he hearing the first part of the conversation and launching into something in his mind before he hears the rest of the conversation? Can he not do that? I guess the answer is to punish him when he does it. Maybe that’s the only way to get his attention, especially considering he did it two days in a row within twelve hours of each other. Sheesh!