After a rough night on Monday, both Lion and I were tired. He was snoozing and I was trying not to snooze so I’d sleep last night. Since he was snoozing, I decided which of our Hello Fresh meals to make. Usually I ask him for his input, but I didn’t want to wake him. And…you snooze, you lose.

About 9 pm, Lion said he was horny. I asked if he really wanted to do something and he told me it was up to me. Ordinarily he’d tell me that 9 pm was too late to start things. He’d also tell me that his snoozing shouldn’t negate play for the evening. While it’s true that play and sex is mostly for him, I still have to participate. Why was 9 pm not too late last night? It’s probably because he snoozed earlier. I didn’t. I wasn’t falling asleep tired. I wasn’t really even exhausted tired. But it was past the point that I would have liked to play. And yes, you guessed it, in this case…you snooze, you lose.

Today, I’m in the office. I’m looking out the window at a wall of smoke about a block or two away. Every so often a waft of smoke smell comes in. Maybe it’s when someone opens a door. It’s not bad so far but I’m keeping an eye on it. It’s incredible how many fires are happening and some of them are in the western part of the state. That’s unusual.

At this point, I’m planning on playing with Lion tonight. I hope he’s still horny. I bet I can entice him with a rope or some clothespins. He usually likes when I tell him what I’m going to do to him. It adds to the fun. I even have some ginger in the fridge. I could carve a dildo/butt plug. We haven’t done that in a very long time. Ginger is warm without being too hot. I’m sure it can get a little uncomfortable, but it’s nothing like Icy Hot heat. I’d say Lion likes ginger but “like” may not be the word he would use to describe it.

So that’s it. I see ginger in Lion’s future. He won’t see it. It’ll be up his ass.

There are a few givens when you live in the Pacific Northwest: approximately nine months of the year are cloudy/rainy and there will be wild fires in eastern Washington. Occasionally, that smokes blows to the west. It can create some beautiful orange sunsets and sunrises, but it can also lower the air quality dramatically. I’m certainly not detracting from the suffering of the people in the immediate area of the wild fires. A coworker had a close call on Saturday with fire very near her house. It’s just unusual for us to feel the effects and we’re not equipped for it.

Needless to say, we didn’t sleep well last night. Between the smoke smell and having the windows all closed, it was a difficult night. We had the portable air conditioner going so that helped a bit but also pulled some smoke in the house. By morning, the sun was bright and the wind was gone, but the smoke stayed settled in for a few days. Lion had some trouble breathing last night. My eyes, sinuses, and lungs are not happy. I hesitate to say it’s the cherry on the crap sundae that is 2020, so I’ll just say it’s at least the whipped topping. I’m sure the year still has some sprinkles, if not the cherry, left to go.

Lion was already tired before the smoke rolled in. There was no joy in Mudville. I’m fairly sure there won’t be any sex happening until the cage arrives. I realize the irony of that statement. The cage, instrumental in male chastity, will restart our sex life; well, Lion’s sex life. I realize it’s still just a theory, but I believe Lion needs to be caged in order to be horny. Sure, he’s horny much of the time, but in order to be horny enough to make it to the edge consistently, he needs to prevented from having random erections. The very thing that outwardly signals a male is horny needs to be prevented.

It’s really not that simple. The cage doesn’t just stop an erection. The fact that it’s locked on is, I theorize, what contributes to making him horny. It’s a bondage thing. It’s a power thing, or lack thereof actually. He has no power over his penis. I’ve taken it away by locking it up. I guess, if you want to know who wears the pants in the family, you have to know who wears the cage. Yes, we split things fairly equally in most aspects of our marriage. We both decide what’s for dinner, when we need to go to the store, where we’ll go on vacation, etc. but when it comes to sex I am in charge. Assuming neither of us is ill or tired, I decide when Lion gets play and/or sex. It may not always go well. Depending on his horniness level, he may not make it to the edge. He might not become fully erect. I think this is where the cage helps.

I’m sure there are other factors, but I bet once the cage goes on, Lion will be hornier. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’m anxious to put my theory to the test again. This time we’ll make sure the dog doesn’t chew Lion’s cage.

Since it’s the end of the season and we got to the pickle farm late anyway, we bought a bucket of cucumbers. We had no idea how many pounds it was but they were the right size and we knew we needed quite a few for our endeavors. After making dill pickles and four batches of bread and butter pickles, we have seven pounds of cucumbers left. That means the bucket was 27 pounds. That’s a lot of cucumbers. We could, theoretically, make almost another two double batches of bread and butter pickles but I think we’re done. We’ve almost exhausted our vinegar supply and our spices are low. We’re done.

Lion’s been waking up early for the past few days. He hasn’t been sleeping well. Sometimes it’s too hot in the bedroom. Sometimes it’s too cool. Lion was snoozing when it was time for the pickles to go into the jars. I almost did it myself but I thought he’d be upset. Pickling is his baby, after all. Once we were done, he went back and snoozed again. His tummy was bothering him and he couldn’t figure out why he was sleeping so much. In my experience, my stomach could be bothering me because I’m tired, or I could be tired because my stomach is bothering me. Either way, he needed to snooze. It’s perfectly understandable.

After a dinner of egg noodles and peas, our go-to meal when tummy issues arise, he snoozed again. Each time he woke up he’d apologize for sleeping. Obviously he needed it. I understand. The only issue for me was worrying he’d be up all night because he slept so much. He was worried about that too. It turns out, we didn’t need to worry. The bedroom must have been at an acceptable temperature because we slept till 8:30 when the neighbors’ dogs were barking. We both woke up at random times throughout the night but we got back to sleep again. Today, we still feel a little tired but Lion’s tummy is better.

It’s the last day of my three day weekend. Because we made more pickles and jam, I don’t really feel like I got three days off. I’ve been cleaning the kitchen and running around like I would if I was cooking dinner a few times a day. I’d say today is a me day but I guess it should really be a Lion day. Although we’ve spent the past few days bumping into each other in the kitchen, that doesn’t really count as Lion time. I know he likes to play early so we’ll give it a shot today, but I guess that all depends on how he’s feeling later and if he can stay awake.

A long time ago we played Zapardy. Lion got zapped with the shock collar around his balls for every question he answered wrong. We hadn’t played in a while. Sometimes the shock collar wasn’t charged. Sometimes dinner was late and we were eating during Jeopardy. Most of the time I forgot to do it. Lion bought a tally counter and suggested we play a modified version of our football spanking game. The rules would be almost the same as for Zapardy except that he would earn a swat for every question he failed to answer at all. If he got a correct answer there would be no swat. An incorrect answer earned him two swats. But now not answering got him a swat too. Previously, he’d been skating by with very few zaps because he was afraid to answer wrong. That was sort of boring…for me.

I don’t remember when Lion bought the tally counter. It was months and months ago. Before COVID-19? I have no idea. In any case, it just sat there unused. We talked about playing Spankardy but never did. And then last week, there was renewed interest in it. I decided we should have a designated Spankardy day. Since then we’ve been trying to do it. Dinner has been too late. But last night, the planets aligned (did you see Mars next to the moon last night?) and we had time for Spankardy.

Of course, Jeopardy is in reruns right now and always is on Saturdays anyway. There’s always the chance that we’ll hit a show we remember and Lion will know more answers. There’s also always a chance that Lion will know a lot about the categories on any given show. He sees opera and classical music and he’s very happy. I groan. I don’t remember specific categories from last night but I don’t think there were any that Lion was particularly fond of. It was a good cross section of things he’d know and things he’d just take a swat for. In the end, (no pun intended) he wound up with some combination of incorrect answers and no answers totaling 34. This was before Final Jeopardy.

We never discussed how the points would work for Daily Doubles or Final Jeopardy. Can Lion bet points? Could this be a way for him to gain the upper cheek? If there’s a Daily Double in an opera category, he could be down to zero again with a correct answer. Talk about confusing rules. Anyway, since we didn’t decide beforehand, I decided for myself. Once the Final Jeopardy category is revealed, we like to come up with an answer before we see the question. The first time we hit the nail on the head it was amazing. We were shocked. So I decided if Lion guessed the answer before seeing the question, I’d wipe the slate clean. Yes, this was even after seeing that the category was opera or famous classical something-or-other. He did get the answer right, but not before he saw the question. The 34 swats stood.

That’s not a lot of swats by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t do full punishment swats. It wasn’t really punishment. I did make sure those 34 swats were evenly distributed across both cheeks. I probably didn’t need to. I just wanted to be fair. The left cheek might get jealous if the right cheek got fewer swats. Or maybe even if it got more swats. You never know. So I was fair and equitable. And it was over very quickly. I don’t think we’re even warmed up in 34 swats. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to root for harder categories next time.