On Fridays, I work half days. At some point in our emails, one of us usually asks about lunch. Sometimes I pick something up. Sometimes we eat what we have in the house. Sometimes we plan to go out together. Yesterday, I was bringing food home. There were a few packages at the door. Once I open the door, there’s usually a psycho dog on the other side. Plus, this time, I had food.

Sometimes I can keep the psycho dog inside while I get the packages in. Not yesterday. She took off out the front door. She hasn’t run far yet, but there’s always that first time. I got the packages in while yelling for her to come in. I heard Lion say something from the bedroom, but I thought he was calling the dog. So I’m yelling and trying to get the dog in. And Lion is saying something. Again, I think he’s calling the dog.

Suddenly, he screams my name. Now I’m stuck between catching the dog and helping Lion with whatever he’s screaming about. I chose Lion. He wanted to say hello. He wondered why I hadn’t come in to say hello. I told him the dog was outside. He wondered why that was a problem. He thought she was out the back door. Why would I care if she was out the back door?

I finally wrangled the dog and got our food on a tray to bring into the bedroom. I asked Lion why he would scream like that just because I hadn’t said hello. He said I always say hello, so he wondered what was going on.

Initially, I was upset because he didn’t think I would say hello if I could. With all my yelling at the dog, couldn’t he surmise there was a problem? Have I ever ignored him like that without having a good reason? I usually even leave groceries on the counter so I can say hello before I put things away. Later on, I was upset because we just had this discussion last week. Why was he yelling from another room? This time he heard me yelling at the dog. He didn’t even sit up in bed. It’s so frustrating.

Lion said his buns were still a little sore last night. I think they’ll be a lot sorer tonight. At least he’ll be yelling for a reason.

I am sitting here at boring work trying my hardest to stay awake. My officemate’s last day was Friday. She refuses to get vaccinated so, per Washington state mandate, she had to leave. It’s quiet and lonely. My boss is covering another location because one of the workers decided to ghost us last week. How do you just walk off a job? Something horrendous would have to happen for me to do that.

I guess we had a good weekend. I got stuff done that has been waiting for me to get around to doing. I made it to Costco. I replaced the water filters. I waxed the Lion. I didn’t get to laundry, but I can do a load or two tonight. I got my Lion all hot and bothered while I was oiling him up to get the remnants of wax off him. He wasn’t sure he’d be ready for Lion riding last night. I don’t think he was but having an oily erection was a good start.

We haven’t really been doing anything lately. It’s usually like this a day or two after an orgasm, but we’re four or five days out now. Lion’s tummy was bothering him a few nights. I’ve been sort of tired. It has been a fairly demanding few weeks. I need a day off. If I could just vegetate in front of a fireplace with some music playing in the background, it would be so nice. Maybe even sitting on a deck somewhere overlooking a lake or stream. Something calm. No dog jumping. No chores needing my attention. No flooded basement. Ah, dreams.

Maybe tonight I’ll snuggle with Lion and see if that gets us anywhere. No pressure. If he’s not feeling well or if I don’t manage to wake up enough by then, we’ll just snuggle. It’s nice being close under the covers no matter what we do or don’t do.

When I cleaned out the pantry so I could wax Lion yesterday, I moved the spanking bench into the hallway. Should that be a hint to him? It’s been a while since I’ve dragged it out for its intended purpose. Maybe I need to use it tonight. I’m not aware of Lion interrupting me or annoying me. Of course, so much has been annoying me lately, I may be desensitized. Lion thinks I was annoyed when we were doing the water filters. He asked a question. I answered. Then he asked the same question again. I raised my voice when I answered again. He told me to calm down. I wasn’t not calm. I was just answering a question again in a louder voice so he could hear me if he’d missed it the first time. Sometimes he doesn’t hear me. Sometimes he hears me but he hasn’t listened. That’s when it becomes annoying.

kiss I do it to him too. He’ll say something and I say “OK” and he thinks it’s a yes when it’s just an acknowledgement that I’ve heard him. If I don’t respond, he thinks I haven’t heard him and he repeats himself. If I then raise my voice and say “OK” louder, he thinks I’m yelling at him. Either we both need hearing aids or we just need to work on our responses. It gets tedious to say, “I heard you and I’m thinking about it.” Maybe we need walkie talkie lingo like “copy” or “10-4”. Maybe we need walkie talkies. We have Alexa, but then you have to drop in on a certain room which means you have to know where the other person is. Lion frequently comes looking for me because he doesn’t know where I am. It’s hard to get lost in a small house, but he thinks I can I guess. Anyway, it would be helpful if you could just say, “Alexa, tell him I heard him.”

When Lion told me it was punishment day on Saturday, apparently, I wasn’t “grateful” for the reminder. He said I sounded bored when I thanked him. I was in the middle of something, so, at the very least, I was distracted. I did respond. Sometimes he says I don’t acknowledge him at all.

This morning, he told me it was punishment day. I made sure to give him my full attention, and I told him he hadn’t gotten himself in trouble. I also told him he was a good boy. From time to time, he tells me I don’t tell him he’s a good boy very often either. For the record, I don’t tell him he’s a bad boy very often either. I guess those two phrases still sound ridiculous to me. It’s like I’m talking to the dog. But I try to remember to do it sometimes because I know Lion likes the pageantry of it all. [Lion — In some ways talking to her lion is the same as talking to the dog.]

Yesterday, I said Lion shouldn’t feel guilty when I do things for him. I wasn’t ruling anything in or out. Apparently, I need to work on things (a lot of things) like the pageantry aspect. It’s been difficult for me to tell him why I’m spanking or even ask him why he’s being punished. Why is that so hard? Again, it’s like I’m talking to the dog. “Bad dog! Why did you barf on the rug?” But I will make an extra effort to tell him he’s a good dog; I mean good boy.

I guess I could even tell him he’s been good when I try to get him hard, and it doesn’t work. He’s trying. It’s not like he’s willfully not getting hard. Maybe if I praise him for trying, he’d be able to get there the next time. I don’t know. Just thinking. [Lion — That’s a good idea! It’s less pageantry than feedback.]

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.