Rock Bottom

So I thought that my depression was bad before... I thought the downward spiral was complete.

Then I realized that I wrote 1,230 all about removing my fake nails.

Then I had to spend Friday cocooned in my bed pretending that I didn't write 1,230 words about fake nails.

Then I worked all weekend and hit the first of what I'm sure will be many 60 hour weeks.

Then I baked 150 lemon almond cookies, a gross of brownies, 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies, 2 dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and 5lbs of almond roca.

Then I spent Monday coming down from the contact high from all of the sugar.

And now I'm here, recovering like a junkie going through some sort of weird withdrawal.

Be patient with me Dear Readers... I promise you something actually exciting will happen to me eventually.

Declawed

For the last year and a half I have been ferocious... indestructible... gorgeous but elegant... fierce but classy...

I am, of course, talking about my nails.

Deep, dark confession time Dear Readers - my nails were fake.

let's not delve in to the psychological ramifications of the above description and identity being tied to an artificial component of my body.  We'll just gloss over that, skip the sociological rant about patriarchal society and body image and women and blah, blah blazzzzzzz..zzzzzzz.zzzzzz

I've never been able to grow my natural nails out very long because they're rather weak, and I wanted long, strong nails.  If I paid someone every month, I could get them. So I did.

When I moved downtown though, I made a startling discovery.

First, a bit of a lesson on fake nails:

Out in the 'burbs, biogel nails are all the rage... these nails use a UV hardened, self leveling gel instead of the acrylic powder/acetone combination of the fake nails of days gone by.  It's supposedly better for your nails, but I suspect the real benefit is for the nail techs who no longer need to inhale the fumes and dust associated with acrylics.  The other bit of marketing genius, is that biogel comes in a rainbow of colours, and you can remove nailpolish from it without damaging the (fake) nail underneath.  With acrylics, nail polish remover of any sort will melt them.  This means that you can walk in, get a French tip manicure (or pink or green or teal or whatever colour you want) that won't chip/fade/etc and in the month between maintenance appointments you can paint over them with whatever nail polish you have, then remove it to reveal the colour underneath.  Brilliant!

Now that I'm done selling you on biogels, let me tell you about my big discovery:

Downtown hasn't gotten on the biogel bandwagon.  

When I moved in with LD ages and ages ago, I started looking for a nail salon downtown who I could go to for upkeep.  Who wants to drive out to the 'burbs just to get your nails done?  I tapped in to my twitter, my facebook, to yelp and various other communities to no avail.  No one knew of a salon that did the colour biogel.

I took to wandering the streets.  I went to the salons that were closest to LDs place and found a couple that could do biogel, but not the coloured stuff.  Acrylics were their big push though and they tried to tell me how awful biogel was. 

I tried a couple of them, getting the regular biogel done and then coloured with nail polish.  All did an abysmal job... one set were all bumpy (how do you make something uneven that's self leveling?!)... another started to chip and break and lift off within a week of getting them done...  

A couple of others apparently did regular biogel (not colour) but had terrible reviews all over the internet. I gave those a wide berth - who wants to risk poorly sterilized tools and bad service?  

I found one place that had the coloured stuff, but don't normally do fake nails of any sort and did everything by hand.  I tried them once and decided that I just didn't have the patience to spend 4 hours getting my mani/pedi done.

After that experience I went back to the 'burbs for my upkeep.  This ends up taking up an entire weekend day by the time I drive out there, get my nails done, and drive back.  Totally not worth it long term.

When I moved downtown,  I said to myself "I'm going to be down here for at least 6 months.  I am NOT driving out to get my nails done" ...

So I continued with my research, looking for nail places that were close to my new place, one again coming up blank for salons that did biogel (let alone colour biogel).  In my research though, I found this fantastic! revolutionary! incredible! product by OPI called Axxium ... it's... UV hardened gel nail polish.

Basically colour biogel for natural nails. All of the benefits of biogel (won't chip/fade/etc, adds some strength to your nails, UV hardened so you walk out the door with perfectly dry nails that you can't smudge), without the downside of fake nails (the adhesives and fumes and filing and leaching of nutrients from your nails).

I was left with the choice of either continuing to trek out to the 'burbs to get my nails done once a month (and then back out if/when anything broke, etc) or I taking off the tips and switching over to Axxium (of which I found 3 salons offering the service nearby).  Coupled with the knowledge that even though the biogel is better for you, it's still not good and weakens your nails and potentially leaches bad chemichals in to you and all sorts of other hippy shit that I don't actually believe but am using as additional justification for my decision...

I declawed myself.

Going to one of the salons that had previously done a shit job on maintenance, I asked them to remove the tips.

Ok, so maybe that was a mistake... I'm pretty certain I could have done a better job myself.

Left with what could generously be described as 'bloody stumps' I hightailed it over to one of the salons that does the Axxium.  One look at my hands had all of the girls cooing and sympathizing over how awful they look and how much they must hurt, etc.  Then came the prognosis that what was left of my nails were too weak and damaged to hold the Axxium, and that I'd need some time to heal first.

At this point, I have to say though that the ladies at the 'real' salon were incredible and by the time I left there you wouldn't recognize my hands as the ones I brought in to them.  They worked magic with what was given to them, and I've already booked my next appointment with them.

This, Dear Readers, is how I've ended up declawed.  My natural nails are cut down to the nail bed, and so soft and weak that I am unable to even scratch an itch effectively.  My cuticles are still healing from the rough treatment from the tech who removed my tips.  I'm dosing my nails with strengthener every day, and cutting/filing them down as they grow to get rid of the damaged parts. I'm hoping that by my next appointment at the end of the month that a good portion of the most damaged bits will have grown out.

I will admit, that I quickly regretted removing the tips.  Despite knowing that it's really "better" not to have them, going from long, strong, beautifully manicured nails to being unable to properly operate the clasps on my necklaces is taking quite a bit of adjustment.  If it weren't for the fact that my nails are too weak and damaged to even put new tips on, I might have gone right back out to the 'burbs and asked my regular nail girls to make me whole again.

So Dear Readers, if you see me over the next few months, please do me a favour and don't look at my hands.  I'm spending a lot of time hiding them these days.

My Downtown Love Nest

I believe I briefly mentioned this in my catch-up post, but I have moved out of the HOIR. We determined conclusively that something in the house and/or neighbourhood was causing Alastair and I quickly had to find myself a new place to live.

I decided that if I had to leave my white picket fence suburban paradise, I wanted to live right downtown - within walking distance to work if possible.

Lo and Behold, I found a place with not TOO much difficulty.  It's a little small, and a little expensive, but I figured it would work just fine as a temporary abode.

I moved in November 15th, and am slowly settling in.  I'm almost there!  In the past month though, I've noticed a number of ... oddities... that make me alternately want to weep or laugh:

• None of the electrical outlets are straight... they're all just a little big crooked.  
• The entire place is tiled... but different tiles.  The tile on the floor, the bathroom floor, the shower, the kitchen backsplash, and the front hallways are all different.
• Where the kitchen backsplash tiles had to be cut, they were not done so cleanly - in some cases broken pieces have been mosaic-ed in to place
• Painting touchups have been done to the white walls with a slightly different shade of white paint
• The sole closet has two bars running perpendicular to the sliding door, not parallel
• There is a large fridge with ice and water dispenser... that is not hooked up to the water supply
• The ceiling in the shower is actually lower than the water supply for the shower, so there is a small hole cut in the ceiling to screw in the shower head
• The shower, which is a shower only - no tub, has a tap/spout system, and is positioned in such a way that it's impossible to turn the water on without getting soaked in cold water
• Of the three sets of taps in the apartment, not one is the same.  The kitchen has a traditional set up (hot on the left, labelled as such).  The bathroom sink is backwards (hot on the right, labelled as such).  The shower is fucked up (hot on the left, but labelled as being on the right).
• Speaking of water - my apartment is part of a duplex and in total there are 4 or 5 units, so there are a number of water heaters.  Mine is shared with the laundry room for the basement units, so every time my neighbour does laundry, I have no hot water.

This is just what I've noticed in the last month... I'm sure as I continue my stay here, I will discover new and exciting 'quirks' to share with you all.

Do any of you have any great 'bad apartment' stories to share?

My Body is an Enigma

This past Friday I was putzing around my little apartment and I banged my hand on my desk.  It wasn't very hard, more of a momentary "ow" moment before it was forgotten.

Saturday I had a bruise the size of a nickel.

You're probably wondering why I'm relating such boring, humdrum minutiae, but just keep this thought in the back of your mind for me.

Saturday was the official celebration of the one year anniversary of myself and my Master.  I came over Saturday evening and cooked a lovely dinner, and then LD brought out the toybags and a very sturdy armchair.

Imagine if you will, a sturdy wooden chair with arms, and myself tied quite securely to it.  Shoulders braced against the back of the chair, forearms resting and tied parallel to the arm rests, legs tied at the knee to the bottom of the arm rest.  Rope across my back immobilizing me.

And then the beating began.  Hard and fast, it did not take long for the first tears to fall.  Screaming commenced shortly afterwards. With very little wiggle room, there was nowhere for me to go, and Master was relentless.  With a hand over my mouth to muffle my screams, He soon progressed to gagging me with His cock, and then finally with a towel in order to change angles.  Whippy rope floggers, our bamboo stick (I refuse to call it a cane, it's aprox an inch in diameter), His fist, the dragontail whip... all met my flesh intimately - the only part of me that was safe, where those that were inaccessible thanks to the chair.  The hard, wooden chair which ground in to my shins and shoulders and knees with every attempt to writhe in pain.  Blow after relentless blow all bled together in to an endless sea of pain.

Eventually Master accidentally hit my Christina with the tip of the dragon tail, not once, but twice... I had to tap out.  I have never felt like more of a failure in my life.

Untied, I was weak and shaky - in shock from endorphins and pain and all of those wonderful things.  Plus I had managed to lose the circulation in my calves and feet, and had been immobilized for... I don't know how long actually.  Master got me in to bed where I promptly could not stop crying for a myriad of reasons, none of which I think I was capable of articulating clearly.  Master stayed with me, cuddled close, and spoke soft pretty words to me while he warmed me up and brought me water and tissues.  Eventually I slipped off in to slumber.

The next morning I woke up stiff and sore and tender.  My shins, my shoulders and my ass were all painful just to walk around - let's not even think of sitting down or putting pressure on any of these spots.

However.

Three days later... still tender... but no bruises.

At this point, Dear Readers, I invite you to remember my first story, and share a hearty "WHAT THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL?!" with me.

Well Then...

Let's see if I can get back in to the habit of updating every morning, yeah?

The other day, I received an email from a stranger... it read

In this age of openness, authenticity, and social networking, I am amazed at the people and the lives I can discover.  You happen to be a favourite of mine for your clarity of thought, your range of emotions - intimate and vulnerable, and the enlightenment that you bring to many topics including the poly and BD worlds.  Most of the time, I marvel at your bravery for being some open but I suspect you are not a heroine in any way - just a human being living life to its fullest - bad, good, or indifferent.  Are there moments of clarity or peace when you can reflect on how life is different from what you imagined it to be?  It does sound like you never look back but are there any situations where you would have liked a redo?  I do applaud you and wish for you much fulfillment in your job search, your relationships, and your beautiful soul.

I am always shocked to find that people I do not know are reading blog, let alone enjoying it.  In all honesty I write this blog mostly for myself and my Master, as a way to communicate my thoughts and emotions and headspace on a variety of topics.  If it is an enjoyable read, or funny... well that's just a bonus, and just reflects my own self-deprecating sense of humour.  As I mentioned in the last post I made, however long ago that was when I told myself I'd get back in to blogging regularly ad the didn't, this has been a rough time for me and the last thing I really wanted to do was share my pain with the world.  I bundled it tightly inside of me, curled around it protectively in the fetal position and refused to let go.  I don't know what depression is like for other people, because we are all special unique snowflakes, but for myself... the more depressed I become, the more I cling to it.  It becomes this horrible self-fulfilling downward spiral.  If someone could derive power from my depression we would create the ultimate perpetual motion machine.

I digress.

Through the haze of this self-isolation I received this piece of mail.  It was like a wake up call - reminding me that there are other people out there... a whole world outside of my head, and that I have millions of connections to it - some known and some unknown. It became a catalyst for my last blog post, jolting me a step forward out of my cave to rejoin the world at large.

I have much to over-share with you, Dear Readers, and I hope that I can get back in to the habit of flaunting the most intimate details of my life and flinging them in to the far reaches of the interwebs.  Hopefully I won't clog the tubes with my filth.

I'm BACK ... sort of

Has it really been a month Dear Readers? What a god-awful 30(ish) days it's been.

I'm going through some profound personal stress, basically in all areas of my life:

1. Alastair has been confirmed as a permanent resident of The HOIR. Last weekend I moved out of my house and in to a basement apartment downtown until we can sell/purchase a house
2. I found a job... sort of... was given a verbal offer for perm/full-time dream job starting in January, and freelance until then. Given the uncertain nature of the ad world, my freelance position has become closer to part-time hours at the moment, which is a little stressful. I also still don't have an offer in writing for the Jan switch-over, so I'm still trying to job search at the same time.
3. Other areas of my personal life haven't been all sunshine and roses either, but that's all I'm going to say on this topic... I don't feel like discussing it publicly yet.

Sooooo... I'm going to try and start posting again, and I'll try to keep the angst to a minimum... but I can't promise anything.

Dying

ZOMG you guys...  absolutely nothing had happened in my life... LD and I both started feeling unwell on Friday (well, ok, I started to get sick on Thursday) and so as a result we spend Friday night curled up on the couch watching The Princess Bride instead of dressed up in our Fetish Finery getting all Freaky...

The rest of the long weekend was pretty uneventful, and nothing exciting continues to happen.

Except I got all of my hair cut off yesterday, I guess that's kind of exciting...  it's now just above chin length, and I've got some cute little bangs to go with it.  I'm still getting used to it.

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to down some hot lemon and dayquil and take a nap...