NOT a salve for sore butts

I have been making hot sauce today.  We like "Tabasco" sauce but it's expensive at $2.40 a small bottle so I make our own.

I buy a handful of small chili peppers ( called harang here), break off the stalks and chop them up a bit.  Put them in about 300 ml water and simmer for 30 minutes.  Add more water to about 100 ml if there is less than that left after boiling.

I then put them in the blender and run for about 5 seconds, then force the result through a fine mesh coffee strainer.  Discard what won't go through.  Add vinegar enough to double the amount of filtrate, add 1/4 tsp salt and mix.  Pour into capped jar and keep in refrigerator.

The resulting product is EXTREMELY potent.  Do not let it near your eyes, or any other sensitive membrane such as prick or cunt. Wash your hands carefully with soap after finishing.  Avoid rubbing your eyes.  I guess it could be applied to the skin post- or even pre-spanking to intensify and prolong sting, but I take no responsibility for the reactions!  Use only microscopic amounts for any purpose.  For food, we just dip a teaspoon in, pull it out and rub the bottom on the fishcake or whatever.

Reading the Story of O

I read on someone's blog this afternoon that one of her training tasks was to re-read "The Story of O".  This is not something I would want any sub or wife of mine to read.  It's a story of abuse, abandonment and desolation and has little literary value, and is an example of how NOT to live, how NOT to care for someone.  I certainly would not ask my wife to read it, and if I did and she started, I think she would soon give it up, probably wondering why on earth I suggested it.

If I were to give someone a reading task, it would be a book with broad human values depicted.  Depending on the woman and her educational level, I might choose Anne of Green Gables,  The Secret Garden,  Sense and Sensibility,  The Alchemist,  Doctor Zhivago,  Silas Marner,  Kim, Great Expectations,  even Madame Bovary or Jane Eyre.

The reason these classics are still widely read is that they deal fairly with universal human doings and feelings.  Many of them I have read to my son (I have read to Claude more than 40 substantial books and uncounted short stories, fairy stories etc since he was 4 years old) and as a result he has a very wide vocabulary and an acquaintance with a little of the worlds great literature.  This is the kind of reading I would ask a sub to do, because I know that after she has finished such a book, she will be wiser, and perhaps happier.

What would be the recommendations of others here?

Rough, angry speech to our son

I have a problem with my wife's rough speech.  So often when she talks to our son, she speaks roughly and makes it into scolding or some sort of confrontation.  Claude often doesn't answer her until she has spoken several times, getting angrier each time, and this makes it worse.  The more she shouts and gets angry, the less he wants to respond.  I really don't like this, never in my own childhood was there any shouting or rough speech, I don't want it in my house now, but I don't know how to prevent it.  I think probably my wife experienced it at home with her parents.  She seems to find it quite normal.

There is another, related problem, too: when she speaks to Claude, Rose uses her own dialect, which Claude understands and speaks fluently but I do not, and I have not been capable of learning it, or even hearing it enough to distinguish the words. I don't like her having an argument with Claude in my hearing in a language I don't understand, and I have told Rose this several times but she takes no notice.   My spirits sink low if I hear this rough speech with Claude starting.  She does speak English to me, but is not fully comfortable with it, I have to pick my words carefully if I want to make sure she is understanding me.

I am not a dominant man and tend to withdraw if things are not going right between us.  

Any useful suggestions?

Skipping the funeral

Yesterday I typed out the Housework schedule I mentioned in a post recently.  Earlier, I had told Rose that I wanted to get back to to it.  She didn't jump for joy.  Or, in fact, make any noticeable response.  This is quite in character.

Right now she and Claude have gone to a funeral.  I have not personally ever spoken to the deceased, so I stayed at home as funerals here mean walking a long way and spending much time with people one hardly knows - at least for me they do.

Yesterday I sat at my piano as I had the urge to play one or two of Bach's chorales.  I wanted to hear "Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele" (Adorn yourself, dear Soul).  When I started playing it, tears sprang into my eyes and my fingers made mistakes.

How is that music can affect us? A succession of sounds only: or is it, perhaps, more than that?

The paradox of me/not me

What we call reality is a strange business.  How can we know it?  Everything we see or perceive in any way is within us, yet if I can perceive something, I know that it is not me. I am doing the perceiving and cannot be perceived.  I am a little piece of perceivingness, like a little window.  Everything I can know about "reality", including its very existence, is within me, yet is not me.  I have no evidence that there  is anything separate from me, yet nothing I perceive can be me because I am the one doing the perceiving.  It's a paradox!

Just turn this over in your mind, please, and tell me what you experience about it.

P.S.  Perhaps I am not a "little piece" of perceivingness, but actually I am just perceivingness restricting its view?

The seamless universe

In a recent comment, Steel Rose said:  "The synthesis of body, mind and soul is the ultimate goal, yes?"

I am not sure about the synthesis of body, mind and soul.  Perhaps the distinction between these three is entirely artificial, they are already one and we have divided them to make things more interesting?

In this universe everything is made of energy.  Even solid matter is made of particles which themselves are simply packets of energy.  There seem to be different types of energy and no-one has to my knowledge yet sorted out the difference between, for example, Chi and electromagnetic fields.  Then there is the energy of the Zero Point Field.  Whatever the truth about this may be, it doesn't seem likely that the universe is split into several unrelated fields.

What do others think about this?