Because sometimes, doing the wrong thing is actually the right thing to do.

My new slow cooker approach to cooking has thus far made a huge difference to both my workload and my stress. Be it for beef ragu to go with pasta or pulled pork to go with salad, the prep is minimal, the pot is contained, and most of the washing up is now done before my husband gets home. 

And I feel better for that, “cleaner” in a way. Functioning little systems really do make life easier. 

Saturday was a busy day of gardening for me. With more than 50 plug plants to pot up and more than 150 litres of bark chippings to spread about, I knew that it was no small task. The heatwave doesn’t help – I’d have much preferred to do it before temperatures reached the thirties, but I didn’t have the plants to plant back then. 

Not ten minutes into starting my work in the front garden, my neighbour and his daughter step outside. She abandons her father and wants to help me instead. 

“Do you mind?” He asks. I laugh at the situation before me.

“Not at all,” I reply. 

“I guess I got a minion too,” I tease. Well, my neighbour calls all of the people who work for him his “minions”, even Master Levi.

He hangs around some while I work, though I pay it no mind.  

“Turn your rake the other way up,” he says, watching me rake the bark chippings. Sure enough, they do blend in easier when I use the back of the rake. When I look up at him, he’s grinning from behind his water bottle. 

So it’s going to be another one of those days. 

Work done in the front garden, we move to the back, and though my neighbour works on his side of the garden, his daughter comes onto mine. Again, I don’t mind it one bit: she’s a smart, thoughtful, hardworking young lady. 

I tried to set up the parasol to give us some shade, though I’m not tall enough to remove the cover without the tool. Seeing me struggle, my neighbour comes over and casually feeds the cover off the parasol. 

“Don’t you dare!” I laugh. “Don’t-“

“All done!” he says, he’s got that grin about him again. I shake my head at him. 

I did wind up mentioning Strange Magic to him, though for his daughter’s enjoyment rather than his own. I admitted that I personally have a love-hate relationship with the movie. 

“Why?” he asks. I sigh.

“Because,” I say. “Because” is about as much as I can manage. Because I too had promised myself that I’d never fall in love again, and that’s probably about the most “Marianne” thing a woman could do. 

I felt called out, and I don’t like that one bit.

We both carry on working in silence and he gets his wacker plate from the shed. When and why he got it I don’t know, but that’s another matter. 

He uses it for a while, then calls me over and shows me it in action. As it pummels the ground, he leans close to me and murmurs. 

“My vibrator is better than yours.”

I’m surprised, but I’m not about to be beaten that easily. 

“Nah, it’s not powerful enough,” I reply with a smirk. He looks at me, surprised. 

“What?! Nah, don’t do that to me,” he says, “my head is going now!”. I laugh. 

“What was it you said, about not starting things you can’t finish?” I tease. He’s grinning again. 

But talking of “winning”, Saturday evening I had a comment on my last diary entry from a commenter who accused us all of playing “silly games” and “pointscoring” in our relationships, while the “real issues” go unresolved. 

I was shocked, a little hurt and rather confused. What issues?

I was so confused that I even raised it with Master Levi and Mister Valkyries, because if we had an “unresolved issue” then I wanted it resolved. None of us felt we had any “unresolved issues” – we have anxieties and frustrations sometimes, sure, that’s true of any relationship, but we have nothing that can’t or hasn’t already been resolved. Actually, I can say with my hand on my heart that I’m the happiest I’ve been in recent years, and I think that probably goes for all three of us.

So maybe some people do have issues in their relationships, but it’s certainly not us. Though I suppose, military banter can look like real psychological warfare if you haven’t seen the tender love and mutual respect that lies beneath it.

Sunday morning, I’m tired from the day before. I’m also a little sore after my rake splintered and I’d been poking at my finger all evening, trying to get the piece of wood out. 

Valkyries calls it a “war wound”. Admittedly, I couldn’t help but think of him when I was poking at it – I just knew he’d want to take good care of his Cadet.

Valkyries also told me to “keep up the good fight”, and it reminds me of a video I used to watch occasionally. That I won’t link here, because it would be unwise to expose my training methods 😉

But it was simple enough: I’d told myself that if I could resist it, then I could resist anything Domkind threw at me. Hypnotic states and trances would never work on me — I was now trained for this very scenario.

If Domkind had plans for their capture of me, then I would hone my resistance to their games, and wouldn’t that be fun? 

I asked Valkyries more broadly if, if Domkind wanted me to relax, should I relax? Wouldn’t my obedience be akin to my surrender? 

Valkyries said that it’s “situational”, and I agreed. But then my mind went one stage further: is my disobedience then obedience by proxy? 

Valkyries suggests it needs “further testing and exploration” and I shiver involuntarily. He knows what that wording does to me, the ass! 

Valkyries asks if it could just be called being a brat, and I argue that “brat” has negative connotations. Valkyries says that it doesn’t in his mind and I, ever the curious, respond with a simple “oh?”. Valkyries points out that that’s exactly what an 18+ brat would say. 

And so it goes with us. It’s how we work. It’s why we work. 

I’m back out in the garden Sunday afternoon, back to doing what I didn’t get done the day before. While I’m out, I couldn’t help but note the tone of the music my neighbour plays: love songs, or yearning songs.

I like a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, but holy cow! At this rate, it won’t be my sugar intake that causes diabetes — it will be the sweetness that gets pumped over the garden fence!

But it makes me wonder about that which lies between us. I mean, at one time of day we really were sworn enemies (well he did give me the run around over some tenancy-related matters!). But now? Now the man can’t not talk to me whenever he sees me. And for long periods of time at that. 

We’re both hopeless romantics; we both wear our hearts on our sleeves, and I think we’ve both realised that about the other. I’ve known it, maybe ever since the time the three of us watched Dirty Dancing together. That little look in my peripheral vision? Oh yes, Eyes sees everything.

But we’re both afraid of being hurt in relationships as well, so I think that makes us both too afraid to admit or explore what might otherwise be there.    

Of course, it only took me overhearing him berate his “minions” for me to remember exactly why I wasn’t attracted to him. Berating your underdogs is not a sign of strength; it’s sign of weakness. And yes, it also does little to impress me.

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Until next time!

Stay safe & have fun,

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If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re now emotionally invested. Go ahead and worship me properly. My writing chocolate won’t buy itself, you know? 😉