Telehealth experience

I did something different this morning. I had my first telehealth experience. My company offers EQ Care as part of its health benefits plan.

For a while, I have not been thrilled with the health care that I've been receiving from my doctor. We have a good rapport. I have liked doing phone calls with her during the pandemic. I don't have to wait at the doctors office for at least two hours.

I don't like her support staff. Everything from telling me to get my health card renewed when the province of Ontario says that it's okay to have an expired one during a pandemic, to another saying that I have to come in for my appointment no matter what, has rubbed me the wrong way.

The catch to doing EQ Care is that you do need your camera turned on. It works rather well through a browser on my phone. I can also download the app.

I had a great experience. I got my prescription renewed and it got sent to my regular pharmacy. A person from my pharmacy called me to say that it would be ready whenever I was free to drop by. Yay!

Friday and second shot side effects

One more workday to go. Yay!

Friends and colleagues who have received their second vaccination shot seem to have mixed side effects Some experience a sore arm. Others have chills, aches, and fatigue.

I am not sure what will happen with me. In general, my track record seems to be positive after a vaccination shot. It's so unpredictable with the COVID-19 ones that I don't know for sure.

I am also doing a mix of vaccines. We'll see how all that goes.

Bittersweet week

My vacation has started. It has been a bittersweet week.

I will write more about a positive recognition that I got on Friday. I'm simply exhausted right now.

Sleep, work, and time

I didn't sleep well last night. I woke up a few times during the night, so I felt tired by the time that I needed to get up.

I've received about 67% of content delivered to me at work. They are essentially three large chunks of information. I got the first one done yesterday. I suspect that the other two chunks will be larger, but it's hard to gauge.

My workplace is closed till June 1 know. I have a feeling that this deadline will be extended for a while.

There are some positives to staying at home. I don't spend as much. I also enjoy cooking meals and having more time to myself.

Here's hoping that I sleep better tonight.

My childhood friend has COVID-19

Two days ago, I found out that a friend whom I've known since we were both four years old, has COVID-19. Ugh!

She works as a manager at a liquor store, which remains open through this pandemic. She lost her sense of taste and smell last Monday. She got a test done and it came back positive.

She describes having it as if I truck had run over her. She is at home, resting and self-isolating. Her daughter is a newly minted nurse. It must be highly stressful for both of them.

My friend is upbeat under the circumstances. She is achy and tired, though. She also doesn't wish this virus on her worst enemy.

It's scary that certain provinces here want to relax certain policies. On Saturday, Ontario was allowed to have nurseries and garden centres open. All I saw were lineups of folks. As much as I am all for having a distraction and a gardening hobby, I simply hope that there are measures in place at these centres as there are at grocery stores. The last thing we want is another spike in the number of Canadians with COVID-19.

Stay safe and healthy, everyone. This virus is scary.

Finding items to use at home and making tons of iced tea

One more workday before the weekend. I am looking forward to it.

My doing spring cleaning and reorganizing various parts of my home has made me find items that I should use more often. I am using a heart-shaped bar soap, liquid soap, and a bath sponge in a gift box that I had never opened until now. They are all nice.

I am a tea drinker. Being at home, I drink a lot of iced tea these days. When I was in the office, it was always hot tea.

I love my tea collection. I bought a ton of tea when I went to London, UK and Istanbul, Turkey several years ago. I also have various tea varieties that I have bought locally.

There are some positives working and staying at home. Naturally, I miss people and being able to move around without distancing myself from others.

Positivity snacks and a jerk who got what he deserved

Some places in the States do not ship to Canada. Recently, I contributed my thoughts about positivity on a company's Instagram account. This company ended up sending me a huge box of snacks as a gift. It was an extremely generous gesture.

Sadly, this place doesn't ship to Canada. However, I have a way to have items shipped up here through a shipping service.

There is one person at this shipping place who has been a pain to deal with. The first time I dealt with him, he asked for my ID. I was fine and asked if I needed to present it all the time, as none of the other staff members had asked me for it. He said no and that it was a one-time thing.

I dropped by a month later and he asked for ID. I reminded him that last time, he said it was a one-time thing. He made up a reason on-the-fly by saying that he will stop asking until he knows me. Um, I have been dealing with your business for four years. I'm a regular. You happen to be new and are making rules up as you go.

The third time I had to deal with him, he stopped asking me for my ID. Yay! The jerk, however, said my last name wrong. It's not a difficult last name or word to pronounce. I happily corrected him, staring sternly at hime. He actually apologized for a change.

On Saturday, I went in to pick up my box of snacks. This jerk was dealing with another customer who was yelling at him and dropped the f-word several times. I grinned. What goes around, comes around.

Luckily, I dealt with his female counterpart who was respectful and nice. She recognized me as a regular. I got my shipment, said thanks, wished her a good day, and left.

It helps to be kind to folks. If you're a jerk, there will be consequences to your attitude and behaviour.

Electric and sporty cars

On Tuesday, I had to take an early morning teleconference, so I worked from home for most of the morning. I then left to pick up my guy at work for lunch.

I got there and waited. I didn't see my guy at all. I decided to text him when he was running twenty minutes late. He apologized and said that he would be downstairs soon.

While I was waiting in the parking lot, I noticed that there was a nervous guy in a Hyundai Ioniq car. He kept looking at the two cars that were parked in the charging spots. He took a look at the meters, took photos, texted on his phone, and more. 

He then moved his car in front of both cars. He went inside the office and came back out. He then moved his car.

I then saw my former boss with a colleague get into his Volvo electric car and pull out. I thought that perhaps the nervous guy was running out of juice and needed to charge his car. Nope, he pulled into the upstairs parking lot. Huh?

I was exhausted analyzing the whole situation. I went into the office to use the women's washroom for a change of scenery.

I walked over to my car. My guy was following suit.

"I'm so sorry," he said again.
"It's okay," I replied, as we both got into my car.
"Everything went wrong with the software, so I was trying to fix it," he noted.
"It's okay. You expect imperfections when you teach a new course," I said, squeezing his hand.
"I know," he said, smiling at me.

I drove us over to our Chinese restaurant. The ice storm did quite a number on it. The restaurant was still closed. We went back to the Afghani restaurant for lunch. Once again, I got salad dressing with dairy on my salad when I said that I didn't want it. Ugh!

It was a nice lunch chatting. My guy showed me a purple sportscar that he likes.

"Hey, it's purple," I noted.
"It is. I like it," he admitted.
"I like it, too. If you get it, you'll have to let me drive it. You'd be in my good books," I teased.
"We'll see," he said.
"That's a positive sign. Normally, you give me a firm no. I didn't get that. You're making progress!" I exclaimed.
"Maybe. We'll see," he smiled.

I enjoy teasing him about having me drive his car, even though he doesn't have this purple one. He knows it, too.

Course is done and all is well

I completed the second part of my refresher course on Tuesday. It was shorter than I had anticipated. Then again, doing a nearly four-hour course over two days is a decent length.

I have received positive, favourable feedback. I am thankful and pleased.

It's a good thing that I am working from home on Wednesday. I plan on going into productive mode. I am banning myself from our instant messaging tool. It is such a distraction.

B is for being me #AtoZchallenge

I have a unique relationship with my manager. We have a respectful employee-manager work relationship. It has also developed into a friendship, which still feels new to me.

Last Thursday, I had my performance review for 2016. Don't ask why it came so late. My company is messed up that way.

When it came down to what I could do to improve, my manager polled a rather toxic individual who naturally gave negative feedback. He hinted that both he and I dislike this person.

I flat out told him how I felt. This person seems to always have something negative to say about me and cannot back up her comments with factual information. She is highly toxic and is probably acting this way because I seem to be a threat to her. I ended saying that I would take her statement with a grain of salt, as she doesn't even know me.

I never asked why my manager asked this individual for feedback. We don't work closely with each other. After saying my two cents, he nodded in agreement.

My performance review was positive. My manager confided in me. He said that there are two writers whom he can count on to meet deadlines and get our work done. I am one of them, which is a nice compliment. The other compliment was that I was the only one on the team who received a comment saying that my work is of high quality.

The younger me would have been upset over the toxic woman's negative remarks. The person writing this blog post now is not. I am pleased with my performance at work. I balance the workload of at least two writers. These days, it seems like three. I will not let one idiot's negative remarks with no factual information to back her accusations up dampen my spirit.

I like who I am and how far I have come. It's good to grow.

Work frustrations, but Friday ended on a positive note

The last 2.5 days at work have been crazy. It ended nicely on Friday, though.

Late Wednesday morning, I got an instant message from a co-op student, who happens to be a software developer. He asked me whether I have time to do some documentation updates. He isn't good at explaining himself.

It turns out that this particular team of developers has been working on a major software enhancement and failed to let me look at the design document, let alone tell me in advance that I would have to write something about it. I was livid.

I asked him to demo the enhancements. He told me to come see him. I told him that I work from home on Wednesdays and that an online session was needed. After much reluctance, he agreed. It also took some nudging to get the design document from him.

I flat out said after I had completed two parts of this enhancement (there are ten in total) that there was no way that I would be done by Friday, which is the deadline. That raised a lot of eyebrows. Good.

For several months, I tend to scramble to get my work done for this particular team, because they cannot communicate that I have work to do. They don't bother telling me what they are working on. I can only ask so much as to whether their work impacts mine.

I have raised this issue a number of times to both my manager and the project manager responsible for this team.

Technically, I work at a decent clip and understand things fairly quickly that I could make the Friday deadline. I wanted to make my point that I should not be killing myself because folks are horrible at communicating.

Sure enough, one of the developers raised the issue to the project management office. The project manager that I work for asked my manager if another writer could help me out.

My manager is understanding. We had a talk. I told him that this team had three weeks to work on this feature. I get 2.5 days to work on my part? Ridiculous.

My manager decided to cancel our weekly team meeting so I could work on this feature. He ended up doing the following:

• Raised this issue with his manager about this particular team and how it operates
• Indicated to the project management office that we do not have enough resources to have another writer pitch in, especially when one just quit this week
• Pointed out that this team does not follow process properly and that the project manager needs to watch this team like a hawk
• Defended me when I was accused by another project manager that I was "jeopardizing both teams" that I work for

I don't understand that last point. She is a jerk, so I don't really take her comments seriously. According to my manager, she accused me of failing to make this team complete everything on time for this work period. My manager told her that I am not to blame. It's a team issue for not completing everything on time. Specifically, it is everyone on the team but me who failed to help me out.

I am fortunate to have an understanding manager. He knows how I tick.

Sure enough, pulling extra hours to finish this work allowed me to finish by late Thursday. I sent out my reviews that evening and early Friday morning. I got some feedback and incorporated everything.

Yes, I completed my work under the circumstances. I have yet to not meet a stupid deadline like this one.

I wrote an e-mail to my manager, the two project managers (the one that I work for and the jerk), and the manager of all those software developers, indicating that my work was done. I also firmly, but diplomatically, indicated my position. It helped.

I got to talk to the software developer manager, who first thanked me for putting in extra work to complete this work. He also knew that our writing team is stretched thin these days. 

He is shaking up things on this team, which includes moving them out of a room that they have been occupying for over a year and moving them to where the rest of us sit. He also wants to make sure that I am involved in all stages of development. Finally, my request to have a retrospective meeting came true. I can finally voice my concerns to everyone.

The project manager then spoke to me. He also thanked me for my contributions and apologized for not being as supportive as he should have been.

Friday turned out nicely with these conversations. I also managed to take a 1.5-hour lunch break with the two co-op writing students. They asked me to join them for lunch. I drove them over to the restaurant and we had a good chat over decent food.

It has been nice to relax so far this weekend. More on that later.

T is for things are looking brighter, telephone, and texting

At work, my manager sits next to me. It is a different type of working relationship that has blossomed into a friendship. It's a first for me.

Back in December of last year, a writer, who was highly defensive, quit. I was reviewing the entire team's work for quality. Instead, what I wanted to do career-wise was sidetracked. I had to not only take over her responsibilities, but needed to preserve most of mine.

I was miserable. I told my boss that it was time for me to look for a new job. I revamped my resume and sent it out for various positions.

Lately, I have resorted to eating at my desk like I used to when I was the lone writer. I don't like doing it, but it is better than my putting even more overtime on weeknights. The last thing that I want to do is work on the weekends.

My manager has slowly tried to keep me from leaving. He has finally succeeded.

My boss and I had a talk last week. Early next month, two interns join our team, so I will be training them as I have done in the past with the previous two interns. A writer from a different group in South America will be joining our team, too.

The plan? I go back to reviewing the team's written work on top of working with the interns. The interns take over my work on two development teams. The new writer takes over my work on my third team. Yes, I am on three different agile teams, which is both crazy and ludicrous when it comes to my workload of being the lead writer.

I am happy. I had another talk with my manager on Tuesday, who confirmed that this plan is going ahead. Yay!

As for my guy, I am missing him these days. At work on Tuesday, I managed to park my car in front of his. Of course, I am itching to tease my guy by telling him that he should let me drive his manual car while he is away.

Whenever I am travelling in the States, I change my SIM card in my phone and go with a cheaper phone, text, and data plan than my regular cell phone provider. After work on our first full day in Seattle, my guy tried calling my regular cell phone number. When he got back to the hotel, he had wondered what had happened to me. I told him that I have a different number and texted it to him.

My guy has some decent company perks. Since he travels a lot, our company pays for his cell phone and plan, including travel data packs. So, it's perfectly fine for me to text and call his cell phone in the States with my different SIM card. I would not be that fortunate and would probably fork half my paycheque out if I did the same with my regular cell phone plan.

My favourite text exchange was on Friday afternoon. We had discussed having lunch together before my guy left work work. It didn't pan out, though.

MG: Hi, guys want me to have lunch with them to ask some questions. Sorry our lunch plans have to be cancelled. Will see you shortly after lunch.
Me: Hey, no problem. Just need to deal with you later about that. =) I'm music-shopping. Ping me when you're done. Enjoy lunch and hope the questions aren't too hard.

When we text, we actually write full sentences. We don't find that weird at all. We aren't too crazy about short forms, which is nice.

My guy did call me when he had arrived at the mall, in a specific store. It was nice to hear his voice. I had to ask him where he was. I found him in the men's clothing section. It would have been much worse had I asked my directionally challenged guy to find me in the store!

We did spent our final night in Seattle shopping, eating, laughing, and more.

Passing of the ex-hubby -- reflections of being spanked as an adult by him

I found out about my ex-hubby's passing simply by doing a Google search.

To make an extremely long story short, our marriage was not a pleasant one for me. I needed to make a clean break from him, as it was an unhealthy relationship that I was in for many years. However, in his view, he thought that all was well and was devastated when I decided to file divorce papers.

His health had been in decline for a while. I hope that he is at peace.

When I first read his obituary, I wasn't sad. I was relieved in the sense that the unhealthy feelings and negativity that he cast on me would cease at long last.

However, I have fond memories of our relationships when things were good. I remember our first kiss and how special it felt. He took me to my first musical, The Phantom of the Opera. I felt special going out in a white sweater and black pants. I also got to discretely grope his hard cock towards the end of the musical.

He took me to my first NHL game. We watched hockey as often as we could. I also got the travel bug from him. I wanted to see the world and I still do.

He was the first man who spanked my backside as an adult. I was shy about having my bare bottom exposed, but I wanted to be spanked badly. He made me feel comfortable. He used a wooden clothes hanger, cane, slipper, bare hand, wooden paddle, and many other fun implements. I love being spanked to this day.

I also became fond of giving spankings. He loved being over my knee, with my wearing a short black skirt and pantyhose.

May he rest in peace.

A sweet review of the girl with the naughty name's blog (that is, my blog)

It seems like a long time. Then again, this year is blowing by too quickly for my liking.

Back in June, I participated in my first blogging challenge. Each day, you choose a topic to write about and your topic goes through each letter of the alphabet. I knew that it would be difficult for me to accomplish, considering that I had a major deadline that month at work and that I haven't blogged that regularly in years.

Although I thought that I would be going through a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and nervous breakdowns, I survived. I felt good that I had accomplished something important. I also managed to find a number of blogs that I love following.

I wish that I could read a blog from start until finish. I was lucky to have found Han's blog. He has a good mix of post topics. Variety is good. I appreciate his hand at writing poetry and quoting poems from some of my favourite poets, such as Ogden Nash. He also posts intriguing photos that end up being etched in my memory for quite some time. I admire that he participates in far more blog challenges that I have.

We found each other's blogs through this challenge in June. I was flattered one day, a few weeks back, when he left me a message, saying that he was striving to read every post that I have written.

I used to do that with this blog. I have been told that I have a good memory. I am also a reflective person, so reading and reminiscing aren't unusual tasks for me.

I haven't read my older blog posts for a while. It is mainly because this blog can be divided into two distinct sections:

• My life as a married woman, which crumbled and I finally managed to end my marriage after years of knowing that it had a number of issues that could not be resolved.
• My life these days with my guy.

A few days ago, Han left me a message, stating that he wanted to write a post on his blog about mine. Reviews are both exciting and frightening to me. It's nice that someone loves reading every post that you write and comments regularly. On the other hand, it's the I-don't-know-what-he-is-going-to-say and I-may-not-enjoy-blogging-if-the-comments-are-negative feelings that I had. He reassured me by letting me read his draft. He also wanted to make sure that I was okay with the content.

His insight gave me insight on my life, which is refreshing. I could tear people to shreds. I have been through a bunch of negative experiences. I could let them all out on this blog, but it's just not me.

I am a writer by trade. This blog is an outlet for me. I don't talk about my love for spanking to anyone but those who are close to me, so I do just that on my blog. I am connected to people in the blogosphere who share the same passion as I do. These days, I am spanked more than dishing spankings out. It is an ongoing, exciting journey for me. I want to share these experiences, which has not changed since I started my blog.

And, yes, it took one reader who was upset that I wasn't customizing my blog post for his liking that made me review all comments here prior to publishing them. As much as I love readers following along, I do blog for myself first. It's just sweeter when readers enjoy what I blog about, too.

So, thanks again to Han for taking the time to read practically all my blog posts by now. Thanks to you, my readers, for your support. 

I am approaching 500 posts. Han made the observation that I have been blogging on and off for nine years. Wow! There are some rather large periods of my being away -- mainly from my divorce, from back surgery, and from my master's degree. Each blog post is a snapshot of a moment in my life, similar to taking a photo. I wouldn't delete any of these snapshots, whether good or nasty.

Perhaps I should go back and read my blog posts and see how far I have come.

Thanks,

Cutiebootie (a.k.a. the girl with the naughty name)

Pinches and lovetaps

So, how did I become a spanko? I can't really pinpoint one event, so I'll have to briefly go back to when I was a youngster.

I recall being five years of age and my mother would bathe me daily. In the shower, from time to time, when it was over, she's lightly pinch my bottom. It didn't force me to rub one side of my bottom. I just remember it as being a loving gesture from my mom.

What did hurt a bit was being in kindergarten. It was gym time and we had a balance beam. We were too small to do anything incredibly creative, other than resting our bellies over the beam. This was apparently a perfect time for our kindergarten teacher to come over and pinch our bottoms. It didn't happen too often to me, but when it did, it did hurt a tad.

I was a pretty good girl. My parents never gave me an over-the-knee spanking in my life.

My childhood friend, whose birthday was November 20, told me the following day that her teacher had given her a birthday spanking in front of the entire class, but it wasn't hard. She demonstrated it on me at an intersection, as we were waiting for the traffic light to turn green. At that point, this didn't do anything for me.

Perhaps it was in grade 2 when spankings started to appeal to me. One day, my teacher was reviewing my math answers I had completed. I clearly remember what had happened after that.

I was standing next to her. She held me, while I was standing and kind of bent over. She lightly swatted my backside for roughly a minute with her hand.

"Do you know why I did that?" she asked me.
"No," I said, not knowing really how I felt, while looking down at my white shoes with Mickey Mouse on them.
"Because you were a naughty girl."

She proceeded to return my math answers to me and I returned to my desk.

That same year, I witnessed my male classmate getting scooped up by a visiting male teacher on his birthday, and getting a combination of spanks and pinches on his bottom, before he was placed back on the carpet, where everyone else was for story time. Wow.

Again, with math exercises, I went to give my math exercise answers to my teacher.

"You finished all your exercises, Cutiebootie?" she asked me.

Without even having an answer, she gave me a swat on my bottom with her hand and then gave me a side hug.

That same year, we had a major spelling test. She said to us, "If you get three or more mistakes, the smacks!" Well, I did get five words spelled incorrectly, but I never got a single smack on my bottom.

In grade five, I played the viola in our strings class. This happened just once, but my music teacher came over and used the rubber part of his baton on my bottom. That lone swat did sting a bit.

So, trying to sort this out now makes more sense. In my mind, these spanking/pinching incidents weren't because I was truly naughty. I was a good student. I look back and it makes sense why I ended up loving music, math, gym, and showers. My bottom getting pinched or spanked in each case was a positive experience for me.

And, yes, I love a good birthday spanking to this day. Since I've known G, he has given me a birthday spanking every year, generally over his knee, with my bottom bared.

I am truly loved.