Build Muscles the Smart (and Enjoyable) Way ... With a Bonus Feature!

I injured my low back 15 years ago and my neck about a year and a half ago. One of the continuing effects of these injuries are continuing problems with my lower pelvic muscles. One suggestion I received was to look for kegel exercisers to strengthen these muscles. I considered Ben-Wa balls but heard too many stories of them falling out at the most inopportune time. My next thought was to look for something that weighed a little less but would still help me achieve the goal of building muscles. I settled on the Smart Balls for a few reasons - first is that I liked the material they are made from, I liked the concept of two connected balls, and they were reasonably priced. I did read the reviews before buying them and decided that these were probably going to fit all my needs. And I will say that I got all that I asked for and more (see below for the unexpected bonus). I ended up choosing the Magenta-Pearly Rose ones. They really are attractive even if I don't see them too often.

These are packaged in a slightly more than functional manner: The front of the package shows the balls encased in molded clear plastic. The back of the package is like a book in that you can open this (secured by 2 magnets) and read about the material and how to use/insert them. The graphics are the usual Fun Factory with bright colors. Included inside is a rather long pamphlet printed in (at least) 6 languages.

I didn't notice any odor to the balls themselves. What I did notice was the sensation of shaking them. Evidently there is an inside ball in each one that moves and rattles. I started laughing because all I could think to compare them to is a baby's rattle although with less noise. They do sound interesting.

Putting them in takes some time and patience. You may need to use (a little, really just a bit) of lube. The balls are just less than 2" in diameter, which some women are going to find too broad for comfort. Also, the two balls measure about 4.5" in length, which again, some women are going to find too long for comfort. It takes some time to get them situated and they do provide a feeling of fullness, which can make them a fun accessory to a romantic evening if you wear them out with a date. They provide sensation and anticipation of what may happen at the end of the date ;)

Once in, they should keep themselves in place unless your muscles need some training. I don't recommend urinating when them in and MOST DEFINITELY not while defecating. Your muscles relax at these times and they can slip out. Trust me, digging in the toilet to retrieve them (and then to wash them off) isn't going to be fun.

Consistent usage will result in muscle development. It does take time and patience to see results though and you need to be dedicated to using them. When in place it does make walking a lot more fun and also much easier to remember to do the kegel tightening exercises. And yes I do enjoy wearing them when going out to parties or on a date because they do provide a lovely feeling of anticipation.

Care and cleaning are really simple: wash, rinse, repeat with soap and water. Yes you can sterilize them by running them through the dishwasher although I'd recommend turning heated dry off. Storing is a bit tricky as the elastomed can pick up lint. Try storing them in a small plastic bag or a bag that gives off little lint.

Although these are safe and nonporous, I am not sharing mine. I think it's just my own preference because they are certainly safe enough to use with more than one person provided you are doing a full antibacterial cleaning after use. Fun Factory says these can be used for anal play and I can see how that might work so here's my suggestion: first is to make sure you keep a grip on/at least a finger through the cord to make sure the anal muscles don't pull the balls all of the way into the anus. Alternately, just insert one of the two balls into the anus. They are certainly broad enough to provide some great sensation.


I will be honest and say that it took me a few times to get used to inserting this and holding them in place. Sometimes I found that one of the balls had slipped out and I needed to go push it back in. I'm glad I was patient because I did notice that there was some better muscle control the longer I used them and now they do not slip out at all.

There is an unexpected bonus to using the Smart balls. That elastomer-covered cord? It transmits vibration well. REALLY well. Try this: take a vibrator and put it through the cord, bringing it taut. That cord transmits vibrations up through the cord and into to the Smart balls themselves. And, since they're resting against your G-spot? Yeah, it's a pretty heavenly feeling.

Ruff Doggie Styles Roses Flogger review: Art or Implement?

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missing a dominant

Recent readings and discussion with Erik reminds me of how much I miss having either a dominant or a master in my life. I say that knowing full well what a PITA I am about Masters. I love them. I hate them. They hit all of my land-mine buttons and require me to do things I just don't want to do. And yet I still crave it. Someone requiring my submission and letting them dominate me.

I love my lovers. All of them. And I'm firm in that I don't want to give them up. One reason is that they love me and have done nothing to merit me breaking up with them to be monogamous with some one or some leather family. Two is that I am developing my own tribe/poly family with M & B and love what they bring me and what I offer them. Three is that remaining monogamous is just frankly a deal breaker. Honestly, I did not spend all of this time being monogamous and closed to other loves just to end it at the requirement of someone else. Even to achieve a true D/s or M/s relationship. I left another M/s relationship because I just couldn't stomach breaking up with my loves to please someone else. And I love my Erik, my M and my B not to mention my T and possibly others. And making a tribe or extended poly family with M & B is frankly a dream come true. A dream from teenage years when I first learned of extended poly families.

And yet I still crave the dominance of another. I know that Erik and I have talked about it and I truly feel that he has it within himself to truly dominate me. However, life, commitments, and other things eat his time and keep him from truly realizing that potential. Do I love him? Absolutely. Do I hope to submit to him. Yes, wholeheartedly. And will that truly happen? No, not likely. Or at least not in the near future. Sadly.

no, the day wasn't horrible, except for...

I so want to be able to say that yesterday sucked. In fact it did not. I got a lot of work done, received a compliment from someone I love, and my house is clean (well, until Astarte horked up this morning's gooshy fud onto the living room carpet). I even fell asleep at a reasonable hour for me and slept well, waking up briefly at 3am and realizing I fell asleep on the sofa, didn't care enough to get up to move into my bed, and going back to sleep until the alarm went off. I even ate well.

So what's the problem? What made the day seem like complete suckage (yeah, that's a word)?

My cat died. I had to be a grown up and admit she was going to die and that I needed to make this as painless as possible for her.

And I had to do it alone.

Did I really have to? No, probably not. But her other mom and I don't really want to see much of each other and she didn't seem interested in coming with me when I discussed it with her a couple of weeks ago. So I didn't ask because I didn't want to face that rejection.

Yes I have loves and people who would have been there to hold me or talk to me. No I just couldn't get to that space. I could barely get to the place of admitting that yes, she was dying, and might possibly be in pain, and the only thing I could do for her was to end her life humanely. 

So I took her to the vet. I'd waited long enough that she was too dehydrated for us to find a vein. Alternate method number two worked and she died peacefully in my arms. The last thing she did was purr at me. But then all the cats I've sent to the rainbow bridge have purred at the very end. They must know we do it out of love for them. Or so I'm telling myself and don't anyone tell me different.

Kali was named so because she was a pretty grumpy and most definitely feral kitten. I wouldn't agree to name her Bat for her bad attitude, so I named her after the goddess of storms and rages. We coexisted for about a year. I broke up with Rita and moved into my own place. And one day I woke up to feel a presence on my hip. It was Kali. She'd finally decided that I was her human. Her only human. She tolerated other people but I was hers. If you have never been loved by a feral cat, you've missed out on something amazing. When they finally love, they do so with everything they have and more.

Kali took taking care of me seriously. She'd yowl whenever I got into the shower because I was in that WET place. She completely bitched Pam out for not getting me out of there and then stomped off with the attitude of, "what good are you?" If you've never seen a cat stomp, it's actually quite amusing to experience. But don't laugh. They get really mad if you laugh. She was assiduous in making sure that all my clothes and accessories were appropriately marked (no, not peeing) so that everyone knew that I belonged to her. When I was in pain from my lumbar injury, she'd cuddle me. When I felt overwhelmed by school, she sat on me or in front of me on a book or blocking the computer so I would take a break. 

She had to have had some Siamese in her very mixed genetic heritage because she could out-yowl purebred Siamese when she put her mind to it. Her mom was a black and white tuxedo cat. Kali looked like a Maine Coon. The smallest Maine Coon you've ever seen, but very much a Maine Coon. Her normal voice was in keeping with a Maine Coon. They are usually HUGE cats with tiny meepy little voices. She was, at her biggest, 8 pounds.

She was my companion. My relationship with her has been the longest of my life. She blessed me in more ways than I can count or recount. And of the two of us, I think I was the luckier by far. Thank you Kali for coming into my life. May you return to me as the Goddess wills. Until then know I miss you.

confusion

Oh dear Gods, how did I become Miss Popularity? I mean this quite seriously. If you'd told me two years ago I was going to have to plan out the next week by Tuesday the week before and share my calendar with at least six other people, I'd have said you were nuts. But here I am, two years later living a life I am not sure I ever imagined. Well, maybe imagined but most certainly never really thought this might happen.

So, let's backtrack a bit. It's December 2006. I weigh 376 pounds and stand 5' 3". I'm short, fat, and completely sexless. How so? Society strips fat girls of their sexuality and make them friends, sisters. Sure, sometimes similar things happen to men, but it seems to always happen to women. Anyway, I decided to have weight loss surgery - Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. I chose to permanently change my digestion to give me the tool for successful and long-term weight loss. And on 12/26/2006 I did just that.

And it worked. Well, mostly. I'm still considered obese but I lost about 200 pounds and have been pretty successful at keeping it off. Most of the time I really don't care that I'm not a size six. I'm a comfortable 14-16 and I love that I can wear dresses and heels and buy clothes off the rack that fit more times than they don't. I shop in thrift stores and count myself lucky to be able to walk and move, and stretch, and lift weights, and all those things that most people get to do and never think about it.

Here's the odd thing. And it's something I heard from almost all of the other women. We lost weight and regained our sexuality and gender. People saw us as women; as sexual beings. And we were confused. I can't tell you how many times we discussed in support group how weird this felt and how we were confused at how to respond. And as time passes, I remain confused.

How did this happen? How did I become Miss Popularity? Who needed either a paper calendar color coded to keep my social life straight or the integration of a Google calendar shared with at least six other people.
And synched to my (new) Android phone so I can keep track of stuff.

When my 40s started, I was married to a lovely woman, who was perfectly nice, if you define nice as conventional and straightforward. And not one for a lot of sex. Yeah, we had a great and emotionally intimate relationship, but not a sexual one. One day my sex drive woke up. One thing led to another and we ended up splitting up. I decided to embrace the lifestyle that I wanted - the polyamorous lifestyle. And I did.

It started out simple enough.I started having an emotional and physical relationship with a married man. Yes, his wife knew and gave her full support to us. We are still seeing each other. Then I started seeing Erika. And Will. And Lloyd. No, I don't see all of these people still. Erika is happy with her girlfriend and trying to be monogamous. Will, although a lovely man, is just someone with whom I'm pretty casual with and meeting Lloyd kind of pushed him out of the scene for me. Then I started seeing Mark and Brittany (yeah, lots of Marks in my life) with our plan to merge households and try building a tribe, a family unit, something. And that doesn't count Joseph, David, and Ellen, not to mention my sisters in my coven, and other friends like Holly. And I still have a bunch of folks emailing me on OK Cupid. Before I commit to any date, I need to check in with my Google Calendar to make sure I'm not already committed to seeing someone else.

Oh, dear Gods, how did this happen? On one hand I love the attention from Mark, Lloyd, and Mark and Brittany. Not to mention the attention from David and Joseph and anyone else who wants to meet me. But it's still just wildly confusing that I went from wallflower to Miss Popularity. Lloyd says that I deserve lots of love and sex and good times because I'm awesome. It's so hard to believe sometimes. And yet it's constant that people are attracted to me and want to be near me.

Wow.

Random Crap About Me

I “hear” a lot. “Feel” even more sometimes. Thanks to sci-fi and fantasy I finally figured out I have pretty strong receptive empathy coupled with a major healing talent. Unsurprising considering the sheer number of nurses in my family. The only thing I can think that would a worse gift to have is precognition. Thank you Goddess for NOT gifting that on me. However, living with this is a challenge sometimes, to say the very least.

Note to self: Don't send an empath to the mental hospital unless there isn't ANY other option. I spent more time helping out the other (nutjobs) than helping myself. I wanted to go home just so I could get a break from the noise and mental screaming. My meds help somewhat but almost nothing blocks the sound of the others from me. Don't ask about 9/11. I called in sick that day, before anyone flew a plane into a building.

My brand of ADHD: I hear it all and will process it all. Seriously – everything. Very little escapes me. I might not say anything, but I probably heard it and just rely on manners to determine what to say or not to say. Again, my meds can help somewhat, but almost nothing blocks everything out.

I work in Human Services because I have to. I don't really get a choice. My empathy demands I do this. But people tax me and my energy. The best compromise I've found is my job at DDS: I get to help people but rarely have to interact with them. I love that I get to read and write and interact (for the most part) with a computer and not people. My brief tenure at Denver Human Services doing TANF interviews darn near killed me. I can't tell you how happy I was to lose that job.

On the subject of interpersonal interaction and empathy: sometimes dealing with people, even people I love, is more than I can handle. Yes, I duck phone calls and doorbells out of sheer self preservation. Sometimes even talking to you on the phone, much less in person, is too much for me. It isn't you, it's most definitely me. I apologize in advance that sometimes the only option I feel I have is to hide away from the rest of humanity and its issues/problems. I suck. I know. I'm sorry.

Sadly, it's a thin line between hiding away from people and their inherent mental noise and becoming mired in a depression, whether it's something of my creation or someone else's. I don't have any idea of how to tell the difference or toe the line between the two. For those who demanded I get off my butt and get out, I thank you. For those who wondered what the hell was going on but continued to talk to me and love me, I thank you. For those who were convinced they did something wrong, you didn't and I am sorry.

I have some amazing friends who have opened their homes to me and allowed me a safe haven to rest and recover from the challenges life throws me. Y'all know who you are, but what you have done for me is immeasurably precious to me and I love you all for your generosity and, sometimes, sacrifice. To you and the rest of my friends: without you in my life I am sometimes not sure I'd still be alive. Thank you. Most days I am very pleased to know I remain among the living and you are some of the reasons that is still true.

I have some fantastic genetic family. I have amazing aunties and cousins who have accepted me for me without judging or expecting me to fulfill some role they conceived. For that I am humbled. Additionally I have been blessed to get a chance to rekindle a relationship with family who live here in the metro area. It took me 40 years, but getting a chance to know AND respect you is amazing.

What I learned/did on my vacation:

Had spinal surgery. Note to self: if the MRI says things are bad, they are. Don't fart around. Surgery is your best option. How do I know? I'm still trying to recover all of my neurological functioning and will probably not get it all back. I still have numbness and the occasional stagger in my walk and the weather will probably continue to play merry havoc with my functioning. Yeah, not one of my smarter moves. I should have more faith in allopathic medicine.

Conflict of interests with your job are BAD. Yep: B as in broken, A as in awful, D as in dropping. Don't do it again. You got off lucky this time.

sex, sex positive, teenagers

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Last week a friend turned 17. Yeah, I wonder too what's happening when I'm friends with a 17 year old (my nephew is older than she is), but she's a wonderful and unique young woman and I really am honored to call her friend. She wanted to have a party at a local bar and grill that also hosts a great karaoke set-up so we turned out in force to sing for her and celebrate her birthday.

Anyway, what's a birthday without gifts? And I thought long and hard about what to get her. In talking with other friends, I learned two things: she had a boyfriend and also that she has a latex allergy. Hmm, latex allergy. That makes getting condoms problematic since not all drug stores carry non-latex condoms. So, since I needed to go to get more silicon lube (a tragedy since I appear to have misplaced my other bottle), I decided to get her some non-latex condoms. But then there were some sample sizes of lube including flavored ones, plus a sale on a Doc Johnson mini vibe plus lube. And then I was off and running.

Yeah, I gave a 17 year old condoms, a vibrator, and different kinds of lube for her birthday.

Let me back track some as well. My social history is pretty mixed. I was raised Catholic, with conservative and pro-life parents. It's a stretch to say they are many things, but sex-positive is NOT one of them, much loss accepting of the idea of teaching teens anything other than abstinence.  My father's sister (and nursing classmate of my mother)  worked for the State of Kansas as a public health nurse for most of her career. She got to see, up front and center, the manifestations of teenagers having sex without knowing how to be safe about it. Oh, did I mention that my nephew, whom I love and adore beyond all reason, was an "oops?" But, in spite of my past and upbringing, I managed to develop some kind of sex positive attitude along the way. You can't be a self-proclaimed slut and poly and not have an attitude that is at least a little sex positive. And I strive to be sex positive. Anything else is just hypocritical. But more on that later....

Anyway, even though I believe in safe sex, raising sex positive kids, and fostering an attitude of open discourse, actually putting this into practice just felt downright odd. Turns out I needed more time to adjust to this than the lovely birthday girl needed.

She was thrilled with the gifts. Honestly thrilled. Her mom thought they were great, as did the other people who came to the party. And we can all giggle at just how happy her boyfriend was to find out what the gifts were. I think they killed the batteries the first night...