Life on a budget and other curiosities

Kinky and life reasons to control costs and some unintended consequences

I’ve always spent money like it’s water.  If I had it, I spent it.  As a life-saving mechanism I don’t believe in debt, so thankfully, have never had any.  But right now, I have no money either.  It is a self-created conundrum.  Investing, enforced savings.  I like putting myself in a bind this way, because if I didn’t, I would spend everything I have.

A few months ago I confessed a shopping addiction to you-know-who.  She knows a little glimpse of it, but I think it is really a bit out of control.  I have a storage facility that is filled with suitcases of clothes and things that I just had to have, waiting to be in a home I don’t yet have.  And there is always more.  

The other day I was chilling in service to said person, and I was uncommonly cold.  So while she was busy I went shopping, ostensibly to get myself a sweater.  I did, it was just one of those have-to-have cute black cashmere cardigans…I’m sure you know just what I mean.  Shopping for two wardrobes is tough.  Right?  Except I have at least 5 because I hate carrying clothes from house to house, so I just keep it all there…I put the stuff with holes in it in one place setting a kind of sartorial style that matches the place.  Fun, right.  Mood clothes are place specific. And yes, you read that right–the stuff with the holes. I am incapable of discarding anything, and anyway, I think that wearing sweaters with holes in them speaks well of me.

But in my “main residence”, a home-away-from-home where I am allowed to be both girl and boy, I have so much stuff.  And that doesn’t stop me from adding more.  So, Mistress was not best pleased when a sweater purchase turned into a spree of sorts.  She didn’t tell me on the spot as we had company, but I got a tongue lashing later.

And she is right.  And I so look forward to what is coming.  She has asked me to pile up everything in one place and throw 80% of it out.  I am totally incapable of this, and so I look forward to it so much.  Ah, the joys of being a slave!  I look forward to begging her to keep certain items and for being sternly told no, but hoping that with a million megawatts of submissive flirting and charm I will be able to keep a few cherished items that are on the bonfire.

There is a slave I admire from a distance who has developed a relationship with his Mistress that I can only dream of, literally.  His life and mine are in very different places, and so I cannot do what he is done, but I love it nonetheless.  He has turned over his entire salary to a joint account with his Mistress and she keeps him on a strict budget.  I think the last I checked it was $50 per week in Manhattan!  When he travels he stays very cheaply, and he does this to support her more fully and completely.  A dream.

I have responsibilities to my wife and children which he doesn’t have, so cannot do this.  I have begun to wrestle with why I cannot simply do this with my wife in discussion with my therapists, and I might have been able to do years ago, but I feel that I have crossed a kind of rubicon with my wife that would never allow me to be subservient to her, as my respect for her is no longer intact.  

What can I do?  Be much more strict with myself.  Of course, I actually suck at this.  Case in point.  I have been looking for a skirt, a very particular skirt, for some months now—a conservative in style, but short, plaid wool skirt.  I have not found one for a price that is acceptable to me, which has me haunting shops that sell designer clothes at low prices, and the problem is that I never find what I am looking for but do find plenty of other things I don’t need.  How many white blouses does a girlie-boy need?  A hundred is the answer.  How many pairs of yoga pants?  At least 20.  Panties?  More than can fit in a drawer.  In other words, I am the most over-dressed femme-boy in town.  

The good news is that I have successfully gone in and walked out a few times now without buying anything.  The bad news is that not every time has that been true.  But the good news about me going bananas in such a shop the other day was that the very next day I took all but one item back.  The one item I kept is now my favourite skirt and I have worn it all over the rural New England in the snow—never mind that it is a skimpy little flouncy little summer cotton thing—think flamenco folds on a mini-skirt with pom-poms and bows.  It is super cute.

Which brings me back to the theme.  I have run out of airmiles and hotel points so I have to actually pay for hotel rooms, and I don’t want to, because I don’t want to spend so much money.  So I booked a rather unappealing place because it was cheap.  And well-located.

I flounced in my bouncy skirt and went up to the front desk and the man behind the desk said, “wow, you look like a hero or something.  A movie star.”

“Thanks,” I said, thinking, he can’t see me from the waist down, only my puffy white winter coat.

“Yeah, like someone straight out of a cowboy western, a real hero, like Clint Eastwood in the 1970’s.”  Hmm, I thought, ‘if only you could see how cute my legs are!’  And not quite sure what it felt like to be likened to a 90-year old man with lot’s of baggage.

What’s the Difference between a 2* and 3* star hotel?

Now I know.  There was a thuggish looking man in black and white tie-dye camouflage sweatshirt and utility pants mopping the floor.  He was a skin head.  As I was wrestling my many suitcases—don’t ask—into the hotel he was ogling me, standing there smiling with a semi-toothless smile and checking me out.  Ladies, is this what it is like?  Gross.  There was something in the way he was looking at me that implied conquest.  Double gross.

The room key didn’t work.  I had to go back down to have it programmed again.  The helpful and friendly manager offered to show me upstairs and open the door for me and came out from behind the corner.  He got to see my outfit.  He didn’t bat an eye.  Good egg.  A gentleman.

“Oh, this is a tricky one,” he said with practiced knowledge as he regarded the door handle which was hanging down at an odd angle.  “You have to hold it like this,” he said moving the door handle into a precise spot, “and then you have to move the key in and out quickly like so,” he said, and then opened the door.

“Thank you.”

The next time I went out to fetch more suitcases, the maintenance man was outside smoking a joint.  He was clearly enjoying watching me come and go.

Some other key differences?  Well, two star hotels, just like their three star counterparts, have both blackout curtains and net curtains, but in a two-star property, the net curtains need to be torn to shreds and just hanging there.

Oh, and in a three star hotel, there is ambiguity—should I wear shoes in the room or not, after all, who knows the last time the floors were cleaned?  In a two star, there is no ambiguity, bless them, because I love clarity.  The floors were probably not cleaned since the carpet was installed at least a decade ago.  There are smears and smudges of caked on light brown something or other all over the place—a bit like peanut butter?  One can hope.  So, I have been wearing shoes all the time.

Thankfully, there is hot water.  It happens to be boiling hot, in the shower, but only lukewarm at the sink, so I have to sit on the edge of the bath to shave, but at least its hot, right?  Getting the water temperature to a comfortable level is a challenge.  At first, it took a while to figure out which faucet was which because it takes a while for the water temperature to reveal itself.  But then, when it does, at least when the water is flowing through the bath spout, it is reasonably responsive.

So, the hot water spout, all on its own, produces a water so hot that it comes out largely as steam.  Hot enough for a cup of tea.  The cold water is the iciest, coldest water I have felt since starting my cold shower journey.  You turn them both on, and it takes a good 60 seconds for you to know what temperature the two dials turned this way will generate—usually either boiling hot or freezing cold.  And when you attempt to adjust, it is at least 30 seconds of the shower running before you know what the new temperature is going to be.  So, I had the bright idea of turning off the shower and letting the water flow into the bath as it flows much faster and it takes only about 10 seconds for a change on the knob to produce a change in the flow temperature.  I got it just right, but when I turned it back to the shower, somehow the pressure difference meant that the water coming out was scalding.  

In the end, I discovered that there is about a 1 cm turn of the hot water dial that gives 100% of the acceptable range (but the dial can be turned and turned and turned, so it took a good while to discover this).  When I found it, I was just lightly touching the dial one way and then the other, alternating between too hot and too cold to produce an acceptable average to get through my shower.  And then I finally got just the right spot, and started to settle into the perfect temperature.  But then I heard the guy in the room next door flush his toilet—and you know what happened.

I was telling this story to one of the builders I am working with and he was laughing and laughing, and he told me that this had happened to him once on a business trip, and the hotel had these problems, and lo and behold, it was the same chain.  Who would think that a nationally famous chain specialises in this kind of wacko plumbing design?

The free internet was equally quirky.  It didn’t work.  I called the front desk.

“Restart your computer,” he said.

“I did already.”

“Close your browser window.”

“I did already.”

“Do it again?”

“Okay.”

“What do you see?”

“It’s still loading.”

“Okay.  Here.  It says ‘no internet’.”

“I’ll have to send you my techie.”

“Okay,” I said and he hung up.  I quickly threw on some boy clothes.  The knock came on the door as soon as.  You’d never guess.  The. Techie was the camouflage stoner who leered at me.  In the confines of my room he did not ogle me.

“Where’s the internet?” he asked jabbing his finger at the touchpad on my apple laptop.  “You using android or apple?”

“I’m wanting to use that computer.”

“Android or apple,” he repeated as if he was really meaning to say “dumb ass”.

“It’s an apple.”

“Where’s the internet?” he asked again.

“Well,” I said reaching in to open up the wifi settings, “its here,” I said soothingly, “the internet is right here.”

“It should be working,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said.  “Do these problems happen often?”

“Never,” he said, “you’ll have to call tech support.”

“Okay.”

“There’s something the matter with your computer.”  I held the door open for him to leave.

“Thanks for your help.  I’ll call right now.”

I called the front desk.

“He couldn’t fix it.”

“You’ll have to call tech support.”  He gave me the number.  After 10 minutes on hold someone answered and began to ask all kinds of questions, superfluous questions, none of which had to do with the problem at hand.  Do you really need all this info, can’t you just tell me what I need to do to the settings?”

“Yes, I do need to know to open a support ticket.”

“I see.”  More questions followed.  I thought he was going to ask my star sign, my favourite colour. 

After another minute of this, he said, “Sir, may I know how to address you for the duration of this call.  Sir, may I address you as [first name]?”

“All those questions for that?”

“Yes, it is an important part of customer service to address people by their first names.  May I call you [first name]?”

“No.  You may not.  I would prefer you to call me Sir.  Now, can we please just fix the problem?”

“Yes [first name], we can.”

“Great.”

“Restart your computer.”

“I just did.”

“Do it again.”  At least he was more patient.  “Open your browser.”

“Okay.”

“What do you see?”

“It says ‘no internet’.”

“It didn’t open the network login page?”

“No it did not.”

“Okay, then type in hddbc.com”

“Okay.  Hey, it opened the network login page.”

“Just enter your name and room number.”  I did; it worked.

“It worked,” I said.  “Thanks.  In future, don’t you think it would be easier to just say to do this at the beginning rather than after all these interventions?”

“Well the other ones usually work.”

“But this is faster.”  Silence.  “Okay, thanks, bye.”

At least next week when I move to the building site I will know that I don’t have hot water or internet.  It will sure save me loads of time!