Christmas Part 1 - Discusions, Arguments, making up and uncaging

 Happy New Year from Madam and myself, we hope that you all had a good and festive Christmas break.

this is the first of 2 posts about our festive period, we thought that it was best to break it into 2 posts as there was 2 very distinct parts to our holiday.

The past year for us has had a number of ups and downs, such as Madam's promotion and also my ongoing health issues.  So it was with an element of trepidation that we all went into the christmas period with the view that it would be the first time when all 3 of us, Alice, John and myself would have time to actually sit down and talk about some of the things that needed to be voiced.

For John we needed to understand what is going on with both his work and also with his family.  At the start of the year John's company started a new contract and it was very good news for him and his workers but it took a lot of his time to ensure that things were running properly and everyone was happy.  Thankfully things have gone well and he has been able to settle into a steady routine and work pattern.

What has been a bit of a change for him however is that he has had more "demands" from his daughters, both are adults but with one of them having moved only a few miles from him and being in the process of settling down with a good job and her partner there is an element of pressure to pop round and spend time with her and "oh and by the way bring your lady friend".  As John puts it if he gets asked one more time by either of his daughters of "when he is going to get married to his 'fancy' woman" he is likely to lose his temper!  

this has been a building thing over the last couple of years and has become more of an issue over the last 12 months. Alice has met both of his daughters  at various times but these have been more by chance rather than by design.  The thing that we are all keen to do, and john especially, it to make sure that there is no expectation or assumption that the relationship is more than a physical relationship.   

Before people start to shout...Yes, We know that it is more involved and more complicated than just that, but as John puts it, his daughters and especially his ex-wife are not going to be quite as open minded as the readers of this blog, and he wants to make sure that he doesn't bring problems to us.

So What?  Well the plan is to be a bit more discrete and also to cut down the number of local public trips out. Both Alice and myself were initially concerned that things would be potentially coming to an end but this is a better solution for all of us.  None of us want John to be put in a position or to create issues with his daughters, but by the same token it was clear that John wanted to continue his part in our FLR.

The next discussion was something that I know was coming, I just wasn't quite ready for the level that it would go to.

Alice has been concerned over my health particularly over the last 2 years and the last 12 months have caused her real concern.  There is no dispute that I've had and still have problems, but she is really concerned over things with me.  Alice put her cards on the table and that was that she wants me to retire.  Walk away from everything and stay home and become the homemaker/ house husband/ submissive wife.

Alice's concern is that some of my health issues are due to me driving myself too hard, and pushing things too much. With her promotion she viewed  it that this would compensate some part of the loss of earnings and that we could manage.

Now she's right, we could get by....however there is a number of issues.

I don't want to retire.

Now this caused a bit of shock to Alice.  she thought that I would be onside with this, she had crunched the finances and she was sure that she had a solid case for me to retire once she is fully into he new job in April.

Well it's not a case that I don't want to retire, it is down to a number of things that need to be done before I can retire and with several of them they still need me to be working.  I had to explain to Alice about a number of things that needed to be done over the next 12 months, the important point is that there is some significant work that needs to be done to our house, we've been in it over 20 years and there are parts of it that need work doing to it.  Yes this is a project that is important and it will need me to be at home but it will need me to work to cover it.

There is also a couple of other things that need to be covered financially that had not be factored in by Alice, such as I was covering the costs for her Mothers home.  I explained some of the other things that I was dealing with which she was not aware of.

Finding out about these things created "a bit of an argument", while this conversation started as a Madam and billie type of chat, with Madam telling me what I was going to do it had certainly changed to a Mick and Alice heated discussion.  I think John was a bit uncomfortable with this but I managed to get things to settled down and laid out what i saw as a sensible compromise.

I have contracted work to see me through to April and early May, at that point I will wind down/close out most of my Project management roles and consultant work.  From the second half of the year I will then become Semi Retired, this will allow me to deal with the renovations and repairs that need to be done to our home.  It will also mean that I can focus on some of the less stressful elements of work while staying professionally active - training delivery, marking assessments, helping individuals with professional development.  A lot of this can be done from home or locally, it is significantly less involved and less stress.  And it also means that I can be more physically active and do more exercise locally.

I also explained that going to a "dead stop" technically and professionally would probably cause me more damage.  A managed "glide" out of work into retirement would mean that I could be better prepared for this.

Alice wasn't happy especially finding out that I was covering bills and costs for her family. it took a couple of hours to go through everything, to add context to and rationale to my plan.  Yes, I had been thinking about this and I had worked out what needed to be done.  

Yes I want to retire, yes I accept I need to change my lifestyle and this last year has involved significant changes already, but we think that we have a plan that might work.

We even discussed this blog, we all agreed that it was something that we wanted to continue doing. Will it change?  well we hope not, we don't have a plan for it to change.  So guess what? you are still going to get our mad ramblings...well as long as someone wants to read it.

The discussions took a fair bit of time and filled a lot of time for us.  we needed it and it was clear that 2024 was a year of change for all of us, but we have come through it with an outline of a plan going forward.

After such a heavy day of discussions, arguments, raised voices and compromising and lots of listening we all sat down late in the day with a couple of bottles of wine and actually realised that we had fixed and sorted most of the issues that we had.

All this was on the 23rd december and just as we finished the second bottle of wine Alice disappeared to her study and came back with the key to my chastity.  I was told to stand up and to present myself and she unlocked me.  This was a surprise, normally this would happen on Christmas morning or on Christmas eve.

But unlocked I was.  Alice then announced that she was going to bed and that she would like "both of her boys" to accompany her and to "make her feel loved." Well that isn't a request that you turn down.

I think that both John and I made sure that we made sure that by the time she fell asleep she was quite well "loved".

The following morning after Breakfast John had to leave as he was expected to be at his eldest daughters house for the Christmas period.

Alice kept me uncaged until the 28th, just before we had our first visitors - Ellie and David.  It was lovely to be uncaged and cuddling in to my wife, making sure that I looking after her needs but I knew that I would be caged and back into a more Madam and billie role before our visitors arrived.  We were also going to have Carol and Kerri visit as well and they would overlap with the young couple for the 30th and 31st December, so we had a busy house for a few days.  The next post will have more details on our visitors and what happened over that few days.  I should have that post up in the next few days.

We appreciate that this is probably one of our serious posts but we thought it was important to give some of the background to why things have been happening and why changes will be happening for us in 2025.

No matter what, we are still here and still enjoying things and enjoying our FLR, even when there are serious discussions and the occasional arguments and the making up.