Mary and Daphne #216 (Patreon)

I know I haven't been posting as often as any of us would like, and I'll spare you the reasons except to say I'm trying to fix them. Part of that is writing 3-5 chapter Mary and Daphne arcs like their recent vacation and like this gem that I'm excited about. So excited that I'm publishing it before proof editing it so you can see it sooner. If typos bother you, I suggest waiting a couple days for the final-final version of this nearly 6,000-word chapter.

___________________________

Mary and her ideas that are mostly evil in all the ways that I only mostly like. She has her business, and I have mine, and I was minding it. ‘There goes Daphne,’ people say, ‘see how closely she minds her business?’ Yep, that’s a thing people say about me. I had just finished our breakfast dishes when the doorbell ding-donged, and I thought to myself, self, I thought, who could that be ringing our bell so early? Am I rambling? Probably not rambling and definitely not cuz I’m still in mental recovery mode from all the things and stuff.

Mary got the door, and I was thinking that was odd cuz it was a workday, and she usually goes straight to her office after breakfast cuz she needs to make money to support my profligate lifestyle (buying flowers, baking cookies, having lunch with Nana - ya know, lady of leisure stuff … Ooo! I’m gonna learn what dressage is and take that up next).

I heard my Mary, “Good morning!”

“Good morning,” replied a voice I recognized as belonging to Sandy, our friend, sometime play partner, and the woman who gave Mary the idea to add incontinence wear to the cesspool that it our humiliation-discipline menagerie of interconnected fetishes and things and stuff. I’ve yet to slap Sandy across the face like a spurned woman in an old-timey movie for that, but I haven’t decided against it yet. I’m hiding my time … yep, four years and counting but it’s still on the table. Just biding my time and WHAMMO! That’ll learn her to give Mary evil ideas. Also, Sandy is much younger than us, and I’m not okay with what that says about us (specifically that it says we’re not as young as we used to be which is all the kinds of crap).

And here’s the thing (and you thought I was rambling, didn’t you? I was on my way to making a point and you just need to be patient, buncha pervs reading my diary) - we don’t have weekday visitors. My submissive the-dominant-I-married-is-up-to-something sense was all a-tingle. She says she has a sixth sense when I’m up to no good (and I think she does) but I have it’s counterpart, and all the little ways you’re body tells you to be on alert we’re alerting me right then.

“I’ll go get her,” I heard Mary say. Mary appeared and told me, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Hoo boy.

Firstly, I’m very good at voices. If that wasn’t Sandy, it was her voice twin. Point B, I’ve met Sandy, and Sandy has met me, which is to say, ya know, we’ve met. More than met. Intimately familiar, one might say if they were trying to be polite. Which brings me to Code Yellow, we met Sandy years ago at a monthly BDSM play party sponsored by a Fetlife group we used to belong to. She stood out from the crowd for being all of 19 and having a man twice her size and age bare bottom over her knee crying real tears while she paddles his butt to a shade of red I call ‘Stop That!’ I mean, of course Mary took one look (actually, she kinda stared at the scene from a respectful distance while I stood nervously next to her wondering what ideas she might be filing away) and decided to take the brutal she-beast under her wing. Mary had a thing, pre-pandemic, for adopting people new to the scene. I say pre-pandemic, but maybe even more so pre-me cuz I’m the original introvert and don’t take so well to newcomers who take my people’s focus away from the dynamic we’ve carefully crafted. But Mary couldn’t resist Sandy, and I liked her too. She gave off I’m-so-young-and-lithe-I-couldn’t-possibly-be-a-no-nonsense-domme-who-makes-grown-men-cry vine that was intriguingly deceptive in all the ways that made the pain slut part of my brain think, I wonder what it’ll be like being over her knee. And I too had an instinct to protect the very young woman taking her first steps into a community fraught with risks.

The dynamic that eventually developed between the three of us were these engineered scenes in which the nursing student would, naturally, have cause to spank me. And lemme tell you, dear diary, she’s every bit the hard-ass ass-spanker we thought she was. She can bruise with just her hand! And not only that, but she’s a world-class guilt tripper. Her pre- and mid- and post-spanking scoldings push my buttons. She’s made me cry for totally made up reasons. Like, actually made me feel bad about things I didn’t actually do.

Every so often, Mary would “suggest” Sandy and I spend some time together, usually when Mary went out on her own or to a thing I didn’t wanna go to. Mary would frame it as having a friend come over, but in the same way a parent would have a “friend” come over to spend time with their kiddo who still needs a babysitter but will throw a kablooey if the parent were to say so. Hence the “friend” is always older and never does friend stuff unless the parent invites them to and, ya know, pays them. So without either of them ever saying so, Sandy would come play babysitter; I even heard Mary thank her for babysitting once and offer to pay her, but Mary and Sandy would never admit it. The whole dynamic gave me those lovely conflicted feels that are part and parcel (whatever that means) of having a humiliation kink, the way they were treating me like an immature teen, old enough to be a babysitter but for one reason or another still, at her age, can’t be left alone, a symptom of said immaturity being the tantrum she’d surely throw if anyone ever acknowledged the babysitter was, in fact, there to babysit. Hence the delicate word choice of “friend.”

It had been a long time since we played that farce. The pandemic put a long stop to playing with others, and being a nurse during a global health craptastrophe, Sandy got hit hard. Even if she hadn’t gotten Covid twice, just the awful a stress of her job wore her out, and I think she got a little too tired and, I think, depressed to want to play much even after we could go back to playing together.

Of course, did she look any worse for wear? Had all that stress aged her? NO! I’m so tired of people in their twenties being younger than me. I was just getting good at being in my twenties when - BAM! - they made me be in my thirties. But I digress.

Sandy was sitting on our loveseat in shorts, flip flops, and a graphic tee looking very much like the young, innocuous bisexual she likes to appear as so as to disguise her true nature as a young, bisexual instigator and scolder and spanker and medfet enthusiast who can make not-fun things really fun, which has never stopped me from being reluctant as heck at the outset of play with her, especially of the play crafted by Mary, cuz of how much it will hurt even though I know it will be fun, especially after I’ve stopped crying.

“Daphne,” Mary said, “I’d like you to meet Miss Sandy.”

Miss, I thought, is a very meaningful distinction that Mary wouldn’t make if it wasn’t meaningful in some way that had not yet been revealed to me.

“Hi. We’ve met, like, a buncha times,” I said because I had decided to wrest control of the situation before the two of them could spring whatever they were gonna spring on me. I am, after all, the mistress of my domain and all I survey and stuff, so it’s never been any trouble for me to wrest all the control of a situation with a mere few of my powerful words. Yep, never tried to do that and failed even once … dammit.

“You’re thinking of your friend Sandy,” Mary explained to me in the tone one uses to patiently but firmly explain for the umpteenth time to a small child that the boogeyman isn’t real. “This is Miss Sandy.”

“Hello!” said Sandy from the loveseat. Our loveseat, I’ll remind the world at large, the one where Mary and I have all sorts of adult situations (like sex and trying to decide yet again what’s for dinner). Not that I was feeling territorial as a result of all the alarms that were going off in the nervous yet intrigued parts of my kinky brain. “Your mommy has told me so much about you.”

My what now? No one but me has referred to Mary that way.

Mary did that thing where just because she’s bigger and taller and stronger than me she effortlessly lift me up as she sits down so I hardly notice that I somehow ended up sitting in her lap. She followed it up with the thing where she puts her arms around me in a way that’s casual and nice but also, when I try even a little bit to get out of her arms, I can tell she’s not gonna let me go anywhere and that she’s strong enough to keep me from going anywhere. At least strong enough that it would be a very tiring struggle for both of us … I think I just have myself a wrestling-with-Mary fetish, but sticking to the story: Me, in Mary’s lap, seated on our couch which was next to the loveseat upon which sat Sandy, now Miss Sandy, who had just referred to my wife as my mommy, all on a Tuesday morning when my wife was sposed to be earning our money. Don’t hafta to be the world’s best detective, though I am, to know something was up.

Mary, putting on one of her big smiles that I love o so much they have a way of making me trust her and go along with all sorts of greater and lesser crimes against my dignity, said in her most earnest, I’m-doing-this-to-make-you-happy-and-I’m-so-excited-to-give-you-this-surprise-gift voice, “I know it’s no fun being all on your own while I’m working, so Miss Sandy is here to babysit and make sure you have a fun day.”

Let’s just deconstruct that. Firstly, I have all sorts of fun while Mary is working. I’m so entertaining, I even entertain myself and have never once been bored despite what unnamed sources who are me in this very diary might said. Really.

Second, it really was Mary’s earnest voice, and it came out of these lips of hers on the very earnest face she was making. I know the difference between earnest Mary and faux-earnest Mary and she was being earnest. This really was meant to be a surprise and treat for me. She’s so nice to me. She’s so nice, she would be very disappointed if I didn’t give her surprise a try, not because she’d be disappointed in me but because she’d be disappointed in herself for not coming up with a surprise I’d like. She’s so nice! Just, ugh! Her niceness and her earnestness and her sweetness and earnest niceness sometimes create pressure to do things you’re wary of, sorta like you’re in a strange land and have been offered the most unpleasant looking dish and try it just to be polite. You’re gonna smile and make a yummy noise no matter what, and usually it actually is delicious … but not always.

And the third thing, which the Head of Suspicious Analysis in my brain heard and went, she’s up to something new and it’s gonna be a major departure from similar play in the past, is the whole she’s-a-friend-over-to-do-friend-stuff-and-not-a-babysitter-over-to-babysit-you pretense the two of them had gone to ridiculous gaslighting lengths to maintain was just thrown ass-first out the window. And my Head of Suspicious Analysis didn’t get that job by sleeping her way to the top, though let’s just say a lot of sex has happened on her watch, issued an All-Nervous-System Advisory: Be on the lookout for whole new ways of being gaslighted that may or may not be fun. All field agents should listen more than talk until the situation clarifies and we know more about our nefarious adversaries’ nefarious plots and plans.

“We’re gonna have so much fun today,” Sandy said in the way people over-emphasize the emotions behind words when they’re talking to little kids to try to get them to feel the same way. I had And to get it out of the way, I will not, except when directly quoting a party to this play, refer to That Woman as ‘Miss’ Sandy from here to the ending of the world … unless Mary finds where I hide this and reads it and makes me.

“And you’re gonna be very safe with Miss Sandy,” is a thing Mary said to me in her I-would-never-do-anything-like-this-if-I-didn’t-know-you’d-be-perfectly-safe-in-every-sense-of-the-word tone. I mean, it was Sandy, and we’d known each other so long I wasn’t worried about that … until Mary said it. Physically safe, of course. Mentally safe? I trust Mary more than myself in a lot of ways, but she’s been wrong a time or three about where my limits are. Like the time, early in our relationship, in the throes of a sexy scene she called me a slut and I burst into tears. Or when she kept dropping the title mommy in the third-person long after I told her I didn’t like it and much longer before I told her it was okay after all. Trusting Mary, though, has usually worked out for me. She does a better job making me happy than I can do of making me happy, which is a partner’s first and most important job. A-plus gold star panda bear sticker for Mary (she’s on a panda kick lately – IDK why).

And in the word safeI also detected another sense of the word kinda sorta unique to the idiosyncrasies of our perverted world: that Sandy, in this new role, would keep me safe from myself if, o, say, I should make any choices Sandy and/or Mary would deem, quote, bad, unquote. Hmmm.

“So,” Mary said to Sandy and started talking like I wasn’t the subject of the conversation even though I was right there in the room. I don’t know if Mary thinks I don’t notice these things, like if she thinks those subtleties all run below my radar but make the intended impression anyway, but I do notice when she adopts that sort of mannerism. You know who else gets talked about like they’re not right there listening? Little kids. And I. Am. Not. A. Little. Girl. Hmmph! But like that did more than add a touch of color to the scene she had already telegraphed just by calling Sandy – finally, being honest about it – my babysitter. Long digression, but back to what Mary said …

“I know we talked about a few things when I hired you, but I hope you don’t mind going over them again. It’s just that I’ve never left my little girl …”

“I’m not a little girl,” I said. Ventured might be the better word for it. Call it a trial balloon the Head of Suspicious Analysis sent up trying to suss out exactly what kind of day it would be.

“Shh, sweetie. Mommy needs to talk to Miss Sandy, and then the two of you can play together.”

You can tell I’m not a little girl cuz a little girl would’ve cried so very hard if her balloon had been shotgun blasted out of the sky like that. Hmmph!

“I understand,” Sandy said not to me but to Mary, sympathizing with how hard it is to leave your spouse in another room when you go to work in your home office … I’m making my not-impressed face right now.

“I knew you would. So, firstly, she’s already had her breakfast …”

Funny thing about pronouns is you only use them to refer to someone who isn’t in the room, unless you’re being super rude or if the person is so young they can’t understand you and/or are used to two adults talking about you like you’re not right there. Also, I heccin made breakfast! And did the dishes!

“… and there are snacks in the kitchen if she gets hungry. I do try to limit her to one sweet a day, so if she gets hungry, there’s fruit and baby carrots and nuts in the cabinet. She’ll always eat cheese and crackers …”

Okay, so Mary does indeed try to limit me to one sweet a day. Trying isn’t doing, though, which is a thing Mary once said to me when I tried to get out of a consequence by saying that I tried to do my chores but didn’t. Also didn’t get out of the consequence. Hmmph! And yes on the cheese thing.

“… Of course, help yourself to anything. Afternoons with her are much easier if she can get a thirty-minute nap before lunch …”

Finally something I wanna do! Mid-morning naps are the epitome of the lady-of-leisure lifestyle. Haven’t actually made a habit of it, but I enjoy the heck outta of post-breakfast naps.

“… She’ll sleep in her clothes. What else? Toys – the cabinet on the left of that console is her activity cabinet. There’s lots of fun things to do I there. She also likes to play outside. If you give her a trowel or a little rake, she’ll play in the dirt for hours and you can just read a book while you watch her. If she gets real dirty, you can give her a bath in the downstairs bathroom …”

News to me that I have an activity cabinet. That means Mary had been buying fun things for me. I always have fun when I’m doing fun things. Mary is pretty good at mixing carrots and sticks. On the other hand, the only people to give me a bath have been me and Mary. Don’t know how I feel about Sandy bathing me even if she is a healthcare professional (ya know, cuz she’s not a babysitter). And it’s called gardening, not playing in the dirt. One of these days I’m gonna make a big salad for dinner and not put any of the vegetables I grew into Mary’s portion. That’ll show her (not that I’m sure what it will show her cuz most of our produce comes from the grocery store).

“… Speaking of bathroom, Daphne already pooped today …”

I wonder what it’s like to go more than a week without experiencing the physical sensations of the fight-or-flight response. The sudden coolness, the enhanced senses, the perception of time slowing down. I hear normal people can go years without that instinct being triggered even once, but I know I can’t judge my experiences – the experiences of a kinky sub living with an apex predator domme like Mary – against those of normals. Mary reminds me of that from time to time, like when she says, I don’t care if other thirty-somethings don’t get spanked for sneaking candy. You’re not other thirty-somethings; you’re mine. I like the last two words a bunch but on the whole I don’t care for those sentences.

My brain chose the fight-or-flight instinct’s secret third option, freeze. I had myself my very own out-of-body experience like I was listening to Mary’s monologue through a wall, all muffled but more than intelligible enough to wish she’d stop talking.

“… We’re working on potty training, like I told you. She does her poops in the potty, but she’s still in pull-ups for tinkles. I know you had some questions about that.”

“Is she in a pull-up right now?”

“Mhmm.”

“Like I said on the phone, I’m really not a fan of potty training. I’ll do it when my clients insist it will totally throw their little one off track if they go back to diapers even for a few hours, but I prefer to just put them back in diapers while I’m watching them. Will that be a problem?”

“No, her progress with pottying in the potty has been very stop and start. Mostly stop. I’ve been putting her back in diapers for a few days or a couple weeks at a time to give her a break from trying. To be honest, I don’t think she’s all that interested in potty training. I think she wants to keep her diapers for a little while longer. She just wants to be Mommy’s little girl for as long as she can, don’t you?”

The Head of Suspicious Analysis does double-duty as The Director of Emergency Communications, and she was saying to me, That question was directed at you. Say something. Protest! Yell! Call her a liar right to her face! That’s it – open your mouth. Now, make sounds come out. No, the words come first, then you close your mouth. Why are you closing your mouth? Good – open it again … And words now! … Now! … And then she said to The Director of Operations, I think she’s shutting down again. Overwhelmed by it all. At least close her mouth so she’s not looking like she’s stunned into silence, even if she is. So great, now the people in my own head were talking about me like I wasn’t even there.

Also, lies! Telling lies! About me! Just, lies! Fabrications, outrages, depredations, slanders, libels, untruths, and dirty, filthy, ugly, malevolent lies! Marrrry!

“She’s just shy,” Mary said when I didn’t say anything.

She’s just having so many emotions, and when they do come out they’re going to be directed at you in ways you might not like, I said to myself cuz even I was talking about me in the third-person by then. Sometimes I use the Royal We, but this was different. This was my internal monologue helping me to dissociate from the incredibly embarrassing things Mary was saying, incredibly embarrassing even if everyone in the room knew they weren’t true. Didn’t matter. No part of my brain and none of the people who work there could be bothered to acknowledge these weren’t embarrassing truths being said about me.

In fact, I’ve long suspected the manager in charge of those brain cells – unpromotable, probably stealing, definitely giving away secrets to the competition just for the sheer perverse joy of it but unfireable cuz she’s someone’s nepo baby – had only one thing to say. And it was snarky, and it was snide, and it was the very opposite of helpful: keep this up and I’ll cum. And I despise her even more for being right. Dammit!

“Anyway,” Mary continued cuz she just friggin loves to continue, “if she does have to poop, please take her to the potty. As much as she doesn’t mind piddling puddles in her pampers …”

Lie!

“… she hates having a poopy diapie. She’ll have a meltdown that’ll totally ruin your day and hers. This past week when we were at Target …”

I can’t believe you, I said to myself. Not about Mary, but about me. I can’t believe you. I know it’s not something you can help or control, and I try to bear that in mind, but I still cannot fathom how it can even happen in the first place.

Of course, Mary can’t hear my inner monologue, not even when it turns into a screaming match, but she could feel the way my body moved and probably heard the almost – almost – imperceptible squeaky grunting noise I made. She stopped mid-fake anecdote (also known as a lie), and whispered in my ear, “Did you just cum in you underpants?” I confirmed that, yes, indeed I had, by turning toward her and burying my face in her chest.

“Everything okay,” Sandy asked.

“Yeah,” Mary said, “She just came in her pull-up. It happens sometimes. We call it a ‘Number 3.’ Ope, I think she’s going again.”

Just … just no secrets apparently Mary wouldn’t tell Sandy in service of this scene. Later, Mary was so proud telling me about the amazed and jealous look on Sandy’s face upon discovering Mary can make me cum with just words. Proud of herself? Proud of me? Proud of the depth of feeling and connection the two of us share that make that possible? Yes.

And was she done? Was Mary done verbally whatever-this-is-cuz-there-isn’t-a-word-for-it-in-English to me? Of course not. “It’s okay, baby, Sandy will get you into dry huggies in a just a minute.” And then to Sandy, “Always best to make sure she’s done. She can be quite the squirter when you push the right buttons.”

“O gawd! Marrrry!” Hey, you can still make words after all. And she really is just gonna give away all the secrets. And of the two of us, you wanna talk about who messes up the sheets more, well …

I could feel Mary laughing, not that she let out even a titter because that would be breaking character. I married one of the great actresses of our generation, and of course she’s a method actor. She shifted and took out her phone. I then realized, she actually scheduled this. She blocked time on her calendar to do this scene, and she was keeping an eye on the clock because she would probably go from the scene straight to a meeting. My only satisfaction was knowing how aroused she was and that she wouldn’t get to cum until after work.

“I only have fifteen minutes,” Mary said as she shifted me off her lap and stood up, still holding my hand and beckoning me to lay down on the floor. “I keep this basket of diapering supplies under the side table,” Mary said as she took out the basket.

“I’ll do that,” Sandy jumped in. “Wouldn’t want her to get anything on your blouse before your meeting,” she joked in a way that was only a little funny, not at all funny, and that, in my post-orgasmic haze I didn’t react to either way. “Can you sit on the blanket for me,” she asked in the sweet, airy tone people use when coaxing tiny humans.

I sat on the blanket and realized this was happening; Sandy was about to diaper me. Aside from still being way out in sub space – I was at the point where the only things I wouldn’t have done were my hard limits – being diapered by Sandy didn’t bother me all that much. She’s seen me naked and touched me down there. She’s a nurse, which didn’t have anything to do with anything but sure felt like it. And if I could get over Nana putting a diaper on me, I could deal with Sandy doing it; at least she actually understands kink. Love her, but Nana is still a wide-eyed tourist who didn’t now the tour bus was going to go through the Red Light District, though she couldn’t be more amenable about it.

Mary sat down next to me and urged me with her hands to lay back. She gets that scenes are lots of things, and one of those things is stressful. Naturally, cuz she’s Mary, she started stroking my hair. Sandy, at the other end of me, was tugging my yoga pants down around my ankles. I thought it seemed like she was used to doing this without any help from the person about to be diapered, which was odd because while nurses do change diapers, it’s actually rare on med-surg floors where she works.

“Let’s get this icky thing off,” she said as she tore the sides of the Goodnite Mary made me wear that morning (now I know why she was kinda aggressively insistent about it). “Let’s clean up your pretty kitty.” As she was pulling wipes from the container, she asked, “Does she get real squirmy during changes?”

“No, she usually holds very still. But she’s a very good helper. Open your knees for Miss Sandy, sweetie. See?” I only did it cuz I learned not cooperating doesn’t do a heccin darn thing, except sometimes I don’t cooperate cuz Mary likes it sometimes when I make her make me cooperate with all the only mostly fun things she does to me.

Sandy cleaned my front and the part of me that isn’t the front but isn’t the back before she brought my ankles together and pushed my knees back, lifting my butt off the blanket so she could clean my backside. Which she did much more thoroughly than she needed to. Hmmph. “I ask because I saw you keep a hairbrush in this basket.”

“My little Daffodil is no stranger to a spanked bottom, but she doesn’t usually need any love taps during a diaper change unless she’s already in trouble. If she does get a little squirmy, you can give her your keys or your phone to play with, but most changes are too quick for those unless she had a dirty diaper … I really doubt that’s going to happen today …”

Trust me: it won’t.

“… but if it does, she really will be very upset. Don’t even try to change her until she’s calmed down, even if it’s really yucky one. Just hold her and rock her until she’s down to sniffles before you try.”

“Gotcha. I bet Daffy here shows me what a big girl she isn’t and doesn’t make any messy diapers for me. Is the independent in the bathroom when she does poop?”

“Mostly,” Mary said while Sandy spread diaper rash cream on me. “I’ll take her pants and diaper off for her. She can take her own pull-up down, but sometimes she forgets that step,” Mary chuckled and didn’t stop even when I glared her really hard. “Most of the time I leave the door open and wait outside until she calls me. She wipes herself, and I just wipe once or twice just in case and to check that she did a good job.”

That fact that that is an actual thing that happens even just three times a year makes me scream on the inside. Trust story.

“And what about discipline,” Sandy asked as she got the diaper under me. “Cute diapers, by the way.”

“Thanks. So, first thing is we are a spanking household, and I give all her babysitters permission to spank.”

True story except for calling all the people on the Can Spank Daphne list babysitters. It’s a long list; mostly inactive, and maybe we should fix that.

“But,” Mary said, “we try other things before we resort to a real spanking. We’re working on backtalk and attitude; putting her pacifier in usually keeps her mouth from getting her bottom in trouble. For other things, I give her a clear warning. If she’s not getting the message, some time on the naughty spot or in the corner to calm down helps. She knows exactly where her naughty spots are. You can also put her down for a little extra nap if you think that’ll help. A lot of times she just needs that teensy bit of help getting her feelings under control to avoid a spanking. Her paci also helps with that. And if there’s a natural consequence, to misbehavior go with that.

“So when I do spank, and expect you to as well, is when all that fails, or she won’t obey a consequence, or for the usual ‘high crimes’ – breaking rules she knows she has, repeated and major disobedience, lying. I make sure she knows what bad choice she made, spank her, we talk about what she’ll do differently in the future, and I’ll hold her until she calms down. She’s usually pretty sleepy after a big spanking.”

Some of the only true things she told Sandy all morning.

“Does she cooperate with her spankings?”

“Most of the time. And not every spanking needs to be a big spanking. Some warning spanks over her diaper are sometimes enough to get her on track. Other times I need to get the stool out the hall closet to put her over my knee before I paddle her bottom. And you can use anything but a belt. She responds really well to just a hand spanking lately, but sometimes she only listens to Mrs. Hairbrush. Mr. Bathbrush upstairs in my bathroom is an absolute last resort.”

Mrs. Hairbrush is a bitch who should mind her own business, and Mr. Bathbrush will one day join all the other tyrants on the ash heap of history, so help me god.

“O, doesn’t she look so cute in her diaper,” Sandy said in that thick, excited, baby-lipped tone people use pretty much exclusively with babies and dogs. This was a side of Sandy I hadn’t seen before. Ageplay disciplinarian? Yep. Caregiver? Not like this. More on that later. Right then, Mary just looked on happily like she felt reassured she’d hired the right babysitter because of how much affection in the form of tickling and one very wet raspberry Sandy was subjecting my tummy and underarms to. Did I laugh and squirm? A little, but only because, like other physical reactions I’d had that morning, I couldn’t help it.

“Anything else I should know,” Sandy asked.

“About discipline, just two important things. First, I don’t wait until we get back home to discipline her. If she needs a spanking out in public, I take her to the family restroom and do it there. Second, I never use phrases like ‘bad girl’ or ‘naughty.’ Sometimes her choices are bad, and she gets a consequence, but she’s always a good girl. Understood?”

“Absolutely.”

Damn straight Sandy better heccin get the message that I’m always a good girl.

“And,” Mary said, “I bet she’s an angle for you today. She hasn’t had a babysitter before, so she might be a little upset when I leave her with you. She still uses a paci, obviously, but if she’s very upset and that’s not calming her down, or if you just want some special quiet time with her, there’s a bottle in the back of the cabinet with the glasses.

“Also, you guys don’t have to stay at home. You can go for a walk, to the park, shopping, to get ice cream, wherever. Just text me to let me know. Her diaper bag is by the door. O, and she can show you where the rest of her diapers are upstairs. Any other questions?”

“Nope. I think we’re all ready to have a great day together.”

“Awesome. Daffy,” Mary said as she helped me sit up, “thanks for being my big, brave girl this morning. I know this is scary and new, but you’re going to have a great day with Miss Sandy.” She gave me a big hug and covered my face in kisses. “Mommy will see you when she gets home.”