HNT - Happy Halloween

Today's HNT is in honor of Halloween. It is one of my favorite holiday's of the year. I love decorating my house and seeing all the children who come to visit that day.

I also love the season of fall. As the nights get colder and the leaves start to fall from the trees my children and I go apple picking and carve pumpkins for Halloween.

Have a Happy Halloween everyone. Enjoy.

Acceptance

A few weeks ago I was invited to spend the weekend at the beach with some extended family members. It was a last minute decision I made to go to this quaint New England seaside town which I am really happy I that I did.

One of my family members organizes this get away every year for their friends and family with everyone staying together in the same area. I truly love my extended family and enjoy when we are all able to spend time together which seems to get harder and harder to do as the years go by.

This particular family member is married and raising a child with their spouse just like many of us. The only difference is that they are married to someone of the same sex. In our family this has never been an issue for any of us and always has been something we have all supported and accepted. They love each other and have a beautiful family together. Why should the fact that they are both the same sex make any difference. They are also lucky enough to live in one of the few states that supports same sex marriage.

Last week I followed Sinclair's many 8against8 postings on her blog and twitter. One of the things I have found that I like best about all of the blogs I follow is how much better informed I am now on so many different issues. There is always someone who will blog or twitter about something that I find myself interested in. Sinclair's post prompted me to look more deeply into this vote in California baning same sex marriage.

I came across an article about the amount of money that has been spent on this fight and was appalled by some of what I read. One of the major backers against it was the Knights of Columbus. A catholic organization based on the other side of the country from where this vote is taking place. Based in a state that allows same sex marriage.

Their only reason for donating to this is based on the teachings of the catholic church. It doesn't matter if the individuals who wish to be married are not catholic or that they are not looking to be married in the church. The only issue that the Knights of Columbus along with many other supporters of it can see is that the people involved are of the same sex.

It has gotten me thinking this past week about acceptance. I love my family member who choose to marry someone of the same sex and accept their choice of who they want to spend their life with. I can't understand how someone who doesn't know them or lives so far away can try to tell them they don't have the right to marry each other. They don't know of the love they share for each other or the beautiful family they have together so how can they simply say it is wrong.

I am sure much of how my life has been and what I have experienced in this past year has made me more passionate about this and the idea of acceptance in general. I have gotten to know many different people in this past year. Some who are very different from me in how they lead their lives or what their interests are. But the one thing we have in common is that we do not judge others for their choices and we accept people as they are. Some who know me personally and know more details about my life than what I write here can understand my issues with acceptance and why it is important to me personally.

So often it seems that we are so quick to make judgements about people or tell them how we think they should lead their lives. I have enough trouble trying to live my own life and raising my children without telling someone who I don't even know how they should live their life and have no desire to butt into some strangers life and tell them they can only have the choices I find acceptable.

I think of my family member I spent that weekend at the beach with and their friends who were with us who I was happy to get to know. Many of them are also in a same sex marriage yet in all our conversations and time we spent together that weekend we never talked about that. We talked about the same thing all parents discuss. Our children, school systems, family pets and what we were having for dinner that night. I personally cannot understand why their sexual preference should have any impact on the rest of us. It doesn't make them any less of a parent, friend or family member in my opinion.

My family member is lucky in that they have found someone they want to share their life with and raise their family together with. That is all that matters to me. They love each other and are happy together.

Today Tony Comstock is raising money for Vote No on Prop 8. When you buy a DVD today 100% of the purchase price will go to Vote No on Prop 8. Today is also my birthday and I have decided to steal an idea from Jiz Lee that I saw posted yesterday. Wish me a Happy Birthday today by buying yourself some great porn and help fight for the right for people to make their own choices.

Growing Pains

The other day on twitter The Butterfly Temptress asked why do you blog. I found myself stumped as I thought about it and I realized that over this last year my reasons for blogging have changed. Maybe that is one of the reasons right now that I seem to be having trouble writing for my blog.

I am not quite sure where I want to go these days with my blog or what exactly I want to write about. Right now I know I don’t want to write about some of the things in my personal life like I have or about my sex life. So much for being a sex blogger I guess.

In the past few months I have gotten to know many people in this community both online and IRL. This has mainly been the result of working on the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar but it has made me look in a different direction than I have previously.

I have seen an entirely different side of this new world of sex in these past few months than what I had originally thought when I first came across sex blogs. I have seen some wonderful results that this CommUNITY can accomplish when we all work together for something such as raising money for SWA, our support for AAG while she stands up for what is owed to her or helping Butterfly while she fights her battle with cancer. I find that I no longer read sex blogs just for the act of sex itself in them.

When I started working on the calendar I was able to get to know more people in the sex industry. I think what has stood out for me most are the women in this industry who have created their own place in it. Women such as Candida Royale who was just recently named one of the top ten women directors in porn. When Tess first told me she was going to be a sponsor for us I had to ask who she was. (sorry Candida) That now seems like such a long time and many emails ago now. I am looking forward to when I will finally be able to meet her in person at the launch party.

I think it is getting to know people such Candida and many others who have helped me grow as a person and broaden my outlook these past months. Now I find myself looking for more knowledge of society and how we all adapt sex into it rather than just reading about sex to get me off. I am sure a lot of this is because of my personal life and my past experiences.

The weekend we were shooting the photos for the calendar I got a phone call from one of my friends. When I told her where I was she expressed to me that she was worried about my participation in this calendar. When I pressed her as to the reasons why she told me she saw it as a moral issue. I couldn’t understand that and when I asked how she felt that way she explained that this calendar is not something I would ever show my children or want them to know about. That statement got me thinking about many things.

I really don’t think my own or most children would want to know the details about their parents sex life whether they are married or single nor do I feel the need to share it with them. I also don’t think I want to know details of my children’s sex lives when that time comes either. What I do want is to teach my children to practice safe sex and to understand the reasons why. I want them to be informed about sex but to also respect the people they have sex with. I want them to be responsible when it comes to sex and know that they can come to me if they ever need to talk about it or have questions. Most of all I want my children to have the freedom to express their sexuality in whatever way they desire and know that there is nothing wrong with that.

Butterfly also commented to me on twitter recently how my blogroll has grown this year. I replied that I hoped I had grown too but she once again made me think how different what I want to read now is from when I started my blog. The people I am now friends with who I share what goes on in their lives from both following their blogs and chatting with them.

I have decided that I would like to attend Sex 2.0 next spring in Washington DC. This is the type of event that I think is more toward where my interests seem to be headed these days. Of course I am dragging my partner in crime with me to it. It will be our first road trip together and that should be quite an interesting adventure.

HNT - What am I going to wear?

When Tess came up with the idea for the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar she decided it would be shot at the Slipper Room to give it a burlesque theme. I then had the task of trying to come up with something to wear in this calendar photo that would fit her pin up theme and also be sexy. Think that was easy? For some reason she found my jeans unacceptable. I ended up spending many nights searching the internet for ideas and sending the links to Tess for her opinion. (approval)

I was really happy with the outfit that I wore for my photo and had even considered wearing it to the Calendar Launch Party on November 14th but then decided against it. It didn't want to be that undressed at a party of 150 fully clothed people.

Now I once again am faced with the chore of figuring out what to wear for this calendar. (This is ending up more difficult than I ever imagined. Must make a mental note to ignore Tess next time she says the words "I have a great idea!") Tess and I were shopping a few weeks ago in the city and I found a skirt I absolutely loved. The only problem is I could not find any type of top to go with it that day.

The following week I went to a mall near my house searching for something and had thought I found a blouse I liked after I tried it on in the store only to come home and not like how it looked with the skirt. Looking in my full length mirror at my outfit it felt to conservative or plain for me. It didn't quite have that sexy calendar pin up girl I was going for.

Now I will once again set off on another shopping trip with Tess this week looking for another top after we have our usual lunch at FreeFoods where I hope Pete will once again share with us a plate of his delicious deserts.

I do like to make Tess happy so I humor her and allow her to order me what to wear. She has that hidden Domme side that needs to be fulfilled at times. I am however going to keep the other blouse and may even wear it to lunch this week when I see her because I did like how it looked with my jeans.

So that all of you can understand what I am talking about when I say this blouse made me feel to conservative or bland I am using it for my HNT picture this week. Hope you all enjoy it.

Behind The Scenes

Below is the first of two behind the scene videos from the photo shoot for the 2009 NYC Sex Blogger Calendar. Audacia Ray shot this video for us that day and then did a fantastic job editing everything into these two videos. Her many talents amaze me. My favorite part is Tess (the shoe snob) wearing flip flops. All she needed was a pair of capris to make her outfit complete.

We will be having the official calendar launch party on November 14th at the White Rabbit in NYC from 6:30-9:30. If you are in NYC that night you should try to make this party. I don't know when there will be so many bloggers together in the same room again and I am looking forward to meeting many of the people in person that I have only known online.

You will not find me anywhere in this video other than my voice in the background talking. Although the others in this calendar are able to be fully out that is not possible for me at this time in my life. I was very lucky that Dacia filmed this for us because she fully understood my need to remain out of the video and I did not have to worry at all that day about it.

There is a second video that will be released in the next few weeks that I was able to see the other night when I had dinner with Tess, Amanda, Dacia and Bella Vendetta. I lost another virginity that night when we went to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. This is the second time Dacia has picked the restaurant and so far she is two for two. Both the food and the company that night were excellent. Twanna managed to join us for tea and coffee before we went to In The Flesh that night.

It was oral sex night that night at In The Flesh and someone we personally knew was reading for her first time that night. Which she did a fantastic job by the way. Of course we were late getting there but luckily Desiree had saved us seats and cupcakes. I always enjoy going to In The Flesh and was glad to hear that Rachel was planning on continuing it into next year. I see each month how much work it is for her but I can also see there are many people besides me who attend and very much enjoy hearing all the different authors she has. The blackberry cosmos aren't too bad either.

One of these days I will get back to writing more about what is going on in other parts of my life I hope. I keep trying but every time I sit down to write about it nothing seems to come out. Hopefully that will change soon. Until it does you are going to have to put up with HNT posts of my cleavage. Sorry.

What I'm Reading

Searching around my house for something to read recently on one of my train rides into the city on the way out the door I grabbed Audacia's book Naked on the Internet.

I had read her book last year when I first had stumbled across sex blogs and was curious about that part of the internet world that was so new to me. Most of what I read was just information to me at the time and in many ways it was almost too much for me to actually take in at that point in time.

I was somewhat surprised when I started reading her book again recently. I now knew many of the people she wrote about either in person on just from the internet. But what really surprised me is how much better I understood what I was reading this time and how much it now related to my own life this past year.

It made me realize that this book is completely different for me reading it the second time than when I read it last year. Reading this the first time I had not met any bloggers at that point and I had never had any experience of hooking up on the internet. It all had seemed such a foreign world to me last year. I think I read it at that time as a way to try to understand that part of the internet. To understand something that I had never experienced but was a way of life for so many people now.

This time as I read it I now knew the author personally and had my own experiences with meeting people on the internet. Everything I was reading this time seemed completely natural to me.

However it made me understand better my friends that I have confided to about my Diva life and my blog. They can't quite understand how I meet people over the internet and the new friends I have made. Sometimes I know I scare them with some of the things I come out with that seems completely normal to me. I don't know if they will ever come to understand all of this about me but I am thankful that I can confide in them and they just accept me as I am now.

I am happy for that acceptance in my life these days and am taking steps to hopefully not have to hide as much of my life as I currently do. Catalina and I had a conversation not too long ago about being judged by people. I was remarking how I had been judged because I was too vanilla and didn't know enough people in the kink world. What I found ironic about that is I did know people but just didn't write about them or didn't identify them as only what they do.

I know a few women who are also work as a pro dominatrix for a living but I don't happen to only think of them by what they do. I have had dinner with a some of these women and our conversations are not what they did that week at work but instead we talk about the fall weather or our common hobby of sewing. Some I talk about our children with. I am not sure how who I know or what they do makes me anymore or less of a person. I have spent enough time in my life living in a world that judges people by what they do or who they know that I have no desire to be part of that these days.

If you haven't yet read Audacia's book I recommend that you do or if you read it like I did try reading it again. It is a well written book about the internet and this world that many of us are currently living in online.

Just don't let your mother find it laying around your house.

HNT - Calendar Preview

Today's HNT is in honor of the upcoming 2009 NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar. This is the outfit I wore for my pin up photo in the calendar. Isn't it lovely? I think so.

This is not what I had been planning on wearing for my photo shoot. A few weeks prior to the shoot I went into the city for lunch, shopping and and then dinner with several of the people involved in the calendar. I found myself in a lingerie shop with Tess, Elizabeth, Desiree and Calico looking for stockings and somehow ended up walking out of there with my entire outfit for the shoot. If you want to see the rest of me in the outfit you are going to have to buy the calendar for that.

Tess told me the other day that my boobs were swelling but I think I have just become better at displaying them. I did have training from the master of cleavage shots after all. It did make me stop to wonder if somehow Tess's boobs have rubbed off on me. Is that possible?

There were a few of the calendar outtake photos released yesterday. Have you seen them? That is me in the far back hanging all over Sinclair. Photo shoots are such hard work at times.

Tonight I will once again find myself in the city having dinner with Tess and going to In The Flesh. It is Oral Sex Night. How can anyone pass that up? I was ordered to wear a skirt and boots tonight when I see my master, I mean friend Tess. Somehow I have ended up in a D/s relationship with her and I am not quite sure how I got there. Other than the fact that she is short, busty and mouthy. I am debating if I should wear my once famous fuck me skirt to meet her.

Prizes and Press

This is a picture of the lovely beach I spent this past weekend at. It was a very relaxing weekend for me but with way too much food to eat. I did manage to find wifi after all at the general store where I was staying. I didn't have cell service but I did have wifi so life was good.

Life has been very busy the past week. Yesterday I proofed the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar. It still shocks me every time I see this calendar. It is absolutely beautiful. I never expected when Tess came up with this idea that it would turn out like this.

Stacie Joy, our photographer sent me my finished calendar photo today and told me how she had showed my picture to her photography students. It seems there was one student in particular who wanted to buy a copy of it because he liked it so much. Stacie told him he would have to attend our calendar party and buy the actual calendar where I can sign it for him. He named me the Mystery Courtesan.

I have also been busy with the calendar launch party on November 14th at the White Rabbit in NYC. Many of our sponsors have donated their products not only for our raffle at this party but also for raffles on our blog. It has been a great experience for me getting to know so many people by being part of this project and I am looking forward to being able to meet several of them in person at the party. I particularly want to see Greg from Njoy so I can beg in person for an Eleven.

This week we are giving away an OhMiBod Naughtibod each day. All you need to do to enter is buy a calendar. I am thinking now is really the time for me to upgrade to the iPhone I have been wanting.

Last week I woke up to find an email from Cory Silverberg in my inbox wanting to ask Tess and I some questions about the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar project. That was a strange feeling to see someone who I read regularly wanting to ask me questions. I left it up to Tess to answer those questions thinking I didn't need anymore public exposure than what I was already getting. The article came out today on About.com. Go check and out and see what Tess has to say about how all of this came about.

My Weekend

The past week has been very busy for me both at work and at home. Lately I don't seem to be able to get any actual work done at work. I was going to spend this weekend catching up on all the things I haven't been able to get to including writing some posts. Looks like that will not be happening now as I am taking an unexpected trip to a cottage on the New England Coast.

Although the weather this weekend is supposed to be beautiful, I will not have (gasp) wifi there. I know. I hope I won't have a breakdown. I am bringing large quantities of wine to offset that problem and looking forward to spending time with everyone and just relaxing.

I saw a preview of the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar yesterday when I was at FreeFoods for lunch. After working on it all these months it was really amazing to see it finally. I still can't believe that comment from Tess to me during one of our chats has turned into something so fantastic. The photos of everyone turned out beautiful.

We also finally firmed up the details for the calendar launch party. It is going to be at the White Rabbit on November 14th. I am very excited about going with so many people coming in from out of town. Catalina will be staying with Tess and I that night and I am looking forward to finally meeting her in person. It will be a mini cleavage party. Expect some fun pictures from that. I'm looking forward to meeting other people I only know from online such as Bad Bad Girl, Match and Avah to name a few along with many of our sponsors. I'm still hoping that Lilly will be able to make it into the city for it. If anyone is going to be around that weekend you should try to make this party. The complete details will be posted shorty over on the calendar blog.

Speaking of the calendar blog, today is the last day to be entered to win the Petite Pink Ribbon over at the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar site. Candida Royalle is one of the sponsors of our calendar and has generously donated this. One of the best things I think for me about working on this calendar project is all the people I have gotten to know. It was nice for me to get to know Candida during this and check out her products. I saw some things on her site that I liked and hope to try soon. I talk about how much I love my Hitachi but I am very interested in trying out the IDEAL and G-Plus from her line and compare them to my Hitachi. Candida and I had talked about the bad reviews the IDEAL had gotten when they first brought it out and that they had corrected the problems that were associated with it. I have a G-spot attachment for my Hitachi but I don't like it and never use it. I like the look of the G-Plus and can't wait to try it. I'll keep you posted on how I liked the IDEAL.

My HNT cleavage was a big hit this week. I guess I will now be taking part in HNT every week if that is the result I get. It even ended up over on The Week in Kink. Now I am kind of asking myself why I didn't do this sooner.

That is it for today. I am off now to go pack for my weekend instead of cleaning out my closet like I planned.

HNT aka Cleavage of the Week

I have not been able to find the time to write about anything in my life lately. I'm not really sure if it is because I have been busy with the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar or if I just have writers block. It seems every time I have something I want to write about I don't have time and when I have the time I have nothing to say.

I have been spending a lot more of my time on twitter lately which I am enjoying very much. If you follow me there you will have seen this past week my comments to Match when he said he was thinking of participating in HNT this week. I had just recently complained that there were very few men participating in HNT and we needed more of them.

Somehow Match's HNT turned into MBM (Man Balls Monday) and when I doubted he would be able to do that with on ninety minutes left to Monday he proved me wrong. Let us hope that will be the first of many MBM.

After all this talk about HNT and my guest stint on Cleavage of the Day I thought I would start a Cleavage of the Week on my own blog. Now I am not competing with you know who because we all know that would be impossible. Sometimes I don' t know which is bigger. Her mouth or her boobs. What worries me most about this is that next I will find myself out buying expensive uncomfortable shoes with stiletto heels. The skirts were bad enough.

So without further ado, may I present my very first HNT.




P.S. Bad Bad Girl....are you happy now?

Funny Story

The other day my mother came over to babysit for my children. While I was gone my mother searching for something to read went through the books I had on my bookcase. Or she may have just been nosy too.

Upon my return home I was greeted with the following conversation from my mother,

Mom: What is this book you have? Naked on the Internet.

Diva: Something I read last year.

Mom: I hope you are not meeting people on the internet.

Diva: Are you crazy. I would never do something like that.

I guess this tells me that in addition to hiding my sex toys I now also need to hide the books I read.

CommUNITY

I first saw that word used in a post Catalina wrote this past summer. I didn’t know of Catalina that well back then. I had read her blog here and there and mainly knew of her from the Best Sex Bloggers blog but the post about her daughter caught my eye. As a parent myself who has had my battles with school systems that don’t seem to want to put the children first I could identify with Catalina’s cause. I personally was going through a rough time in my life at that moment but what she wrote really hit home for me. It amazed me the overwhelming support Catalina was receiving from this community. My personal contribution to her was small but put together with others in this community we were all able to help both Catalina and her daughter.

At that time I myself was questioning being part of this community and if I wanted to be because of what I had been going through. What Catalina’s post at that time showed me was that there was so much more to this community than the small part of it that I had been exposed to. There were so many people out there who wanted to help and support Catalina whether they knew her or not.

When we launched the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar blog last week we were a small group getting together in support of Sex Work Awareness. That was just over a week and over 10,000 hits ago. What I have seen happen since then has simply amazed me. Each day we received more and more support from this community for our project. So many people wrote about and linked us, bought calendars and days or added the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar button to their site in support of us.

I am very new to this community only finding sex blogs just one year ago. I look at my life now compared to that year ago and am overwhelmed with all the changes in it. I have found many new friends in this community and so much support in my life. What I personally like best about this community as a whole is that I am not judged for who I am or what I do. I look at my friendship with Tess and how we are different in so many ways. She wears skirts, I wear jeans. She wears fancy heeled shoes, I wear boots. She likes bruises and razors, I like…..well you get my meaning. But then I see how Tess and I are both working mothers struggling in our marriages and trying to find happiness at this point in our lives. We are both different and alike in so many ways but we can have our close friendship because it is just who we are and we both accept that about each other.

That is also what I have found this past month in this community. It doesn’t matter if I am married, single or whatever. It doesn’t matter if I am gay, bi or straight. The people I have been lucky enough to get to know in the past month accept us all for whoever we are.

As each day passed this past week it seemed more and more unreal to me at times. I had started blogging last year and created Diva as somewhat of a joke on Jefferson’s life and his blogstar status. I was now being listed on blogs all over the internet. We were written about on Fleshbot and by more than 40 different bloggers. I find myself now in contact with people who I have only heard about and read on the internet. I kept thinking how much my life has changed over this past year.

What I have also found over the past week is that it didn’t matter who I was, what I have written or who I have sex with or even what type of sex. What I saw in this community was a strong group of individuals who all came together to support a cause doing whatever they could to help us. No one cared if I was married, poly, kinky or just me. What mattered was making and selling a calendar to benefit Sex Work Awareness. I wish that was how it could be for everyone in this world.

Imagine living in a world where everyone is accepting of each other. Maybe then so many of us wouldn’t have to blog anonymously.

I want to say thank you to all of you who have helped to get the word out about this project and to all who have bought days and calendars too. I haven’t had as much time as I would like to write these past few weeks because I have become Tess’s slave on this project. Oops, I meant to say assistant. That is latest the title I believe she has given me this week. Hopefully now that our photo shoot is over and once the calendar goes to the printer my life will get back to a more normal pace because there are several things I need to write about from this past month. Please be patient more regular posts are coming. Right now I am spending most of my free time on twitter these days so you may want to follow me there. You can keep up with the latest escapades of Tess and I there.