Just Keep Swinging

I was very lucky to have beta read the first two chapters of "Bouncing Back" Bouncing Back Ch. 01 - Lesbian Sex - Literotica.com a story by the amazing and prolific writer Emily Miller. She has as of this being uploaded so far only published chapter 1!

As ever with me when reading another author's story, an idea for a twisted "Bazzle" alternative manifested itself.

I will say from the outset that from what I've read of Emily's story hers is far superior! I have borrowed a framework and a vision. But now this is very much a Bazzle story.

As such it will contain plenty of smoking and drinking, plus other good stuff- including the lesbian interaction...

I have been given permission by Emily to publish (she also kindly beta read it). All errors are still mine 😊

Just Keep Swinging

"Mom, Mom, Timmy has taken my pen!"

"Has he Jo, can you use another?" I bark from just inside the open back door. My voice was now almost gravelly when I shouted.

"No. He has taken my best purple one. Mom, help me!" The voice pours like a river down the stairs.

I hate these moments when the over excited and angry shrill voices bounce off our magnolia painted walls, as the sound makes its way down the stairs. I sighed. "Okay, on my way." I call back up the stairs trying to do positivity whilst rolling my eyes like a twister. It is ten thirty am on a very wet Saturday morning. It's meant to be nearly summer. We are meant to be outside doing things. A family walk or something exciting. The car needs vacuuming for a start. But no. Everyone is cooped up in the house like chickens and as such everyone is already at the end of their tether. We have all been up since ten to six when we got bounced on in bed. I am already counting down the hours until school drop-off on Monday. Eight thirty on Monday morning I am liberated. At this moment it feels like a month away.

Parenting was now meant to be easier. We had prepared ourselves the best we could. We had money in the bank, having made a lot of savings in preparation. There was no getting away from the fact I was a mature mom. Practically geriatric. I gave birth to my second daughter Johanna, when I was thirty-six. I am now well over the hill at forty-two. I knew what to do, I had already had my son, Timothy, two years before. Dealing with one was easier even though we had no idea, actually dealing with two was a nightmare. When I assumed it would be easier. The two of them have chalk and cheese personalities. My friends had gone through it all about ten years before. I had focused on my career. Hell, it is scary seeing them post that they are either grandparents or their kids are now eighteen and off to university. That just scares me. I've got years until that freedom. As for being a wife. Well...I've been married to John for over twelve years now.

We all have our vices. I still enjoy myself. I take another drag of my cigarette and exhale through the open back door, most of the smoke going the right way. The rain is pouring down, it's gotten heavier in the last few minutes. I am meant to be outside, that's what I agreed with John. But I am staying dry. I then flick the tip with my index finger, the extended ash scatters in the breeze swirling around. I will go outside and sweep them all up at some point. I don't have the time now. I really now need to climb the stairs yet again and go on a pen hunt.

I, like, properly quit when I had both Timmy and Johanna. But I had a wobble in-between but as soon as I found out I was pregnant again, I was very good yet again. Once breast feeding finished...with the stress of two young children screaming at me I found myself reaching for my well-known support. I just needed a cigarette. Then of course one was never enough. I just wanted another.

My life now is still like spinning plates. It used to be customers I was trying to keep happy. I loved my job. Being busy was fun and I loved being important. The money also helped. But it seems I am now trying to keep three people happy. It is stressful. Like really stressful. There is always someone demanding something or losing something or just wanting attention. It feels like it's twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year job. I can now never truly switch off. I am forever needed. I do feel sometimes as if I need to climb inside a rocket and be fired up and away into outer space. Just to escape.

I have now made a rule. The kids sort of understand. Mommy has a "time out". A few moments where I am not playing a NATO peacekeeping trooper. I'm definitely not on a smoke break, that is totally wrong. I am not going to announce that too all and sundry. I don't want the children repeating or them thinking that. Or telling the teachers. I'm not a bad mom. They don't need to know that. It's mummy's time out. It just so happens it is my moment with a cigarette. It is my time. Five minutes of bliss in an otherwise stressful world. I only get twenty or so of them a day. Twenty moments to myself. My thoughts. With a cigarette between my lips and the smoke in my lungs I can block everything out until it's finished. I can then go again and face the world. If they had been really truly annoying, I might have made it ten minutes in the garage and two cigarettes.

John...where do I begin. I met him twenty-two years ago on a night out. Actually, in a nightclub. He was tall and slim with a lovely smile. At that moment, I was looking the best I have ever done, I was at my fittest and had just won a tennis competition. I was at that moment on top of the world.

"Mary!" His deeper voice cascaded down the stairs, it was so deep that it almost came through the walls. It always does. Like a jackhammer it vibrates through the building.

I close my eyes and drag hard, and exhale out the door, before turning in once again. 'On my way dear." I call up the stairs with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. I wave the displaced smoke away. His coffee would be empty or the thermostat on his radiator too hot. He will be too busy to come down the stairs or sort it himself. But I have to deal with Johanna and the case of the missing pen first. I flick my orange filter and briefly watch as it cartwheels out onto the patio. To be dealt with on a dry day.

Today, and since lockdown, he practically lives in the back bedroom. Coming out of the man cave for food and sleep. No longer needs to drive into the office quite as regularly. I have never gotten back into work either. I had promised to start job hunting again in 2020. Children were either about to go into school or nursery. Yup, lockdown. That finished everything. There were no jobs to look for.

A few years earlier I just had to give up work and most of our fun social life to try and be a mom. Things were not happening. Sex was. Lots of it. There was no lack of effort on either side. It was perfunctory, almost a chore. Check the calendar, my temperature and undress and jump on the bed or sofa. But with ever worrying certainty every month my period rocked up, mother nature sitting there in my panties grinning triumphantly all in red at me. Everything was also getting too stressful at work. Equally it was hard at home. My mom was continuously on at me for grandchildren. "You and I are not getting any younger" was the refrain. Then John was on to me to be a dad. I now really truly wanted to be a mom too. He had very supportively gone along with the no kids rule up to the point where I said I now wanted to be a mom. I was the one that had changed my mind, he now had one focus. He saw a reason for his life. Sex. It was no longer spontaneous. It was not really enjoyable. It became a function. Three times a day on the weekends, we even jokingly did it upside down on the stairs. Just to experiment and see if that was the cause.

It just was not working. There was a consequence. I was unfortunately smoking more and more, whilst telling everyone I was quitting. I was planning on quitting. I knew I had to. I didn't want to admit that might have been part of the problem. The stress levels I was suffering from were not helped by coming off the pill. My hormones flew around and around like an aircraft circling an airport. My moods are swooping and swirling like a bird. Even I noticed it. The dream that this month we had done it, only for total emotional failure. It was my mom that suggested quitting work and staying at home. Life calmed down. I could suddenly breathe a little easier. I was not rushing out of the house at seven in the morning, spending an hour driving to the office. It certainly helped. I was also not getting home at 630 at night.

It was easier to stop work than smoking. I almost danced after handing in my notice. Even though I had to show effort to quit, telling them I was busily trying showing off the patches on my arm when we decided to go down the IVF route. I honestly did cut down a bit. What helped was that being out of the office, there was now calm in my life. The stress of the office work vanished. I was not being as highly strung. There was no pressure on reports or meetings. Nothing.

However, what didn't help the body clock situation was that for several years, including the first four or five years of our marriage, I was dead against having any children. I just did not want to be a mom. No, it was not for me. The idea scared me. We didn't like to announce it, but I was on the pill, and we were wearing condoms. There was not a chance in hell of me getting pregnant. The idea of being a mom truly scared me. I wasn't ready.

I liked having our expensive holidays together. Getting in or even out of my bikini spreading my arms and legs out on a stunning white sand beach taking in the sun, sea, and plenty of sex for two weeks every year. There is nothing like post coital sand in the butt crack. I liked that at home at the weekends could fuck at two on a Saturday afternoon and not give a care in the world that we were both sprawled out naked on the lounge sofa. I could reach across and swiftly light a cigarette afterwards and spread my legs, grin at John and be dripping our combined juices all over the couch.

That was an amazing time for me. Life was reckless and for me, fun. I then all of a sudden without really noticing, I turned thirty-one. Almost overnight I was now very much on the wrong side of thirty. Forty was on the next horizon. However much I willed it, I was no longer in my twenties. I was truly in my thirties. I was now looking towards a fat, frumpy middle aged forty with fear. It was also around then that I got a tinnitus type thing. I could now hear the ever louder ticking noise surrounding me. It was from my own personal body clock. I was married, I had a well-paid job, and a large house. Life was amazing. But mother nature was banging her drum.

For all the trying and stress it created, relief finally washed over me to a certain extent. It was the day that we were due our first meeting with the IVF doctor. Mother nature had worked. I had almost violently threatened my ovaries and his sperm with a test tube, and they had responded. We just had a scan rather than treatment. My second was so much easier. We didn't plan her, but the postpartum sex was fun even if I felt fat and grumpy. She was a delightful surprise.

I have separated my children into different rooms, they are like two scrumming rugby players but each now with their own expensive tablet. It scares me every time they get their mitts on them. Just how long before it gets thrown at the wall in a fit of rage because the operator made an error and blames it on the computer. Peace and quiet is the aim for all. Silence fell, this meant they were now quiet playing games or probably watching awful YouTube videos. As a rule, I had fifteen minutes now before they would start fighting again. Yes, bad mom. They should be doing arts and crafts or playing board games. Promoting their dexterity and STEM or other such bullshit. But the stealing pen game brought that to a halt. Screen time was a win. Quiet was very much a win for me. I like winning. I always have.

It was then time to face my husband. I took a deep breath outside the nursery cum office door. He has accepted that I smoke, as I always have. But I know that he is never happy with it. That's why since we had children I have been standing outside. Or inside in the garage, to stay dry and warm or at the point of last resort on the back door with at least the door open. I never smoke in the house when they are awake. Once they are asleep it's my time. They don't need to know.

I was heavily smoking the night we met. I shouldn't have been. But I was county champion that day. I had to let my hair down and party. I was riding a wave of triumph. Nicotine had helped me continue that flight. My dad had spent a lot of time trying to find me sponsorship to go for the next level. I didn't care. I just wanted to party.

The only level I was going for was horizontal. I had been drinking all afternoon. They gave me a bottle of champagne to win. I thought at the time it was rude not to drink it.

"Hey, do you think...." John looked up from his keyboard, his finger clicking his mouse and closing the browser just when I popped my head around the door. He could have rescued the pen. He was upstairs. No, it was mommy's job. I took a deep breath of anticipation, and it was killing me. This time he wasn't working. He was looking at porn. I've seen the OnlyFans accounts in his browser history. He doesn't realize I know how to check. It's our family computer, not his. We will have to have a conversation around cleaning his search history when Timmy gets older and curious.

I am lucky in one regard with John. He goes into the office every other Thursday to keep in with the team. They then normally end up going for a drink afterwards as none of them will be up early on Friday. It's on these days that I've checked his computer once or twice. I may have had my vibrator in at the same time.

It's my reliable friend every other Thursday. Mom friends are one thing. My delightful and ever-present bullet vibrator is another. Twenty to thirty minutes of unadulterated fucking pleasure. He would be delighted to know how much I've been looking at videos and pictures of his OnlyFans models as I dribbled and gushed over his expensive office chair. I just love it. Cleaning up afterwards wasn't quite so much fun. I didn't really want the chair reeking of me.

"What John?" I instantly snapped back. We had been snapping more and more recently. Maybe longer. We were just getting on each other's wick.

"Well, you know I've got to get this PowerPoint done by Monday." His head pointed towards the screen. As if what was in front of him was not huge fake tits of a skinny bottle blonde and a shaved pussy with three fingers thrusted inside her, but his boring work.

"It's Saturday, spend some time with us?" I tried to smile and be positive. I have to be perma positive with all three of them. Keep everyone happy. In reality all I just wanted to do was run downstairs, hide, eat one of the children's chocolates and have another cigarette.

"Maybe later, I have got to get this done?'

My eyes roll like a kaleidoscope, I may have even huffed rather loudly. "What exactly do you want me to do?"

"It's MY iPad!" Jo screams through the wall interrupting our chain of thoughts. Another mutual roll of our eyes. Our fifteen minutes are already up.

"Could you..." His face winced as a grovel. His sexy handsome five o'clock shadow that he used to have been now almost a gray forest of a beard. He trims it for his Thursdays in the office. The rest of the time it's a prickly forest.

"Get them out of your hair?" I finished his sentence and clocked that my voice went up an octave at the end. I knew I was being equally antagonizing.

"Yes?" He was defiant. He ran his hands through his thinning hair. When we met it was a nice full head of brown hair. His bald patch and receding gray hairline were speeding up. He now had more hair on his chin than on top of his head.

"Like how?" I looked across the small room to the double-glazed window, and we both watched the tree in the next-door garden swaying in the wind as rain drops lashed against the pain and dribbling down.

"I don't know, how about the new indoor tennis center, we picked up the flier the other day?"

My heart sank. "John...it will be busy, will our two actually play tennis?" More excuses. They are too big now really for soft play centers. They get easily bored and want to drag my fat ass through the rollers rather than play with other children.

"Your old racquet is still in the cupboard." He pointed to the wooden pine wardrobe that was next to the spare bed, it contained all my clothes and things that I would 'one day' fit back into once I lost the baby weight. There were far more nice sexy clothes and expensive underwear in there than in my bedroom wardrobe. It's been over eight years since I wore any of it. It might happen one day. You read all the books and magazines about how your body pops back. However, for me two babies and then finding that when your child is asleep during the day sitting down and enjoying the chocolate biscuits and cake on the sofa are rather nice, might not have helped.

"Go on, you might even enjoy it."

I stared at him, I hoped he wasn't going to follow up about my own weight. That would have been a tipping point again. He occasionally plays Squash on a Friday night with an old school mate. Beer belly reduction he calls it. But the beers afterwards probably counter it.

"I guess, you could come too, help me out, we could play doubles?" I grinned ever hopeful.

"If they like it, maybe next week?" He deflected and delayed.

That was it. The conversation was over. His face told me everything. He was clearly going back to watching jiggling big tits and equally fat shaking asses. Or his presentation. He didn't pay much attention to my now overly wobbly fat ass. Thank God for baggy t-shirts and leggings. Keep everything tucked in. I was not often his MILF. Maybe once a month, but only if I was feeling up to it.

Deep down I am still that tall leggy brunette he met in the Loft nightclub all those years ago. Yes, I've just developed curves. I was lucky back then, with a low-cut top, my breasts always made the men stare. It certainly kept his attention over the years. Didn't matter which diet I went on; I kept my assets. I had large breasts. My mom told me they came from her grandmother. Lucky me.

Except now, with quite a bit more weight, they are even larger. I still get the very occasional look in the supermarket. But it does tend to be the elderly men shuffling around who pause and look. Again, lucky me.

At this moment all I knew now was I was going back to hell. I had not picked up a tennis ball in over two decades. I had no reason to. That was my past life.

Back to being a mom. First, I had to find the flier, get the number, and ring up and book. I was not driving across town on the off chance only to find they were fully booked. I called as I hid in the garage just enough time to have another cigarette and then after a glass of water, herded the children in the car.

Chapter 2

The whole process of getting out of the house feels like it takes hours. Toilet breaks, clothing changes, finding socks, the right socks. Getting two matching shoes on. Forgetting and then remembering the water bottles.

Then finding a coat and running with our hoods up and finally getting in the car. Fighting on which side of the car to go. Oh, for a cigarette. Then before someone had forgotten something we drove off. A few years ago, I would have run back and romantically kissed John goodbye. No need now. He wouldn't appreciate it even if I would.