Sketch #2 - Her

It was a dangerous game and she knew it. But that didn't stop her from edging out there further, further. It would go too far. She knew that too. But that didn't stop her from pushing beyond the bounds of decency, or normal.

She had to know, but oh, he'd remain closed-mouthed if she asked directly. She'd done exactly that more than once and he'd always wielded the same tactic. You couldn't even call it a glossing over. It was an outright silence on the matter as if he hadn't heard the question.

"It's like I've been beaten with my own stick," she said to her ex-husband who had enough sense and class not to smirk when she recounted her most recent tale of woe. She'd been dumped. The irony wasn't lost on either of them though neither mentioned it. She muttered about Karma while he looked anywhere but at her.

They talk about desperate measures, she said. And these are desperate times. Things had gone so wrong and now knowing seemed less painful than not.

But holy shit. Those words, delivered so succinctly and so matter of fact, weren't just an arrow to her heart. No, that motherfucker sliced right through her and landed squarely on her future selves too. Hell, she suspected that years from now those words would be arcing through the air and landing hard and sharp on her sorry ass ego.

.......She was smart and funny. The prettiest girl in high school......

......So what happened? The thin, beautiful women he was chatting with on a sex hook-up website braced herself for the but.....

But I was never attracted to her physically.  She let herself go. She's 48, overweight, gray hair.

And there it was. The thin, beautiful girl who'd lured him so expertly into thinking he was fixing to fuck the girl of his dreams felt her stomach drop. Blinking back tears, she morphed into something not at all sexual but something rather repugnant apparently.  48. Overweight. Gray hair twisted around her finger in a nervous knot as she considered her response.

The thin, beautiful sex object could afford to respond any way she wanted.  He was going to let her get away with anything because he was still hoping for a hook-up. But instead of hitching up her feminist pants and defending his ex as desirable despite her age, her weight, her silver hair, she remembered the game and typed something about how understandable that was. Who wanted someone who'd let themselves go? 

He barely registered her response.  He was ready to move on to more titillating topics like how he wanted to bend her skinny body in half and fuck her hard.

The skinny girl she'd pretended to be shadowed her at every mirror, frowned at her soft middle as she slipped as fast as she could in and out of clothes, sighed when she wanted to eat an entire bag of M&Ms with no consideration whatsoever for color order.

She hates the skinny girl. She wants to be her. She stops herself mid-spiral. That skinny girl won't always be skinny. Or even if she is, won't always be young.  There will always be younger, thinner women. And, she reminds herself, this particular skinny girl wasn't even real.

Instead of giving in to her cravings she chewed on the double standards of sex appeal. The man who'd found her so disgusting wasn't anything to shout about. 45. Overweight. Balding. Bad teeth. And yet he felt perfectly within his rights to expect someone like the woman she'd invented to want him.

She trolled the internet for new hairstyles and color. She fought her cravings and took up walking and lost twenty pounds. She bought foundation garments that could double as torture devices for the weak of mind.

She lay next to the new man., the one who rarely touched her, and thought again of those words. 48, overweight, gray hair. His last girlfriend had been significantly younger, slimmer, and therefore prettier by default.

The new man had his own tactic. It's me, not you. Can't you just accept that I love you and leave it at that?

"It's like getting beaten with my own stick," she thinks because she doesn't want to talk to her ex-husband about this anymore. The situation is so absurd.

She thought about how the days of getting by on her looks were behind her. She had been only marginally aware that she did that, but now it was clear. The way men wanted you when you were young and slim and fresh was actually predicated on those traits. The awareness of this sent a shudder through her like the one she felt when she realized that her days of having the soft warmth of her own babies were behind her.

She could starve herself to nothing. Walk until her feet ached. Dye her hair and attack the wrinkles with creams. And still she was always going to be 48, 49, 50. The words young and fresh were never going to be applied to her again.

She started to talk to herself about being undesirable. Or something different than desirable. How would she operate without the barrier of sex? It had been such an important part of her repertoire for so long that she felt as though she were losing one of her senses.

What else was there to her? Oh dear lord, was she going to have to grow as a person and become interesting?

The thought nearly exhausted her. Instead she resolved not to care. To accept the new definition of herself. She knows it's silly to allow the opinion of others to determine her self worth, but there it is.  The root of the problem. Has she ever existed outside of being defined by someone else?

Hell, one day she might even embrace this new, sexless self, but for now she's still puzzling over the sensation of invisibility when she puts on her shoes and walks the downtown streets in an attempt to salvage a little bit of what was once considered fuckable.

Adventures in Real Parenting: Intense

My youngest daughter and I were watching television when this commercial came on.

She cleared her throat and said, "Okay, so I get the message that it's supposed to enhance satisfaction, whatever that means, but what exactly is the point of KY?"

Blink, blink.

"Rub your hands together. See how that friction feels?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay, now imagine if you were to put some lubrication like oil on your hands, what would happen?"

She looked at her hands for a moment then said, "There would be less friction."

"Right. Do you need me to explain further? You know, you make your own. When a woman is sexually aroused---"

She cut me off. "You can stop right there. The last time we had a conversation like this, you ended up telling me about nipple clamps."


"Oh. Right. Hey, you started it. Did you need me to explain what they mean by satisfaction?"

Under her breath. "My future therapist is going to be one busy person."

Unemployment Diary: Call me

Fun fact: A turnkey operation for that phone sex hotline will cost $799 set up fee plus $50 a month in maintenance fees. All I need is a home phone (got it) and a preamble which identifies the line and the cost per minute. Billing begins in three seconds...

And I'm going to have to create a marketing strategy.

This idea is taking shape. A question remains:  Will I be able to do get through a call without laughing? The websites I've researched stress a level of professionalism and good customer service to ensure repeat customers and word of mouth marketing. Really? Do people, guys mostly, I suppose, discuss their phone sex calls? I'm going to have to do some reconnaissance on this. Maybe do a Joyce Hyser like in Just One of the Guys. I guess I'll listen in at bars, the gym, the grocery store. Maybe the local barber shop?

Looks like I'm going to have to improve my game. I can imagine all kinds of things going wrong.(dream waves go here)

Oh, yeah, baby. Yes, right there. Mmmm. Oh, one second. (Stage whisper) Sophie, Daddy will have to help you with that math homework when he gets home.  Ooooh, yeah. Do you like that?(Note to self: Lock door)

Or ....

You want me to say what? Um...okay. But do I have to say it in that Edith Bunker voice again? (Note to self: Rehearse!)


Or....

Tell me how you like it.  What? No, not your hamburger. MathMan! get off the line! (Note to self: No second extension for the business line.)

Or.....

And then I take your ..... shit, I've lost my notes, what do you like me to call your thing again? (Note to self: Get a whiteboard. And markers.)

Or.....

Yes, you can call me Dcup, Senator. I mean, darling. Senator darling. (Note to self: Confidentiality rules. Remember them.)

Or....

Mmmmm, what? Oh that? It's my new sex toy. It does? It sounds like a mixer? Well, that's interesting. You just keep going, while I pop this cake into the oven.... (Note to self: No multitasking unless the customer requests it.)

It's also been suggested to me that I might want to update my look for the marketing material. Really? Color my hair? Botox the crinkles? Loofah the cellulite? Wouldn't it just be easier to use photos of my younger, more nubile self? I'm still that flexible hottie on the inside. Or a graphic. Why not just a graphic? Like my old DCup avatar? (Let's not discuss how old that thing is.)

What do you think? Maybe I'd better research the ethics of this. I mean, what is not sexy about this?

Would have been better if the sour cream weren't fat free.

 

Okay, maybe my adviser has a point. And even though I sound quite young on the phone, won't callers figure out pretty quickly that someone with my experience would have to be at least ...... oh nevermind. I'm overthinking this.

First things first. I'll see if I can do this kind of work for someone else. It that works out, then I'll get my own line.

As I mull this over, aside from the initial investment and the fact that I will finally be paid for my sex work, there's little reason to prevent me from giving this a try. It's rather like I've been in training for it for the last oh so many years.  And here's another upside to it:  Reading erotica can now be considered research and prep instead of just that thing I do when no one is around to hear the buzzing.......

I'm living in an age that calls darkness light

So Arnold had a secret that (one hopes) included child support payments. One wonders if he made his mistress and child take the same kind of cuts he foisted upon the employees of the State of California.

Meanwhile, Newt's passion for his country forced him to have sex with and eventually marry one of his staffers, leaving behind another wife.

Former Senator John Ensign had to be told by his spiritual advisor to put his pants on and go home.

David Vitter, Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, the new guy from New York who photographed his hot bod in the bathroom mirror for a craig's list posting.

I know I'm forgetting some.

John Edwards does some personally despicable things and his political career lays in ruins, despite any good works he might have done in the past. All those things are erased because of what he did with his penis. Same for Elliot Spitzer and Gary Hart. I'm probably forgetting others.

Republicans, while running candidates on a family values platform, forgive their members' transgressions. Democrats, while not being the party of sexual morality legislation, fricassee their members. Most of them, at least. Bill Clinton is a survivor, but he's definitely the exception to the rule, wouldn't you say?

And it's not just sexual moralizing on the right. Oh, Mike Huckabee. He was obese and lost a bunch of weight and got really healthy. He wrote a book and did huge promotional events touting the importance of being lean and healthy and how we should treat our bodies like temples, not garbage dumps.

Have you seen Mike Huckabee lately? Poor fellow. I feel his fat. Sharing his genetic programming toward porkiness, I understand how frustrated he must feel. The yo yo weight is on the upswing and he's got the double chins mocking him in the mirror every damn day as a reminder that he's still a prisoner to his love affair with food. But did his food and exercising moralizing earn him hard knocks from the geniuses on Fox News the way they've gone after First Lady Michelle Obama for promoting healthy lifestyles? Of course not. It got him a job there at Fox instead.

All of this is my long-winded way of saying this is why I try to not preach about better living or sexual morality. I am weak. The flesh is weak. My body is a cage, my mind a cesspool. My better angels are often seen sitting in the corner booth of a seedy bar playing strip poker over glasses of whiskey, telling dirty jokes while cigarettes dangle from their lips. And that's when they're not climbing into the back seats of cars with a sly smile and a glance over their shoulder. Their halos long gone, their wings missing feathers, their gowns stained with barbecue sauce, their pantyhose a laddered map of where they've been.

So really, what chance do I have? And who am I to tell anyone else how to conduct their personal affairs? That doesn't always preclude me from doing so, but it does make me a tremendous asshole for it.

One can't watch the TV or scan the internet without seeing someone yucking it up over these stories of right wing personal indiscretions. I understand the need to laugh. Hypocrisy is ever so deserving of the shame finger. This particular hypocrisy has become such a standard on the political right that we don't even have to clarify that what we're on about isn't the sexual peccadilloes, but the fact that they were committed by some guy who'd just made a speech about the sanctity of marriage. Do you imagine them grunting and rutting and giggling as they recite their speech into the ear of their paramour, the irony as thick as the smell of sex in that room at the Four Seasons? I do. It's very unappetizing.

Or do they compartmentalize just as Bill Clinton said he did? Do they flip a mental switch that keeps them from drawing a line between what they're doing and what they say other people should do? Are they completely incapable of noting the hypocrisy?

I had an affair with a guy once who wanted a midlife do over. I always suspected that it pleased him to no end that he thought he was pulling a fast one on our shared employer, but he'd never admit that the illicitness of the affair was a huge part of the appeal, critical to the relationship. His favorite line to repeat to me was that if I were ever questioned, I should deny, deny, deny. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what evidence an accuser could produce, I was to deny.

He was a Republican, too.

The mind of the powerful man is a curious thing. While I can list all the reasons why I could never run for office, the reality is that I don't believe I have the right to tell other people what to do. Seriously. I sucked as a boss. I'm much too accommodating and worried about the feelings of others to make for a good authority figure or leader. Powerful people, on the other hand, feel entitled to tell people what to do and how to do it.

While talking about this with a friend, the friend pointed out that perhaps I should run as a Republican because then my deviant background wouldn't matter. All I'd have to do is pretend I've seen the error of my ways, find God and be born again. Voila! Instant political career success!

Except I'm a terrible liar. And I would never last as a Republican considering how they're supposed to be anti-everything these days. I don't want to tell people what to do with their lives, I just want to advocate for everyone to have a better life. And yes, I do believe that some people would have better lives with a little less excess. Some people would be well served to be relieved of the burden of some of their wealth and power because having it all has depleted their humanity. They no longer recognize that they are part of something larger than themselves. There is nothing larger than themselves. And there I am - being my own kind of hypocrite.

This being human thing is such a balancing act, isn't it?

The human heart is complicated, indecipherable. Add to it the pressure exerted by the sex glands and some days we're lucky we can walk across the room without having to stop to hump a table leg without so much as a by your leave. Focusing on sex and sexuality has been such a winning vote getter for the political right. And how much time and energy has been wasted on things that, as Arnold, Newt and the rest of the Pink Helicopter Club have, once again, shown us, are truly non-starters. John Boehner calls letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire a non-starter, but Mr. Boehner, sir, you can legislate tax policy. It's an enforceable law that worked for many years in this nation. On the other hand, you simply cannot legislate morality. Humans are built to do certain things, our hardwiring is meant to lead us into temptation.

Wouldn't it be invigorating if we could refocus our political system on lifting all boats on a rising tide instead of tying concrete blocks to the ankles of the least among us? Who really cares if Tab A is going into Slot B? Ultimately, no one cares. Only when they're standing in the voting booth with an array of candidate choices and not a lick of sense about real public policy matters, do most Americans actually give a good goddamn about sexual morals. And it's not that they really care because if they did, they'd care about who's  diddling the maid or sexting or dancing around in his girlfriend's underwear while she wears a fake mustache and strap-on dildo. People vote for moralizing hypocrites because it's a hell of a lot easier to understand pee pees and wee wees and who should be doing what with whom according to somebody's unread bible than it is to understand the federal budget, tax subsidies and foreign policy.

While the world wanks over the salacious details, I'm going to get busy on my next project - my plans to run for President of France as the Socialist Candidate. I hear there's going to be an opening.

Adventures in Real Parenting: Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it

Rihanna has a song title S&M and the lyrics are pretty much what you'd expect...

Feels so good being bad (Oh oh oh oh oh)
There's no way I'm turning back (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Now the pain is my pleasure cause nothing could measure (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Love is great, love is fine (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Out the box, outta line (Oh oh oh oh oh)
The affliction of the feeling leaves me wanting more (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me
Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me

There's more, but you get the idea.

This song gets a lot of play on my youngest daughter's favorite XM satellite radio channel 20 on 20 and it came on while we were in the car - just the two of us - on Saturday afternoon.

"Mom, what does S&M mean?"

Oh, fiddlesticks. I knew this was coming.

"Well, it's a sexual reference. I assume you gathered that."

"Well, duh."

"Fine. Do you want me to tell you then?"

"I asked, didn't I?"

"There's no need to be hostile. I don't care if you are twelve."

"Fine. Will you please tell me what S&M means?"

"Okay. Well, the S stands for sadist and the M stands for masochist. Do you know what those words mean?" Oh hell, why hadn't I changed the station to Radio Classics. We could be listening to some nice wholesome crime on Dragnet.

"Yeah, go on. Tell me what those words mean. Please."

Ten minutes later....

"So that's it. One likes their sexual pleasure with pain and the other enjoys doling out the pain." I took a deep breath and waited. I glanced over at her. She looked a little pale as she stared straight ahead.

"Too much?"

She took her own deep breath. "You know, I didn't really need to know about the existence of nipple clamps.  You could have just said kinky sex."

"Yeah, but kinky implies a value judgment and there's nothing wrong with..."

"Mom!"

"What?"

"You're doing it again."

"Oh. Right. Sorry. How about we listen to some Dragnet?"

"Yes. God, yes."

Do you over-explain things? How do you know when it's too much? What's kinky anyway?

If she's seen the video, then I think she knows. I do believe I was being tested to see what I know.

Adventures in Real Parenting: So I Say Hello to Wasted Hours

Is Mars in retrograde with Venus or something?  Because the way things are going here, there must be some explanation beyond the biological.  It's like 1987 all over again.

Either way, MathMan and I are aligning a lot lately.  Not that I'm complaining.  Along with the cardiovascular benefits, it's good for the brain chemistry.  I am less likely to chew your head off for asking a simple question like "Are there any clean towels."  Which is, for the record, a damn ridiculous question.  Of course there are clean towels. That washing machine seems to run 24/7.

Anyway, Friday night "alignments" were so splendid that we were in the midst of discussing a three-peat when a faint rapping came from the bedroom door.  What promised to be a mutually satisfying game of the desperate novelist and the  lecherous publisher was abruptly interrupted.  I tucked the velvet cuffs under my pillow while MathMan adjusted the blankets over us.

"Yes?" we huffed in sexually-repressed unison.

The door opened slowly and at first I thought Sophie was the culprit.  Alas no.  It was Chloe, doubled over as she made her way into the room.  A hungover Groucho Marx missing the mustache, but sporting tremendous raccoon eyes from the previous night's liberal use of mascara and eyeliner.

"Wild night?" Her father inquired, his voice sanguine, his expression a smirk.

Chloe barely nodded before resting her head against the bed's foot board.

We watched as she slid to the floor where she whimpered, a bedraggled mess of headache, nausea and that lingering sense that you said and did things you're going to regret when your friends tell you about them at some later date.

"Tough lesson," I nudged MathMan with my elbow.  "What, pray tell, were you drinking?"

She whimpered again. Pititful.  Finally she managed to bleat a few words.  "Beer," she hesitated.  "And some malt liquor thing."

MathMan and I hooted with laughter as our darling child, our perfect girl crawled to the bathroom.

"I have sunk so low" were her last words before she retched.

"So did you ever share your hangovers with your parents?" MathMan asked me in a voice loud enough to be heard over the barfing.

"Good god no."  And then to Chloe, "Shall I turn on a parade?  Extra loud?"

My mother came into my room one New Years Day and did that very thing as I lay in bed wishing for speedy death.  Our children had heard this story before so Chloe would have understood the reference.

"Please don't" came the weak voice from the bathroom.

"But this is all about punishment so you remember not to do this again."  MathMan helped make the case.

Chloe flushed the toilet, but remained in the bathroom.  "Yeah, well, don't you think throwing up next to a trash can containing my parents' condom wrapper is punishment enough?"

Four Kinds of Pleasure In One Box

Prologue
He kissed her and rolled off onto his side of the bed.  "So?"
"So?"  She smiled at him.
"It felt just like any other to me."
"Me, too.  Although, for a second there, it got really warm in here."

***********

"Okay, so do you wanna go..."

"Yeah, let's go."

Chloe looked at us, her face expressionless.  "I'm going to go look for something on the other side of the store."

I followed MathMan down the aisle past the tampons and pads.  We stopped before the display of Trojans and Durexes.  Even the organic sheep prophylactics were representing.  They're made of sheep skin, not prophylactics for sheep.  I think.  I haven't researched this, so please don't quote me.

MathMan shrugged.  He grabbed a box with the word KYNG emblazoned across the front.  "What do you think?"

"Definitely appropriate."

He pointed at the box of SKYNs.  "Or maybe?"

We giggled.  Dear me, we're fourteen.  He put the KYNG box back and resumed his serious face.  This was serious business.  Preventing pregnancy and disease is not to be trifled with.  At least that's what we tell our kids.

"Did you see this?  The Pleasure Pack."  He pointed to the less screamingly obvious front of the Trojan box.  The deep purple color of it was nice, non-threatening, quite soothing.

I pulled a box from the shelf, the springy thingy that keeps the boxed items in order snapped into place, as if to draw attention to us.  I shushed it.  "Let's see what this says."  I turned over the package to read the descriptions of what constituted this Pleasure Pack.

I whispered, "Twisted Pleasure. Designed with deep spiral ribs to help stimulate both partners in their most sensitive areas.  Okay, so it's going to stimulate our egos?  That's some pretty powerful latex."

MathMan smirked.  He's a champion smirker, have I told you that?

Her Pleasure was more of the same, but the Trojan people had been broadminded enough to focus purely on the woman's pleasure.  Only, if they were being sincere about a woman's pleasure, they'd make sure it also vacuumed the house, made breakfast and loaded the dishwasher.  The right way.

Intense Ribbed had deep ribs and ultrasmooth lube.  Well now.  Who could argue with that? Shared Pleasure contained warming lubricant because everyone knows how chilly it gets in the vagina/penis areas.  I mean, if you're not careful, you could get frostbite messing around down there. All that talk about going blind?  Lies.  But frostbite? Just be careful.

MathMan continued to look at the vast array of options.  The last time we put this kind of thought into a purchase, we were buying a car that he could wreck sixteen times without totalling it.  "So?"

As with most things, we concluded that the only way to make the choice was by price.  Since there was no white box with black lettering with the simple word Rubbers on it, we decided to go with the Pleasure Pack.  It cost exactly the same as all the rest of the Durex and Trojans and had the same quantity of condoms in the box.  We congratulated ourselves on being such wise consumers.

I hid the box under something in the basket so that Chloe wouldn't be confronted with that aspect of her parents' lives right there in the middle of the store and we met up with her as she came down the main aisle.

"Ready?"

"Yep."  She didn't meet my eyes.

We stood in line and placed our items on the conveyor belt with a bit too much insouciance.  Chloe stood behind us holding a desk lamp she'd found on the clearance end cap.  "Go ahead and put that with our stuff,"  MathMan said. "We can get that for you."

Then we all tried to act like nothing.  We put our hands in our pockets, looked at the ceiling, whistled.

The checker who was getting ready to scan the items, shifted them around, trying to determine if it we were together.  I moved the condom box up to the front of the pile.  "Oh, heh heh, those are ours. Don't want to traumatize her."

The checker looked at Chloe who shrugged.  "Well, at least this isn't as bad as the time when the checker tried to insist that the KY Jelly that belonged to the woman in front of me must be mine."

********

So now you're just dying to try them, aren't you?  Go on, you can admit it.  KY will cost you extra.

See, the Germans are very serious about condoms, too. So stop that snickering right now.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice, I Mean Cats and Men

Art imitates life. Or cats imitate art.  Or in a few months, we might have free kittens for good homes.

Yesterday I got my IUD removed which means MathMan and I must use a new method of birth control.  (Please note the copay for the elective surgery called vasectomy is and always has been out of our range of possibilities, so thanks for the suggestions, but no can do.) 

Considering our past inability to find and use effective methods not involving hormones, this should be fun.  We already have three "unplanned" children.  Unplanned does not equal unwanted (most of the time.)  We have living, breathing, food consuming, mess making evidence that neither coitus interruptus nor a wish and prayer - against, not for - are not, I repeat not, no matter what that guy told you in high school - effective methods of birth control.

And while all of our children were wanted and treated like happy little surprises until they pooped that first time, only one of them was a conscious decision.  On my part, that is.  MathMan just got dragged along for the ride.

Which would explain why, in anticipation of my IUD removal, he reminded me of my determined efforts to have a baby back when I was a silly young thing of twenty-five.  I'd stopped taking the pill because of weight gain and as a youngish married couple, we employed methods ranging from Russian Roulette to Hey, Nice Pearl Necklace! and when we were feeling responsible, condoms.  The Diaphragm and Spermicidal Jelly Incident proved both disastrous and traumatic.  MathMan didn't enjoy having a burning wang and I got woozy watching him standing in the shower trying to rinse out his third eye.  We were both such delicate creatures back then.  Parenthood would solve that.

We made that trip into the Carson Pirie Scott Baby Department where I saw those booties and next thing you know, I'm in Mom Training big time.  I started watching Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street on PBS, purchasing books on why midwives are superior to ob-gyns, quizzing my sister-in-law about her cesarean section and tossing around baby names.  MathMan knew trouble was brewing.  He just didn't realize how much trouble and how sinister it would be until it was too late.

So a couple of days ago, he thought it best to remind me of my past determination or folly, if you will.  "Listen, our anniversary is on Saturday.  Please remember what happened the last time you bit a hole in the condom on our anniversary."

Clever gods took their cue.  Chloe walked by our open bedroom door and glanced in.  "What?"  It's how she likes to open conversations these days.

I blinked at her and turned back to MathMan.  "I remember."

We've agreed that we will not tempt fate.  Abstinence, oral sex or butt sex it is.

Put your money on abstinence.

As if we needed our resolve reinforced, those same clever gods delivered this healthy dose of reality:

Nate went downstairs this morning to find Fiona the Not Exactly a Kitten Anymore standing outside the patio door staring back at him.

Oh.  Dear.

Listen, ever since I was that girl watching the city works guy on the cherry picker coaxing my kitten from the top of the electric pole, I've tried to have indoor cats only.  I can't take the stress of what if.  For weeks after that electric pole drama, I would not let that kitten out and when he did sneak out, I would search the streets, sobbing and calling for him before I would go inside to cry into my pillow and dream of horrible things happening to my precious.  So this kitten, who is yet unfixed because we haven't had the extra money to pay for her surgery, has been kept inside, forcibly maintaining her virtue even as she's been serenaded by the neighborhood Toms.

When the urge got to be too much, she'd bump and grind at our indoor male cats.  Since they no longer recognize the need, they responded with uncomfortable looks, searching for a quick escape from her mewling advances.

Last night she got out.  I believe she sneaked out while Chloe and her friend were coming or going. Thankfully, or maybe not, Fiona survived her nocturnal prowlings, but I doubt her virtue remains intact.  Upon her reentry into the house, all the other Pussies for Peace took defensive postures.  It was Crouching Tabby, Flattened Maine Coon Ear. Both male cats sniffed suspiciously around her backside. For her part, she acted a bit bored as she picked spider web from her whiskers.

Someone hissed.  It could have been me, but I think it was our alpha male tabby.

Bad Girl Fiona gave him a look.

"Hey, I offered.  You weren't interested, you eunuch," she said between bites of her food.  She was ravenous.

Before.

You Can Hire Me, Bring Me Back After a Session

During this - our time of financial recalibration - we've found it necessary to cut back and cut back some more. This has offered us a chance to revisit our priorities and to better understand ourselves as consumers of the vast array of options modern American have vying for their dollars.

Put another way - we see who we really are by what we continue to spend our money on versus what we're willing to do without.

For example:  I'm not willing to give up my nightly glass of wine or occasional beer. Make of that what you will. On the flipside, I am willing to stick my hand into the full vacuum bag, pulling out clumps of cat hair, bits of random things, dirt, dust, and the occasional dried Tootsie Roll of cat poo festooned with litter and feathers.  I can never figure out where the feathers come from.  They're indoor cats.

I figure, why keep buying vacuum cleaner bags when all I'm going to do is throw them away?  Recycle, reuse, repurpose. That's my motto and I'm sticking to it.

I admit knowing that in a week or two, I'll be pulling my shirt up over my face to protect my lungs from the dust particles and rummaging inside the bag to dislodge its contents has made me a bit careless when I wield my magic sucking wand.  Oh, shoot!  I only meant to get the hairs out of that drawer, I didn't mean to suck up that cloth headband.  Oh, well, I'll retrieve it when I clean out the bag.  I can wash it and it'll be good as new.

So yesterday, the vacuum was behaving rather sluggishly while we did our dance around the living room.  I cut the power and hefted it off the floor.  Yeah, it was getting pretty full.  I dragged it to the ceremonial emptying garbage can and tugged my shirt up over my nose in preparation for the job.

Out came the usual suspects.  Cat hair in massive, gray clumps, horrifying dust, part of a pencil, a Q-tip, bingo! my headband, more hair and dust.  And hello!  What's this?

Nathan just happened to walk by as I held up the little surprise that waited, buried deep within the bowels of my beloved vacuum.

"What's this?"  My shock was real.

He looked at the object, then back at me and laughed nervously.  "Don't you know?"

"Whose condom is this?"  I held it, flattened and dusty, between my thumb and forefinger.  It flapped like a yellowish, ribbed-for-her-pleasure flag in the breeze from the ceiling fan.

"Not mine!"

"Whose condom am I holding in my hand?"

Crickets and the batting of his long eyelashes and finally.  "I said it's not mine!"

"And how did it get into the vacuum cleaner?"

"Does it really matter?"

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose he's right.

Happy weekend, lovers.  Careful where you put your condoms.

It's Like a Faulkner Novel or Something

There's someone in my email who wants to show me what she's learned from adult stars.  Honey, if it's all the convincing moaning, I'm convinced.  But I have a question for her and for you because I know you know a thing or two about "Adult" things.  No, I'm not talking about arguing politics on Facebook without resorting to name calling or even paying taxes.  I mean Adult as in those things we wished we knew we liked and could be good at and comfortable with while we were still nubile enough to pull it off and look good doing it.

Digressing, aren't I?

Oh, wait! she screeched.  I had a question for you about Adult things.  Sex things.  Ready?  Put your thinking caps on, please.  I'll wait..........(deep breath)

WHEN DID SPITTING BECOME SEXY?

I swear, I like some good bondage or a girl on girl scene and sometimes you can find me sipping 7Up and giggling through a bit of bukkake, but for heaven's sake, stop with the spitting.  It's kinda gross.  Oh sure, I know it makes a fine lubricant in a pinch, but didn't your mother teach you anything?

Honestly. 

Rescued and Rerun: Vaginally Yours

Two posts in one week? Awww, come on. I am consistently inconsistent. You know this about me, don't act as if you don't. Anyway, this one is easy. See, I was doing more cut and paste from the RSS feeds that Buelahman sent me. Then I read this funny TMI Thursday from lilu and I thought, well, this post fits in perfectly with a Too Much Information theme. And so I am, of course, sharing it with you. Again.

Vaginally Yours from PoliTits by DCup (edited)

If you are squeamish, please move on. If you don't want to read what goes on with the female body when she goes through the pregnancy/birthing process - in graphic detail, please, please move on.

First, my body has carried and vaginally bore three babies, weighing in at 7.6lbs., 8.6 lbs. and 8.7lbs. I stand five foot, three quarters inches, have reasonably nice baby-passing hips and enjoy a wide weight swing of about 40 pounds given the year and the mental state. A baby-making machine. That's established. Moving on.

As with most women who've passed smallish people through their birth canals and beyond, my body bears the structural changes from the pressure and passage. Baby number one was kind enough to be head down to make her entrance into the world. Unfortunately, she was facing my front, which in labor and delivery is a FAIL. Not EPIC, but FAIL. The result is that someone, preferably a medical professional, must reach into your no-longer-private parts and turn the tiny person around. In my case, this procedure was performed without aid of painkillers (because I'm either a masochist or a coward, you decide). That done, the little bundle of joy made us wait another hour or more before she finally came blinking and sputtering into this world.

I still remember the sense of unreality. I pushed and huffed and breathed. Never in my life did I work so hard. I lost count of the number of times MathMan and The Midwife encouraged me to push just "one more time." I eventually lost all my sense of humor and proffered that if anyone said the phrase "one more time" even once more while I struggled to expel that kid, I would have risen up from the bed and killed someone with my bare hands.

Sensing my utter fatigue and heeding my pleas for a quick death (it was too late to beg for painless), the Baby Hoover was hauled out and the hose attachment was stuck to my precious darling's wee, soft noggin. She was literally sucked from my body. After all that - the medical fisting, the frenzied pushing and the apparatus, I was left with a tear the size of the San Andreas fault. I thought my vagina would never recover. Of course it did, but first there were other issues to deal with and lessons to be learned.....

Scatalogical Me
No one ever talks about the first poo after you have a baby. Look, you've just pushed a small person through your vagina. Its next door neighbor has likely taken a beating in the process. And if you've got stitches, you're terrified of busting them. The Midwife gave me a stool softener before I left the hospital, but nothing happened. So we went home to the apartment to await the momentous occasion. Baby sleeping, book in hand, off I went to the bathroom. Nothing. MathMan went out for prune juice which I drank with several shots of vodka. Still nothing. Some friends came over and visited. Small gurglings. Something? Friends leave - thank goodness, as you shall see - and I settle in on the toilet with a new American Baby magazine. I think I'm just going to sit there getting tips on how to be the perfect mother (they never tell you how much vodka will help in the longrun) and three days worth of poo will just quietly evacuate. No muss, no fuss. I gingerly attempt to do my business. Still nothing, but I know I have to go. I'm feeling backed up.

Out of desperation, I ask The Honey for his help. He did his best to stifle his horror and dread. "Just look. What's going on down there? It feels funny."

His eys met mine. Wasn't that sleeping angel in the bassinette enough proof of his love? He peeked and a funny look spread across his face. "There's something there."

"A something what?"

"I don't know, like a little plug?"

"A plug?"

In hindsight, my mistake was not sitting down again. That simple act might have prevented the walls, the sink, the toilet, the floor and us from being splattered with the sickeningly sweet-smelling stuff that erupted from my body. The prunes had done their work.

The Boy Baby - Where Two Become One
Obviously, my body healed and the V snapped back, if you will. My desire for the dark-haired man and a short memory led me to pregnancy number two. More weight, more spider veins. But the birth, now there's a story! This kid was facing the wrong direction, too, so I got more fisting. This time I knew to just close my eyes and think of England. I had a better understanding of the pushing thing and all was going well until The Boy's shoulders got stuck. MathMan tells a good story about the look on the kid's face as his head hung out of me.

This time, the baby was literally wrenched from my body. At one point, I swear that someone propped her foot against my thigh as she stood over me, yanking and tugging on Nate. My reward was another big tear and stitches. This time I knew about the first poo, so that wasn't quite so scary. It didn't take me long, though, to figure out that upon exiting, The Boy must have been hanging on for dear life and as those last final tugs yanked him into the world, he grabbed on and took everything with him. I asked The Midwife about it. "Oh, there wasn't anything separating the in-door and the out-door. We had to put you back together." Well, then.

Baby Number Three- A Photo Finish
Now that you know this, you might be surprised that there is a baby number three. But the need is mightier than the fear and don't you forget it. This baby came out just like the ones in the birthing class videos. I didn't even muss my lipstick. She had the benefit of being the third baby to have passed through that way and it was really quite easy. In fact, I think I just sneezed and there she was, swaddled in a striped blankie, wearing a matching knitted cap on her perfect little head.

After all that, I feared that one could drive a small delivery truck through my birth canal without losing a mirror. As it turns out, that is not the case. In fact, over time, I noticed that certain sexual positions hurt when they didn't before. The Tantric Anansi the Spider with Lemon Drop became especially problematic. That sucked because as sex positions go, it was a favorite. Anyway, I finally went to a doctor a couple of years ago to find out what was going on. Actually, I was there to have an IUD installed so that I wouldn't go through the joys of another pregnancy, but while the doctor was down there plugging in the device, he mentioned that my uterus was drooping and might cause "pain during sex." So there it was - the culprit. My uterus was falling out of my body. After all that, it was trying to escape. I really couldn't blame it.

Sadly, my relief at having an answer about why I could no longer endure a teeth-rattling good pounding was overshadowed by the doctor's unfortunate choice of words.

Drooping is not a word one should use with a vain, forty-something woman, especially when your head is so positioned that it can easily be trapped between her vise-like knees. I understand that in a few days time, the doctor was just fine. And the charges were dropped.

Commute Chat 7: Casual Sex Friday, Part 2

Warning: Audio is not exactly safe for work or children.*

I realize it's Wednesday already, but Part 2 of Casual Sex Friday is complete. Now I'm working on a bonus track of inanity.

Part 1 is here.

For the person labeled Troll Asshole in my Statcounter, there's no need to leave an anonymous comment telling me this is boring. I trust that since Part 1 so bored you that you felt it necessary to tell me, you won't bother watching this video. Unless of course you seek boredom which might explain why you visited my boring blog seven times after telling me how boring it was yesterday.

For the record, anonymous comments will be deleted immediately unless they are showering praise on me or lauding my artistic genius and wicked acting skillz.

Carry on......

*For Utah - some people don't like to expose young minds to some of this stuff. I respect their desire to protect their kids from the ravages of the world. I don't follow that path as a mama, but just as they don't shame me for being myself, I won't shame them for being themselves. Much. Well, I mean, I try........

Commute Chat 6: Casual Sex Friday

Warning: The audio is not exactly safe for work or kids.



Done with the typically professional style you've become accustomed to......

I Want to Be the Girl with the Most Cake

Long time readers are painfully aware of Parenting by Benign Neglect, my preferred parenting style and one which I have advocated for over the years of blogging.

Come to think of it, I advocated it before I started blogging, I just hadn't dubbed it with its clever title. You know those scaredy cat moms, hovering too closely to their children, constantly reminding them in public places like parks to "stay where I can see you....?" Well, I was the mom rolling her eyes and saying annoying things like "Look, if someone had the poor judgment to kidnap my kids they'd either kill them or return them quickly. I harbor no illusions about how annoying my kids are."

Hovering moms don't cotton much to that kind of talk, I can assure you. Death and kids are not something to joke about around these mommies.

That sounds so condescending, doesn't it? Well, hard cheese. Death is part of life. There's no escaping it and if I can't laugh about that which scares me most, I may as well just wall myself in somewhere with my kids so we can be secure for the rest of our safe, but miserable lives.

I'm reminded of this because last night was the zenith of parental pride and the nadir of parental, um.......dang, I can't even think of a word for it. And it isn't often that I'm rendered speechless. You'll see later what left me so....speechless.

Last night was another proud parent moment. The Dancer's high school had their honors night. Two hours of awards and recognition for the students who really are getting out of it what they put into it. It was really something.

I watched The Dancer being draped with the graduation bling that is now all the rage, and felt such pride. I took blurry pictures and monkeycam video and sent gushing texts to MathMan who was having his own proud parent moments with The Actor on the baseball field. (Unassisted double play for The Actor, oh yeah!)

Sitting for long stretches of time with little to entertain me besides my own evil thoughts and urges , I considered how I would map out the day that was coming to a close. How would I draw it?


Yesterday was a long one. First there was a drive to the north Georgia mountains for meetings to plan a meeting. You heard me. Then there was the nauseating Mexican food-fueled drive through the mountains (I was not the one who ended up sick so shut up, CoP and Darling Sis. No one wants to hear how I ruined the 1976 trip to Cape Canaveral because I was carsick and threw up behind some bush behind a Birmingham McDonalds.). Finally, MathMan and I arrived home from work to find that someone had redecorated the kitchen with barbecue sauce, someone's backpack appeared to have exploded leaving a blizzard of papers all over the living room, and someone left something that resembled a White Castle Cheeseburger sat forlornly and moldering in the microwave, probably forgotten during some heated battle over the television remote. A couple of someones needed a good beating.

I remember the days when one was required to get up to change the television channel. In my childhood home, we had our own things to fight over - a certain spot on the sofa - and a system for dealing with potential conflict. "Saving a seat" was our method for marking territory and solving problems before they started. It worked thus: If you were so lucky to have snagged the best seat in the family room (it was the left end cushion on the sofa as you faced the telly), you were required to call it "saved" as you stood, otherwise that prime spot of t.v. viewing real estate became fair game.

The Spawn are less into the Aylesborough Rules of Sibling Conduct Management required to maintain the civilized "saving" procedures that could, I admit, become rather complicated and burdensome at times. No, The Spawn are action-oriented probably due in large part to their expectations of instant gratification. They live in a different world than the one in which we were kids. My siblings and I would have established a blue ribbon panel to investigate a breach of contract or conducted a trial by peer jury. The Spawn resort immediately to brute force, harsh words and, in a real pinch, shouting for the aid of The Mother. This is, typically, a very bad move.

Now I'm not saying my siblings and I were the perfect little poppets of politeness. Please. We were far from it. However, we did develop and live by those saving rules and by the "calling" of Front Seat by the Door when it was just us kids getting into the car with a parent. Front Seat by the Door was another piece of prime real estate. The person sitting there often got to control the radio.

Now would you look at how I've rambled.....

Anyway, after the last round of polite applause, I was glad to collect The Dancer and Garbo and get into The Dancer's car to go home. Garbo rode in the back. The conversation turned to family matters once more.

The girls expressed some disgust at how much of a seventh grade boy The Actor is lately. I was very dismissive of their attitude. He's a guy, so what? Not satisfied with my response, they pressed on. He scratches his balls! He jokes with his friends about masturbation! He's nasty and gross and ick!

"I'm sure he has cooties, too," I added unhelpfully.

Predictably, they turned on me. First The Dancer made sounds in the back of her throat that resembled wordless admonishments. I'm fully aware that although she enjoys the fruits and freedoms of Parenting by Benign Neglect, she would prefer that MathMan and I rule with more of an iron fist when it comes to her siblings. The nerve.

Then Garbo, who has reached the age of curiosity, chimed in. Not one to miss a chance to humiliate a sibling, she turned her razor sharp wit on her sister. "Did mommy tell you what I thought you should put in the goody bags for your birthday party last week?" she asked sweetly.

Now I should pause here to point out that what she is about to say is completely incongruent with still feeling comfortable referring to me as "mommy." But whatever. They're human. Inconsistency is to be expected.

The Dancer's throaty noises got louder and more vigorous. She pretended to be concentrating on the road. Garbo continued, "I thought you should have condoms and birth control pills......"
The Dancer shot her a look in the rear view mirror. "Poo poo," she smiled up at her sister in the backseat, using her favorite term of endearment for Garbo, "where do you get such ideas. That's soooooooo ......... uh.... inappropriate."

And then she looked at me pointedly, cheeks sucked in, eyebrows way up on her forehead. Mouth small and pinched.

Garbo didn't miss a beat. The little rat. "Mommy. She said something else to put in the goody bags, but I can't remember what it was. She said it when we were joking around about it the other day. Mommy, what was it?"

Oh, I see how it was going to be. I was being dragged in for sure. I resisted by mumbling my response.

The Dancer leaned toward me. "What was that? You were joking about goody bags and you said what should be in there?"

"Lubricant."

The Dancer snapped to attention, a scowl on her face. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She took a deep breath and then laughed. "You're sick mom. Edible underwear I can understand, but lubricant?"

I'd like to end it right here, but, well, Garbo wasn't done with me. "I have a question now for you, Mother," came the command from the backseat. Mother? Now I'm mother? The transition from mommy to mother is chilling.

"I reserve the right to not answer. I may plead the Fifth, but go ahead."

"Did you ever have sex with anyone but Daddy?"

I gasped. "Poo! Poo!" The Dancer shrieked. "That's none of your business!"

"I'm not going to answer that question," I finally managed. For goodness sake, I've really not got this boundaries thing sorted out, I thought at I rubbed my temples with my fingertips......

The Dancer was still aghast. "Garbo, that's wrong. Mom's sex life has nothing to do with you. In fact, we should all just assume that she never has had, does not have and will never have a sex life!" she warned.

But her little sister was relentless. "It does concern us. I mean, we know she's had sex three times, but I was just wondering if she'd had sex before that......"

Ah, and there it was. My out. "Nope. Just those three times with Daddy. That's it. Ever. Now let's drop it. You've crossed a line, my dear."

Garbo sighed. I could tell she wasn't completely satisfied with my answer. "Well then, someone is lying to me," she intoned. "Because I heard on the school bus that you don't get pregnant every time you have sex......"

The Dancer glanced into her rear view mirror again and then looked at me. We were thinking the same thing. Of that, I am certain. It's time to clear up some fourth grade sex-talk fallacies.

Some things cannot be neglected. No matter how benignly...............

Weekend Round Up: I Still Don't Have Any Red Boots UPDATED WITH PEE PEE RANKINGS

This weekend was a perfect mashup of the real, the unreal, and the surreal. The Actor was away on a band trip until late Saturday night. The Dancer was booked up with her last high school performances on Friday and Saturday night and Friday night found MathMan and me fidgeting grumpily on hard, small benches that double as lunchroom tables and benches at Garbo's elementary school. It was the annual "talent" show.

As we squirmed and hissed gripes to each other and checked our phones for any text that could distract us from our skin-peeling boredom, countless numbers of sweet, well-loved children attempted to sing over the voices of the artists who made today's pop songs pop.

Think karaoke without the beer, drunks, hot wings and Hooters Girls.

Pardon me for saying this, but it was brutal. Of course, being a biased mama, I'm confident that Garbo and her BFF K were the best singers, performing in tune and quite confidently to a current Miley Cyrus hit. But this highlight of our evening was just one teeny fraction of a moment in the midst of so many where I wished that I could be anywhere but there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of Garbo, who flat out sparkled on stage, and I did enjoy the songs crooned by the Bus Driver Who Stole the Show, but when the program was over and the assistant principal announced that the we should stay put because we were under a tornado warning, I thought it was the cruelest joke ever. I believe I made some kind of gurgling noises of dissatisfaction and threw questioning glances at MathMan. "What do we do now?" I asked, my eyebrows raised in a full on RESCUE US expression.

MathMan was decisive. "We're outta here." Was his pronouncement. Halfway through the parking lot, we heard the severe weather sirens blaring. We rounded the edge of the school where we could see the horizon and it was black with clouds that made an ominous wall. Having experienced tornadoes as a kid and again just last year, I'm just a tad weary of them. I could feel my adrenaline spiking.

Lightening backlit the clouds as we watched in awe. Now we could see in front of the black wall fingerlets of clouds breaking out and moving swiftly over the murky backdrop. We broke into a run to the car. Garbo got there first.

After we clambered in and buckled in, the question remained. What now? We, like so many others who'd abandoned the school (which happens to seem like a tornado magnet - its pavilion was obliterated in last year's storms and its roof was lifted off and returned just slightly out of place), drove quickly and as safely as we could to the exit and then turned on to the main road, wondering where in the hell to go? Off to the west, the wall of black, swirling clouds inched closer. "We don't want to go home," MathMan said pointing toward the clouds that were swallowing up Plant Bowen, our neighbor.

We got to the intersection of the main road. "Which way?" I asked. I really wasn't sure what to do and I was driving. Again, MathMan was decisive. "Towards town," he instructed me.

Now I like to drive fast, but I save my fastest driving for when I am alone. It is one thing to endanger me. It's something quite different to endanger my loved ones. But Friday, I drove as fast as I've ever driven. My eyes were glued to the road and my knuckles stood out stark white against the dark grey leather of the steering wheel. MathMan and Garbo scanned the skies for danger.

With each blaze of lightening, I imagined a swirling giant of destruction bearing down on us. The drive had the surreal quality of a dream because I do often dream of tornadoes. We decided that the best thing to do would be to meet The Dancer at the performing arts center. As if on cue, she called and told us that they were in intermission and waiting for more news about the weather.

Just as we got to the PAC the front edge of the storm was upon us. The wind whipped and the lightening crackled in the air and felt too close for comfort. Thunder rumbled overhead as MathMan took Garbo's hand and ran toward the building with me following closely behind.

Thankfully, the front passed as we waited inside. The electricity flickered and then went out, leaving us sitting against the wall in the dusky glow of emergency lighting with all the attendees of the performance. I remembered again that I really want to get a flashlight for my purse. Just in case. (Read MathMan's version here.)

The performance was suspended and the dancers were sent home. The Dancer was miffed because the two pieces she'd choreographed were in the second part of the show. Nevertheless, she seemed glad to drive home with her dad riding shotgun and Garbo in the backseat recounting the wild ride from earlier.

Me? I stopped for pizza and tried to get my heart rate back to normal. The tornado that touched down didn't do much damage and there we no injuries thank goodness. We'd all live another day to sit in the basement (on Sunday afternoon) while the sirens went off once again. (Enough already! We get it - the weather is a powerful force in our lives. Can we go back to the drought now?)

Saturday was full of family snark time and finally a chance to see The Dancer's performance. I think that deserves its own post. We got The Actor back in one piece and were grateful that we hadn't gotten a huffy call about his behavior during his trip. He came back with voice rough from screaming and loads of stories about roller coaster rides and other off color, adolescent things. Fast forward....

Sunday was a day of more family time in which we went to the mall (a rare event for this family, I tell you what) because I decided it was time to treat myself to some new skin care products. A pumice stone and Vaseline just aren't doing the trick anymore. Naturally, a trip to get mama something is an invitation to all to outstretch their little hands and beg for some new clothes.

Honestly, I can't complain. Compared to the way I was raised (if you daddy's going to work 16 hours a day, I'm going to spend that money), our Spawn rarely go shopping. They've learned that we only go when absolutely necessary and even then a budget is established. I don't mean to sound defensive here, but after all we've been through financially, it seems odd to even go to the mall. The one thing these kids will never confuse is entertainment and shopping.

The drive to and from the mall did not include outrunning threatening and severe weather (that came shortly after we arrived home), but it did include a segment that went unrecorded, thank goodness? The Actor detailed his adventures during the band trip and explained how he and his friends had watched Manswers on the Spike Channel. I could tell by the name Manswers that no good was going to come from this. But then, I have radar like that. Plus I'm married to a man who calls Lifetime Channel Vagina T.V., so it's not often that something so blatantly gender-biased would be missed by anyone in our family.

And y'all know we don't do nearly enough to shelter The Spawn from the realities of, well, anything......

Apparently Manswers had important biological information about why spanking is, in fact, sexually stimulating. The program also provided detailed information about average penis size and size ranking among the world's nationalities. (FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR RANKING INFO)

Not one to allow her children to think they are anywhere near sexperts yet, I had my comeback ready within nanoseconds of the average penis size pronouncements. After nudging MathMan in a "see, I told you so, you are too above average" way, I glanced at my self-satisfied son in the rearview mirror. He loves shock value as much as his mama does. Then breezily, I quipped "I would agree with those findings, based on my informal studies of individual penises."

They tell us that The Actor's hysterical blindness is only temporary and that, when his sight returns, I might want to refrain from mentioning myself and the male organ in the same sentence.

We'll see............

* Ranking info provided because of loud outcry for details. I assume you wanted the info provided by The Actor and not from my informal studies....

Love in the Afternoon

Update on the possessed Kia:

The driver's side door still won't open. I guess we'll get that fixed or at least have a hearty laugh when the repo men come for the damnable vehicle.

Speaking of lemons, I was reading this post from Lisa at Lemon Gloria (there sure are a lot of us Lisas, aren't there?) and it occurred to me that I may be missing an opportunity for a Love Connection...As Lisa explains:

Because it's about this small group of people - all women - who fall in love with objects. Like fences. And the Eiffel Tower. And the Golden Gate bridge.

And when I say they fall in love with them - they fall in love. They imbue them with personalities. They assign gender to these objects. They have sex with them.

"So," I think out loud, rousing my co-worker from her afternoon nap, "perhaps I should change the way I'm viewing the maneuvers I go through each time I enter the car from the passenger's side and climb across the seat and console, trying desperately not to impale myself on the gear shift......"

Maybe from now on, I'll make sure the Sade cd is ready to play when I make the move from one side of the car to the next. A little seductive music, the right attitude and who knows? A little inanimate object love as I'm leaving the office might be just the thing to help me "shift gears" between work and home.

(Insert "balance" joke here.)

Adventures in Real Parenting: Boy Was My Face Red

When I was a kid, I would want to sink through the floor in embarrassment when I was watching television with my father and an advertisement for feminine hygiene products would come on. He's my dad. The very idea of something suggesting vaginas or bodily functions other than farting did not need to be spoken about in front of him.

Over the years, I became a little less embarrassed. When The Dancer was an infant, MathMan and I were terribly broke, buying groceries on a Shell credit card. The baby and I were sweating out a hot summer in our un-airconditioned apartment and MathMan was working about eighty hours a week as a manager for Radio Shack. For weeks at a time, I would pack up The Dancer and flee to Indiana for breaks from the monotony, hunger and heat.

One night, in my old bedroom at my parent's house, I was wrestling with a breast pump and having absolutely no success. In a huff, I tossed the vile sucking machine back into my suitcase, shoved my milk heavy breast back into that stupid bra with the flap and stalked out of the room to pluck The Dancer from my mother's arms so that I could nurse her before I exploded in a rain of milky, white sweetness all over my parents' family room.

In front of my father, I was self-conscious about nursing the baby, but I was determined to get over it. Nursing was a healthy and perfectly natural thing to do. I sat discreetly under a blanket, The Dancer sucking away like a Kirby vacuum and griped to my mother about the breast pump. Being the cheerfully helpful man that he is, my father suggested that we take a trip out to my uncle's dairy farm where I could be hooked up to the milking machines.

I responded with a simple, "Moooooo."

I never really got over the ick factor of nursing my babies with my father around, but I did what I had to do and just tried not to think about it.

You'd think at the age of forty-three and the mother of three children, I'd be over it. I assume my father might have a clue about the things I do with my private parts or that I even have them, but I am loathe to admit anything. I think it might be part of the dynamic between my generation and our parents. My parents were not terribly demonstrative, affectionate people and they certainly weren't open about things like sex and love and all the complicated and uncomplicated pieces of the human condition. There was oh so much that we never discussed. Hell, for the longest time, my mother referred to our private parts (see, there I go doing it) as "your body." For a while after I started school, I was a bit confused whenever someone used the term "body," but didn't mean privates.

How times, and parents, have changed. And so have kids, as a result. Last weekend, The Actor had two friends stay over and they watched the movie Stepbrothers. (Spoiler alert below.) Oh my. I was there, too, working away at my computer while they watched the movie, laughing at all the jokes. They didn't seem terribly concerned by my presence when one character talked about stuffing things in vaginas. They even saw me shake my head and laugh at a scene where one of the main characters rubs his scrotum on the drum kit of another. (Links not safe for work)

I tried to imagine watching a show like that with either of my parents around and I came up blank. It would just have never happened. I remember once watching a Cheech and Chong movie with my mom in the house, but, if memory serves, her eyes bugged out of her head and she stormed out of the room in disgust during one of the racier scenes.

I watched The Actor react during the movie the other night. There were times when he made eye contact with me and put his hand over his face or shook his head or rolled his eyes in embarrassment. But then what do I really expect? MathMan and I are open about sex. We discuss it in a straightforward way with the hope that we can convey both the pleasure and the responsibilities of being sexually active. We use the proper words for the genitals and we make up a few of our own, too. You know, so as not to be so bloody clinical about it.

MathMan used to hate the euphemism that I used for vagina when The Dancer was little so he came up with his own word and we've used it ever since, when we don't use the proper term, that is. I coined the term badgina, but not to imply shame of the vagina, but rather more like badass. A strong woman, a tough chick. You get the idea. A sort of family short-hand or inside joke.

So why should I expect my son to be chagrined to watch such a movie in front of me? I wondered if I was bothered or surprised or a little of both. I thought about whether it meant he and his friends were showing some lack of respect for me and did it matter? Then I wondered - would The Actor watch that movie in front of someone else's parents and be laughing and burping and farting and generally carrying on like his friends did here?

And then I got a pretty good idea of who I am as a parent, the alleged keeper of the moral flame in some societies, because the very idea of The Actor behaving that way sent a shudder up my spine........

New Feature: Siren Saturday

It occurred to me this morning that some of you might think I've gone all soft on you, that the old sass and semi-sex-obsession of DCup would somehow disappear. As Steve Emery pointed out, though, all of DCup's elements reside within me. We are one and the same.

But as my friend CDP pointed out, sometimes the assumptions about a woman who calls herself DCup are wrong. I thought it interesting when CDP pointed out that I am more soft-spoken Midwestern nice than twangy and brash.

Well, let it be known that I won't always bore you with stories about my children or pictures of rainbows. I'll still have plenty to say about events of the day micro and macro.

Even though I have shuttered Un-Glued, I want to continue to address matters of the heart, the head and the genitals. In an attempt to be a more disciplined blogger, I've decided to do a Saturday feature called "Siren Saturday." The cool thing about it is the feature will allow me to do both the Un-Glued thing and the PoliTits thing here.

Because I just cannot get my political mojo working at the moment (I've been informally banned from MSNBC as the television is now hooked up to electronic games) - this too shall pass, I've decided that each Saturday, I'm going to refer you to The Siren Chronicles for your political news and opinion. To get things started, if you haven't already done so, read this piece about an Alabama sheriff who is skimping on prisoners' meals so that he can enrich himself. Legally. If you care one whit about human rights, that story will make your cream curdle.

And it just now hit me that featuring a post about law enforcement goes along beautifully with the whole "siren" theme. To borrow a post tag from CDP, I crack myself up.

Now on to the other purpose of Siren Saturday - matters of the heart, mind, and do-hickeys... I want to tell you about something I read in a Cosmo magazine the other day. I know you're shocked that I would pick up a Cosmo, right? Don't I seem vastly more The Economist or Southern Living?

I came into possession of the Cosmo while I was visiting my weight loss doctor. His waiting room is just rife with all manner of fine reading. Skipping over the House Beautiful, the AARP Magazine, and Golf Digest (huh?), the Cosmo cover headline 50 Things Guys Wish You Knew just reached right up and tweaked my nipple. Its own kind of siren song, if you will. I asked it to tweak the other nipple, too, as not to make the right jealous of the left.

I leafed through the well-worn April 2008 issue until I came to the article I was seeking. Look at the table of contents? What kind of adventure would that be? When I got called back into the other waiting room, I carried the magazine with me. Finally it was my turn to go into the small room to get weighed (five more pounds gone - whoot!). I was still reading through the list of fifty things I must know about guys. Relax - I only want to know because I'm raising one, my daughters may need my sage advice one day about them and because I haven't even come close to figuring out MathMan. And not for a lack of trying.

At the doctor's office, I see the same nurse each month. We've developed a friendly relationship so I asked her if she'd read the article. She laughed and then asked me to give her some of the tips. I read a couple off to her, choosing carefully. I don't know her that well. When it was time for me to leave she told me to take the magazine with me and bring it back, if I wanted, on my next appointment. As if. This thing will still be in the bathroom reading basket in 2014. Put money on it.

So what of those Things Guys Want Women to Know? Well, some of it was eye-opening, some were things I assumed and some are things I've known since my boobs sprouted at an early age. For example, I know that forcing a man to carry my purse can be emasculating. I'm not talking the "Honey, can you hold this a second while I try on this top." I'm talking the this purse is heavy, will you carry it..... That's just wrong. It's my purse, I should carry it. But by the same token, don't ask me to put a bunch of your stuff in my purse. You have lots of items to schlep around? Get a murse.

I've always assumed and practiced sincerely #8 which reads: "When it comes to your guy's penis, remember three things: (1) If it's small, say it's the perfect fit; (2) If it's average, say it's huge; and (3) If it's huge, he'll already know it, but he'll still love hearing you say it anyway."

I was surprised to learn #32. "It's not a good idea to read into every word I say when we fight. You're probably choosing your words more carefully because you have been upset for weeks and have had time to plan your argument. But I'll be caught off guard. So for me, it's like trying to pass an oral exam that I never even knew I had to study for."

I've got to remember that. It's true. I'm more inclined to stew for a while about things and then spring them on MathMan when I'm good and ready, leaving him at a disadvantage.

Since it's Cosmo, there were more than a few nuggets of information pertaining specifically to sex, as well. I suppose it would be imprudent for me to comment on the fact that none of that surprised me. Of course men* masturbate, like some kind of porn, would prefer to think that anything kinky you do is your first time doing it, would like their partner to seduce them at least occasionally and will think about having sex with your female friends if you tell him that your friends think he's hot.

But has anyone told Victoria's Secret that men prefer a t-shirt that just covers their partner's ass to all those lacy, itchy, strappy fuck-me contraptions with stripper heels?

*most men

Coming up next Saturday: What I do with all that information gleaned from Cosmo. Seriously, this could go on forever, my loves. Just wait until I get to the "new" sex positions article!