Go Read This

Kaye's blog, "The Road Goes Ever Ever On," is a blog I decided to follow a few months or so ago. I can't remember where or how I found her, I can only remember thinking that anyone having a header dedicated to world famous hobbits can't be all that bad, as a matter of fact, they must be amazingly witty, wise, and winsome. I've enjoyed following her. But today...well...probably posted yesterday, but I read it today, she took the cake.

Go there now. Read this post. It will get to you too.

Doctor, Doctor

Brutal confession.

I hate doctors. Not really them, just going to visit them. I hate the whole entire process. Walking into the office, signing in, waiting (gods, the waiting), having the nurse give you the run down, looking at the scale, getting on the scale, looking at the scale again, and then waiting for the doctor, again, but this time in a room small enough to house towels and a dishpan.

I have to go to the doctor. I need to pick up the phone and call him. I'm sick. Very sick. I've been sick since Friday when I walked into the kitchen to fix Avery's oatmeal and semi passed out. I say semi because I think I was awake the entire time. It was the first time in my life that I actually saw the room spin...and really spin. Like I was holding my head trying to keep the room from spinning. And although I'm not feeling as horrible as I felt on Friday, I think this episode merits a visit to the doctor.

I don't want to go. I want to sit here and pretend that the headache I've been having for the last three days isn't sitting in the background living on the edge (threw that phrase in there for you, Tammy). I want to sit here and pretend that the absence of that little pain in the center of my chest, the one that's been there for a bout a week or so, won't be popping up later on in the day. I think that one is due to stress (good answer, huh?). Yesterday, my entire body felt weird...like it was tired all over. I remember feeling that way ten years ago.

I'm kind of scared.

I'm really scared.

It's probably nothing.

I'll go. I'll go. Jeez.

Random Post Redux: They Call That Average?

Kel, over at A Hesitant Housewife hosts "Random Post Redux", where each Saturday, post a "previously used post." Here's mine. You can also head over to Kels and link up yours with her Mr. Linky, and read other previous posts by her, and others who play as well. Enjoy!



Original Post done March 18:

They Call That Average?

Annoyed would be the current description of my mood at the moment. Well, not annoyed, aggravated. No, no...not aggravated, irritated. Frustrated, maybe? No. That doesn't work either, asphyxiated?

There is a rumor going on that men think about sex, want to have sex, when ever possible actually have sex, and have nothing but sex on the brain twenty-four hours a day...twenty-five if you throw in a couple of leap years. This rumor also states that MEN want SEX more than WOMEN do. Furthermore, once you enter your mid thirties and so forth, your desire for sex decreases to only wanting it once or twice a month.

According to very outdated research:

13% of married couples reported having sex a few times per year, 45% reported a few times per month, 34% reported 2-3 times per week, and 7% reported 4 or more times per week (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

AND

A survey by Durex, a leading research firm, found the frequency of sexual interaction varies significantly from country to country. The global average for frequency of sex is 109 times per year (2.1 times per week, or once every 3.3 days). The following summary shows how individual nations compare to the national average of frequency of sexual interaction per year.

Frequency By Country
United States 135
Russia 133
France 128
Germany 127
Britain 124


People from Thailand had the lowest average sexual frequency at 64 times per year, half the frequency of Americans.

Source: 1997 Durex Global Sex Survey

WTF? (I love that acronym)

I am a woman. Yes, for real. I'm a woman that likes sex, thinks about sex often, and wants to have sex okay, not daily, but maybe every other day.
I think about sex. Quite often, I might add. I think about the good sex I've had. I think about the good sex I want to have in the future. I think about the sex I've never had and wonder if it's as good as people say. (warning, there are going to be lots of "I's" in this particular passage because I'm feeling a bit self-centered today) I like sex. I like sex on a daily basis. Personally, me, myself, and I, do not fall in the average category. However, I do not fly solo, much, so my marriage does fall in that 45% range of "a few times a month." By the way, how much is a few?

Why?

Well, the usual suspects are at play here. Kids...yes...those adorable sticky, smelly, salt-nose encrusted specimens produced by my marriage. I have five of them, remember?( http://orbitingthegianthairball.blogspot.com/2009/02/would-rose-smell-same.html) There ain't nothing better than being in the middle of doing the nevermind and having a teenager run in, yes, without knocking, and ask if they can borrow money or your shoes. MY SHOES??? For crying out loud! Not to mention the fact that the lock on your door is broken and your two and three year olds take great pleasure in storming in just to see how fast and wide they can open the door. Don't forget about the nine month old that just LOVES to take power naps of five minutes or less and has the uncanny ability to know "just" when to wake up. HA. Now go ahead and include how unimaginably tiring it is to run after three, three and under, children all day, do minimal household chores, cook supper, run after two teens, and blog (had to include that huh?). Wow, I just wore myself out reading all of that. Then there is the male counterpart. You know, the one that is supposta be thinking about sex 24 hours a day? Well, he wakes up at five a.m., heads off to do manly work things all day, gets home at six, does the SSaS routine (figure that acronym out ha!), and is in bed for nine. In his defense, his job is physically demanding. It does get hot here...very hot and humid. It can drain a person physically...yes...it does. So anyway, I understand when he says, "Not tonight honey... I'm just too...snore...

In defense of my amazing husband:

I love my husband. And he's absolutely incredible and just where incredible should be! He is, without a doubt, the most giving of bedmates! I haven't a complaint. (But I didn't win the give-a-way sponsored by http://www.youwontgoblind.com/! No, I didn't so he just needs to wake his snoring behind up and take care of the situation at hand right now and no one can see this part because it is in ( ) and that makes it completely invisible).

Anyway. :regains self-composure: My point, if there is one, is that women like sex and think about sex just like men do. We do become disappointed when it only happens once a week. And we love those surprise in-the-middle-of-the-week romps! We don't fall into general "honey, I have a headache" stereotypes.

So, back to my current mood...

I don't

(pregnant pause)


have a headache.

There is nothing more fun than playing tag, and Ms. Pam, over at Pam's Perspective, has tagged me. However, this is a new tag thingy, one I haven't played yet. The rules are as follows:


~Open your first photo folder
~Scroll down to the 10th photo
~Post that photo and story on your blog
~Tag five friends to do the same.

















I think I'm going to do a better job of arranging my photo folders, I don't even think this shot has been edited.

This is my second born daughter, Caylith, and my second born son, Avery. It was Avery's first Christmas, and Caylith's sixteenth. The gap in their ages spans nearly two decades, however, the love they have for each other narrows that gap to nearly nothing. While Caylith is brash, opinionated, headstrong, and stubborn, she can clearly take and command center stage. And though she can be completely exasperating, she can also light up a room. The comic relief she provides for the rest of us is developing at a quick pace in her baby brother. His need to be the center of everyone's universe has exceeded the allowed baby boundaries, and the charm he exudes will often make one forget that in order to use his charm on you, he had to get you into the room with him, and in order to get you into the room with him, he used his lungs and howled high to heaven. Perhaps it is them both being second born children that makes them almost parallel in attitude,wit, and charm. Although Avery is still discovering who he is, I can see much of my older dragon child's personality peeking through.

Two dragons in one family.

God help us all.



Now for the tag~


Jillian over at The Infamous

Tink over at The Tink-n-Frog

Viv over at The V Spot

Brandy at You Don't Know

Persephone at This Tasty Jam is all Me

And one to grow on

La la at Music, Hugs, and Random Rants

Mimi at Living in France

Of course, I would have loved cheating and added Tammy and Anita, but Pam tagged them first. I also would have tagged Ms. Savant, but she's been tagged so many times, I do believe her backside has a permanent target pasted to it.

Anyway, whether they play or not, their blogs definately deserve to be checked out.

Enjoy!

A Little Bit of Me

We grew up in a sort of extended type of family. Imagine a huge yard. Really big. Don't ask for measurements, because agriculture isn't my thing, I mean architecture. In the front part of the yard was my aunt's house and ours, the back consisted of a huge vacant area, my aunt's washing shed, a swamp on the side and a couple of trees (not too many), and my grandmother's house. On the side of her house was another vacant area and my uncle's house, and in front, or to the side of his was another of my aunt's (her yard was fenced in, though, so it almost didn't count as part of the extended family thing). Across the road from my aunt with the fenced in yard, was my uncle. He was a rebel living across the road from us all.

All of these people, aside from my uncle living on the side of my grandmother, had children ranging from 19 years to newborn (my mother was a virtual baby machine...she had eight children...EIGHT...can you imagine?). Of course the older ones tortured and stole from the younger ones (me and my sisters), and the much older ones ranging in the almost 18 + department would go over to Joe's Pool Room and shoot pool and smoke (you name it, they smoked it...come on...it was the early seventies for cryin out loud). I longed for the day where I would get to walk to Joe's and shoot pool. Alas, we moved to a different town before I even came close. I missed out on Joe's. Hrmphf. Good thing, I suppose (grumble, grumble, moan, b*tch, complain).

Sometimes, late at night, we'd go and sit on the swamp side of my grandmother's house and tell ghost stories about the rou-ga-rou (a swamp monster of sorts that was a mean ass individual...he didn't stick to his swamp which made him even scarier). My cousins swore up and down that "once, while playing hide-n-seek, they went to look behind a shivering bush thinking to find a player only to find the rou-ga-rou. Their quick wits and swift feet were the only things that saved them. And, of course, I believed every word. Every word uttered. We were even convinced that a hole, which use to house my grandmother's clothesline, was actually a tunnel to satan's den. I swear, I even saw a red light coming out of that hole. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to lie. There was nothing better than scaring the bejeebus out of ourselves, and then lying late at night with the blankets tucked tightly around our feet, and blinking like owls in the dark because we were too "afeared" to sleep.

Yes, those were the days...late nights...ghost stories...and playing tag.

Speaking of tag, Vivienne over at The V Spot, has tagged me. According to the rules of the game, I am to reveal six things about me. I'll play her little game, my pretty, and her little dog too...er...wrong story.


1. While I may not have the best table manners in the world (I will take an occasional book or two to the table with me...but only sometimes), I cannot abide smacking...you know...chewing with your mouth open. A smackface will drive me absolutely bananas. My dad is a smackface, but out of respect for him, I endure it silently (although sometimes it drives me nuts enough to make excuses to leave the room...he's deaf...and he smacks REALLY loud). My little sister was a smackface, though, and I would tell her often time: "Quit your smacking, Smackface."

2. I've only recently started shaving my legs again. I hadn't shaved in years due to the next day pickiness of my legs rubbing together would keep waking me up. The longer my hair grew, the less pickiness. Since I've had 3 babies in the last 4 years, I've had a good excuse not to shave, and trust me, I took that ball and ran with it. However, I decided to try shaving again. I have to shave nightly, though, because the hair on my legs grow way too fast, and I cannot abide the pickiness.

3. My first car was a 1971 Volkswagen Superbeetle. You can find all kinds of interesting facts about the Beetle here. I loved my beetle. love Love LOVED it! It was my first very own car. The seat in the back lifted up and you could hide things in it, and it was just freaking cool.

4. When I worked at Wendy's, the staff would eat the peaches and tomatoes and stuff while prepping the containers for the salad bar. I didn't, though, because I was too paranoid about getting caught. They also ate the fries.

5. I think I'm going deaf, and blind. Although I wear glasses to correct my nearsightedness, I have to hold things away from me in order to read, now. Now, I'm just waiting for dumb. It's coming, I'm telling you, and soon.

6. When I'm embarrassed, even if just slightly embarrassed, my face turns beet red. And I mean beet red. It's hard to control it, actually, near to impossible. Not only that, if I feel the heat going to my face, I blush even harder. I hate it. Sometimes I don't even have to be embarrassed to blush. Take the other day for instance. I was shopping, and as was leaving, I just happened to run into one of our school's former band teachers, Mr. Patterson. He is young, dynamic, vibrant, and the kids loved him (Okay, so he was cute, too). We were classroom neighbors during his time at our school, and would often stop to chat with us (the other fifth grade teachers) when passing by, so I went over and said hello. Not an embarrassing situation, not an excitable situation, but wouldn't you know, I began to blush. Alot. Which of course embarrassed me, so I blushed even MORE. Jeez. How embarrassing.

Okay, so there you have it. Six. Now, according to the game, I'm to tag six others. Deviating a bit, okay, more than a bit, I tag YOU, yes YOU. Have fun. Remember, people love reading about YOU more than YOU realize! We're all voyeurists of some type or another. Go for it!

Mrs. Jones and Me

"The Diary of Bridget Jones" struck such a chord with me, that I'm amazed it didn't shatter my hurricane proof windows at the time of my viewing. Not only could I relate to her being in her thirties, overweight (yeah, right, I wasn't overweight, I was tothemoonweighted), and single, but I also would suffer through her episodes of painful embarrassment with just as much pain that she was enduring at that moment as well. Heart aches, heart breaks, over joyed, unemployed...you name it, she did it, and, many times, so did I.

Watching Bridget trip across her life was a bit like watching my own, and I'm thinking that was the case for others as well. My drink of choice wasn't vodka straight from the bottle, it was Cosmos (I was a Sex in the City fan as well, der). And yes, I smoked (long skinny menthol), danced, went out all night and came home late in the mornings, and dragged my not so willing butt to work the next day. My friends were as cool, if not cooler, than Bridget's, and yes, I even had a few gay ones as well. We were definitely cooler than everyone else. So, age and weight, (check), wild nights spent with variety of friends (check), painful embarassment...ah...yes.

Admit it, we all have these moments...painful embarrassment. I will be the first to admit that not only have I had moments of painful embarrassment, I have had MANY moments of painful embarrassment. To imbibe, and heavily imbibe in the consumption of alcoholic drinks seems to lend a helpful hand in creating quite a few of these moments. Oh, like the time there was orange juice, cranberry juice, vodka, and bar-b-qued sausage, all consumed at different stages of the evening, and all deciding to make an appearance later on that evening. Together. Holding hands, even. Not the best way to impress (Okay, so this wasn't when I was in my thirties...I was actually like 18, and trying my damnedest to impress what's his name now that I'm a couple of decades older....AND WISER that I now forget who he even was). But being young, clueless, and naive, I forgave myself this one small...teeny tiny...event. Of course, as you age, like wine in a barrel or cheese in a wedge, comes wisdom.

Yep, you learn how to read the signs that state if you have one more fruity cocktail, then you'll learn the true meaning behind "two for the price of one." It is at this point where I will thank the god(s) for sending my friends my way, and of course, vice versa. They saved my ass from many an embarrassing morning after. Oh, like the time in the parking lot...with a beautiful Frenchman...after a night of dancing...pulling me out of the club holding hands...Yes, I fell in love after knowing him for only 29 minutes (You would have as well if he whispering sweet french nothings in your "I haven't been a bad girl in waaaaay too long.") ear. Fortunately for me, Margie and Claudia came tripping along and pulled me away from the Frenchman. I still remember tenderly waving from the window of her car, the tires snick snicking away, while I waved to my Frenchman (who straightened his color and went back in to find another fool...er...victim...er...girl). Ah, friends. Good thing Bridget and I had the best of them, huh?

Fortunately, and after dating a couple of the same guys Bridget had dated (Meet Ben and Jerry), I began the process of settling. Found a job, a good job, one that paid the bills which in turn allowed me to make even more bills, WOO! Found a fella, a good fella (cue Van Morrison singing, "Someone Like You."), one that paid the bills which in turn allowed me to make even more bills. Got married (take that Bridget), and so on and so forth.

My embarrassing moments weren't all sloshed related...like when I sprained my hand trying to wave at someone through a closed window, or each time I wave at someone I don't think I know but maybe I do because I think they are waving at me but in truth they are waving at someone standing in back of me (admit it, you all have done that before). And fortunately, Bridget has gotten over Vodka and Chaka Chan, while I have gotten over Cosmos and Ben and Jerry (well, I still do occassionally visit with Ben and Jerry...they helped me over SOOOO many hurdles ta ha, and girdles). It is still nice to know that we have each other to cry with, aggrieve with, and laugh with.

Ah, Miss Jones.

There is Superstition

Step on a crack and you'll break your momma's back.

You don't know how many cracks I've jumped over, yes, even now, because of that statement (you don't know how many I've stepped on either).

I am a superstitious woman. Beware walking in my kitchen with barefoot because you're likely to slip in the piles of salt lying scattered throughout. Who cares about gas prices, if that black cat crosses my path, I'm turning around. The bayou in the back of my mom's yard is filled with my broken mirrors; ain't no seven years of bad luck followin me around. And as for Lowe's, well, it's a ladder nightmare. I've even gone as far as creating a few of my own superstitions.

When I was just a young girl, there was an armadillo that had the misfortune of kissing the wheel. Alas, the wheel did not return his affections, and the wretched creature crawled off to die. His final resting place was a sidewalk I frequented on a daily basis. My walks would take me past his body in all of it's decaying glory. Each day he faded until at last a mighty wind (no, I didn't fart...ooo...I hate that word...fart), carried him away. That patch became "The Sacred Armadillo Spot." Never could human feet pass over this sacred armadillo spot. I had no idea what would happen to the feet that did pass over that spot because its sacredness was so awesome that no one dared attempt it. Certainly not me. I still don't walk over the sacred armadillo spot.

Never.

Ever.


Being superstitious, aside from not knowing how to spell the word, and it being a cool Stevie Wonder song, isn't as cracked up as it's made to be. It's annoying, actually. Your days are filled with nonsense ritual...tossing salt, walking back and forth under ladders, throwing mirrors into the bayou, kissing your husband goodbye once, or three times...but for goodness sakes, NEVER twice. Imagine the woe, the panic, the absolute FEAR that would strike if you missed doing something to avert evil. It's like those freaking chain letters you get in your email...ergh...send this out to 1,000 people or your dog will stop licking your toes in the middle of the night...what's that? We don't have a dog?

Damn, you freak.

Those things usta freak the everliving out of me. I'd be like...oh gods...if I don't fill this out and answer 128 questions asking weird things about me like if I like mountains or desert (like I've been to the desert...come on now) or if I like Sprite or Mountain Dew (dew the dew), then the love of my life will be eaten by a rabid monkey squirrel.

Well, can the squirrel at least wait til we get life insurance?