Women and Whoopie November 22, 2010

If I had a dollar for every mom that told me that they were now asexual, then I’d have about 15 dollars. That’s a lot of cold hard sexually dysfunctioning cash. Asexuality mainly being the lack of sexual interest or desire in a total sort of way, seems to be the common theme for many moms and married ladies. For the guys, it’s opposite day. As always.

I think women tend to start feeling this way after years of marriage, not only after becoming moms, but since I’m a new mom. Let’s talk about mommy.

Getting back to the marital basics after a baby is a weird thing. For Lance, pregnant marital basics was more difficult. There was something beautiful but not so tantalizing about his daughter being in my stomach. For me, I felt really weird when we tried to be intimate after having her. Seriously, all I could think about was, “I have a daughter in the next room. She would be grossed out. Hey, maybe I’m feeling grossed out! I can’t touch her with the hands of friskies!”  It’s a weird transition.  Actually, it’s a transition I haven’t fully had to make because of being out of commission and all.  If you are a new reader and don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s only about 3 blogs or so away from being brought back up again, I’m sure.  

Anyways.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to several things:

1.  You’re tired.  Unfortunately, when the time comes for marriage practices, you are way too exhausted.

2.  Your hormones may be plunging down low the depths of the estrogen lake of fire.

3.  Watching toys dangle from strings on a Baby Einstein video while your baby cries with teething doesn’t start your engine.

4.  You don’t like your new permanent fanny pack of loose skin and lard around your middle.

5.  You don’t like your new body in general.

I’m dangerously on a roll here…..

6.  As I always I saved the best for last and this is a big one.  We feel so tired and a lot of times feel like we are doing it on our own.  Maybe you have a helpful husband.  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe your husband will do anything you ask him to do, you just wish you weren’t always asking.  Maybe your husband tries sincerely to help but there is still leftovers on the changing table and I don’t mean macaroni.  Then you feel mad and frustrated and say, “I’ll just do it myself!”  and you cry into a spare diaper you find on the floor.  Ahhhhh, hormones and sweet exhaustion….how you know me so well.

That was a make-believe scenario.  Sort of.  I do find poop a lot of places I normally don’t when Lance watches Eden but that’s okay.  I’ve never actually cried in diapers.  Those are much too expensive to simply absorb tears.  BUT still, we all have that feeling from time to time where we just want a break resulting in our husbands not catching any.

What dear sisters and sisters does this have to do with sex?  When you feature ovaries and uterus….EVERYTHING.  When you feature parts that make testosterone?  Probably means nothing.

I think most women lose their sexual drive because the demands of motherhood hit right on our love language which is to be loved.  We don’t feel loved when we feel short-changed because of a late meeting that left us in momma overdrive for 13 hours straight.  When our hardworking hubbies get home, even if their hard work allows mothers like me to stay home which is priceless for me/us, it’s hard to not feel a sense of isolation in your parenting role.  No matter how much you love being a mom, no matter how much you love your child, no matter how much you appreciate their work cause BELIEVE ME, I don’t want the job as bread winner….you can still feel all those things and still feel a little overworked in your own mommy right.  Can I have a lunch break, hallelujah one time!!!!!

When issues like this seep into a marriage, and they do no matter the working arrangements, it’s easy to take on the attitude of  ‘if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody getting any sort of thing in our room that makes you happy’.  But then the problem is for real, ain’t nobody happy.  Except baby.  And maybe the occasional cat.

I have a perfect illustration of how this has proven itself true in my own marriage.  I can see Lance reading this at work, gripping his office chair for impact.    It’s okay brother Lance, ease down, ease down.

It’s actually a reverse example of how this works and it started after the delivery. 

As soon as I popped my baby out, I felt so loved and soooooooo close and emotionally intimate with Lance.  This lead me to wish that we could be close in ways that got me to the delivery room in the first place.  Not in a raunchy sort of way but more like an expression of love and togetherness over what we just shared.   Trust me, that was the last thing I expected to feel. 

Then once we got home, as I started kind of losing my way physically, emotionally, and mentally, he took such perfect care of me that, again, I wished I could’ve shown him love that way.  You wouldn’t think a lady hyped-up on PPD would even have that within a million miles of herself but, I really did.  Almost to the extent that it was like when we first married over 6 years ago.  Little did we know that just 7 months later we would get to finally share in that again.  Nope, just kidding.  Still can’t.

All giggling about my privates aside, my point here is that I wanted to be with Lance in the worst of physical and emotional situations because what was drawing me to him was his love for me.  I think it’s so different for men that it’s really hard for them to understand or rather even believe that- that is how we function.  I really and sincerely become more attracted to Lance when he washes the dishes un-asked or offers to take Eden so I can go in town or when he secretly buys me the picture frame I want at Target for 16.99 for limited time only in aisle B16. 

That kind of stuff gets me going.  Men are so visual that they really have a hard grasping that cooking dinner for the family is like the male equivalent of Victoria Secret.   SO, as life gets more demanding for the both of you, neither of you wanna cook or clean but one of you still wants to contribute to the physical area of the relationship while your wife has decided to become asexual.  And here we find the problem for many women.

The solution is a two-fold fix:  your husband meets your needs, whatever that may be, and you meet his.

This, however, is only a solution to inspire you to desire each other.  You have to still do your part to meet your spouses needs even they aren’t taking as good of care as yours as you’d like.  The only way to get back on track is not to both throw in the towel.  Someone has to be trying.  Better if you both are but when in doubt, try, try again.  When you take on the ‘ain’t nobody happy approach’, then you aren’t working as a unit which is what you are and moreover, that approach is totally selfish and apathetic to actually making changes.

Sisters of the asexual world, I hear you.  The cave women felt this way.  There is nothing new under the sun.  I guarantee that the cave lady would be like, “Where’s my Brontosaurus leg?” And when he said, “I don’t know I was rolling rocks down the hill with the guys”, then she would take two big sticks and make an ‘x’ over her body. 

It’s not always fun and it’s definitely not always desirable or an easy thing to do BUT it’s necessary for a healthy marriage and asexuality doesn’t seem to fit into the picture somehow.

I hope you and your cave man can make cave babies together through the good times, the wanted times, and the unwanted times.  It’s not easy and not something that most of us can snap our fingers back into but somehow there has to be a way even without Brontosaurus bones.  We just have to do our part to be selfless, just like we want our cave kings to be.  

PS- But for real, lasagna will go a long way for you.  Top it off with a freshly, cleaned tub and you are going to straight to Disney World!

Ding Dong the Gina’s Dead November 4, 2010

Just in case you read the title incorrectly, it’s not Gina (Jeen-uh) like a girl’s name. It’s a half nick name version of vagina….Gina. (nod my head in reassurance) You understand.

So let’s revisit…

Ding dong the gina’s dead, the broken crotch of the south is dead. It’s true. It use to be funny and now it’s just a big messy body part.

I went to the doctor today for the sixteenth thousandth time since giving birth. I go about every 6 weeks. I’m for reals. This is my first time back since my surgery which we’ll say…didn’t work out for me. But I did get to spend about 1,000 dollars on the surgery so at least some good came from it.

I kid….I guess. I mean, I guess I had to have it to see if it would work. Now that it didn’t, I’m like Jay-Z and on to the next one.

My doctor  is going to call another doc at a prominent surrounding area hospital to see if they can help me. She asked me just in case if I’d be willing to go out-of-state for care and I was like, “Oh brother, what kind of crotch do we have on our hands here????” Who knew that giving birth to a fleshy bowling ball could be so destructive?  You know who did?  The bowling ball and Gina herself.

She also said that she feels like this could be a long-term issue for me which concerns her because I’m such a young lassie. DANG. That made me use words in her office like I and feel and like and crying.

Now I’m wondering if we’ll be able to try to have a baby in the time frame we originally wanted to but let’s not think that far ahead. Although, we haven’t been able to stick a feather in a cap and call it macaroni for almost 7 months now. Maybe it’s not thinking too far ahead after all.

I know I’m joking around a lot.  This is for two reasons:

I’m hilarious.

and

You can only take vaginas so seriously…..

But I am a little disheartened about it to say the least. Initially, it was impressive to say to my friends because I felt like the crazy Guinness World Record holder for saddest vagina but now…now I’m really like, “Okay guys jokes over. You can fix the kid now.”

In my wildest fantasy dreams I get to a specialist and they say, “Why this is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen and we can fix it with something really basic” like with a pack of Skittles or something. And no I don’t mean a pack of my torti cat Skittles. I mean the taste the rainbow kind. A double rainbow even.

I’m hoping that when someone extra-learned in the arts of crotches sees it that it won’t be as complex as what it seems to be now. Furthermore, I hope we can keep the care close to home. Forthlymore, I hope this is over in approximately one more month. Lastly, I know that won’t happen. At least the fourthlymore part.

Truth be told, I’d do it all over to have my cute little baby. If I got better and had another child and knew this would happen again, I’d still bring forth more glorious children from my loins. Right now I just want to know that I have the option to do anything with my gina that I want as I should be able to do at 28. If I want to dress it up like a police man, BOOM…I can. If I want to go on walks with it, Boom, Done! The funny part is that we always go on walks. I just want it to be like the old days where we could walk innocently down the lane without a care for each other. Those were the days. The gina free days.

So, the saga continues as I get to spread joy to the world in a new city with my record holding baby maker. Becca’s Gina, coming to a city near you.  May not be suitable for kids under 13.

Bail Out Your Own Boobs January 10, 2009

I have read a lot of news titles recently. Ones about women so obsessed with babies that they carry around real-life looking dolls, to one about a man hanging upside down by his pants from a ski lift thus exposing his butt. But NONE compare to what I just read today.

PORN INDUSTRY SEEKING FEDERAL BAIL OUT.

Can we have a moment of silence please. Not necessarily to honor the absurdity of this statement but more because I need a little personal time-out before I lose my religion over a headline.

The porn industry in America is unforntunately one of the single most successful products produced in this world. FACT: Last year the adult-film industry had a profit so large that it made more money than all professional sports COMBINED!. Unfortunately, there will always be a profit and a massive market for pornography.

The industry is requesting a 5 BILLION dollar bail-out. This request being made by Flynt, of Hustler magazine, and Francis, the CEO of Girls Gone Wild.

CNN quoted them as saying this,

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry’s survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people.”

End quote.

You have got to be kidding me!!! If there ever was a euphamism used, it is here with the word cherished. Sitting in a hormonal sweat watching people degrade themselves and broadcast it for profit is not something we “cherish”. We cherish time with our families and relationships. We cherish things that are meaningful and things of substance and hell will freeze itself ten times over before there will ever be an ounce of diginity muchless meaning and substance to the flith of pornography.

CNN further quoted Flynt and Francis as saying this,

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt said in the statement. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

End quote.

The issue is a nation in need? In need of pornography?! There are no words in the English language to capture the absolute ignorance of this statement.

Pornography is an addiction.
Pornography is boredom and discontentment with your partner.
Pornography destroys lives.
Pornography breaks-up marriages.
Pornography is a perversion of intimacy.
Pornography is the master of people who spend their hard earned money on indecency.
Pornography is degrading to women and a trap to the men who can’t escape from it’s tempting pleasure.
Pornography is not the need, it’s the problem.

It’s problem enough that it drives a man to say, “People can live without cars, but people can not live without sex.” It’s a problem when a man thinks this world needs pornography to run as if it is a necessity. Furthermore, robbing the world of pornography is not robbing the world of sex, it’s robbing the world of being voyers and watching strangers have sex with one or many people for a dime. Sex will not die if your industry does. You didn’t author sex and you won’t end sex. Pornography is a perversion that we would be lucky to have robbed from us. Gosh, then what would do…be left to enjoy only the sex with our spouses? Poor us.

Let me give you analogy for what a sick pleasure this is.

If I were to watch you have sex through a window in your house, no one would think that was normal much less appropriate. That’s called voyerism. As a matter of fact, if I were to be caught watching you, I would be put in jail by the same government that you want to you pay you to stay in business. But somehow we aren’t perverts if we purchase a copy of strangers having conscentually viewed sex which is essentially viewing paid prostitution. I realize the difference between watching porn and watching someone without their consent, is the issue of the privacy. However, my arguement is not about the people being watched, but the how the dysfucntion of the people watching is the same. If I want to watch people I don’t know or do know, in any setting, have sex, either through a window or on my TV, there is no difference in respect to the watcher. Consent of the party being watched doesn’t change the perversion of my motivation to want to watch you. That’s why we think voyers are gross, right? Because what’s so wrong with a person that they’d want to secretly watch people have sex. Well, pornography in any form is secretly wanting to watch people perform sex acts. It’s no more than respectable voyerism.

Pornography has never enriched the life of a person watching it or the lives of the people making it anymore than a fleeting temporary rush or pay-off that leaves them hungering for the next hit or high like a drug addict. It’s the chase after fullfillment in something that is utterly empty. What this world needs is not more emptiness. We need not another cheap form of instant gratification that only offers us a picture of the perverse which perverts our minds and makes us crave it’s dysfunction.

How do I know it’s a dysfunction of soceity? How do I know it’s a perversion? How do I know it runs our world and control’s it’s people?

Because no other thing on earth consumes us like this:

Every second – $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography

Every second – 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography

Every second - 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines

Every 39 minutes: a new pornographic video is being created in the United States

US adults who regularly visit Internet pornography websites: 40 million

Daily pornographic search engine requests: 68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
Monthly Pornographic downloads: 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)

Monthly Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites: 72 million

Internet Pornography Sales last year: $4.9 billion

The United States leads in the number of porn pages on the web with a total of : 244,661,900

Number 2 is Germany with 10,030,200. Be proud America, we lead by 234,631,700 millon pages.

Trust me, I’m not some naive person that doesn’t understand the allure of the forbidden. That is in our nature. My harsh tone is not condoning, however, not in judgement of the people who struggle with this temptation. It’s towards the people who are arguing that this is a wonderful, life enriching, healthy thing for our world. I get why people are so hooked on this stuff. I know boys, girls, men, and women addicted pornography on many levels. I know marriages that have been destroyed by it. I know children who have been victims of sexual perversions that started with some sick persons click of a mouse. I know of a teenage boy who killed himself because he couldn’t stop looking at pornography and the control it had on him was driving him crazy. I know of men who have lost their jobs because they couldn’t control viewing it at work. I know of parents whose 8 year-old child kept viewing their pornography tapes and they couldn’t throw them away to protect their child because they wanted to keep it so badly for themselves. I know why it hooks people and I know anyone can become hooked. That’s why this is so serious and not just some carefree entertainment industry that needs saving as if it’s the equivalent to movie theatres or some harmless past-time.

It hooks people because it’s a rush, it excites them, it feels good to them. In the same way, I’m sure doing drugs gives you a pleasurable physical high, but not all things that are pleasurable are beneficial. This is one of the most addictive and accessible poisons a person can take and they are, second after second, click after click, page after page.

I wish I could say that I would’ve never imagined the day the there would even be a mention of a bail-out to save pornography, but that’s not the hopeful world we live in. We live in a world driven by sex and we don’t even mind it because sex makes us crave more sex, thus resulting in things like pornography. We live in a world where sex is sung out in detail on the radio, where commercials have girls in bikinis to sell hamburgers, and in a world of where your kids can see dear Mr. Flynt’s magazine while walking down the aisle in a Barnes and Noble . Why wouldn’t we live in a world where there are people that think material acting out the explicit should be saved as a cherished necessity of our soceity?

So go ahead and make your silly request to save your little industry so that you can pay some girl millions of dollars to sell her body in hopes to sell it to people’s sons, daughters, and husbands. Tell me I’m wrong, tell me there is freedom to do all things and that whatever a man does can be right for him. Tell me that people would rather have access to pornography than cars to drive and food to eat. Tell me it’s a healty desire, tell me it’s normal because we all do it. Tell me that we need it, tell me that I’m narrow-minded.

And I’ll tell you that, “Tolerance is the mark of man with very little conviction.”

You can try to take our 5 billion dollars.

It’s already cost us way more than that.

Birds, Bees, & PTSD October 9, 2008

When I was 8 years old I decided to ask my mother what sex was.  I had recently heard the word virgin while my older brothers and sisters were watching 90210…could this have sparked my curiousity?  We may never know. 

She was stirring a pot of beans at the stove and I said, “What’s sex?”  She may have asked me what I thought it was because I went on to say, “Is it when people roll around in the bed and kiss each other?” 

I’m not really sure what transpired in the next few minutes but I do remember pushing my mom, againtst her will, for a real answer to the  point that she slammed the spoon into the pot and said “IT”…. In unmistakeable words. I never thought it was possible to do something so vile.  I never expected to hear such words over a pot of beans.

I did next what any such person would do.  I went and locked myself in the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror and cried.  Everyone who learned about sex at a young age has the same reaction just moments after hearing about the birds and the bees.  You have the disturbing realization that these people you call mom and dad have been doing this thing.  Who are these people?!  How could they do such unspeakable things?  And at that age you wonder why someone would even want to.  It makes as much sense as saying, “I’m going to put my hand on a burning stove.”  Why?  Why would you do that to yourself?

I must’ve still been a little confused….at least with the anatomy involved.  A famous story in my family is how I came home from a school party in first grade and told my mom about how I had a wonderful time at my class party.  I told her we beat vaginas with a stick.  Almost got it… It was pinatas which is commonly confused with vaginas.  Same thing. 

To be sure I understood what sex was, one night my whole family, all 6 of us, were sitting down in the basement watching a discovery channel show.  At one point in the show they cut to a monkey refuge and talked about mating practices.  Lucky for our family in one of the most awkward family moments of all times, they showed them mating.  I felt like I had the word “sex” on my forehead and that everyone must know that little Rebecca had just learned about this act.  It was okay though because just in case they didn’t, my mom asked me, “Rebecca do you know what they’re doing?”

Yeah.  Thanks.  Is family time over? I want to go cry in the bathroom again because even monkies are doing this outlandish deed. Was I the only one who understood that this thing was evil? I was beginning to think so.  The world was much easier when I could just play with my cabbage patch dolls and not think that cabbage and patch were somewhere….you know….

In an instant my parents became perverts and I became traumatized.

It took me several years to recover.