Sexyhusband and I are moving to a bigger apartment at the end of this month. As I began the long, tedious journey that is packing (made more so because I'm not allowed to lift boxes-I pack them and then ask other people to carry them for me) I contemplated my lingerie drawer trying to decide what to pack now and what to leave out.
I packed every last thong and g-string, because as I've come to realize, I really really am not a huge fan of ass floss.
So this week's question...regardless of your gender or sexual orientation...
What is your real opinion of thongs? Does it change if the person wearing the thong in question is you/not you? What is your relationship with thongs?
For the purpose of clarity of the question, let's use the word thongs, but mean any sort of thong-ish underwear including g-strings. Feel free to make whatever distinctions you wish to make in comments.
I've spent most of my pregnancy feeling pretty scornful of all the predictions about pregnancy and how you're "supposed" to feel. I lost weight from all the puking, and I still throw up a few times a week even now. My belly isn't really showing yet, although I've found some tops that give me the look of being pregnant (Sexyhusband says I look more pregnant than I think). I feel stupid for buying any maternity clothes since I can still fit into my normal clothes...with the exception of my bras. I get most of the negatives--having to pee, all the restrictions, but it really felt like there wasn't a lot of great stuff going on.
Until about two weeks ago all I'd gotten physically out of pregnancy were bigger (sore) boobs. Feeling the baby kick had been the highlight.
But now, nine weeks into my second trimester, the clouds parted and the sun finally shone down on me. Because my sex drive, which had been practically MIA, came roaring back to life with a vengeance.
This was poorly timed, as Sexyhusband has been sick for a week. I, however, am not an understand spouse, and chose to have my wicked way with him anyways. I mean, really, how hard is it to lay there and take it???? (said with a grin and a wink).
I have some pictures to post soon, which I will do as soon as I locate the usb cable for the camera. I want to do some before and now shots of my breasts as well as share a story of me, a thin white cotton shirt, a down pour, and a shower-aided re-enactment.
But for the moment, all hail the return of the sex drive!
I think you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the Gloucester Pregnancy Pact, as it was initially announced in the media. I hear the story went global, but if you have no clue what I'm talking about go here, here, and here. The short version is that in one year, the average number of pregnancies at a high school in my home state quadrupled from 4 to 17 pregnancies. Most of the girls were sophomores (making them 15 or 16) and reportedly many gave very positive reactions to their school-nurse administered pregnancy tests--such as high-fives or saying "Sweet!" Several of the babies were fathered, allegedly, by a 24 year old homeless man.
Prior to this, Gloucester was best known as the home port of the sailors from the movie "The Perfect Storm." It's a blue collar, fairly economically depressed coastal town in Massachusetts.
I am perhaps a bit late to the party in commenting on this, but I wanted to get more of the story before I jumped in and started armchair quarterbacking.
Initially, the story was reported as a "pact" by some of the girls to get pregnant and raise their babies together. That story has since been denied, although I don't know if I buy into the vehement denial ("the lady doth protest too much?").
Both sides of the sex-ed debate have jumped on this story, both arguing if only they'd been allowed more access in Gloucester this never would have happened.
Here's why I think both the abstinence AND the complete sex-ed people are wrong--if a girl wants to get pregnant, it's not like you can stop her, short of putting a chastity belt on her. Abstinence-only education wouldn't have prevented a 15 year old from knowing how she can get pregnant. My fifth graders know how a woman gets pregnant (even if there is a lot of misinformation mixed in there). Teaching them not to have sex wouldn't stop them from having sex if they want a baby. On the other hand, teaching them how to properly put on a condom or making the pill available to students is also not going to prevent pregnancy if the girls are going to avoid the pill and choose NOT to use condoms because they're trying to get pregnant.
Was it a pact? No one can say for sure. Knowing teenagers, it sounds like the kind of screwed up logic most teens would use. I respect teens, but I will be the first to say that they don't have the best judgment. I don't think it matters since some of them obviously WERE trying to get pregnant. You don't high five the nurse if you're shocked and horrified, nor do you shriek "SWEET!"
Was it "Juno's" fault? Jamie Lynn Spear's? Um, no. "Juno" should have taught them that pregnancy is way above the maturity level of the average 16 year old and that it makes you an outcast and is completely NOT FUN. Jamie Lynn Spear's pregnancy may not make a great case against teen pregnancy, but even the dumbest teenage girl should understand that having a baby when you're 16 is easier when you're a millionaire.
Was it the school's fault? They provide day care for teens who have babies, and it's perhaps less of a stigma there than in other schools. I personally think it's commendable that a school would make an effort to help teenage mothers get their high school diplomas. It's not like the school provides a monthly allowance to the mothers or provides them with luxury items and cars or any sort of real incentive. Daycare is a small gesture, and Gloucester has much better teenage mother graduation rates than other districts.
I was a poor, lonely, under-parented teenage girl who lived in an economically depressed town. I had a lot in common with those girls. And I contemplated getting pregnant when I was in high school. I wanted someone to love me unconditionally. I wanted to have direction and meaning in my life. I decided not to because as the child of a single mom, I understood how hard my life was as a direct result of my mom having me at too young an age.
I have sympathy for these girls. They don't have an easy road. As teenage moms they'll have overwhelming odds that predict that they won't achieve higher degrees, ever climb out of their current socio-economic bracket, and the odds also predict that they will have more children which will just compound the other issues. That doesn't mean that they'll be bad mothers.
Being a teenage mother doesn't automatically mean that you're a bad mother. I personally know a woman who had her daughter as a teen. She would be the first to say that 16 is too young to have a child and then would back it up with a list of all the ways having a child made her life very difficult. She would also say that she doesn't regret her daughter, whom she loves dearly. Her kid is a pretty spectacular 15 year old. My friend is the kind of mother I hope I can be-she's great with her daughter and her son who is now 6. She also has a degree from Harvard, which she earned at a much older age than most of us, but that doesn't lessen the prestige of the degree or the effort taken to achieve it.
I wish these girl luck. I hope that they find whatever they're looking for, and that they find the right path for them that leads to a happy life for both them and their kids.
Since I read Uppercase Woman, I saw today's post and her challenge for her reading to post 5 character defining things about themselves. Any of my readers with blogs, I pass the challenge on to you. Please post a comment with a link to your post so I can read your character defining things.
1-Growing up without a dad.
My bio-dad and my mom were never together seriously. He was a fling that got my mom pregnant. He offered to pay for the abortion, to marry my mom (but have nothing to do with raising me) or to give her money to support me. My mom wasn't interested in marrying him, so they didn't get married. He decided that not being involved with us at all was better than giving my mom money every month for the next 18 years. Two states worth of Welfare tried to track him down with no luck. I had my grandfather in my life, but the truth is that the lack of a father was a deep wound. I spent YEARS of father's days in tears at school while my classmates made potholders or macaroni picture frames, with my teachers trying to convince me that my grandfather was a perfectly acceptable substitute. He's a great guy, but he isn't a substitute for a dad. When I was 16, my grandfather began to emotionally separate from my family (after my grandmother's death) and I felt as though I'd been deserted by my dad all over again.
For years I blamed my mother for the lack of my father. She was there, I and knew I could yell and scream and throw all my anger at her and she'd still be there in the morning, loving me. That didn't make me hurt less, and it didn't make it easier on my relationship with my mother.
Of course this had a bearing on my relationships with men. I was so needy for male attention and love that I spent years being sexual with men that I might not have slept with otherwise. I don't regret my sexual history, but I will admit that I was less selective than I could have been. I equated sexual experiences with love and with positive male attention.
I have often thought about searching for my bio-dad, but I don't because I just don't see how it has a positive result. I would like to know if I have siblings, and my ethnic and medical history on his side of the family but it's too late to build a relationship.
Meeting my father in law was a revelation because he is a good father, and a good father in law. It has really only been the past few years that I understand what I really did miss out on, and I do regret it, even though I'm finally old enough and mature enough to know that it's not my fault.
2. Going to College
I am the first member of my family to ever go to college. This, more than anything I've ever done has changed the course of my life. College opened the doors to a world where I wasn't a complete freak-where I met other people like me. It opened the door to seeing other parts of the world. It gave me the opportunity to go to grad school in New York. It led me to a career, even if it's one I am considering not returning to in the long run.
College was the first time in my post-childhood life that I actually felt happy. I was a very unhappy adolescent. I was unpopular, I was defensive, I was lonely, and I was confused about who I was. College was a much less restrictive environment than my high school and for the first time I felt free to be myself in all of my awkward, geeky splendor.
3. The time I spent living in France
France was an experience for me on so many levels it's almost hard to quantify them all. It was my first time on a plane, my first time out of the country, out of New England, and out of my comfort zone. We could never afford for me to go to sleep-away camp, so college had been the first time I had spent time away from my family, but only by less than two hours, so it really didn't count.
I had to speak a foreign language all the time. My host family did not speak English. I didn't know any of the other students from my school, and we were very different people so I didn't hang with them much. I had to navigate the small city we were living in.
I had to take chances I never would have taken before. On a free weekend, I took a trip by myself and went to the Riviera. I arranged for my transportation, my lodgings, and how I spent my free time. I'd never been alone in the world the way I was that weekend. I didn't have a cell phone or a lot of money. I didn't even have a guide book. But I figured it out.
I learned so much about myself that summer. I learned that I could take flight and figure out a life for myself in a strange place. I never would have been able to handle New York if it hadn't been for France. I learned that I liked traveling alone. I learned that I was stronger than I had ever given myself credit for.
4. Writing
I've always been a writer. In college I began to write again, and it really unlocked my heart and my soul. I never anticipated that I could write long stories, erotica, or a blog. Writing has changed my life-I've made friends through my blogs over the years, I've successfully completed a NaNo challenge, and I have a novel that's halfway written that I do plan on finishing. I've even got paid for my writing in the past year.
Writing makes me happy, it helps me release my demons, and it's how I interpret the world around me. I would be lost without my writing, and I'm grateful everyday for the ex-boyfriend who introduced me to Literotica and said "I bet you could write stuff better than some of this."
5. Sexyhusband
Considering my history with men, you wouldn't really expect me to end up in a healthy relationship. There are days when it still shocks me that somehow I found this person who gets me, who accepts me for who I am, and who challenges me to be better without implying that I'm lacking in some way. Our relationship isn't just about sex, although that's certainly the point of this blog and what I talk about here.
I am grateful every day for him. My life would be less full without him.
I was lucky enough to have been present in both Massachusetts and California on the day that same sex marriage became legal in each. I happen to live in Massachusetts (which I know makes me a godless liberal, but let's move on from that for a moment, hmmm?) so being here wasn't any sort of stroke of luck-it was just being in my home state on a momentous day. It was pretty cool that Sexyhusband and I were in California on June 17th-in fact it was the day before we came home. We didn't extend our stay to be there on purpose, but by a confluence of lucky events, there we were.
In 2004, when gay marriage became legal here, I was a single girl who had not even met Sexyhusband. I was an overworked first year teacher just trying to survive the last 6 or so weeks of school, but I took the time to watch the coverage and do a little celebrating. The following year I met Sexyhusband and....gay marriage did not stop us from falling in love, creating a solid relationship, and getting engaged. In 2006, the thousands of legally married gays did not impact my wedding (except perhaps to help determine the date--I'm sure I was competing with a few couples to get my first choice location), nor did they impact the love and support my husband provided as I went through the hell of back surgery. My marriage will be two years old this summer and it is no less strong because a gay friend of mine has been married for two years longer than me.
I am furious that some Californians (and many non-residents of CA) are trying to start a ballot iniative to end gay marriage this fall. With one pull of the lever they get to sit in judgment over other's marriages. For people who say that GOD is the only one who can judge if we are good or wicked, this seems a lot like they're staging a coup d'etat on GOD. Who are they to make this sort of judgment? What reasons could they possibly have to destroy families?
The reason I've heard most often is that marriage is for procreation and propagation of the species.
Which makes me wonder if by their standard, my marriage was in trouble the moment I had a miscarriage. How many strikes would I get before my marriage was invalid? Three miscarriages (strikes) and then I'm annulled? Is my marriage license only filled out in pencil until I produce a healthy child this fall? And since I'm having a little girl, how many of them would consider it marriage lite until I produce the proper male heir to carry on my husband's proud last name?
Or we can talk about my friend N, who found out after a year of trying, that her husband could not father a child. Is her marriage invalid? Because they're having a child thanks to the scientific wonder that is a sperm bank plus intra-uterine-insemination does that get them a free pass, or are they breaking GOD'S LAW and thus doomed to spend eternity in hell next to Hitler and other evil persons?
What about couples that choose not to procreate. How many years do we give them the benefit of the doubt? If she reaches menopause, are they annulled/divorced automatically if there is no progeny?
If you base legitimacy of marriage on procreation, the situations I've proposed aren't that far-fetched.
I also hear that famous passage from Leviticus quoted to explain why gay marriage is bad.
Does that mean you can have gay marriage if you're Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, or any other religion that isn't held back by the Bible? I don't know if you know this, but Hinduism has no such holy writing declaring homosexuality a sin. Atheists are perhaps the most free as we don't have any holy writings at all to tell us what to do--we have to (gasp) use our own judgment about what makes us a good person--and personally I don't think that discriminating against others is the way to do that.
If you're Christian, I think the best rebuttal comes from Season 2 of the West Wing. If you insist on following that choice rule from the Bible, what about the others?
Let's all take a step back from the hysteria and think about the following question...
Who are you to decide who I can love?
It's only been 40 years since the Supreme Court struck down a law that made it okay to ban persons of different races from marrying. That's not in my lifetime, but only by about 10 years. It's certainly within my mother's lifetime that the law changed, and she was of an age to have it affect her. She grew up in an era where it was perfectly permissible to talk about whether or not it was okay to date a person of a different race, and to be told that if she did, she didn't need to come home again. (This was not an actual scene from my family's history, but it COULD have been).
As a member of an interracial relationship, I can tell you that there are plenty of people who still don't think that it's okay for my husband and I to be together. Some of those people, sadly, are members of my extended family, who also throw around the N word and other ethnic/religious/sexuality based slurs with ease.
I can also tell you that being a mixed-race couple has some benefits--when we had to do genetic testing for any ethnic diseases, it was just to check off a box. Coming from two such different ethnic backgrounds meant our daughter (and any other future kids) are at next to zero risk for any ethnic diseases since both parents have to be carriers and my husband had next to no chance of being a carrier for Tay-Sachs and I had next to no chance of being a carrier of Sickle Cell Anemia among others. This, however, is the sort of discovery that only comes to light when you stop hiding your face in the ground. Yes, it's a benefit to our procreation, but it has made for other advantages in our marriage as well.
Because my husband and I come from different backgrounds (ethnicity is just the tip of the iceberg) our child will have a wider viewpoint of the world and growing up than they might have experienced if we came from homogenous backgrounds. My husband grew up much wealthier than I did, lived in another country as a teen, worked in other countries as adults, and had two parents in a solid long term marriage. I grew up poor (on Welfare, not to put too fine a point on it), the only child of a single mom, never got on a plane until I was 20, took out frightening loans to pay for college, and came from a family that did not historically do anything other than blue collar work. Ironically, we grew up not 30 minutes from each other.
A marriage is a combination of two disparate entities who are stronger together than they are apart. Children or no children, marriage is about being stronger, better, happier than you are apart. It comes with a plethora of legal and social benefits. There are inheritance rights, tax breaks, and other legal rights. It means you can be with your most loved one in the hospital in an emergency. And when you're sick and alone in a scary hospital room, knowing the worst could happen, do you want your most loved one barred from you?
Gay marriage doesn't make straight marriage weaker. What are you so afraid of, and why do you want to legislate hatred and discrimination?
When my daughter is old enough to ask, I won't have an answer because the truth is that I just don't understand it myself.
"First I ignore you, and then I tell you I'm not interested in sex. This gets me some of the best sex I've had in a while. I'm not sure what lessons I'm supposed to draw from this, but I'm sure they're pretty fucked up ones."
The correct answer to the question "how do you have great sex while you have a horrible sunburn" is that you have a serious allergy attack to something in SoCal that they don't have on the East Coast until you're laying in your vacation bed hacking up snot, coughing so hard that your baby bounces on your bladder causing you to pee yourself, and not being able to take a deep breath. Then sunburns don't seem so bad.
So the vacation was still mostly fun, but the last few days did preclude much more than a lot of making out in the steamy bathroom (the only place I could really breathe even with 2 inhalers, nose spray and allergy meds--all pregnancy approved--which is generally code for "these won't really work if you have a high drug tolerance"). We arrived home safely and the allergy attack seems to be getting better--I'm breathing a LOT easier here although I'm still congested.
I'm pretty sure it was allergies because my eyes don't get irritated and scratchy when I catch a cold.
We did, however, visit an AWESOME store in the OC which I have to review for you and bought a great video on pregnant sex which also deserves a review, so we'll try to get to those as soon as I'm not sleeping ninety percent of the day away like I did today.
Does anyone have any thoughts/tips for how to have sex while sunburned (VERY sunburned)? My shoulders are just tomato red furnaces right now. Last night we put aloe on the burns and then started fooling around. Unfortunately I got stuck to the pillowcase and when I moved to get up I ended up shrieking...and not in pleasure as the pillow case ripped away from the burn.
Considering I burn ridiculously easily, you would think I'd long since mastered the sex while burned thing. However, any mystic knowledge I had on the topic seems to have evaporated. I think I perhaps defaulted to the female superior position in this scenario in the past, but my hips and back have been a bit too tight to do that, and doggy has had it's issues recently too.
As I detailed in Saturday's post, Sexyhusband and I went to see Katie Morgan dance yesterday. We had been good little do-bees and finished our packing for California in time to go to a college reunion event...but decided seeing Katie Morgan would be more fun, so we blew off the reunion event.
Katie was appearing at the Foxy Lady here in Massachusetts, which made it easy to get to, but unlikely to be a great strip club. Massachusetts, in general, I am sorry to say, has pretty lousy strip clubs. We only had to wait about 20 minutes until Katie came on, which was great because the dancers were, well..robotic and bored for the most part.
This is why I like divier clubs, like the ones in Providence because the girls there tend to have more fun with their jobs (or at least put on one hell of an act). Guys tend to rate clubs based on the hotness of the girls, and I will admit that there was not an ounce of fat, or a less than gorgeous girl in the place, but give me 15 extra pounds or a 7 instead of a 10 who's having a good time and I'll pick the latter every time.
Anyways, when Katie took the stage she was dressed in a sexy cowgirl outfit. I've seen pink sequined cowgirl hats before and had always found them corny rather than sexy, but Katie pulled it off. She did a set of 4 songs and gave a performance with a thousand times more energy and sex appeal than any of the girls we'd seen thus far (or would see before the end of the night). She also joked with the clients at the tip rail and showed off an impressive range of moves.
We waited through several lackluster house girls before Katie came back out to autograph pictures and dvds. We'd gotten a picture with her when we last saw her that has a limited fridge life (in that we can only keep in on the fridge for so long) because she's showing her tits. So this time we got one with the top on so we can at least have some photographic evidence of our pre-kids life in our post-kids one.
A fun night, and certainly better than a college reunion event.
Tonight Sexyhusband and I went to strip club to see Katie Morgan dance. This is actually the second time we've seen her as a feature dancer at a local club (I talk about the first time here) and she made everyone else look like amateurs. I'll talk more about the experience later, but as it wasn't the best club I've ever been to, I spent some time contemplating the fact that while I'm pregnant, I don't look pregnant yet. Katie is coming back to our area in September, when I will look obviously pregnant, but that fact alone wouldn't keep me out of a strip club....
Which led me to this week's question...
What would be your gut reaction at seeing an obviously pregnant woman with her husband at a strip club?
For the sake of argument, let's pretend that your state (like mine) has banned smoking so there's no second hand smoke worries.
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