Putting My Big Girl Panties On

My bedroom has a built-in state-of-the-art security system. If anyone heavier than Stuart Little tries to enter the room, the floor CREEEAKS so loudly that it not only wakes us, it wakes everyone within a three house radius.

And that is why I went commando today.

It was 6:30 this morning when I was tippy toeing around in the dark, trying to piece together a decent outfit to go garage saling in. My only real criteria was that everything be close enough to reach in three creaks or less, and clean enough that it passed the sniff test. In only two creaks, I managed to dig a skirt and bra out of the dumping ground I have created on the top of my husband's dresser. Three creaks later, I scrounged a shirt off the floor of my son's closet. One more creak, and I was slipping on a pair of shoes waiting by the door.

I was fine with the fact that my naughty bits would be getting a breath of fresh air. Anything that helps keep me cool on an Arkansas summer day has to be a good idea, right? Well, you'd think so. Except for one critical garage sale design flaw. When they run out of tables, they just stack stuff on the ground. And unless you're Sharon Stone, do you really want to be caught in that position?

Luckily, there is a law of garage saling that is as steadfast as gravity: If you need it, it will be there. And today, I needed undies.



Yes, they do go up to my armpits and make me feel about as sexy as Andy Rooney, but they're new and they fit and they were only a buck. I would have preferred something a little less Victorian and a little more Victoria's Secret, but you can't always get what you want. You get what you need.

Big Love

I thought you should be the first to know.

I have a new boyfriend. And it's serious.

Don't worry. My husband knows all about us. In fact, he introduced us. And he completely understands my attraction.

Meet Paulo.





He's beautiful, no?

You must understand, this is no casual affair. It's destiny. Our new house has forty pairs of shutters, you see.

FORTY!

I spent three weeks painting the first pair by hand one day.



muthashuttas


At that rate, it was painfully clear that the house would be finished just in time for us to move into assisted living. So my husband invited Paulo home for a threesome.

It was love at first spray.



Me and Paulo, getting it on


It didn't surprise me much to discover that Paulo, in the end, turned out to be quite high maintenance. All the great beauties are.





But I don't mind taking good care of him. He's totally worth it. I have a feeling we're going to be very happy together.




Den, before



Den, happily ever after

Grammas Gone Wild

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When you look at this picture, what do you see?

Obviously it's a victim of Jack the Ripper, a pretty young thing with a slashed throat. But maybe you see something else. There is no reality, only perception. And sometimes, you have to squint and hold your head just right to see what might be lurking beyond the first impression..
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Let's try another one. What do you see?

This one's harder, because the dark underbelly is more cleverly concealed by the deceptively innocent exterior. Like those War Heads candies that start off so sweet and then all of a sudden blow your head off when you hit the surprise layer inside. Yeah, she's that. Sit back and I'll tell you all about her, starting with the sweet candy shell.

To most, she is Judy; to some, she is Gramma; to me, she is Mom; to my Dad, she is everything. And to us all, she is extraordinary. If you could look her up in a thesaurus and read the list of antonyms, this is what you’d find: boring, ordinary, typical, demure, predictable. She lives each day with gusto, as if it could be her last. Unlike her daughters, who have their Masters in delaying gratification. (My sister is going for her PhD.)

While my mother’s personality is huge and irrepressible, her belief system is really quite simple and old fashioned. Her life revolves around her husband, her church, her family, and her friends (we'll get to them in a minute). She married my father when they were kids, back in the fifties when good girls waited until their wedding night (and panicked on its eve). Their marriage is the best I’ve ever witnessed, beautiful and sacramental (which means they drink wine and eat bread a lot). They are so good together it almost makes me believe in soul mates.

Her faith is equally remarkable. She not only works at a Spiritual Life Center, but also attends services twice weekly and prays, well, religiously. (Although I will divulge that she cusses almost as much in her prayers as I do in my blog. He's either good with the sailor lingo or afraid of her, because He pretty much does as He's told.) She hosts a Christian book club which reads, duh, Christian books. The soundtrack of her life is Sandi Patty and the set design is everything angel. Her current ministry (and there have been many) is a Christian quilting group who goes on retreat to pray and make quilts for returning Iraq veterans and sick children.

As you might expect, a life so steeped in religion is bound to be rife with conservative Christian Republican friends. But make no mistake, liking them is not the same thing as being like them. It is my theory that God is using my mother to slap some cool into a seriously uptight crowd.

Which brings me to the surprise juicy layer, my sainted mother's inner tart. Dad, if you’re still reading, this would be a good time to go plunge toothpicks in your eyeballs. For the rest of you, it’s time to talk vajayjay.

I feel confident (nauseated, but confident) saying that my mother must have the heartiest vajayjay in the northeast. Those two lovebirds have been at it like a coupla randy teenagers at summer camp for the past fifty years. BLECH! Yay for them! Unfortunately, one of her friends has a different story. Years of abstinence has taken its toll on her vajayjay, turning it into an overcooked manicotti. So her doctor, and I am not making this up, prescribed a vibrator. (Did I mention I am not making this up?)

There’s a wide range of reactions an older woman might have to a recommendation like this: apprehension, fear, sadness. My mother’s reaction? Road trip! Granted, this is a group of women who take road trips together all the time . . . the quilting/praying retreats, annual treks to Women of Faith, shopping junkets to the yarn wholesaler in Massachusetts or the outlet village in Maine. It only follows that the Christian Coalition would pile into the minivan for a pilgrimage to the porn shop. So, while my father sat home rubbing holes in his temples and freebasing Tums, a vanload of Grammas headed across state lines in search of therapeutic dildos and a nice chicken salad.

The first minor glitch arose when the ladies came to the unsettling realization that they didn't know where the hell they were going. So imagine if you will, them asking directions. Excuse me young fellow, but Gramma needs a new Vibrating Silver Bullet. The poor guy had to think he was being punk'd.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers (and an epic pair of balls), my mom got them to their destination: Oh My, an emporium of adult toys, restraints, and paraphernalia so sordid my mother declined to elaborate. And she's a girl who lives to elaborate. You know that old saying, actions speak louder than words? Well, after taking a cursory gander at the inventory, my mother turned around to find herself standing alone. Her friends, including the one there on doctor's orders, had turned tail and run into the street, frantically crossing themselves and rubbing Germ-X on their eyeballs. The mission was promptly aborted, slack vaj be damned.

So the ladies instead retired to lunch, and giggle, and sip a Pinot Grigio or two, and probably pray for their sullied souls. Then, they headed back to the van for the return trip to piety and propriety. But just as the interstate came into view, the wine intervened and demanded they turn around and do what needed to be done. And they listened. In what I can only envision as a terribly wrong Golden Girls meets John Holmes mash up, the Christian grammas browsed, and compared features, and asked questions, and made their MasterCards blush. They left so thoroughly dazed that once they actually did make it to the interstate, they took a wrong turn and ended up in Connecticut.

Sometimes, there's just no telling where a road might lead. Dildos and handcuffs and whips, oh my!

PS, I can't wait to see what I get in my stocking from mom this Christmas!

Posh Spice

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I could be wrong, but sometimes I wonder if sharing a bed with my five-year-old might not be the very best thing for my sex life. Sure, I can make a solid argument for the naughtiness factor of sneaking around to other rooms of the house for the Sexy Time rendezvous. I’m also a big fan of the down-and-dirty, peel-off-your-clothes, sprint-to-the-finish-line while the little guy is playing (audibly) in the neighbors’ yard.* But let’s face it, there are times when I do want to tell him to get a room.

Instead, we did. For one night only, we got a hotel room and hung the No Stinky Five-Year-Olds Allowed sign. And this was not just any room mind you. Non, non mon frère. This time, girlfriend did it up right. This room was at The Capital Hotel, thank you very much. (Pause to allow those of you who have ever met me to return your jaw to its upright and locked position.) Even if you haven’t met me, and therefore don’t know that paying full price for, say, a new pair of socks causes my right eye to twitch uncontrollably, you have to give props to a night at The Capital Hotel. It’s an event. It’s the Kentucky Derby of married sex. Except with more pressure to perform.

That pressure began for us when it dawned on me that my husband hadn’t read my mental agenda. He therefore didn’t understand that since Check In Time was 3:00, Naked In Bed Time was 3:05. Maybe sooner if we scored a room on the ground floor. The word opportunist is so unflattering, so let’s just say I am skilled in the art of maximizing opportunities to their fullest potential. Kay? While it seemed clear beyond requiring verbalization that we would be standing on the curb poised to bolt into the lobby at 2:55, my husband was clueless. Clueless in this case defined as: PREPARING TO BAKE TWO LOAVES OF HOMEMADE BREAD AT 2:30! To quote Dave Barry, I am not making this up. In his tiny little manmind, a nice dinner and then adjourning to the room for a quickie and a movie was peachy. Why push it? (Oh, I don’t know. Why do that whole week in Europe that you paid for when you can just skip Paris and head straight to Rome in a couple days? What the fuck, you seen one old church you seen ‘em all, right?)

Like the big grown-ups we are, we had a mature conversation about expectations and respect and compromise and how much he likes seeing me naked, and we were at the hotel by 3:20. I don’t know if you’re much for omens, but I am. And the first person we met upon arrival was this guy.

Come on, people. Two words and one of them has cock in it? Game on.

There is only one word to describe the room: Classy. But don’t worry, we took care of that in a hurry.

I like to think that no matter what I do, no matter how embarrassing or gauche, somebody somewhere has done it, too. But it’s entirely possible that we were the only guests at The Capital Hotel that night eating Kroger brand sharp cheese and Triscuits, and drinking wine out of cardboard. As my friend Karen always says, I put the ass in class.

Since my mom and pleasegodnot my dad will be reading this, we won’t delve too deeply into the events that occurred next. Suffice it to say Hanky AND Panky showed up for the party, and they brought party favors.

Next stop, dinner at The Capital Bar & Grill. And let me tell you, that vigorous 3 minutes hours of good lovin’ really worked up our appetites. Almost as if he knew I’d make a Kentucky Derby analogy, my husband stepped way outside of his box and ordered a Blackberry Mint Julip. I, predictable as gravity, drew my finger down the price column and ordered whatever aligned with the lowest number. It’s fortunate The Capital doesn’t carry Boone’s Farm. Since the concierge visibly drooled when he recommended the Rib Eye, we both eagerly took his advice there, but not until after we shared a couple of yummy appetizers.

Everything, ambiance and conversation included, was perfect.

But just as the sun set, our perfect romantic evening turned strangely, mysteriously . . . uncomfortable. A little jazz trio started to jam, and that was nice. I ordered dessert, chocolate with a little extra chocolate on top, and that, of course, was nice, too. I even treated myself to a couple cups of coffee, a downright reckless act of abandon past nine at night. But nice as it all should have been, it wasn’t. It was such a precious rare event for us to be out on a date, especially with a live jazz cherry on top. My husband has made us drive across state lines to pay good money for jazz, and here it was delivered free to our doorstep. I so wanted to be happy there. I tried to be, really I did. But it just wasn’t going to happen. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.

The crowd continued to stream in. Loud. Happy. Drunk. Rich. I was Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and the chemical combination making me shrink was wealth mixed with alcohol splashed liberally all over my low self-esteem. I would talk more about my perverse aversion to rich people, but you might be one of them, and I want you to like me.

I kept observing the crowd, and myself as a part of it. How was it that we were all sharing the same environment, but such drastically different experiences? It worried me that here we were in a perfectly romantic venue, where every swinging dick in the place was manic with joy, and I was bored. I was anxious. I was itching to get the fuck out of Dodge. Like, poison ivy itching. Could I not enjoy one night out on the town with my own husband? That’s a scary thought.

So we left. And by the time the elevator doors slid open on our floor, my itch was cured. The fear that my marriage was doomed because I couldn’t enjoy one solid night alone in my husband’s company high-tailed it out the emergency exit and down the fire escape. Instantly, I realized it was never his company I was uncomfortable in, it was theirs. Who invited them, anyway?

We spent the rest of the weekend alone in our room, curled up in each others' arms in our five-year-old-free bed. In the morning, I steeped for a good long time in a luxurious bubble bath. The tub was deep and decadent, marble and porcelain, surely made with rich people in mind. It did feel great, for an hour or so. But truth be told, it was a little too big for me. A little more than I need.

I hadn’t missed my five-year-old once the entire time we were at The Capital. Maybe being somewhere so foreign helped me not crave the part of my life that is most familiar. It took getting into my car to make me suddenly hungry to have him back. I can’t tell you how good it felt to get to him, and to get home. I admit I did worry for about a minute that our bed at The Capital would be an impossible act to follow, what with our mismatched pillowcases and thread count about as high as my IQ. But all the goose down and Egyptian cotton in the world’s got nothing on this.

*Thanks, Catherine.
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