Really just kind of blogging now. Read at your peril. My wife is hours away tonight, having visited her grandmother in the ICU. Grandma is only being comforted at this point. They've decided to let her go. I don't know what life will be like exactly after this. I don't expect grandpa to live long after she's gone; they've spent the last few years seated side by side in easy chairs sipping Bloody Maries. He used to fly everything from fighters to supply planes in the days during and right after WWII. If you asked them, they would recount their longtime hobby of crashing weddings. That's right, she was a wedding crasher. They'd show up, eat the hors d'ouevres, he'd dance with the bride, she'd dance with the groom, they'd drink a few drinks and then a few more, and then off they'd go.
Grandma is not home, but she's apparently somewhat stable, in the most normal, least-positive sense of the word--her condition is not changing much from day to day. Everyone involved seems pessimistic, so I'm not letting that get any hopes up.
On the other hand, my wife and I just had a great little getaway. Most things that could go wrong, did, but we were able to laugh through it all and have a good time together. I had a couple of episodes of depressive thinking, but they were at quiet times, so I just sat there and thought through them until I was OK. More later. Must fix supper.
Well, that was exciting. A lightning storm killed our internet connection and television service, and we were cut off from the world a little bit. Apparently Fedor Emelianenko lost while I was stuck in 1985--what the hell?
Anyway, I've used that time to GAL some more. Joined that gym I couldn't seem to get to, and I'm really enjoying working out again. Wish they had a real squat rack, but they've got a lot of good stuff and the elliptical machines are much more challenging than my bicycle, yet so much easier on my joints than running. Eating 2000 calories per day and doing at least 30 minutes of cardio per day, plus back to weight lifting.
I've also begun the improvements to our fence that should keep the dogs in--lining the outside of the fence with sunken railroad ties and the inside with an electrified wire. The goal here is to train the dogs to stay in the fence so that they can be left outside without chain runs. At that point we can install a dog door at the back of the house and avoid a LOT of the household stress caused by those dogs.
Tomorrow a roofer is coming to repair a leak the previous owners left us (their roofers didn't flash around the chimney when they put a new roof on.) This too is a deceptively large step, because we've been putting it off forever since we want to take that chimney out someday after we get a new furnace. But the water from the chimney leaks directly down to our bedroom ceiling, and it's been one more reason why we couldn't renovate the bedroom "yet." Now we will, and we'll then have a brand-new bathroom and a new, comfortable, romantic bedroom upstairs.
Passed my EMT-B exam this week, so I should be a licensed EMT soon. Of course, that means going from driving the rig to being thrown around in the back by the idiot driving the rig, so it only looks like advancement if you squint just right . . . .
The new scale says I'm still losing. It's been hard to see, though my family says they can see my face thinning. However, I had one belt that was already on its last hole, and now there are no holes that make it small enough. My watch is looser, too, actually. Just forget I said anything else.
My wife took a vacation trip with her best friend to visit family (the friend's, not ours) in Texas. I took the chance to keep busy, work on "self soothing" as Schnarch describes it, and focus on my youngest son for awhile (the other two were at Boy Scout camp and visiting grandma, respectively.) I missed my wife, but it was still a great week, and last night we celebrated her return with maybe the best sex I've ever had. It was nothing elaborate, no toys, no props, no role-playing, but it was completely open and I felt totally connected to her. I think I picked up the Schnarch book just as I was ready to understand it. Last year I don't know if I would have gotten nearly as much from it. It's mostly easy mindset stuff if you're ready for it, very few "tricks" or "techniques."
The heat is brutal here, and it's messing with moods a little.
And, frankly, this morning I feel like I'm starting to slide back into that over-pursuing mindset a little bit. My wife was feeling sick Tuesday and Wednesday, then much better on Thursday, and I wanted to make love that night. It was clear to my wife what I wanted, and when I came to bed, she was reading a mystery novel. She told me she was just about to find out who the killer was, so I snuggled in next to her and waited for her to find out. A couple of minutes later, she closed the book (the killer turned out to be a patient of the protagonist's parents who blamed them the for a medical procedure gone wrong years before, apparently.) By this time I was getting the impression that we were not going to be making love. I tried to spend a little time self-soothing, and I decided I was still in a pretty good mood and might as well go ahead and find out a definite yes or no. I think about what would be fun to do if it happens tonight. She asked if I'd minded waiting. "No, I was just lying over here thinking." *Pause.* "What were you thinking about?" "Just a fantasy." *Pause.* Pretty sure the pauses are her waiting for me to say more. Not going to do it until she asks. Even if she says no, I figure, I'm going to enjoy the game and leave her with something to think about. "What were you fantasizing about?" "Nothing elaborate. Just taking your clothes down just far enough to hold you down on the bed and eat you out." "Oh." "Yeah. I was imagining how you'd squirm and giggle and kick your feet and fight so hard to get away, but you were giggling and gasping, and we were having fun, so I'd just wrestle you and hold you down and just keep doing you until you came. Actually, it was simple, but it was a pretty good one."
She was lying with her head on my chest by now, and she turned to me and said "OK, I want to tell you something, and you have to listen carefully, OK?" "Sure." My hands were wandering, but I really was listening to her. "OK. I'm tired. I'm not . . . really . . . in the mood right now. But I'm willing to try it. OK?"
Now, this is my post, so I'm going to point out here that not so long ago, I would have resented this. A couple of years ago, if she'd said the same thing, I'd have had to fight the feeling that she didn't really want me, it was insulting for her to "force herself to be with me." She even threw in a "Well, you always say I should do it even if I don't think I want to, so . . . " That would have started an argument before. Maybe she half-hopes it will start one now, but it doesn't, because I know I don't always say that. I don't think I've actually said it for months, and it was actually MWD's idea, not mine, but I know all that. I'm not going to argue about it, because the bottom line is that it's true no matter whether I always say it or not. And experience has taught me that it works and brings us closer together, so if she feels a little anxious about it beforehand, that's OK. We'll both feel better in a moment!
And we did. I told her I understood and I took over. I laid her back and went to it, and we had a lot of fun. Interestingly, I didn't act out my fantasy . . . I moved toward doing oral, but something told me that wasn't what she wanted (still not sure what it was) and as I moved up, I found we both wanted something else.
Several great things ended up happening:
First, and I don't know whether others here already know about this, but in the last couple of months I've started doing something new. My wife has never been able to reach orgasm from intercourse. It's not a huge issue for us, because she still craves and enjoys intercourse when she's in the mood for sex, and because I really enjoy oral and manual sex, so I bring her to orgasm by stimulating her clitoris. But I had a problem with premature ejaculation for years, and I'm only now starting to feel a release of performance pressure and finding that it allows me to last longer. What I've started doing recently is to slide my penis between her labia, but too high up to actually enter the vagina. This slides the shaft between the lips and against the clitoris, on the outside of her body. Apparently this is REALLY good clit stimulation, and it makes a penis feel pretty excellent, too. It's also hands-free and simple, and the risk of doing this unprotected is acceptable to me (I have a love-hate relationship with condoms nowadays.) I'd never heard of this kind of thing before, and I discovered it more or less by accident one night while trying to tease her while she tried to get a condom out.
Second, and more importantly, my wife's reluctance melted away in about 20 seconds and she was completely absorbed in sex with me. This happens every single time we do this "just do it" thing, and it no longer surprises me at all--one reason I'm so happy to do it now is that I know that the sooner we begin, the sooner her mood will spin 180 degrees and she'll be panting and snarling at me like a cat in heat. What *does* surprise me is that she apparently still finds this surprising or worrisome, as evidenced by her comments before we began. I don't know how many times she has to have it proven to her before she accepts that she's sexy and sexual even if she's not walking around fantasizing about sex all the time.
Third, I felt really good about the way we handled another "problem"--I lost my erection. Well, actually that's probably the wrong way to say it. She came, I didn't, and my erection went away. The thing is, I don't mind that so much. Lately I've been a lot less focused on reaching my own orgasm. If I come, I come. If I don't, that's really OK with me; I'm having good sex and the orgasm isn't that big a deal. So, there we are in more-or-less missionary position (which gets a bad rap, but let's face it, it's fun to have sex face-to-face.) By this time I'm wearing a condom, which I frankly don't like much. When I was younger, I'd never had sex without one, and I didn't get why people complained about them. When we tried to have a child, we spent two or three years without condoms, and I found out what everyone was raving about. Now I hate the things, but they're a necessary evil until we either have one more child or decide not to do so. The point is, the condom really de-sensitizes the penis and it does make a difference. More than that, by this time I'm really concentrating on my wife. I'm balanced on one hand, using the other to slide across her clitoris in various ways while still thrusting deeply. She's doing her thrashing, gasping thing that I love so very much, and it builds to a fantastic orgasm. We go through the whole process of her orgasm together, and I'm in heaven. This is beautiful, and I can't help but growl "NOW who's in the mood?" in her ear. This is all wonderful. I don't know if it happens because I've put all my focus on her and sort of forgotten the sensations from my penis, or because I felt so connected when she reached orgasm that I felt a profound release myself, but for whatever reason, my erection softened as we lay there together for a moment. I figured I was done, and I was happy. I started to move away.
But she looked at me quizzically. "Did you finish?" "You mean, did I come? No, but really, it's OK. I feel so good . . ." She smiled and took my penis in her hand. I'd thought I was satisfied (and maybe a little tired out!) and ready to snuggle in beside her and sleep, but I was wrong. She had me hard and aching in a moment (maybe it really was just a matter of changing the focus) and we came back together until I came. I think I'm beginning to move past the need to have an orgasm every time I have sex, though. I think the less sex is centered on physical release of a pent-up physical drive, the less you have to worry about whether you reach orgasm or not. It gives me the freedom to figure I'll do it next time or the time after that if it's important, but enjoy what I'm doing right now in this moment. What I liked about that moment was that I was satisfied and happy, and she was the one who reached out and playfully insisted that there could be more (without words, but the intent was clear in the action.) I don't know whether she completely believes me when I tell her the orgasm doesn't matter as much to me as it used to, because she'd be right to think that's a big change for me in only a couple of years and also because I think it's still very important to her that if we're going to have sex, she's got to check all the boxes, including orgasm, or she failed at sex somehow.
Anyway, I know I said I was going to write about my worry that I'd been slipping back into that sex-starved mindset a little bit, and here I've gone on about being happy with this and that and the other. I sort of think these things through further as I write, and it gets long and involved in a hurry. Next post, I promise. I don't know how many people are reading this anyway, but it seems like my thoughts make more sense to me after I've written about them.
So, that was a great night. Unfortunately, she didn't sleep much that night (I did, but she told me the next morning that she woke up over and over.) The next night, Friday, we had a little mood swing action happening.
I spent the day at a school (in cold air conditioning) doing some training. (More on this in next post; long story short, it was great and I came home in a great mood.)
My wife and one twin dropped off S3 at the babysitter's house and went into the bigger town to get checkups and vaccinations. Fun fun fun! The other twin stayed home.
Since it's hotter than Hell's attic here, I called my wife when I left for the gym after work and told her I wanted to take the family out for Thai food and a movie in a dark, air-conditioned theater. She was delighted.
But when I got home, I found her shouting at the twin who stayed home, S14K. S14K was throwing a tantrum because W had taken S14D out for breakfast at Denny's this morning, and they'd also stopped for an ice cream cone after getting their shots. He'd been cooped up in the house, he'd shouted at her, and had nothing to do except watch TV and play the Wii and his PSP! In addition, he HATES Thai food and nobody CARES and it's not FAIR and everybody hates him and he's had it with us and . . . .
So the evening proceeded like that for awhile. I refused to let him keep us home. He could choose, I told him, between being polite with us or impolite out in the car until we were ready to go home. He settled down once we had dinner on the table and everyone enjoyed the movie (Toy Story 3, highly recommended) but the drive to the restaurant nearly killed my wife. She pulled over more than once to argue with him. I was trying to get her to ignore him and let him stew over his choice, but she'd been with him too long already and it was too much.
Anyway, when we got home, we were all feeling good, but I'm sure she was exhausted. I was tired, but it was more of a horny sort of fatigue. The HD men reading will know this feeling, I think.
I said something about getting her upstairs, and she flat-out shut me down. It went something like: "Stop right there. I'm not kidding, the answer is no. I'm going to sleep. No sleep last night, remember? And I ran all day, and I'm tired. I'm going to sleep."
I didn't argue with her, which is good. And I noticed that she was nice, but clear and explicit, which is also good. She obviously didn't expect me to read her mind or "just know." And I was able to self-soothe pretty quickly and feel OK about it, which is good. But I did notice in thinking it over that my disappointment took the form of thinking something like "Crap, last night worked so well. What went wrong here?"
I also said something to her about sex in the morning instead. She replied that she wouldn't go along with that, because I'd wake her up at 2 a.m. and insist that "It's morning now!" This seems really unfair because, although I wasn't planning on it, it does seem like the sort of nonsense I find hilarious. I told her all I meant was that when she did wake up, I wanted to make love. But that was not to be, and this morning I again had those frustrated pursuing thoughts . . . "Oh, come on, that should have worked!"
It's not that I expect these thoughts to cause me major trouble . . . and I've gotten so much better at thinking about how I'm approaching my wife and my marriage that I examined these thoughts and dealt with them. It helps to be able to self-soothe so the nagging feeling or thought of having been slighted or missed out doesn't hang in my head all day. But I don't want to go back to thinking of sex as a game where I try to get all I can from her and she's the goaltender trying to keep me out. I don't want to fall back into doing things like the dinner and a movie out last night (which I genuinely did so we could all relax and have fun, not to get her in the mood for sex) with an eye always on getting my wife into the mood.
Not only that, but the way she reacted this week makes me think she's starting to feel a little pressured again. Whether the pressure is coming from me, from her or both, is hard to tell sometimes. Sometimes she feels pressured because I'm coming on too strong or too often. Sometimes she feels pressured because we've had especially good sex lately, and she feels like she has to live up to it and keep it that good forever. Sometimes she feels pressured because we haven't had it in awhile and she feels like she's got to wait to make it great . . . but the longer she waits, the greater it has to be . . . it's not easy for her.
Without getting too inside baseball, my new job involves working at an alternative middle school in the midwest. Our current way of teaching students coping and life skills doesn't work. The rest of the district has a system in place, and another teacher and I trained in it this week to evaluate it for our school. We were very impressed and now we're putting together a way to sell it to the administration and staff. If we can get people to buy in, I think we can revolutionize the place. This is part of my GAL experience, I think; I'm determined that I'm not going to make any decision based on not making waves. I'm going to look for the waves that need to be made and make them. Better to fail at something excellent than to succeed in keeping your head down . . . and it's not like keeping my head down has made me successful in the past.
IF we can pull this off (and it is genuinely a big "if," mostly because I don't know whether the current staff and administration can come together and implement a simple but demanding system) we will be giving this school a better shot at changing the lives of the 100 or so kids most likely to drop out, get shot, shoot somebody, go to jail or otherwise burn out before they have a chance. Not just to maintain them and get them to comply long enough to last another year in the district, but to give them skills to change their lives for real. It will really matter that I worked there. Nothing will be perfect, but some terrible things will be better because of what I did.
Of course, that's what happens if we succeed. If we fail . . . .
. . . . aaaaaand now for . . . the rest of the story.
Tonight we had a big talk. Went from her accusing me of being grouchy and snappish to me pointing out how much more snappish she's been to her admitting that she's felt lousy for days; first she said the heat got to her, then she said she didn't know what was going on, then she admitted that she quit smoking four days ago. She smoked for years, "quit" when we got serious, then actually quit when she got pregnant, and maybe 6-9 months ago began sneaking cigarettes again about the time she started going out for "girls' nights." She tried to hide this at first, but I figured she's a grown-up and she can sneak a cigarette on a Saturday night if she wants. Then it became several, then she started having one in the evening, and lately she's really been a pretty steady if light daily smoker.
So she decided she's been smoking too much and she really ought to quit . . . but not to tell me, for some reason I didn't get out of her.
In any case, I kicked the whole thing off by asking whether she was feeling pressured again. The short story is yes, she is. I told her I would think about that and do my best to minimize pressure, but I wasn't going to betray my integrity, nor do I expect her to do so. I'm sure the nicotine fits aren't helping when her husband brings up sex again.
I'm being cautious here because I don't want to put unnecessary pressure on her, and I'm happy to back it down if it will help . . . but I also will not sacrifice my integrity. I won't pretend I don't want sex.
It felt a little like old times tonight. This afternoon she said something about going to bed later, and I said something suggestive. I don't really remember what, but I think it was respectful and loving, just something like "I can't wait" and maybe I waggled my eyebrows a little, as is often my wont. She said something she hasn't said to me in a while: "Is that all you ever think about?"
I have to admit, I went right back to taking things personally. I think she meant this at least half-jokingly. Maybe she thought it would be funny banter. But I thought we were getting past the point where she turns down sex by making fun of me. When she tells me "no," I don't smile and say "Don't you ever think about sex?" It'd be awfully hurtful. But maybe the only difference is that I realize that's hurtful and not a funny joke, and she doesn't. I do realize that one difference is that for years I didn't take a straightforward "No, I don't want to do that tonight" as the end of the conversation. Now I would . . . and now I wish she would just say that . . . but now I have to deal with the fact that I taught her to deflect me by hurting me with funny little quips like "Do you have to do that?" and "Don't you ever think about anything else?" So I'm trying.
But in the spirit of venting, I did tell her that yes, as a matter of fact, I do think of other things sometimes. Today, for instance, I've spent time thinking about: breakfast lunch dinner cooking barbecue chicken in the crock pot for dinner Terry Pratchett Willie Nelson Garth Brooks They Might Be Giants Beethoven This American Life people who represent themselves in court psychiatry people who pretend to be mentally ill to avoid jail sentences, then find themselves unable to get out of their mental institutions science pseudoscience vaccinations autism chelation chemistry dental amalgams, controversy surrounding political volunteering opportunities meeting with lobbyist and grassroots activists next week revisions to a proposed bill landscaping/mowing/weeding working out (cardio day) gunsmithing rifle types (AK47 vs. AR15) Russian history American history ballistics USPSA rules power factors proud of my friend who won his local Steel Challenge happy birthday to another friend I haven't seen in a long time religion, multiculturalism, and the intersection with the American justice system (in the case of a man who was acquitted of sexual assault charges in New Jersey because the trial judge ruled that he had no criminal intent (though he admittedly raped his wife while she cried and refused him) because he believed that his religion allowed him to do so Taking S14K to the pool Figuring out what's eating S14D (I think it's hormones?) changing S3 getting S3 to pee on the potty playing with S3 making S3 lunch drawing pictures with S3 swordfighting with S3
That's probably not even exhaustive, but off the top of my head . . . I get that she feels pressure. But the fact is that I mentioned sex twice yesterday and one time today. None of the rest of that counts for anything when she needs to see me as one-dimensional and sex-obsessed, but I'm not. I *do* have a life, and most of it doesn't revolve around sex (though that doesn't mean my thoughts never stray to sex during those other times, just that I'm actually a fairly busy, complex guy whether she's always able to appreciate it or not.) She actually told me that these things don't really count because I don't talk to her about them. The truth is, I do talk to her about them, of course. Some of them we had conversations about, and some of them I tried to talk about and she tuned me out or blew me off. For example, the idea of steampunk design. A friend is building a really cool couch that's going to have steampunk elements that I thought were really cool (without getting too detailed, think Victorian steampunk airships. Cool, right?) She said, "Yeah, I guess," and went on to something else. I was OK with that; I wasn't expecting a deep conversation about some nerd's steampunk couch. But where it goes off the rails is when she comes back hours later and accuses me of not talking to her about it . . . she doesn't get to blow my conversation off and then complain that I didn't have a conversation with her. If she wants to have a conversation, but she's not interested in the ones I'm starting, she could just start a conversation about something else. It seems silly.
It all feels a little silly, since I just finished writing up this celebration of how connected we were and she was apparently busy hiding resentment and feeling pressured. Pride goeth before the fall, I guess. But I do insist that we're doing so much better than we used to; we were able to have this conversation, and she cried a little and I got a little angry, but we stuck with it and we had our conversation. And I was able to tell her honestly that I know she loves me as much as I love her, even if I don't always understand how her mind works. And I realized that I really do believe that now, which made me realize that for a long time I truly did not. Allin all I really am grateful for the progress we've made . . . but it clearly doesn't pay to get ahead of myself.
