But at seven o’clock at night on the floor outside the bathroom, no one was around but my middle child’s siblings, and for once they were uncharacteristically quiet, the eldest immersed in a book and [...]]]> Someone watching closely might have noticed that the hair dryer was pointed toward her blond curls at most half the time.

But at seven o’clock at night on the floor outside the bathroom, no one was around but my middle child’s siblings, and for once they were uncharacteristically quiet, the eldest immersed in a book and the boy concentrating on getting every bit of shampoo out of his hair. If I’d tried a decade ago to blow-dry my little bookworm’s hair she’d still be shrieking today. I assumed that every child shared her fear of screaming hot wind; consequently with the younger ones I left the dryer under the sink and used only towels.

Until recently that is, when I unearthed that noisy gadget (my own hair outrageously revolts unless allowed to dry in its natural state) and turned it on the middle child’s fine blond hair one frigid night when I worried that otherwise she’d freeze. I anticipated revolt; instead she could not stop giggling as the air tickled her neck. “Don’t stop, Mommy!” she yelled. “The wind is making me laugh!” I’ve continued to make her laugh since then, gently detangling the hair as she wiggles and squirms. I point the dryer off at an angle, willing it to dry slowly. It’s not often that I get to see that child alone. It’s even less often that she’s still, so I brush and dry and linger for as long as she’ll let the wind make her laugh.

Unfortunately, I’m not certain there’s any amount of post-shower hair care — no matter how hilarious — that can make up for all the times this child, sandwiched between a pair of high-maintenance siblings, has had her needs deferred because her mother was needed somewhere else.

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This post, The Middle, originally appeared on aag on Wednesday, March 10, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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This might have been nice (Consider the soothing babble of water! The dewy humidity! The bathing options!) but for the fact that a finished basement stood in [...]]]> Almost exactly four years ago the combination of heavy spring rains and my sump pump’s untimely demise lead to the spontaneous generation of a river below my living room.

This might have been nice (Consider the soothing babble of water! The dewy humidity! The bathing options!) but for the fact that a finished basement stood in its way. Being possessed of a crumbling marriage, difficult child, active toddler and a new-born whose adoption status rested on the blade of a knife, my ability to divert said river was at best limited. Furniture was moved to higher ground, insurance dried things out and replaced the carpets and while time more or less did its part to bring that part of the house back to tolerable standards, it was by no means fixed.

This fact nagged at me. Four years! I said to myself. Four years since the flood and still (STILL!) you haven’t replaced all the baseboards, you lazy girl you. Four years and you haven’t cleaned the detritus out from the storage room. Four years and you’ve not redone paint scarred by moving furniture, gigantic humidity-sucking fans and five-thousand trips up and down the stairs made by the water-buffaloes who call themselves your children. Four. Years. You fail at life.

Until such a point that I am able to spend several hours a day writing, a few more working on websites, even more writing for Jane, every waking one caring for the kids then the final three (or four) reading, I will not believe that my life is at full capacity. Oh, and I forgot to schedule in the hawt secks! At least every other day! Anything less than that amount of activity and I’m convinced that I’m the most intractable slacker.

This is poppycock, I know. But just try convincing the voices in my head.

Almost exactly four years after the flood, my darling boyfriend found himself with a brief break in his hectic schedule of international gallivanting and all-around troublemaking. “Can I come help you with some of your projects?” he asked, and before those little voices pointed out how horribly lazy it would be to accept the help, I’d said yes.

And so on a Monday morning just five minutes after the bus had pulled away from the curb I discovered a semi-nude man armed with a paintbrush in my basement. “Are you going to paint without any clothes on?” I asked, eyes wide with wonder and drinking in every bit of his exposed skin.

“Do you want me to paint without any clothes on?”

“Would you?”

“As you wish,” he said, and for the next couple hours I worked to the slap and roll of carefully applied paint, relaxing as (for once!) someone else took care of me.

Really? I should let people take care of me more often.

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This post, Flood Recovery, originally appeared on aag on Tuesday, March 9, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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I was happy not only because my readers seemed to enjoy — judging by the number of purchases– Liberator’s affiliate banners, but also because I have adored every one of their products that I’ve tried. The Zeppelin? Heavenly. The Esse? Brilliant. And the Throe? [...]]]> For well over a year I was a supremely happy Liberator.com affiliate.

I was happy not only because my readers seemed to enjoy — judging by the number of purchases– Liberator’s affiliate banners, but also because I have adored every one of their products that I’ve tried. The Zeppelin? Heavenly. The Esse? Brilliant. And the Throe? If possible, I’ll take it to my grave.

So it was with extreme pleasure that I watched the dollars add up. Every time I logged into my affiliate account I imagined how much fun the items’ new owners were having and a happy jolt passed from brain to cunt.

Um. Surely I’m not the only one who gets slightly excited by this sort of thing?

Eventually enough dollars accumulated that I reached Liberator’s very high pay-out amount. Some affiliate programs issue payments at $50 or $100; Liberator requires $200 before they’ll pay. Is this because the products tend to be pretty pricey? Or because they figure that few will stick with the program long enough to earn that much? I don’t know, but since I’d reached the level without undue fuss I didn’t much worry. I gleefully clicked Liberator’s “Pay Me Now” button and waited for my miniature windfall.

Almost immediately I began to hear murmurings that all was not well in the land of water-resistant sex positioning furniture. “They’re delaying payments,” one rumor went. “The whole program is frozen,” said another, and my previous confidence began slipping. I fired off an email to the company requesting information. It went unanswered. More rumors reached my ears. Am I ever going to get paid, I wondered, realizing that by then it had been many more days than one might reasonably expect for a check to wing its way from Atlanta to the Upper Midwest. Does anyone have a number for their main office, I asked via Twitter, and Twitter once again proved itself to be capable of answering my every question.

Reader, I called them. Immediately I was connected to someone who was not, by her own admission, in charge of the program. She was, however, quite chatty. “We’re a couple months behind,” she told me frankly. “We’re paying the big guys — the ones we owe hundreds or thousands of dollars to — first. The little guys like you are seeing their payments delayed.”

Well that’s hardly fair, quoth I.

“Not much I can do about it,” she said, and that’s when I asked to speak to her boss. Of course she wasn’t around; I was encouraged to email her (I already have, I pointed out to no avail), and the conversation was over. Imagine my surprise when not even five minutes later my phone rang and on the other end I found the head of the affiliate program herself.

“Problems? In our program? Delays in payments? Of course not,” she said, and went on to explain fourteen ways to Sunday how they were just transitioning over to a new program and while payments might seem ever so slightly delayed in my perception, in reality everything was perfectly, glowingly fine. Just fine. In fact things were so fine that they’d decided to lower the pay-out amount from $200 to just $100.

Hm, I said. So might I have my check?

“Of course!” she gushed. “We’ll put it in the mail today!”

And the check did indeed arrive in the exact number of days one might expect for a missive sent from Liberator corporate headquarters. Only one problem. The check was not for two-hundred-plus dollars. Instead it was for roughly 70% of that amount.

What gives? I asked in an email to the head of the program. I earned twice the amount of your current payout, you promised to pay me, and this is what you send?

“You are so very wrong!” she said. “You earned over $200 but not all of that was eligible to be paid! You need to sell more in order to get your $200, you silly girl you!” And she continued on with an explanation I hardly heard due to a massive case of annoyance.

While I love Liberator products, I don’t love having to wonder if I’m going to get paid. Not even a little tiny bit. So how do I express my love without supporting an affiliate program which has (shall we say) issues? Here’s how:  I’m sending you to Amazon, which is the best of both worlds. You get fabulous Liberator products (if you so desire) and I get paid.

Doesn’t get much better than that.

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Sending a big wet kiss and my thanks to Bacchus from ErosBlog who provided invaluable advice on the topic of affiliate programs and their foibles.

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This post, On Being a Liberator Affiliate, originally appeared on aag on Monday, March 8, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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“My penis!” he cried. “It’s giving me troubles!”

Get used to it, I thought. Buddy, you’d better get used to it.

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If you haven’t already taken Heather Corinna’s Survey on Casual Sex, [...]]]> He was rooting around in his pants with the dedication of a mechanic working loose a recalcitrant spark plug. Son, I asked. What is the issue?

“My penis!” he cried. “It’s giving me troubles!”

Get used to it, I thought. Buddy, you’d better get used to it.

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If you haven’t already taken Heather Corinna’s Survey on Casual Sex, please do. Thank you very much!

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This post, Troublesome Penis, originally appeared on aag on Friday, March 5, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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There’s a lot of buzz now about “hooking up,” the newest term for casual sex, though casual sex isn’t new at all [...]]]> Heather Corinna is doing a large study on multigenerational experiences with and attitudes about casual sex. The data will ideally be used for publication, but answers are completely anonymous and will only be used anonymously.

There’s a lot of buzz now about “hooking up,” the newest term for casual sex, though casual sex isn’t new at all — nor does it only belong to the current generation, despite often being presented that way. Unlike most of the buzz out there, she’s not interested in telling anyone how to have sex, warning people off any given kind of sex or in presenting any one kind of sex as “the best way.” She’s just looking for what’s real, both in sexual attitudes and experiences among a diverse array of ages, genders and sexual identities, races and sexual ideologies/constructions. The only requirements for participating in this study are being over the age of 16, and having had some kind of sexual partnership before, even if none has been casual.  The study will take around twenty minutes.

She would like the study to show as diverse an array of people as possible, especially since so often media representations or cultural conversations about casual sex are usually only about heterosexual white women or about gay men. She particularly wants to be sure LGBT people, people of color, those over 45 and social conservatives are adequately represented, so please share this link with your networks after you take the survey yourself, especially if your networks include people in any or all of those groups.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S97WR6H

If you don’t know who Heather is, she’s been working in human sexuality for around 12 years. She is the founder and executive director for Scarleteen.com, does sex education outreach at youth shelters and women’s clinics in Seattle, and has been a sex columnist and writer online for sites like The Guardian and RH Reality Check. She has also been published in a handful of anthologies and is the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know-Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College (DaCapo Press).  If you have any questions, you can contact Heather at hcorinna@mac.com

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This post, Heather Corinna’s Study on Casual Sex, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, March 4, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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*ow*

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You know what happens [...]]]> You know what happens when you’re having sex on your back, folded in half with your head over the side of the bed and your partner thrusts really hard and you jerk yourself back up on the bed because you don’t want to fall on your head? Right, you strain your shoulder.

*ow*

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You know what happens when you spend three years chucking junk into a storage closet without ever cleaning it out? Right, it turns into a disaster area.

The storage closet that is my web host was so messy that I’ve taken some time over the past few days to do a thorough cleaning. Change is good, right? Right. Change is good. This change may cause some continued weirdness as I sort things out, so DO NOT PANIC if things are a little off.

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You know what happens when you start a pornsite based around strap-on sex? Right, it’s super-hot.

Want to see exactly how hot? FurryGirl is giving away a one-month membership to Cocksexual.com to someone who leaves a comment below describing in 200 or fewer words a strap-on experience they’ve either had or they’d like to have. Make sure to enter a working email address (visible only to me) so that I can contact the winner, who will be chosen by random draw at some point after the contest ends on Saturday, March 6th at 12:01am.

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You know what happens now? I’m going to baby my shoulder while deleting more files and YOU’RE going to go check out Cocksexual and then leave a comment below.

Have at it!

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This post, You Know What Happens?, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, March 4, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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In a perfect world I’d make the transition from mother to sexpot in the exact amount of time it takes to wave at the bus, rip off my clothes [...]]]> ***note: there may be weirdness here over the next 24 hours as i
make some updates. capital letters should also be
re-enabled at a point very soon.***

In a perfect world I’d make the transition from mother to sexpot in the exact amount of time it takes to wave at the bus, rip off my clothes and arrange myself provocatively upon the bed.

In the real world, however, inertia rules. Too many tasks — just like dirty clothes, mushrooms and fleas — breed more of the same; even when faced with my partner (whose path must surely have crossed that of the bus), even when he kisses me while shutting the door, even when I breathe in his scent of clean and smoke and barely subdued sex I find it nearly impossible to let go of the thousand bits of work that weigh on my mind so that my body for two brief hours can be allowed to take over.

But moments later I’m on the bed, as provocatively positioned as I can get without giving the impression of trying too hard. Even then guilt whispers that I really should be working instead of doing something so self-indulgent as watching this gorgeous man strip. Finally he is down to his shorts, so tight that his dedication to the scene is in no doubt.

Drawn in, I trace my fingernails down and around the generous curves; I kiss through the thin fabric as he grabs a handful of my hair and tugs down his waistband. His cock leaps free. “Get Daddy hard so he can fuck his little girl,” he growls, and I begin to do my level best.

Transition made.

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This post, Transition, originally appeared on aag on Wednesday, March 3, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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Luckily, the scope of the fires is small, or at least as small as can be expected from something [...]]]> Imagine for the sake of argument that you live across the street from a large apartment building which for the past (let’s just say) six years or so has been afflicted with an extraordinary number of fires.

Luckily, the scope of the fires is small, or at least as small as can be expected from something as inherently dangerous as flames and burning wood. In no small part the damage has been kept to a minimum because of the efforts of the neighbors, who have rushed in time and again at the first sign of smoke. “Let us call the fire department,” they murmur to each other, and within moments uniformed defenders do what they can to bring people and property to safety.

There’s no one single action that even if palatable enough to be embraced by all in the building would guarantee that the fires would stop. None of the fires are anyone’s fault; or perhaps they are everyone’s fault. But fault or no, so many fires eventually wear everyone down. The firefighters get antsy and wonder how much of their time can or should be spent on only one building. The neighbors tire of too-frequent wakings. Compassion, in short, begins to run thin.

I try studiously to live in the realm of what is, not what should be or what I wish could be. While I have no plans to change my stance on reproductive freedom (in all its forms), lately I’m having a hard time not wishing that things would have gone very differently for my children’s mother.

Because these constant fires? They are wearing me out. They are wearing everybody out.

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This post, What Is, originally appeared on aag on Tuesday, March 2, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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I have an adolescent daughter – precocious, cute, and too smart for her own good. She’s been taught the mechanics of sexuality and [...]]]> My eldest is a bit too young to have reached this phase yet, so would anyone else care to provide words of wisdom for the parent who last week sent me this missive:

I have an adolescent daughter – precocious, cute, and too smart for her own good. She’s been taught the mechanics of sexuality and was even in the delivery room watching her little brother being born. She’s been given a primer on masturbation by her mother. Boys have discovered her; she knows why, and has kept most of them at arms length.

But she is the exact demographic for every teen vampire novel. While I have no hope of derailing her notions of true love that lasts for eternity (literally) I have a small issue with her awareness of the connection between vampirism and sex (and her own sexuality). In and of itself, I get the fetish – but I just don’t want that being the original one shaping her own understanding of mature coupling.

I would rather she be reading something more explicit but more honest about the emotions and interactions of the characters. I worry that this new version of Harlequin Romance for teens creates an expectation that reality just can’t meet.

Thoughts? Advice? Suggestions for alternative reading material?

Leave them in the comments below.

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This post, On Teenagers and Vampire Novels, originally appeared on aag on Monday, March 1, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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But it was hard to avoid. Discussions of #LiveTweetingAbortion took over my Twitterstream; some spirit of punishment gluttony made [...]]]> I should know better than to look at anything categorized so, especially during a time when I’m struggling to understand how yet another unplanned baby will fit into my family and the lives of those I love.

But it was hard to avoid. Discussions of #LiveTweetingAbortion took over my Twitterstream; some spirit of punishment gluttony made me look at the responses flagged #prochoice. I shouldn’t have looked, not only because of the raw hatred and ignorance (masquerading as concern, of course) directed toward @antitheistangie but because one voice from the pro-choice side in particular caught my eye.

I shouldn’t have read his tweets. I shouldn’t have looked at his blog. But I did, and what I saw made me sicker and sadder than anything goatse-esque, tub-tacular or two-girls-one-cup-arific:

What pro-choice people don’t understand is the concept of self-sacrifice: subjugating one’s own wants for the needs of another.
–from Not All Women’s Rights Are Right

It’s a lovely straw-man argument, Mr. Schlenker, but I can assure you that many of us pro-choice people understand self-sacrifice very well indeed.

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This post, Straw Woman, originally appeared on aag on Friday, February 26, 2010. If you are viewing it anywhere other than in a feed reader or email, it was scraped illegally and without my permission. Please email aagblog at gmail dot com and let me know.
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