Reproduction Ruined My Sex Life

From the file “Water is Wet, Also” comes this news: Happier Relationships for Couples Without Children,  a headline to which all the fruitful and multiplying couples in the world collectively responded, “No shit.”

If you click on the linky-link you’ll find out that the Open University interviewed over 5,000 people to come to this not-so-startling conclusion.  The Open University, by the way, sounds like a totally made up name for a fake school, which it sort of is.  You can check out their website here if you want.  Anyway, in 100 years, we’ll all probably be speaking of Open University in revered tones and praying that our great-great-great grandchildren get accepted there.  People probably snickered about Cambridge and Yale and the Toni & Guy Hairdressing Academy when they were new, too.

Let’s see what the 5,000 folks at the Open University had to say about relationships and happiness and everything.

For both men and women, those who did not have children ranked the quality of their relationship more highly than those who did. They also did significantly more to “maintain” their relationship, such as taking time to go out together or talk, than those with children.

By “taking time to go out together or talk” they mean “have sex”, right?  Because that’s what I would mean by it.

Did you just hear one of the kids cough?

My own robust marital sex life took a downward turn the night our four year old wandered into our bedroom looking for a glass of water.  The experience so scarred my husband he was still shaking about it three days later.  Luckily, his psyche (and his penis) eventually recovered and we resumed our sexual relationship, only now sex was quiet, quick and furtive.  Also, my husband added this tantalizing question to his foreplay routine:

“Are you sure they’re asleep?”

I don’t know what he expected me to do to ensure our kids were soundly asleep.  Maybe spike their juice boxes with Vicks® Nyquil®?

Since the phenomenon of coitus interruptus de filii (or whatever we want to call it) is so widespread,

Mommy put on her nice underwear tonight. Time to come down with a stomach virus!

there must be some advantage to children having evolved this ability to disrupt their parents’ sex lives.  Now that I think about it, it’s quite obvious: family resources are limited and the more children there are the thinner those resources get spread around, so it makes sense for the existing children to not want more children.  It’s the same reason why baby birds peck their siblings (sometimes to death) in the nest: they want a bigger share of that worm.  Since humans don’t have beaks, we had to develop another technique to limit the number of competitors within the family.  I imagine it works something like this, just as Daddy puts a little Marvin Gaye on the stereo and Mommy slips out of her pair of good underwear.

INT. Children’s Bedroom. Night.

Older Sister: (throwing a shoe across the room at Younger Sister asleep in bed)  Wake up!  I think they’re trying to have sex again!

Younger Sister: Huh?  What?

Older Sister:  They’re trying to have sex!  You better go in there and tell them you had a scary dream or something.

Younger Sister: Why?

Older Sister: To stop them from having sex!

Younger Sister: Why do I want them to stop having sex?  What do I care?  I don’t even know what sex is!

Older Sister: Sex is how you make babies, stupid.  If only I’d known what they were up to the night you were conceived.  Oh, well.  Now it’s in both our interest to stop anymore babies from coming into this house!   As it is, my future is already full of Friday nights waiting tables to pay for college.  And you better start taking kindergarten more seriously! They’re not going to throw away our limited financial resources on someone who gets a “Needs to Improve” in Listens Attentively!  Now go on, get in there.  Tell them your tummy hurts and I’ll go downstairs and start a fire in the microwave with a piece of aluminum foil.

Royalty free stock photos including the images in this post can be found at Stock.XCHNG.

One More Reason Why I Have No Followers

Lately, I’ve been witnessing a disturbing trend among bloggers: they’re writing what people want to read.

You can see it here on Lara Chase’s blog in the post, “So Are You Still Writing or What?” where she explains why she’s writing what she’s writing about:

When I started this blog I mostly wrote about the craft of writing, and some tips about the publishing market. For the last several months I’ve had posts on fall pilots, cooking, how to button tuft a couch, exercise, etc. Occasionally, this has led to someone asking me, “Hey, what’s the deal?”

In case you didn’t read the articles and statistics that lead up to the switch (according to my blog stats, few of you did), I realized that no one but other aspiring authors care about dialogue and how to write a convincing antagonist. So, I started writing blog posts about other things that interested me: food, home décor, TV, and whatever else I thought others might find informative. Turns out, you guys seem to find these topics more interesting as well.

(Lara’s post is awesome for another reason: go over and look at how she’s organized her work space for writing.  I’m absolutely ashamed and humiliated that I write at my dining room table, hunched over my lap top eating Cheez-its® while my husband, children and two cats mill around me).

And then I saw it again, over on Musical Wishes Blog, where the blogger came right out and asked readers to vote (there’s a poll!) on what they wanted to read next.  Head on over and vote!  I voted for The Closeted Bisexual because I’m a Democrat and couldn’t vote for Rick Santorum in the Republican primary.

I’m about a year and a half late with that Rick Santorum joke, aren’t I?  Or maybe I’m a year and a half early.

Anyway, I’m not sure how I feel about the audience dictating the subject matter of my posts.  I mean, why should I write what they want to read?  That would be like feeding my kids just because they’re hungry, or paying my mortgage just because it’s due.

So if I’m not going to take cues from my readers, how do I come up with topics to blog about?  Usually, I get some ridiculous moronic idea for a post and then proceed to have an inner dialogue with myself.

After I blow out the candles, let’s have anal sex.

Me: Maybe I should write a post about anal sex.

My Inner Voice:  Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you?  No one wants to read about anal sex!  Why do you think of these things?

Me: Well, it could be funny.  I could tell that story about how I got drunk on my birthday that one year and decided that would be the night I would try to have anal sex with my husband. That was pretty funny.

My Inner Voice:  That story isn’t funny! It’s embarrassing!  There really is something wrong with you!

And because whenever I hear that little voice in my head telling me “No! No! No!” I absolutely must do whatever it’s warning me against, you can expect a post on anal sex from me in the near future, whether you want to read it or not.

Royalty free stock photos including the images in this post can be found at Stock.XCHNG.  The Cheez-It® logo is from the Kellogg Company web site and is believed to comply with fair or acceptable use principles established in U.S. and international copyright law.

My Tagline is Killing My Blog

I think I’ve finally figured out why Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please has not propelled me into blogging superstardom, despite years of writing raucously funny posts about France and swinging and bugs (oh, wait, that post is not really about insects).

It’s my tag line.  It’s killing my blog.

I figured this out after taking a look at the writing prompts over at the Daily Post Zero to Hero: 30 Days to a Better Blog. Here’s the prompt from Friday, January 2, 2014 (day 2 of the challenge):

 

 

Day 2: What’s your name?

We make snap judgements about websites all the time — how many times have you disregarded a site because it wasn’t immediately clear what it was about? Today, you’ll name your blog and expand on that with an “About this Blog” widget, drawing on the introductory post you published yesterday. Let no reader click away to the next site because they were unsure of your focus!

I was explaining all this to my husband, about how the name of my blog and my tag line were probably turning off readers and how I really needed an “About this Blog” widget and then, look out,

Yes, I’m still writing that blog.

there would be no stopping Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.  I had worked myself up into a lather while pacing the floor and making wild hand gestures as I spoke when he pulled earbuds out of his ears and said, “Sorry, I’m listening to a lecture.  What did you say?”

This grievance was multiplied a thousandfold after I repeated what I had been saying and he then asked, “You’re still writing that blog?”

Realizing I’d receive no help from the man with whom I had made the disastrous (or so it seemed at the moment) decision to procreate with, I sat down and tried to think of a new tagline that would make readers “immediately clear” about Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.  Humor.  Or, at least, I think it’s funny.
2. Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.  Humor and Sex.  Not really that much sex.  You perverts will be disappointed.
3. Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.  Not really about plumbing.  You plumbers will be disappointed.
4. Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.  Blogging and Swearing.
5. Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.  Humor and Sex.  Mixing them together with embarrassing results since 2012.

If you’ve read this far and you remain disappointed, check out P Simpson Plumbing and Heating.

Royalty free stock photos including the images in this post can be found at Stock.XCHNG.  The Zero to Hero logo was snatched from the Daily Post @ wordpress.com page.

 

 

Helpful Tips for Tweeting: Don’t Threaten Rape or Murder on Twitter

#rape #murder

As an American with a Twitter account, I’ve watched with curious alarm as anger over the decision to put Jane Austen on the £10 note has risen to levels where opponents of the 19th century author were threatening rape and murder on the Twitterverse.  From a story in the weekend edition of The Washington Post, “Twitter Apologizes to women abused online“:

Hours after successfully campaigning to have a woman — Jane Austen — featured on a new British banknote, Caroline Criado-Perez was bombarded with rape and death threats. The vast majority came via Twitter.

Who knew Austen could raise such passions in the British public that they would feel the urge to Tweet criminal threats?  And do Americans even know who is on our ten dollar bill? The answer is no, we don’t, but I think it’s Alexander Hamilton Andrew Jackson nope, looks like it really is Alexander Hamilton.

While I don’t think selecting Jane Austen is enough of an outrageous act to drive me to rape and murder, I am kind of baffled by the decision, as Jane Austen is the author of some of the most annoying novels in the English language.  I can say that having read absolute no novels by Jane Austen, as I am an American, and we don’t really need to experience anything in order to have an opinion about it.   Anyway, I’m not reading any Jane Austen, so forget about it, even if you threaten to rape and murder me.   I didn’t read her work in college even though I’m sure I was assigned at least one of her novels (Sense and Sensibility, maybe?  Pride and Prejudice?  Boredom and Agony?  Ok, I made that last one up), and yet I still managed to graduate with a degree in English Literature.  Yeah, the American educational system really is fucked up.

So I’m no fan of Jane Austen but still I think threatening rape and murder over putting her face on a £10 note is a little extreme.  I mean, can’t you just pay with a £20?  And always demand your change in £1? Do you really have to threaten rape and murder?  I’m offering a reasonable solution, and you’ll avoid incarceration and the loss of your Twitter account.

Now I’m wondering what would happen if some American tried to replace Andrew Jackson Alexander Hamilton on the $10 with a woman.  Instead of threats of rape and murder, there would probably be actual rape and murder.  I can’t even think of a woman who could possibly be so uncontroversial in American history that the idea would not be met with a vicious onslaught that would make the entire island nation of Great Britain tremble in the face of our American ferocity.  Oh, yeah, we’ve tried sticking women on coins before with the Susan B. Anthony dollar and then the Sacajawea dollar, but you can see that went over so well I have nothing but George Washingtons in my pocket today.

You can follow me on Twitter @WPKarenBrowne and I promise I won’t threaten to rape or murder you.

The image of the Twitter bird appears with permission.

I Could Be Blogging About Sex Among the Demented in Nursing Homes

At the risk of turning this blog into something that is read only by science nerds who have absolutely no chance of ever getting laid, I’m going to write again about some interesting (at least to me) scientific studies that were recently published trying to explain how monogamy evolved in mammals, even though monogamy is not widely practiced among mammals (only 3% of species) but is ostensibly the goal of humans, or at least that’s what we claim in our Facebook profiles.

I can hear you whining right now, “Oh, no, not more science!  Where are the dick jokes?” so just let me say this: Consider yourself lucky to be reading about monogamy and primates because I was this close to writing about sex among the demented in nursing homes.

Maybe I never get laid because I smell like chemicals all the time.

So why did marginal minuscule inconsequential some mammals decide to practice monogamy? Two theories are proposed. The first, outlined in the paper, Male Infanticide Leads to Social Monogamy in Primates, published this past week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (how’s that for a magazine title?) argues that monogamy developed in some primates because a male would impregnate a female and then go off to impregnate more females and while he was gone, his progeny would be born and promptly murdered by another male, who then hoped to mate with the single and newly unencumbered female. Eventually, the first male realizes, “Hey, my babies keep getting killed when I wander away.  Maybe if I stay here I can fight off these motherfuckers and put a stop to that shit.”

Thus we have monogamy.

Sure, she won’t go down on me anymore, but the dragonfruit here is so tasty!

The other theory, put forth by researchers at Cambridge in the article The Evolution of Social Monogamy in Mammals and published this month in the journal Science (a less intimidating title I’m much more likely to read, because while I am a science nerd, I do hope to get laid) focuses not on the violent behavior of horny males, but on hostile and solitary behavior of females, who may or may not be horny, but who are definitely hungry, and work to keep other females away from the most desirable feeding locations, usually by chasing and biting and making horrible, scary noises that encourage the other females to go a ways down the road to eat.  So this angry, solitary female is out there guarding her good food and the horny male wanders into her territory to mate and thinks, “Hey, the food is pretty good here, and the other female I’d like to screw is way, way over there down the road, so maybe I should just stay here and eat the good food and wait around for this female here to screw again rather than expend the effort to screw that other female, where the food may not be as good.”

And thus we have monogamy.

These two competing theories were rattling around my brain the other day as I’m standing in my kitchen cooking dinner.  At the exact same moment, my husband is sitting at the dining room table, scrolling through his iPhone.  A generation ago, he would have been sitting there, a knife clutched in one hand, a fork in the other, and  a napkin tucked in his collar.  A millenium ago, he would have wandered into my territory and thought, “Hey, the food is pretty good here.”

Royalty free stock photos including the images in this post can be found at Stock.XCHNG

The Key to Monogamy is Cooking a Really Good Chicken Piccata

I’d love to have sex! Oh, wait.  Do you mean with you again?

As a long time practitioner of monogamy (10 years.  OMG, ten years!), I recognize that there comes a point when the response to the sexual advances of your partner changes from “Again!  Again! Again!” to “Oh, no, not again.  I wonder if I can fool him into thinking I’m asleep if I fake snore.”

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog considering the issue of desire, and I have a peculiar particular fascination with the concept of polyamory, which I’ve written about in an embarrassing number of posts for a married lady.  At least, I should be embarrassed, but I have no shame.  Anyway, a quick search of this blog will show that I wrote about polyamory in Surviving Polyandry and in The Pros and Cons of Polygamy and Turkey Leftovers and in Polyamory: Married and Dating.  My interest in polyamory doesn’t stem from the fact that I want to participate in a triad or a quatrain* or a quintuplet** or sextet (get it, sextet?) or an octane***, but rather because I’d like to know if monogamy inevitably leads to monotony.

Let me add that while the idea of seeing the sexy UPS driver out of his brown uniform holds a certain appeal for me, the thought of my husband with another woman turns me into a feral beast who growls and hisses and is ready to claw out the eyes of any female who wanders too close to him.  He’s mine and while I don’t always want to have sex with him, I don’t want him to have sex with anyone else, either.

So polyamory is not a viable option for my relationship and I’ll have to look elsewhere to figure out this whole passion thing.  While I’m looking, I often find myself reading marital self help articles, like this one at Salon.com, titled The Key To Monogamy.  Ah, a key!  Just what I need.  I read on, and here are some suggestions for keeping the passion in your marriage.

1. Maintain distance
2. Put sex on the calendar
3. Validate your own damn self
4. Open Eyes Sex
5. Candor and Caring

I can vouch for 1. Maintain distance.  While I was attending law school, my husband received a fellowship that required him to temporarily relocate to another state and we lived apart for about six months.  We saw each other most weekends and all I have to say about that is this: Best. Sex. Ever.

The key to monogamy is parking validation.

The other four tips are so much bullshit, especially number 3.  I’ve read that bit five times now, and I have no idea what it means, other than whenever anyone uses the word “validate” all I can think of is parking garages (yes, I’m a city girl).  I don’t think the author is talking about that sort of validation here, but she might as well be.

The key to monogamy is treating sex like a tedious chore.

I’m particularly mystified by the idea of scheduling sex, as though adding fucking to my long list of To Do’s will somehow get my engine revving.  Part of the fun of sex is when it springs on you spontaneously, so that I’m left wondering if that rerun of Justified was particularly arousing or if he just really enjoyed the chicken piccata I served for dinner.

Royalty free stock photos including the images in this post can be found at Stock.XCHNG

*not a sexual dynamic, a quatrain is a poem or stanza of four lines.

**also not a sexual dynamic, a quintuplet is one of five children born to a mother all at the same time.

***octane is a rating of gasoline.  Not a sexual dynamic.

Why That Sucky Blog That Sucks Has More Followers Than You Do, Part II

On Monday, the Daily Post asked the question:

What makes a blog great? What makes you follow a blog or “Like” a post?

Right now, attorneys are drafting a Cease and Desist letter with my name on it.

Yesterday, in Part I of Why That Sucky Blog That Sucks Has More Followers Than You Do, I made you all quite a bit paranoid about the readers of your blog by explaining the reasons why people Like/Follow your posts.  Armed with that knowledge, how can we explain the fact that the dumb post that stupid blogger wrote about his dinner at Applebee’s where his wife ordered this dish and he ordered that dish and that was it, goddammit, they didn’t even take pictures of the food, and not one thing happened that was memorable, let alone bloggable, and I just wasted ten minutes of my life reading that post and now oh my God how did this post get 114 Likes and 278 Comments???????

How can we explain that?  What is there to Like about a dinner at Applebee’s?  What is there to even say about a dinner at Applebee’s?

And yet there are 114 Likes and 278 Comments.

I consider myself to be a member of the Seinfeld School of Blogging, meaning I blog about nothing, so in and of itself a dinner at Applebee’s isn’t automatically disqualified as material for a blog post.  In fact, I envision a future post on this blog about dinner at Applebee’s, because I’ve eaten there (unfortunately), and I’ve rather a lot to say about the experience.  I consider myself to be a bit of a gourmand (or at least a foodie.  Or at least a person who eats), but I’ve decided I’m an abject failure as mother because my daughter wants to go to Applebee’s for her birthday because it’s her favorite.  I blame her father.  His favorite restaurant is Red Robin.

My point is, I don’t think it’s the content of an individual blog post that attracts Likes and Followers, which is why we so often see craptacular posts get a zillion Likes while our best work is ignored.  Think about it.  Isn’t there a post on your blog that got a ridiculous amount of Likes for no reason that you can fathom?  Here’s mine: What If You Had to Marry the First Person You Had Sex With.

Instead, I think we can attribute these mega-Like posts to the following:

• The Lemming Like/Follow:  A blog is Liked/Followed because other people are Liking/Following.  When I first started blogging, I remember following a blogger for the simple reason that she had 1400 followers and I thought, “Wow!  She must be good to have so many people following her!” so I started following her.  It turned out she is an absolute psycho, and my original reason for following has morphed into something else (see: Trainwreck Like/Follow).
• The Catch 22 Like/Follow: Similar to the Lemming Like/Follow but it also works in the reverse.  Your blog gets Likes/Follows because it has Likes/Follows and it also doesn’t get Likes/Follows because it doesn’t have Likes/Follows.
• The Social Like/Follow: Packs of bloggers who roam WordPress in gangs and Like one another’s posts because they’re mafiosi friends.  I actually should do more of this, but I just can’t bring myself to Like that awful post you wrote about Applebee’s.  You’re better than that.  Really.
• The Are They Fucking? Like/Follow: I’ll confess that there are at least a dozen bloggers I follow because I think they’re having affairs with one another (they aren’t.  Well, they probably aren’t.  I mean, they couldn’t be, could they?)
• The Trainwreck Like/Follow:  The posts on these blogs are just so bizarre that you can’t look away.  This explains every single Like/Follow on Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please.
• The Freshly Pressed Like/Follow: The least valuable Like/Follow, it’s the result of WordPress editors using the random filter (which is no filter at all!) on all the gazillion blog posts published each day.  I’ve been Freshly Pressed twice and while it does give a momentary spike to your stats, you’re left having to respond to a shitload of comments like this: “Your blog is very nice.  Can you please come over to my blog and follow me?”

So there you have it.  Those are the reasons Why That Sucky Blog That Sucks Has More Followers Than You Do.  I wonder if WordPress has any more questions for me to answer . . .

You can join me in mocking Applebee’s with images, like the one in this post, from their media page, Applebee’s newsroom.

Why That Sucky Blog that Sucks Has More Followers Than You Do, Part I

Yesterday, the Daily Post asked a question that I often obsess over:

What makes a blog great? What makes you follow a blog or “Like” a post?

I’ve considered this very question before in Why I Stopped Liking Your Blog Posts, but I continue to wonder about it.

For the record, Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please is rapidly approaching 1000 followers, numbers which have been buoyed by a sudden and surprising popularity in Jakarta, a place where everyone seems to be inspired to blog about generic Viagra.  I guess “Viagra Blogs” are their version of “Mommy Blogs”.  Anyway, I can’t complain too much about my Jakartan followers because at least they speak English, and I guess I can imagine someone there maybe making sense out of a post like Let Go and Let God (Find You a Date for Saturday Night).  However, I reserve the right to continue to be suspicious of the mass of followers I’m accumulating in the smallest country in South America, Suriname (pop. 560,000–there are more people living in Vermont), where the official language is Dutch.

In order to answer the question posed by the Daily Post, first we have to understand the different types of Likes and Follows on WordPress blogs.

1. Fake Like/Follow: the reader has never read a post on your blog, but Likes/Follows because they have an ulterior motive.  Usually, the motive is merely that you will return the Like/Follow (see: Reciprocal Like/Follow) but sometimes it’s to get you to go to their blog and buy generic Viagra.
2. Reciprocal Like/Follow: the reader has not read a post on your blog, but Likes/Follows only to get you to Like/Follow their blog. This almost always works with newer bloggers, desperate to increase their readership, and almost never with older bloggers, who have become cynical and jaded by too many bloggers trying to sell them generic Viagra.
3. Pity Like/Follow: the reader has actually read your post/blog (finally!) and doesn’t really like it, but they press the Like/Follow button because they feel sorry for you, usually because your post is so pathetic they’re hoping to forestall your suicide by Liking/Following.
4. Stalker Like/Follow: the reader is reading every blog post you write, Liking/Following you, following you on Facebook and Twitter, sending you email, and also hiding in the bushes outside your apartment.
5. Lurker Like/Follow: the reader pops up on your blog occasionally, and comments just often enough to make your spouse suspicious that there may be something more going on with that blog of yours.
6. Genuine Like/Follow: the reader likes you, they really like you.

So there you have all the different types of Likes/Follows.  In tomorrow’s post, Why That Sucky Blog that Sucks Has More Followers Than You Do, Part II, I’ll discuss why those other bloggers are getting so many Viagra Bloggers, as well as some genuine, real life people, to Like/Follow their blog, even though it sucks.

The Sex Education of Non-fiction Young Adults

Is it me, or are the Young Adults in Young Adult fiction getting a lot more action than I ever did when I was a Young Adult?

Or maybe it’s just the Young Adults in New Zealand, as recounted in Ted Dawe’s new book, Into the River, which was just named children’s book of the year by the New Zealand Post.  The selection of the novel has caused a bit of a controversy, due to the explicit sexual content of the children’s book.

Yes, that’s right.  I said explicit sexual content in a children’s book.

To be fair, the book is targeted to an audience 13 and older, but I’m 32 (and a half, my kids feel the need to add) and I had to be revived by smelling salts when I read the passages, which were too racy for the New Zealand Herald to excerpt in their review.

The book uses expletives including the c-word, depicts drug use and sex scenes, including one where a baby mimics sounds of intercourse. The Herald on Sunday has decided not to print extracts as they would offend some readers.

In an effort to get more page views for their website In the interest of journalistic integrity, the newspaper did link to the offending passages in the story, “Award-winning kids’ book drops c-bomb”, on their website, so you can satisfy your prurient interest make up your mind about the literary value of the writing by following this link.

I’m not averse to the topic of sex in books intended for children to read (as long as it is age appropriate, and I think it probably is in Dawe’s book, although I have not read it, except for the dirty bits) and I think that books can serve as terrific (and emotionally neutral) starting points for parents to use in discussions about sex with our kids.  It’s got to be a lot easier to talk about the choices Ted Dawe’s protagonist makes in Into The River than it will be to talk about the choices a real life son has made when he announces his real life girlfriend is real life pregnant.

Not that I need a book to get sex discussions going.  I am one of those women who’s always bringing up the topic of sex, menstruation and/or childbirth, to the discomfort of my dinner guests and the elderly man who got stuck standing next to me in line at Dunkin Donuts last Tuesday.

I’ve written before about the sexual education I got from my mother in the post, Sex Really is Disgusting After All, Just Like Your Mother Told You, and I vowed, as I gave birth to one daughter, and then another, that my kids would not grow up feeling shameful and embarrassed about sex, and I hope to greet every question from them about sex with good humor, understanding and acceptance.

See, in my mind, I am Super Mom.  In reality, my attempts at educating my children has my oldest explaining to her little sister that sanitary napkins are “Mommy’s diapers” despite the diagrams I white boarded for her explaining the menstrual cycle and then brainstorming together the pros and cons of wearing sanitary napkins vs. tampons.

“They are not my ‘diapers,'” I correct, removing the sanitary napkins from the bathroom walls where the toddler has stuck them.

“I didn’t say they were diapers.  I said they were like diapers.  A simile!” Since we have been working on figures of speech over the summer, she’s now hoping to appeal to the English lit nerd that she knows I am.

“They’re not even like diapers.  You’re going to have her thinking that I’m incontinent.”

“Incontinent!” She repeats, and then as she’s walking away, I can hear her saying, “Africa, Antartica, Asia, Australia, Europe . . .”

We’ve been working on Geography, too.

You can read more about New Zealand (yes, I’ve actually written about this small Pacific island before!) in the post,  U Can’t Has Kittehs in New Zealand.

The image in this post is from Wikimedia Commons, a freely licensed media file repository.

Turns Out, Ellen Degeneres Is Not the Only Lesbian in the World

Suddenly, lesbians are everywhere.  While before they used to be strictly limited to afternoon talk shows, now they are over in France winning film prizes, and down in Florida playing high school basketball, and watching porn.