Life in pictures

 

 

Finding Inspiration…

I’ve been reading a fabulous blog written by a woman whom I will come right out and say makes me envious! She’s a beautiful lady, married to an incredibly sexy looking man (and obviously deeply in love), and they’ve produced a quartet of incredibly cute children. Okay, so what, right? Well, she can also cook, takes incredible pictures and writes with such a charming style it all just makes me envious, okay? Hell, I’m purely green at the moment.

In my little online ventures, I’ve run into a few women who inspire me in some way. Just pick any of the ladies over at MFFO, and take a look at HeadMutha, and I dare you to say you’re not inspired. And the group at MM, headed up by Courtney, is enough to restore anyone’s faith in womankind.

Anyway, that lady I mentioned up there? She’s been blogging the “how we met and married” story and it’s practically romance-novel material. Hell, I take that back, it IS romance-novel material! Since discovering her blog, I’ve been swept away in the romance of it all, and I am not a fan on that genre.

Any woman who reads this stuff is likely to have to start fanning herself to cool off, and it’s not explicit, it’s just… well, steamy. It’s also funny. And cute. And silly. And sweet. And… yeah.

Meanwhile, it also makes my little writer-type brain start twisting and turning and thinking, “wow! I’d love to be able to write a ‘how we met’ type story!” There’s only one problem, no amount of license, creative, editorial, artistic or otherwise, could put such a sweet-romantic spin on my own story! (Errmmm… someday, I’ll write it up and you’ll understand…)

But, I can and will, enjoy her story.

And I can and will take inspiration where I find it – as I see yet another woman online who makes me sit up and take notice, and this one also makes me dust off my cookbook project (long lying dormant under the pressures of life), pick up my camera for something other than work and recall the intricacies of f-stops and shutter speeds (which I was never very good at to begin with) and perhaps best of all, to enjoy writing…

Not every writing effort has to turn out a socially motivating post, or bring focus to a major world crisis. Sometimes, it’s just about life, and I love that even the every day can be so very beautiful!

Do these jeans make my butt look fat?

No, honey, your butt is just fat, it’s not the jeans, trust me!

No woman in her right mind should ever ask her man that question. And no man who values his masculinity would ever give that answer.

I never ask, and my honey never answers. I know I need to lose a few – read here – however, I also know that clothes can and do make the woman.

I spend a lot of time in jeans, and I really have this thing against “Mom Jeans” – those usually comfortable but terribly unflattering and downright matronly looking things that can transform even a svelte, sexy young thing into a decidedly dowdy “Mom” with the swish of a zipper. Since I already bear distinct resemblance to the quintessential suburban housewife (though I do not, and will never, sport the “Soccer Mom” ‘do!) I figure I do not need any additional help via denim.

Thus my quest for the “perfect pair of jeans” – in my world “perfect” means they are snug enough to look “tight, but either stretchy enough, or loose enough that I can still move and breathe in them, they also must not come up over my belly button, be reasonably “cool” looking, not give me the dreaded muffin top, boot cut, long enough to wear with heels (what, you thought I meant cowboy boots? C’mon! Who are you talking about here?) They must also be comfortable.

Oh, and perhaps most importantly, not make my ass look any bigger than it actually is.

And every female reading this has just fallen out of her chair, laughing her head off and gasping, between guffaws of uncontrolled hysterics, “She’s got to be kidding, right? Such jeans just do not exist in this universe!”

Well, yes, they do, and I found them.

I tend to buy ONE pair of a particular type of jeans – trying them out in real life, not just in the fitting room, until I am convinced they are worthy of wearing. Then, when I finally decide they are straight from heaven, I go to buy several pairs, usually finding they have since been discontinued, or worse, “improved” in some way that may be an improvement to somebody but certainly is not to me.

And so, ask me how thrilled I was when the pair of jeans that in the dressing room had seemed just a tad snug (read - I couldn’t breathe) after washing proved to be the epitome of perfection. Now, ask me if I’m going to quickly go buy a few more pair of them before they decide to “improve” these as well.

PS - for the record, yes, that is my butt and no there was not a gun to my head when I decided to put that shot on this blog. It just seemed the best way to illustrate my point - ample rear and all.

PPS - yes, I’ve done a few posts today - it so happens I have the time, finally, to put up some stuff I’ve been working on. It also so happens that I will likely not have the time to do so in the next couple of days. Though, I’ve got a major rant coming up about a certain household behavior!

Sex is power?

Note - I am posting this as part of a little journey of self - certain  “issues”, which shall, for now, stay silent, have prompted me to not only look at my past, but to actually question the why of it. Call it growing up - finally.

My first (consensual) sexual encounters were of the typical teenage variety - fumbling around with fellatio and then a furtive, half-dressed consummation in a treehouse. It didn’t rock my word, but it was fun and it opened my eyes to something seemingly important: sex is power.

Thanks to a past history of abuse, my views of sexuality, and my personal sexual development did not follow the “norm” - to me, this discovery that sex equaled power was momentous. It gave me something I had previously lacked: control. It gave me a sense of being in charge, of making my own choices, of having power over someone else without them controlling me.

I dove into this discovery head first, never realizing that it did not offer the freedom I believed it did, but instead wove an intricate cage to form my prison.

Girls of my own age hated me. They sensed this awakening in me, they knew it was different than their own early explorations, and they were intimidated by a fully sexually aware peer, even though they did not realize that was the source of the problem. I remember one girl saying to me, “I hate the way you walk.” That baffled me for years.

Guys of my own age were intimidated by me. They wanted a girl who quietly acquiesced to their teenage desires after much coercion on their part; one who “let them” do things. They didn’t know what was different about me, only that there was something there that was beyond them. On the one hand, they wanted, on the other, they were afraid. Guys don’t like that feeling.

During high school, I wasn’t called a slut, or thought of as “easy” - I never dated boys in my school, I rarely dated school-age guys anyway. None of my peers were aware of my sexual activities, but like the pack animals that teenagers are, they sensed something - I had some knowledge they did not and they resented it.

Those attitudes actually persisted into college, where I found people of my own age still fumbling in the dark and unaware of their own sexuality. They were still dabbling on the edges of the pool, dipping their toes in, perhaps even wading, where as I had swum out into the depths, and had dove fully to the bottom.

I don’t claim to be proud of my youthful activities - it is simply a part of who I am. And I don’t claim to have been better than my peers - in fact, quite the opposite, I believe my early sexual awakening kept me from understanding deeper and more important issues.

I learned, through the years, that I could get what I wanted through sex. My few girlfriends joked that the “good” guys were all either taken, gay or head over heels for me. It’s not that I was prettier than they, or smarter, or anything else. It was that I understood male sexuality and desire and could, would and did satisfy it - to a degree that had my partners completely and utterly at my feet - even if I had not “slept with” them. It was the potential promise, the flirtatious awareness, the desire and willingness they felt.

I happily used sex to get what I wanted. And there is the dark side of this picture. Thanks to that history, I felt I had no value aside from what I could provide through sex. I could not feel loved except through sex. When I did not have a sexual relationship with a man, I didn’t understand him, I couldn’t control him, and I didn’t feel loved by him.

My entire image of myself was wrapped up in, and warped by, my sexuality.

There it was, what seemed at first to be power and freedom was actually a cage built by my own actions. I didn’t understand how to define myself outside of my sexuality. I didn’t have any sense of self without that.

There is no point in describing chapter and verse of my life and mistakes. But I learned lessons over the years, slowly coming to the understanding that sex was indeed powerful, and did equal power, true - but it could also warp and twist, it was power that consumed rather than fulfilled.

Now, many years and some hard life lessons later, I am finally understanding myself, finally no longer defined by my sexuality, but fully embracing it, no longer controlled by it, or controlling with it - but instead reveling in the full confidence of a woman for whom sex is an expression of love, not a means to attain it.

And that, I believe, is the true “power” in sex.

Tags: Sex, sexuality, self discovery

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Pretty sparkly stuff…

It’s a quiet Sunday morning - the kids are at church with their dad and the BF is out golfing, and I’m taking the opportunity to crank up the Twisted Christmas Tunes and put together a wreath.

Normally, Mom would have made one for me, but, since she’s not around anymore… I decided to do one myself. In keeping with my holiday theme, I kept it simple - just some beaded ribbon and sleigh bells on a lighted wreath.

Why on earth I got a lighted wreath is beyond me. I guess it will go next to my door instead on on my door (so, call me a dingbat, okay?)

And so…This:

and this:

Quickly became this:

Merry Christmas!