its always easy to sit back and to say  your a angry man………. when you all cant be in my shoes…….  you onley   see from your side of view……right or wrong your always right …if  AM so angry then whys it hurts so much…………………..   don’t call something you cant  possibly know about…. from your  safe place  with your loved ones…………….fix

There’s a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,
He’s always at home with his back to the wall.
And he’s proud of his scars and the battles he’s lost,
And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

There’s a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,
He’s always at home with his back to the wall.
And he’s proud of his scars and the battles he’s lost,
And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

~Billy Joel, Turnstiles 1976

~~~~~

As a child of the 80’s, I’m a die hard Billy Joel fan.  For a very long time I would have even used the word “quintessential” in my self description, but my mommy duty of the last twenty years or so has forced me to change my self description in a lot of ways.  I know all his lyrics, all his jazzy interludes, and all his piano diatribes; I can even pick out his music (including the classical variety) in tributary elevator styled renditions.  So it shouldn’t surprise me when this morning I couldn’t get the above song out of my head.  It lodged there about 5 minutes after I hung up from yet another futile phone call with our resident angry middle aged man.

I’m not interested in bashing anyone, but because this blog has become a sort of essay styled diary for me, it’s a good place to wax prophetically about how a person, any person, comes to a place that make our respective perspectives (ok, that was a mouthful, I didn’t do that on purpose) so intrinsically different.

I just finished reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.  Her heroine makes a statement that I find a brilliant observation.  “People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.” ~ August Boatwright

We all start out in different ways, with different families, with different values and morals, with different opportunities, and with different advantages.  But we all have the same potential.  We all get the same 24 hours in a day.  We all get the same rules and rights.  From there our lives become a statement of what we do with what we were given.  So why would someone camp on what’s wrong instead of making something right?

I don’t believe in victimization.  I don’t advocate the woe-is-me’ism so prevalent in our society today.  And more than anything, I don’t support complaints without action.  The plight of the angry young man seems illogical to me, I cannot make sense of it.  So when I should be showing sympathy and support, all I feel is cold and distant.  And I find myself in a place where two wrongs are having a great deal of trouble making a right.

~the laundry goddess, September 29, 2008

its been 10 mounths sence i have left the house   what has been asked of me to leave and change for the better  is the only thang that has been asked of me  like it or not  right or wrong.      to get to who i was before or better is the life you want but to get there i have had to give up a lot …..and stand on the sidelines  to get a little  bit back of my life  you say i get adjatatied when iam at the house for a long time its not that i get that way its the fact that i have to leave and go back to my place where i belong     out of the  once home i use to livein but becouse i  trried to talk and got know were but out of the home …. now i find my self wanting back but that realaty is now more for me due to the facts that the broblums with the rest of the quied are a big factour to getting back is now more a  big wall then ever before…..is there a chance for me to ever return …   i dont know    , but one thang is foe sure that till you 3 get to a place   i am out and a dredfull  reminder that i am on the sidelines till the 3 are where thay need to bee    meanwhile i stand and hold in my place till the time comes and hope to start over again what i have worked so hard for the past two and a half mounths for.   you can’t see or feel what i have to go thru day to day   every day   trying to hold on too whats left of my life the life i once had and question if i will ever have it again      this was too make are life better but for me i have a hard time seeing it from 12 miles away   i thank what is asked of me is more then what eny one else should have to go thue   i know big whould have not stood for this… this is why where wear we are at now ….. this is not what we all wanted but to  asked one person to give up on the life we had together as a quid or joined . blended family is ok for one but not for two or three  but only ok for me .  wright or wrong on how i feel and where i am   hurts   my chest hurts not for whats wrong with me but for whats wrong with this            us                  fix

When Art Linkletter told us kids say the “darndest” things, he never considered the sex positive slant.

I’m not sure how publicly we’ve advertised, but Temptress and I signed up last winter to be adult toy reviewers.  For the low price of a speedily posted and well written review, we are gifted several toys a month that we can test and keep.  The older children are aware of this side gig of ours because when we began, we had to warn them off from opening boxes addressed to the Mommies.  We wouldn’t want them opening a box expecting a birthday gift to be scarred for life by what they’d seen.

Despite our growing collection of adult toys, every once in a while I spot something I just must have, so I’ll buy it for myself.  Recently I bought a “lipstick” vibe.  When the item came in the mail I opened it up, installed the batteries and dropped it into my purse.  Temptress looked shocked and said, “Why in the world are you putting it in there?” (ok, that was a warning)

“Because,” I replied, “that is where you keep lipstick, right?”  I did purchase said item with the intentions of keeping it close by for those impromptu moments when I might not be at home near the toy box.  So in the purse it stayed for a couple of weeks until one day when Miss Academic, age 15, went looking for lip gloss in my bag.

We were sitting in the doctor’s office waiting area when she grabs my purse, opens it up, and pulls out the shiny purple lipstick (FYI, it really DOES look like a tube of lipstick, even with the inconspicuous dial at the bottom.)  “What color is this one?”  she asks, holding the cylinder in the high in the air.  I look over (forgetting momentarily that I had anything unusual hidden in my bag) and started laughing.

“Don’t open that!”  I said, “You will not appreciate that particular lipstick.”  (a devilish, evil grin spread across my face)

She looked at me puzzled, then this look of sheer horror crossed her face as she dropped the vibe back in my purse and practically FLUNG the bag in my direction.  “Ewwwwww, MOM, gross.  Do you HAVE to carry one of those things in your purse?  What’s wrong with you?  If you were a prude like most moms I wouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“If you stayed out of my purse or asked first, you wouldn’t have to deal with this either,” I reminded her.

But it started me thinking about progressive parenting and sex positive messages.  We are very open in our home about adult realities, not only with the nature of our poly parenting and our status as reviewers, but the responsibilities that adult behaviors bring.  Our children know we have sex, they know we like sex, and they know sex is a good thing when experienced in a mature and responsible way.  But they also have heard us say many times, that engaging in sexual activity is a responsibility.

I want our children to know that when the time comes for them to ask questions or need advice of a more adult nature, the parents are the “go to” people.  I remember the type of misleading opinions I heard from peers as a teen and young adult.  It only makes sense if one required accurate information, that person would go to a reputable and experienced advisor.  At least that is what we’re trying to teach our kids.

In the meantime, I’m content with just grossing them out just a little while longer.

~ the laundry goddess, September 5, 2008

I was answering questions on OKC today….

I was asked:

Which of the following relationship timelines would you prefer?

1.    Attraction > lovers > love > friends

2.    Friends > love > attraction > lovers

3.    Attraction > friends > love > lovers

4.      Attraction > friends > lovers > love

So I answered #3, what most people I think would have answered. While perusing the answers however I realized for the most part #1 is what describes or described Big and myself.

Three years ago we found an attraction to each other. Well I did anyway, I won’t speak for him as to what exactly the attraction for him was ( the thrill of the hunt I am guessing).

Very quickly after the attraction we moved to stage 2 and became lovers. I was satisfied with this, as I am going to assume he was. Then after 4 months of living together my defenses lowered and a weekend away changed everything for me. I fell in love with him. And reveled in stage 3.

So that is where things stood for me until last week. I knew that he cared for me, I also knew he was not “in-love” with me, I knew that he was camped at stage 2.  I was under the stupid and mis-guided assumption that I could love him enough for both of us. Until last week … I realized after over hearing a conversation he had with Goddess that what I thought he felt for me… well even that was a fantasy on my part. I was expendable, I was a thorn in his side where she was concerned, I was competition for him in her affections, I was a commitment he had made, and really nothing more than that.

So now I am trying to find a way to convince my heart that it is time to move to the 4^th stage, to the stage of friends. It is time to let him go, to help my heart and my mind find the path to releasing him and coming to a place where I can breathe, where being in the same room with him doesn’t cause me to fall apart, where I can sleep at night, rather than lie awake wanting to feel his arms around me.

It is time for my heart to come to grips with reality and find a way for us to be just friends and housemates.

Temptress

 “The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here…”

It has been a long 9 months since the night I asked Fix to leave the family home.

Initially the intention was a 3-6 month therapeutic separation. Unfortunately we have surpassed the expected time frame, however I can say with great joy we are on the right track.

Somewhere in the vicinity of mid-July we turned a corner. I can not say what it was exactly that caused the winds to change, but change they did.

The happy smiling man I married almost 18 years ago, the caring warm hearted bear I shared with Goddess 3 years ago, the Daddy the children have waited for, has returned.

We are still taking things slowly, one day at a time, but now we know that each day brings us closer to being  under one roof again. Each day brings our family closer to being healed and whole.

~Temptress