Men oh Pause

All of us have heard the startling fact that men think about sex several times a day. Every 52 seconds, if you can believe this report.

We are all well aware that most women do not.

I agree. We’re too damned busy thinking about what to serve for dinner, or whether we paid that bill in time, or where the hell the other sock went.

By the way, according to the same research, a woman uses 20,000 words per day, while a man uses only 7,000.

I’m not surprised by that at all. Considering that the word for fellas is “Sex”, while the woman is busy coming up with excuses to get out of it.

If you ask me, if men had to do the whole menstruation and menopause thing, methinks the odds would be a little different (is it irony that those very words have 'men' in them yet it's the women that suffer?).

I do find it funny in a way, that a young girl looks forward to the whole puberty business with excitement and a certain kind of pride that she is “becoming a woman”. Give her a few months of visits from Aunty Flo and she’ll soon sing a different song.

So why, I wonder, do so many women get so upset when they’re closing in on the other end of things, worrying that their womanhood is somehow diminished? If we believe all the jokes and stereotypes, she’s spent the better part of 40 years cursing ‘the curse’ or trying to get out of her matrimonial duty, and should be happy that it’s almost over.

It’s not that the ladies don’t like the lovin’. Oh no, take a look at all the stories of ‘cougars’ currently on the prowl, looking for love in a younger form than perhaps the one they’ve been cuddling up to for better or for worse. Heaven knows Harlequin/Mills & Boon™ still publish enough of the sexy stuff (about 100 new titles every month at your local newsagent or favourite bookstore- I should know, my Beloved delivers them).

It’s just that women need to be in the right mood.

Whereas the typical man wakes up in it (hello morning glory).

And if you’re Mr & Mrs Average, time and place –not to mention privacy– is paramount for your paramour.

I swear I do not know how the previous generations had so many children. If it isn’t enough doing all the running around that a family requires on a daily (and nightly) basis, how on earth did the parents manage to find themselves alone in the bedroom with enough time and energy for intimacy?! Equally, I wonder how many have not been caught ‘in flagrante delicto’ and had to come up with a cover, or cover up, so that their children are not permanently damaged by the scene (do the words “Mummy and daddy are just having a little chat; we’ll be out soon” sound familiar)?

After a couple of kids, most couples I know have sadly resorted to what’s known as ‘hallway sex’: be it a quick kiss on the cheek or an outright “Screw you” as they cross paths, depending on the stress levels that week.

If they’re lucky, they’ll get lucky only a few times a month. And then sometimes it’s a case of just lie back and think of England, just to keep the other happy for a while.

It’s obviously been on my mind as I edge ever closer to that certain time of life, whether I’ll embrace the end of my monthly visitor, or feel saddened as the visits stop. I can only hope that Aunty Flo won’t take what’s left of my libido with her.

At least I can console my Beloved with the fact that in the time it’s taken for me to compose this post, I have had sex on the brain for a solid 37 minutes (give or take a couple of trips in to check on children).

So by my reckoning, I’ve matched his every-52-seconds no less than 42 times today.

That’s gotta count for something, right girls?!

Jx
©2010

Ten Green Bottles

My children have enough drink bottles to slake the thirst of a thousand camels. If camels were to actually require water bottles, that is.

But just as I have lamented before, my kids have a real problem letting go of stuff.

Consequently, we have quite a collection of drink bottles in various shape, size, and shade. Not all of them seem to have a matching lid anymore, which renders the things close to useless in my opinion. Sadly, my opinion differs vastly from theirs.

So do you think they will let me ‘do the right thing’ and pop the bottles in the recycling bin?

I’d have more chance of passing a camel through the eye of a needle, if you’ll forgive the sad plagiarism of a biblical tale in my efforts to extend a metaphor.

See, the medication my son has to take for his juvenile arthritis means he gets mighty thirsty. Being mighty thirsty naturally requires a lot of water (his beverage of choice, God bless him) which requires a lot of containers on call for consumption.

Anyone who has kids knows that no matter how often you remind them, they don’t always remember to grab a drink before you leave the house (ditto using the toilet, but that’s another blog). Likewise, anyone who has kids, and particularly has those close in age, knows that if you then buy one something, the other sorta, kinda, HASTA have a similar sort of something. So the bottle collection grows.

My kids can’t even bear to part with those generic water bottles one can buy everywhere these days- heaven forbid it’s something schmicko with a cartoon character on it- so at least we’re doing our thing for the planet by not chucking too many plastics away. Instead our kitchen cupboards have got this whole landfill-in-a-box thing going on.

And if you’ve ever experience the dreaded Tupperware crash, you’ll know exactly how much I am risking life and limb any time I need to pry open the pantry door. Despite being diagnosed as having very poor hand-eye coordination, I can tell you that I can open/find/remove/shut the cupboard with the best of them (talk about sleight of hand- David Copperfield’s got nothing on me, at this at any rate).

But during one particularly bad day, with the dropsies in full flight, I decided it was time to do the great drink bottle cull of 2010. Having learnt from my mistakes, I decided to do it while the kids were at school.

You can imagine my delight when I managed to dispose of at least a dozen containers that presented without the correct accompanying cap, despite my best efforts at search and retrieval.

You can imagine my despair when I found about half a dozen lids the very next time I opened the cupboard in question….after the weekly recycling collection.

And I am sure you can imagine my children’s faces when they asked me could I “please get out the drink bottle that goes with this cap?”

*sighs*

Oh well, look at it this way. If ever the kids decide to pass the time by singing that old ditty ‘Ten Green Bottles’, we’ll have the right number of props to enact it as we go. And then some.

Jx
©2010