It’s been so long since I have known sexy in myself.  I want to know sexy, or to share sexy but I always have excuses. It’s either work, dogs, travel, too tired, or most realistically, it’s that I don’t have a reason. And who really needs a reason? And with that, I still have EXCUSES.

A newly married woman should feel sexy or have reasons to sport the sexy dress and shoes. But most of our so-called dates take place in Kuwait, and it’s rather difficult to have date time when both of us are exhausted, me from travel and him from long days complicated with my unusual or rather lack of sleep habits. Everything is casual and maybe this is what happens post marriage. I don’t really agree with that, I really don’t. But I am fishing here. And I think all this will be clear soon, please bear with me.

I just saw an episode of The City. And all I could think after seeing one of the dates was that I bet my husband had sexy dates like that. ARGH!!! and with that I want to pound my head into a wall. Why must I think this? WHY?!!!! I am guessing I think this because we have skipped a lot of the normal parts of dating or at least all the dates and most of our so-called dates have been on dive boats in wet suits, or fully clothed trying not to go any further until we were married, or via iChat (and this almost, or about 99% of the time) has me in pajamas….so UNsexy.

And sexy just got more complicated with pregnancy. Yep. Hard to feel sexy when your tummy resembles a keg, your ass resembles that of a donkey’s a little more everyday and well, just to be honest…you are getting FAT. Sure, the fat is needed to make breast milk but it is cruel where some of this fat starts to gather. The girlie bits that used to be pink and little and pretty aren’t any of that much anymore. It’s rather embarrassing. So embarrassing in fact that I didn’t want my husband to see these parts of my body for fear that it would cause trauma and our sex life would have been short-lived at 3 weeks. Yes, that is how many post marriage weeks we have spent together. Yet, we have been married 5 months.

Can we at all see my frustration?

3 weeks and I have no idea what is normal.

I like stories to belong to me. I especially like sexy stories to belong to me. My identity is deeply rooted in my sensual nature. And it feels like for the last year and half this sensual nature has been in storage. And now with pregnancy it feels like it might be gone forever. Or at least the me that was won’t be any longer and I have no idea what will be, but if it is what is, then I would be entirely disappointed with myself. I feel like I should feel sexy, I WANT to feel sexy.

 

First up, I need to grocery shop. I’ve been away from my house 16 days, or at least according to the kennel where I leave my dogs, though I thought it only 15 days. None the less, I paid for 16 days, so let’s just stick with 16. I have ice cream in the freezer and some boxed food, but the boxed food would require some help, ie. I have boxed humus but that would at least need a pita or some vegetables. My fridges isn’t a terrible sight, just a little worrisome. There is about a pint of eggnog remaining in a carton that I am actually afraid to dump in the sink because I am sure it doesn’t smell so eggnoggy anymore. There is a Tupperware of vegetable soup with lemon grass that is likely now “fungi surprise”. I don’t even remember what is in the vegetable draws but I am sure it is a compost delight.

This being said, I am a pregnant woman who gets hungry. I can go without food for a fairly long period of time, maybe 12 hours, but then I am so hungry I could cry. Yesterday morning I planned to get myself to the nearest town, a 60 mile round trip away, to do my grocery shopping but by the time I woke up I was so hungry I decided to start my day by having breakfast at the local diner. I ordered pancakes with bacon and a side of oatmeal. I stumbled home in my carb wasted state to have a conversation with my husband because I too was fast asleep, much thanks to being on Kuwait time. When I woke I was groggy, no problem, I would take a bath and then be ready for my trip to the grocery. Right, until I lay on the couch for “just a moment” and that moment lasted until about 6pm. Now, I could have gotten up and made the grocery drive, I would have gotten there by 6:45, shopped, and home by 9pm, which means I would have missed my evening chat with my husband. Ever the glutton to make sure I didn’t wake up to eat another half jar of applesauce as I did the night before, I headed back out to the local diner sporting information I knew to be “top-secret”.

I saw her before I was even in the door. Her lips spelled out “she’s back”…which I took as “She’s back from Kuwait”…but one could have taken as “She’s back for her second time of the day”. However, the words came from a girl who works the evening shift, so I didn’t even see her at breakfast but I was a keeper of her secret and she didn’t even know it. She and the cook joked about what I would order and assumed it would have bacon. She then referenced her craving for “fry-sauce”, the nasty combination of ketchup and mayo. I played “uninformed”. She then just said “I’m pregnant!” and I of course congratulated her. I knew she had been trying to conceive for 7 months. Nevermind you that she’s 21, newly married and does not have health insurance, doesn’t have a clue about prenatals or folic acid and hasn’t even touched a pregnancy book. I am trying not to be judgemental. And this isn’t the point anyway.

It was the surprise. I was told her secret by the cafe owner that morning, but she said “let her tell you”. So, of course I did, and I think it has meaning that she got to say those words. But I am a lover of the art of surprise. In fact, it stretches into other areas of my life. For example, my husband pointed out my stretch marks the very first time he saw me naked. Yep, to my total dismay. I thought at least he wouldn’t say anything. But he ran his hand up my hip over the marks that were left from sprouting about 4 inches in one summer. I don’t think they are that bad, but when they are pointed out to me, I feel like I am wearing the mask of death. When I mentioned, months later, how this hurt my feelings, and he proceeded to say that he’d never seen them on a woman, which hurt my feelings even more considering how many women he’d seen naked before me, only made me feel worse. So, of course, he says “well, I have stretch marks too!” and I say “I never noticed.”

It doesn’t matter if I had known this or not. I believe for a moment it made him feel as if I didn’t pay attention to the flaws he consider a part of his body. And honestly, I didn’t pay attention. Just as I would have wanted him to not pay attention to those marks on my hips. If he could have just praised the thinness of my body and the small orbs that were my pre-pregnancy breasts, or the curves of my hip bones, I think for that moment, I would have felt amazing. But I was left feeling inadequate and less of a woman. He could have been “surprised” by the marks a year later as I pointed them out to him in my concern to not get any more during pregnancy. I have ever since that day been concerned that all he sees when he sees me without much on, even just a bikini that these scars are of course the very first thing he notices about me.

Sometimes, I think, feigning surprise is the best reaction.

I might be becoming a grouchy woman. If not becoming, I am finally realizing that I am a lot more opinionated and passionate and less likely to let people push me around. Isn’t this when we start calling women bitches?

If so, then I am a bitch.

We have all probably sold our soul at some point, or at least parts of it. I worked for a few coffee/bookstore giants and it was the worst work situations I have ever had. One of the two coffee spots in New Orleans had the benefit of free coffee, whether you were working or not. They also let us snag cast out pastries at the end of the night. However, if there were pastries that were going to be tossed, they preferred that we sample them that day. Of course we did because after a few weeks of this novelty, well, the muffins don’t have as much of an appeal and the quiche really is much soggier on the 2nd day…however, I was always open to taking quiche home as it make Jinx very happy. But if I gave him a pastry I had to make sure there was one for my housemate as I felt guilty giving the dog a $3 quiche when we were eating a lot of rice and broccoli. Hard times in New Orleans…a familiar story for so many young people. But a good life experience. It still makes me sick to think about how horrible some of those days were. But much thanks to a few good friends (a particular detective, a biochemistry professor, my librarian housemate, a street painter, a haunted tour guide and a bartender) the other days were pretty eventful and enjoyable.

I am sitting at my desk on what would have been my last week of work. Part of me really wants it to be the last week. The other part has a hard time letting go because I love the work…no, maybe it isn’t that I love the work, but that I need to be doing something to feel like my life is worthwhile. I can’t sit back and enjoy my pregnancy, my marriage and my dogs, for fear that someone (anyone really) would think of me as lazy or not doing my part. I am ashamed that I make significantly less than my husband and I am not sure if I will ever make more. Is it wrong that I want to make more than him? Not to prove to him that I am better but more to show him that I am worthy and that he doesn’t have to worry, or that he doesn’t have to worry about me because I am capable of earning my keep and capable of supporting us when has already done so much for me (us). I want to be a great mother and raise well rounded and loved children. But I also want to be successful at a career and paying back my own student loans (there is no way I could do this without his help). I want to be a wonderful and loving wife. To cherish my husband in an equal partnership, to give to our marriage 100% of the time, and to encourage him to do the same. To seek a fulfilling and well rounded spiritual life. To write. Yes, I want to write. I want to produce something worth reading.

My diginity…I am not sure the exact value. I know that it is not at Starbucks or Seattle’s Best. I do love making people happy with a coffee drink, some beautiful concoction and greeting them at the beginning of their day and maybe even making their day just a little better. But the truth is, with the economy, I believe that people are probably bitter about their caffeine and sugar addiction and more likely to be really unhappy about spending their $5 on coffee and pastry…that is the value has gone down for them and they more likely to take it out on the one serving them. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of someone’s anger. I am not too far removed from this ….this being my first full-time career experience, which was horrible and landed me with a lot of anxiety and sadness about the work world and those bullies in it. My dignity is worth more than someone stomping their muddy shoes in my office in the hope that might would make right. It doesn’t.

And here. What do I want here? Why do I become so invested in something that is not invested in me?

I was in my college town over the weekend and met with a good friend, the professor. Loyalty, how can I have it for a company that finds my work value less than that of an older woman who can’t even type correctly and take 8 hours to write a newsletter that I then have to rewrite? The same woman closes the door to her office to call a board member, while I am home sick, and the new hire is in her own office…but closes the door? Yes, she closes the door and requests that the board come to the office to fill out the Scope of Work. Ridiculous!!! The last two times they have filled it out, I spent 3 hours each time making corrections after the State of Oregon called requesting the corrections. And they can’t even save the file to correct location so they lose half the documents and then spend hours looking for them and after such search, ask me to find them.

How can I be loyal to this?

Do I love a paycheck that much?

Yes, I do. But how much? I came here to do what I did. I got them out of hot water with the State of Oregon, I have requested over $250,000 in funds and managed over $500,000 worth the grants. I could still spend another 2 months managing these grants and will likely be called often by the new hire. I am good at directing her what to do, without being a controlling supervisor and I am proud of that because I can see her learning and I feel that this is the way training goes. She does what I ask and she takes care of things as they come to her desk. She really is great for this office and I want to see her first job out of college be a success and to be enjoyable….unlike my own. However, had I not had my experience, there is no way I would know how to NOT manage her. I am as hands off as I can be, but always only a phone call away. I am not a perfect “boss” I am sure. But I refuse to her sell her dignity for anything less than a person is worth. And in a job like this….well, you can be treated pretty poorly by people how are making decisions with money that isn’t theirs but really belongs to the local community for conservation. But explaining is like telling a child not to play with fire…you have just given that child to do exactly that!

I have two projects to complete before I leave for my next trip to Kuwait. Somehow, I think I need to arrange for my leaving. Same with my rental situation. Somehow, I need to arrange my packing and moving. I guess I hate leaving. The feeling of abandonment after you have become attached. How do we become so attached that we are willing to sell our dignity to remain in a situation where we are valued if only our selling price is much lower than fair market value? I am not talking about what YOU think your value is, but really, more about the value of a human being. The value of human dignity.

I am making hot chocolate naked in my kitchen after having underdressed to sit in the bath. Originally, I wanted to eat coffee ice cream while soaking in the bath on this very chilly October Sunday, but the hot chocolate seemed like a better idea. Oh, and of course I am listening to Harvey Reid Christmas music.

Beauty isn’t the same for everyone, but it’s not always different, either.

It’s no secret that fret over my own appearance. It’s a long hoed battled. Years of being told by men that I am “odd looking, or unusual or that I am not pretty…but somehow it works okay”. I’ve been told that I am unusual looking enough but not unattractive. But what I don’t have a long history of hearing is that I am beautiful. Fine. I am not. I get it. But I look at Hollywood and if any one of those girls were not sporting the make-up or the name of fame, they would be rather odd looking and not necessarily beautiful. But our minds are clouded with what we should be thinking.

We were tossed Kate Moss when she was like 15 and told that she was the image of beauty. We watched Hollywood shed weight to display the figure of beauty. Demi Moore buffed up for GI Jane and took it all off for Striptease. She held a title of beauty. Then she slimmed down and dropped a few years for Charlie’s Angel’s and made her “comeback”. Scarlett Johanssen isn’t a classic beauty. But she has lips and breasts that have gotten Woody Allen’s attention and clearly most at Maxim and the readers that follow. But my guess is that any of the men reading that magazine have probably dated at least one woman that given a high dollar maintenance budget would look like that as well.

I started reading the beauty magazines before I even had a learners permit. I’ve believed all the hype about cellulite and wrinkles. I was 14!!! I am 31, now let’s talk about cellulite and wrinkles. Well, because of a good diet and lots of exercise I don’t know about cellulite except when I slack off on running and my weight creeps up. Then I feel it before I see it. But the loss of 5 pounds brings the chuck right off. I think about it as fat cells that have been stuffed to overfill and they start to bulge in places they would normally not if they weren’t so darn full.

Wrinkles. My least favorite part of aging is the change I see on my face. Mostly in the fine lines but the also in the clarity of my skin. Youthful skin is lush and free from the dull complexion that comes with age. How do you accept aging gracefully when your entire life has been lived in a society that values youth. Bring on the sex appeal of the Candance Burgen’s and the Sharon Sarandan’s. Yet, even they have has a little Hollywood Kiss and Nevertell.

What’s a girl to do? Short of turning her face inside with cutting and carving and plumping and numbing?

How much time should a woman spend on her morning routine? What if I don’t have one? Do I get one?

All most women ever want is to be considered attractive, I am not an exception. Though, at times I would also like to know how to be attractive and a lot feminine at the same time.

In part this is my fault. I chose a career in a field less than glamourous. What did I know about glamour? It was unattainable. The girls in the magazines had it, I didn’t. So, one needed to decide, beauty or brains? and yes, a few lucky few would get both. Now I am asking for the whole enchilada. I want to be able to blend beauty and brains. However, I need to do some digging and find my beauty.

I do believe that inner beauty can be breath taking but I think if a person is so consumed by not having it – well, then it certainly doesn’t shine through.

I am kind of stuck in a rut. The old me would cut the hair, color it an entirely different color, lose 10 pounds and buy a new dress and have fun with the boost of confidence. But now I am married. So, begging for a boost of confidence is completely out – at least from strangers. Besides, I live in the middle of nowhere and so there aren’t other women to shop with or sort out these feelings or even better is that hanging out with other women I believe, is a self confidence booster. You are admiring another person’s beauty and it makes you try a little harder to feel confident in their presence. So, you apply one more item of make-up or get a darker tint to your hair than the other girls with the same color – you do things to set yourself apart. I am sure men are under the impression that women dress for them (men that is) but the truth is that women dress for other women. When you live out in the boondocks like me, you dress in whatever is mostly clean and will function in your office. If you teach at the local school you try to dress a little nicer than the other teachers.

But what is this girl to do?

I don’t want to live 1 week at a time in Kuwait while visiting my husband and worried as all get out that my pedicure is just the right shade of red, or that my highlights are fresh enough or that my skin is clear and blemish free for the week or that I brought the right things to wear. Sure, I want to effortless toss on some clothes and have him think I look amazing. But some times I get a microdermabrasion treatment before I see him and I go extra careful on my skin care in the hopes that I won’t have as many blemishes. I worry about the hair and often get a color before I see him. I pick out something cute to bring with me in the hopes that he’ll be distracted enough by the shoes that he won’t notice that my thighs aren’t as smooth as they were last time.

This is after all, to be my first trip to Kuwait as a married woman. We spend about 10 weeks or so apart. This is long enough for about 5 bikini waxes or in my case, 2. I haven’t had a microderm since before the wedding and even that was probably 2 or so weeks before. I haven’t had my hair done since the week before I last saw him and it’s getting long and unruley but not in the sexy kind of unruley that every woman wants, where you can just toss it around and it always looks amazing. So, how much time should one take to get ready? Why can’t I put out the effort here in the states that I attempt to put out there in Kuwait? Wouldn’t “practice makes perfect” completely make sense in a subject like this? But how much is too much?

I think the Honeymoon, and I mean the whole period that is often referred to collectively as “The Honeymoon Period”, end shortly after touch down in Houston following the actual vacation that is also referred to as The Honeymoon.

Days after being home I wondered if I had made a mistake, if we made a mistake. He was so interested in marrying me within the first days of meeting and this eventual grew to a near standstill – with all the romance neatly packed away like a winter sweater for the appropriate day when you desire wrapping yourself in the warmth and comfort of something so familiar. I asked him if he felt like we made a mistake. He said no. He seemed like he felt like it was the best decision of his life. But I was torn. Something I had wanted to so badly was finally mine and it was hardly sweet, but rather full of bitter distant doubt. I don’t know where the trouble started but I can surely point out the weak joints.

We come from such different backgrounds. We have such different ideas on fairness and politics. We have different ideas on how to love, but not that each of us wants love – we both certainly do want love. But they way we want it is clearly very different. I try to give love in a way I would like to receive it. Yet, my heart is so wounded I always feel like I am holding, my full potential to love, back.

We both had lives before each other. He read about my life, but I have heard about his from the same lips that said vows to me, the same lips that whispered sweet nothings in the ears or mouths of so many women before me. We have fought over this a million times. As a woman, I want to hear that none of that meant anything, that they were just words said to get what was wanted. My husband can’t offer this solace, and yet I so badly want him to. He doesn’t doubt my love for him, only fears my leaving. So, I have fought hard to make sure he didn’t think I would leave. Yet, I knew it wasn’t working for me, but I thought it would be different when he wasn’t pushing me way or pulling me toward him, only to push me away, yet again. Marriage was to be the answer.

We haven’t spent that much time together. We have talked a great deal. But when I read the communication he had with his friends before me, he is a different person. I have shut him down. He doesn’t engage with them as he did before. In part because I see the kind of interactions that occurred to be so far removed from what I consider normal interaction between friends. But these friends are different. There are some that are married but it is a large group of singles that vacation together, visit each other in foreign countries, keep track of each others lives in great detail (and all before Twitter and Facebook). To me it is odd. It is odd because it isn’t like with my friends. My friends are all over the place. Some are finishing their Master’s Degree, one is finishing medical school, some are married, some live in other countries but mostly my friends are deeply connected to one person in their life – their partner. I don’t anyone that has been single as long as my husband and his friends. So, I can’t really understand a situation that appears to me to be group dating without sexual intimacy but they have intimacy that goes beyond a lot of sexual relationships, and it is difficult for me to adjust. And on top of it, his friends are really opinionated (as is he) and it comes off as rude to me, and perhaps this is because of my background and how most people I know are just so grateful they don’t list favorite or acceptable eating locations, but rather go along with what everyone else is doing and somehow they just make it work. I am not saying either of our friends are better than the others. But my social circle is smaller in part due to isolation and also mainly to the fact that when I am in a relationship, I put my focus there.

When I read the exchanges he used to have with people on public forums like blogs, I can’t help but ache a little. He isn’t this person anymore because of me. His friends hate me because I am from outside the circle. I hate them because I don’t feel like they want me to be a part of it. I also don’t trust him and I know this hurts him. I know that he pretty much has an email address for every single person he has ever met, even if for 10 minutes standing in line for a movie or on a dive boat or they sat 5 rows behind him in Freshman Orientation. So, I would imagine the same kind of conversations go on, but just in the form of email and not on Facebook.

We are trying to work on a relationship but we are 10,000 miles apart and everyday myself esteem falls. I am trying to pin point why it has plummeted and today what I can come up with is that being so far apart and me living in the boondocks, I am not around ANYONE. This means there are  no fun conversations with hotel staff on the way to the lobby (or the water cooler or whatever your office situation may be). He works for a huge company and sees and knows a ton of people. I don’t, not because I am not good at meeting people, but there is really no one for me to meet. I go to an office by myself, I sit by myself everyday, I drive the two hours everyday by myself, I come home to be alone and exhausted (most recently anyway). I am tired of faking it. I miss the gym, I miss talking to be able about training programs, or beer, or church, or seeing another persons lips move in real life time with the words they say. I miss yoga and seeing people in coffee shops. I feel a bit like a prisoner in my own hell waiting for the release date, the day my husband leaves his place in the desert and returns to the US. But I fear us being able to make the adjustment to making a live together here work. I fear that I will not feel loved. That I am not capable of feeling loved. That I will be frustrated because we have not had time to get to know each other before we are thrust into a life somewhere together that will mostly like have his friends and family present and not mine. When my friends take vacation, they go with their partner on a mini-moon, but it seems like his friends vacation to see each other. I am not sure I am up for that kind of lifestyle. I want to feel included but I think perhaps it is a bad idea for those that don’t believe in the power of genetics to participate in genetic drift (dating outside the cirle). Is this going to lead to an even worse nightmare? My husband is changing who he is in order to love me – is that fair?

I am off to Kuwait in about 7 days. I hate going because my schedule changes and I leave my dogs, but yet I love going because I love giving to him and seeing him smile and to see his happiness at the end of the day when he sees me. But he is so tired and I have waited all day, it hardly seems fair. Then it all seems over before it really started and I am on a plane home to pick up dogs, grocery shop, and get back to work at a job that I don’t know if I have on a week to week basis. I just keep showing up, like that guy in Office Space – but luckily I get a paycheck, it might never be in a timely manner, but I get one. One more day at the office is one more closer to his being home.

When we first started dating his plan was to be home by now, about 4 months before now. I think it only gets harder, not easier. But he has stayed longer to help me, to help us. Each month longer he stays is a payment on my student loans, and my student loans are no small feat. So, obviously I am entirely indebted to him and fight to accept the distance and the amount of time that he is spending there.

Marriage is not 50/50 or any form of a fraction. It is a fairly complication equation where XX = 100% and XY = 100% and when you try to find the fraction you end up with 1. It takes two people to make one marriage (period) and each person must give their 100%, but sometimes (most of the time), this is very difficult and you wonder when you get to give up. The answer is easy, NEVER.

Women and girls alike have been conditioned to envy female celebrities. We have been conditioned to want to look like them, dress like them, have people lust over us as people lust over them. In the 1996 every woman wanted “Rachel’s hair”, in 1983 they wanted to dress like Madonna, in 1990 it was the thinness of Kate Moss, in 200- something it was hair like Giselle and probably still is, at some point it was lips and breasts like Scarlett Johanssen, and it’s always in to want to look like Angelina Jolie – just ask Megan Fox.

Men have been conditioned to view these women as sex symbols. FMH and Maxium strip them down and display all the goods, sure, there is airbrushing but no man thinks about that when he’s, hhhmmm, “blowing his nose” – no. Rather, I think the question is “why doesn’t my wife look like that, or my girlfriend, or I wonder if I could get her”.

Sex symbols have been around since at least Helen of Troy – hell, she’s still a sex symbol and we’ve never even seen her.

I am a married woman now. The skin is no longer as supple as that of a 2o year old. The breasts aren’t as high as a 16 year old or as firm as a 22 year old. The lines on the face started forming somewhere around 28.

Men couldn’t wait for the olsen twins to reach 18. Women, grown women had to hear men lusting for these 18 year olds. Playboy rarely places a woman over 23 as a centerfold – unless it is a celebrity they have been trying to get pose for like 15 years and then they take them when they are almost 40 – airburshed of course, like all the Playboy models.

What is a REAL woman anymore?

She spends an undisclosed sum on clothing, highlights or all over color depending on shade, she gets Botox and collegen, microdermbrasion and chemical peels, she has an eyebrow lift at 35, gets seaweed wraps to fight cellulite, goes to the gym for two hours everyday and does yoga 4 times a week. She watched what she eats, never gets whole milk at Starbucks unless her friends or around, this way she can say “I just have a fast metabolism” but she would never dream of eating ice cream in front of the boyfriend or husband for fear that he might think she has no self control – so when she complains “I am so FAT” instead of saying “Honey, you are the best looking woman in the entire gym – let’s get pizza tonight” he will say “Honey, if you’d lay off the treats, you’d look and feel better” or “Honey, if you’d run everyday after work like you say you want to, then you’d not be getting that little muffin top”.

We work our asses off and it is only understood that men will size up every other woman out there. That they will fantasize Megan Fox is folding the laundry instead of the wife. They will fantasize about Angelina Jolie and yet, their wife won’t have the same glow when she’s only dragging their 3 kids to the Target.

We will be the body that carries their children but they will still remember the stripper that gave them such a great lapdance that they creamed their jeans when they were 21. Or the random one night hook up that got them off in the front seat of the car. Or the breasts of that 18 year old they were lucky enough to bed when they were 30. When our bodies age and our breasts start to soften and drop – they will look at Cindy Crawford who is now 40 and wonder why at 35 their wife can’t look that good – dang that Randy Gerber sure has it good. And when Cindy Crawford is too old it will be someone else.

We lust over these images of celebrities without their permission. Some approve of course – Sierna Miller certainly knows when her breasts are on display out the hotel window.

As a woman – I am not jealous because I want to be them. I am not jealous because I want to look like them or lead a life like them. I am jealous because we don’t have real women standing up and saying, “I am a mom, I am sexy and my husband is faithful to me – through pregnancy and through aging, he doesn’t lust over other women, he has always praised me for being me.” I don’t need to look like any other woman, but I do have a need to feel sexy and desireable.

I am married. I don’t need to go to a club and have some man flirt with me. Youth gave me cofidence. Running was giving me confidence for a while. But now things are changing. I am married and moving on to the next stages of married life and I feel unattractive and old. I see the photos of Megan Fox and I miss my youth. I miss the luster my hair used to carry and the dewiness of my youthful skin. I am tired all the time. My husband works 10,000 miles from you. I don’t feel lustful eyes on my naked body when I am drying off in the shower. I don’t feel them or the touch of a warm hand on my belly when I am chopping vegetables for dinner. I don’t get a random spanking while pulling vegetables from the garden. I don’t get a morning kiss or to see that twinkle in his eyes that let me know he is only thinking about me.

Rather I am left to think about all the celebrity skin or real woman skin he sees in a day while mine ages months at a time until the next time we shall meet.

How does a real woman capture and hold her husband’s eye? Can men be tamed? Do you look at other women in ways you should be looking at your wife? Do you wonder how she might look at other men?

At some point you toss the shovel and starting planting some worthy of you.

There is only one song per side and you have kept putting the needle back to the start each time the song ends. It plays so often you know all the words. It doesn’t take a full 3 seconds for you to recognize the song on the radio. But you have actually heard it more than one time too many. The words sound like sonic waves harassing your hearing. Your mind grows fuzzy and you can no longer think straight. There are moments when you can’t even see straight. Anger wells inside and it is all you can to keep yourself from covering your ears and screaming while shopping in The Gap when the song starts to play again.

I almost hate the artist all because of one song.

I wished I’d never heard the song. EVER!

It plays in my head at a constant rate, sometimes the speed has been quickened. But it is the same degrading lyrics.

Other women came before me. Other women were lusted after and kissed. Other women were taller, or shorter, or smaller or skinnier or prettier or smarter or interesting or extraordinary. Other women – I am tired of this fucking song and it is beating his ugly rhythm inside my brain. I gnash my teeth like a wild animal at the artist formally known as “my boyfriend” – I throw daggers as if it will send the time wheel in reserve. As if all those words could be sucked right back into his shaved head.

He says he never intended to hurt my feelings but there are ways of saying things and certainly some things should never be said, and if they are (ahhmm, calling someone else extraordinary more than once to me when they are someone of the past) said once, LEARN A LESSON – don’t then repeat it, especially if given a chance to recoup your losses. Feel like repeating it? Might as climb on that wheel of time with your testicles exposed because I am throwing dangers. But I am not very good at hitting where it hurts most – why? Because I know what it feels like.

I will never tell you that any other person in my life has ever been an attention grabber – there very well might have been several. But because I care about you – you won’t even know about them, BECAUSE if they truly mean nothing, then they are just that, NOTHING. I’ve limited my stories to things that won’t hurt feelings, or cause any explaining. You know what you know -and I will always help the cause by talking down those that you know I dated. Surely, some don’t need talked down, they pretty much started at bottom and dug their own hole. Others, well, everyone has a shadow self and I am pretty good at sorting these people out. And one I know and love is still or was still sorting out his secret shadow self before I fell in love.

I wished I could take the record back to the store and exchange it for another record by the same artist. I love the artist – just not the song.

I wished I wouldn’t pay attention to deal.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those kind of people that keep reports on my desks for ages trying to get every last sentence perfectly structured. No – honestly that is a thing of the past. You worry of crap like that and nothing ever gets done. This is not to say that I am not productive. I am, and I turn out a good product. I pay attention where the details matter. My work is neat and orderly – my life is not.

I can have laundry all over the bathroom floor and I will walk over it for days before I decide to clean it up so I can sweep/mop/scrub – because when I go at it, I go all at it. I like to tear everything apart and put it back together. I used to be able to leave days worth the coffee cups at my desk before the mess got to the point where I had to clean the whole desk, organize notes and throw out the paper coffee cups -which I no longer use – before I could direct my attention to the study, and sometimes this was at 2 am!

I am the same with relationships. I can tolerate a lot of clutter before I can’t take it any longer and the longer I look at it/think about it, the worse it gets. It gets so bad that my blood pressure goes up, anxiety wells in the chest and I am ready to burst if I can’t throw it all on the floor and sort through it in order to make rhyme or reason of what is going on.

I also understand I have an insane ability to be unreasonable. However, I also try to treat others as I want to be treated. I don’t say “shut up” to people and I ask that they not say it to me. I was once asked to stop referring to babies as “invasive and parasitic or as a parasite” and I did stop – for about a day. Yep, I learned my lesson when my fingers were slammed in the proverbial door.

I am unreasonable and I am also supersensitive – but these characteristics have formed part of who I am. Sure, just like leaving laundry on the floor of the bathroom for way longer -actually there is no excuse for it to be there at all, except that I live alone and well, the dogs don’t complain – there are some things that have become part of me that I am not comfortable own. I get way too angry when matters of the heart – not just any heart – MY HEART- are concerned.

Take for example, my husband is asking me about sending music in iTunes – he wants to send me a couple of songs. Awww. Yes, I was like a little girl on Christmas, my heart was all pitter patter, but instead of Barbie I was going to get the crooning of a song that made my husband think of me and only me! WRONG! now maybe guys aren’t like this and you will send the same song to every girlfriend you ever had. Women on the other hand try to be creative because we would never like to receive the same pair of earrings you gave your wife, or we’d rather not drive the same car as your ex-girlfriend or we’d rather not have the same swimming suit as the girl you had a crush on last year – and you know what? if you do – DO NOT SAY ANYTHING!!!!  We do not need to know. It will cause pain and frustration for us and HELL for you.

I am way too in tune to things I think others might not be and I am not sure where it comes from but maybe from studying science and learning to pay attention to details, or readying to many detective novels or watching years and year of Murder, She Wrote reruns before going to school. Having this ability to catch details really isn’t helpful to me – except that I remember where others might have left their keys or how they might have filed something – incorrectly because we were talking about another project and it is likely sitting in that folder. Not great examples but bear with me.

So, when the husband was sending me this music he said it says “complete my album?” I didn’t think much of it until I got to work and was going to give the songs a listen. FUCK! why did I not think of this before? Oh, right, because I had just gotten up and was kind of off my rocker and routine this am. “Complete my album”, means that he has sent these song to some other girl, which doesn’t make this girl feel loved.

We want to believe that we are unique – and this may not be true – but we want to believe. It’s like the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus – you want to believe in them, you really do. Someone throws a bend in it at some point and  you start to wonder, you start to doubt, and then you plot to find out. Maybe you stay up all night, or maybe you ask your friends, or nowadays I am guessing you can probably google it, H-E-LL, they both probably have a Wikipedia entry.

I think he would be really peeved if I had some playlist that I loved having sex while listening – and that I have been playing it for people for ages. I would be annoyed for sure!

The difference is that women will make you think everything is unique, but the truth is she might only know how to make one special dinner and she will say you are the first to try it or that you are the first she has made it for – or that she’s never done this or that before – but honestly, in our minds it kind of is the first of whatever it is because – after meeting you, no one else mattered. It is as if all the faces of the past have been washed clean from the chalkboard of time. Love letter? hun – I don’t have any. Why? because I have never loved anyone other than you. Oh, sure, go back 10 years, I probably thought I did, probably went through the motions, but then there was someone else and then there was you! I don’t know if this is unique to women, maybe.

But we can go through excruciating pain in childbirth and swear that we aren’t ever having sex again (i don’t know this from personal experience – but I can look for references if you need them) and then wow, like 9 months later, less for some and longer for others – we forget! and when you ask a woman, she’ll say it hurt, but that she’d remember the pain just that it hurt like nothing else. But clearly she got over it and decided to have sex again and then bam! she’s pregnant with number 2. So, maybe it is just our brain being wired to handle intense pain and then completely forget as if the kid had been brought by Fed-Ex.

I can’t wait until my mind forgets the pain of struggling to prove my uniqueness, my own sexuality, my own place in this world of marriage and relationships. I don’t want to have my husband say “oh, that was the best orgasm ever” – I want him to say “having sex with you is more amazing than life itself” or “you are the most sexy and erotic woman” or “I am so lucky to have you as my wife because you love me like I never knew love could be”….and in some ways I am lucky because he says these things.

But just as I need to train myself to pick up laundry and not be as reactive when he does or says things I would refer to as “stupid shit” I need to train  him how to give me the love I desire.

I am glad that there are no “returns” on marriage but I do wished there was a drive in on love just every once in a while.