Are BJs a Cure-All?

Things have been heating up around my house lately, and for once I'm not talking about in the bedroom. No, I'm in hot water with my husband for crossing the overshare line with my candid posts about our sex life and refusing to end each one by telling you how well-endowed he is. That must mean it's time for me to address the relationship side of this blog about sex and relationships after kids.

A couple days ago an obnoxious and juvenile post from a mommy blogger I follow arrived in my inbox. I won't insult your intelligence by linking to it, but the gist was that women bitch about their husbands too much. We need to stop being nagging harpies and give our men more blow jobs. Did you know that blow jobs are a magical panacea? What a novel idea. I think every 17 year old boy on the face of the planet has that in his arsenal. After I threw up a little in my mouth, I wondered how many blow jobs it would take to restore my thyroid to working order. How many to cure the post-partum depression a couple of my friends suffered from?

Can blow jobs keep my house clean? Hm...

I think you get my point. Sex and oral are amazing gifts two people can share; they certainly can elevate one's mood and smooth over little irritations. I can get behind the idea of not sweating the small stuff, but when's the last time an argument about the dishes was actually about the dishes?

When there are other tensions in a relationship just closing your eyes and thinking of England isn't going to fix anything. Suggesting that keeping your husband happy by putting out is going to solve anything for you sounds like this: "My shoes are too tight so I'm going to buy my husband a bigger pair." "Oh, you have cancer? Well I'll just get radiation and you'll be cured in no time." See? Crazy.

Everyone who is committed to making a relationship last knows that marriage takes hard work. During a difficult time in my marriage I discovered that I didn't really know what that meant. What exactly does that "work" look like? I didn't feel like I was doing anything differently, but my husband and I weren't connecting and resentment and anger were building up.

We went to counseling and were assigned a concrete task to complete. Each of you writes out a schedule of the weekend in one-hour increments, filling in all the things you have to do, as well as the things you want to do. We each did one in Google Docs and then shared with one another. Then you make any necessary adjustments in order to balance the things you have to do with the things you want to do individually, just the two of you, and with the kids. This seemed silly and too simple to change anything, but it really did help by getting us to work toward a common goal that didn't involve our kids. Over the course of doing that exercise every week, we learned that our communication skills were a little rusty and that most of the discord in our marriage came from feeling off-kilter from a lack of balance. In my limited experience, both are common difficulties for couples. We still do a weekend schedule when it starts to feel chaotic and like we aren't getting enough quality time together--a lack of balance between what we want to do and what we have to do.

Oh yes we did schedule sex.
It was probably more like 6:00-6:11 am

Problems in a relationship are best solved out of the bedroom, in my opinion, and the sooner the better so you can get back to the awesome bedroom stuff with an open and trusting heart. The weekend schedule is just one example of a way to work out difficulties without it feeling like you're doing a bunch of unpleasant work.

So, how do you and your partner keep your relationship healthy? Lay it on me!

Have a sexy weekend!

Sexy Reads That Are Not Fifty Shades of Grey

Hipster Kitty read erotica before it was cool.

Reading something sexy has helped me out of a dry spell more than once. You know that old saw about the brain being the most important sex organ? Well, I guess it's true because there have been many times at the end of a long day that I'm brain-dead and suffering from the over-touching of my wonderful children and the last thing I can possibly consider is having sex. 


Then I read something sexy and, though I haven't slept or spent a week at a luxury spa where no one touches me unless I pay a ridiculous amount of money, voila! My brain has been reset and sex is suddenly more than a possibility. It's happening.

I'm excited about this post because I get to do something I've never done before. I get to say that I did something before it was cool.

Romance literature has been a part of my personal library since I was in middle school. I devoured the Sweet Valley High series because it felt so delicious to read books that were on the Black List for book reports at school. If teachers don't allow it and my mom thinks it's trashy, it must be good, sez PreTeen Me.

Some time in 7th or 8th grade, my family took a trip to Florida to visit my great aunt Margaret. She was one of those beautiful grande dames who took hours to "put on her face" each morning before we could leave the house to actually do anything. Obviously I poked around in all her drawers and closets during the wait. I struck gold one morning when I pulled down a box overflowing with romance novels. I opened up the first, a western, read a few pages and was hooked. From then on, I turned to Romance Lit when I needed a light read; it worked like a palate cleanser from the books I read for school.

When I first heard all the orgasmic rapture over Fifty Shades of Grey, I went on amazon to read the reviews. The critical reviews convinced me to skip it, or wait till the Kindle price dropped below $2.00. Plus, there's something really condescending about the phrase "Mommy Porn," which is how I always heard it described. Then I read this review from Jen at People I Want to Punch in the Throat (Check out her blog. She's hilarious). Twilight FanFic? So not interested. Tampons? Even less. Interior monologue with Inner Goddess? Oh, hell no. But, this silly book is apparently causing many women to reignite the bedroom flames with their husbands or significant others, which is a good thing.

My point in dismissing Fifty Shades of Grey is that Romance/Erotica/Sexy reads have always been out there. Check out the Song of Songs, for pete's sake:

I went down into the garden of nuts

to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded. And if you look around a little, you might find prose that is a little less purple than what you find in Fifty Shades. Check out 50 Shades of Suck for excerpts. I can assure you skeptics out there that Romance Fiction has evolved since the bodice-ripping days of sex scenes that read a little too much like rape scenes (but there is the BDSM sub-genre if you're into that). Now, most Romance Fiction could appropriately fall under a bigger "Women's Fiction" umbrella. I don't think there's any shame in reading about hot people having toe-curling sex or people whose relationship problems can be solved in 300 pages. It's escapism at its finest, and it's largely written by women, for women. Without further ado, here are places you can look for sexy reads that are generally better than Fifty Shades of Grey: 1. See if your area has a Romance Writers of America chapter. Most chapters maintain websites with suggested reading lists and features on chapter members who are published authors. You can also get similar information from the RWA website above. 2. Ask a librarian. Romance is well represented on the shelves of America's libraries, which means someone is curating that collection. Ask for her at the desk. Also check out your local library's website. It might have a "Staff Suggests" section. 3. Check out Ellora's Cave, a publisher of Romance Fiction, though here's a warning that the website is not well-designed. "Naughty Nooners" are very short stories (you can read them on your lunch break, hence the name) that are also very inexpensive, or free. You can download them to read on your eReader or computer. Ellora's Cave has three imprints, Romantica: Erotic Romance; Exotika: Erotic Fiction; and Blush: Mainstream Romance. Be sure to check the reviews because sometimes you get what you pay for. 4. Literotica. Free erotic fiction. 5. Browse the Erotica section on amazon.com In general, Romance is broken down into many, many sub-genres and levels of "heat" so it's pretty easy to find a sexy read that you'll be comfortable enjoying. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the Comments. Now, go forth and make those "vines flourish"!

From 50 Shades of Suck

Lower Your Standards

We aren't fancy romance-y people.

One thing that has really facilitated our having sex more often is setting the bar ridiculously low for our sexcapades. While we were never the sort of people who felt like we were slumming if we weren't doing it on a bearskin rug in front of the fire with a cut crystal glass of champagne in one hand and caviar on toast points in the other, we did have our version of an ideal setting. Mostly, we wanted the time to do what we pleased without fear of interruption, and to break out the sex furniture every once in a while. (Remember this? That right there is why there will never been any photographic evidence of what goes on in my bedroom.)

It took a while to come out of Sex Drought I for the simple reason that we couldn't figure out when to have sex. We had a lot of excuses: we were too tired at night, which was our familiar time, and I wasn't usually in the mood upon first waking. Once our son could get out of his bed, we were afraid he'd walk in because the bedroom door at our old house didn't close all the way, much less lock. It would be weird to have sex in the middle of the day when the kid was taking a nap, blah blah blah.

After we added a second kid to the mix, necessity forced us to drop all our inhibitions, get out of our comfort zone, and just do it. Also, we bought a house with locking doors.

Our older son turned 3 about a month ago and we have never had sex while he was awake. The other day changed all that. We woke up on Saturday morning, both of us ready to go, when at 6:10 our 3 year old alarm clock peeked his adorable head around the door. He always wins the race to morning, and I draw the line at setting an alarm for 5:30 on a Saturday just to beat him to it and have some alone time with my husband.

As the boys went downstairs to start coffee and breakfast, I asked my husband, with a significant glance, to wake me up in a bit. A while later I heard my son coming up the stairs, which was seriously awkward because I had been this close to just taking care of business myself. Turns out my husband, who came upstairs with our son to deliver my coffee, thought I really just wanted more sleep. I can't say the man doesn't know me well. Once we straightened that out, he plunked the kid in front of Sesame Street with his cereal and raced back upstairs.

So, yada yada yada, we had a fun morning and were happy all day. Baby steps!

A door that locks has eliminated one scenario
 in which we have to see this face.