Ma Bell Hates Meh

So ah hates her back.

I got home after having been a way a week to find my phone service dead. No dial tone, no DSL, nada. Calls to AT&T on my cell established that 1) they hadn't disconnected me due to billing issues or anything 2) there were no widespread outages in my area 3) they had no idea what the problem was. So, they tell me they're sending out a service guy sometime today to look into it. We shall see.

She Pwned Teh Face

I stayed up a couple hours later then normal last nice, 'cause Bell offered to run orctacles through RFK so he could finish a quest, and that was when she was available. <3 Bell. Figured I'd just stay in bed a little later this morning to make up for it. Unfortunately, I forgot to explain this to the dog.

5 am the Buffy torpedo slams into my face with maximum licking action. YOU MUST BE BATHED! she announced, and proceeded to lick my cheeks, nose, eyebrows, mouth-- BLURGH!

So I got up, took her for a walk, and then did some dailies.

Football, And A Moment Of Closeness

Brett invited me over to the house to watch a football game yesterday. Since she has the 46" hi-def and I have ... umm ... my cell phone? if I wanna pay for it? I took her up on it. It was a nice, relaxing afternoon. She fixed some nachos, we had a beer or two, we put our feet up and watched the Patriots show that the Jets can't beat them, even with Brett Favre and no Tom Brady. Oh well.

After the game, she needed to go meet someone for a while. She asked if I wanted to stay and watch the Steelers play the night game, but I said no, I'd rather leave as planned, while things were going well. She understood that. So we hugged, and kissed, and kissed more, and caressed, and ...

"I want you" she whispered. I can't remember the last time she said anything like that to me. But she had to go, and saying sneaking off to the bedroom for a quickie when the kid would've known exactly what we were up to just wasn't something I felt comfortable with. So we left it at that, and said goodbye, and went our separate ways.

I don't know if that moment will come again for months, if ever. And part of me regrets not taking her hand and leading her into the bedroom, regardless of the circumstances. But mostly right now I'm just enjoying knowing that, despite what's happened, we can both still feel that desire for each other.

I Can Haz Hurricane?

We're kinda weird here in central Texas in that we want hurricanes to hit us. Hurricanes mean rain to refill the lakes and aquifers after a hot, dry summer. Yeah, they can do some wind damage too, but we're far enough inland that the winds usually have dropped a fair amount by the time they get here.

So far this summer, three different hurricanes have made landfall on or near Texas, and we haven't gotten diddly rain from any of them. Last night Ike came ashore near Houston, and we're supposed to get some rain out of this one. Right now, though, we're just getting a strong breeze, and looking at the weather sites I'm not at all sure that this one won't miss us too.

Phooey.

Updates

Took Buffy to the vet this morning. He took out her stitches, and said that her range of motion in the borked leg looks good. However, gotta keep the locked in a crate except when on a leash treatment going another couple weeks. She's not gonna like that...

Also, several crates of fruit bars are being airlifted in tonight from the grocery store down the street, narrowly avoiding a popsicle catastrophe of epic proportions.

/cry

I'm out of Dreyer's Fruit Bars.

/despair

New Rule

Buffy's leg appears to be healing, but it's a slow process. I'm tired of having to come home at lunch every day to walk her. I'm tired of having to force her to swallow jagnormous fish oil pills every evening. And she's tired of being locked in a cage all day and not allowed to run around and jump on the bed and all that.

Taylor broke her leg last February. Brett broke her foot in March. and Now Buffy. So, new rule. Nobody in my life is allowed to break their leg without they get permission from everyone else first.

So there.

Sex Ed

Brett and I were talking the other day, and we agreed that being in 6th grade means it's time for more thorough talks with Taylor about sex. Not the "where do babies come from" talk - we've covered that long time ago, and she's got a pretty good handle on at leasts the basics of biology, anatomy, and reproduction. Plan to go into some more detail, but that won't be a big deal. Also want to cover stuff like birth control, relationships, why people have sex, and why they don't. I'm a believer in giving kids lots of information, so they can at least have a chance to know what they're doing, and letting them know that you see that you're comfortable talking about it - that you see it as a part of life & not something to be embarrassed about.

And for the most part, I'm pretty comfortable with this. It's how I was raised, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I've never believed that teaching kids about sex encourages them to have sex, any more than wearing seatbelts encourages people to drive into brick walls. I also would just as soon she not "save herself for marriage." From personal experience, I know that two virgins having sex can be awkward, clumsy, and unsatisfying. I want her to enjoy her wedding night, ya know? So, at some point, she's going to make some choices, and I want her to be ready to make good ones. And I want her to be comfortable getting answers to any questions she has - whether from me, her mother, or books - not rely on friends who may or may not know what they're talking about.

For the most part, I think Brett and I can share this job. We pretty much see eye-to-eye on a lot of this. There are a couple of areas where I'm pretty ignorant, though, and probably would muck things up if I talked to Taylor about them. One obvious one is menstruation. The fact that I'm okay buying tampons at the grocery store hardly is sufficient qualification. I'd do my best if I had to, but I think it's okay to let her mother handle this subject.

One that's not so obvious is masturbation. Now, for a boy this would be pretty easy - the mechanics are straightforward, and mostly you just need to remind them to stop from time to time. But for a girl? I know it's more complex, not just the act itself but the whole significance of it. And I know it's different from person to person. And that's about as much as I know. And I don't think it's something I can leave to Brett. She told me early in our marriage that she'd tried it one time as a teen, didn't get much out of it, and never masturbated again. I can't help but think that masturbation is part of a healthy sex life, and Taylor's going more information than either of us can give her. But, I'm flying blind here - maybe it's not so big a deal as I'm making it. Tried looking on Amazon for a book that might help with this, but so far all I've found is sex ed primers and softcore porn, neither of which is any help. Bleh. Gotta keep looking, I guess.

Cooking Tip

When cracking eggs and you suddenly realize that your brain has been somewhere else and you are a fraction of a second from dumping the contents down the garbage disposal....

Just write the dang egg off. Do NOT try to change course in mid-dump and swing the egg around to over the mixing bowl which is on the opposite side of the kitchen. Is a bad, bad idea.