Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Pass the rolls, and the porn


I don’t remember how the conversation got started, but it was somewhere between passing the rolls and passing the omega-3 infused light margarine. Somehow the subject of soft core porn versus hard core porn was on the table. My mom felt that hard core porn wasn’t really attractive or a turn on. My brother-in-law to be, Anthony, felt that soft core porn was pointless. Tori, my little sister’s friend who’s been living with us for about a year, observed that this conversation would never happen in a million years at her family’s dinner table. My mom’s husband just laughed at the whole thing. It moved on from there to the ever interesting subject of whether or not all guys would universally give themselves oral sex if they were physically capable of doing so. Anthony felt that it would be kind of gross. Everybody else felt that guys will be guys, and they’d totally do it. This channeled us to a more general discussion of fellatio which even my younger sister, Clare, gave some input on.
It’s never a dull moment at our house.
For Anthony’s birthday yesterday we went out to the Olive Garden for dinner. It always amazes me how that restaurant is so big and always mostly full, even on a Monday night. Especially since I don’t think it’s all that good. My mom and her husband came, Clare and Anthony of course, my brother-in-law, Izzet, (my sister Jami is away at Yoga camp in Yogaville, VA), myself, and we even invited Randy (estranged boyfriend who now wants to settle down and be a family). It was one of those dinners where there are 3 or 4 conversations going on at once and never one unifying one that everyone is involved in. But inevitably someone isn’t being talked to. But it was alright. Poor Anthony even had to endure being sung at by a chorus of olive garden staff. I think we ate our weight in breadsticks.
After dinner Randy and I went to the mall to walk around (this is supposed to help bring on labor and get the baby in the right position). We walked at the mall because it was late, but also still really humid and about 90 out. We encountered an entire subculture of mall walkers. I wanted to ask one of the larger groups if we could join in with them. They were older and all kind of egg shaped, wearing brigth white sneakers, pumping their arms and rolling their hips, probably discussing retirement savings plans and golf carts. But they were pretty fast, I think they got a little irritated when they lapped us and had to try to get around us, walking at our leisurely pace – amateurs.
Randy and I made the usual small talk for a while. I know we have serious and unpleasant stuff to discuss, but neither of us is ever ready to be the one to broach the subject, so instead we talk about what’s going on in the family, and at work, and what good restaurants we’ve eaten at lately. Finally I broke the ice and said we should talk about the serious stuff. But that just led to some pouting on his part and some arguing. I came damn close to leaving his butt at the mall with the barracuda mall walkers.
It’s really hard to know if I’m doing the right thing. I can see how the people around me think that starting a relationship back up with him is a bad idea. He hasn’t shown a lot of compatibility with me in the past 2 years, and walking out on the whole pregnancy bit doesn’t score in the plus column either. And ultimately I think I may end up wanting someone I have a little more in common with, who can be the decision maker and who I can learn from, and they can learn from me and we make each other better, and more well rounded. But on the other hand, growing up in a broken home I can also see the value of providing a normal family life and the value of a partner who may not be perfect, cause no one is, but who is at least there and supportive. But there is a whole wide world out there.

Other than that I’ve just been working and gardening. We have serrano peppers and lemon cucumbers and bell peppers now. The tomatoes and tomatillos are starting to ripen, and the corn has tassles. We even have a couple baby watermelons. It’s very exciting. The two sunflowers that survived have reached epic proportions. The larger of the two is gargantuan, like Jack and the bean stalk. It’s taller than me, with leaves bigger than my head and a stalk about 3 inches in diameter. The runner beans are also very good producers, but the damned Japanese beetles are eating all the leaves.
Now that Clare’s friend Tori has actually been at the house for a length of time we’ve also been having rounds of late night card tournaments and cookie baking, which has been really fun.

No comments: