Nonsense, Parenting, Youth Exchange

How I ended up spending a whole lot of my summer thinking about sex

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Midlife Sentence | A Lecture on Sex

I should start by letting you know I’m no sex expert. Sex isn’t even really what this is about, but I think a disclaimer is necessary if I’m going to post anything remotely related, considering how much traffic comes my way since I wrote that thing about pineapples––really just speculation on whether our neighbors were swingers (jury is still out on that)––which was picked up by a porn aggregator site that now regularly steers about a third of my blog traffic this way.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one to complain about an audience, ever. But I think whether you’re here for the pseudo-porn or the more regular fare of random, inane stories, it might be good to switch up to higher-brow entertainment once in a while, just sayin’…

Anyway, where was I? …Right. Boffing. Boinking. Bumping Uglies. The Horizontal Greased-Weasel Tango. Or more specifically, straightforward conversations with teenagers on the topic.

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Nonsense, Parenting

Teenagers might one day be the death of me

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stanley_valley copyOur wedding anniversary was Sunday, and Mike and I slept in separate rooms.

It wasn’t like that. He did spend the better part of an hour trying to make a fire for me in a teensy stove, but there wasn’t much for kindling and the wood may have been a little wet. The room would be warm enough anyway once all the girls returned to the cabin.

When I looked up this place online I read about a lodge that sleeps 50 on the shores of Alturas Lake with a view of the Sawtooth Mountains. There would be en-suite bathrooms, linens and towels and hand stitched quilts and a staff to serve meals in a common dining area.

It sounded rather swanky for a labor-day weekend orientation for twenty or so Rotary foreign exchange students, but maybe the intent was to start their year off with a bang.

In retrospect the fact that I thought we were staying in that lodge is a little funny.

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Nonsense

By the way, Namaste

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flagsA little while ago, Mike and I spent the morning with a group of emotional teenagers.

… Sorry, that’s redundant. I meant “more emotional than usual, even given the teen thing.”

We were chaperoning a group of kids on year-long exchanges from all corners of the globe. On a regular basis during the year, these kids would leave their various host homes scattered across Idaho to gather in a central location. They bonded, comparing notes on their new lives in mostly rural places they may previously believed were only contrived as a setting for Napoleon Dynamite.

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Parenting

Cereal and other “First World” grievances

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cerealThere’s no getting around it. There has been a distinct change in tone around here over the last couple of years.

It was bound to happen. Little people get big, and find out the truth:

  • The Tooth Fairy and Santa are myths
  • Mom ceases to be helpful with math along about fifth grade
  • No matter how funny he may be, your parents will never be motivated to find the time to care about what PewDiePie did on Youtube this week.

These are some of the cold, hard facts of life. Hard to deal with all at once, I’m sure. Add puberty to it. And parents who are frequently out of touch, demanding and laugh at their own jokes. It gives a person plenty to complain about. I’m just as sure of that as I am that being the teenage child of a blogger is all kinds of wondrous karma.

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