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By Serenity Everton, February 7, 2010 5:04 am

The princess is making Valentines for her classmates at school. She has a bag of chocolate hearts, colored papers, a list of people and she’s set off  making a collection of oddly-shaped little notes with misspellings, math problems and various other decor in pencil and marker.

For each one she is taping one of the chocolate hearts to the cover. Next week, the school district has closed on the 12th and the 15th for President’s Day and an in-service, but never fear.

Her first-grade teacher has planned a big Valentines bash for February 11 and all the children are expected to exchange Valentines with each other. The event will be complete with “teaching centers” run by parents who are expected to do Valentine’s crafts, cooking and reading with them.  I can see this is all meant in good fun and for good times, and for my pinkie-child, it’s like a dream come true.

But.

A little checking has demonstrated conclusively that the other first-grade classrooms are not having Valentine’s Day parties, and the schedule in part was meant to facilitate the absence of such “celebrations”. They are not in school on that day anyway.

The princess is already drawing her own conclusions about the ‘holiday’. The chocolates, marketed to children and parents for Valentine’s treats, have little sayings printed on them in the old-style hard candies all Americans know.

Except they’re not such old-style sayings anymore*.

I read through them with her, and we ended up sorting them into piles.

LOL
Sweet
Be Mine
2 Cute
One & Only
U R Cool
4 Ever
I’m Yours
True Love
Wild 4 U
Hottie

After I had to define the phrases hottie, Wild 4 U and LOL, she looked at me and said quite seriously, “Mama, some of these are not appropriate for school.”

“I know,” I answered. “Would it feel awkward to give a candy to a boy that said on it True Love?”

“Yes!” she said absolutely, then clarified, “Except if it was B—-, because he’s going to marry me. He said so.”

“He did?” I answered, pretending surprise. “Is he back from his trip?”

“Yes!” she returned happily. “He told me today at recess that we’re going to get married when we grow up.”

“It’s good if you love the person you are married to,” I returned. “But what about I’m Yours? Is that going to be appropriate for your classmates?”

“No!” she returned absolutely and hotly.

We ended up separating about half of the candies out as ‘inappropriate’. Even so, she’s still having trouble with who to give the Be Mines and the One & Onlys. Indeed, she’s coming up against the very reason that have caused the other first-grade teachers to avoid Valentine’s Day altogether and celebrate President’s Day instead.

Valentine’s Day should – is – a time to celebrate love with loved ones.

But not everyone has a love, do they? I detested Valentine’s Day as a child for much the same reason, cringing and being so choosy about what valentines I would give to my schoolmates (by expectation, not desire) as to drive my mother crazy. “Just pick one!” she’d say.

I’d read them carefully and say, “I can’t give that to C—!”

Then again, I did feel a lot like the female version of Charlie Brown as a child. The first Valentine’s Day I ever actually celebrated was with Chris.

So this meandering, wandering tirade can be summed up by the following:

1.  Being told I love you by your parents and your siblings and your spouse is fine. Exchanging little special joys is good. Having an excuse to buy chocolate is excellent.

2. Getting and giving inane little cards to your classmates with expressions of life-long devotion on them when you are six is creepy. I say so.

Nevertheless, this is how we’re spending our weekend. Cutting out, writing on, pasting together and decorating pink, red, white and purple hearts. I will be so glad when this holiday is over. Bring on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll take leprechauns any day over this nonsense.

[* The packaging did not list all the sayings on the chocolate hearts, and it was impossible to preview them without opening the bag. I would have picked a different sort of candy if I'd known I would have to tell the princess what hottie means. And she did give one of those away... to someone who reads this blog. If you get it in the mail, smile! ]

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By Serenity Everton, February 5, 2010 5:30 am

We were together on the bed not so long ago, doing what we do very well. Canoodling, I called it once, and Chris laughed at the word but agreed. Sometimes it is foreplay, and sometimes not. It is touching, often naked touching. Sometimes there is spanking.

It’d been about a week, because of one thing and another, and I’d sorely missed his time and attention. In addition to my own woes, I was under a work deadline (finished 2:30 this morning, yay!, waiting for feedback now). And I have a bit of a cold coupled with a nasty cough. Chris has just started another semester of graduate school and the subjects addressed in these courses promise to be of a pertinent and absorbing nature for him. He has a new toy and is busy getting iTunes behaving properly instead of me.

And, he’d been to the gym that evening.

You know, in and of itself, that’s not a problem. Except his particular fitness facility is filled with college co-eds, most of whom have been worshiping at their own altars since puberty and are exceedingly conscious of how they look. Everywhere. I’ve seen them.

So he comes home and tweets this sentence while grilling dinner: “Saw a great pair of shorts at the gym today. Well, wasn’t so much the shorts as what was in the shorts. Or rather partially in the shorts.”

For some reason, it hit me the wrong way, you know? Now, I’m not a jealous person, normally, although I’ve had my moments, and my jealousy tends to focus on things rather than people (i.e. that video game, that volunteer opportunity that takes 40 hrs of your week outside of work, that iTouch you’re playing with when I’m in the room trying to have a conversation with you, etc). And, as Chris pointed out later, I’m generally just as likely to point out that cute bum before he even notices it. Generally.

Continued at The Punishment Book – Listening & Leading (or sometimes, topping from the bottom is okay) … please leave your comments there if you are so inclined. Thanks!

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By Serenity Everton, February 3, 2010 5:00 am

This is but one example of what my daughter did this recent weekend. While I cleaned bathrooms, vacuumed and rearranged furniture, she did as she usually does during such bouts.

She took herself off to her room, closed the door (a rarity), and occupied herself by playing Bendaroos.

She occupied herself by creating masterpieces like this one. She didn’t call it art. No, when I asked her about this poor girl, she shrugged dismissively and said, “Oh, I tied her up like the others.”

Like the others?

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By Serenity Everton, February 1, 2010 5:00 am

There has been much buzz lately over a Menifee Unified School district parent, who called her child’s elementary school principal to complain about the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

She said the definition of oral sex was “too explicit.”

Now, parts of Riverside County are quite conservative. And, to be truthful, we are talking about elementary students. Fourth and fifth grade elementary students. Students who have been receiving state-sponsored “age-appropriate” sex education for at least 2 years, possibly three, from this same school.

I can’t speak for those who read this little ramble, but I learned to use the dictionary (and a lot about the alphabet) by looking up words I wouldn’t ask my mother to define. In fact, I still have my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary – a Christmas gift from said parent in the fifth grade. I kept it because I had the habit of marking the entries I looked up.

Let’s see… a brief sampling of marked entries…

anal
anus
asinine
ass
chemise
copulation
corset
cunnilingus
fallopian tube
fellatio
fuck
heterosexual
homophobia
homosexual
ovarian
ovary
panties
panty
penile
penis
prostitute
prostitution
queer
rape
ream
rectal
rectum
sex
sexual
sexuality
sexy
slut
slutty
spank
spanking
stockings
tan (as in “tan his hide”)
thrashing
underwear
uterine
uterus
vagina
vestal
virgin
virginal
wanton
whore

Oddly enough, I never looked up lesbian. I don’t think I knew or ever heard the word until I was in college. Still, you get the idea. I didn’t want it to become my mother’s spelling handbook. So I kept it, took it to college, moved it to California.

There is a lot of outrage about this current brouhaha, much of it due to premature “reporting” (blogging, buzzing, twittering, digging, etc) on the Internet. For example, this article at CarnalNation was written before the school board reviewed and returned the dictionaries to the classroom. It was also not updated, so the comments include a lot of ranting about the district for succumbing to the complaints of one vocal overreacting parent.

In a calm attempt to give said parent the benefit of doubt, perhaps it did not occur to her that someone gave said child the idea to look up “oral sex” in the first place. Who was that? If it was another child, perhaps it is time for some good old frank discussion about how the body works and what makes it happy. If it was not another child, perhaps she ought to be pursuing that route instead, if she is so worried about what her children are learning.

You see, every fifth-grader I’ve ever met – even when I was a fourth-grader – had a fascinated interest in sex and everything to do with it, even if they don’t talk about it with their grandparents or public officials. My twin cousins – boy and girl – at age 11 stole their parents’ condom supply from the master bedroom, took said condoms to another aunt’s wedding, blew them up, and tied them to the happy couple’s car. Their 7th grade sister drew happy smiles on them with a Sharpie while my brother laughed hysterically and took secret pictures. (Their mom and dad found out who did it when they went to get a condom and they were missing.)

So what did happen? The school board ordered the books sent back to the classroom after a board-approved committee (off-site) looked at them and deemed them age-appropriate. This is the process put into place to review instructional materials to which parents object, and it worked perfectly. Simply put, everyone (except the parent) concluded that if you take the dictionary off the shelves, what’s next? The School Board president called it “absurd.”

They did permit parents to opt out of having the book on their child’s desk, and those children now have a happy copy of McGraw-Hill’s dictionary, which also contains definitions of sexual words (although shorter and apparently less explicit). I’m willing to bet not very many parents made that change.

Or maybe they did. It is Riverside County, after all.

Somebody remind me to buy the princess a copy of Merriam-Webster in a few years, please?

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By Serenity Everton, January 29, 2010 1:16 pm

I should write about spanking. I should.

Except when I think about it, then I think about my rear end. And then I remember the dull knife that is being slowly twisted through my uterus, inexorably tugging my ovaries out of place and down into that deep pit of agony and despair.

I hurt a lot when the princess was born. For awhile – for a long time. But I had nice, happy, painkilling drugs then too.

Seriously, what’s with the cramps? I’ve had some, but not this bad for many months, until yesterday. Then – promptly twenty minutes after a negative pregnancy test* – they started, and progressively got worse over the day.

By last night, I could barely function. My body was shutting down, and I really did feel somewhat numb. I have a bit of a cold on top of everything else, so when I dropped my flannel pajama pants and stood me and my blue and white polka-dotted panties in the corner, I just prayed fervently he wouldn’t leave me there shivering for very long.

He’d seen me struggling already, of course. He’d done the dishes. He’d set the table. He’d let the dog outside and made sure she came back in. He’d listened as the princess read to me and perhaps heard her say, pity in her voice, that Mama did not have to read. “I’m tired, too, Mama,” she said, pulling the blanket around her and rolling over into her pillow.

So there I was in the corner, thinking of my open laptop upstairs and literally trying not to fall asleep standing up when he said, “That’s enough.” I turned around, he smiled at me and said, “Now, go to bed.”

And all I could think was…thank you.

Sometimes simple instructions are best. He could have kept me up to help – he had to wait up for a very-late conference call for work. He could have let me go upstairs, where I would have stared blindly at SimCity for an hour and nodded off at the keyboard. He could have made me stand there. He could have waited to see if I had gone to get in my bed of my own free will, which I might have done – but I also would have turned on the television.

So I looked at him and said, probably looking as pathetic as I felt, “I need Daddy.”

He held out his arms, held me, and sending me to bed became putting me to bed.

It is a very good bed.

——–
[* Yes, I'm on the Pill to regulate my progesterone production. But it was Day 5 of that week, which is about 3 days late. I didn't want to buy another month's worth if by some miracle I got pregnant on the Pill. But, as I said to Chris, Oh the irony of it! Going on the Pill to have a maybe-pregnancy!]

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By Serenity Everton, January 27, 2010 12:48 pm

I was gone for four days. And yet, less than 2 hours after he got home from work Tuesday and I had a welcome home hug, there I was.

Standing in the corner, bare-bottomed.

Again.

I will say, though, that absence makes (at least) the cock grow fond. Cornertime did not, as per our normal custom, turn into spanking time. Ah, no. No, his mind and hands were otherwise occupied, at least until I stopped touching him. Then, and only then, did he flip me over on the bed and smack my backside until he couldn’t wait any longer.

I don’t like being away from Chris. It somehow seems wrong, especially when it is me going away instead of him. I have this odd feeling of desertion, as if I have left him to fend for himself – as if I have prioritized my own self over his. And yet undoubtedly he needs his own soul-time away from me and the exuberant princess. And she needs family time, with her cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles. The princess and I had many good reasons to go for the weekend, and the reasons to stay home were mostly the ones that link my heart to Chris.

So yes, I went to bed willingly. And stayed in bed after he left it, wishing he was still holding me.

If that sounds pathetic and dependent, so be it. I’ll accept cornertime if I must, if it means I get him.