Is being married bad for your sexual health?

I've started doing research on sexuality and middle age. Apparently, living with a sexual partner, a husband for example, may not be so good for your sex life. This conclusion summary is from "The sexuality of middle-aged women with a sexual partner: a population-based study" and was published in the Jul-Aug 2008 issue of Menopause.

CONCLUSIONS: In this cohort, the sexuality of women in midlife was negatively associated with the factors of living with a sexual partner, being in the menopausal transition or postmenopausal, and being hypertensive. Therefore, greater attention should be paid to identifying these factors, and measures should be adopted to minimize their repercussions on the sexuality of middle-aged women.

Read the full abstract here.

I think this is a reflection of how difficult it is to maintain erotic tension with anyone you share a bathroom with.

Getting quality sex out of long term relationships

We all wear many hats for our partners. We are coaches. Cheerleaders. Mothers, fathers, sisters, lovers, cooks, chefs, and pissed off customers. We are, especially in very strong relationships, each other's everything. We make love. We make babies. We cry after climaxing. And sometimes, maybe even more often than an enlightened post post post feminist may like to admit, we just want to get laid.

Why is booty call sex so much hotter than sex with your husband? Why is it hard to get into the Hot Zone with someone you love, adore, worship, respect, and want to fuck? In my last post, I suggest that it is because hot sex does not have a known outcome. If you know you are getting laid, all the fun runs out. Solution: the don't-plan-for-sex method. In this post I suggest that hot sex requires situational support. Solution: the set-a-date-to-get-freaky method.

About 80% of the conversations I have with my husband are about non-sex stuff. Kids, house, money, personal growth. Blah blah blah. The 20% that is left over goes to sex. We both think about sex a lot more than we communicate sexiness to one another. Or at least I think about it more than I share with him, because well over 50% of my conversations with my girlfriends are about sex and sexuality. A booty call (remember?) was all about the sex. There was no mortgage, no kids, no wasps nest to knock off the gutter. It was just you and him and the lust.

Amazingly, once we have a freaky night on the books, the percentage of sex talk goes up. Way up. The date creates a frame on which to hang sexy communication, and sexy communication is powerful situational support for hot sex. That little "I'm thinking of you" email turns into something a shade more intense. Words like "love" and "appreciate" are replaced with words like "bend" and "slick." I do this online, over the phone, email, text, etc. In person, I may hint at it, but I cannot maintain Sex Goddess status while scooping cat puke or through night time parenting. I don't try. Booty call me is strictly virtual until the actual night in question.

On freaky night, I like to get ready alone and meet somewhere. We all know how to make that transformation, from Madonna to Whore, and the reason we don't do it very often is because it is labor intensive and can only be maintained for a few hours. With freaky night, you know just when to let her out. The best part about freaky night is all the mental foreplay. Not so much what your partner is saying to you, but more about how you feel about yourself. When I get into that zone, I am thinking hot thoughts. I am sending messages with hot subtext. I feel hot. And isn't that the point?

Busted for lap dancing

I've have many female clients whose primary issue is inability to climax, even during masturbation. All of them tell me, I'm not always in the mood when I have the time for sex. I call this the sexy-on-demand myth, which states that feeling hot is completely under our control. Turn it (or me) on, and then turn it off when you're finished. The truth is that we are more like leaky faucets, which have inexplicable and unpredictable surges of pressure that result in uncontrolled gushes now and again.

I shared a delicious, fully clothed moment with my husband this weekend. This moment was interrupted when my teenage daughter pointed out that the location of said fully clothed moment was in a direct line of sight to the dinning room table. I looked up from my lap dance and was met by the suspicious gaze of six children. I actually blushed. I felt like a teen, busted making out on the couch. While the dance ended, the tension it created did not. Which brings me to the dot I am connecting to.

Sex, for people who live with young children and teens, is generally planned. This is because life is too complicated not to plan it. It can't be too late, because everyone is up early for work. And it can't be too early because then the kids will hear. And it can't be tonight, even though we planned for it and I'm about ready to pop, because one of the kids is sick. We're left with the second Friday of every month. Until that second Friday arrives, we're not even thinking about sex. We're arranging play dates and carpools and field trips and swimming lessons. About 30 minutes before show time, we're thinking, I'm sure I'll be up to it after I take a shower.

Married-with-children-sex is also planned in the sense that everyone already knows the ending to the movie. Ready, set, CLIMAX. Are you feeling it? No? Me, neither. I've spent a lot of life energy planning for perfect sex, and what I've learned is that perfect sex is not planned. Perfect sex just happens, just flows seamlessly from one pleasurable experience to another, without expectation, until both parties are ready for a nap. The effortless experience of pleasure is a defining characteristic of peak sexual experiences.

So while I plan for date night, plan for solo vacations, plan to text and flirt and otherwise make my husband feel like he is my own personal Adonis, I do not plan on sex. I clear space for it, I put on perfume, I go out for dinner and drinks. But am I getting laid? Only the gods know, and I like it like that.

The blessing of traveling and hosting

We have a regular stream of visitors to the Ship. More come in the summer. For a brief moment before every visit, I have thoughts like, "I should clean up. I wish the siding was finished, the garden had something growing in it besides wildflowers, and that there was not a bug carcass right at the front door threshold. If this were the Middle Ages, I would be one of the dead. Did I take a shower today? Do the children look too thin?" Then I spend an hour contemplating these important questions and discover that my guests have arrived while I am in the shower or taking a nap on the porch. (Thank you so much Mark, we are loving the porch!)

People who work in teams or units with several lateral counterparts get to see how other people would perform similar tasks. But mostly, I work with my kids. And while I get to witness them being kids, a lot, I don't get nearly as much time watching other mothers mother. Witnessing my dad be an adult with no children around is like visiting another planet. I imagine that others visiting my life, in my earthship, with my hairy pits and muddled relationship with time/space, must also feel that they've just stepped off the transporter pad. Which, I think, is a good thing.

It is important for people to see one other people's real lives. Not the FaceBook world where we can buy one another drinks without getting drunk or hug one another without ever making eye contact. And not the media world where everyone is beautifully polished or beautifully tragic or beautifully green. But the real world. Blood, shit, tears, and laundry on the couch. Sometimes for a week at a time. To all my co-workers out there: I see you and I love your laundry pile.

Gratitude to all the guests and hosts who have helped teach me that my life's imperfections are what make it divine.

Suffolk, VA shallow well water quality report

We participated in a water testing program with the cooperative extension a while back. I've been cleaning out my desk and found it. You can click on the image for a larger version, or click here to download the PDF version.

We have a standard shallow well. The aquifer that provides our water is the same aquifer that pretty much anyone in the 23434 zip code will access if they have a shallow well. Deep wells use a different aquifer, so these results would not be helpful to people with deep wells.

Our water is great with the exception of pH. Our pH is 6.2. Very acidic. Even before we got these tests, we knew our water was acidic. We've burst not one but TWO hot water heaters due to pin-hole leaks. And our teeth ache in the summer when we drink a lot. We ordered this acid neutralizer to deal with the issue.

Earthship power consumption May 2009: 540 kWh

Our monthly average kWh use since May 2006 is 1165.

The 12 month average is 879 kWh, and I feel we've reached our consumption goal. This is the last post I'm doing on our electrical consumption, but I will continue to collect data and keep this chart current, indefinitely.

For more on the house, check out the Suffolk Earthship Eco-Home Project.

Earthship grey water cell trouble shooting

We plan(ed?) to dig out the planter to day. The goal is to seal it from the top with screen, to discover if the black bugs are coming out from the top. We are trying to eliminate one variable at a time until we get rid of the bugs. There is also the possibility that:

• the bugs are flying into the house by coming up the pipes that drain into the planter.
• for an unknown reason water from outside is flooding into our green house via ground seepage.
• the bugs are living on the water than condenses under the granite slabs covering the planter.
• the pipe that drains into the planter is too low, and so the planter overflows around that juncture.
• that covering the planter with granite significantly reduced its transpiration rate.

It is raining today, though, so we may not actually get passed the possibilities and into any work today.

Learn more about earthship living at the Suffolk, VA Earthship Eco-Home Project.

The good news is they don't bite: tiny bugs attack from earthship planter

We're not exactly sure what bugs these are, so we call them walla-walla bugs. They like water.

They live in our greywater planter and one hypothesis is that they come up through the rock (or the pipes) and then seek out anyplace in the house that has moisture. Favorite hang outs include our shower, the kids bathtub, and the light fixtures above the sink.

Yellow fly paper is catching a lot of them, but they just keep coming. And coming. And coming.

I've covered the bulk of the planter with plastic in an effort to keep them trapped there. This has not worked. Another hypothesis is that they are living in the water that condenses under pieces of granite that cover the planter dirt. The granite is there to keep the cats from peeing in the planter. Of the two, I greatly prefer the bugs to the smell of cat piss. But my first choice would be to have neither.

To deal with this we are digging the planter down to grade level and paving it with brick over screening and sand, effectively sealing it up. If the bugs still come when that is done, we'll add check valves to the pipes that drain into the planter.

Learn more about earthship living at the Suffolk, VA Earthship Eco-Home Project.