The Gurly Life

Time for another workshop

A couple of years ago I took two tremendously helpful workshops by PAX Programs. At the time, I took their Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women workshop, and their Celebrating Men & Sex workshop. Both were extremely useful and revealing. Lots of "Oh! I get it now!" moments. Lots. I don't pretend for a moment to fully understand men, but I am not as lost as I once was.

PAX offers a couple more programs. One is what they affectionately call the Queen Course. The final course, and the one I'm told is absolutely the most useful of all is Celebrating Men & Marriage. I will be taking that one, too. It is time for more clarity. Landmark Education got me a good deal of the way to where I need to be in terms of relationships and men, but not all the way. And as you know, doing more of the same thing expecting a different result is for the birds.

So now that I am clear that I need more clarity (sometimes you don't see the fog for the trees, to butcher a hackneyed metaphor), I am interested in these two courses. So instead of taking a Hawaii vacation, I will do these workshops and take little trips to visit friends that I do not see nearly often enough. That means you, Deirdre and Travelvixen. I'm not really in the mood for a vacation, anyway.

I will be taking the Queen course the weekend of May 14, by the way, which sadly means I will miss the artichoke festival in Castroville (thistle be fun!).

Some stupid thoughts

As I research the American with Disabilities Act for a work assignment, I discover that (a) driving is not considered a major life activity but (b) sex is considered a major life activity.

I agree that sex is a major life activity, but disagree about the driving. Sadly, if I had to give up sex or driving, I would give up sex. Remember now, I live in Los Angeles. I prefer sex to driving, but I can go places with my car, like my job, to get food, or to purchase kitty litter. And I drive a heck of a lot more than I have sex. Waaaayyy more than I have sex. Sigh.

So I can't say I'm entirely in agreement with the federal courts on this one.

A weekend of ups and downs

Down mostly being that I have a cold.

On Friday afternoon, around 5pm, I got a terrible sinus headache and had to stop working. I was done for for the rest of the night, and I'm not ashamed to say I had to take a lot of sinus stuff and ibuprofen to wrassle the sucker down. Of course, I was completely wiped out.

For some reason, I've been waking up at 4am every morning for several weeks. A few times I woke up from icky dreams, a couple of times I woke up because Maliboo Kitty was vomiting. As most pet owners know, the sound of a pet vomiting will wake you up, much like I think the sound of your baby crying will wake you up. Not that I'm comparing pets to babies, though to some they are just as good or better than babies, but you know what I mean. Unfortunately, 4am is usually right at that part of the sleep cycle where I wake up and then I'M AWAKE! It then takes me a couple of hours to fall back asleep, at which point my alarm goes off. So, since I can't seem to not wake up at 4am, I'm working on falling back asleep right away. Ujai breath helps, in case you're wondering.

Saturday morning I of course woke up at 4am. I dozed a bit but eventually I got up. I spent the morning with a good friend, and it was great to see him, but things were weird and I was all, what's going on? I thought it had been me because I'd taken all that sinus stuff, and sometimes it affects me a little bit. By the time I got home around lunch, I was starting to feel sick from my cold. Later he sent me a text, and it turns out he was coming down with something right as we were hanging out, too. What are the odds of that? Apparently, pretty good.

Early afternoon rolls around, and I have the classic symptoms: Fatigue, a little soreness, headache, and my neck hurt (not my throat, my neck. I know - what?!). I flopped around all afternoon, and had to cancel going to a good friend's birthday party. I moaned a bit. I went to sleep early. I woke up at 4am, but this time fortunately I went back to sleep quickly.

Today I felt better. Dinner plans with Willow and Adam got canceled however, so that they might have decent odds of not getting sick for a jaunt they have planned for next weekend. Now my mom and I will have to eat all that carrot cake with whipped cream all by ourselves. How ever shall we manage?

This afternoon, I felt well enough to take a yoga class taught by David Swenson. Not to be confused with David Swensen, who happens to be the Chief Investment Officer at Yale. Amazing what kind of crap one learns by misspelling something on Google! Anywayyy... David Swenson is a famous Ashtanga yogi, and he has a very helpful illustrated book that walks you through the entire primary and intermediate series of Ashtanga yoga. This weekend, he was teaching a workshop. I had signed up for two classes, one yesterday and one today, but I was feeling too shitty yesterday to go.

Today, however, I didn't care what, I went. I probably infected a couple of people, but it was worth it and my apologies to those lovely people. Today's class was focused on inversions and back bends. We began with a Surya Namaskaras (sun salutations) to warm up, and then moved into a series of balance poses in Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward facing dog). After that we got partners and did headstand, forearm balance, and handstand with our partners helping us. In fact, handstand was with 2 helpers. It was a great method because the helpers really lined you up properly and you could get a sense of how the pose feels when you're actually balanced. Then we did all kinds of back bends, mostly variations of upward bow. Having helpers is cool because those of us that are still shaky on some of these poses could do them. When we did upward bow, we eventually tried bending backwards into it, and then coming back up. It was not as impossibly hard as I thought it would be, but then, I did have help!

I'm pretty tired now, the class was two and a half hours long, and there was a lot of sweating that happened, some of it mine. I think the sweating helped my cold a bit. We'll find out tomorrow when I get up to go to work...

A sexual conquest

On my way home this evening, I stopped at Petco to refill my 30lb tub of kitty litter. Yes, I buy kitty litter 30 lbs at a time, which is problematic for two reasons: one, it makes me look even more like a crazy cat lady than I already am; and two, it's too damn heavy for me to carry upstairs by myself. So it sits in my car for weeks at a time until either I cave and make a superhuman effort to carry it upstairs, or I ask a friend, usually a guy friend, to carry the thing up for me.

What? I don't like carrying the thing.

The people in line in front of me had a puppy, which looked like a small German Shepard with short legs. It was revealed that the mother was a German Shepard and the father, get this!, a Dachshund. A weiner dog. You know, they're about 6 inches high.

At which point I said that I had a technical question about that. The cashier said he thought she, the mother, had been asleep.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Whatever. That little weiner dog had the Mount Everest of sexual experiences. Pun intended.

Sex is boring

There. I said it.

You might say, WTF? This is the big breakthrough you had in the Sex and Intimacy Seminar? Well, I don't know if it's the big breakthrough, but it's a breakthrough.

Here's what I got: sex is like absolutely everything else in my life. There are stories and weirdnesses around it, pressure, performance anxiety, thinks we think we know about sex, fantasies we have. Here are some examples: sex is good, sex is bad, sex is fun, some people are good at it, some are bad, men always want it, women don't always want it and so on. If you have too much sex, there's something wrong. If you never have sex, there's something wrong. And let's not forget, if you don't use it your lose it. This is in the realm of normal sex, because then there are all the so-called sexual dysfunctions, which I'm not even going to go into. But most of all, everyone is always talking about the great sex they have, or that they want more sex. Sometimes people are honest and they'll tell you they have crappy sex or that they don't like it much at all. And then you think they're weird or feel mildly sorry for them and change the subject awkwardly. You know what I'm talking about.

But all that stuff is just made up. Just like everything else we make up about everything else. Sex is just sex, and it doesn't mean anything. Nothing.

And the truth of the matter is, I'm not that interested in sex. I used to be. For a while there, after Julian and I broke up, I was downright slutty. It was awesome. It was fun, and freeing, and easy to come by. I have lots of stories.

But priorities shift. And sex, by itself, is boring. That is to say, sex by itself is not worth that much to me. It's very pleasurable, don't get me wrong, but by itself is not worth that much to me anymore. Napping, writing, doing yoga, working, hanging out with friends, watching movies or tv, traveling - all of these things are worth more to me than sex.

I've been making myself a little bent out of shape about it because, hey, it's not socially acceptable to just say I'm not interested in sex without automatically becoming an old maid, the crazy cat lady, or some such bullshit. But since I really really got tonight that all those stories are just as made up as anything else, who the hell cares?

How I've been being about it is that I pretend that I can have sex with no strings attached. Again, this was the case for a while, but that was several years ago and it no longer applies. That's my schtick: no strings attached, boys, you won't have any trouble from me. None of that emotional stuff, no demands on your time or your affections.

I've known for a while that this no longer applies, and that it no longer works. But it's been undistinguished, and so I keep getting all the sex-only propositions. My only option has been to simply say no and wonder what was up.

So what am I interested in? Living my life the way I want to live it, kitty cats and all, and when I find the guy who is worth my time (and who thinks I'm worth his, obvy), then the sex will reenter the picture. Until then, I'll be busy doing my own thing.