a trackback on julie: dairy queen is actually a small (and shrinking) chain of restaurants here in texas. the steak fingers are good if you like meat with your grease. but i like you better, hon. stuff’s in the mail.
we left the house today at about noon on the way to san antonio to visit my mother. i’d wanted to leave by ten, but the main reason i wanted to leave that early, in truth, was because i knew if we set an early time we’d actually get out about the time we did. if we’d shot for a 1pm leave time it’d actually be 3pm or 4pm by the time we actually pulled out of the driveway.
as is our custom for family outings where i’m a participant, i drove. the trip itself was mostly uneventful. the only serious setback was in the town of hamilton. i tend to think of hamilton about “half way” to san antonio, even though i doubt it’s actually half way. i also tend to think of marble falls as “almost there,” even though it’s still another hour or so to our destination.
anyway, hamilton. during the trip through hico and hamilton, ian had been bawling up a storm and we really didn’t understand why. sue had fed him some apple juice and crackers and whatnot, but nothing calmed him. eventually he did quiet down, but apparently when she handed him a piece of pop-tart he shot her this “eat shit!” look that only a two-year-old can muster.
when we stopped in hamilton at dairy queen, sue discovered what she couldn’t have seen before. now remember, we drive a mini-van, one of the ones with two rows of back seats. because of the configuration of the van, we can only put two seats in the front, and so one child has to go in the back. that’s always ian, even when he rides alone.
the downside to this arrangement is that our view of him is blocked by the seat (in the driver’s case) or by samantha (in the passenger’s case), and so it can be hard to fully understand what his problem is.
his problem was that he’d gotten car sick and vomited on himself, and we didn’t have the wits to realize it. the poor kid must have sat there in his own vomit for upwards of a half hour before we realized what was going on and got him cleaned and changed.
one of the big successes of this trip is the playskool table. it’s an outdoor-style picnic table made of plastic, but it’s light and small enough for our children (2, 1, and 1) to fit into it. when we go on eating jaunts and other family affairs likely to involve copious amounts of food or copious amounts of time, we drag it along. it fits in the space vacated by the minivan seat we removed, and the kids are comfortable eating at it without much adult supervision. that’s good because it frees us up to eat at the adult’s table in something resembling peace, instead of having a two-year-old en-lap and plate-a-noshing.
so that seemed to be wet number one.
wet number two surrounds a new device recently installed in my mother’s (copious) back yard: a new hot tub. it’s got the variable lights, variable jets, programmable temps, the whole bit. the other exciting thing it has is a full-cover gazebo, and it’s also well-hidden from the street and eyes of prying neighbors, affording the possibility of frolic-a-natural, something, in my horny-little-bastard heart, consummately to be desired.
in a 100 degree tub, even with the doors closed (and the heat trapped in the gazebo), you can stay in there and relax for a considerable period of time. open up the doors so some of the heat and humidity escapes from the air, and it becomes even better. repeat for as long as you can stand it.
since this is supposed to be a family trip (although i brought along my laptop so as to not have to use my mother’s awful spyware-ridden piece of shit), i managed to convince sue to hit the tub with me, and she was silly enough to forget her suit, which meant jumping in ala-skin. while doing this inevitably invites sexual advances from me (and tonight was no exception — refer horny bastard above), we did actually manage to relax for the better part of an hour after getting the kids to sleep (which only took the better part of an hour).
however, both ian and ben are asleep with mommy as i write this, meaning there’s no way i can sleep in there. i can go into the room sam is in and sleep on the twin. but i’m 6′4″ tall and when in the hell am i going to fit into a twin bed? i’m going to have to venture in there for covers, though and curl up on the couch before too long. it’s 0300 and the kids will be awake in just a couple of hours.
on tomorrow’s agenda, puttering around the house followed by a romantic dinner for two at one of san antonio’s oddest restaurants, the magic time machine. we will no doubt indulge in a drink called “the ugly,” a blend of fruit juices that comes out looking positively swamp-waterish, with some dry ice tossed in the bottom for added pizzaz. it comes in both a regular and unleaded version. sue will no doubt go for the regular; i will of course select the unleaded. there are times, even with 11 years sober, that i still wish i could have just one with my wife, on our romantic nights out. they are so infrequent.
even so, sue remains as repulsed by my sexual advances as ever. i can’t figure out anything that turns her on, and she jokingly calls it the jackpot theory of positive reinforcement. (it only works in humans, and if you take intro to psychology you’ll learn about it). still, it’s well-nigh on impossible to get anywhere with her 99% of the time, and nice things i do are always interpreted as an attempt to get her horny (or willing) enough to “spread ‘em wide and take it deep.”
and on those occasions when she is willing (once every week and a half tops), it is indeed just that — willing, not eager, not participatory. same stuff, every time, and it amounts to … well … masterbating into my wife. that’s not the kind of healthy, loving sexual relationship i want.
wtf?