pageant porn scanda

Recently, a contretemps broke out on the Internet after a porn video surfaced where the performer bears an uncanny resemblance to Miss Delaware Teen USA. Once the feces hit the fan, Miss Delaware Teen USA promptly resigned.

In 2013, a porn video is no big scandal. Who cares about Miss Delaware Teen USA anyway?

What's notable about this is how the now former Miss Delaware Teen USA handled the media. In resigning, she claims that her lawyer would be releasing a public statement for her but didn't bother to provide the name of the lawyer. No lawyer has stepped forward with a statement. One might wonder if the whole lawyer thing is bogus.

Throwing gasoline into her own fire, the ex Miss Delaware Teen USA refused to specify the reason she was resigning, but claims the video had nothing to do with her decision. Sure it didn't. I have a lovely bridge for sale in Manhattan, real cheap.

The erstwhile Miss Delaware Teen USA also claimed the woman in the sex tape is not her, notwithstanding the sex performer says she participates in pageants. Also, other beauty queens who know her say she's on the tape.

The one-time Miss Delaware Teen USA does not sound like the sharpest knife in the drawer. Who wants to bet she'll be appearing in a Hustler spread or Vivid video or something similarly X-rated before the year is over? She may have lost the Delaware title but she has a great future ahead of her doing double penetrations and cum farts.

dancing for george

I saw this George Bernard Shaw quote when I was hunting for material to put on my Tumblr:

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."

I was the family skeleton, and when I was kicked out of the house as a teenager, I ultimately worked as an exotic dancer to support myself. This did not happen right away, of course, because I left home at sixteen and couldn't legally dance until I was eighteen. Nevertheless, the Shaw quote turned out to be ironically true for me.

I eventually told my brother what I was doing for money but he's the only one in my family who knows. I'm almost positive that if my parents ever found out, they'd absolutely, positively never speak to me again. I often wondered when I was dancing in New York, Los Angeles, and Vegas if I would see anyone my parents knew, but I guess all of their friends who traveled to those three cities behaved themselves.

When the time comes and he's old enough, I will certainly tell my son what I once did. It's nothing I'm ashamed of, but at the same time, I know it's something that's best unsaid at times for diplomatic reasons. There's a right time and a wrong time for everything.

From what I know about George Bernard Shaw, he would've loved the idea of exotic dancers. He was no prude.

barbie WTF

I saw this on the Internet -- where else. If it was meant to be a statement, I don't think it quite succeeded.

Yes, you can shove all sorts of things in yourself. Most of us discovered that at about age nine. We stopped doing it shortly thereafter.

oscar apathy

With each passing year, I find myself less and less interested in the Academy Awards. I love movies and watch them all the time. I regularly follow news about upcoming movies.

The Oscars increasingly seem to be less about movies and more about an orgy of self-congratulatory spectacle. They primarily recognize product made under the old Hollywood studio model in a shrinking industry and all but ignore movies from the expanding international and alternative media. It's like an auto show featuring primarily horse-drawn carriages.

I think the Academy Awards needs a major retooling from top to bottom and not just the window dressing changes we see from year to year. If it doesn't make itself over soon, it risks becoming the Miss America of the movie business -- a tired has-been shadow of its former self that can't stop looking over its shoulder.

Look through a list of recent Oscar winners from the last ten years. It's amazing how many of those movies are now all but forgotten. The same can't be said for previous decades of movies, like the 1930s, 1960s, or 1970s, with films that have had real lasting power.

a mirror in the forest

It's interesting to watch the contrast here between the chimps and the jaguars when they come upon a mirror in the forest. I don't know whether I'm projecting here, but it seems like the chimps have it somewhat figured out, as revealed by their movements. The jaguars act like housecats but seem perpetually stumped.

Watching these, I was reminded of Gary Larson cartoons come to life.

a tattoo love story

Lesya met Ruslan online. Less than a day later, she let him tattoo his name across her face in five-inch Gothic letters. Now they plan on marrying.

Let's see a show of hands from people who have had terrific first dates with someone but, by the fifth date or so, the relationship was dead.

Now imagine on that first date he/she asked you to have his/her name effectively carved into your face for the rest of time.

The minute Ruslan asked to do that to her face, she should have immediately unplugged her computer and not gone online for a year. That she would even consider doing this for a thousandth of a second amazes me, let alone that she actually agreed to it.

I worried a bit that I married my husband four months after meeting him. Was I rushing into things? He did not, however, deface my face. He has never asked to deface my face. I love my husband and will bear his children but he can never deface my face.

A picture of the lovely couple appears below.

oneirologic riddle

I've always been intrigued by those dreams we have early in the morning, when logic seems to have taken all leave of its senses. We sometimes wake up with such dreams fresh in our memory and are completely confused.

This morning shortly before waking I dreamed a realization that I hadn't changed the cat's litterbox in the longest time, and for that matter, I hadn't fed her in quite a long while. The cat belonged to my roommate, but because she often neglected the poor creature, I often took care of her.

In the dream, I walked into the bathroom and discovered the cat swimming in the toilet. Joey, my three-month-old son, was about to crawl into the litterbox. I also realized that he somehow had shaved the cat.

And then I woke up. I soon remembered that we have no cat, that the roommate in question is somewhere back in America and I haven't seen her in years, and that my son is too young to finagle an escape into the bathroom let alone to groom a feline.

Freud said dreams manifest our deep desires and anxieties, which often stem from childhood memories and obsessions. The fact that my son escaped in the dream and was up to no good is likely related to a mother's typical concern that she (I) cannot always make certain he is safe.

The cat, however, is a total mystery. And the shaving. And the swimming. I'm sure Freud would have some explanation for that, but sometimes a swimming bald cat is just a swimming bald cat.

the housewife

These are intriguing images by Australian photographer Peter Coulson from a set called "The Housewife." I liked the look of these when I first saw them but wasn't sure what they were all about. (Like many images I post here, they're larger than they appear below, so click on each one to see full size.)

I played "trip to the museum" about these photos with myself while I was driving around on errands. When I was a kid -- and I imagine this was true for many children -- when we went to a museum for a school trip, some docent would take us through the galleries and stop at a particular painting.

"What was the artist trying to say?" we were asked. "What are we supposed to think?"

I'm thinking the housewife is lost in her sexual fantasy. She hates housework and, while she does it, she escapes into her increasingly complex sexual fantasies. But she's been fantasizing so much during her chores -- perhaps because she's not actually getting fucked in real life -- that the fantasy and the reality have sort of morphed into one.

Now all she needs is a randy door-to-door salesman and some afternoon delight to get her head back on straight for her.

vatican orgy

I saw the picture below and it looked like an old painting to me, not a faux-old new piece of artwork. It turns out I was right, which I learned thanks to the help of Google image search. Titled "The Sin," it was painted circa 1880 by the then-scandalous artist Heinrich Lossow who specialized in explicit erotica.

While poking around on the internet for more information about the artwork, I learned about something called "The Ballet of Chestnuts" which occurred in 1501, purportedly the most famous orgy held in the Vatican. "Most famous" certainly suggests it wasn't the only one.

An alleged sixteenth century eyewitness and master of ceremonies for the event, named Johann Burchard, wrote about the fifty prostitutes who attended "The Ballet of Chestnuts" papal banquet, along with high church officials and the pope himself, who was Alexander VI at the time. "Following the supper, lampstands holding lighted candles were placed on the floor and chestnuts strewn about, which the prostitutes, naked and on their hands and knees, had to pick up with their mouths as they crawled in and out among the lampstands. The Pope watched and admired their noble parts.”

Burchard wrote that the prostitutes then had sex with the clergy and other dignitaries attending the event as the rest of the diners watched. "Prizes were offered -- silken doublets, pairs of shoes, hats, and other garments -- for those men who were most successful with the prostitutes. Servants kept score of each man’s orgasms, for the pope greatly admired virility and measured a man’s machismo by his ejaculative capacity."

No word if Alexander VI himself participated, but he did happen to have at least seven bastard children, so he certainly wasn't a virgin.

I wonder if this kind of stuff still goes on today behind Vatican walls?

labia pride

Salon has an interesting new piece piece about the so-called "Labia Pride" movement spearheaded by women whose nether regions don't match what you see in porn. (For men who might be interested, the article contains several links to websites with voluminous collections of pussy pics.)

I never realized large or mismatched labia was an issue with some women. I guess all my friends either have "normal" equipment or they don't talk about it. I can see why some women would freak about non-standard labia, considering so many younger men today learn about the female body by watching porn online. My first glimpses of male nudity were via porn and I was later somewhat surprised to learn real men aren't quite as endowed as their X-rated brethren.

Perhaps some of the larger-labia ladies don't realize that so many men want pussy that they'll be happy with anything they can find. Yes, maybe Brad Pitt lookalikes get to pick and choose, but most men are so grateful to talk their way into your pants when you're a single woman that I suspect they're not as picky as they're made out to be.

In a world of supply and demand, we women hold all the supply and men have all the demand. We control the marketplace. I wish all women understood that. If they did, 99 percent of politicians and billionaires would be women.

my child abuses me

Joey's not yet three months old, but already he's begun physically abusing me. I've heard of grown children sometimes abusing their elderly parents but never have I heard of infants physically abusing their mothers.

I was changing his diaper yesterday and boom he drop kicked my left thumb backwards much further than it's meant to go. It still hurts like a bastard. And not a peep from him -- apparently he had no pain in the foot he used to so savagely assault me.

Of course I know he didn't do it on purpose. He's in infant control mode, which is rather haphazard at best. But it gave me a taste of things to come, when he's 16 and 6'4", suddenly rushing out of a room and not realizing I'm there, knocking me ass over teacups. At least then he can say he's sorry. I hope.

The husband was very impressed that his son has the makings of a future football star.

massive worldwide conspiracy

I just finished a novel by a first-time writer that started off very strongly. The writing was excellent and I really enjoyed the first third of it.

But then it started to go south. I discovered the novelist had better writing skills than story skills. He didn't escalate the jeopardy nor use the set-ups he had given himself. Two major characters -- a male and female -- had major sexual elecricity but then nothing happened.

It went from bad to worse when he started to mix in some shopworn cliches. The final straw was, near the end, a revelation about a worldwide conspiracy known to thousands of people for decades but it had never been discovered by law enforcement nor the media, notwithstanding they had numerous opportunities and repeated clues right under their noses.

Long-time conspiracies are realistic if they involve only a few perpetrators. The Madoff mess is a good example of that. Conspiracies involving a lot of people are realistic if they're in a short timeframe. Watergate is a good example -- start to finish that was about two years.

But a long-time conspiracy over decades or even centuries, known to countless hundreds or thousands of people, with repeated obvious clues, yet the secret is never revealed? I just don't buy that.

attention litigious lawyers

The Barbie makers have sued artists several times for parodies like this, but they seem to be more on the losing side when they do.

You have to wonder about the wisdom of such actions. Will some little girl or her parents refrain from buying a Barbie doll because they heard about someone using one in a bondage photo spread? You'd think that silly litigation "protecting" Barbie's reputation only does more harm than good, as it gives the artists more attention than they would have received otherwise.

For the record, I did not create the Barbie's Dream Orgy photo below. I found it on the web. So don't anybody sue me.

clinging but slipping

I've been in Australia for four years and four months now. I will always consider myself American and, in small ways, I still cling to my Americanisms.

Ever since I've been here, I've pretty steadfastly continued to use American spelling for everything I write. It's a quirk, I know, but I wanted to remain consistent.

In the last month or two, I've noticed I've been slipping. I've been using British/Aussie spelling on occasion and don't even notice it until later. Realize is becoming realise. Aging is becoming ageing. Baptize is becoming baptise. And so forth.

It seems the less obvious spellings have been slipping. I never do the more obvious ones like colour or honour. I assume I've been picking up the spelling changes by reading the newspapers here.

I know my syntax has long been littered with Aussie slang. That I primarily pick up from my husband. I use it in email "back home" and don't even realize it.

Although I can do a wicked Aussie accent that now fools even natives, I still speak with my American accent almost all the time. That's my natural voice. I find that opens more doors most of the time. People seem to go to more of an effort of they know you're a foreigner -- it's their tireless sense of hospitality.

Nonetheless, I absolutely, positively refuse to ever say "G'day."

baptism quandary

Several of my husband's relatives have inquired as to when we're having Baby Joey baptized. We've been vague about the answer.

James is a lapsed Catholic and I'm something of a lapsed Protestant. We both believe in an almighty but are rather vague about what exactly we believe. We've been to a non-denominational church on occasion but have not become a members.

We frankly are both somewhat superstitious about not having him baptized. We both sort of feel "well it couldn't hurt." It's not like he's being forcefully indoctrinated into a religion simply by being baptized.

But if he's not baptized, and something should happen, well... So what harm would it do?

Needless to say, James's more devout relations will not be pleased he wasn't baptized Catholic, but we both are against that. It's tempting to say "well, it really isn't your business," but we thought a non-denominational baptism, to which no one is invited, would be something of a diplomatic compromise.

grammy disasters

As always, the Grammys this year were filled with fashion disasters. I think a lot of them can be excused, however, because many of their victims don't yet fully understand the importance of image. They're confused about what makes an impression and what shocks people. You want the first, not the latter.

Some of the biggest disasters, in my opinion, were veteran entertainment pros who should've known better. By now, they should have a clear sense of their own image to know what works right for them and what looks very long.

Nicole Kidman was one example this year, as seen below. All that outfit did was emphasize her bony legs and knock knees. She desperately needed a subdued under-dress the same length as the gown. The color was not good for her, either, nor was that hair recycled from Gwyneth Paltrow. Her husband Keith Urban somehow made her look even more ridiculous standing next to her in his wrinkled T-shirt and dirty army boots like he had just finished cleaning out the garage.

JLo usually dresses fantastically but this year's frock was nothing short of a catastrophe. It looked like a bipolar swim suit/choir robe hybrid. It's just plain absurd. She's a beautiful woman but that getup did not flatter her at all. And the shoes, with that red band around them, looked like she was wearing some kind of court-ordered monitoring device.

I'm sure, of course, both these women are devastated I've given them a thumbs down. Try harder next year, ladies.

are babies born bad?

I just finished reading this fascinating article about several studies testing whether babies are born with an innate sense of morality or whether it's something they learn.

While the article makes no definitive conclusion one way or another about the source, it makes a pretty convincing case that babies, even as early as three months old, do have a moral sense. With time, they want to help their fellow humans more than hinder them.

As a new parent, it's fascinating to watch how my son has become more plugged into the world around him. He clearly now responds to stimuli of all sources and has preferences. He has preferred toys, as he demonstrates by repeatedly trying to reach for his favorites and all but ignoring others. He also seems to like certain kinds of music -- jazz, ambient, and light classical are fine but he makes a funny face if the music is too intense.

He clearly also likes certain people and dislikes others. He particularly favors a female relative in my husband's family but seems to dislike a bearded friend of my husband, perhaps because the latter insists on sticking his face really close to Joey.

I find myself at times impatient to see him grow up more so I can see how things progress, while at the same time I don't want him to grow too fast because the clock can never be turned back.

He's too young yet to make some of the moral choices outlined in the article, but I certainly plan on testing him informally at home as he ages to see how he picks up on these things.

I miss the IRS

I'm starting to do my taxes for 2012. Theoretical math may not be my strong suit, but I never have a problem with dollars and cents stuff, so I've always done my own taxes.

The tough part about doing US taxes when you're overseas is that help resources are extremely limited. Back in the United States, you could simply pick up the phone and call the IRS or visit the public library to use their resources if you needed more information. Here, that's not possible. Yes, I could call back to the United States, but it would be very expensive, particularly because you have to wait on hold for eons when calling the IRS.

I have one little issue on my taxes this year that I've never encountered before. Back when I turned eighteen, I invested some of my savings in a mutual fund. I've since long given up using mutual funds and now buy stock directly. But I never cashed out that original mutual fund because it's appreciated handsomely (even though it did dip, like everything, in 2008-09, but has bounced back and then some).

For the first time, this mutual fund paid me "taxable long term capital gains." I understand what that is but not where I'm supposed to put it on the capital gains tax form. I've had capital gains from selling stock and understand how to report those, but I'm not sure on a mutual fund.

I've emailed my brokerage where I have my investments and hopefully they'll tell me where to report it. I remember a lawyer I once dated who told me it didn't matter too much if I completed the tax forms incorrectly as long as I paid the correct tax.

I'm pretty sure I know what the tax is, just not where to list the item. Hopefully his old advice was good. But at least way over here, I don't have to worry about the IRS beating down my door. At least I think I don't.

So I don't exactly "miss" the Internal Revenue Service. But I wish they were a little easier to reach this time of year.

wallpaper tattoo

I know someone who had wallpaper in her bathroom like this, with randomly placed passport stamps all over the place. She liked to travel so it fit her personality. She also had towels that matched with the same design.

After a while, she tired of the look and had it replaced with something else. She gave the towels to use, because I'm such a cheapskate and will happily take someone's high-quality cast-offs.

That's the problem with novelty tattoos. You can't replace them like wallpaper. They're clever and interesting for a while when they're new, but they're like wallpaper that remains forever and ever and ever. You even take that wallpaper to the grave with you.

online dickhead douchebags

oLike many people, I occasionally participate in a few online discussion forums. If you've done it for any length of time, you'll notice common behaviors among certain type of people.

One species is what you might call the "online dickhead douchebag" (ODD for short). The ODD knows everything. The ODD is a name dropper. The ODD has experience in almost everything life has to offer. Most of all, the ODD likes to demean other forum participants to underscore what he believes is his self-importance. The ODD has no friends or supporters on the forum. Everyone wishes he would leave.

I sometimes wonder what these people are like in real life. My personal theory is that they have a woefully poor self-esteem and horribly inadquate personal lives. They make up for this emptiness by their perceived self-importance online.

Usually I ignore these people online and never respond. But sometimes they're so hurtful to other people, particularly forum newcomers, that publicly shitting on their parade seems to be in order.

I'm tempted to do so on one forum I visit. I'm thinking the next time I see a particular person lash out in a discussion thread, I'll post something like this:

Dear ODD: I'm sure some of us here would love to know why you're such an incredible asshole. Is it because you have utterly no self worth? A shockingly tiny penis? A horrendous erectile dysfunction issue that medication cannot remedy? You've been having trouble landing temp jobs lately? Your mother yells at you for spending so much time in her basement? Please enlighten us about your troubles. You know we all care so much for you.

I'll let that one germinate for a while before I decide whether to post it. But it was fun writing it.

pubic shaving accidents

Salon has an amusing little piece up now about the explosion in pubic shaving accidents in recent years. According to a recent University of California study, accidents "down there" that resulted in emergency room visits increased five-fold from 2002 to 2010.

The article then offers various bits of advice on how to reduce hair removal disasters. One glaring omission, I thought, was any mention of having a partner do your grooming for you. It can both be safer and also excellent foreplay. I haven't groomed my kitty in I don't know how long -- that's a job for the Husband, who always is a superb craftsman.

My advice: don't groom alone. Your libido will thank you for this.

unisex overkill

Casey Legler is a woman who models menswear to look like a man. Andrej Pejic is a man who models womenswear to look like a woman. Both are big name models -- Legler is represented by Ford, and Pejic has modeled for the likes of Marc Jacobs.

I haven't modeled since before I had the baby so it's not like they're taking any bread off my table. Even if I hadn't gotten pregnant, Marc Jacobs or Ford never came knocking on my door. Since we moved to Australia, my husband has gotten more modeling gigs than I have.

In my humble opinion, however, I think women models should look like women and men like men. I want to see what a dress looks like on a woman, not on some boy. So many models today look like androgynous waifs. I just don't get that look. Yes, some people in real life are sort of androgynous but most people aren't. In the world reflected by fashion photography, androgynous folks seem to be the majority.

Ordinary people aren't usually attracted to androgynous waifs. I see an ad for menswear worn by some unisex pixie, I don't see what those clothes would look like on an ordinary man. It doesn't tickle my erotic fancy. I see an ad with a very attractive, feminine woman or a masculine man, I respond to that. It registers with me. I maybe want to buy the clothes.

I mean, what's next? Baby clothes modeled by poodles? I'm sure some "creative" type is thinking about that right now.

spam tidal wave

I have a personal email address that I've had since I was still a kid living at home with my parents. The account was created when using a real name -- first plus last -- as your email address wasn't such a magnet for spam. I've had the address for so long I don't want to give it up, because some people contact me years after I've heard from them last.

I've noticed in the last month or so that the amount of spam has increased exponentially. It usually seems to be targeted to late afternoon weekdays in the United States, when I guess most people are goofing around at work reading their email.

On some days, no joke, I receive as many as forty spam emails an hour when it's late afternoon back home. Most of these end up in the spam box so it's not a problem but I still have to scan through the subject heads to make sure no actual mail ends up in there, as sometimes happens.

Do spammers even consider the pointlessness of their emails when they send it? Or is so much of this phishing garbage being sent by virus-infected computers? Sending a hundred billion spam emails a day must be worthwhile if you can find one sucker out there somewhere.

My husband has a friend in his forties who has never owned a computer nor gone online. He's now thinking -- finally -- about getting a computer. I promised to help him set it up if he does so I can give him a little primer on spam and online fraud. He's a bit naive so he'd be the sort to fall for some Nigerian email scam unless someone gave him some pointers and warnings.

house of cards

I have not seen the new TV series House of Cards but I'm looking forward to it. It's a loose adaptation of the brilliant British series of the same name, which I have seen.

What's different about this new series is that all thirteen episodes premiered on exactly the same day -- February 1, 2013. Unlike typical series that string you along with cliffhangers week after week, Cards throws it at you all at once. You decide when you want to watch and how much at one time. To date, it's only available through Netflix but will soon be released via other platforms.

When I first heard about this series, I had a sense that television had just quietly made a tectonic shift. The medium has become so digitally driven that the week-to-week spoonfed approach seems much in need of replacement. The Brits and cable TV have a sense of this because they don't adhere to such a rigid schedule of delivering new shows within a narrow time and presentation like American networks, although the latter still dominate the marketplace, even internationally.

Yes, web-based series have been around for a while, but Cards takes it to a whole new level by including talents like Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and director David Fincher.

I was thus interested to read a short piece in The New Yorker this week making some of the same observations that I had already pondered -- with this series, TV has crossed a new and possibly very exciting frontier.

While this may not be a positive development for network and cable TV, I think it will be a big step forward for us viewers.

sexual extortion

The husband and I watched The Getaway the other night -- the Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw original, not the remake. James said he saw it years ago but only remembered the garbage truck scene. I think I saw it on TV when I was a kid but I'm not sure -- some of it seemed vaguely familiar.

Early in the movie, the Ali McGraw character (who is married to the Steve McQueen character) sleeps with an older, influential man who can secure her husband's early release from prison. This is sort of the match that ignites the entire plot.

The husband and I talked about McGraw's choice after we watched it. Would James tell me to sleep with another man so we could be together again? What if he didn't tell me and I did it but he found out later? Then we put the shoe on the other foot and he asked me what would I do if I was in prison and he slept with another woman to secure my release.

We both agreed that we wouldn't do it without the other's consent. Husband said he might not consent if it was a shorter prison stint, but if it was a long sentence or life imprisonment, he would definitely give the thumbs up. I felt the same way.

That led us to talking about how many happily married couples would come to the same conclusions we did -- consent was essential. James thinks more women would agree to it than men, and I think he's probably right.

It's an interesting but horrible dilemma that some couples actually face in real life. While not necessarily trying to get someone out of prison, they do find themselves in a similar predicament for other reasons -- to keep a vital job, for example, upon which the entire family relies.

Whatever the circumstance, I think it would be a great challenge for the marriage after it happened. While the couple might believe they're okay with it before it happens, once the deed was done, I think it would have the potential to eat away at the marriage after the fact.

I certainly hope I never face that kind of decision in real life.

I agree

Someone posted this on Tumblr and I could not agree more. The husband often pins me down when he has his way with me and it sends me over the moon. Something to keep in mind.

birth control decisions

The Husband and I definitely want more children, but we also want to put family growth on pause for a while for a whole lot of reasons. We'd like to wait until Joey is at least three.

Because I'm breast feeding, I probably don't have to worry about birth control right this minute, but I will need to soon. Probably everyone knows a woman or two or more who has had two children within a span of fifteen months or so.

I don't think I want to go back on the pill again. That was great when I was single and active sexually with a variety of men, but married life is different. I also worry a bit about long-term health benefits of being on the pill for year after year. Also, the pill may have been part of the reason why it took a while for me to become pregnant, so no reason to tempt fate.

James doesn't really care whether he uses condoms or not, but I'm not their biggest fan. I prefer all-natural love. But they're also the most convenient birth control and arguably without any deleterious health effects for me. Yes, they sometimes break but usually not with a better quality brand.

We have had some conversations about this and we sort of decided that we'll go the condom route during the days I could possibly become pregnant but skip them when we're in the safe zone. I have clockwork periods so that won't be a concern.

What we both decided was that the "withdrawal method" was not an option. Sometimes the husband just gets so worked up that we're really going at it, so his explosion comes with too much suddenness. Trying to interrupt that for him to dump his load would be disappointing for both him and me.

If I become pregnant sooner than we want, so be it. Then Joey's little brother or sister arrives ahead of schedule. It would be somewhat ironic that, given we didn't become pregnant immediately, that the second one comes fast on Joey's heels. I've heard of that happening before.

babies are himbo magnets

I have made a curious discovery as a new parent: random cute guys in public make nice-nice to Joey as an icebreaker to talk with me. I can tell they're "interested" in me because when I casually slip a mention of my husband into the conversation, their enthusiasm usually deflates and they pay more attention to the baby than to me.

Maybe these men are on the lookout for women with ready-made families so they can have instant parenthood without going through the pregnancy thing. They get a sex-available girlfriend and the added bonus of a cute baby to satisfy the daddy instinct. Then, when they tire of the mommy girlfriend, they can dump her without the emotional baggage of leaving their own child.

I love cute male attention but maybe I should get a little T-shirt for Joey that reads "My Mum's Already Married." That way there's truth in advertising and full disclosure up front.