I remember watching it when it came out. I was 18 and I remember thinking that Jennifer Anistons character was crazy town. Who would freak out like that and break up over lemons and dishes?!

Scene: My Kitchen, Monday Night.

Me: (slamming pots and pans around, prepping dinner)
Johnny: What are you doing, do you need help with dinner?
Me: No, I can’t get dinner ready until the kitchen is cleaned up! I just wish you wanted to want to do the dishes!

Literally, those words come out of my mouth. Boom, we just accidentaly acted out the scene I always thought was crazy and unrealistic. But here I was, on a random week night, and I totally got it now. After I realized how sillly I sounded, we started laughing and saying, ” What my baby wants, my baby gets!” and “Why would you want 12 lemons?”

Anyways, when people say that getting married changes your relationship, this is a perfect example of how! I never would have imagined we’d argue about loading a dishwasher, but here we are. Johnny has always done “the heavy” housework, ie. mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, shoveling the snow, cleaning up dog “business”, etc. I started from day one with the “cleaning” for no other reason than that I am very specific about how I like things cleaned. This is not to say that Johnny doesn’t help with loading/unloading the dishwasher, but he has never mopped or scrubbed the tub.

I think, for the most part, this has worked perfectly for us. We make a great team and if nothing else, I really think that’s what marriage is all about…working together for the greater good. I love my hubby very much and appreciate everything he does for our little family. I probably don’t tell him that enough or really stop to think about all he does outside of the “everyday” stuff.

Sometimes, you have those “baby wanted 12″ moments.  And I think hope most woman can relate to me on that.

But, let’s be honest, who would “want” to want to do the dishes? No one, that’s who! I know I don’t want to scrub a toilet the same way Johnny doesn’t want to shovel the driveway. We do it because we want to make our life together nicer for each other.  Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in everyday life and forget to remind each other just how much you appreciate the things the other one does to make your house a home. 

That’s my take after a year and half of marriage.  Expert status, I know   Good topic for a week before Valentine’s day, I think <3  Let me know your thoughts!

How do you and your spouse/significant other/roommate divide up house work? How do you work through issues and remind your love that you appreciate them?

Marriage. Baby making. Good stuff.

This is grounding.
This is love.

“I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace.” ― Natalie Lloyd

A few months ago, I randomly booked Paris because I was dying to see my favourite band play live. Mr.Husband agreed to it, mainly because he thinks I’m nuts and so goes along with my random date night ideas. I knew we’d be on a budget trip but it didn’t bother me what hotel we stayed in, as long as it was clean and relatively quiet. Our philosophy is to spend most of our time roaming the streets and little time cooped up in a hotel.

Paris is just so damn beautiful and sexy. Sure it has the roughness of other cities but it’s enchanting. Mr.Husband said, ‘Wow, French makes everyone so much more attractive.’ I had to agree. Men in their 30s looked effortlessly delicious with their beards and Parisian fashion. I found myself mumbling to Mr.Husband ‘Jesus, why didn’t I come to Paris when I was 18?’ and he naturally elbowed me hard.

Even I started to feel sexier. (Note: I think the recent addition of Royal Jelly to my supplements has helped with that)

As we walked down a street in Chemin Vart, we came across three unusual shops along the strip. There was an erotica store, a store with African fertility dolls in the window and a fantasy/magic shop. Mr.Husband looked at me and laughed as he said, ‘This street was meant for you.’ That made me smile.

Later that night, we visited the Eiffel Tower and sat by the river to share a crepe. We didn’t know that the Eiffel Tower lights up at midnight and when it did we looked up in complete awe. It was only by chance that we’d gone there so late. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for everything that is right in my life.

Mr.Husband broke the magic spell with ‘I like her legs’ – he meant the Eiffel Tower (I hope). You know Nathalie Lloyd is right; the Eiffel Tower does look like steel and lace.  Had the Eiffel Tower been placed in London, I assure you it would not look so charming or sexy.

Snuggled up in bed, I said with all seriousness, ‘You know if we conceived here, we could name our child Paris.’

‘That’s awful,’ he replied.

‘I know.’ We both laughed.

In Istanbul we found our faith again, in Paris we found our relationship again… I can only wonder what’s next.

Things haven’t been smooth sailing between Mr.Husband and I.  Actually we don’t remember a time when things were smooth sailing for us. We married at 20, struggled to complete our studies together, survive financially, buy a place, travel and act as normal 20 something year olds.. Ten years on and we both feel that we haven’t really moved forward. It’s like we’re doing the running man but stuck on the spot.

Struggling with fertility has brought out the best and worst in us as a couple. It has tested us, beaten us and stretched us beyond our comfort zones. I really do believe our stressful lives shifted my hormones and periods. In one way it’s brought us closer, it’s healed past resentments and made us really appreciate the love we have for each other.

In another way, it’s made us me question where the last ten years have gone, wonder what’s next for us if having a family isn’t on the horizon and question whether we’re right for each other.. whether we’re meant to be a family and together still. All of this fed into the bedroom. The sex was dying and that for me was a huge alarm bell.

I started to believe that I was really dysfunctional. Not just because my ovaries weren’t behaving but also because of the way I started to question my marriage. That was until I spent two weeks living at my sister’s and roaming her bookshelves. She’s a sex therapist/relationship counselor, you see. I explored Amazon for books that I thought might help me make sense of my marriage and help find a way to heal the situation.

I ordered ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you’ on Mr. Husband’s Amazon account to my kindle and then cursed myself when I realised it had pinged an email of the book title to him. He came home looking forlorn and thinking I wanted to leave the relationship. I had to explain..

“I want to fix things. We’re not truly living, we haven’t been for a long time and I’m not always here.. paying attention.. because I feel so lost. I want to give more but I feel sad and I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’ve worked so hard over the years and I feel like I’m at zero again. I just always thought I’d be a mother to your child by now. I can’t feed energy into us when I’m in no man’s land.“

I knew that my zombie state wasn’t healthy for him or fair on him. Even he asked, “Do you think we’re fooling ourselves?” To which I replied, “I don’t think either of us would be pushing on with this if we didn’t believe our love.”

The author of ‘I love you but’ breaks a relationship down into categories by the number of years you’ve been together. According to the 10-15 years category, by now we should have a joint dream, a joint project and for most couples that is a child. Suddenly I didn’t feel so insane or dysfunctional.

I didn’t want to speak to my sister about it because it’s a bit … weird. Plus she’s newly wed and trying for a baby too, I didn’t want to be a Debbie downer on her by offloading my issues. But when she called me, I confessed that I was reading ‘Resurrecting Sex’ by Dr.David Schnarch – a book I had seen on her sofa. She immediately told me to put it down and read ‘Passionate Marriage’ by the same author and to throw out ‘I love you but..’ (she didn’t like the title and hadn’t heard of the book or the author).  I made my way through 100 pages of ‘Passionate Marriage’ on my Kindle and being the great sister she is, she made time to pop over for a tea to discuss it.

Here are snippets of our conversation and what she made me realize.

The issue of acceptance (seems to be word of the year)

Sister: You’re angry and still holding onto grief. I can see it in your eyes. You need to let it out.

Me: I don’t want to cry. I’ve already cried so much and it makes me feel like shit. I don’t want to feel like shit anymore. I want to be strong.

Sister: It’s still in you. Just look at your eyes. I can see it.

[At this point I notice her eyes are welling up in response to what she sees in mine and I admit I was fighting back the tears. Damn sisters!]

Me: I can be angry and shout it all out but it won’t fix anything.

Sister: Yes it will. It’ll stop you from holding it here. [She points to her ovaries] You’re angry at Mr.Husband and you haven’t truly moved on from it. You’re holding yourself back. When I thought I’d never meet the right man for me, I’d cry and shout at how unfair it is. You need to do the same but for your fertility. You need to accept that you may not have a child and if you don’t have a child, then that’s okay too. You will be okay. The way I accepted that if I didn’t meet a man, I could live life without a man and be okay.

Me: But if I accept that then I feel like I’m saying to my body and the universe that I don’t want one. That I’m not fighting for it.

Sister: No, you’re saying that you want a child but you’re okay and strong enough even if you don’t.

Me: You’re probably right. I am still angry at him. It’s why I want to punch things these days. I don’t like to be angry at him though, I’ve played my part too in our relationship.

Sister: I know but anger is part of the process, it gives you the energy and motivation to push forward. You’re feeling pretty low right now and that’s okay. It’s part of the journey. When you first gave up work, I had to wonder what you were doing and I didn’t think it was right. I admit I was wrong because you’re looking much better for it. You need to be where you are right now to get to a better place tomorrow.

[I nodded but it didn’t make me feel much better]

Using eye contact to melt

Sister: What do you see when you look in his eyes?

[I shifted awkwardly]

Me: I don’t really look. I tend to look away.

Sister: But when you do look?

Me: His eyes show emotion but I’m frozen.

Sister: Because you’re angry. You need to look into his eyes and you need to think about what you see and feel. Eye contact will melt you.

On wanting to run away

Me: The thing is… everyone did their running away when they were in their teens. I have the urge to do it now. I just want space. I feel like I’ve lost myself in the struggle to just get by and survive.

Sister: Sure you can run away but you’ll still be stuck with yourself wherever you go. You need to fix things here and get that space here.

Me: I need to do some serious growing up as an individual.

Sister: Yes you do. I don’t doubt you’ll make an incredible mum. You’ll probably be better at it than me but you need to get yourself into a good place first.

Where we’re standing now

What touched me most was that my sister recognized my grief and my acknowledged my strength. ‘People look at us and say I’m the ferocious one and that you’re the gentle one but your core is much stronger than mine. You need to use that core for you,’ she said. When she left, I knew that I’m going to face stormy waters but I am going get through it.

I realised that the internal blame game has to stop. I want my marriage and I want a family but most of all I want us to be happy. My happiness can’t depend on a child. My sister pointed out that it’s not whether we’re meant to be a family – we are a family already – even without a child.

I have consciously tried to accept that maybe a child isn’t written for us (yet or ever) but I haven’t really accepted the fertility struggle. One minute I’m hiding from it, the next my head is lost in charts and I’m popping Zita West Vitamins. I’m not in a state of peace.

Mr. Husband and I have already started talking through it all and the more we talk, the closer we become. The more we open up, the greater intimacy we achieve and while certain topics can leave the atmosphere tense, it never stays that way. We hug and end up play fighting.

It’s likely that the next few posts are going to focus on sex and intimacy. My mind is running circles around it. I’ll note my thoughts on ‘Passionate Marriage’ and how we’ve started to apply it. My sister suggested therapy but right now I don’t want someone picking at my brain. I want to read, reflect and absorb. I want to melt and love in Mr.Husband’s direction.

Right now I’m off to find a way to get that anger out.

But I had to breathe, remember by sister’s happiness and compose myself. So (insanely) I said yes.

Super infertile aunt

For two weeks I lived a very surreal life. I was on the posh part of town, driving her fancy car and doing the school run. Every morning my husband and I would sit at the table with our nephew for breakfast and every evening we would take it in turns to get him bathed and ready for bed. We had to laugh at the situation and the irony.

I love my nephew to the stars and back (as I told him). For those two weeks, he was my world. We made cupcakes, drew monsters, practiced his phonetics and letters, carved pumpkins, built lego and played the ‘crazy song’ in the car at the start of every journey. Seeing him happy and healthy got me through it.

One morning he said to me that I looked like his mummy. That made me smile but inside it broke me, I suddenly realised as I stood outside his classroom that I might not get to do a school run for my own kid for a very long time… if ever really.

The day before my sister returned I was cleaning up her bedroom, preparing to pack up my things when I stumbled on a Boots pharmacy bag. I opened it to see if it was rubbish and inside I found a pregnancy test. My sister is a gorgeous mother, she totally deserves to a new addition but it blew me away. She’d spoken about wanting to try but suddenly the reality of welcoming another baby … having to smile and smother my pain all over again.. I don’t think I can face it. I’m tired of playing the aunt.

A lil ray of hope at Halloween

Right now I’m holding onto a conversation I had at a Halloween party. It was the one night that we had managed to get off in those two weeks. I spent two hours lost in my world applying facepaint because a little earlier that evening I had encountered ex-colleagues who only got married this year and were already pregnant. Painting my face helped me mask the pain and gave me an excuse to hide from the rest of the party. It was then that I saw my friend’s boss, a career woman who doted on her little 2 year-old golden haired boy the last time I had met her. She asked if I had any kids and I was honest about the struggle.

Then she shared her story, she was told at 26 that she couldn’t have kids and she was very close to 40 when she met her partner. They struggled to fall pregnant. She only got one period in the few years they were together and he had sperm count problems due to diabetes. It was when they finally gave up and were about to think about adoption, that they fell pregnant after a fun weekend in Paris. What struck me in particular was that she too over compensated as an aunt because of it. That’s exactly what I do. Her story re-lit my candle of hope and my mind wasn’t stuck in darkness anymore.

What would you fill the void with?

I guess that’s been one of the hardest things in the last couple of months. To stay on top of it all and to not get sucked into the void of darkness and pain that comes with this awful journey. Thea asked me to mentally fill the void with something. I chose yellow flowers. I almost cried when my husband came home with a single yellow rose that had been growing in our garden. He didn’t even know about my conversation with Thea that day.

I need to make some job decisions too. Everything is a mess. I hate the stagnation. I want to move on. I feel like I’m stuck with a map that doesn’t make sense (a bit like the new Apple Maps I guess lol)  and I don’t know which direction to take.

One day at a time, right?

As the 2012 Elections drew closer,  my hubby began to tell me that I needed to start paying attention to what was going on in the world. He assumed that because I wasn’t engaging in political conversations with him, that I had no idea what went on around me. Poor misguided man. I knew, I just didn’t care to engage in a debate. He would go on and on, with a fury, about the issues, the needs, and the “statistics” while I would sit and listen in awe,  ”Who was this man? What did he do with MY man?”.

Here are a few things one must learn to keep the peace with your significant other (I’m limiting it to 5 things, but in all honestly there are many more)~

1. there is no changing their minds (you must let that one go right off the bat)
2. stay quiet during televised debates or the news (maybe have a glass of wine)
3. it is ok to ask where they got their information from (watching them search for it can be amusing and lift your spirits)
4. the best place to discuss politics is in a restaurant (they can’t yell at you or walk out!)
5. NEVER make fun of their candidate while they are nearby (leave this to SNL)

Last night’s vice presidential debate wasn’t too bad for us, although it was hard not to comment during it …even for Joe Biden! But, I must admit to a cautionary note when it comes to #2 of my list… drinking wine during a debate can also put you in a position to forget your stance on keeping the peace, and you may find yourself willing to discuss topics  you vowed (to yourself) not to discuss. YIKES! Before you know it a difference of opinion begins to emerge and the gloves are on. So how can I say it wasn’t too bad? As I was mentally lacing up my gloves for a fight, my hubby would say something along the lines of “Ok, I see what you mean” and that was that.  I was left with nothing to further debate! After several times of hearing this, I realized what he was doing-he was trying to keep the peace!

Sometimes it isn’t about changing the view of those we love, it’s about  allowing them to have their views.

If you and your partner aren’t at this point, remember; this too shall pass! The presidential elections only occur every 4 years!

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, ISBN 13: 978-0375832994, Knopf 2005.

Plot Summary

Paul, a high school sophomore unexpectedly meets Noah, the guy of his dreams in a book store and suddenly everything is coming up roses.  Paul has a new love interest, he gets picked to be head designer of the upcoming school dance and his two best friends are by his side.  That is until everything changes.  Paul’s best friend Joni suddenly begins dating, arguably one of the lamest guys in school and what’s worse is she no longer has any time for anyone else.  Tony, Paul’s other best friends, conservative parents think that Paul and Tony are dating and refuse to let Tony leave the house.  And then Paul stupidly hurts the one person he thought he would never hurt, Noah.  Can Paul get it all back?  Will Joni and Paul figure out how to be friends again?  Will Tony be let out of his house?  Will Noah forgive him? Can Paul design an unbelievable dance while all this is happening?  Or is he always going to be alone?

Critical Evaluation

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan is a ground breaking novel that portrays an idyllic world for a gay teenager.  Boy Meets Boy strong plot development, successfully pulls the reader into the novel.  The novel describes a high school in which gay, lesbian and transvestite students are just as much a part of the school as the straight kids.  In essence the gay scene and straight scene are all mixed up, which allows all the students to be who they want to be.  In contrast Paul’s best friend Tony, from a neighboring town embodies the more typical gay teen.  He has come out to his ultra-conservative parents, but instead of accepting who he is they are trying to change him.  Even though Tony might reflect the more typical gay teen experience he finishes the novel as a brave young man who stands up to his parents in a way that makes them more excepting of his sexual orientation.

The novel also gives young gay readers the whirlwind romance between Paul and Noah.  Because Paul and Noah do not have to worry about society’s thoughts and interferences because of their sexual orientation, they are free to have an idealistic romance, just any other straight couple.  And just like any other romantic young adult novels, their relationship suffers from the normal complication of past love interests interfering with new ones. The reader will surely enjoy the rest of the novel which is devoted to mending relationships (family, friend and romantic) and getting back to the idyllic setting in the beginning of the novel.
Readers Annotation

Set in an idyllic gay friendly town at a high school that boasts a cheerleading team that rides Harley’s and a quarterback who is also a transvestite and the homecoming queen. Boy Meets Boy follows Paul, an openly gay high school sophomore as he struggles to navigate between friendships, school, old loves and new.

Information About the Author

In David Levithan’s own words from his website,  “I find it downright baffling to write about myself, which is why I’m considering it somewhat cruel and usual to have to write this brief bio and to update it now and then. The factual approach (born ’72, Brown ’94, first book ’03) seems a bit dry, while the emotional landscape (happy childhood, happy adolescence – give or take a few poems – and happy adulthood so far) sounds horribly well-adjusted. The only addiction I’ve ever had was a brief spiral into the arms of diet Dr Pepper, unless you count My So-Called Life episodes as a drug. I am evangelical in my musical beliefs.”

“When not writing during spare hours on weekends, I am a publisher and editorial director at Scholastic, and the founding editor of the PUSH imprint, which is devoted to finding new voices and new authors in teen literature. (Check it out at www.thisispush.com for a full list.)  Among the authors I’ve edited and/or published under the Scholastic Press imprint are Suzanne Collins, Maggie Stiefvater, Ann M. Martin, Garth Nix, Patrick Carman, Natalie Standiford, Alice Hoffman, Gordon Korman, M. T. Anderson, Blake Nelson, Cecil Castellucci, and many, many other awesome writers.”

Genre

Contemporary

Curriculum Ties

Optional book choice for English classes to use for a book report.  Maybe a controversial choice for a mandated book for middle school and high school students.

Book Talking Ideas

Describe the unusual town Paul lives, with its transvestite football quarterback/prom queen and the cheerleading team that rides harleys, and its general progressive attitude towards gay and transgender people.

Read an excerpt from the book that highlights Paul romance with Noah,perhaps from when they meet in the bookstore or from when they go on their first date.

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Ages 12 and up

Challenge Issues

Many parents and adults may be offended by the acceptance of gays, lesbians and transvestite.  They may also take issue with the fact that their student may have to read about a gay relationship.

If this book were challenged I would show the challenger the libraries selection policy and written rationale for the inclusion of the book in the library.  I would also provide the challenger with book reviews for them to consider. If they were still not satisfied I would suggest the fill out a request for reconsideration form.

Why Included

This book was included because it is well-written, upbeat, gay romantic comedy suitable for kids 12 and up.  Also, it was a required reading for this class.