Killing time

(June 29)
I've been home a week and a half now. Monday I start my five-week swan song, my very last class. Is it the last forever, or the last for now? I think forever, but my record for prediction is dismal. What about "I'll never get married" and "I'll never have kids"? Three marriages and two sons later, here I am.

I've been a total slug for a week. No exercise more strenuous than dogwalking, got nothing done that needs doing except vacuuming up dog hair so I could breathe. Watched movies & TV, read books and magazines, listened to a lot of NPR while playing solitaire. My only excitement was expressing my attraction to (and my perception of reciprocation from) a lovely woman who rejected me flat. Bummer.

Then, in the past three days I've exercised twice at Bally's, done a syllabus and lecture outline, run the dishwasher, started laundry, made the phone calls re tax prep and yard work that I've postponed far too long, and contemplated the piles of god-only-knows-what on my desks which I may get around to filing today. I guess I'm awake now.

This last conjugal visit in Ireland was good for my sex life. After all these years I'm learning to express what I want sexually. The most significant lesson after that is the need for reinforcement training and fine-tuning. Years of him mistaking feelgood noises for orgasms take considerable time and effort to eradicate. Decades of men stopping just when I'm getting close have constructed a set of low expectations that are hard for me to change. Sex therapy at some point many years ago would have been nice. People are the strangest animals.