Clean and Elegant

Clean and Elegant

Sunday 29 December 2013

Hip Replacements and No-Knead Bread versus Chapped Nipples and Low Sex Drive

“Either I’ll end up writing year-end letters about no-knead bread, hip replacements and mango chutney, or I’ll be stuck blogging about my low sex-drive and chapped nipples.”

I came to this conclusion at 11:45 P.M. on Christmas Day. The Boatman and I had just returned from a delightful carolling event at our friend Julie’s parents’ house. Accompanied by Julie’s brother Tom on the piano, we sang from old Shopper’s Drugmart ‘Tis the Season carolling pamphlets. When it was time for “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Julie’s mom divided up the lines. Robbie and I got “Seven Swans a Swimming” which we enthusiastically rehearsed several times before the song began. Throughout the lengthy song, many of the other carollers were distracted by wine, conversations and Julie’s adorable child who was wandering around the living room stealing everyone’s cellphones. Not Robbie and I. We didn’t miss a beat.

Afterwards we hung out in the kitchen, and being the nosy person that I am, I came across a year-end Christmas letter hanging on a bulletin board.  The author opened with a compelling sentence about the smell of baking no-knead bread wafting through the kitchen as he wrote these words. I skimmed down the page, and learned that the author’s significant other had been through a hip replacement that year, but had recovered in time to oversee her garden and the production of mango chutney.

I looked up and saw Julie’s father Alain. “Who are these people and why did the write this letter?”

“Well, you know,” he began in his charming French accent. “They are re-tired, no kids. They travel the world and come home to bake their bread, and write this.”

“My father has a friend who writes these letters every year. Fills the page front and back. My father can’t read a word of it.”

“No kids,” Alain said again. Julie’s child, Alain’s grandchild, toddled by pointing up towards the window and tilting his head back and forth.

“Lune, lune, lune, lune,” he kept repeating. He loves the moon. And Cheerios. Soon he would head towards the cereal cupboard where he would crawl in with the box.
 
Every time one of the mothers at school gets pregnant I feel dead inside and jealous of their clear, tangible purpose that no one will ever question them about and that will last them for their entire lives.

One Friday night a couple of months ago, as we were lying in bed, the Boatman and I decided that we were not going to have children. That day, I’d been masturbating on Facebook when I came across the Mommy Blog of the cool girls from my high school. She’s a Mompreneur. Just Another Mompreneur, she humbly calls herself. I devoured most of the seven posts she’d written. With honesty and humour, the mother of two described her fecundated life filled with boogers and diapers and chapped nipples. When her partner comes home every evening, she has absolutely no desire to fuck him, but derives true, legitimate pride and joy in the fact that she was able to transcend the day’s chaos and prepare him a healthy home-cooked meal.

As I lay in bed, I considered the Mompreneur’s existence. I take pride and joy in my sex-drive. And my nipples. Also, I absolutely despise cooking.

When the Boatman, a regular entrepreneur, arrives home long after I do, I have rarely cooked anything. I tell him that while he was gone, I humped the bed twice and he tells me that he’s proud of me.

“I don’t want to be a Mompreneur,” I told the Boatman that night. “I don’t want to spend my day at home chasing after toddlers and then blogging about my chapped nipples and low sex-drive. Plus I would hate having to cook dinner for my family every day. Hate it.”

“Yah, I don’t really want kids either,” said the Boatman.

That settled that. I would become a BarrenWomanPreneur. But now I’m worried that instead of having kids, I’m doomed to write nauseous year-end Christmas letters about no-knead bread and mango chutney.

For some reason, the chapped nipples and no-knead bread is less disturbing than my current endeavours, which include gathering all my menstrual blood into a peanut butter jar and posting it on the internet.

I’m not sure why.

The End.
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Just another self-help book, I Let Go


Menstrual Blood, Peanut Butter
Mythological Unconditional Love
What the fuck should I do with my life? Part Two.


 

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