from a week in the sunshine, on a boat, racing, getting bruised up and battered. Guess I *am* still a masochist a bit. heh.

will update the site later, too much to catch up on right now… hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

(p.s. at the races, a rollerbetty sighting! who woulda thought.)

So… this past Saturday I finished my actual first, Olympic distance competitive triathlon. Woo! I will admit that I had vainly hoped to have a more aesthetically appealing body by the end of it, and to me it’s less so. But that’s ridiculous to worry about because I got so much stronger and healthier in the past 4 months of training for it. For someone who’s not been on a bike since childhood, or run EVER, I am feeling pretty happy about things.

Now that it’s behind me, I can start to focus on other projects again. I will keep up on a less rigorous schedule of things, because I fully intend to do another triathlon next year (or sooner) but now that this FIRST one is behind me I hopefully won’t be so consumed by it. I was really kinda stressed out by fear of the unknown previous to actually doing this.

~Jane

I just had to post and mention a happy happy thing - one of our longtime favorite reviewers, Vamp, who had taken some time away for other pursuits, is back! Imagine my surprise and joy to wake up today, look for reviews that needed to be released, and find a whole bunch of Vampness! I just adore her and I know that she’s been missed. Happy day.

In unhappy news, my beloved dog Max died earlier this week. He truly was the Best Dog Ever. I’ve admittedly been dragging around all week in a funk because I miss him. He had a good life, and it happened here at home with all of us near him. Totally unexpected though, it had only seemed like his age was slowing him down a bit, not that anything was really wrong.

Triathlon training is going. Not well, just going. It’s coming up now in only 2 1/2 weeks, the big day. This weekend we’re doing an open water swim for the first time, and Washington being what it is, the lake is cold enough to need wetsuits. Ugh. If there is anything I hate, it’s being cold AND wet. But I can do it!

~Jane

So I’d intended of course to write about all of the topics Babeland threw out there for the SexyMama blogs. I was surprised to find it difficult - usually if someone asks me a question or throws out a subject I have something to say about it. I don’t know why it ended up being so difficult. Anyhow, from my last post, I wanted to say Melanie, send me your address and I’ll get this little gift from Babeland right out to you, it sounds like the perfect thing for your next trip. :)

As for me, life is swamped. We have a new puppy (which is like having a new baby) and while she is bringing me much joy, she’s also a handful. She’s actually the oldest daughter’s puppy, but until school in out towards the end of June, I have puppy duty during the day. That, managing this site, helping with Elliott’s business, getting ready for the retail store in September and training for a triathlon are keeping me way busy. Elliott just had a birthday over the holiday weekend, and we spent the 3 days without making any major plans. It’s so nice sometimes to just be spontaneous and go with whatever we feel like doing. Gardening a bit, a minor bike ride, friends over, bbq, and of course new puppy wrangling. heh.

So on another note: I was in a local wine shop the other day and the very cute BettiePage-esque girl working there said “where do I know you from, you look really familiar. Are you a RollerBetty? You look like you could be a RollerBetty.” I have to say I was super happy that she’d think so. Trying out for roller-derby is on my list of things to do when life calms down some. Of course life NEVER calms down some because whenever it does, Elliott and I seem to add something else. But in this case maybe that’ll be the next “something else”. Tryouts are in January each year, I think. Question for you, Dale (if you’re reading): are the injuries as prevalent as I hear they are? ‘Cause the only thing that gives me pause is that I’m too old for broken bones.

Ok, that’s my updating for now. I’m off to try to get other site updates done while I have a few minutes.

~Jane

Yow. This week’s topic for SexyMama blog is interesting, it’s “desire” - as in, how to keep it even with sleep deprivation, stress, hormones and anything else that might be going on. Happily for me, the days of sleep deprivation are long gone, but oh my do I remember the period of time during which I got about 2 hours sleep a night. Being a single mom at the time, of 1, 2 and 3 year olds, with a soon-to-be ex who wasn’t participating in the childcare, it was ROUGH. It sucked. I couldn’t actually get in a car and drive for more than a mile or so without starting to doze off.

Nowadays it’s not sleep getting in the way, it’s privacy (sharing a home with 3 kids and 6 pets leaves very little uninterrupted time), stress, and most recently the added physical exertion of training for a triathlon. The physical activity is actually good, and I know it’s not just me, it’s pretty much proven that exercise leads to higher libido levels. Still, sometimes my body is pretty tired out, so I suppose then I can just communicate with Elliott “hell NO, I’m not going to be on top, my legs are shot”. Heh.

I wish I had a good cure-all for what to do when one of the above is getting in the way. The most obvious thing is to say “hey, make a little time for yourself” - but I do realize that most of us consider time for ourselves a luxury. It’s taken me several years to get over the mindset that if I’m not constantly doing things for either the kids or the husband, I’m somehow not doing enough. Now, I’ve fully embraced the idea that a happier and more relaxed me is the best thing I CAN give them. If I need it, I can say to Elliott “hey, I’ve just got to have a couple of hours - can you do x, y or z?” Sometimes he can, sometimes he can’t, since we’re both pretty busy, but we definitely TRY to help each other out, and encourage each other to have downtime.

I’m sure a zillion sex/relationship advice books say that - but there’s a reason: it’s totally valid advice. A long time ago, when I was in a relationship when my kids were that young, when I was sleep deprived, hormonal and stressed out, I found the time where I could: in the drive over to meeting the then-partner. I’d get a babysitter, and I’d have a half hour of driving to switch gears from stressed out mommy to sexual, hopefully interesting woman. That was the only “me” time I had back then, but I took it and it worked.

On another note, I have a lovely little getaway kit from Babeland to give away to a reader: it has massage oil, bath fizzies, little travel candles, lube, a cute little vibe, a condom - all the little accouterments one might need for when the mood does strike. Leave a comment, and I’ll happily pick a random reader to send it out to.

You know what I need help with anymore? desire to write. I’m having an easy enough time with sex, but writing? feh.

Today being the first day of the SexyMamaBlog project, I’m sitting down now with my cup of coffee to write about topic one: Sex Positive Families – what does it mean, and how do you create this in a rather sex-negative culture? How do you model being a sex-positive mom?

I don’t think I grew up in a particularly sex-negative household, it was more of a sex-apathetic household. My mother was a volunteer for Planned Parenthood for at least a decade (probably more) counseling teenagers about birth control options and reproductive choices. That said, I somehow got the feeling that she was exceedingly embarrassed to talk to her own two daughters about anything at all. I learned plenty about HALF of the important things: how to protect myself from unplanned pregnancy and STDs, but not the other important thing: the pleasure principle. If anything, I grew up thinking sex was normal but overrated. Then, marrying a man who was a product of a conservative sex-negative religious upbringing, I didn’t really have the experience or tools to have any pleasure in our sex life.

That was eons ago, but I want a better experience for my daughters than I had. My take on sex-positive is this: good sex is an integral part of our lives, necessary for physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. And that is in whatever form is right for the person involved, be it gay, straight, bi, queer, poly, monogamous, kinky, ‘nilla, or whatever inbetween of any of those. The other part of being sex positive, to me, is to make myself available for questions, but not to foist information on them before they want it. They have access to tons of reading if they’re uncomfortable asking me things. They have their Aunt Heather if they want another adult to talk to, and their Auntie Natasha as well.

I don’t know how well I’m doing - what I do know is that each person is so unique, there isn’t one right answer. My oldest daughter will probably never speak to me about anything relating to sex. It’s simply not in her comfort zone. My middle daughter has already come to me for advice, birth control, and talked Auntie Heather’s ear off time and again with questions. I have tried to convey my opinions, which are to be safe, and to make sure sex is pleasurable for BOTH parties, something too often lost in teenage relations. That said, I also have my own limits with my daughters - my own comfort levels with what I do and don’t want to know. I may know that my middle daughter is sexually active with her longterm boyfriend, but I don’t want to be her best friend and hear the details, any more than she wants to hear about what Elliott and I do or don’t do. I think it’s important to respect boundaries there on both sides.

I will say that I am not the parent I thought I’d be. Now that they are teenagers, the reality of my emotion about things is not what I’d envisioned it might be. My oh-so-enlightened “anything consensual is ok” attitudes have been tested, with middle of the night worries. What it always boils down to is wanting to spare your children unhappiness or injury, physical or emotional. Unrealistic, definitely, but completely normal to wish for. Are we a sex-positive household? I hope so, but it’s not something I wake up thinking about how to do. It’s more of an attitude along the way, the little comments as issues are encountered. Saying something when awful mainstream media messages pop up in front of us, instead of letting them slide.

One of the things that’s always interesting is how a kid’s perspective differs from the parent. My own mother now claims that she never made the comment “sex is overrated” (which she did, repeatedly, when I was growing up) because she remembers herself being more openminded. How my own daughters will remember their upbringing remains to be seen, but I can almost guarantee they’ll remember it differently than I do. :)

K, so starting tomorrow I’m going to participate for the month of May in Babeland’s Sexy Mama blog. Each week, those of us participating will write on a new theme suggested by Babeland, relating to sex and parenting themes. Oh, and I get to give away one yummy prize to a reader, although I haven’t determined yet how I’ll pick a winner for that. So: stay tuned, it’ll be the most regular updates for me in at least a year. :)

~Jane

Ok, so yesterday I posted something about what appeared to be a site hack - at first we wondered if it was a Wordpress issue, since a security bug fix was released around the same time we started getting reports of people being redirected to fullpage ads on our site. Then we thought somehow our javascript was hacked. After much investigation, mystery solved, and I’m feeling quite angry. We use Adbrite for a few text ads on our site - mostly it’s a couple of phonesex companies, and literotica (whom I like) that are there. It’s an easy way for me to at least offer some advertising on JanesGuide, but I’ve always taken pains to make sure that I see and approve of the text ads that appear, and that they ARE just text ads. Well, awhile back Adbrite sold or partnered with, or opened a second brand name or something to handle the adult portion of their business, called BlackLabelAds. I never bothered to even sign in there, as I could still approve ads and view stats through the interface I’ve always used. I looked at Adbrite when this happened, by the way, to make sure it wasn’t from there - and sure enough, they showed only the text ads I’d approved.

I decided to login in to BlackLabelAds to make sure nothing was amiss, however. I’m very glad I did, and very pissed off. While told at the time that BlackLabel was launched that all account info would be transferred the SAME as it was set in Adbrite, apparently someone over there decided to change my acceptance policy about a week ago, on fullpage ads without so much as informing me, much less asking my consent. This greatly pisses me off. I changed the settings back to what they were before (it looks from the statistics there as if this only happened for about a week) - and the beautiful part of it is, my site was changed, over 13,000 of my readers were subjected to fullpage ads that looked like redirects, and for all of this I got a whopping $35.

I’ve turned down fullpage ads for $1.00 PER view because I never wanted to sully my website with them. Grrr…

While I was gone, it appears that there was a security breach on the site, and somehow people were being redirected to various sites that I have no reviews of, much less affiliation with. Not entirely sure how it happened, but I *think* it’s fixed. If you do find yourself sent off somewhere when you haven’t clicked anything PLEASE let me know, I’m fairly upset about it. Since I can’t seem to duplicate it (it happened to me randomly as I was checking the most recent listings I’d posted) I am not entirely comfortable that it’s really fixed. :(

Anyhow, the trip was wonderful! Did a bunch of sailing, and a very tiny bit of diving. The diving, sadly, wasn’t much fun for me. I was too cold (wetsuit from the dive shop was a tad too big and I got water flow in) and the visibility was poor. I shivered the whole time and went through way more air than usual. Elliott went on two dives, but I stayed up top and had a beer with the other half of the group that opted out.

Every time we go to Mexico, we fantasize about staying there. I thought about it a bit more seriously this time, and realized that I don’t actually want to. I think the best thing would be to visit for longer periods of time (once the girls are in college) but not LIVE there. I love where we live now, grinding weather patterns aside.

So: back to serious work on all fronts: here, the triathlon training, getting my little retail thing geared up… way too much to do, and not enough hours in the day.

~Jane

It’s snowing here. I got my snow tires taken off last week, and now for two days in a row it’s snowed. Unbelievable.

Just figured I’d check in since it’s been awhile. Everything is going wonderfully, (weather woes aside) my daughters ALL just had birthdays and one more birthday season is behind me. Elliott and I have moved back to a home office, something I didn’t think I’d ever do. I worked from home for so many years, and I didn’t like not having enough separation between work and home. This is slightly better since the home office is a very separate space, so maybe it’ll work for me. But, I have yet another new project (the first one I cryptically mentioned is that I’m training for a triathlon. There, secret out) and the latest is a retail store I’m planning on opening in the fall. Yes, a brick-and-mortar thing. I’m tired of everything being virtual, I think I may actually be ready to interact with people in person! heh. And no, it’s not adult retail, it’s G-rated. :)

So, as you can see, it’s been busy around here. Busy, and fun. 6 pets, 3 kids, 3 businesses now, and the one adoring (and adored) husband that makes the whole rest of it possible by dealing with my increasingly diverse interests. He’s been biking and swimming with me, which is REALLY nice. Biking is boring alone. He refuses to run, but I understand why - of the 3 sports in tri, running is the one I loathe.

Anyhow - the tri I’m doing is in June, so I’ll have to post an update at some point and let y’all know how I did. :)

~Jane