My boyfriend and I just completed building a house and we're now decorating it. The following is a popular and frequent exchange, occurring several times a day.
HIM: "How can you not like that?"
ME: "Because it's ugly."
And blackout.
Through this intense process of producing a house, I've learned that my lover is more anal than I had originally thought.
Case and Point. I bought several votive candles the other day, to put with our framed photographs in our book case. Then, upon seeing the empty mantlepiece with the flat screen television hovering only inches above it (whole other rant about mounting the television over a fireplace) we decided to put the votive candles on the mantle.
He was acting like fuckin' Rain Man, placing eight tiny votives in a straight line. He eye balled them for alignment (thank god because if he got out a tape measure or leveler, I was going to have a stroke). The way he leaned over them, then stepped back to see his handy work, pushing one here, sliding another over there, he looked like fuckin' Rain Man. I had to walk away. I'm not equipped to handle that much OCD.
As soon as I washed Rain Man from my mind, I focused on something that I've been struggling with for awhile now. I'm Facebook friends with my boyfriend's 12 year old son and 17 year old daughter. This means that they can read everything that I write, (including this post) if they choose to.
I thought friending the kids was a good way to see what kind of trouble they might get into, and any inappropriate behavior taking place. That, and I also feel that there's a certain amount of freedom that the kids get by expressing themselves online, and that perhaps I'd learn something about them. Of course there's the dark, ugly and dangerous side as well, which was another reason I wanted to be their friend. I watch Dateline.
I can't imagine if Facebook existed when I was 12 and 17 years old. My parents would've been privy to my kleptomaniac phase in eighth grade and the daily keg parties that we had in high school, when they were out of town (which was often).
All was fine until I started writing articles like, Are You Jealous of Your Partners Masturbation? and Skype Sex because in order to improve my readership, stats and traffic, I post it on Facebook and Twitter. Helloooo Girlfriend Kids!
I haven't been a Girlfriend Mom very long, and this sort of thing is completely foreign to me. I'm not sure if it's my responsibility to monitor what the kids see or read. My boyfriend hasn't said anything, so perhaps I should let it go. Then again, he just asked me if someone moved the votives, so I'm not sure where his priorities are.
My mother doesn't show my salacious articles to my dad, so that gives you some sense of the content. If it makes my mother uncomfortable, then what affect might it have on a 12 year old boy? Am I being paranoid? Is it egotistical to think that he would give a rats ass and want to read my stuff? I think he's spending his time on more important things like friending the entire cast of The Jersey Shore.
I know that kids growing up in the world today are exposed to a lot more adult related material than I was at their age. However, my parents never hid their pot smoking from me, or as they liked to call it, grass. It's hard to know what should be kept locked in a drawer, and I suppose it's different for every parent.
Speaking of drawers. My boyfriend came to me the other day and said that his son asked him, "Dad, what's Gun Oil for?" I almost seized! The personal lubricant is kept in our nightstand drawer, where most people keep their lubricants, except those of you who don't need the extra help and to you I say, God bless and LIARS!
His son obviously went on a fishing expedition in our bedroom. I'm not sure what I was more miffed at, his son opening our drawers, or that my boyfriend makes no effort to hide the contraband. "What did you tell him?" In my boyfriend's quick thinking wisdom, he told him that it was to oil door hinges.
I'm no blood related mother but there's no way that his son bought that crappy crap. And the fact that my boyfriend believes that he did, shows daddy's gullibility, or a need to prolong his son's innocence before it inevitably fades into Gun Oil, Playboys and Porn (ALSO in the drawer).
"Hey boyfriend, you're going to tell me that he only saw the Gun Oil? Okay, and there's a huge bridge in Brooklyn that went on sale."
I'd like to be a responsible adult and parental figure (right?) but at the same time, I prefer to leave most of the child rearing responsibilities to my boyfriend and the blood related mother. I just know that if I read about my dad's girlfriend's favorite sex trick in bed, whether I was 12 or 45, I'd throw up and then take a shower to wash the image away, just like I did with my Rain Man.
