Pinko, Peri-Menopause and a Perfect Blend

The second date with Pinko is going very well, although he should have shown a tad more restraint with the duck and ricotta pizza Gigi and her friends made for a dinner party at my house right after he first got here.  It was delicious, but rich, and there were some other kinds of pizzas, but I'm thinking the third little slice of the duck one gave him a case of midnight indigestion.  Actually, now that we've had a couple of weeks to study each other, I'm thinking that any time he's able to make a choice about what to eat or drink - he's going to make a choice that gives him indigestion.  Jalapeño jack cheese seems to be the primary culprit.

I had a bit of a melt down myself that first week which he attributes to my inability to believe things could possibly be going so well between us.  He may be right, although I really did think that my vagina was broken on account of menopause stuff.

When I went for my check up a couple of weeks ago, the doctor ran blood tests which confirmed that I have, indeed, entered Peri-menopause.  Some other blood test results were off kilter, so I have to go back later this month to do fasting blood work. There are plenty of resources on the internet to explain menopausal symptoms, and I have a big book by Christiane Northrup called The Wisdom of Menopause.

Plenty of people make plenty of recommendations for dealing with peri-menopausal symptoms; however, a preliminary examination of the literature suggests that the very best thing for peri-menopausal symptoms is sex, sex and more sex.  At least, that's what my reading suggests.

Christiane Northrup continually makes the point that lots of the troubles women have during peri-menopause stem from long standing issues in relationships that haven't been addressed.  Apparently, I preemptively addressed those issues some years ago when I filed for divorce from Buzz Kill.  Dr. Northrup doesn't think all women need to divorce their husbands in order to have a peaceful peri-menopause, but she does think that when you've been sweeping marital issues under the rug for twenty or thirty years in order to maintain a harmonious domestic environment, it's possible that you'll start loosing your shit in an explosive sort of way when the hormones start fluctuating.
Hide the knives - stuff like that.

Since Buzz Kill is safely and securely in the past, unless he's sending a check, and Velvet is managing quite well on his own - the relationships that could be the most problematic are, thankfully, perking along smoothly because we've reached understanding and accord.
Blessed Be.

While introducing this new relationship, what has been most striking so far is how easily Pinko fits into my space.  The equipment he uses to make musical mixes fits right into the drawer of an occasional cabinet in the dining room that has become to spot for his laptop.  I already had an extra desk chair so now he's got his own workspace right by the window where he can smoke.  If things develop into something more permanent, it would be a simple matter to install shelves on the wall.  It would probably be prudent to resist rearranging the furniture since Pinko is just visiting right now.  Nevertheless, his shaving things went neatly into the medicine cabinet, and his suitcase slid smoothly under the bed.

When I first moved into this apartment, I was surprised to see how perfectly all my own belongings fit into the closets and the kitchen drawers.  During the time the marital residence was on the market, the year in the rental and the subsequent move into storage, I was very proficient at getting rid of extraneous stuff and keeping only things I really used or really loved.  More to the point, I was so aware of the amount of space necessary to store that stuff in the existing containers and boxes that when Velvet and I finally moved into our new home, everything landed in cabinets, drawers and closets so perfectly that it was like a custom design.

The same can be said for Pinko.  We fit together so well that I started getting dizzy.  We have communication glitches like everyone else.  There have been times when he thought I wasn't listening to him when I was really trying to give him additional information, but that instance involved navigation and directions and my horrible sense of direction is legendary.  And a little tempest developed in my teapot after he made a comment about a rice cake I was fixing to eat.   When I got over being pissed off because I figured no one who eats as much bacon as he does has any right at all to judge, criticize, question or remark upon my eating habits and/or food choices - I finally brought up his comment and told him I found it disturbing.

He found it disturbing too, once he heard about it, because he was simply expressing his great surprise that anyone as surrounded by delicious food as I am would chose to eat dirt.   He thinks rice cakes taste like dirt.  He also thinks it's a bit odd that someone would be in a tizzy over a remark about a rice cake for nearly two days without seeking clarification from the remarker.

To me, this episode illustrates that Pinko may know his way around a woman's body, but his ability to navigate around a woman's mind is somewhat limited.  Every one of my female friends who heard about the rice cake remark didn't even need to hear the end of my sentence to know that in my mind, he  said I was fat.  I like the whole rice cake incident because it shows where the work lies when we're moving forward together.

And we are moving forward together.

Last weekend, he finally met Velvet.  Velvet and Cupcake are absolutely living together at Buzz Kill's apartment, and while I could muster up objections that make me sound like a bitchy mother-in-law, overall, it looks like an appropriate and desirable arrangement especially since it gives Pinko and I lots of time to get to know each other better.  I cooked dinner Saturday night and Velvet came over with Cupcake.

Once again, we seem to find a perfect fit.  Pinko and Velvet had an animated conversation about Marxism, economics in general and some other stuff they enjoyed even though nobody brought up revolution last weekend.   Or if they did, I missed it because I went to bed on the early side.  As it happened, Velvet went to bed fairly early too which led to Pinko and Cupcake talking all night long.  When I woke up at 5:30, they'd drank almost all the red wine in the house and were hanging out the dining room window smoking cigarettes.

Cupcake had told Pinko everything anyone ever needed to know about the life and times of Buzz Kill and me, and Pinko talked with Cupcake about her general anxieties, the relationship with Velvet (whom she adores) and, of course, communism since talks with Pinko tend to include communism no matter what.   Cupcake was astounded to learn that many of her own internet beliefs counted as Communism especially since she'd been trying to talk about this sociopolitical stuff with her dad for years without success.  First because she's a girl and her dad is old school and believes she should be in the kitchen, but more importantly, Cupcake's dad had enough trouble in Hungary as a youth that he's the model of an oppressed worker today in America.  Most of us probably are, to some degree or another.  Anyway, Cupcake's dad believes the Job Creator bullshit and supports Republicans for all the same reasons all the people who believe that Bullshit support Republicans.  He's against Marriage Equality, too.  But Cupcake's dad is not the point.  The point is that Cupcake LOVES Pinko, and Pinko fits in beautifully.

Before Pinko got here, when I mentioned that Velvet has never seen me with a man besides his father, people often thought I was worried about Velvet's emotional reaction to my dating.  That was never true, although I wasn't able to articulate my real concern.   Hanging around the apartment in our pajamas all day on Sunday, the four of us - and Gigi too since she'd come over so I could help her edit the final version of her master's thesis (on dance/movement therapy approaches to treatment of eating disorders) - rubbed along together so naturally that I realized that I was never once worried about how a 22 year old would view his mother's dating.

Velvet has been aware that I've been dating ever since I was hanging out with The Narcissist, although he's never met anyone except the Man from San Antone - who doesn't count as a date.  That's a significant individual from the past who has no bearing on the present, much less the future.  I've always been convinced that there was no reason to introduce Velvet to anyone unless I was seriously interested in a long term relationship.  

Introducing a new element into the stable, harmonious domestic environment that Velvet and I have created together, however, is a very big deal.  I wasn't going to risk disrupting the balance unless I was nearly 100% positive that any man who became a new element would be part of a delightfully dynamic blended family.

Preliminary evidence suggests Pinko blends beautifully - and that has nothing to do with how I came to think of him as the Pussy Master, but that's another story.
Things of Beauty #073 and 074-101 (realia)