Basketball, bikes, and condoms

Look at me, I missed April entirely.

I'm taking a break from writing the semester's final papers. The sky is pink and purple outside my window. It's absolutely still. I hear birds and noisy cars and the occasional screams of my daughter and her friend Hunter, who are apparently playing in everyone's yards.

I rode my bike for the first time this year yesterday. Kelsey wanted to go to the ice cream store. So we dug around on dressers and nightstands trying to find enough change to pay for an ice cream cone, pumped up the tires on my bike (which was wedged underneath Eric's and held down by the dust collector and some clamps), picked the spider webs out of my helmet, and left. It was a good ride. Kelsey still can't keep up with me, even though I'm dreadfully out of shape. I didn't have any ice cream.

I also played basketball for the first time this year yesterday. It always feels so freeing and relaxing to shoot hoops. Today I played a while with Kelsey. She is such an enthusiastic, joyful thing.

The big, funny news is the impromptu field trip I took today. My teacher drove us to the dirty book store. We must have made quite a little circus: she, the middle-aged lesbian; I, the boring mom; Brian, the young musician; and Adam, the sweet guy who hasn't admitted he's gay yet. Brian was the most vocal. He and Adam each paid a dollar to try to win a porn movie. They lost. Ah, well. My friend Chryshelle works there, but she wasn't there right then. She usually works the 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. She says a guy breathed on her the other day. I'm not surprised. That's what they're there for, after all.

I was there to do some research, heh, heh, heh. I'm writing a story about condoms, and I got sort of stuck. It was boring reading. Brian said I should go to a porn store to find some really outrageous condoms and write about those. So Bird, the teacher, said, "Let's go." So we did. We piled into her Mini Cooper and we were off. It's workshop week, so the class was just the four of us.

I'd never been to this particular porn shop. It just opened about a year and a half ago, and it's been a very long time since I ventured into such a place. Not much has changed in the world of adult book stores. But the place was clean since it was so new. Still, I felt like they should have a hand sanitizer dispenser at the door.

I can't say the trip was inspiring. At least not yet. I bought some flavored condoms and I'm going to try to get people to taste them. Adam suggested I cut them into strips, that way I could get lots more people's comments. I think it will be hard enough getting a few comments. We'll see.

Any suggestions for my condom article would be appreciated. I need a good angle for this one.