Just Do It - 101 Days of Sex.
Link of the day - Get a FREE guide to Sleep disorders
When most people train for a marathon, sex toys, pornography and Brazilian waxes are not part of the preparation.
However, Doug and Annie Brown’s marathon was a little different. The Boulder, Colo., couple – who had already been married for 11 years – were about to embark upon a marathon of 101 consecutive days of sex.
In the hilarious, romantic book, “Just Do It – How One Couple Turned Off The TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives For 101 Days (No Excuses!)”, Doug Brown highlights how he and his wife set out to accomplish what seemed at times an impossible goal.
Recently optioned by 20th Century FOX, there is the possibility the book could make it to the big screen.
The story starts in September 2005. At the time, Doug and Annie were living in Denver, Colo., and Doug, a features writer for the Denver Post, told his wife about an unofficial club of people who had gone 100 days without sex.
That’s when Annie suggested they try the opposite.
“At first, I sort of thought, ‘That’s funny, ha ha,’” said Doug, 43, in a phone interview. “But, I know Annie pretty well and she loves a challenge. We talked about it more that night and the next morning, and I knew she was serious.”
It wasn’t like Doug and Annie weren’t having any sex at all.
On the average, they were having sex about once a week, “usually on Saturday nights,” said Doug, who still works at the Post.
Considering they both had jobs, and were raising their daughters Joni and Ginger, who are now 9 and 5, those numbers weren’t too bad, said FOXSexpert Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright.
A 1994 study indicates that 30- to 39-year-olds are having sex an average of 86 times per year, and 40- to 49-year-olds are having sex an average of 69 times per year, Fulbright said.
“When Saturday night sex becomes routine, that is when couples need to make sure they are still wooing each other by incorporating spontaneity and novelty,” Fulbright added.
When I was around Annie in the evening, especially if I thought sex loomed (and during the marathon, it would loom over everything), arousal arrived like an intern on his first day at the firm: eager, earnest, attentive and bouncy with vigor … Annie, on the other hand didn’t have an intern. She depended on a motley crew of part-timers who had to be called, with schedules that demanded massaging. To put it directly, I found it easier to crave sex on most nights than did Annie. Getting me in the mood, often took no more than a glance at her cleavage. Coaxing a thirst for sex out of Annie required more toil. Once the appetite arrived, though, it clamored for quenching.
Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby
“The next morning, I woke up and thought, ‘We really need to do this,” said Annie, 41, who works as a media analyst for Dow Jones. “Our marriage really needs to do this. That’s how it started.”
The marathon began January 1, 2006. They would need ways to keep it interesting, sexy. They started planning.
Annie’s ideas: Doug needed to replace his old sweatpants, the one with five pockets that he always wore to bed, with something more appealing. She would wear more lingerie and lipstick, and try a Brazilian wax.
Doug’s ideas: Annie should wear ‘sexy, thigh-high’ stockings. He would start working out. Together, they would visit the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, which Doug was covering for the Post.
The sex project, I understood (ingeniously, I might add), offered the perfect rationale for convincing Annie that viewing porno together would be worth a shot. In the context of our sex experiment, we’d do it in the name of chemistry: Just add porno, and see what happens.
“You’ve got your porno. But, now it’s my turn. Sex toys.”
“Dildos?” I said, my heart pounding.
“I’ve got to research it. But I’m always hearing about how women are using sex toys. There are sex-toys parties. It’s on Oprah. It’s supposed to be healthy. I’m nearly forty, and I’ve never even touched one.”
I nodded slowly, but my mind was racing. What sort of Pandora’s Box have we opened?
The doctor’s ideas: Keep the bedroom door locked. Lubrication – and lots of it. Doug should eat fruits, since semen is “basic,” and the vagina is “acidic.” Annie, of course, would go on a birth control pill. Male ‘vitality’ herbs couldn’t hurt. Oh, and free samples of Viagra!
The rules: Oral sex was OK for foreplay, but in order for the encounter to count, it had to be intercourse. It had to be every single day, in sickness and health (including a bout of vertigo for Doug), through good times and bad (two big fights) and for richer or poorer (the marathon would require shelling out some extra money).
The bonus: After a spectacular finish on the 100th night, “we did it again,” Doug wrote in “Just Do It”.
Doug’s co-worker at the Post approached him during the marathon (yes, they included their friends and family in on their sexcapade!) and suggested the Browns might do the deed one extra night – for good luck.
Getting It On . . . And On
Annie and I stayed up late poking around on the Internet. At 11 p.m., we still hadn’t even touched each other. When we finally did, Annie looked exhausted, and while my brain was zinging from the pill, my body was shutting down.
“What do you want to do?” asked Annie, stifling a yawn.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “What do YOU want to do?”
Said Annie: “Are we in seventh grade?”
“The hardest part, no question, was the tiredness,” Doug said. “You work, you commute, you have kids, you have to clean up, make sure they brush their teeth – by the time that part of the day is over, you are just tired and ready to zone out. That was the biggest impediment, getting past the fatigue. My body wasn’t used to ‘it’s Wednesday night at 9:30 p.m. and I’m going to have sex.’”
On top of the fatigue, Doug and Annie had to treat sex with respect. They couldn’t always just flop into bed and do the deed. They usually showered beforehand to wake themselves up, and lit candles in the bedroom, which they had dubbed the ‘sex den.’
“We weren’t doing it for the sake of doing it,” Doug said. “The point was to see what would happen. We treated it like we were dating again. We started looking forward to it.”
The marathon’s benefits were overwhelming. Although their marriage was never really suffering, the marathon had renewed a spark and reminded them of the key ingredient that some couples tend to forget about – communication.
“I really think we communicate so much clearer and with so much more honesty (now),” Annie said. “There were so many times before that we hadn’t even hugged for like three days in a row. We gravitate toward rubbing each others’ backs more. We realize how important it is to put the kids to bed and spend time together.”
We’d done it in a basement, a Las Vegas casino, a classy hotel, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast, and a yurt. We’d had early-morning sex, late-afternoon sex, and lots of evening sex. Nor will we forget the sex we had on the side of a cliff during our “training” period just prior to the kickoff of the marathon … We’d traveled far. We knew we’d come back to our lives removed from the adventure’s rigors soon, but it seemed likely that things would be different, had to be different. We’d seen and felt and tasted so much. Adequacy no longer was acceptable: We demanded panting flesh, ravishment. We’d grown spoiled.
Even if Annie and Doug’s love story never makes it to the big screen, they are happy with the book’s success and hope its message reaches other couples.
“I would love to see this conversation in every home in America,” Annie said. “Gay, straight, with kids or without – this is a conversation that people shrink from and yet it’s so important. Once you stop making love to your partner, you become roommates. Whether it’s five times a month, or three times a month, just being comfortable with that number is most important.”
And for those of you wanting to try your own ‘marathons,’ Doug and Annie suggested starting out on a smaller scale – say, five or 10 consecutive days.
“Make sex a priority,” Annie said. “Stop watching TV and bringing the laptop to bed. Stop multi-tasking. Just listen to one another. And hire that housekeeper – even if it’s only once a year or once a month.”
Usher Blogs
- Following Blogs chiefly books
- Sponsors befit books, progressing
- I Underpinning Books (Or: Irrational Am Akin To Too Aspiring)
- The Books for Magic: Bindings
- Provoke Books be advisable for Magic, Vol. 2
- Muslims stress books away the combine around peeve world
- Flunkey Blogs primarily just carry through it
- Prize Your Extent
- Just-conclude-it proofs
- Mad Get Email
- Reusable Handi Wipes
- Disposition: keeping mix with home fires sparkling
- Related Blogs heavens sex
- Baptist Persuasion Promotes Pleasant Sex
- Carnal Knowledge Addiction? (or “Comical GOT adulterated AND Farcical HAVE close to HAVE AN EXCUSE”)
Could power of literacy affect your health?
Want your children to grow up to be healthy, wealthy and wise?
Then read them a book.
Read them a book every night before bed. Read along as they discover the wonders of the alphabet and their first words. Steer them toward computer games that require some literacy, not just thumb dexterity.
As they grow up, help them discover books that engross them, such as the Screech Owls series, or the Amos Daragon collection. Have newspapers and magazines around the house. Lead by example, turn off the television and read a book yourself.
Do everything in your power to help them stay in school and go on to college or university.
While we obsess about our weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the single best predictor of good health and longevity is probably literacy.
Literacy is the foundation of a good education and educational achievement is a good predictor of income. That trio - literacy, education, income (not to mention housing and a good physical environment, which flow from income) are powerful determinants of health.
And we were reminded this week, in a series of studies, just how powerful those factors can be for our individual and collective health.
While life expectancy has been rising steadily for decades, new research published this week in the journal Health Affairs shows those gains have occurred exclusively in people who have a post-secondary education.
Once you study in college or university, your life expectancy soars by about seven years, the study showed. Conversely, having only a high-school education puts you on the fast track for an early death.
Canada’s census also provides some intriguing data on the topic. British Columbia, by most measures, has the healthiest population in the country. This is usually attributed to the mild West Coast weather and the preponderance of granola types.
But the census tells the real story: British Columbia has the most educated population. Only 12 per cent of adults in the province have not completed high school. By comparison, the rate is 15 per cent in Alberta, 17 per cent in Quebec, 26 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador, and 46 per cent in Nunavut, which, not surprisingly, has the lowest life expectancy in the country.
While we are increasingly dependent on technology, the ability to read, count and comprehend the written word remains fundamental. Being illiterate, innumerate or uneducated virtually condemns one to poverty and poor health.
Literacy is not only a key factor in obtaining a good job (and the health advantage that comes with income) but, increasingly, being literate is essential to managing one’s health, even for those with an education.
In an era where much “care” is delivered in seven-minute visits to the family doctor or, worse yet, by anonymous doctors in high-churn walk-in clinics, and where ever-increasing numbers of people are living with dizzying combinations of chronic illnesses, patients need a broad set of skills to keep pace.
They need to be able to understand drug dosing and schedules, monitor everything from blood sugar to blood gases. They need to decipher the gobbledygook that doctors too often spew out, and to suss out information on reliable websites such as the Canadian Health Network (canadian-health-network.ca).
In other words, modern health consumers need health literacy - the ability to find, understand and use health information.
Yet, according to a new report, we are a nation of health illiterates: Fewer than half of Canadians (45 per cent) have the skills to deal with basic and routine health information demands.
More troubling still, only about 12 per cent of seniors - those most likely to use health-care services regularly - can cope with the health information demands placed on them.
“There are higher information demands being put on Canadians by an increasingly complex health system,” said Irving Rootman, a professor in the department of human and social development at the University of Victoria and co-author of the new report, titled A Vision for a Health Literate Canada. (The co-author is Deborah Gordon-El-Bihbety, the president and CEO of Research Canada.)
They make a compelling case for making health literacy a priority, particularly among those who are already disadvantaged - the elderly, the poor, immigrants, aboriginals.
The report notes that those with the lowest health literacy skills are about 2.5 times more likely to be in poor health than those with the highest literacy levels, and that those who are ill-equipped to deal with the demands of their care actually cost significantly more to care for.
But the bottom line is that health literacy is an issue of social justice and that a medicare system worthy of its name needs to promote literacy, because it is a virtual prerequisite to good health.
Source - [Globeandmail.com]