I am hoping you can shed some light on the mystery of making mojitos
at home. We are having a large party and desperately want to serve them.
But…all that muddling. Is there a way to pre-muddle the mint without
causing it to turn black and look like I scraped something off the bottom of
my shoe to put in my guests’ cocktails? Now that I think about it, most of
them would probably knock it back anyway, but still…

There is a mint syrup on the market, but I am suspicious of it’s
claim to taste as fresh as…well, fresh mint.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Always looking for a shortcut

This is just a follow-up to a Vine letter — specifically, to the part of Annoyed’s letter where she says, “I think I have a right to be offended when someone teases me about my body just as much as someone who is overweight.”

Of course Annoyed has a right to be offended, but it’s not nearly comparable. First, both the co-worker’s comments and yours reflected a positive slant on Annoyed’s slender frame — the co-worker may be making Annoyed uncomfortable, but she’s making Annoyed uncomfortable based on envy, not contempt. She isn’t calling Annoyed ugly, lazy, stupid, morally inferior. She isn’t making assumptions about Annoyed’s character and lifestyle. Furthermore, Annoyed’s co-worker’s comment does not reinforce a theme of social discrimination against Annoyed based on her body type. I don’t think anyone’s ever lost a job for being too skinny. Well, maybe a construction worker. But a lawyer? An opera singer?

It’s not the same.

Off the soapbox now,
Just For The Record

This isn’t a terribly pressing question, but I’ve been
giving it some thought lately and would like your
opinion.

I’ve been with my boyfriend Z for three and a half
years, and things are good. We’ve been through some
ups and downs, but communication is generally pretty
open and we’ve worked ourselves into a really great
spot, as a couple. But there’s a slight issue.

Last spring, Z slept with someone else. It was a
one-time mistake and he was open with me and, after a
lot of thinking and talking and fighting and thinking
some more, I decided that I wanted to stay with him
and work things out. Which we did, painstakingly, over
the next six months.

However, Z has suggested occasionally that I take an
opportunity to balance the karmic scales, as it were,
and sleep with someone else. At first, I turned it
down because I’m not a vindictive person and I don’t
want to create more negative energy in our
relationship, but the more he mentions it, the more I
want to do it, but for my own reasons. (Z has had sex
with other people before me; he was my first, and
while I see myself staying with him for the long haul,
I’d like to see what it’s like to be with someone
else, just once, for experience and curiosity’s sake.)

Z and I have talked openly about this, and I’ve
explained that if I were to sleep with someone else,
it would be purely physical and that, if he wanted to,
he could even choose the person. He has said that he
thinks it’s a good idea — to do it now and not create
bigger problems in our relationship down the road —
but admits that yes, he probably will get upset
regardless, though nothing we can’t deal with.

My question, I suppose, is this: since it was his idea
in the first place, and now seems like something I’d
really like to try just once before we get engaged, is
it worth it? We’re in a great stage of our
relationship right now and I’m really hesitant to
throw a kink in things…but, as he says, it would be
better to do this sooner rather than later. Or should
I just drop it? I love him terribly, and I don’t want
to do this unless he’s okay with it first. Thanks (and
you write beautifully; I love your site]).

Curiosity Killed the…Well, Nothing, Hopefully

I have a pretty low-key problem, but I’d still like your thoughts and
advice.

My boyfriend and I have been together almost two years. When we met, we
were working together on a campaign but for different organizations.
Both of us were in crappy marriages that needed to end. We were friends
and comrades in arms first, and about a year later we started feeling
romantic.

When I saw things headed that way, I confronted him and basically said,
“Look, we’ve been flirting and talking about how awful our marriages
are. We either need to get divorces or stop this nonsense before it
leads to a lurid affair.”

He freaked out a bit at first, but decided he wanted to go for it. My
divorce was short and very amicable (my ex-husband’s total lack of
emotional involvement meant a very easy divorce, but that is another
story), while his was difficult, expensive (at least in his opinion, it
was probably average) and emotionally horrible. It was probably made
worse by the fact that they dated/lived together for five (mostly
crappy) years and got married only two years before the divorce. In
retrospect he says he thought the marriage would make things better.
Eye-rolls from me, but whatever…

We had a couple of short estrangements/break-ups while he tried to deal
with that, but he always came back to, “Why should I torture myself in a
loveless marriage when I care for you and we are happy together?”

Then his dad got brain cancer and died. His evil stepmother proceeded to
disinherit him and she won’t let him communicate with is half-sisters
(who he helped raise).

Pretty stressful, eh?

So that’s the background. We have our tumultous moments, but basically
our relationship is great. It is a bit weird though, by “normal”
standards I suppose. We live apart, in fact we each own our own houses.
He’s a materialistic person (not in the bad way, but because he was poor
growing up, so owning property and nice things means happiness and safety
to him), so owning the house is important, and he claims it is a tax
shelter.

Recently, a friend of mine started talking about how she’s looking for a
house to rent with her boyfriend in the year or two before they leave to
go teach abroad. I thought, “Well, why don’t you rent you my house and I
can live briefly with Boyfriend. It will be temporary (thus non-threatening) and we can save money/pay debts (I still have a lot of debt
from the divorce and am living pretty hand to mouth).”

She was cool and so I asked Boyfriend. He liked the idea (especially
since paying a mortgage by himself is starting to feel expensive to him)
but said he wanted time to think about it and would not commit.

It’s been a while, but he seems to have completely dropped the idea.

In a related story, he keeps bringing up long-term plans then backing
off. Like he will talk about us selling our houses and building a house
together. Or when we were on vacation at the beach surrounded by playing
kids, he said, “I guess you’ll want kids someday.” When I said that I
wouldn’t have kids without marriage (I’m funny that way), he replied that
he was never getting married. So I said, “Then I guess there won’t be
any kids.”

Later, when we were watching some talk show with a woman who was scared
of giving birth, he kept joking about how that was my syndrome (I am
VERY ambivalent about having kids) and started discussing having kids
again.

So my very low-key, long-term problem is…what the hell? What does this
boy want? Are these mixed signals or is it just me? Is he just really
burned on marriage or does he not trust me? What is with the random,
sporadic talk of kids?

For the most part, I’m willing to just not think about this too much and
deal with the relationship one day at a time. I’M not dying to get
married. I’M a little scared of kids, but not 100 percent opposed. This is not
a big deal in many ways.

The problem is that I am going to be thirty in a few months. My
fertility is going downhill. These are the years I should be getting my
plan together IF I plan on ever having kids.

So I feel, perhaps I OUGHT to be thinking about this more. Maybe I
should have a “serious talk” with boyfriend about his intentions. Or am
I just overreacting?

I don’t need a specific yes or no answer here, just some general
objective advice and a feel for the situation. Thanks!

Muddled in the Midwest

Since I’m both an English major and a baseball fan, I have always
especially loved reading your essays on both baseball and grammar, and I
have a question that touches on these two areas of your expertise. While
watching a Yankee game against the Angels, the announcers referred
to the next game, the third in a three-game series, as the “rubber” game.
My boyfriend confirmed my understanding of the term — i.e., that it is the
last game in an odd series — however, he couldn’t tell me where or how the
term originated. Since I’m a big dork, I really enjoy knowing the
etymology of various baseball terms, and I thought you might either know
the answer or be able to point me in the right direction.

Thanks!
Yankee Fan from Brooklyn