Riding the Cotton Pony

*Author's note:  This blog is completely offensive and wayyyyyy overloaded with TMI.  Continue at your own risk.


My period and I are not friends.  In fact, I'm pretty sure we hate each other.  You know how those girls in the Judy Blume books were all bummed because they were the last ones to get their periods, and the other girls who did were all smug and exotic and pleased as punch and used a tampon the first time and celebrated by having sex and sprouting boobs?  


That's all crap, ya'll.


There has been no dancing and twirling on the beach in white pants during my "time of the month"... oh HELL no.  (Or frolicking in a white bikini, or wafting along the beach gently in a white sun dress, or bouncing out of bed in white pajama bottoms...)  There was, however, copious amounts of weeping, cramping, bloating, screaming, cursing, wearing every color except white and lying in the fetal position clutching a heating pad.  


My mother was one of those annoying women who didn't believe in PMS, mainly because SHE didn't have it.  Then my sister came along and lo and behold, neither did she.  (Proof positive, according to my mother, that PMS is a myth.  No one in HER family got it, ergo, it wasn't true.)


Then came me.


I got my mother's PMS, my sister's PMS, my grandmother's PMS, and the PMS of all previous generations of women who share my mother's DNA.  (These are the same women who paused only long enough while working in the fields to give birth, attach the baby to a boob, and keep going.  They're all related to my mother.)


I, unfortunately, was made of weaker stuff.  


(My mother:  *looking indignant and taking it really personally*  "You didn't get this from me!")


I had cramps that caused me to fold in half and vomit and pass out cold.


I didn't have them occasionally, I had them every single month.


My mother was hugely irritated by this because, again, no one in her family has this problem.  (We had the same issue when it took me 5 days to give birth to my first child.  As previously stated, my mother's family views birth as a blip in their day between brunch and lunch.  Of course, I had to fuck it all up by not going into labor without medical intervention and then spending a week on pitocin not giving birth already.  I'm pretty sure she thought I was doing it just to be contrary.  She actually called the hospital and demanded to talk to me, after explaining to the nurses that I should have had that baby by now.  She held the same theory regarding my cramps and PMS... I was just trying to be difficult, because apparently my secret method of rebelling against her and her child-bearing pelvis was to put myself through horrific pain every single month and refusing to give birth in a timely manner.  I needed to suck it up and stop being such a brat.)   She could never quite wrap her head around the fact that my pain was not only real, it was brutal.  So were the crazy-ass mood swings that had me sobbing uncontrollably one minute then wanting to kill everybody in their sleep while eating peanut butter cups the next.  


(My parents should have been wayyyyy more afraid of me than they actually were.  True story.)


Anyhoo, as time went by the cramps lessened to some degree but the mood swings kicked it up a notch.  Through the years they went from a couple of days before to the entire week before, the week during, AND the week after.  (I'm a rock star.  I am the Queen of PMS, yo.)


Three weeks out of the month, Dan is in fear for his life.


As well he should be.


The thing is, there's nothing I can do about it.  I don't use it as an excuse (in fact, I deny it... "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I HAVE PMS??!!!  HAS IT EVER OCCURRED TO YOU THAT YOU'RE JUST AN ASSHOLE??")  or even acknowledge that maybe I'm feeling a certain way because my hormones are tap dancing on my uterus and depleting the seratonin in my brain (totally made all that up, but it could be what actually happens, yes?  I suppose I could google but I'm not going to).  While I'm sitting around snarling and eating chocolate I'm also finding 157 reasons why it's all Dan's fault.  What do you mean it's hormones?  Fuck you! (Which is why I refer to the week before my period as "Stay the fuck away from me" Week.  We celebrate it with me crying and blaming Dan for everything that's wrong in the world and Dan playing mum and avoiding me until the day I start my period, at which time I inform him, "I have cramps.  I started my period," and he says, "Nooooo shitttttttt.  Imagine that" and then the bastard has the audacity to roll his eyes.


Things that piss me off the most about other people and periods:


1.  Men who say, "Must be nice to be a bitch anytime you want and blame it on your period."  (As opposed to men who just get to be an asshole whenever and not feel the need to make an excuse for it, am I right?  Smack it high, girls!)


2.  Women who wear a light days pad for 3 days and that's it.  (I hate you all.)


3.  Tampon commercials.  Hate them.  HATE THEM.


4.  Pad commercials.  Hate them.  HATE THEM.


5.  All the people who saw me in 9th grade wearing my light blue Dittos with a blood stain the size of a salad plate on the back and didn't bother telling me.  I walked all the way home from school like that, people.  ALL THE WAY HOME.  I never wore those pants again.  I was too traumatized.  I was planning on never going back to school but my mother nixed that plan.  (Thanks, MOM.)


6.  People who say, "Exercise helps!"  Newsflash:  No it doesn't.  You know what helps?  Vicodin.  Vicodin helps.  Vicodin, sweatpants, heating pads, Reese's peanut butter cups, and leaving me the hell alone.  All of that helps tremendously.  


7.  Dan.  Dan pisses me off A LOT while I'm on my period.  He says the same thing EVERY TIME.  About two days into it he will suggest something inappropriate and I will remind him, for the umpteenth time, that I'm on my period.  I'm all, "Dude!  I'm shark bait, for Christ's sake!" and he says, "STILL?"  Yes, DAN.... STILL.  


GOD!!!


For your amusement (or mine, whichever), here are some euphemisms for Aunt Flow that seriously crack me up:



15. Miss Scarlett's Come Home to Tara

14. Trolling for Vampires

13. A Dishonorable Discharge from the Uterine Navy

12. Saddling Old Rusty

11. Feelin' Menstru-riffic!

10. Clean-Up in Aisle One

9. Massacre at the Y

8. T-Minus 9 Months and Holding

7. Game Day for the Crimson Tide

6. Panty Shields Up, Captain!

5. Taking Carrie to the Prom

4. Playing Banjo in Sgt. Zygote's Ragtime Band

3. Ordering l'Omelette Rouge

2. Arts and Crafts Week at Panty Camp

1. Rebooting the Ovarian Operating System




(Note how I turned them all red... bwaaahahaaa!)  


My personal favorite:  Taking Carrie to the prom.  Classic.