Unsanitary Napkins

The thing about periods is that they always give me something to write about, or at least once a month. So, yes, put down that jelly donut, because it’s time for a story from the nether regions.

So, I’m getting older, you know. Like, mid 40’s older. And after two kids and three decades of eliminating the monthly lining of my uterus, I seem to be, well, having a bit of a glitch in the matrix. If you are one of five who reads my blog regularly, this does not come as a surprise to you.  But for some unknown reason, possibly denial, I am constantly shocked by how fucking miserable my period can be.

Not miserable enough to get a hysterectomy.  A hysterectomy is not only the last resort, it is literally my last resort. I have exhausted all other traditional options available to me through western medicine.  I am not a huge believer in alternative methods, so for right now, it’s either surgery or irregularity. I go with irregularity. Take that, you people who think I am not spontaneous.

What’s more unplanned than an aging woman’s menstrual cycle? Right now, I am having a period a mere eight days after the last one ended. If I were any more spontaneous, I would combust.

This premenopausal bullshit is all relatively new to me. I come from a line of women who had their interior lady parts ripped out at an early age. I am pretty sure my mother and both grandmothers did not make it to their forties with their wombs and tubes. I don’t have anything in my family history to compare my experience, other than the fact that even after so many years, it still sucks.

I do remember my mom having her own issues with excessive bleeding. One time, when I was about eight or nine, I recall my mother coming home from work or shopping or wherever she used to go without my sisters and me. She came in all upset, and the entire backside of her really large mom jeans ass was just covered in menstrual blood, like she sat in a bucket of blood or her butt hole ruptured or something. It scared the hell out of me. I remember another time when she was on all fours on her bed, writhing around, as what must have been an ovarian cyst burst, leaving her with extreme pain and an inability to stay still. I recollect laughing at watching her bellow like a cow yet being afraid because she didn’t slap me for laughing, which meant it must have really hurt. By the time she was forty, all her lady innards were gone, and whatever menopausal shit she experienced was lost to me, since I was too young to really know what was going on. Mostly, I just thought she was a bitch. It never occurred to me she might have a good reason.

But enough about her. This is a story about my uterus, which I am convinced is trying to kill me. Here I am, having a period a week after the last one ended. You would think I would not have had the time to conjure up a healthy uterine lining, but the joke’s on you.  And here’s the thing: they don’t tell you about this part in your sex ed class in middle school. Back then at the start of all this womanhood crap, it’s all about how you aren’t going to lose your virginity to a tampon if you are truly pure and a good girl (well, maybe you won’t, but it’s best not to risk it). They don’t tell you that later on at the tail end of the baby making time frame, you think you are going to die from the blood loss, and also, seriously, Tampax, can you not make something more absorbent than a super plus? I regularly have to use the XXXL tampon along with a pad, because you just never know.

Yesterday was that day, the one where I feel like crap, where I need to check and recheck for potential feminine hygiene breaches. I changed my tampon before I ran to the grocery store, but I didn’t have time to investigate any potential leaks before heading over to the car pool line. And I forgot my back up pad in my rush to do the grocery shopping. I was living on the edge. It wasn’t until I parked my car in the school line when I got that feeling.

Ladies, you know that feeling. You sit there, or you stand up, or you sneeze or cough, and you think, oh shit, I’ve sprung a leak.

I got that feeling while in the car pool line. It wasn’t like I was just going to be there for ten minutes. I knew between picking up one child and the next and then the drive to dance lessons, I had no opportunity for a pit stop. I frantically dug through my purse, looking for a spare pad. Usually I carry one or two around for my daughters, and I thought I might luck out, but I found nothing but a handful of crumpled Target receipts, which don’t appear to be very absorbent.

I searched the back seat, hoping that at some point, a lonely pad might have fallen out of a pocket or handbag, but again, I was empty handed. Also, searching the back seat made the situation in my pants seem even more precarious.

Surely, I had a travel pack of Kleenex somewhere in my vehicle. I looked in the thing between the seats, but it only held CDs that I didn’t remember putting in there five years ago and a collection of dried up pens. Nothing under the seats. Nothing in my purse or the storage in the doors.  Then I checked the glove compartment.

My glove compartment holds the car manual, a couple of tire pressure gauges, an ice scraper, proof of insurance and registration please ma’am, and yes, a giant stack of fast food restaurant napkins. I think you know where this is going.

I grabbed a wad of those napkins, courtesy of Chick Fil A, Zaxby’s, and Bojangles, and I did what I had to do. Right there in the carpool line, I unzipped my jeans and shoved my hand down, positioning that heap of paper napkins between my legs and inside my underwear. It wasn’t a mound for a family of four, mind you. It was enough for the whole Duggar family, 19 kids and counting. Because desperate times call for desperate measures.

I am sparing you the aftermath details, because I care, and I want you to come back and read some more. Let’s just say that as far as judgment calls go, this was a good one. And also, I need to stock up on my feminine hygiene products for the car, much like I used to carry around a change of panties and clothes for my girls when we were potty training, only this time, the spare panties will be for me.

The Love Canal Disaster

You know how you hear a story that is so wonderfully funny you want to share it, even if it would cause someone else terrible embarrassment? If it happened to you, you probably would only tell a few privileged individuals, really close friends, maybe, people who share your sense of humor and don’t judge.   This is one of those stories. It involves things you might not want to read about, like periods and tampons. Also, you have no idea who this story involves. Don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know who it is about, so just shut up.  Names and details have been altered to protect the innocent and the mortified.  Stop it, because you don’t know who it is. Ok, kids, here we go…

Tampons are pretty routine for the long time user, but for a young girl who is new to them, they can be rather tricky. Some girls act like they are no big deal, but a great many  teenage girls balk at the mere idea of a tampon, the idea of sticking something inside their you-know-what, in order to absorb the worst thing that ever happened to them, that happens every month for like ever, well, it just can’t get any worse. The mere mention of a tampon sends fear to their very core, or possibly their vaginas, and that creates a big problem. Why? Because in order to use a vagina properly, it must be relaxed. A tense vagina is just not very forgiving.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

What happens when a vagina is too tense to accept the reality of a tampon? If it’s the initial stage, then that tampon just isn’t going to go in. Then you must resort to plan B, a pad, and everyone moves on with their lives until the next trip to the bathroom or, if not soon enough, the inevitable ruined pair of shorts and ensuing humiliation.

But here’s another scenario. What if you got the tampon in, but later, it doesn’t want to come back out? What if it’s in there like Punxsutawney Phil, scared of its own shadow or the light of day? How do you get it out?

It’s not unheard of. When I was in college, a girl in my dorm forgot she had a tampon in and inserted a new one. The two of them somehow knitted themselves together, and she had to go to the health center to get them extracted. Naturally, we all talked about her because that’s what girls do. I never understood how she didn’t know she already had one locked and loaded, but she could have been drunk or stupid or something.

Sometimes you just plain can’t get it out.  It isn’t that unusual, especially at the end of one’s cycle, to have a bit of dryness in the old cooch. If your flow isn’t heavy enough to saturate the tampon, it gets, well, stuck, too dry to be budged. After yanking on the string of a dryish tampon for a while, the vagina starts to have a panic attack, and bingo, the perfect storm, or drought, since we are talking about dryness here.

I heard this story about a teenage girl who couldn’t get her tampon out. She struggled with it for a good thirty minutes, but it wouldn’t move. She panicked, and that vagina went on lockdown. The girl did what she had to do. She texted her mother.

Her mother came to her aid. On the other side of the bathroom door, to ask how she could be of assistance. The girl explained that her tampon was stuck and that she didn’t know what to do. The mother offered a few suggestions. Relax, she said. Take a few deep breaths. The girl replied that she was beyond that and she needed real help, not new age meditative bullshit propaganda. The mother suggested that she open her legs wide in an effort to maybe help the vagina stretch and yawn and maybe spit the tampon out. The girl began to cry, convinced that she was not just going to remove the tampon, but that the uterus would come out as well. The mother asked to enter the bathroom, but the girl screamed for her to go away.

The mother, who was not fond of being yelled at, went into her room, and soon after, was joined by the girl. She had tears in her eyes, desperate for help. The mother thought and thought. She suggested the girl try a lubricant of some sort, perhaps the well-known brand KY Jelly. The girl stated she didn’t have such a product. The mother thought she had given the teen some when she began using the dreaded tampons, but she was, according to her daughter, mistaken. The mother told the girl she had some personal lubricant the girl could borrow.

This is where the story gets interesting. The mother realized that if she went to retrieve the personal lubricant, the girl would discover where she kept the product. This was a detail the mother did not want the daughter to know. She asked that the girl return to her bathroom and wait for the mother to return with the lubricant.

The daughter left the room, and the mother went to the father’s nightstand, where the personal lubricant was kept. Alas, when the mother removed the bottle, she discovered that the container was almost completely empty. She knew she couldn’t hand the empty lubricant bottle to her child. The day had been traumatizing enough as it was.

The mother devised a plan and joined her daughter in the bathroom. She instructed her child to close her eyes and hold out her hand, so that the mother could dispatch some of the lubricant into the girl’s outstretched palm. The child closed her eyes and opened her hand. The mother began to vigorously shake the lubricant bottle up and down, squeezing it over her child’s open palm. Nothing happened. The mother repeated the steps, up and down, squeeze.

Are you thinking of an empty ketchup bottle right now, one with just one glob of ketchup left at the very bottom? Good, you should.

Finally, with a loud wet noise, the bottle released the last dollop of personal lubricant into the teen’s open palm. The child was visibly disturbed by both the texture and the sound of the lubricant, and asked the mother what she was supposed to do with it. The mother instructed her to slather it around the opening of the vagina and perhaps a little inside if possible, and then to relax and open her legs wide and if everything went according to plan, the vagina would release its hold and allow the tampon to pass.

The daughter instructed the mother to leave the restroom at once, and to close the door behind her. The mother waited for about twenty minutes, but the daughter never left the bathroom. The mother texted the daughter to ask if it had worked, but alas, it did not. After more time had passed, the daughter had decided to take a shower, and the heat and the water were able to accomplish what the mother’s lubricant could not. They both decided to never discuss it again.

You should do what that mother and child resolved to do. Never discuss it again. Just be glad it wasn’t you.

Sometimes the Apple Falls Far from the Tree

Yesterday, my twelve year old daughter, S, made me cry in the car. It wasn’t what you think. They were tears of joy, of pride, of love.

Why? Because this person, my daughter, is amazing, and certainly not because of me. She is compassionate and caring and nice.

While I try to set a good example most of the time, the truth is, I am not that nice. I laugh at things I shouldn’t, like people with bad teeth or dogs squatted and hunched, relieving themselves. I sometimes don’t let people merge on a busy highway, just because I don’t like their car or the way they drive or their stupid bumper stickers. When I am in line with a full cart at the grocery store and the person behind me has one or two items, I think fuck you. So whatever kind of nice she is, she became that way on her own.

Nice has somehow become a bad thing to be.  When someone is unattractive, he or she is described as “having a nice personality.” Women gravitate away from nice guys, favoring the bad boys that eventually break their hearts or batter their faces or whatever it is that bad boys do. Single men know that to be described as “nice” is the kiss of death to any hopes of getting laid, which isn’t a nice thing to say, but true.

My daughter, however, is nice, and she makes it a good thing to be. She's bringing nice back.
On the second day of school, S was behind another girl on her way out of the art room. S didn’t know this girl and wasn’t friends with her; she was just another kid in class. S noticed as the girl walked that she had gotten her period in class, as she had a blood stain on the back of her shorts, obvious enough to anyone to whom such things like a big bloody Rorschach blotch would be.

She scooted up to the girl and whispered to her that she had a blood stain on her pants. She told the girl it wasn’t so bad, but she might want to go to the bathroom before it gets worse. S was discreet and quiet about it so as not to arouse unwanted attention. The girl thanked her, and the two of them, along with the rest of the art class, left to go to their lockers.

S told me she saw the girl later that same day, and that she was wearing a different pair of pants. She was happy for that girl, that she didn’t have to walk around all day in blood stained shorts for the rest of the school to see.

So, yes, that single act of kindness, that compassion for another girl going through a potentially emotionally scarring middle school experience, brought me to tears. How many teenagers would think about how someone else would feel?

When I was in college, I had the opportunity to do something nice for someone else, but I took a pass. I was walking to the cafeteria one day, and in front of me was another girl walking by herself. She had a nine foot train of toilet paper trailing behind her. It wasn’t stuck to her shoe; it was tucked into her pants. Her paper train floated along like an elegant reminder of some unusual hygienic behavior on her part. To this day I still don’t understand how a piece of toilet paper longer than my car can originate from someone’s pants, but still, this girl was walking along unaware of her own shadow. I felt I was in the presence of bathroom royalty. Rather than disturb her paper trail, or alert her to its existence, I merely held the door as she walked through it, making sure a heavy swinging door did not come between her and her Charmin.

Okay, it probably wasn’t Charmin. After all, it was college. That toilet paper was industrial and one-ply and probably could have survived the door, but still. I didn’t want to be the one to stop that train.

My daughter, being nice, would have told her about the toilet paper streamer. Me? I didn’t want to be the only one to witness that papery spectacle, even if it meant that poor girl discovered it later and felt deep embarrassment and humiliation and maybe even anger at those of us who saw it and said nothing.

That wasn't the only time I bypassed an opportunity to be a nice person. I also laughed at the person who tripped up the stairs and couldn’t get her hands out of her pockets in time. And the woman who walked across the hotel lobby with her skirt tucked into her pantyhose, under which she opted against panties. I snickered at the person with a static cling panty broach on the back of her shoulder at the grocery store. And at countless men, including my husband, with their flies down, or, worse yet, evidence of a dribble, a few damp spots on the crotch that couldn’t always be caused by a spraying faucet.

I have felt badly about some of those times, when I could have been nice, but chose to be amused instead.  At least most of them happened before I had a cell phone, and honestly, I am not quick enough on the draw even if they did.

In the car, on the way home, sitting next to my daughter, I felt a pride like none other, knowing that this child of mine, this amazing, nice person, she didn’t learn how to be nice from me, but developed it on her own.  She made a good choice, better than one I would make, and all I could think was, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, she makes me want to be a better person. 

Except I will still laugh when someone falls up the stairs, because, seriously, that shit is funny.

An Insider's View

[Disclaimer: This blog post is the first in a series of three posts that are all about my lady parts and their malfunctioning. If you don't want to know that much about women in general, or me specifically, don't read it. And if you do, thank you for your support.]

I never wanted to be that kind of woman who lived according to her menstrual cycle. You know who I mean, the one who won’t go swimming because it’s that time of the month, the one who has to take a day off of work because her Aunt Flo is visiting, the one who stays in bed and feels generally cursed by Mother Nature. I wanted to be like the girls on the Tampax commercials, with their hair blowing in the breeze as they water ski across the river, the ones executing a perfect dive off a platform or racing a car faster than all of the men. No period was going to slow them down.

Unfortunately, I am not a BASE jumper while on the rag. I am, at forty four, finally having to accept the truth about my lady parts, that they are out to get me. Ever since that first time, thirty two years ago, when my panties blossomed red, I have had a less than happy relationship with my uterus. From cramps in  junior and high school that were strong enough to make sitting in a desk impossible, to the horrible head-crushing migraines that plagued my twenties, to my less than ideal emergency C-sections in my thirties, to now, my reproductive system has had it out for me. And finally, after many years of my putting up a good fight, it’s winning.

Over the past few years, my menstrual cycle, which could never in good faith be described as normal, has taken the unusual and extreme to some new limits. I decided to mention how much worse the frequency and length of my periods is to my gynecologist at my last annual exam. She told me that the next time my periods came closer together than twenty days,  I would need to call the office for an ultrasound appointment. Sure, she tested my hormone levels and all that stuff, to see if I am going through “the change,” but honestly, everything else seemed to be okay, except for the part when I never know when my period is going to show up or how long it will last. My period is the worst house guest ever.

I downloaded this lovely app during the summer which keeps track of your periods for you, the greatest app ever created. Men, I am sure, don’t have to keep track of anything when they go to see a doctor, which is as often as never anyway. Women, on the other hand, are lucky to not be asked the date of their last period when checking out at the grocery store. You always know you need to know, and somehow you never do, which is why I still think my second daughter’s due date was more than a few weeks off. Anyway, with this app, I now know just how irregular my periods are. Sometimes, it’s every twenty five days. And sometimes, it’s fifteen days after the last. Considering it lasts over a week, that means some months I only get a week off. Government employees get more vacation time in a year than I spend not bleeding.

So I made my ultra sound appointment. I went to the doctor and sat in an crowded waiting room filled with everyone from young beautiful first time moms to way older women fighting their aging in a very ungraceful fashion. I just sat there, waiting for my turn, trying to avoid staring at the other patients, convinced that I had uterine fibroids and would need surgery, much like my mother and grandmothers had. What do I know about menopause? No one in my family’s history made it that far with a uterus.

The ultra sound technician called me back to the exam room after a bit of a wait that I didn't mind because of the awesome people watching. She was a very friendly woman, and I was nervous, not so much for the test itself as for what it might show, which meant that I was incapable of using what little filter I had and would tell this woman everything. She told me to step into the adjacent restroom to remove my jeans and underwear and to empty my bladder, after which I was to return to the room and settle myself on the exam table with my feet in the stirrups.

I walked back in the room after the peeing and disrobing part and said, “It’s just like at home.” She gave me a look that said odd, so I had to explain that I meant walking around without pants, you know, when you go home and take your pants and bra off, except that I generally keep my panties on at home, so really, it was nothing like that. I couldn't stop words from spilling out of my mouth.

She laughed politely and dimmed the lights. “Ah, creating the mood,” I said. She put a protective latex cover on the transvaginal ultrasound wand and then lubricated it before inserting it into my vagina. Let me translate that. She put a rubber on that thing, lubed it up real good, and tried to stab my cervix. It was all I could do not to ask her to turn on the vibrator so at least one of us might enjoy it, but was it really necessary for me to transfer my discomfort to this woman who was just doing her job?

She moved the wand around a bit, not unlike you would do with a stick inside a hula hoop, before saying to me, “Have you had an ultrasound here before?”

“Why yes, I am a member of your frequent flyer program,” I said.

“Did we put an IUD in you or something recently?”

“Yeah, about a year ago. It wasn’t all that easy.” Which was an understatement. It took two doctors over four attempts and one hour to do what was supposed to be a simple ten minute IUD insertion. Afterwards, it took two nurses to clean up me and the floor. After six unpleasant months, getting that IUD out was also an ordeal. No wonder she remembered me. I was the one who fainted on the table. Fuck waterboarding. If you want to torture someone, have trouble inserting an IUD.

“I knew your uterus looked familiar!” she said all excitedly.

“No one has ever said that to me before,” I told her.

“I don’t know faces,” she said, “but I never forget a uterus.”

She took all the measurements of my lady parts, data that meant something to her and my doctor, I am sure, before checking all around. She located one ovary, but then said,” I can’t seem to get a good picture of the other one.”

“Oh, that one likes to play hide and seek. No one can find it,” I told her. I actually had a theory that I expelled it several years ago, which is why I only get ovulation pain on the right side every other month.

“No, it’s there; it’s just hiding behind a gas bubble in your intestine. See?” She indicated what looked like a tube sausage on the monitor, which turned out, in fact, to be my bulging intestine. She pressed on it a bit more with the transvaginal wand to make certain I knew what she meant, down to the very core of my being.

“Oh, excuse me,” I said. “I’m gassy, and you can see it. How embarrassing.” I was desperately trying to keep it all in. Talk about control. Thank you, Joseph Pilates.

She removed her wand from my love canal and said,” I don’t see anything to be concerned about. No fibroids or anything. You look good to go. Go tidy up and get your pants back on, and then you can wait for the doctor down the hall.”

My gynecologist reviewed my chart, my ultrasound, and my history with me as well as could be accomplished in under two minutes. “An endometrial ablation is the next step. It’s simple, just five minutes in the office, not even general anesthesia. Most women don’t even get periods anymore after they have it done. And it’s perfect for someone like you, who just bleeds too much and doesn’t want any more children but isn’t really going through menopause yet.”

And so, I agreed. I fought the good fight, but I am ready to not have to spend so much of my time planning around my period anymore. No matter what I try to tell my daughters about how periods are a normal part of life, I accept that I am lying. Periods do suck. And I am ready to not have one anymore, especially if it means I can still have my own natural hormones. Sign me up!

Red Solo Cup

My fourteen year old daughter asked for a hysterectomy for Christmas.

I don’t really blame her. I had to pick her up from school last week because she was so miserable. It was day one of her ragtime, and she was so nauseated and crampy she couldn’t sit in a desk. In fact, her teacher made her go to the nurse’s office because she was dry heaving in class and then almost fainted. The nurse insisted that she go home, as the school has a policy that if a student faints in class, EMS must be called to transport that child to the hospital, and she preferred not to have the headache of the paperwork that goes along with that scenario. Not to mention the part where children shouldn’t be fainting from their periods.

I took the teen home and pumped her full of ibuprofen and hot tea and settled her on an arrangement of heating pads. She remained there until it was time for her harder classes, and I drove her back to school with one of those adhesive heating pads stuck to her belly. Have you ever seen one of those? They look just like a sanitary pad filled with rocks, only without wings. I wonder how many women have stuck them in the crotch of their panties, waiting for cramp relief that doesn’t come.

I don’t know how long it takes to get used to having your period, but I am pretty sure it is until menopause.

The teen definitely hasn’t adjusted, even after a few years of being a woman now. She still won’t use tampons, not because the school convinced her and many of her female peers that she will lose her virginity by shoving a plastic tube filled with a wad of cotton in her cooch, but because the idea of sticking anything in her cooch disturbs her, to which I say, thank you Jesus! She sticks to pads and panty liners, unless faced with the possibility of being at the beach, in which case she closes her eyes and blindly aims for the right hole with something more covertly absorbent.

Knowing her feelings about things happening below the belly button made the conversation we had the other day even odder. She brought up a third option of feminine hygiene, the menstrual cup. A menstrual cup is a little cup that you stick inside your vagina to collect your menstrual flow. Although menstrual cups have been around since the 1930’s, I had not heard of them until Whole Foods came to town. They have a feminine hygiene section just for the granola vegan crowd, complete with what I think are washable and reusable pads and menstrual cups, sold under the brand name Diva Cup. Anyway, I guess a couple of other teens and my teen were talking about Diva cups after having seen them while shopping for overpriced organic snack food with their mamas.

Here’s how it went down:

The teen: Mom, have you ever heard of a Diva cup?

Me: Yes, why have you?

The teen: Some girls were talking about them at school.

Me: Really? Seems an obscure topic of conversation, but whatever.

The teen: Well, have you ever tried one?

Me: No. I am quite comfortable with regular old cardboard tube Tampax. I don’t really see the need to make changes now, after over thirty years. Why?

The teen: I’m curious about them.

Me: Seriously?? You won’t even use a tampon, not even with the plastic applicator, the kind that ruins the planet for the next generation of bleeders. But you’re curious about putting a small cup in your vagina? Please.

The teen, laughing: I know, right? I just can’t imagine putting a cup in there.

Me: Me neither. How long does it stay in there, anyway? Does it start to smell? What if your cup overflows? And then what do you do with it? Run it through the dishwasher? Or is it disposable? I don’t understand how that is any better for the environment. Can you use a Dixie cup in a pinch, because I still have a whole box of those under the bathroom sink if you want to try them out.

The teen: (more laughter)

Me: Do they come in different sizes, or are they a one size fits all kind of product? How do you put it in? And worse, how do you take it out? What if it tips over when you remove it?

She stopped laughing and redirected me, which was a good thing, because I could seriously have kept going for at least another five minutes or so.

About a week later, I kid you not, I met a woman who had actually used menstrual cups. Now, this was one of those situations where a casual acquaintance ends up telling you something extremely personal that you rather not know about them, ever.

A woman I barely know and I made small talk during a volunteer event. We were discussing our daughters, which is what women do who have very little else in common to discuss. She is an older mom with kids a little younger than mine, and we talked about how girls get hormonal and moody when puberty starts. Her daughter had not yet started her period, but since mine is a few years older, she asked me about how I taught her about menstruation. I told her about a class the hospital offers that does a great job making girls feel comfortable with their bodies and such. She thought that sounded great since she wasn’t really sure she knew how to teach them to use tampons.

Then she said, “It’s been years since I had my period, since I am past menopause, but I didn’t use tampons when I did have mine.”

“You didn’t?” I said. “Oh, I remember those giant pads, with the belt you had to pin them on. What a pain!”

“No,” she said, “Although I do remember those too. Like a diaper. No, I used those cups.”

Okay, finally I found someone who has tried the mysterious and lesser known menstrual cups, and it’s an almost complete stranger, but one that I will have to see and talk to again. I don’t want to have to think about her period, let alone her choice of feminine hygiene, but now, every time I see her, it will be the only thing I remember about her.

“I’ve never tried them,” I said, because really, what else could I say? I couldn’t tell her I threw up in my mouth a little. “I don’t know what to tell you about teaching your daughter about tampons. Mine is still uncomfortable with the idea of them.”

“Oh, then she would never like cups, because you have to stick your whole hand in there,” she told me.

No, no, no. I can never, ever, shake this woman’s hand again, and the idea of hugging her is even more off-putting. In fact, I don’t think I can make eye contact with her ever again unless I develop dementia and forget this little nugget about her. And no matter what, I will never join her for a glass of red wine.

How About a Thank You?

As I woke up this Thanksgiving morning, I thought about all the things I have to be thankful for. Like ending a sentence with a preposition. I’m thankful I can do that without it affecting my grade. And sentence fragments. I’m thankful for those too.  Obviously, I am thankful for all the things I should be thankful for: my beautiful family and loving husband, my rich and meaningful life, the love and support of friends and family, a roof over my head, a sustaining meal, blah blah blah. Everybody is thankful for all of that on Thanksgiving. But what about the little things we always take for granted?

While you are sticking your hand inside your bird to extract that little sack of innards, how about a big thanks to the grocery store industry? If I had to go out in the yard to select a bird to kill, then grab it and twist its neck with my bare hands, followed by eviscerating its lifeless carcass, well, let’s just say there wouldn’t be a whole lot of variety in my family’s diet. “Aww Mom, oatmeal again?” “Shut up and eat your groats.” The only reason my family gets to eat any flesh at all is because someone else already selected the plumpest, juiciest bird titties and shrink wrapped them for me. I will even bypass a package of chicken if it looks like there is too much juice in it. Juice? Try life fluids leaking out of that flesh.  No, I would have stuck to potatoes and cabbage, like so many European immigrants.  Anyone want more bubble and squeak?

Speaking of bubble and squeak, I am thankful that we fart. Did you ever get a gas bubble, that pocket of gas trapped somewhere deep inside your miles of intestines? Painful stuff, gas bubbles. What if it had nowhere to go? Those bacteria would keep producing gas, and the pressure of that gas would grow, and you would bloat until your distended torso would finally explode like an overfilled balloon. Farts are a good thing. Remember that today about an hour after you eat enough food for a small village in Africa. If your family complains about your gaseous emissions, explain to them how a body decomposes. Don’t leave out the part about the gases building up inside a rotting corpse. They will encourage you to fart some more, and then they will leave the room. Ahh, peace on earth.

Since I’m being thankful for bodily functions, how about a quick shout out to tampons? Remember that expression, on the rag? Yeah, well, before tampons were widely used, women were literally ON THE RAG. Rags were stuffed in their pantaloons to absorb their monthly flow. Rags that later would have to be washed and dried and pressed and stored for the next time of the month. You think an overnight pad feels like a diaper? Try an actual diaper. Rags didn’t come in slender regular or super plus; they came in rag. If it was the first or second day of your period, you just used more rags, which you would later have to wash, lucky you. No wonder women spent so much time being pregnant.

How about a shout out to washing machines? Your great great grandmother was beating her rags against a river rock, hoping it would attract some fish so her family had something different to eat other than potatoes and cabbage. Or she was boiling water and making her own lye soap to wash her monthly rags along with the one outfit for every family member, because who had time to make more clothes when they were washing their bloody rags stored up for a week every month? And I’m not just thankful for washing machines. I am thankful I own my own. While the Laundromat makes for some excellent people watching, it isn’t exactly a place I care to frequent again in my life time. I did my time in rusty public machines, thank you very much. I know the joy of moving someone else’s soggy unmentionables to steal a machine because I was tired of waiting for their owner to return and stop hogging all the fucking machines. I don’t have to lug a giant body bag of dirty socks and underwear, only to wash them and fold them and put them back in the same bag all clean so I can lug them back to my apartment. Thank you, Whirlpool! Your front loading machine might make my t shirts stink but at least you are in my house.

Don’t forget to be thankful for closets. Have you been inside an old home? In addition to all detailed wainscoting and other old world craftsmanship, they have maybe one coat closet for the whole family to share. That’s why so many families had only one pot to piss in. They didn’t have storage for more than one pot. Where did our grandmothers keep their massive collection of rags?

Here’s another reason to be thankful for your house. Did you eat too much today? Just take off your pants. Isn’t that better? If you were homeless, you would be on the verge of an indecent exposure charge right now. You can overeat and then take off your pants all you want in the privacy of your home. Show some motherfucking appreciation.

Isn’t it about time we offered up some gratitude to time? My family has had massive conversations already about what time thanksgiving dinner will be served.  How about when I am done heating it up, bitches? Time is relative, but it gives us a frame of reference, does it not? Plus, for those of us with anxiety, where would we be without time? If I know I have to get that turkey in the oven before the parades end, I can obsess on how long I get to watch Al Roker make slightly off color comments to  a soap opera star with too much foundation before I have to get up and go to the kitchen. How did the pilgrims and the Native Americans know what time to sit down with their wild turkey and maize pudding? I’m pretty sure they were not a lot of pocket watches under deer skins back in the day.

I could go on and on about the little things we should appreciate, which aren’t so little when you think about them. Air conditioning. Western toilets. Automobile brakes. Spellcheck. Antihistamines. Cranberry sauce. The list goes on and on. Why not take the time today to think of a different thing to be thankful for? Spice up that toast tonight before you gorge yourself on mashed potatoes and just one more roll to sop up that gravy. We all know to be thankful for the big stuff. But really, it’s the little things that make the difference. And if you don’t believe me, take off that cotton cashmere sweater and undershirt and go put on a real wool sweater.  See, I’m right. Thanks for being big enough to admit it.