You guys, I’m selling some crafty products on eBay, meaning products I crafted myself, as well as a few other things. Feel free to look at them or to ignore them, as you please. Either way, it won’t hurt my feelings. I just have to sell things periodically so I can continue to write off my craft supply purchases on my taxes. It’s a sickness, I know.

For sale:
bracelet with dangling pastel beads
carnelian and red agate necklace #1
carnelian and red agate necklace #2
rhodonite and rose quartz necklace
bronze and pink freshwater pearl necklace
pink and gray dangly pearl necklace
pale jade necklace
green wood bead necklace
amber earrings
silver ring
amber ring
garnet ring
silver cuff bracelet
vintage cross pendant
that painting I did a while back, of the woman

There you go. Happy browsing.

Get Rich Quick Scheme

The other day I saw a People magazine, and its cover gave me an idea. So I turned to my son who has Asperger’s, and I said, “Hey, Dallas, how would you like it if Mommy wrote a book all about your Asperger’s and how tragic it is and how dramatic it’s made Mommy’s life? And then Mommy could go on book tour and make a lot of money?”

My son said, “More money than you make writing fiction?”

I said, “Way, way more.”

He said, “Would you tell heart-rending personal stories about your strength, your struggle, and your survival that would embarrass me, later, when I’m old enough to understand them fully?”

I said, “Maybe. Then again, maybe not, since you do have Asperger’s. Maybe you’ll never fully understand, or else it simply won’t hurt your feelings. We can always hope, but either way, we’ll make money. Don’t forget the money.”

He said, “Will you use the money to buy me a PS3, an XBox 360, and a bigger TV?”

I said, “Of course I will, honey.”

He said, “Then sell our story, Mommy. Sell it away!”

Just kidding. That conversation never took place.

[Edited to clarify: Hey, everybody. This segment of the entry is referring to Jenny McCarthy, as featured on the latest cover of People magazine, promoting her book about her personal struggles with her kid’s autism, and the power of Jim Carrey’s penis helping her through it.

This segment of the entry is not about my long-time fellow blogger and author Rob Rummel-Hudson. For the record, although I’ve been catty in my time, I’m not catty/lame/rondo enough to hate on Rob on my blog, while linking to him and Facebook-friending him at the same time. If I thought Rob was selling out his kid for money, I wouldn’t link him or Facebook friend him. C’mon, people. Y’all should know better than that.]

Inspirational

On the way to work, I pass a company that performs a very specialized service for other companies. It’s not a service that I’ll ever need, but I always stare at the company and remember its name, because it has an inspirational marquee. Know what I mean? They have one of those LED signs on which the owner has chosen to put a different motivational saying each day.

Weirdly, although I normally ignore crap like that, this marquee frequently inspires me. Like, one day, a while back, it said something like “If you knew you wouldn’t fail, what would you attempt?” Something like that — poorly worded, but it got the point across. What would I try to do if I knew for certain that I wouldn’t fail? I thought about it until the end of my commute.

Usually, I end up thinking about the owner of this company and what his motivation is for providing these thoughts. He could use the marquee for advertisements, but instead, he tries to inspire us all. Why? What kind of person does something like that?

It’s something to think about on a long, long drive.

Dazed and Confused and Swollen

If none of this makes sense, it’s because I’m on drugs, because I recently had surgery, because my teeth are sad and lame, and yet strong and stubborn and constantly having to be messed with by surgical means. I had this jacked-up tooth remnant, under an old crown, and it turned bad, so my dentist (who is the best dentist in the world, fyi) tried to remove it with pliers and such, but it wouldn’t come out because the rotten tooth was holding on with all its might to my jawbone, as all my teeth like to do, apparently…

… and so my dentist was forced to give up, sweatily and reluctantly, and he sent me to his friend, the best oral surgeon in the world, and she removed my tooth (and I told y’all before how she looks sort of like Mimi Rogers, but I never told y’all that she studied dance at the same school, at the same time, as Madonna!), and it went as well as possible, but now I’m kind of achy and drugged up. Bleh.

Oh, well, that’s life, though. My super power is fast healing. My kryptonite is cavity-prone teeth. If teeth being fused to jawbones were a super power of any use, I’d be bragging that I had that, too. But it hasn’t done anything for me yet. We’ll see what happens, though. Maybe one day my stubborn teeth will save the world.

Moms do get sick. I guess I have the flu now. Or its nephew, 24-Hour Flu-Like Virus. I didn’t stop feeling beat up this morning, in fact, it only got worse, so I drove home at lunch time and have been in bed since then. Now I’m awake, eating soup. I hope to God I don’t start puking my guts up. But I don’t think I will, because I feel voraciously hungry instead. I think my body knows what to do. Eat the virus out.* Ache it out. Sleep it off.

Random Stuff

I admire people who make things.

I keep wanting to take extra pics for my own Flickr page, but I haven’t done so yet. Haven’t remembered to take my camera around. I could use the cell phone, but actually, no, I had to stop that because I get charged, like, 5 cents a photo, and last time it added $20 to my bill.

I’m waiting for a university to pay me. I’m waiting, waiting for good news. Waiting for a star to fall… Can’t remember who sings that song. Also, there is a song about waiting by John Bon Jovi that I couldn’t stop thinking about in the workplace cafeteria today. Sometimes I think about lyrics that mean what’s going on in my life.

How do you say hot dog in Spanish? I tried to say it today but the words wouldn’t come to me. My boyfriend thought it might have literally been perros calientes, but I don’t think so. Try it and see:

Me: Tienen perros calientes hoy?

Hamburger lady: No, pero [points to Vietnamese food station next door.]

My boyfriend: No, they only have cat today.

Speaking of racist stereotype humor… I’m gonna try to tell y’all a funny conversation we had the other day. Background: My boyfriend was born in Vietnam, so it’s okay for him to say stuff about Vietnamese people. I am Latina and White, so it’s okay for me to say stuff about my own peoples, too. Also, when we are together, it’s okay for us to make observations about each other’s people… as long as they’re funny. Okay.

So we were in Houston’s VietnamTown area, eating at this place we always eat at. And, next to that place is a place called Cyborg Tax. And, as it often does, the mere existence of Cyborg Tax got on my boyfriend’s nerves.

Tad: That’s so stupid. Who the hell would name their tax place that shit?

Me: I think that’s a bad-ass name for a tax place. Anyway, it was probably an old Asian couple, and they didn’t speak English too great, so they asked one of their kids to pick a name. They were like, [poorly mimicking Vietnamese accent] “Jimmy, what good name for our store?” And Jimmy was like [miming kid playing on Playstation], “I don’t know. How about cyborg?” And they were like, “What’s that?” and he was like, “It’s something really cool.”

Tad, shaking head in disgust: No. That’s not how it happened. Here’s how it happened. [Re-does my skit with brilliant, spot-on Vietnamese accent and Americanized teen voice:]
“Jimmy, you help with store. What we name it?”
“Uh… How about Cyborg Tax?”
“Cybog? What that?”
“You know… Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator.”
“Oh, I like that! He a Republican!”

See how my boyfriend’s funnier than me? But, actually, I bet I’m funnier than him when it comes to making fun of my own people. Someday we’ll have to have a big, racist Joke Off* and see.

* Ha, ha, that sounds dirty.

And it’s not anything I thought it was, or anything any of you thought. Not PCOS, not fibroids, not cancer, not pregnancy, not thyroid.

Here is what’s wrong with me:
1. My pituitary gland produces too much prolactin.
2. I also have too much of the other male hormone. (DHEA? Forgot the name already.)
3. My insulin resistance is borderline.
4. I need more Vitamin D.

Those last two aren’t what’s causing the double periods. But he told me about them, anyway, just so I’d know.

Besides that, I’m completely healthy. Even my cholestorol is good.

He gave me little tiny pills to slow down the prolactin. He said that’ll most likely bring the DHEA down, too. If not, though, they’ll give me something extra for that.

I am ovulating, after all. Twice a month, I guess.

No wonder I’m always tired and bitchy, then. But still. I’m glad we went through all the tests. Hopefully the tiny pills will work. I should find out in the next four weeks if they do.

In the meantime, I’m going to buy a sun lamp.

Is it just my imagination, or does everyone Gen X and younger have panic attacks on a regular basis? I blame high fructose corn syrup.

Is it also just my imagination, or does everyone younger than Gen X (What are y’all – Gen Y?) have experience with cutting themselves? What’s up with that? Nutrasweet, maybe?

What will the next generation’s issue be? Besides being born with adult diabetes, I mean?

What will Splenda bring?

Seriously

I know this is going to sound weird and maybe a little bit disgusting, but I pretty much love 90% of my coworkers very much. I like to see them in the elevators and trade pleasant small talk with them on the way home. I empathize with them and wish them well.

Or maybe it’s just PMS.

Seriously as Hell – Why I Hated The Unconsoled

It wasn’t that it was told as a dream. It wasn’t that I’m too dumb to follow it. It wasn’t that everyone in it talked like the butler from Remains of the Day.

No.

It was that the narrator being an asshole was supposed to cover Ishiguro being self-deprecating, which in turn was supposed to cover the narrator(/author) feeling sorry for himself for lame-ass, petty reasons.

When your parents don’t support your art, you’re not supposed to write a big book about a bunch of people’s parents not supporting their art. You’re supposed to write a small book (or a series of them) eviscerating people just like your parents, and presenting fictionalized theories on how they came to be so fucked up. That is what cures you. (Because nothing you can write will make them change. You can only change yourself.)

When you want to complain about and simultaneously apologize to a lover or ex-lover, you don’t write a big book containing three or four versions of her. No. You write several books containing those versions, and you make one of them a man so as to disguise your whininess better.

Don’t be a baby, Kazuo! Exploit your personal slights the time-honored way.

Earlier yesterday I was thinking about low-glycemic-index stuff you could eat without crying from frustration, and I invented something new, in my mind.

Coffee shake! A sugar free, real coffee, coffee shake!

Here’s what I thought my invention might contain:

real coffee
ice
heavy cream
whey powder
sugar-free flavored syrup
cinnamon (which may or may not bring down insulin resistance)

Then I went on the Google and searched for “coffee shake.” I discovered that, not only did I not invent coffee shakes, but that other people had been way more inventive about it than me. Here are things I may or may not put in my coffee shakes, thanks to all the Internet Coffee Shake Pioneers:

unsweetened soy milk
avocado
coconut milk
fiber powder

Coconut milk! That’s kind of exciting. They haven’t even done that at Starbuck’s yet, have they? Avocado I’ve seen, at the bubble tea places – but I never would have thought to put it in coffee. Wah! (That’s the sound effect of magic revelation occurring.)

In other news: Does anybody out there know where Mike‘s food blog is? I could go look for the link, but man I’m so tired…

I think I do, I mean. I did some research on teh internets, and I’ve realized that my gynecologist was right, even though she said things in such a dismissive, blow-off-y way.

I’m gonna try to lose 70 pounds. Then, in theory, my ovaries should return to normal.

If anyone speaks to me in an inappropriate way when this is happening, I will simply say, “Would you say that to a man?” Or else I’ll elbow them in the nose and make their nose bleed, distracting them long enough for me to get away.

If I accidentally get kidney stones while losing weight (again), and my doctor says, “Maybe you should quit [doing whatever I end up doing to lose weight],” then I will say “Shut up – as if you wouldn’t tell me to lose weight in the first place.” And then I’ll drink something vinegar-y, because that’s how I got rid of the stone last time.

If, like Dr. Atkins, I slide on a ramp and hit my head and die (and then people say I had a heart attack because of my unorthodox diet), then I will be dead and who cares what people say? If I’m dead and I hear them saying it, then I’ll haunt them or change the channel.

Okay. Ready, break!

Well, first I have to weigh myself, I guess. Then, I’ll know what weight to go to. (Seventy was the number I came up with, last time I gave this matter thought. Seventy pounds sounds like a good amount. Not too fat anymore, but also not too thin. Plus, it starts with an odd number, which I like. Actually, I like the word itself: se-ven-ty. Mmm. Sounds good.)

Okay… Seriously, now…

Today I accidentally dressed like Alice in Wonderland. I put on a pleated skirt to minimize ironing time, then added tights to keep from having to shave my legs, then the flat Mary Janes that that hurt my corn the least this week, and oops. Cakes saying “Eat me” have appeared all round my head.

In the nearby halls, someone has posted childen’s variations on a local company’s logo. A bevy of coloring-contest entries, I mean. There are three that are very clearly better than all the rest. On closer inspection, you see that those three were done by three children, all of whom belong to the same person. You go, unisexly-named person I’ve never met! Raise those artists!

People, People, People

So, like every single other time, I got thwarted in my lunch-time mission to be alone.

I no longer believe that my fellow citizens are doing this to me on purpose (mostly I don’t), but something’s going on. Long-time readers remember that I can no longer read and eat Jack in the Box tacos in my car, in a nearby normally-deserted parking lot, without party-poopers feeling the need to park right next to me.

So, instead of whining about that more than once, I began parking in a different spot, in such a way that makes it impossible for the lonely space invaders to park alongside.

Well, no. No, no, no. It’s not going to work out that way (me being alone, with privacy) because the strangers will just drive in circles near me, peering through their windows. (“What in the heck is that girl doing? Is she eating Jack in the Box tacos and reading a book? Weird!”) Or, like today, they will just park illegally, blocking the parking-lot entrance adjacent to my car. Why? I don’t know. I hope the person who did that today got immense satisfaction out of it, though.

So then, in the parking garage, I unintentionally inhaled the cologne/deoderant combo of the gentleman twenty steps ahead and wondered if I’m becoming a misanthrope. And, if so, if it’s caused by hormones.

The fragrant gentleman and his friend began a disjointed conversation that caused them to slow down. (“So what are you…” “What [turns face into cell phone]?”) They slowed down exactly long enough for me to reach them, then sped up to exactly the pace I was walking, so that we were all three walking abreast, as if we knew each other, and it became clear that some kind of rearranging would become imminent at the parking garage door.

So I walked very fast and got away. And I tried not to be a misanthrope about it. And I almost ran into another guy near the elevators. And we both paused at the same time to be polite and let the other go ahead. And he gestured for me to go. And I looked at his face and it looked like a nice face. And the spell was broken and I was glad.

In a huge, airy hall, me and several men walked along behind two women, one of whom had on a belt too tight for her tight low-rise pants. The two women talked loudly. Me and the men fell into silence behind them, awed by the belt and pants, I think. Something fell from the side of the belt-pants women. It hit the floor with a “blap!” She didn’t notice, but all the rest of us looked down at it. I felt us all wonder if we should pick it up for her, or at least maybe say, “Excuse me.”

The thing she dropped was a condiment packet. Psychically, I felt us all decide not to bring it to anyone’s attention.

As I stepped over the condiment packet, I could not resist noticing that it said “Sweet Relish.”

For some reason, this embarrassed me so much that I started to giggle. I couldn’t stop. Then, twenty steps later, I saw that Pants/Belt had lunch items in her hands. I felt bad, then, imagining her at her desk, wondering what the hell happened to the sweet relish she’d planned to employ.

Cakes Saying “Eat Me”

I’m not even going to talk about what the endocrinologist said yesterday, for fear that it will upset me to dwell on the fact that his diagnosis will most likely parallel that of my gynecologist last year. (In short, I’ve paid hundreds of dollars for him to very carefully reach the same conclusion, and explain it more fully, but offer no more underlying reason than she did, and treat it with pills that have all the same ingredients as the Pill she gave me, but without any contraceptive effect.) (Maybe. Won’t know for sure until after Friday’s test.)

But… I’m taking a special, multi-needle test on Friday morning. In the meantime, my endocrinologist explicitly instructs me to eat more carbs. “CARB LOADING,” he writes across the paper that tells me what to do.

And so I’ve thought of a new diet plan, which is “Have your doctor tell you to eat stuff that makes you fat.” Because, now that he’s told me to do that, I don’t want to. I don’t feel like eating any carbs at all, now.

And yet, dutifully, I eat a Halloween mini candy bar once or twice per hour. And I think doing that is putting me in a bad mood. Unless I’m already in a bad mood because I’m about to start my period – my third period of the month. No, wait, it’s November. First one of the new month, then. But anyway. Maybe that’s why I hate people, too. But, then again, conversely, what if that is why people like me? What if my smell – a heady combination of candy, testosterone, and impending blood – is what’s making people park, walk, and drop condiments next to me?

I don’t know. What do you think? Do you think I should maybe start a new book and become an endocrinologist? See about getting a radio show? Get a hysterectomy? Stop reading so much Kazuo Ishiguro?

I don’t know now, I don’t know. Everybody, stand back please. Just take twenty steps in the other direction and let me love you again.

So my endocrinologist is making me take my temperature every day this month, and I’m learning ever so much. One, my temperature never goes up enough to indicate that eggs are in my uterus. Two, I feel especially sickly on days when my temperature dips low.

Like today. Today I was at 96.9 degrees (Is that normal? Am I dead?) and, once again, I have the between-bimonthly-periods feeling of nausea, dizziness, exhaustion. I even managed to fit in a panic attack between breakfast and lunch.

What does it mean? I try to visualize my own insides. It means… My uterus reaches out lovingly to grasp the egg it knows should be there. (Cramp.) There’s no egg. My uterus feels a chill sweep through its bones. (Low temp.) Where is the egg? My uterus is sick at the thought of having no egg to nurture. (Sick.) My uterus sheds bitter tears. (Another period.)

That’s what I think of. Sorry to be so gross. Really, though, there’s nothing gross about it. If you can watch those plastic surgery shows on TLC (which I can’t watch), then you can read about my uterus’ bloody bimonthly episodes. (Or you can skip reading them, too, like I skip the shows on TLC.)

My endocrinologist says that hormones control everything. On the one hand, I believe that he believes that because it makes for his good livelihood. (Cynicism.) On the other hand, I find myself measuring everything in my life along with my temperature. Am I nicer to my boyfriend when I reach 98 degrees? Do I wear more makeup at 79.3? It’ll take another month of record-keeping to know for sure, I think. (Mild sarcasm.) And what hormone dosage will make me perfect? We’ll wait and see what the doctor tells me. If he knows anything at all. (Carefully controlled optimism, disguised as pessimism.)

Depressing books depress me (and yet, I read).

So I’m reading The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro. And I’d like to say that I don’t know why people spend money on drugs, when it’s just as easy to borrow weird books from the library when you’re in the mood to alter your consciousness.

I’m also like to say, “Darn you, Kazuo Ishiguro, for making me rush to figure out what the hell’s going on in your book.” Although I know a lot of people who are always like, “Oh, I figured out The Sixth Sense in the first five minutes of the movie,” and “Oh, I figured out The Village five minutes before the movie started,” and “Oh, I figured out all of Agatha Christie’s mysteries five years before she was born”… I am not one of those people. All you have to do is hold up a sign that says, “This is a mystery,” and I will willfully suspend my disbelief and powers of deduction for weeks on end, until the mystery unfolds.

So don’t tell me what happens at the end of The Unconsoled unless you want me to hate you. But know that I’m reading it so very, very quickly, it’s making my head spin. It’s turning me crazy. I predict several daylight hours in bed, with book in hand, and a wet washcloth across my forehead. Oh my word, what is going to happen? No way to know until I read, read, read.

And then I turn the book over, to examine the blurb for clues, and two times it tells me the story is witty. What? No, it’s very dark and gloomy, you guys. It’s making me sad, but I have to read through.

More Measurements: Marking Time

I realized today that I mark my time with weekends, and that’s not a pleasant way to live when you work five days a week. I live weekend-to-weekend, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way.

A good way to live, I think, is project-to-project. I imagine Mick Jagger and Keith Richards live that way. (Although maybe, for them, it’s overlayed by high-to-high or drink-to-drink?) My weekend marking is overlaid by project marking, fortunately, so I really can’t complain.

Some rich people, I think, live purchase-to-purchase.

So many unrich people live paycheck-to-paycheck, or assistance-to-assistance, or abuse-to-abuse, or high-to-high, overlaid with crime-to-crime-in-order-to-pay-for-the-highs.

How do you live? And do you feel lucky?

Normally I’m a person who thrives on deadlines and slight amount of pressure. But…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time explaining to people that I have this big writing deadline, and therefore I can’t hang out as much. Even though I really, really love the people I’m explaining it to, and I do very much wish that I could hang out with them. And I don’t know if anyone believes me, because the writing thing is so ephemeral. Does anyone ever see me write? No – no one except my kids, and they could easily be trained to lie about it. And yet, I have several books written, don’t I? Therefore, writing books must be something that takes care of itself, or that I can easily put off until next weekend, or until Monday, or Tuesday at midnight, surely. Sometimes even I believe that.

Meanwhile, I have this jacked-up period thing going on. (Warning: talking about my period.) As y’all know, blah blah jacked-up periods blah, and this last one lasted twelve days, and (update) it doesn’t look like I’m ovulating, after all, if my temperature-taking skills are any kind of trusty barometer, and so I guess when I go back to the endocrinologist on Halloween Day, he’ll tell me that, yes, it is early menopause. And I don’t even know what the treatment is for that, because the techniques are constantly being improved (I think, hope) and I haven’t wanted to research it yet without knowing for sure. And, yet, maybe I should go ahead and do that, if only to keep the word hysterectomy from randomly floating through my mind.

Another thing I don’t yet want to think about is the fact that, if it’s menopause, then, logically, I can no longer produce children.

Because, what a cliched thing to think about, right? And, as several people have pointed out to me recently, I already have three kids. And I say, “Well, it’s not that I wanted another one. It’s more about the abstract loss of choice, you know.”

But, you know what? I’ll confide in you, now, and say that, hey, maybe I did want another kid. Whether everyone else in the world thought I needed one, or not. Maybe I had some half-formed idea to make a certain amount of money, and get to a certain point in my career, and then hurry up and cough up one last kid before I got too old. You know? Maybe I wanted to have a million kids, dammit. And, as long as no one else’s tax money is supporting them, I figure that’s my freaking business.

(I wasn’t even going to say any of that on this blog, but now I’ve gained the courage to say it because of Laura Bennett. Thank you, Laura, for getting pregnant with your sixth kid and being unapologetic about it, and for showing on national TV that you like having kids.)

(Yes, I know I could always adopt. But now that Madonna’s copied Angelina Jolie, I’m sorry but it’s just not cool anymore.)

But, you know, like I said, there’s no use freaking out about any of that yet, because I don’t yet know for sure what’s up with my eggs. So pretend I didn’t say any of that.

So, anyway… then, speaking of having too many kids, I temporarily lost my youngest one last night. He and two neighbor kids were supposed to be launching mini careers in landscaping, offering their pinecone-gathering service for money door-to-door. I’d been worried enough about that, but decided to go ahead and let him do that, lest I be branded the meanest mommy on the block. But when I drove around to find the little brats, it turned out that they’d walked their earnings to the local burger place. Which is on a busy street. And by the time I got there, they’d walked back home. When I finally caught up with him, I lectured the hell out of my child, telling him I didn’t want him going to the burger place without adults, much less without telling anyone where he’d gone. His eyes said, “Whatever, meanest mommy on the block.”

So then we ran to the grocery store and the gas station. And, upsettingly, when we got home, I saw that my lawn had failed to magically edge itself, despite all my fervent wishing. (My oldest son can mow the lawn, but he can’t yet edge it.) As we carried the groceries into the house, I saw my neighbors pointing through drawn blinds. “Messy-edged-lawn-having bitch,” they said.

But I couldn’t worry about that. I had work to do. I put a chicken carcass on the counter and commanded the children to pick it clean. I sat down at my computer and worked until bed time. “Can we watch South Park: The Passion of the Jew?” one of the children begged. “No,” I said on autopilot. “Mommy has to work. Go read classic British children’s literature before I spank you with a stick.”

This morning I got an early start and fantasized about treating myself to a lovely breakfast before work. Then I bent down to put on my shoes and realized my top was showing too much cleavage again. So I pulled another camisole out of my closet and saw something so shockingly disgusting…

It was a tiny albino lizard running on my camisole!

No, wait… It was tiny, bleached troglobite!

No, wait… GROSS. It was huge freaking silverfish!!!

After screaming and killing it and gingerly putting on the camisole and the rest of my clothes and getting in my car and starting my 1.25 hour commute, I noticed that I had completely lost my appetite.

In the past, the old Gwen, with her external locus of of control, would have freaked out and seen the silverfish as some kind of bad omen indicating futility in all endeavors. Instead, in the present, I made a mental note to call the exterminator.

So then, finally, as if all that crap wasn’t enough, I got to work and went to ladies’ room and looked in the full-length mirror, and realized that, in my hurry to escape the silverfish, I had accidentally dressed myself like Molly Ringwald in the ’80s.

Embarrassing!

I’m going to write a book called The Silverfish Diet Plan. (It’ll be about using silverfish as appetite suppressants, not about eating them.) I’ll get started on that as soon as I finish what I’m currently working on. Which will be… one week and one announcement of discontinued fertility from now.

Okay. Back to work.

We went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday, like dummies, in the hot sun. I thought, at one point, that I might die of low blood sugar and dehydration. And yet we all had fun, I think. As our friend Richard explained it, “All these women are hot. And they’re medieval.”

Sunday Laundry List

Then, on Sunday, my loud, dirty cousins came over. Tad made fried rice. We all played DDR and drank wine. Then we ate birthday cake to celebrate the twelth-birthday-en-ing of my middle child. Also, we looked at my sexy, sexy bead collection and made plans to attend Houston’s October bead show with wholesale license in hand. Woo hoo – domestic bliss.

Female Trouble News Update

I forgot to say that the week before I saw the endocrinologist, I got off the effing Pill.

I’m the kind of person, my friend Rose observes, who lives in the moment when it comes to relationships. I’m a creature of experience. If I’m with a person and they do something weird, I just roll with it. I like to go with the flow. Sometimes someone will annoy me, and I’ll say, “Don’t do that. That’s annoying.” But it’s never a big drama. I don’t like confrontation or ultimatums to ruin a good time.

Then, a year or so later, I’ll be sitting at home alone, and it will suddenly occur to me that I don’t like a certain person anymore. Suddenly, every annoying thing they’ve done will parade through my mind, and I’ll decide that that person is no longer my friend.

“Just like that?” asks Rose.

Yes. Just like that. Because, by then, I’ve already lived through several instances of telling a certain person, “Please don’t do that. That’s annoying. Please don’t be mean to my kids,” or “Please don’t tell me how to conduct my romantic life,” or “Please don’t spy on me while I’m in the shower.”

And the person keeps doing it. They know I don’t like it, but they don’t stop.

At that point, in my mind, there’s no reason to continue hanging out with that person. At the same time, there’s definitely no reason to have a big dramatic conversation with the person, in which I issue ultimatums. “I want you to apologize for poking me in the eye with your chopstick three times, and promise you’ll never do it again, or I’m not going to be your friend anymore.”

What’s the point? I don’t have time to teach people how to behave decently. That’s not my job – I can only do that for my kids. So I quit calling the person. And it’s over.

So, two weeks ago, I did the same thing with the Pill.

They put me on the Pill a year ago to make the double periods stop. They did stop, but, at the same time, I felt tired. And, as I explained to Rose, they affected my mind. Instead of fantasizing about pretty men with black hair, I found myself fantasizing about lemon-filled donuts. All the time. Nothing meant anything to me. I felt like a fat rabbit in a warm hutch, lying down waiting for my next meal all the time.

And then, the double periods came back. And then, I went back to the gynecologist, and she told me, paraphrased, “A year ago I put you on the Pill to stop the double periods, and now your double periods have returned. And, since then, you’ve gained 15 pounds. I know… Maybe losing weight will stop the double periods. Try losing 15 pounds.”

It took me a while to figure it out, and to connect all the annoyances in my mind, but then I did and I decided to get the hell off the Pill.

Go to hell, Pill. I’m not calling you anymore. You were never my friend, and I’m not going to bother asking you to change.

I feel better already. As PJ Harvey would say, I’m happy and bleeding. (And nauseated.) But that’s better than bleeding and lethargic, isn’t it?

Book Corner

Recently I read Oryx and Crake (by Margaret Atwood), and less recently I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, finally. I enjoyed them both very much. If you haven’t read those yet, you should check them out. Unless you don’t like science fictiony or magicky things, I mean.

Now I’m reading (maybe rereading?) The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro. She reminds me of Atwood, even though I probably shouldn’t lump them together just because they’re both Canadian and write about children bullying each other near bridges.

Also, as far as not-books are concerned, I’ve been reading Project Rungay. Go there now, because that shit is super hilarious.