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All new blogging! All new blog genre!!! Guess what, peeps. I'm the Houston Chronicle's newest mom blogger.
Are you shocked because you never thought of me as a mommy blogger before? Well, you know what that means, don't you? All new, never-before-told invasions of my children's privacy for your reading entertainment! Go visit and enjoy!

Pre-order my new novel, Lone Star Legend, now!

New kids' book: Sunflowers is on sale now. It's been oh sale, actually, but I haven't been keeping up with this announcement section very well. Know why? Because someone's making me a new Web site as we speak.

Right now: I'm about to start writing a new novel and will tell y'all the title as soon as we decide on it. :)

Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Obligatory Periodic Menstrual Entry

Get it? "Periodic"? Get it? Huh?

This is my monthly routine ever since I got off the Pill in May:

Morning of Day 1:
Everything is normal, except for the fact that I keep dropping things and Houston drivers are stupider than usual.

Evening of Day 1:
Suddenly, I realize that I'm a big loser. This is because I've figured out that whoever I'm currently dating secretly hates me, all my friends would rather watch reality TV than talk to me on the phone, my writing sucks, and I'll never leave the insurance business. I spend the evening crying myself to sleep.

Day 2:
I bleed. Woo hoo! I'm bleeding! All that crap from yesterday was only PMS! I eat some sugar-free chocolate to celebrate (and because it keeps me from killing everyone on the freeway).

Day 3:
I'm not bleeding anymore. Okay, well... doo dee doo. Go on with life.

Morning of Day 4:
Still not bleeding. Feeling nervous. Am I... could I be... Could I be pregnant? Maybe Day 2 was just the spotting of early pregancy. Oh, crap... Dude, now that I'm thinking about it, I feel a little sick. WHY am I NOT bleeding?

Evening of Day 5:
I realize that the PMS-inspired worries of the other day were just the fantasies of a naive child. Now I know the truth - that my petty social concerns aren't important at all in the face of the fact that I am a total freaking loser who will never make anything of herself and who's destined to be miserable forever. Will I ever make enough money to buy a house? No. Will I ever make a living writing, so that I can quit working in hell/insurance? Obviously not. Will I be able to put my children through college? Hell, no, because college is only for the children of people who aren't losers who don't know how to make money. Why am I such a failure? Where did I go wrong? Why does all my hard work lead to nothing? How the hell am I ever going to get ahead? Why wasn't I born a pop star, or a white man?

I don't cry myself to sleep, exactly, but cold liquid does run out of my eyes in the dark as I conjure up money-making schemes in my dreams.

Day 6:
I bleed like a stuck pig, to use an evocative Southernism. Buckets of blood well up in my gut and lower back, making it hard to walk through the parking garage to my insurance day job. In my veal-pen, I listen to my coworkers chatter like excited gibbons in an echo chamber. I'm unable to refrain from putting my head on my desk and leaving it there, even if my boss and other "important" people are walking by.

I imbibe Ibuprofen, fake chocolate, and sugar-free hot chocolate mixed with coffee.

At 10:30 AM (or earlier, as it's been lately), I tell my boss that I have to go home. Very slowly, I stagger back through the parking garage. All the way home, I thing of all the tasks and errands I'll complete during my sick time. At home, I take off my work clothes and work jewelry, get into bed, and sleep until someone calls and offers to bring me a cheeseburger.

I eat the cheeseburger while watching bad TV and soaking up the sympathy of the cheeseburger-bearer. This until it's time to go pick up my kids. Also, the whole time, I'm bleeding like a geyser.

Day 7:
Lately, more and more, I stay home from work on Day 7, too. And sleep. And bleed. And eat drugs.

Days 8, 9, 10:
I manage to get back to work. And, I bleed. A lot.

Days 11 through 30:
My body is busy making enough blood for the next time.

So, yeah. I'm thinking that I need to go back to the gynecologist and complain louder and more succinctly than I did last time. And I'm sure she'll put me back on the Pill again. And that's $30 a month that I don't really have, owing to the fact that the insurance company where I work has rocket-high health insurance copays, seeing as how the median age there is, like, 62, and everyone's always getting quadruple bypasses and hip replacements and titanium veins and shit.

But the good thing is that I've finally realized that the depress-o-matic feelings come right on schedule, once a month. So I can take them with grains of salt and go on with my life.
 

6:01 PM #

Comments:

 Oh, god, Gwen! You hit it right there, girl! I have been off the Pill for 2 years now and STILL I have those strings of months where I'm all like... "why am I so fat? Why is everyone out to get me? I hate me! No, everyone else hates me!" And then I realize, (for the three-thousandth time) oh, yeah. PMS. And then the bleeding just goes on, and on, and on... Yikes. I wish I was young enough to still be on the Pill. Argh!


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 8:36 PM  

 I feel your pain, but, unfortunately, it gets worse.

Yeah, worse.

See, once you are my age 40, you start to go in to meno. It's lovely, you go stark raving mad, crying jags and so on. The up side is that your peiods don't really last as long.

The downside (aside from that fact that soon this will all stop and you will no longer have a period) is that whole weird hormone thing. I think some women grow facial hair. I look daily, and it has not happened to me.


yet.

lo siento.


# posted by Blogger artist7 : 9:37 PM  

 I wish that, for once, I could have PMS without it taking an entire DAY (or more if I'm unlucky) for me to figure out what is wrong with me is that and not that I am suddenly a fat repulsive failure.

Guys have it easy. I swear.


# posted by Blogger Ali : 12:28 AM  

 Thank god for chocolate... Ask your gyno for a prescription for a 3 month pack--usually there's just 1 30 dollar co-pay.


# posted by Blogger Yvonne : 3:30 AM  

 I just went on the Patch (easier version of the Pill) four months ago, and I seem to be moodier. Or maybe it's just the whole boyfriend-quakes-in-his-shoes whenever I start to get mopy or crap-headed with the PMS.


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6:29 AM  

 Try naproxen sodium (Aleve or generic-brand equivalent) instead of ibuprofen for the cramps. My gyno told me to try it and I find it works much better, at least for me.

As for the PMS--I've got nothing. Every month I turn into the Incredible Hulk, only without the pretty complexion.


# posted by Blogger DeeDee : 8:16 AM  

 work out, exercise run, walk - like you are training for the olympics - the more you work out, the less of a period you have!


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 8:48 AM  

 Trying going off the Pill and an SSRI at the same time.

Brains=mush.

The feelings of low self-esteem make me want to lash out at EVERYONE. I snapped at someone for humming tunelessly in my vicinity.

So dizzy. So very dizzy.


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 9:01 AM  

 Hey Gwen,

isn't it weird that your period is more dependable than a Man. It's the "ole faithful" geiser. Been there, done that; I hate it sometimes. Hope you feel better today.

bye
Cuz


# posted by Blogger monica : 10:14 AM  

 I'm not on the pill and this is pretty much how it goes for me too. In fact, yesterday I had to buy three things for dinner- ground chicken, phyllo sheets and poulty seasoning. I left the grocery store with ground chicken, phyllo sheets, a box of Hostess chocolate donuts, a box of ding dongs, and a carton of B&J's oatmeal cookie dough ice cream. I ate half the box of donuts on the ten minute ride home, when I got there I realized that I forgot the poultry seasoning and dinner was a bitch to put together and my husband came home to find me curled up on on the couch eating donuts and looking sad. Fortunately he realized that hair petting was required. Anyway, thank you for letting me know I'm not a total freak around this time of the month. Now, I must go get a bacon cheeseburger for lunch.

~Rebecca


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 11:01 AM  

 I'm sure that being on the pill does ease the symptoms of PMS, but I haven't been on the pill for 10 years, and my periods are just getting worse the older I get. When I was younger, there were no cramps, and now my husband has to fetch me a hot water bottle because I can't even move or I'm gonna throw up. I used to laugh and say that I'm such a control freak that I never start my period on a day when I have to go to work. I agree with the Aleve, but I had to go to Tylenol when it stopped working, so you're body prolly builds up an immunity to whatever drug you're taking. I hate to buy it because it's so obvious but Premysn PMS really does work. I think it's just our bodies getting pissed that we're not pregnant as we get older so they take it out on us and make us feel guilty that we're such losers because we're not doing what we're genetically designed to do by staying preganant all the time. But then we get sick when we're pregnant. It's God's way of keeping women submissive and proving that men are superior. Wait, let me go check my calendar.


# posted by Blogger Tiffany : 12:37 PM  

 Try feeling that way even on the pill. Or maybe
the fact that i'm in a permenant bad mood nowadays so that PMS doesn't make a difference!


# posted by Blogger MissCathee : 12:46 PM  

 Today is "talk about your period" day. Just wanted to add that the pill is definitely a godsend - you know pretty much when you'll start and you bleed and cramp a lot less (even on the very low dose pills). I can understand not getting them if you have bad insurance though - that's a lot of money to spend on birth control each month.


# posted by Blogger Kay : 1:38 PM  

 damn..no wonder you're a writer, you got all that "passion" built up inside.


# posted by Blogger Cy : 2:03 PM  

 God, I just recently decided to go off the pill. It is all such crap: my copay was $30 so the insurance company's part was just $3.50 a month. Why has nobody come up with better, less-invasive, cheaper birth control yet? Can't they make powdered sperm-inhibitor and put it on, like, Nacho Cheese Doritos? That way every guy would be totally covered.


# posted by Blogger supine : 2:34 PM  

 Gwen --

Just a thought, but if you have health ins. at your work, sometimes it will cover the pill if it's for "medical reasons" rather than birth control (which is such an irritating double standard, but well, whatever). That might be something worth looking into.

And I recently had the same weird realization "oh god, this awful crushing depression is on a MONTHLY CYCLE!" which completely made things liveable. Thank goodness.

Thanks as always for your ridiculously great sense of humor -- I can't be that funny about that stuff, thank god you can.

:)
Laura


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 2:36 PM  

 You poor thing! I can so relate to the mental anguish and self hatred that happens like clockwork once a month. And the pregnancy fears - yikes!


# posted by Blogger Katie : 9:33 AM  

 God. I just went back on the oral contraceptives after 6 months off. Decided to give in (Lo-estrin, this time) after fearing I would bleed out at work. "Get the cart and a pint of O neg, stat!" So my skin only breaks out 3 days a month. I don't use Supers any more. But I sweat like a linebacker. Lots of sleep.

And on Monday, everyone hated me. I could tell. They were all either looking at me or avoiding looking at me. I can tell, cause I'm not paranoid. Little sleep.

On Tuesday, I was fairly certain that I could not survive the first year of my new job in banking. I have no libido, I am a horrible cook and my husband will leave me. If I don't leave him first. Sleep is for sissies.

Wednesday found me happily immersed in a new project at work and walking. Yes. Walkin on my lunch break out in the warm sunshine. Sleep? This is what now?

Thursday, I'm not sure if the child I have been raising is actually mine. DNA tests must be performed. Sleeeeep. Ahhh.

Today, my iron was just high enough to allow me to donate blood. If it weren't for the pill, the Red Cross would be giving me blood.

Sorry, hormones make me long-winded.

-gee


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 8:40 PM  

 Hi Gwen,
Yikes! That sounds like the period from hell!
I use ta get the period cramps from hell, that was very bad!
Twelve years ago, after I wenned my year old baby, I went on the pill--it was horrible My blood was black and thick, and there was three times as much as usual. And my mood swings where phyco-wierd. I can't believe I actually yelled at cashiers at Wal-mart. Later after my pill-harmone-induced madness wore off I was too embaressed to show my face in there! At least for a while.
I got on the pill at Family Planning, I called to talk to them about it, and they told me that was normal?!? What? Even the nausia? Yes!
They said stay on it for a year. It was a year of hell! Then I got off the pill, and my period stopped! No period for five months. I was scared! The only time I didn't have a period was when I was pregnate. I ended up back on the pill again, another year of hell! After that year Family Planning found out I was having migrains too, they said "this pill causes brain tumors." Brain tumors???? What?!?
O.K. I'm done this time for real!
I had a period like every other month for like three years, and I was O.K with that! Then finally it settled down.
So now I'm regular; easy normal not too bad periods, every month, but with hot flashes, and night sweats!
I never get a break!

Jan


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 11:01 PM  

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