Code Red: Of Periods and Stupidity

If you’re one of my male relatives, please stop reading now. You know who you are, and you know that you once had to be educated on the differences between a pad and a tampon, so save yourself while you still have the chance.

Other people: DEAR GOD, MENOPAUSE CAN’T COME SOON ENOUGH.

I used to be a pad-only girl, having always been a little wary of the little white torpedoes. Nine out of 10 health food store clerks would have agreed with my stance. Read some of their literature, and I may as well be sticking a lit cigarette up my cooter, cancer-wise. Not that they like pads any more. If tampons are like cigarettes for your vadge to the Diva Cup and Lunapad-ers, then wearing pads is like sitting on top of ultra-absorbant uranium.

 Still, I’ll plug it up before exercise, their advice be damned.

And when a grocery store was inexplicably out of my preferred brand, OB, I ended up with some ridiculous Kotex product, complete with colourful plastic applicators. I guess my vagina has a preference. OB doesn’t even have applicators, but I had used them before. And yet I couldn’t work these. Day 1: FAILURE TO LAUNCH. Day 1, Take 2: FAILURE TO LAUNCH. And on, and on, with me grumbling all the while about the (likely cisgendered male) idiot who had designed these useless plastic monstrosities, when I would just have to nudge the tampon in there with my fingers ANYWAY, so why not just skip the MIDDLE WOMAN, because it's not like my vagina is more of a blue than a green.

And then, as I used the sixth-to-last tampon, it dawned on me. I had to pull one part of the applicator out until it clicked, and then I would finally have a useful product. SUCCESSFUL DEPLOYMENT.

Hopefully this is the last grade 6 sex ed lesson I'll have to learn this year.

Cold Hands, Warm Wool

This year, summer didn't slowly fade to fall. Instead, one night somebody went in and switched the heat off. I went to bed wearing shorts, and woke up searching for my wool socks and flannel pyjamas. 

Productivity has plummeted. The only place I can stand to be in the house is in my bed, as the bean filling in a blanket burrito. I want to keep my hands under the covers at all times, so typing is hard. Saying I'm worried about frostbite is hyperbole, but Christ- you can tell it's cold when the cats huddle with me for warmth, instead of howling outside of my door like the fuzzy little monsters they are. 

And so there hasn't been that much writing happening at my house lately. However, I've finally picked up the knitting needles after a long, long hiatus. What made me put them down for months remains a mystery, but I know what's prompting me to pick them back up: my ice block feet.

Protagitron at 26

I turned 26 on Wednesday, got far too drunk, and decided that my life needed to change in some nebulous, yet major, way.

In other words: a standard birthday when you're in your 20s, life crisis and all.

When I was looking to the future on Wednesday night, I was convinced that this undefined shift would cause my apartments to always be perfectly curated and my wit forever sparkling. Now in the sober light of a Friday night, I'm beginning to think I was wrong to wish for that. Because now I'm thinking about the past. As in the past year, in which I:

• watched two of my friends get married
• moved twice
• switched jobs
• ended up in the hospital for two weeks
• threw myself into dating with all of the frenzied pace of an 80s training montage
• finally slowed that down
• got over my fear of Toronto biking
• had a falling out with one of my best friends

Perhaps it's better that this major shift never happens. Or waits until I'm thirty. Twenty-five felt like all I could handle and more, like a turning point that will mark my life into a "before" and "after" point, no matter how much I tell myself that mine - like anyone's - is just a continuum. And so I hope my apartment continues to be a bit of a sty, and my wit often lacking. Because I hope this year doesn't throw me - too much.