Warning to sensitive male readers: this post is going to contain items of an oversharing, girly nature. Proceed at your own risk.

I seem to have a wicked case of PMS this week. (See, guys? I warned you!) I’m irrationally grouchy for no reason, my boobs ache and I’m going through a lot of that whole “give me chocolate or DIE!!!” thing. Oh, and don’t forget the zits. Forehead, cheek, eyebrow, chin: check! (There’s another one under my right ear that I swear you could build a ski lift on. Ow.) You should all send Internet sympathy hugs to Dave, the poor soul who has to live with me. At least I try to warn him and apologize in advance, so my bitchy outbursts won’t be totally unexpected. I’m just courteous that way.

It’s funny (not ha-ha funny, just odd), there is a noticeable difference between my PMS symptoms when I’m on birth control as opposed to when I’m not, and honestly? It is way worse when I’m off of it. Speaking of which, you know how when I made the decision to ditch my birth control, I said that we were just going to relax and see what happened? How we weren’t really “trying,” we were just removing any preventative measures? Ok, that’s fine and all, but WHAT GIVES?? I’m about to have my 4th period (fourth!) with no birth control and still nothing. I just assumed that I’d get pregnant immediately since I have a ridiculously fertile family – my grandmother had 7 kids and my great-grandmother had 16. And no, that isn’t a typo, the woman had sixteen babies – she spent more time pregnant than a lot of people serve in prison for murder – and she still outlived her husband by many years. I mean, how is it that every teenager who gets drunk at their junior prom winds up with an unwanted pregnancy their first time, and we haven’t been able to pull it off in 4 months? The hell? Annoying!

Before anyone lectures me that if I stress myself out about it then I’ll never get pregnant, let me just say that this really hasn’t been bothering me that much. It’s only irritating me because every little damn thing in the world is irritating me right now. Honest. I know this mood will pass soon enough and I’ll feel silly for having written about it, but there you have it. Right now, at this very moment, I am annoyed.

And since it was bothering me, I started doing some Internet research (because, you know, that’s always a good idea) about how one goes about charting one’s ovulation. I found this website, which is full of fascinating tips. This is the paragraph about basal body temperature (BBT) that made me scream out loud:

Take your BBT temperature first thing each morning – as soon as you wake up. You must remain in bed (as physical activity can increase your temperature) and avoid eating or drinking or even moving. Either insert the thermometer in your mouth – or alternatively your rectum – and wait five minutes. Read the temperature to within 1/10 of a degree and record the reading.

Wait, “or alternatively your rectum”? Wow! Who would CHOOSE that when you have the option to take your temperature orally? Who on earth wakes up and thinks, “hmm, I think the best way to start my day today is to shove some foreign object up my butt for 5 minutes”?? Ok, don’t answer that question. I’m sure those people are out there, and I don’t want to meet them. I especially don’t ever want to shake their hands. Of course, now the only thing I can think of is that stupid joke where the punchline is, “Rectum? Damn near killed him!” I don’t remember the rest of the joke (I think there are about a hundred different versions), which makes it even more lame that it now seems to be on some kind of weird loop in my brain.

Now I’m off to my boss’s office birthday party, because hey, free cake! It had better be chocolate.

And GOD, I don’t want to imagine the Google hits I’m going to get because of this entry.