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.

* Number of items on my home improvement to-do list: 22
* Items that were completed this weekend: 2
* Approximate year that all items on list will be completed: 2018

Task item #1
* Stupid, leaky, stinking, broken garbage disposals removed and thrown out: 1
* Shiny, pretty, new garbage disposals installed: 1
* Number of times I had to ask Dave for help installing the new garbage disposal, thereby ruining my whole “I am Miss Handywoman, hear me roar as I handle all plumbing issues with ease and grace” image of myself: 4 or 5
* Instances of profanity involved in the removal/installation of garbage disposal: well over 100, probably
* Unnecessarily bitchy comments directed at Dave for no reason other than the fact that I was frustrated with the m*&#erf*@$ing disposal: at least 20
* Number of times a stupid garbage disposal reduced me to tears: 1
* Person who actually finished the damn installation of the garbage disposal because after the crying, I was ordered to go upstairs and lie down: Dave

Task item #2
* Broken toilets that were fixed: 1
* Pipe snakes that were thrown away after the toilet was fixed, because ew, that thing just cannot stay in the house: 1
* Person who did the entire toilet-repairing and wouldn’t even allow me in the bathroom because he’d had quite enough of my tears & bitchiness for one day: Dave

To sum up:
* Big whiny crybaby: me
* Rock-star husband of the weekend: Dave

I think he wins. Oh, and even after a shower, my fingernails still smell like plumber’s putty. Gross.

I’ve been trying to think of something to write all week. Something funny, something light, something… eh?? But unfortunately, I have been in the absolute foulest of moods for the past several days, and I got nothin’. I think it can be chalked up to a particularly severe case of PMS, or maybe I’m pregnant and don’t know it yet. Actually, I won’t know about that for a couple of days, and it got me thinking about whether or not I’m going to blog about it if/when I do get pregnant. On one hand, my blog is sort of like my journal, and I do write a lot about everyday stuff that’s going on in my head, so it makes sense to write about it since it’ll obviously be taking up a good chunk of my brain space. On the other hand, first pregnancies = higher risk than normal, plus miscarriages run in my family, and I really don’t want to have to write about it if that happens, so… I honestly don’t know what I think about that. I guess I’ll wing it and figure it out if/when it happens.

So to showcase a total lack of creativity, I present to you a list of things that are annoying me this week:
* Every other driver on the road, particularly that stupid red VW EuroVan that I keep seeing that has “WNDRLND” as its personalized license plate. I don’t need any pot-smoking hippies going ten miles per hour in front of me when I’m trying to get to work, thanks. Pull over and take another hit off the bong, why don’t you?

* I have a headache. Also, even though I’ve been sleeping at least 7 or 8 hours every night, I’m still so exhausted during the day that I can barely keep my eyes open. It feels like the tiredness is in my muscles and bones, everything just aches.

* Going through the salad bar at lunch today, I thought I was putting ranch on my salad, and it was actually bleu cheese. Gross.

* The cats got mad that their litter box wasn’t cleaned according to their precise schedule, so they peed on some blankets that we had left on the futon. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the smell out of the den, but I’m not sure there’s enough pet stain remover and Febreze in the world.

* Speaking of cats, this story made me cry. I’m glad it has a happy ending, because too many of them don’t. But reading articles like that reaffirms my belief that there is a special place in hell reserved for people who abuse animals and children. Oh, speaking of the children part, this one also made me feel like crying, although mostly it makes me want to gather up an army of angry militant feminists and unleash them on Pakistan. Hell, I might even join them.

* Apparently the milk in the company kitchen went sour over the Christmas holidays, and hoo lordy, it stinks in there. The smell is reaching all the way out into the hall and into the ladies room, which is unfortunately located next door to the kitchen. It’s so bad that it makes me cough and my eyes water every time I walk past there. It reminds me of when I was 16 and worked for the summer at a grocery store. (For you Jxn residents, it was the Kroger on County Line.) There was always one of those gallon milk jugs in the case that would leak and cover all of the others with foul, stinky milk. And because I had to pick them up to run them across the scanner, my hands smelled like sour milk for that entire summer. That was long before I discovered that I’m lactose-intolerant, but the experience put me off dairy for at least 2 or 3 years.

* Dave didn’t load the dishwasher the way that I like it. This one obviously points to a case of PMS combined with my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I load it a certain way to allow for the maximum possible number of dishes in there, and he just sort of casually tosses things in wherever they fit. I actually bitched at him for doing it “wrong,” as if it’s an algebra problem instead of a freakin’ dishwasher. Wouldn’t most women just be happy that their husbands were doing the dishes at all and keep their mouths shut? I think so.

* Ok, this one might actually be a legitimate complaint: it looks like my trip to Memphis to drive cross-country with Kris is going to get delayed, because her boss is yanking her along about exactly when her end date is going to be. He originally told her mid-January, now he’s trying to make it the end of January. It sucks, because I booked my plane ticket weeks ago, and we’ll have to pay to change it. Plus, I just want her to hurry up and get here already.

* We have no plans for New Year’s. I suppose it isn’t really that big a deal. I have Dave, so the issue of who I’m going to kiss at midnight is pretty well settled. We were trying to get a group of our friends together to do something – I liked the idea of getting a table at a restaurant so we could all just hang out, talk and have a few cocktails – but we can’t seem to rally a group together. So we’ll probably just go to the little park in our town to watch the fireworks and call it a night. Ho hum.

So… yeah. I’m sorry this is so whiny. Just call me Miss Crankypants. I do hope that all of you have a good New Year’s, though. See you in 2006.