womanhood

There are many different terms for it:
"That time of the month"
"Aunt Flo"
"On the rag"
"The curse" (This was my grandmother's special term for it)
Or the one that I use, "Oh, thank god!"

Menses.  It's not a pretty thing - it's gross, you gain 5 pounds in water, it makes you feel like you want to curl up and die, you're an emotional wreck...but it only lasts a few days.  It's better than the alternative of nine months of those symptoms multiplied by 20, followed by labor and 18 years of parenting.

Don't get me wrong, I love being a mother, I love my son more than anything in the world, but one is enough...I'm done. 

No matter what kind of birth control that's used, there's always some sort of slim chance, even if only a hundredth of a percentile, that it won't work and those determined little spermatozoa will accomplish the one task they were set out to do...fertilize.  (And some of us are pretty dang fertile.)  So while some women grumble about getting their periods, I give a silent "Woo-hoo!" and fist pump when I get mine.

And do you remember getting the talk about puberty in school?  That special day when they separated the 4th grade boys from the 4th grade girls.  The girls went into the gym and watched a movie that taught them about the horrors that were about to happen to their bodies, that they were gonna get hair in strange places and bleed for days and days every month while the boys stayed in the classroom and got to play Head's Up 7-Up, then they sent us home devastated and full of questions for our moms.  Well, I found the movie that we were subjected to. Now I'm sharing it with you.  It was made by Disney in 1946!



I'm hoping the video they watch now has been updated since then.