OMG my OCD has PMS

You’ve heard the old adage…if a tree falls in the forest and the only one around to hear it is a woman with PMS, does she fly into a rage trying to convince her husband it really happened?

I am completely convinced husbands do not understand the power of PMS.  Do they not realize they have to sleep at some point? And I don’t know a single woman without a sharpened razor at the ready! (For our legs, of course…but still!)

Men just don’t get the danger!

There, I’ve said it. It’s a wonder the human race has survived this long when you consider how often women get PMS and how often men mock our pain.

It’s ok…I’m fine now. I’ve had a cherry cheesecake and a few bits of leftover chocolate. But a few hours ago? Things were pretty dicey around here.

I’ll admit it. I have a love/hate relationship with conflict. I’m a writer, so I know a good story is isn’t complete without conflict.  Conflict drives the story. It’s what keeps us turning the pages.  

But in reality? Conflict is the crazy taxi driver of life!

My ride started with a trip to the grocery store…well, it started a day or so before that, but the trip to the grocery store brought everything full circle.  I made a passing comment to my husband about feeling an overwhelming urge to swear.  Specifically, the eff bomb. Repeatedly. Until heads turned and whispers of “does she have Tourette’s” filled the air. 

I didn’t do it.  It was just an urge.  An overwhelming urge, but I resisted. 

My husband listened to me with a blank expression then counted on his fingers before proclaiming, “Ah ha! PMS.”

“PMS and OCD are never a good combination,” I reluctantly agreed.  “It’s the dreaded acronym soup feared by men everywhere!” I added with a smile.

My husband tossed in his two cents with an acronym of his own.  “CFB.”

I mouthed the letters back to him, scrunching up my face as I tried to decode them. 

“Crazy fucking bitch,” he said with a sneer. And the winds began to turn.

What I should have said was, “Kind sir…why do you mock me so?” What I actually said was, “Fuck off, IDP!"

And with that primitive little phrase, I had opened Pandora’s box and let the eff bomb out.  Trust me when I say, Pandora’s box is like a brand new tent. It’s all nice and neat until you take it out, but no matter how tightly you roll it up, you can never get that fucking tent back into the bag it came in. 

The innocent little exchange became a full-blown war of epic proportions.

I think I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight.  But don’t feel bad for me. I’ve booby trapped the bed with a little help from my “always willing to help with some drool” dog Indy.  And I swapped out the new toilet seat for the cracked one I was saving for just this occasion.  Hey, if a man sits on a broken toilet seat in the night and gets his butt pinched but no one is there to see it…will he still learn a lesson? Don’t ask me…I don’t give a fuck.  I’m just going to smile when he yelps.

Until the next time…I’ll be hunting for chocolate!                                        

the chocolate apocalypse

Well, we've lived here on the haunted farm for a whole year. I don't remember the exact date we moved in, but I measure our time here by Easter. That was when we got our first bunch of baby chicks and officially became a working farm.

As a young girl I used to get so excited for the arrival of Easter. It always meant a new dress and a pretty bonnet for church. (And of course, a basket of candy from the “giant bunny”.) And when my kids were growing up, I was torn between that same nostalgic excitement, and something akin to horror as roamed the apocalyptic scene at the local Walmart on the night before Easter, fighting old ladies in wheelchairs for the last few chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs in the entire store. This because I’d either completely forgotten about Easter until then, or already eaten the previously purchased candy. And the scene was a cross between a Mad Max movie and the original Willie Wonka and the chocolate factory.

Mad Max and the chocolate apocalypse.

Of all the things I miss…that wasn’t one of them. So as sad as I was to realize last year would be the first year I failed to do Easter baskets for the kids (most of which are actually adults who don’t really care if I buy them candy) I was secretly delighted I would be spared a trip to Walmart on the Saturday before Easter.

Imagine my horror as I somehow managed to find myself exactly there…Walmart! At ten o’clock at night. On the night before Easter. With all the other zombies trolling for chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs.

But I wasn’t shopping for candy. I was shopping for a light bulb.

Let’s rewind. Mike and I rolled out of bed (reluctantly) at seven am on the day before Easter. We were having a garage sale (which also means the weather was much better last year than this year...it's far too cold for garage sales) and we were thrilled to be getting rid of our junk…I mean stuff…for some extra cash. It was a good morning…we sold a lot. We even met the neighbors.

This is how I know were really and truly living in the country.

I actually witnessed…as in heard with my own ears…a grown man say the word do-dong. You might remember I wrote about a dongle a few years back, and as funny as the word dongle sounded, it wasn’t what I thought it was. Well, this time it was exactly what I thought it was. The context is somewhat important. My husband was pulling a vine from under the porch when the neighbor (a man in his late fifties to early sixties) said (and I’ll write this out phonetically because it’s way funnier that way) “That thar is posen (not poison…posen) ahvy. You don’t want none a' that. And ya best not touch yer do-dong before you wash yer hands.”

Yep, you heard (err…read) that right. “Ya best not touch yer do-dong…” Well, I agreed wholeheartedly. You do not want posen ahvy (or poison ivy for that matter) on your do-dong. I don’t have a do-dong myself, but if I did, I’m certain I wouldn’t want poison ivy on it.

Funny accents aside, he’s a sweet man, my neighbor. And oh so thoughtful, thinking about my husband’s do-dong like that. Not many men are secure enough in their manhood to mention such things out loud. And here, a year later the man feeds my chickens when they wander to his yard to visit. And hey, thanks to him, the do dongs around this house have been posen free for a whole year.

So, I guess you’re wondering what drove me to Walmart (and a twenty minute drive to reach said Walmart, by the way) for a light bulb, on the night before Easter? Well…with our garage sale proceeds, we went to the local feed store and bought eight baby chickens. We needed a light bulb to keep them warm at night. And they seem to be toasty warm, indeed.

Until the next time…I’ll be listening to this year's not-so-baby chickens peeping in the back room.

ok, who drank my wine?

I’m blogging about wine again. How many times does this make in such a short time? I don’t even know…I’ve lost track. But despite how it may seem on the surface…I swear I’m not a wino.

Really! I rarely drink wine, or even wine coolers, and I steer clear of anything stronger at all costs. I don’t take aspirin unless I really need it. Hell, I don’t even finish my prescriptions as directed! I’m a lightweight at best, and a control freak at my core, so consuming anything that takes the control out of my hands and puts it somewhere in the unseen mist is truly rare.

Enter the great game changer…PMS.

Someone up there is laughing at me, I know it. Laughing a sadistic little laugh and pointing. Pointing at my puffy eyes, splotchy skin, and bloated gut. Well, laugh on, you cosmic sadist. Go ahead, laugh on. I refuse to be broken by you, or anyone else. Do you hear that? I. Refuse. To. Be. Broken.

Oh screw it. I’m broken. All I do is cry.

Cry. Cry. Cry.

I cry when the sun goes behind a cloud. I cry when I step into the pant leg of my pajama pants, falling into the kitchen sink, splashing water onto my freshly washed Eddie Bauer sweatshirt, forcing me to change my clothes. Then I cry when I discover someone put the bag of chocolate chips away with only three freaking chips left in the bag. And let me just say…who does this? Someone with a death wish, perhaps? Someone foolish enough to tempt fate in the middle of the month? Someone with a broken cell phone and therefore can’t check the dates on the calendar? Oh, I suspect I know who you are…and you’re the same evil soul who drank the last of my fucking wine too, aren’t you?

Wackiki WabbitAnd people, if you don’t already know this (and you really should) please don’t eat the last of the chocolate AND the last of the wine right in the middle of PMS week. It’s just not fair…or smart…or safe for that matter. I’m already unstable…already eyeing you like a hamburger in the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the castaways stranded on the desert island…so don’t tempt fate here. Play it safe. Bring me chocolate and back away slowly. Offer me wine and hope I slip off to sleep quickly.

Or sleep on the couch and keep one eye open.

I’ll be the one wandering the house aimlessly after dark, with a menacing groan, as I bump into walls on a futile quest for chocolate that may have been left in packing boxes. Something I may have missed from Halloween…or Christmas…maybe Easter.

If you notice a trail of chocolate powder leading through the house, it was probably me as I fed from the baking cocoa when I ran out of other options, because YOU couldn’t leave well enough (and my chocolate) alone.

Zombie invasions? Pfft…I laugh at zombie invasions. You’d better start reading up on how to survive an attack by a PMSing woman!

And you know who you are!

like beer for chocolate

What sort of man tells a woman…a woman in the throes of PMS…she can’t have chocolate?

A man on the edge…that’s who.

Surely this is grounds for divorce. Possibly justifiable homocide…or really nasty looks at the very least!

I get his motivation…as misguided as it may be. He has made a decision to live a healthy existance. No more gluten. No more dairy. No more red meat. Clearly he’s insane, but that’s completely beside the point. Or maybe it’s right on point, because only a crazy man would deny his wife something as life sustaining as chocolate.

I wasn’t asking for much. I wasn’t asking for bags of sugar and caffeine. I just wanted a bag of Oreos to go with the milk.

Ok, so maybe I wanted chocolate nutty bars too. Oh, and the chocolate muffins. Then there was the donuts. But honestly, I didn’t want anything…ok so I wanted the cookies too. But that was it. I mean, you can’t screw around with PMS. That shit is dangerous!

Yeah, he wasn’t buying it. Big fat no…and he was driving the cart.

So, fast forward a few aisles…past the cat food (for the cats he says I tricked him into getting…and so what if I did…it’s old news, get over it) past the bread and the milk and the cheese…oh and the frozen pizzas. Yep, fast forward right to the beer aisle…and watch for the brilliance of the PMS stricken woman.

Beer is not healthy.

Don’t argue with me…it’s not. It’s chock full of calories and grains and all sorts of not-good-for-you-ness. So when the newly focused on a health kick husband reaches into the beer case and pulls out a six pack of something unpronouncable and thoroughly beer-like, I didn’t hesitate. With swiftness worthy of someone hell bent on a mission, I sprung.

“If I can’t get chocolate…you can’t get beer.”

So yeah…I got a Hershey bar.

And the Oreos…chocolate milk…brownie mix…Cocoa Pebbles…and a bag of chocolate chips.

But more than that…I got to win the argument. And honestly, is there anything better than that?

Until the next time…I’ll be feeding my PMS!

what is sexy?

Sexy?  Oh sure…I know.  Webster defines sexy as being, “sexually suggestive or stimulating.” But what exactly does that mean?

Are we talking about the fuel to your fire? The harmony to your melody? The keys to your libido?

When I hear people speak about sexy, they always refer to an object of perfection.  A Greek god or goddess.  A sleek sports car. The most delectable dish imaginable.

Advertisers want us to believe only flawless naked bodies are sexy.  They tell us that racy cars, lacquered in candy apple red, speeding down a deserted highway are sexy.  Hot melted chocolate drizzled over just about anything is sexy.  And ok…I’ll admit it.  Those things can be sexy. But isn’t sexy more than that? Isn’t sexy something different for everyone? One man’s bunny is another man’s Botticelli? Or something like that.

To me, sexy is an off-kilter smile and a day’s growth of stubble.  A strange sense of humor where he can laugh at his own shortcomings.  An indefinable glance that makes my toes curl from across the room.  It’s something in the timbre of a man’s voice when he whispers sweet nothings into my ear on a moonlit night.  The way he brushes his lips across my cheek in the moments before the actual kiss, and the silence that follows.

Sexy isn’t something you can order online in a pretty package. It’s something you cultivate over time. It isn’t one size fits all…it’s tailor made to fit.  It doesn’t jump off the page, it’s tucked in between the lines. 

Sexy is a feeling created from within.

At least that’s what’s sexy to me.  What’s sexy to you?