What was my first clue?  Well I should have known something was amiss when the GIANT zit showed up two weeks before the real hell of horrormonal upheaval was due.  We are talking mount Vesuvius huge.  So very huge it would give a whole new meaning to the description double chin.  But, I was clueless. 

Then there was the ten pound weight gain.  OH, COME ON!!!  I've halved my meal portions, practically cut out all sugar, made vegetables the largest portion of any meal and I'm needing a tow truck to get my comfortable fitting pants to close??  Everything was fitting fine the week before.  How could I have blown my diet to hell in one week?  I swear I've been eating properly.  What is going on here?

I'm plugging away at life.  I even have a job, as in customer.  The customer is happy with my work and gives me more work later that week.  Then the night before, the realization of what has been wrong hits.  "OH, IT'S YOU!"  Spelled y-o-u but pronounced yeeeeeewwwwww.  The evil inside.  The monthly menace.  This time it's out to get me.  A whole night of painful migraines.  I'm feeling so exhausted the next day I actually contemplate rescheduling the one job I've had all month, but I don't.  I'm not at work more than a half hour and the pain is coming back.  Time for drastic measures.  I break out the Imitrex.  Just a half a pill.  They scare me since the chest pain incident.  I avoid taking them.  This time I take it and pray that the god I don't believe in doesn't kill me at my customer's house.  You know it's bad when death is preferable to the pain.

I'm functioning.  Because I am just functioning, I've taken the extra precautions of tapping into trainer mode.  Going through my new employee spiel about protecting yourself by protecting your work area.  Everything is covered.  I'm working my way around the room trimming the top of the wall.  I get to the skinny odd corner smoothing out the brush marks when my arm hits the edge of the cupboard.  Here is where someone needs to explain to me why when something bad happens it happens in sloooooooooowwwwwww moooooootttttiooooooooon.  The brush is flipping through the air end over end in an arc, handle first, right into the full paint can where it splashes lovely blue paint onto the blond wood cabinets, the white microwave and down my ladder onto the drop cloths.  OH, and LOOK!  Where the corner of the drop cloth has come away from the baseboard there is paint on the floor too.   My head snaps over to the Olympic judges . . . 8.5, 8.9, 9.0. Yeah, I couldn't have pulled that off if I tried on purpose.  The trainers voice trails off in my head, "You can bet your whole paycheck that if the paint is going to splatter it will splatter in that 1/2 inch gap between the two drop clothes."  Murphy's law.  The one saving grace is that the paint is water based.  Just one half hour of unplanned clean up and we are back to work.

But wait, the day has just begun.  There is more fun in store.  Today is going to be in the upper 80's with humidity in the six thousand percent range.  Not even the customer's air conditioning is going to make someone working hard comfortable.  It doesn't help when the customer cracks that three more pounds and I wouldn't fit behind the refrigerator.  There I am bending and stooping and crawling and climbing and hot and sweaty and head-achy.  The only thing that would make me more miserable is a nice big hemorrhoid and no Preparation H.  OH be careful what you wish for.  NOW my day is complete! 

After a painful night, at both ends no less, I get up early and call my friend Teddy to see if she needs anything from the Evil Walmart.  She just needs milk but she would be glad to ride along and keep me company. 

When did we women get over the fear and embarrassment of having to shop for pads and tampons and not run into the cute football player only to have that embarrassment replaced by shopping for hemorrhoid ointment and running into anyone remotely human?  Here I am with my friend asking me what we are looking for and I'm stuttering trying to get Preparation H out of my mouth.  She just does that sharp intake of breath and squeaks out, "oh."  This is why I left early.  Real early.  Less chance of running into people at that time of the morning.  Lucky for me there are only 50 cars in the parking lot instead of the usual 500.

We get to the health and beauty section and I ask Teddy which aisle she thinks it would be in.  Being the helpful friend she is, she says she'll start at the other end and work her way toward me.  I'm thinking she didn't want to deal with the embarrassment of being with the hemorrhoid queen.  I take a quick run down the cold and allergy aisle.  I work my way up the itch cream and powder aisle.  I'm rounding the corner into the digestive distress aisle and find where ALL the customers belonging to the 50 cars in the parking lot are shopping.  Is there a sale?  An epidemic?  I muscle my way past the pastel colored antacids.  I work my way past the bland looking laxatives.  I shuffle past the discretely colored Immodium boxes with their small lettering that almost whispers, "quick relief from diarrhea."  And, there it is.  Big as life. Look here.  Look here. I'm surprised they couldn't package the stuff in boxes with flashing lights.

This is where I notice the other 50 customers in the aisle trading suspicious squinty eyed glances.  You know the scene in the movie where the group of people has discovered there is a murderous alien in their midst but they don't know who it is because everyone looks normal so they eye each other up waiting for the impostor to do something to reveal themselves as the alien? (Whew)  Well, I'M NOT PLAYING that game.  I'm irritated and uncomfortable and if you idiots want to spend your day entertaining yourselves with other peoples digestive discomforts you are going to have to do it without me.  So I grab the neon yellow box and faster than you can say, "GET HER!  SHE'S THE ALIEN," I run out of the aisle. 

Now all I have to do is find my friend who I discover has annoyingly become sidetracked in the nail polish aisle. To speed things along, I hold up the neon yellow box and say rather loudly, "Teddy, I found the ASS CREAM."  She just clutches her milk tight and says, "I guess we better go then."  Yeah, we better.  I have a hot date with some ointment and a soft bed in a dark room.  I'd add a book to that but it just makes the migraine worse.

So what products do men feel uncomfortable shopping for???

tags: pms  periods  hemorrhoids  embarrassment  humor  preparation h  

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