Monday, May 23, 2022

AND NO LOUD NOISES THIS EARLY PLEASE!

My apartment mate woke me up at five in the morning to tell me all about the menstrual period. Which is happening. And she's calling in sick today, because it is uncomfortable.
It's her first period in almost a year. Apparently menopause is a spotty process.
She is surprised. Well okay, I can understand that.

Some men are queamish discussing such things. I think most of those dudes are American, because y'all goofy. When I was in highschool, as a reward, because we had all been good little fifteen year olds, they showed us a French movie in which one of the significant plot elements was a juvenile who in the middle of a lovely family celebratory lunch with distant relatives discovered that she was bleeding -- it was her first period -- and everyone sought to reassure her, this was a good thing, and she was allowed to drink a glass of wine like the grownups. Yay, she's heading into adulthood, here have some red wine! My high school class was mostly male. And we were wistfully envious. She got wine. How nice!

At five in the morning after several days work I really needed a few more hours of sleep. But okay, she's bleeding, and months ago she gave away most of her pads because she didn't think she'd need them. I offered to go to Walgreens to get her more. Once they opened.

Again, and I stress this, American men who have gone through football practice in between school prayer and handling chainsaws in woodshop at their highschools, where butch manliness is stressed and pounded into them, are squeamish about this.
Dissecting frogs and fetal pigs is one thing. But the menses?

Your sisters handled it, what's wrong with you? Bunch of wussies.

It's because a period didn't happen that you are here.

I do not squeam. Are maxipads okay?


Given that my apartment mate doesn't like alcohol and wonders why people drink it, and because of various bloodpressure meds I don't indulge anymore, there is no wine in the house. There is a bottle of cheap bourbon under the table in the teevee room which I use for cleaning old tobacco pipes I'm restoring, but it's highly doubtful she would have wanted a shot of that at five in the morning, what with not being blonde and Waspy.

Anyhow, she'll be okay soon. Problem is that today I cannot smoke inside at all. I had loaded up one my pipes with Palmetto Balkan at work yesterday, intending to smoke it once an old friend dropped by as he often does on Sundays, but he never showed (probably enjoying the beautiful sunny weather with his elderly cat and the coyote who wants to eat that cat in the backyard), and somehow I got distracted, so I put a tampion in the bowl to keep the tobacco from falling out, and planned to smoke it in front of the computer this morning.
Guess I'll wait till tomorrow.

[A tampion, in this case, is a spiral coiled scrap of kitchen tissue or paper put on top of the tobacco.]


Need to go down to Chinatown to visit my bank anyhow. So I guess an early lunch, then after a long smoke I'll have milk tea and a pastry, followed by another pipe. She's bleeding, so I can suffer a bit. It's only a minor inconvenience. The main thing is to make sure we have enough drinking chocolate of a brand she likes. I've heard that women need chocolate at moments like this. Something about theobromine and comfort levels.
I myself rarely drink chocolate, and I wonder if they carry her brands at the nearby specialty food store three blocks away. What are her brands anyway?

Also, Almond Joys. She likes the whole nut.
I'm more of Mounds man myself.



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