yoicks, yowza

Wow, this is the worst menstrual period I've had in a LONG time. Here I've been thinking that the emotional symptoms, the irritability and weepiness, that used to accompany my periods were "cured" by my pregnancy (or possibly just by getting older). Apparently not! They were just lying in wait, biding their time until they sensed the time to strike!

Or something.

Anyway, there was the bitchiness of yesterday*, coupled with a hefty dose of road rage** that continued into today. And then on top of it, this morning I was driving to work and I saw a cardinal*** fall out of a tree and get run over by a car :( and I just wanted to cry and cry. But I didn't, on account of I was driving.

Okay, wanting to cry over such a thing is normal enough, but there's an intensity to the emotion that I can easily recognize as being hormone-related. I've gotten that stuff ever since I was a teen, I sure know what it feels like. Same with the irritation. I'm still getting irritated at the same things that annoy me at all times of month; it's just a different degree or quality of irritation, with an almost physical sensation that distinguishes it.

I always remember a loonnnng time ago when I was on an email list for pagan women, and there was a thread about how people always dismiss PMS emotions as "just hormones." And one woman said, although of course I'm paraphrasing wildly, that it's not really that PMS makes you get upset over things you normally wouldn't care about; it's that PMS lowers your defenses, your tolerance, your filters, and your inhibitions, so that something you'd normally just sigh and shake your head at becomes occasion for a screaming fit, or something you'd normally let go out of tact/politeness becomes a whole big deal. So it's not that during PMS you get bitchy over nothing; it's that the rest of the time you suppress your bitchiness for the sake of polite society.

Anyway, I always think about that, and I think it's very accurate. And a good way of "reclaiming" women's emotions, which are all too easy to dismiss even here in the twenty-first century.

To sum up: I'm here, I'm bitchy, get used to it. ;)

It's also a bad menstrual period in ( the squicky TMI sense. )

Whee! Ain't it fun being a girl?

* not helped at all by an afternoon at work spent trying to fix other people's messes in projects that I'm not even supposed to be touching.
** although, seriously people, when the sign says "yield," it does NOT mean "cut off the person who has the right of way, thus forcing her to swerve wildly into the other lane just to avoid being mowed down by your precious Lexus SUV.
*** or some kind of red bird, anyway. What do I know, I'm no bird expert.

some Isaac cuteness to cut through the gloom

Just to counteract the bitchiness of my last few posts, here's some Isaac cuteness. Get your insulin handy!

Isaac's latest cute thing to say is "correctamundo." This of course comes from me, because I got tired of saying "that's right!" every time he says something that's true, such as "that car yellow." So I started saying "you are correct" and that made me want to say "you are correct sir, yes!" (in imitation of the late lamented Phil Hartman doing his Ed McMahon impersonation, and if you didn't get that reference you're probably not in my target demographic). So instead, somehow, quite against my will, I started saying "correctamundo!" And of course Isaac picked it up. So now our conversations go something like this:

Isaac: Light change-a green?
Me: Yep, that light changed to green.
Isaac: Green mean go?
Me: Green means go! That's right!
Isaac: Wreck-a-minnow?
Me: CORRECT-A-MUNDOOOOOOO!
Isaac: RECT-A-MINNOOOOOOO!

bahahahaha!
anotherjen has witnessed this and can attest that it is fucking hilarious. :D

Isaac has also turned into a little songster. He sings all the time! Sometimes he sings things that I can recognize as snippets of actual songs, but sometimes he just seems to be improv-ing on "da da ma ma ba ba" or riffing on whatever was the last word/phrase he said. Like last night in the car he was like "where's our house?" and I was like "our house is that way" and he started singing randomly "dat way, dat way dat waaaaaay..." I freaking love it. I'm so happy that he's turning musical and picking up my habit, which in turn I picked up from my mom, of making a song out of whatever random conversation happens to be going on around him.

Isaac is also obsessed with brushing his teeth. He wants to do it like ten times a day -- every time I go near the bathroom, "Isaac brush-a teeth? Mama brush-a teeth?" Of course if he does it, I have to do it too, "Mama do it!" He directs the entire proceeding, "take-a Isaac toothbrush. take-a Mama toothbrush. Water. Toothpaste onna Isaac toothbrush. Toothpaste onna Mama toothbrush." Then he laughs like a loon when I start brushing. He thinks it's so funny to watch me brush my teeth. LOL. My dentist is going to love him. ;)

WWYD?

The other day Isaac and I were in CVS buying some stuff, and I was unloading my purchases-to-be onto the counter to pay for them, and I noticed that Isaac had taken a chocolate bar off the shelf and the wrapper was open. I assumed that he had opened it, so I told the girl I would pay for it, and she rang it up with my other stuff and I put it in my bag.

But in retrospect I'm not entirely sure that Isaac did open it. I only had my eyes off him for a moment, and he usually has trouble opening wrappers of that kind. So maybe it was already open. I don't know.

So my question to you is: should I eat it? ;)

Please answer soon, and answer yes, cuz I'm frickin' hungry. ;)