it snuck up on me again.
2004-07-26,

After all these years, you'd think I'd have a clue when the menses fairy is going to drop in. I spent Saturday running errands and doing chores, so when I woke up yesterday, I just figured I was achy from all the running around. Well, until I felt something running down my leg, anyway. And it is one of the agonizing ones, too. One of those where I feel absolutely toxic, and have gastro problems and wrenching aches and cramping.

It's funny; if I have the aches AND the grouchiness, I know it is coming. But if I'm achy without being grouchy, or vice versa, the damn thing comes as a total shock.

So I called in today. I'm just taking it easy and developing a relationship with the heating pad. I can barely type because my fingers feel like overstuffed sausages.

Spouse just called and and forbade me to cook tonight. Heh--as if. I really wasn't planning on it. But I do appreciate the thought. I know he's trying to be sweet when he insists on being (a little) less spoiled.

Yesterday, after I got myself up and thrown together, he decided he needed to visit the dirt mall. He gets these yens occasionally. No matter how many times we go to that hole in the world, he always thinks it's going to be different. I just can't convince him that you can't get anything good at a flea market anymore.

I've tried to tell him that the kind of stuff you used to find there is all in the "antique" malls now, but he still has to go periodically, and realize anew that it is all cheap sweat socks and slutty, hooker-style schmattes and tacky, mass-produced tchotchkes.

Oh. Time to get back to my heating pad.