Once A Month

Ugh.

Once a month I become everything I hate. I have to endure myself for a week or so, and worse still, my family has to endure with me. Being all males, they are not particularly suited by nature to understand this difficult time on the calendar. 

I know, I know. I shouldn't even talk about it. "We" don't discuss such things. "We" being nice girls, good Catholic mother-bloggers, or homeschooling representatives. I will probably get reprimaded by someone (gently, of course) for choosing to share such things, for daring to show the world that yes, even good-girl-Catholic-homeschooling-mothers have bad days, bad weeks, times they dread every..single...month.

But what can I say. I am an artist and my medium is words. Sometimes I paint pastoral scenes and sometimes it is wacky abstracts of fish in toilet bowls. I will not complain about you if you don't complain about me.

Here I sit, somewhat bitter because I was supposed to be on a trip, starting today, for the weekend, with my best friend. A road trip involving the wild world of Gregrian chant - it would have been awesome! But when I did a few calculations and realized how this trip and my - let's call it a "schedule", shall we? - were to collide, I had to back out the the trip. Whatever.

Age or repeated motherhood or birthing four man-children or some combination of the above has made this "schedule" of mine more difficult to bear as the years go by. Now I am like JK Rowling's character, Professor Lupin - once a month I have to stay hidden in my Shrieking Shack and hope I don't bite the hell out of someone!

Although Weight Watchers is working miracles for me, at this point I am ravenous - a black hole for salty, sweet things. I will not even tell you how many 100 calorie chocolate covered Mr. Salty Pretzel packs I just knocked back. Weight Watchers will never know, because I refuse to weigh myself until this monthly monster leaves me alone. Whatever.

My hormonal headache is pounding away. I just blissfully ignored the heel of bread laying on the kitchen floor and the dried-out-stuck-like-glue piece of generic Apple Jacks that is stuck under the table. I boarded up the fireplace with butcher paper and tape hoping to stop the daily procession of wasps down the chimney, but they are finding another way in. One is dying on the windowsill and here I sit, pounding on my keyboard. Any other time of the month, and none of this would be happening. I hate food on the floor and I hate, hate, HATE insects in my house. But right now - whatever.

I have become the stereotypical monthly crazy woman.

"Have a happy period"?

Whatever.