tamponblog

I work in an office building where each floor has a few office suites. Each suite shares the building facilites: parking lot, stairwell, elevator, bathrooms.

Let's talk about the bathroom.
There is a woman in the building - every female co-worker in my office talks about her. We think maybe she works for the real estate company.
She talks on her phone in the bathroom
If you're already in a stall when she comes in, it's like a radio play - you hear her talking, stall door locking, peeing, talking, toilet paper rolling, talking, clothing shuffle, talking, Okay, good to talk to you *click* flushing, door closing.

Oh, did you notice she doesn't wash her hands?
Anyway, today I kind of felt she crossed the line. Today's radio play involved me listening to her conversation as she changed her tampon.
I never thought about it before, but I don't usually HEAR people changing their tampons. I guess it's usually covered by all the other myriad noises. But I was the only one in a stall when she came in, and. as usual, I was paralyzed with interest in the latest installment. How would she get off the phone before the flush? How loud would she get in the stall before she had to end the call?
Well, she wasn't loud.
And this made me wonder how many times I've talked to someone on the phone while they were changing a tampon. I'm hoping for zero. Not because of the sound of it. It's an etiquette issue.

For those in CA or who have relatives/friends in CA, please check out ”No on Proposition 73” which outlines some reasons to defeat the Parental Notification initiative on the November Special Election Ballot.

As I attended an event to raise funds for Planned Parenthood’s Campaign for Teen Safety, which supports the aforementioned site, I started feeling what would usually be considered menstrual cramp pain, but isolated on my left side in a specific location on my upper pelvis that has been bothering me for about five years, ever since I was pregnant with my first son.

Each time I mentioned the pain, I got a different excuse for its cause, all minor things, all things which didn’t seem quite right. The pain didn’t track my cycle, nor was the quality of pain the same. It could be a “twinge,” a “stab,” a “squirt,” a “cramp,” or just “pressure.”

I finally got it checked out. But it took several hours: first at the “Minor Injury” clinic, then the ER (because Minor Injury doesn’t have an OB/GYN.)

When I had an ultrasound, the lady doing the procedure allowed me to insert the vaginal wand myself. She said it was less invasive that way. This was an interesting way of making the patient more comfortable. I had two previous vaginal ultrasounds, both of which the nurse had inserted the wand herself. So, doing it myself was a new experience! They also did an external ultrasound, and it was in the same room where I had learned that my second child would be a boy.

This time, instead of seeing a penis, we saw an ovarian cyst. But the cyst was located on the right side, instead of the left, where I had been having pain! Go figure.

So the good news is that it isn’t ovarian cancer, or something else obvious on an ultrasound, but the bad news is that the cause of the pain is not yet determined. In the meantime, I’ll get the right side checked out during a normal OB/GYN appointment.

At least I now know the probable cause for the 4 days on, 3 days off period that I’ve had the past month or so.

There was much talk of the “stigma” of “MommyBlogging” over the weekend at the BlogHer conference. I would venture to say this would translate in part into other female related blogs, such as TamponBlog.

I went to an obscenity-in-blogging discussion group and met people such as Melissa from sacredwhore who explained that although her blog doesn’t use profanity per se, having the word “whore” in her title meant that it was censored from iTunes.

On an amusing note, the searches used that (erroneously) lead surfers to mommy blogs included all kinds of fun words, since “breast,” “nipple,” “poo,” “penis,” and other terms are mentioned “innocently” in the natural course of discussing parenting through breastfeeding, potty training, and so-forth. (I know I’ve made posts here with several of these terms.)

“Where are all the female bloggers?” was the question that BlogHer originally sought to answer, but it went much farther to produce debate, discussion, and tools for female bloggers. Interestingly, I didn’t think there was a paucity of female bloggers. 99% of my daily reads are women. Therefore, I didn’t realize there was an issue.

In the midst of the “blog hierarchy” discussion that somehow put “Mommy Bloggers” at the bottom of the chain (“she’s a good writer for a Mommy Blogger,”) someone made the comment that “Hey, one of the top female bloggers is a Mommy Blogger,” referring to Dooce.

But I never really considered her a “Mommy Blogger.” Dooce is Dooce. She started writing long before getting married or having a child. Same as the other women I read: I never really labeled them in a specific term, because to me their blogs were about many aspects of their lives, not just the motherhood role. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the term “Mommy Blog,” but in the case where the woman writes about other things, it isn’t exactly accurate.

And for women who write exclusively about their kids, I love that there is a witty, entertaining record of these kids’ lives. These women are fabulous writers, and it is terrific that they have shared their anecdotes with the Internet World. (Shouts out to the leaders of the Mommy Blogging Panel: Meghan, Jenny, and Jen. Plus The Mommy Blog, of course. And special mentions to Mandajuice and jenandtonic, both fabulous “Mommy Bloggers Who Also Post About Other Things”)

"Female" issues such as tampons, childbirth, childrearing, female sexual empowerment, and so forth should be talked about without lowering the credibility of the speaker. Period. (so to speak.)

(Technorati tag blogher)

I am lucky to have kept my period away for nearly a year after giving birth. This is probably a combination of breastfeeding (until my son was 10 months old) and the mini-pill, which is a low-dose birth control pill given to breastfeeding mothers.

About two months ago, I had a little spotting, but three weeks ago, the flow returned for good. Then I figured it was over for another month. But then a week ago, I had a couple days more. And then yesterday I started again. So it looks like I am going through that fun regulatory period (so to speak) where I am hormonally batty and spot-unpredictable. Too bad, because August is the time to wear bathing suits and go commando under white jeans (well, maybe I am not that bold!)

The upside is that I finally got a chance to try the ditties I won "ditty bowling!" Unfortunately, I was so crampy and what-not that I didn't notice when I didn't insert it correctly and it subsequently fell out. So I thought I had lost it up there. It was a teenaged fear that I thought had come to pass. But then I realized that it had probably just fallen out during one of those multiple trips to the restroom (if I didn't know better, I'd think I was pregnant again with all the peeing going on!) At any rate, I never have learned to insert tampons correctly, or maybe it is just my strange anatomy that produces "sunny side up" babies, but I remain an o.b. gal. (Incidentally, I found this o.b. ad from the early 1950's while searching around for that lounge-chair Always ad.* I guess o.b. stands for the German "ohne Binde", meaning "without [a menstrual] pad" )

In a way, I am relieved that I started anew yesterday because I was so weepy over the weekend, and inexplicably shy at BlogHer that I really did feel possessed.

*Two things:
1) That Always lounge chair looks pretty comfy to me.
2) A Google search for "Always" yields first the site I wanted, then second, the WALMART site, because their tagline is "Always Low Prices!"