ragtime: the musical that i star in every 28 days. i know that so many of you out there are interested in my menstrual cycle, and that's why i choose to talk about it. part of the beauty of being female is that you can give birth. because birth is so beautiful. having your period is all part of that glorious cycle, the cycle of LIFE, and we, as females (and some of you more sensitive males), are supposed to celebrate it. the only reason i celebrate it is because it means that, for another month at least, i'm not CONTRIBUTING to the cycle of life, if you catch my drift.

now, i'm not a regular girl. when i say i star in ragtime every 28 days, it's 28 days give or take, like, ten, and of course i'm never prepared for it. i try to carry tampons around regularly in my purse, but inevitably they fall out of their wrappers and then i'm at the jewel-osco extracting my credit card when suddenly this totally exposed tampon, usually with some gum stuck to it, just topples onto the counter. and then i have to say something to the usually older-gentleman type cashier. "oops, isn't this embarrassing?" i remark, paying for my cheese wheel. "hey, you got a trash can back there?" so i throw out all my naked, wrapperless tampons, and then a day later, bam, it's like the floodgates have not only been opened but thoroughly doused and destroyed by a substance i find not beautiful or celebratory but instead rather bothersome and disgusting. like creamed corn. without the chunks of corn. and there i am without a tampon, wearing light pants. or no pants, depending.

of course, it happens at work, when i'm in the middle of a forty-five minute ordeal with problem patient #298. "listen," i say, trying to speed things up because the situation below my waist is turning disasterous. "you'll have to excuse me-"

"no, you listen to me NOW," problem patient #298 bellows, the volume of her voice knocking her new wig slightly askew. "i can't SEE out of these glasses."

"that's because you've got them on upside down. now if you'll just-"

"and is your doctor even licensed? he wasn't very professional. i want to know why he was playing 'wario world' back there...."

"wario world's a great game," i attempt to explain as i pale from substantial loss of blood. "but if you'll just give me about ten minutes to run to the drug store, i promise i'll listen to what you think about wario world...."

"listen, little girl," #298 spits, "is that an italian last name? where's your family from? we're sicilian ourselves."

this is where i get angry. "we're NOT sicilian. now i'm thirty seconds away from ruining my SOCKS on top of everything else, so EXCUSE ME PLEASE!"

so, what do we have here? unneccessarily disgusting stories, cramps, bloating, frequent bathroom trips, the rising cost of absorbent cotton, and people who don't think that wordplay on the musical "ragtime" is all that funny. plus, i'm sick of people bashing wario world. enough is ENOUGH.

i apologize in advance for this entry. i mean... ah, never mind.