no boys allowed in the room!!!!

carl i think you may have a dangerous addiction
to F{BL)OOD

what should i know about baby showers?
That they are the worst.

otm

People having babies like Target gift cards, and if they don't, FUCK 'EM.

i think there is a registry thing that the hostesses sent guests a link to

I have never known a parent-to-be who did not appreciate a gift card if you don't feel like futzing around with something from the registry.

I think the only potentially wrong move is getting a thing that is not on the registry or getting a different version of something that they registered for (admittedly may be projecting there).

with these online registry things, it keeps track of whether someone else has bought a particular item, I'd hope?

The last baby shower I went to was men and women (which I am sort of against in principle) and it was fun.

The grandfather-to-be found his son-in-law's brother asleep in truck bed so I guess someone had fun.

It does if the person buys the thing through the registry or a parent makes the thing as purchased, but there's no guarantee. Just get a gift receipt and it will all be fine.

I think the thing w both wedding and baby showers is that many times the other guests are all family or friends of your friend that you don't know. Sometimes that's great bc what you have in common is how much you love the bride/mother-to-be but sometimes you distinctly don't click with the other guests and you basically have to put up and shut up, them's the rules. This is where drinking helps.

Of course if it's mostly people you already know and like, then you can safely think of both types of occasion as just awesome parties to celebrate for and with your friend.

FYI with those online registries that corral a bunch of websites you usually buy on one site then go back to the list to indicate you purchased the item.

does anyone in this piece experience super localized pain on both sides w/ ovulation?

Sometimes yeah.

Well at least Ive always assumed thats what it was from the timing.

ive just started getting that. i dont know why it waited til now. haw.

Yeah I (used to) get that every month starting around my mid/late-20s, on both sides but worse on one side. It's called "mittelschmerz" which is fun to say and not so fun to have.

Painkillers didn't have much effect and it was getting so bad I just wanted to spend 2 days a month curled up in a ball so I went on the pill to stop ovulation, which came with some exciting side-effects of its own. I've been off the pill for 2-3 months now and it hasn't been as bad as it used to be but I suspect it's building back up.

Yeah its a sharper more kick in the guts pain.

I get that too! Only since I've been off the pill though. It's a good reminder for me that I am about to board the rollercoaster, so it doesn't really bother me that much.

Huh, interesting. I think I might also get that? It's hard to tell between the cramps and the vagaries of my digestion at any given moment--I can have stomach pains at p much any time unless I've been super careful w diet.

I just didn't know what it was because it didn't make sense for it to hurt on both sides.

Ovaries are like abdominal drudge sirens.

I get those ovary pains, which seems odd because I don't ovulate (thanking u, pill).

Although I've been on the same pill for aaaaaaages, my PMS has been worse in the past several months. I've always had breakouts (controlled by spironolactone, thankfully), a hunger that isn't so much hunger as a compulsive need to be eating something all of the time, and one day where I prefer to be close to a bathroom (progesterone-induced diarrhea), lately I've had feelings of anxiety/depression/general grumpiness. These feeling suck worse than the other symptoms. Advice?

menstrual cycles are fucking shit, man. if i believed in god i might actually agree with fundies who think he hates women.

i'm interested to see if the AD i'm now on has any effect on the anxiety/depression/general grumpiness that precedes my period, since thinking about, it definitely got worse when everything else got worse months ago.

i get the compulsive hunger, too, quincie - and it really is compulsive.

I started getting premenstrual depression/anxiety a few years ago and it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. Part of me knew that it was hormonal and if I waited a couple of days, I'd be in the clear, but the fun part of depression/anxiety is that you can logically tell yourself whatever the hell you want and no matter how true it is, it won't mean shit.

yep

Ovaries are like abdominal drudge sirens.

Didn't want you to think I slept on this, I've had this image in my head all morning.

I used to know someone who had red and blue navigational stars tattooed under her hip bones, and now I can't stop seeing drudge sirens in the same place.

haha
your friend aimed a little low if she was aiming for ovary tattoos

I hear you, carl. I tell myself "OK don't freak out this is just hormonal thing and you will be fine in 2 days," but in truth I am thinking "holy shit I am losing it, will never feel OK again, wtf wtf wtf wtf is wrong with me HALP."

roxy i started getting that just in the last year!

!

I got tons of blood drawn today at the doc - they're trying to figure out which connective tissue disease I have. The nurse who took me back was like "this is a really cool test. You find out a lot about yourself from it."

my appt is tomorrow
really nervous but treating myself to a trip to the middle eastern place for lunch + record store to convince myself to not cancel
i will apparently submit to having my blood removed from my body in exchange for a spinach pie + falafel salad for dinner

no shame in that!

I am a big believer in Buying Yourself a Present when you have to undergo unpleasant things. I still owe myself for seven trips to the dentist in the past two months.

LOL now Im imagining drudgesirens lighting up and going WOOT WOOT in my belly and it is making me roffle much.

xp - i chose my dentist based on his proximity to my fave record store and book store

^^^smart lady!

and i did not give 1 (one) fuck that the right side of my mouth was swollen while paying for my records

I chose my dentist based on the same criteria! Sisterz.

the wonderful donut shop that made that corner the best shopping corner has since closed. it had chocolate chip donuts. ba "that girls only thread is brilliant" mcquern made a negative remark about the deliciousness of said donuts. THE NERVE!!

I used to have very obvious ovulation symptoms but now I am not ovulating thanks to good ol fuckin thyroid friend, so I can never really tell what's going on.

I am both looking forward to going off the pill (in about eight months) and am not looking forward to going off the pill. Will the PMS be better or worse? Will the period itself be more or less painful/messy (I has fibroids)? Will aspects of my libido which I miss (TMI) return? Am I perimenopausal or totally menopausal? Who knows?

I have pretty much zero regrets about being XX, except for the XX organs part. It might be different had I ever wanted to use said organs for procreative purposes, but that is not the case. So I'd be happy to donate my reproductive organs to science, except that the surgery creates its own goddamn problems.

So, not penis envy, but. . . not-having-these-parts envy.

why do people go on and off the pill (apart from babby-making)? i have never been on it.

I'd give anything to go back on the damn pill. It got rid of all my symptoms with no side fx. But im told as a smoker it is a Bad Idea.

Yes, I know I could quit smoking.

In my case, I've been on it for decades for birth-control and period-management purposes. Spouse (current) is totally fine with getting snipped, and would have done so earlier had I not been so hesitant about quitting the pill for period/PMS-management purposes.

Now that my period is kind of a pain in the ass/ovary/brain even WITH the pill, I figure it is time to investigate off-pill life. I was also recently deemed pre-hypertensive; going off the pill may fix that with no other action on my part. Also, I may or may not be past fertility--hard to know, really, so may not need the birth control aspect.

So, I dunno. Gonna get off and deal. Hopefully it will be totally easy sailing! That would be awesome.

i would go off it occasionally just to double check what my 'normal' flow is like etc, to see if it's more or less painful etc so that I have something to measure against if anything goes weird. but that's just me

i went on and off it because of varying levels of tolerance of side effects over time. it made me a weird emotionless zombie. sometimes the tradeoff was worth it, sometimes it wasnt

I went on it because of ovulation pain and the contraception was a bonus, stayed on it for years but changed brands a whole lot of times because of unpleasant side-effects, now I'm single and not needing the contraception so I thought I'd come off it to See What It Was Like

(i.e. not have the one remaining side-effect of migraines on the off week, also suspected it wasn't good for my mood problems - but my mood doesn't seem much better and apparently I still get hormonal migraines even now I'm not on it. but my periods are a whole lot lighter, which I wasn't really expecting)

Surprised so many other people have ovulation pain! When I told my doc I was sent for a scan to check for cysts/fibroids, so that might be something to be aware of. Didn't find any conclusive evidence, which is good but at the time I was just noticing I had most of the symptoms of PCOS so in a way it was like, well, cyst symptoms and no cysts, now what?