Period.

I got my period today.  Isn't that a stupid way to say I'm menstruating?

It isn't gross.  It's not too much information.  It's a fact of life for half or more of the global population.

Spoiler Warning:  The rest of this blog post will contain more bletherings about me being on my period.   If you are a prude, make like a baby and head out of here.

Now then.  For whoever is left (echo chamber) I will proceed with wild abandon.

Womanhood is an interesting experience.

As one might await the fall of mankind, I'd been waiting on my period for several days.  Like I do every month.  Just today it came.  My period punctuates its dawning day with fatigue, listlessness and an abject lack of desire to work.

Here I sit at my desk.  Making a pathetic attempt to pretend to be productive.  Sometimes I do what I call my Swan Flamenco Chair Yoga.  Visualize it:  I'm sitting at my desk, which is a triangular cubicle thing.  Staring at a giant iMac screen.  Sitting in a none-too-thrilling roller desk chair; Staples-issue black with little wheels.  My arms rise in tandem up above my head, then sway from side to side in perfectly-timed simultaneous movement.  I curl my hands ever so slightly to mimic the delicate gestures of a flamenco dancer, ignoring what is the confused look of the male coworker seated next to me.  This pain, he does not know.  He does not get a period.  So he condescends to give a question mark.  Dick.

Unfazed, I continue with what can only be described as an Olympic performance of the Swan Flamenco Chair Yoga.

This is not waste, this is grace.

My arms stretched to near perfection, I go back to surreptitiously typing this post.  As I type it, I am hoping no one walks by during the crucial moments it takes me to churn it out.  Intermittently, I will answer a text message from my guy friend in Pennsylvania whose wife walked out on him last spring.  He is a big, ole hot mess right now.  I truly feel bad for him.  Convincing him to make some changes to his own self and surrounds in order to bring a patina of optimism to his life has been an uphill.  I said, Revamp your house.  He said I'm a guy, I hate decorating.  I said, Well reinvent yourself, go to Barnes & Noble, buy a home decor magazine, see what moves you, don't get overwhelmed, pick one wall in your house and paint it.

Damn, I should be a professional counselor.

Oh god the Russian guy I work with just walked by.  I swear he is a spy.

This is life and death, folks.

The death of my uterus lining for the month anyway.  It makes my back hurt.  Blood feels like it is draining from, not my nether region, but my brain.  I become ghostly pale, my skin can get blotchy.  I get completely super anemic.  I desperately crave gored gored and am ready to procure it at the cost of anything.  My hormones experience a seismic shift.  Vice grips are painfully crushing what's above my cervix.  The urge to claw out the eyeballs of any man who dares cross my path ebbs and flows.  For days, it's all Lord of the Flies up in here.  In a word:  Danger.

People don't think much of a menstruating woman.  They think this stuff is beyond ordinary just cause it happens every month to virtually all females who are not in menopause.  As if the world weren't misogynistic enough, we have to go from period to less pause, the latter which is followed by pause or, you know, death.

Look, all I'm trying to say is that society takes the matter of the menstrual cycle lightly at its own peril.  Next time you are merrily farting down the road in your car and you see what you might at first believe is an irrational motorist cut you off or put the pedal to the metal a little bit too fast think hard about what is really going on.

Women need three days off from work every month.  Three days that correspond with the first three days of every woman's period.  This is not weakling excuses.  This is reality.  Women should not have to prostrate themselves to the stupid traditional work schedule dominated by men.  For three whole days out of every month women should be able to just not go to work while they are menstruating.  That gives them three whole days to lay in a fetal position, drink wine, blog, work on their book, watch soaps, eat bon bons, pick at their toe lint, navel gaze or just do whatever the fuck they want in between changing tampons and liners for three days.  Three whole days that do not also involve being forced to look at the face of any adversarial, question-mark giving, member of the opposite sex during work hours.

I know, I know.  You are thinking that during those three days men will get a competitive advantage in the work place.  Well, the period of women's periods will be interspersed throughout the month, for one, so not all women will be off for three days at once.  Also, men are nothing without women.  So pathetic is their collective sensibility and sensitivity, that they would just devour themselves up in a big cutthroat testosterone-overkill messy environment.  One need not worry.

Now if you will excuse me while I go back to pretending I am writing a letter for a client for 2 more hours.  After which nobody better stand between me and my bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.