I am smooth like buttah and I have flow...

As in Aunt Flo. I know! It's been a while since I regaled you all with the overshare, and boy do I have some catching up to do! Exclamation points make everything better!!!

So, in cervical news, since June I have:
-had my first abnormal pap smear.
-had the spot tested (it failed)
-had small surgery to remove said rotted lump o cervix (yay for knockout drugs!)
-had a myriad of issues that are too gross for me to even go into, but get a couple of drinks in me some time because the story never fails to fascinate.*
-gotten the all clear from the follow up lab work for all of the above.

-gotten an IUD and HOLY GOD I BLEED. Wild ride, this one. Firstly, I'm off fake hormones for the first time in god knows how long. Actually, I do and it's 16 years. In my first and last burst of adult like foresight, I went on the pill as a youngin so as not to catch a case of the babies and ruin my life like the 10% of my graduating class whose children populated the nursery built into our high school. (Yes, seriously)
This whole kick the pill campaign was a decision made for a multitude of reasons, the most prevalent I guess being that I just wanted a chem-less life. (not to be confused with Chemless, aka Chemfree. Bitch, please. Chem-less as in less chemical-y) I wasn't feeling quite myself as of late, so I tried a few different pills and finally just binned the whole idea of being on the pill. Partly because it doesn't fit with my new ideal of actually being careful about what I consume, and mostly because it started to weird me out that I don't really know what the norm is for my body, having been masking it since about when it began. Suddenly this was important to me. Maybe it's a mid life crisis? Anyhoo, so now my egg factories are fired up, and all the hormone pumps still seem to work. In fact, my body seems to be making up for lost time. It's like this whole time when they couldn't do their thing, my ovaries were banking their stuff, and now it's on like the break of dawn and I'm a hot mess for a solid 1/3 of the month.

Yesterday for instance I was driving to yoga when an OnStar commercial came on the radio. You know the one, where the dude's car crashes, and the OnStar peeps call the cops and verbally hold his hand until help gets there? I was crying by the time help was on the way, and I sat in the parking lot listening tearfully as the survivor was pried from his wreck and able to make witty jokes to the OnStar operator. I hope the other yogis find the sound of my snuffling soothing, because it took me a while to pull myself together. And yes, I intend to show my face there again.

Secondly, IUDs are known to make your period worse for a while. I went with the no hormone IUD, so it's metal and aside from the whole "EWW" factor of basically permanently riding the (miniature, copper) coat hanger, this shit is seemingly shredding me up. I have sought counsel from several friends (from whom I sought counsel in the first place, which is how I ended up in this mess) and apparently a) this is sort of normal with an IUD and b) periods can hurt and this is something I have to accept from now on. I vaguely remember not thinking this was a good enough answer in the day and age of modern pharmaceuticals when I went on the pill in the first place. Alas, now I think the inconvenience of dealing with my natural rhythms is the lesser of the 2 evils. It could be worse. I could live in a world with no Naproxen, which fortunately I don't. I also still seem to be running right on a 28 day cycle, which is pretty cool from the whole biology point of view. Thankfully I live with a biology dude, so I have someone to talk about it with ALL THE TIME. He loves it, way deep down inside. I'm sure of it. Anyway the real benefit of thisa regularity is that even if "onset of menses" weren't preceded directly by facial eruptions, consumption of chocolate by the kilo, and crying jags I'd still be able to have some idea of where I'm at with things. So far I'm 3 for 3, and gaining confidence. If the sight of my own blood didn't make me so sad, I would say this is actually cool. But it does, and I don't care if no one else thinks the same way, it's my blood and I need it to live and it makes me sad when it leaves me.

So now I'm all natural, give or take and it's like a whole new me. One with smaller boobs and not such happy skin but we're working through it.

In pictorial news, I also got a bomb ass pair of hooker red high heels. Long story short, HN and I are going to a wedding and he wanted a say in my outfit. In the end, he got to pick the shoes and he didn't disappoint. They're ridiculous and escort-y and I love them. Being me, I have no skills in this arena so I've been wearing them around the house for practice while doing things like vacuuming. Witness:

Provided I don't end up with a broken ankle, these things are going to be a hoot.

Also, last weekend HN and I came into some tickets to the Orioles game vs Boston. When we got there, I was pretty psyched to see that our seats were 8 rows from the field, dead down the 3rd base line. We were this close to being on TV every time there was a lefthanded hitter. HN and I hung out a bit until we realized our ticket pack (which had included a VIP parking pass- BOO YA!) also had tickets to a suite. We went to investigate and were delighted to find out that this meant we had a posh hotel room like thing with our group, that was filled with free food and had a private bathroom, not to mention a covered balcony full of comfy leather chairs from which to watch the game. I like to think that this was a great opportunity for me to practice being rich and stupid, because we're flying First Class to Chile in December and I don't think it's right not to act entitled when I so clearly am.

It is not lonely at the top!

In project-y news, I am testing the very limits of my sanity by trying to knit this;
It's fucking hard. So far I have started, fucked up and ripped it all out roughly 12 times. 1 more day and I go to the old ladies down the street for help. It can be a shawl or a blanket, for no particular reason I have decided I need the shawl. Apparently I wear shawls now (?)
So we'll see. I know if I ever get it done I will be psyched, but I'm less confident in that outcome now than I was when I bought all the supplies. I've discovered though that being without a project is not ok for me. I need a hamster wheel or something.


There's more to tell- isn't there always. Hopefully soon I'll get around to transferring pics from my camera and I'll fill in the details of my missing summer.