Girl…You’ll be a woman soon!

Awww.. You are now a woman!  All girls hear those words when they hit puberty and they have their first period.  Mom’s get a little misty eyed.  Dad’s, upon hearing the news, try and figure out where they are going to spend two weeks a month until their daughter syncs up with their wife.  Mom will pick up the phone and call friends and family and gush about what just happened while the girl in question tries to dig a hole big enough to bury herself in to hide from the embarrasment.  Mom has had the talk but they don’t cover everything.  They cover the basics but don’t clue you into all their bloody years of experience.  So, I’m going to clue you in on a few things you should know or you should let your girls know.

So, you woke up/went to the bathroom and found yourself to be bleeding.  No matter how well prepared you have been made there is still that moment of holy hell panic.  That’s fine, that panic should be there, you are going to be bleeding monthly for the next fifty years.  Mom has probably stocked some pads for you under the sink in preparation for this big event.  Know this, they don’t stick well.  They will ball up.  You will feel like you are wearing a diaper.  You will change them every time you go to the bathroom because otherwise you feel like you squish when you walk.  Some people liked them.  I hated them.  I felt like I was wearing a big sign on my ass that said, “Hey!  I’m on the rag!”  I made the tampon switch as soon as possible and never went back.  Know that whatever brand you start using is the brand that you will use for life.  I have had the same blue box in my bathroom since I was thirteen.

Smell the Roses

No, not those roses my dog peed on those.  I wouldn’t smell those either, I just put down some mulch and it’s a bit reeky over there.  Maybe you shouldn’t stop here to smell the roses.  Just move along.

 

While I was busy blowing my nose last night and trying to get to sleep my mind, as usual, was racing right along.  I was flitting from thought to thought, from memory to memory, from things that needed to be done to things I had already gotten done.  At some point I fell asleep but not before I realized something.  A lot of shit has passed me by.  Things that I haven’t taken the time to appreciate or that I have taken for granted.   I also realized that while I was younger time seemed to crawl right along.  It seemed to take years to get from the start of school to christmas break and even more time to get from there to summer.  Now, it seems like I wake up and it’s the first day of school, wake up the next day and it’s christmas, the next and it’s summer.  The older I get the faster it seems to happen and one day I think I may be afraid to blink and miss a season entirely.

It drove me crazy growing up when I heard my mom say something like, “It seems like just yesterday..”  In my teen years I would think to myself that she needed to get over it, that happened years ago.  Now, I find myself thinking about all the things that seemed like they just happened yesterday.