the_siobhan | I fell off the sidewalk again today

As if sleep-dep and vertigo weren't enough, today I have PMS.

I came to this realization when I was contemplating the pros and cons of slaughtering a subway car full of innocents in retaliation for the fact that we were being delayed at the station. It occurred to me that that might be a little harsh, even by my anti-social standards.

I wasn't expecting it, of course. It's only the second one since I had my uterus removed last September. I'm curious to see what happens once I'm living in a household that only has non womb-equipped bodies living in it full-time, since I know I pick up a lot of symptoms from other people. (When I lived with

ldot my pain tolerance would go through the floor in response to her cycle, something that never happened with my own. Drove me bug-fuck.)

For the approximate half of the population who have never experienced what PMS feels like, I can best describe it this way. Imagine somebody removes all your skin. Then they gently sandpaper all your nerve-endings so they are nice and raw and sensitive. Then they send you forth unto the world with the exhortation to try and "act normal".

Well of course every motherfucking thing is an irritant and a Big Deal and there is absolutely nothing that you can just let roll off your back. Innocuous comments from loved ones turn me into a weepy pile and I have graphic fantasys about punching a complete stranger in the throat for the insufferable sin of sitting next to me on a crowded streetcar.

Coincidentally, a study just came out with this evidence that women who undergo Hormone Replacement Therapy have a higher than average rate of dementia. Just more proof for my theory that estrogen makes you nuts.

Mind you, the fact that most people drive me nuts to start with probably stands me in good stead here, since refraining from thumping irritating people is a particularily well-developed muscle.

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Anyway. Trip to specialist was inconclusive since he was stuck in surgery so I have to go back to see him next week instead. I pretty much know what he's going to do -- send me for X-rays and other tests -- and it would be nice if I could get that part out of the way, but of course I have to wait to see him in person so he can authorize it first.

Me: So they X-rayed my head at the doctor's the other day.
Random co-worker: What did they say?
Me: They didn't find anything.

*boom-tish*

I expect to get a lot of milage out of that joke.

I did, however, get to have my first ever SARS-related experience -- being handed a mask and asked to wash my hands with antiseptic on the way into the clinic. That was kind of surreal. Because despite what the papers and the WHO say, it really hasn't really affected most people in the city all that much up to now.

Well, other than the fact that I feel the mild need to be slightly more entertaining than average because

northbard is under quarantine and slowly going stir-crazy.

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On my way home I stopped in a local hardware store to pick up some random whatever, and a couple of guys came in just after me, talking loudly about the contents of the store and inquiring about the prices of things. This hardware store is one of the few remaining little Howard Cunningham type places, full of odds and ends from yard sales and crammed to the rafters with fascinating stuff. I love the place.

The proprietor, who is normally a very warm person, stiffened visibly when they came in and was curt in his responses to their questions. When they left he made some half-muttered comment in my vague direction about "Romany".

...

OK, call me a sheltered urban Mick girl, but that actually startled me. Logically, there would be Gypsies in Toronto, because there are people here from everywhere. I think the part that floored me was the obvious animosity from the third-generation Italian-Canadian behind the counter.

I guess I figured that if I comfortably count a few Irish Protestants as being within my friend group, such issues aren't a problem for anyone. Naive, me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

it wasn't until a romani friend of mine came to stay with me for a couple of weeks that i found out how many romani there are in this city.

it's strange: racism and animocity towards people who are different is so completely foreign to me now. it was rampant where i grew up and it was nice to move to toronto where people weren't ignorant fucktards. whenever i come across it here it's sort of a shock to remember that it's still very much alive and about. maybe we've just politically-corrected it into submission.

(check it out, i made a word. :) )

I've got to say, if you've got a choice between racism politically-corrected into submission, and racism that lives free and proud, I'd much rather have the racism that's been smacked around with the Club of PCness and is whimpering and trying to hide under the sofa.

Our friend

markeris has been going off at this particular subject for a while now -- it makes for some interesting reading if for no other reason than that he lives in a different country so the politics and culture are different.

(See now, there a comment about Romani probably wouldn't have startled me so much. Not sure why.)

Anyway, a lot of his take on it seems to be that PCness is attacking the symptom and not the disease -- instead of asking why certain members of certain groups are perceived in a certain way, there is just a lot of pressure to not to talk about it.

I'm not sure how relevent that observation is to the US. But the whole topic makes me think about how much critisism Donovan Bailey got in Canada for saying in one of his post-Olympic Gold interviews that Canada was a racist culture. Never any honest dialogue over whether or not it was true -- just vitriole that he dared to say it in public.

Dude, I almost fell into a tree last night (while falling up a sidewalk). Do you have gurgly sounds in your ear? Because I do, and I seem to be walking around like a somewhat dazed llama.

It's not so much a "gurgle" as it is kind of a thick sludgey kind of sound.

But yeah, you might have the same thing. Somebody on my friend's list from Pittsburgh has the tipping-overs as well. It might just be a cold that is affecting a certain number of people this way.

your description of PMS... totally dead on... i think it should be used as part of an awareness campaign... there's still a lot of people out there who think PMS is a myth... clueless fuckwads

My sister once told me, "I believe that PMS is a myth. My husband, on the other hand, believes in it devoutly."

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle... sometimes I'm crazy because of PMS and sometimes I'm having an honest emotional reaction that has nothing to do with hormones.

Okay, let me wrap my head around this....

You say there are CONS involved in slaughtering a subway car full of Humanities Finest?

...

Can you give me a couple to get started?

i don't think it's just your pms. i've been on the verge of slaughtering the entire bus of ppl that i'm on for the past 3 days. for not reason other that they stink.

there are some factors that are currently making me more prone to that. but not to that extent. i think it has something to do with the current weather paterns.
weather has been all over the place past two weeks. it's definately starting to have it's effect on me.

I think the reactions concerning Gypsies, is different when it comes from people who have been affected by them. Reuben ived and worked in a neighborhood that had a lot of them. I can't mention them to him without him getting angry as he had severa paychecks docked due to them walking off with aot of stuff. He was 17-18 at the time.

On the other hand, the mother of a friend of mine growing up also ived in that neighborhood and just had to occasionally remind her childrens friends that no matter how pretty they thought it, her jewelry had to stay in the jewery box.

It's gotta be confusing to children to live in an everything beongs to everyone society and then have to interact with our "this bleongs to me" outlook.

does that make sense?

I think the reactions concerning Gypsies, is different when it comes from people who have been affected by them. Reuben ived and worked in a neighborhood that had a lot of them. I can't mention them to him without him getting angry as he had severa paychecks docked due to them walking off with aot of stuff. He was 17-18 at the time.

There are places that do that?

I think I would have a slightly different take on just how many people in that story were "stealing".

It's gotta be confusing to children to live in an everything beongs to everyone society and then have to interact with our "this bleongs to me" outlook.

does that make sense?

Perfectly. There used to be a native tribe in Newfoundland that was completely wiped out by the white settlers over just such a disconnect.

Who is the "theif" depends on which side of the culture divide you are standing in.

Well, other than the fact that I feel the mild need to be slightly more entertaining than average because northbard is under quarantine and slowly going stir-crazy.

It's taken me this long to realize that if I was doing the job I do here in Toronto I would have spent most of the last few months in quarantine. Not only do I work in a hospital - I work for the respiratory docs!

I do wonder if I'd get an extra 2-week "vacation" from work here if I visit Toronto while SARS is still active. Because I could use it to catch up on magazines, books and I have cable...

I fell off the sidewalk again today

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PC and racism

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falling off the ground

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mythbehaving

Re: mythbehaving

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discord registered

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