A Girl...

Punch Me

As penance for my lack of posting lately, I'm going to share a short but increasingly mortifying tale of woe about how my body is rebelling like a surly teen and oh, how I wish it would just dye its hair green and pierce something already because that would be so much better than the kind of crap it's been giving me for the last two weeks. I'm looking for someone to bitchslap.

Our story unfolds not chronologically but in stages of increasing awfulness, beginning with a sore throat that's hung on for three days and turned into a little bit of chest congestion and a fair amount of dry coughing and good deal of snot. It feels like allergies, and it seems the irritant at fault is the sun. It is absolutely beautiful out and I feel like a big barrel of mung. Blech.

Then a few days ago I woke up with a mysterious pain on the top of one foot. It felt like either I'd pinched a nerve or a quintet of mischievous gnomes had danced the maypole with my metatarsals under the full moon. I tried to drug them to sleep, massage them into submission, and stomp them dead with my good foot, but to little avail. Walking around Chinatown in Flip-Flops, The Shoes with No Support™ seems to have done the trick, however, at least for the time being.

Bad, but not too bad, eh? Well, that was the little stuff. And now, gentlemen--especially those of you who know me in real life--I'm going to ask you to avert your eyes...

Ahem.

Ladies, ever heard of Bartholin? Well, he has this gland, see. And when it gets infected or blocked, it hurts like a motherfucker. After three days the afflicted can barely walk, stand, or sit. After four days the afflicted contemplates switching careers with a wheel of cheese because now all she's good for is hanging out on a shelf and aging. After four and a half days the afflicted may ask loved ones and strangers to please punch her in the affected area to (1) rupture the pus sac of flaming fire and (2) show Mr. Bartholin who's boss. Sweet sisters of mercy, the gland can only get so big before something's gotta give, and boy, when it did there was much rejoicing. Yaaaay.

And hey, ever heard of Aretha Franklin's little-known sister Urethra? Well, sometimes she gets irritated, see? And she's the type of gal who can't just deal in a quiet, self-respecting sort of way, suffering in silence, taking great care to burden nary a soul with her malady. No, she has to share her misery, spread the irritation far and wide and make the Netherlands (that's where she lives) a pit of writhing, contracting, overactive soft tissue. Please someone please punch me in the bladder please! There's money in it for you.

Lucky for my poor begraggled innards, there are over-the-counter medications for this last and most tenacious problem. And the best part is you know it's working because your thoughts are no longer consumed with buying stock in absorbent undergarments, not to mention that your pee is bright orange-red, rich and beautiful like sunset on the African safari, only it's pee! pee! infected pee! If I were the type to act all cool like I don't check out what the Uristat box promises will be bright orange-red pee! pee! infected pee!, I would be able to tell you what color it is because I had one of those dreams where you're, you know, let's say you're dreaming about biking and in your dream you're riding along a wide-open road, the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, free as a bird and all that junk, and then smack!, you've slammed your knee into the wall--the wall that is next to your bed because you weren't really biking but only dreaming of biking, even though it was so real you were pedaling away in your own bed, legs up and flailing. Get what I'm saying? Yeah. Welcome to my platform of public self-mortification. The good news is I only biked a little--just enough to make a story out of it.

Let this be a lesson to me that slacking on the blog comes with consequences, Internet humiliation being just the tip of the iceberg.

p.s. I do shower regularly and practice good hygeine, I really really do.