Just Beth

Disclaimer: The following post WILL include detailed descriptions of my physical self, most directly my UTERUS, and other things associated with this magical fount.  THEREFORE, if you are; Related to me, Male, Uncertain About How You Feel About Blood, or any combination of the three, DO NOT READ THIS.  Consider yourself warned.

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I have my period for the first time since August, 2005.

No shit.

A little background, because I know you want it…

I had my son, E, in 1995.  I married his father (yes, after getting pregnant, so what?) and even though our relationship was doomed, we “tried” to have another baby for the entire duration of our marriage… another three plus years.  The reason I put “tried” in “quotes” is that we didn’t do any fertilization treatments or ovulation tracking… we simply DIDN’T use birth control.  The lazy person’s way to get pregnant, I guess.  Not conceiving MAY have had something (<—- dripping with sarcasm) to do with the abusive nature of my relationship with E’s father, but I don’t know, I’M NOT A DOCTOR.

Now, if you haven’t followed my directions and you ARE related to me, and you just read that, you are probably stabbing your eyeballs out.  Remember, I was twenty-one.  (and STUPID)  Plus, I’ve always wanted a bunch of kids, and even though my marriage was like living in hell it never really occurred to me that I would only have one child. Children are a miracle, and it was absolutely a god-sent miracle that I DIDN’T get pregnant.  Having another baby would have been the height of selfishness on my part, on our part.  Obviously we couldn’t take care of ourselves, let alone another child.  So, thankyoujeezus, amen.

Still, that’s three years, and no pregnancies.  In a normal relationship,we would have gone to the doctor, but we weren’t, you know… normal. (Oh!  No, doc, really!  My hair is falling out in clumps and my entire right calf is a bruise because I ran into a doorway!  HONEST!!) Anyway.

When I finally left E’s dad for good I immediately went back on the pill.  I wasn’t having SEX, per se, but I wasn’t having any kids, either.  My responsibility was to E, and only E, and I tried (as most parents do, in my opinion) to do the best by him in every decision I made.

Then, on Memorial Day in 2001, I ran into Andy Harrington at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Pasadena, California.

He’s like a walking orgasm as far as I’m concerned.  MY orgasm.  If you’re a Twilight junky, AS I AM (judge me as you will, but I would Cougar the SHIT out of Robert Pattinson), Andy is my Bella, “my own personal brand of heroin” (Twilight, Stephanie Meyers just in case you live in a cave).  I cannot get enough of this man, physically and intellectually.  He drives me INSANE.  We started sleeping together dating right away and it was a relationship I figured to be about as long-term as from this moment to the next moment when he saw someone else he wanted more.  Month after month, I kept telling myself that it wasn’t going to last.  Until one day, as I watched him walk in front of me down the aisle at the Albertson’s we frequented, I thought to myself, “Dear god, I love the way he walks”.  I mean, if you dig the way someone walks down the GROCERY STORE aisle in Highland Park, you’re pretty much a goner.  As soon as I allowed myself to let go of the past – our past together as kids, plus my own personal past – I realized I that I had loved him my entire life and that he had loved me then and that he loved me now.

The first time we got married, we stood in the Colorado river with two of our very best friends by our sides and our friend and pastor, Matty McTurkey, officiating.  We were married under the stars and god herself, with the river flowing through our toes and the smell of the desert in the wind, and we both knew without a doubt that nothing else mattered, not a piece of paper or a ‘real’ wedding… we were married, then and there.  It was magical.

Strange, I never thought that I would tell that story, never thought that I would be able to remember how it felt that night, and how it changed everything.  Shit, as shit tends to do, happened… betrayal following betrayal, obstacles that were not merely difficult but heartbreaking…mountains that were not climbed, but crept up.  I am so glad that that wound is finally healed, and I can remember the night the way it was that night, and not tainted by what followed.

Wow.  Ahem, well, the previous paragraph was written for me and for people who probably don’t read this blog, and so no one who IS reading this probably knows what the hell I was just talking about.  So I’ll get back to the point now.  I really DO have one, I think.

The point being, after that night, I went off the pill.  This was about a year before our ‘real’ wedding.  And again, I didn’t get pregnant.  We were sticking to the lazy version of ‘trying’, and my stress levels at the time were pretty high… nothing like the stress of my life with my ex-husband, but I can certainly understand my body saying, ‘AW, HAAIILLL naw, we ain’t gettin’ pregnant NAI-OOW!’ (my body is southern.  I didn’t know that either).

Skip ahead a year, and Andy and I moved from Los Angeles to Snohomish, Washington (snow-hoe-mish, it’s not really that difficult, people.).  We arrived on August 5, 2005 and sometime in late September (and our first anniversary) I got pregnant.

When Sally was born in the summer of ’06, I figured it would behoove us to simply let nature take her course, and allow myself to get pregnant when my body was ready.  My body was all, “Daim right you weeiill!  I dun’ TOLE you to le’ ME haindle theeiis!” and I got pregnant pretty much on Sally’s first birthday.

What the fertile?

I was breastfeeding Sally, and as most people know, breastfeeding can and does (to some extent, and OBVIOUSLY differently for everyone…) delay ovulation.  I figured that since I was breastfeeding, plus my history of NOT getting pregnant would mean that when Sally was probably three, I would get pregnant again.

Nope.  The Southern Woman who is my body decided that the very first time I ovulated after having Sally I should be pregnant again, and so it was that I had Bobby when Sally was twenty months old.

It’s no world record on close-in-age siblings, but oh dear lord, IT’S CLOSE.

I started the pill right after I had Bobby (I’m dumb but I’m not THAT dumb), and stayed on it for probably a year or so.  I had no sex drive whatsoever, and THAT, my friends, was AN ISSUE.  For both of us.  Since I’m also on an anti-depressant, and a lack of sex drive can ALSO be a side effect of that drug, I decided to go ahead and stop taking the pill.  And pray.

That was about a year ago, and I have thought that I was pregnant nearly every single month.  Remember in high school, when you’re first having sex and you are in a CONSTANT state of panic over whether or not you’re pregnant?  I’ve felt like THAT.  Because I am NOT ready to have another baby.  Probably not EVER, but christ, the first time I say THAT I’m CERTAIN to get knocked up.

So, this week, is the first period that I have had since August of 2005.  And you know what?  IT FUCKING SUCKS.  Oh my GOD I forgot how awful a period can be.  And mine isn’t even THAT BAD.  I know people who have knock-your-socks-off periods, and I KNOW mine isn’t in their league, but holy jeezus.  My uterus is PISSED.  And the gobs of bloody tissue coming out of me are just plain DISTURBING.  (I know, that was over the top, but I felt like I was going to be letting someone down if I didn’t go all bloody disgusting like I had warned in the beginning.)

The moral of the story is don’t ever underestimate the power of your uterus.  She will FUCK YOUR SHIT UP.

Valentine’s Day is one of those Hallmark-induced ‘holidays’ that I normally shun with the disdain of one who has been neglected year after year, and so decides that not participating at all is her only recourse, the only way to shield herself from further heartbreak.

It sucked being the big, tall, dorky girl with glasses who never got any Valentines’ in elementary school is all I’m saying.

So, piss on the whole thing, right?  It’s just a made up holiday anyway…who cares about flowers and chocolate and pretty baubles and declarations of adoration and love?  Not me!

Seriously, though, it’s just not something my husband and I have historically given a shit about.

The last two years, however, Andy and I have used the day as an excuse to (flee the house) go out on a ‘date night’.  Last year Andy took me to see The Lion King at the uber-cool Paramount Theater in Seattle  and out to the Crab Pot for dinner.  It. Was. Awesome.

This year, we didn’t have an agenda.  We got a babysitter… well, we got TWO babysitters because my kids are (crazy) cool like that, and just sort of… LEFT.

That’s when the Most Amazing Valentine’s Day Ever began.  I don’t mean amazing as in romance and candles, I mean amazing as in The Strangest Most Awesome Evening In Recent History.

First, I went to pick my husband up at his office, and as we were leaving, this hugemongous crow flew directly over my head and laid the biggest pile of bird poop directly in the MIDDLE of our windshield.  Like, INCHES from my head.  If I had been out the door two seconds earlier, it TOTALLY would have been in my hair.  Or in my ear.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit with bird poo, but I have.  Once.  And a pile like that HURTS.

Regarding the sheer VOLUME of poo, not to mention the color and texture (*barf*), I counted myself EXTREMELY lucky.  Ex-treee-mely.  We couldn’t even use the windshield wipers to get it off, it would’ve meant a whole ENTIRE windshield of poo.  (*gags*)  Instead we headed straight to the gas station and broke out the ‘big gun’ – that spongy, wipey thing.  I had to cover my eyes the whole time because OMG, GROSS, GAG VOMIT.

Following The Poop Adventure, we decided to go to the movies.  How appropriate, right?  Movies, Valentine’s Day, sheer brilliance. Upon arriving at the local mall wherein the movie theater is housed, we quickly realized that we were (strangely enough) NOT the only couple who thought a movie on Valentine’s Day might be cool!  Being the optimists that we are (and complete whores for movies, we’ll watch almost anything)  We went ahead and stood in line.  By the time we were three back from the counter every movie was sold out.  EVERY. MOVIE.  That was just kind of funny.  I think every single couple and/or teenager in the city of Everett was at that movie theater.  Now, you might think we’d be upset over this, but what the hell… we were footloose and fancy-free (read; childless), plus Andy offered to take me to Old Navy, and I love Old Navy, so into the mall we went.

Approximately two-point-one minutes into our mall adventure I spotted something that I have never, ever, in all of my twenty-five years on this planet, witnessed. (what?)  It was Amazing.  Glorious.

It was an Ass Crack.  THE Ass Crack.  Now, of course I’ve seen ass cracks before…, hell, even enjoyed catching an ass crack or five…but this one… oh wow.  It was so MIGHTY that I had Andy turn around and then walk back the way we came, while whispering to him, ‘look left!  left!  on the BENCH!’

For those of you who know me, you know that I’m practically incapable of subtlety and find it equally difficult to suppress giggles should they threaten to overtake me.  I think I did an excellent job of being coooool.

I only snorted aloud ONCE, honest.

Anyway, Andy spotted The Ass Crack, stationed just to the left as we were approaching.  The Ass Crack was at LEAST eight inches in length and belonged to a fairly regular looking dad-type.  He sat, Ass Crack facing us, leaning on his knees, watching his children play.  His wife (or whatever) was sitting right next to him.  I mean, as a woman, you are kind of hard-wired to make sure your significant other and/or children look presentable.  I’m no fashion diva, but I’d know if my husbands ASS was hanging out.  And I would FIX IT.

Now, the way Andy and I entered the mall is not a ‘normal’ enterance, so maybe Mr. Ass Crack thought no one would be behind him, and so chose to let his Ass Crack Fly, so to speak.  This is the only, and BARELY acceptable reason I can think of to excuse this guy’s Ass Crackedness.  I mean, it’s cold here, people.  He HAD to know it was out there waving in the breeze.

You might think that the sheer volume of random Ass Crack I saw was enough reason for my glee and horror, but you would be wrong, my friend.  It was The Ass Crack HAIR that really just sent my world spinning.

It was glorious.  Pitch black, black as the night itself, it stood in stark contrast to the pasty white skin that peaked through.  It covered both ass cheeks, and while I’ve been talking about ‘The Ass Crack’, you couldn’t actually see the crack, if you get what I’m saying.  It was like The Nothing, from the Neverending Story… frightening and sinister, roiling with follicles.

I’m sure we will never get the vision out of our head.  And we laughed and gagged a little and then laughed some more.  After our Old Navy adventure, we headed back out the same way and the GUY WAS STILL THERE.  As well as The Ass Crack.   I kept expecting someone to pop out and say ‘haha!  you’re on Candid Camera!’  Or something crazy.  It was absolutely surreal.  And Awesome.

That was enough of the mall, so next we decided to head to The Casino.  For the FOOD.  Well, and the gambling.  Anyway, while we were on the way I got a phone call from Masue.  She was completely cryptic, and would only say that I should call my sister.  She had her super happy voice on,  so I kind of figured what was up.  When I finally got Catherine on the phone she confirmed it.  Her boyfriend of three years had proposed.

On Valentine’s Day.

On top of a volcano in Hawaii.

On bended knee.

Of course there is more to the story, which included but was not limited to; vomit and shivering, champagne and beautiful, honest and loving words.

What I want to talk about is the ring.  More specifically, the diamond in the ring.  The history of this diamond is not my story to tell, but I can tell you that it represents the strength and fortitude of the women in our family.  This diamond is our feminist heart and soul; the symbol of our inner strength and our unwillingness to put up with bullshit and misuse by others.

He knew what this diamond meant to my little sister, and so  he moved mountains…no, he moved volcanoes, to get it for her, for her engagement ring.   What this means to me is that he gets her.  He understands her romantic heart and her love of her family.  He understands her desire for the grandiose and her love for the simple and true.   And while I don’t know him very well, I know that much about him now.   And I love him for that.

I was overcome with emotion all night, and I began to understand that Valentine’s Day may just be a ‘made-up holiday’, but from this Valentine’s Day forward, it will always mean love and new beginnings to me.

Oh, and then I won a hundred dollars at the roulette table.  I love Valentine’s Day!

xo

b.