Blood, Sex, and Ovarian Violence

There are valid and well-known reasons why women like to stay on top of their menstrual cycles. For one thing, they need to be like a Boy Scout (i.e., prepared with necessary implements, badges, sticks, what have you). They need to know when to get worried and take a pregnancy test. They need to know when to schedule dates, and which underwear to wear on said dates. Today I discovered a new reason: if you forget and spend the night before it starts doing shots of whiskey, you might very well end up horribly in pain the next day, throwing giant buckets of tears around your office hallway while your boss hugs you and runs away after you tell him you have "lady problems." That's right, I called it lady problems. What? Ladies can be alcoholics, too.

Look at me, being Debbie Downer. Nobody ever promotes the reasons how it might enhance your life to have no way of keeping it straight. So, Point, meet Counterpoint. I have four days of sunshine to get over my embarrassment, I got to leave work early, I had a heating pad secretly keeping my crotch warm as I traveled home in the rain, my boss paid for a cab, and sometimes it's necessary and humbling to revisit the experience of waking up semi-nude on your bathroom mat.

A Modest Proposal: Make babies out of chocolate

This is what my weeks of endless workouts (and, fine, endless boozing) have produced? This morning, as I, ashen-faced, slumped shoulders, belly sticking out, held on to a subway pole, about to succumb to my hangover and two hours of sleep, the woman in front of me offered me her seat. Unsolicited! The one other time this happened to me, it was because I had just sat down on the floor so I wouldn't pass out from low blood sugar. I figured my evident unwellness had now induced similar sympathetic feelings, so I gratefully accepted. As I was sitting down, she made a comment that chilled me to my bone:

I'm so sorry! I didn't even notice you for a few minutes.

Hold up just a tic. Why would someone be so apologetic for not noticing that someone whose head is clearly not in their normal line of sight didn't look too well? But what was in her line of sight was... my stomach. Did she think I was PREGNANT?

What. The fucking. Fuck.

But hey, maybe she was a nurse trained in dehydration. Maybe she was conducting a reverse of this sociological study. Maybe she just really likes fucking with people's heads. Who knows. I may look like death on a hot plate, but I certainly don't look pregnant*.

Cut to the afternoon. I walked into the nurse's office for a Band-Aid, almost colliding with the nurse standing inside the door. She looked at me and asked something that chilled me not just to my bone, but to my fatty, fatty heart:

Lactation room?

I thought I was hearing things. Why would I need a lactation room? I didn't have the energy or quick-thinking to say no, so my face had to pick up the slack. My poor, confused face. She clarified, asking if I was there for the Lactating Mothers group. Lactating mothers. Lactating, as in, just gave birth and haven't had time to lose the baby weight yet.

I held up my mangled extremity in response. "No, um. My hand? Don't have a kid."

"Oh, I'm sorry! You look just like one of the mothers in our group."

"Ah."

"Just the face! I didn't mean anything."

NOT BLOODY LIKELY. What is the world trying to tell me? That I probably shouldn't have made brownies an hour ago with my roommate. Mmmm, brownies baby...

*No offense to any preggos out there. You have such a lovely glow! I would be honored to glow like that! Or so I've heard! Sorry about the whole "baby" thing, though.

Balls Jr. #1: Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris

True Blood ruined Dead Until Dark for me. That's not to say I hated it; I liked it well enough for yet another "I finished my book at work and need to find something else, anything else to read" selection. But the one episode of the show that I've seen was the first one, so I either knew exactly or had an idea of how everything turned out, which ruined almost all of the suspense and surprises. I might have gotten more invested in the novel if I hadn't known, because objectively they were pretty well-done. Also, my favorite character from the show, the gay black cook, Lafayette, technically appears in the book but has no substantial part and no good lines. Boooo.

Setting all that aside, it really was not bad at all. 1) There was nothing in the plot that made me stop, shake my finger at an inanimate object and scold it for contradicting itself, which is a nice feat for something surrounding vampires and psychic girl-detectives and all sorts of crazy shit. 2) The characters were believable, as far as I can judge having never personally experienced True Life: I'm Poor and Southern. Or True Life: I'm a Supernatural Being, I guess. Or True Life: I'm a Psychotic Murderer... I think you get the point. I even managed to quickly get over my initially negative impression of Sookie, based off of both Anna Paquin and Sookie's opening lines of (paraphrasing) "Yes I'm pretty and blonde with blue eyes but oh I don't date because I can read people's minds and I call that my disability aren't I so cute." 3) The writing was fine. Not terrible, not terrific. Nothing made me roll my eyes and groan (except for that opening), nothing made me mark a certain line as great, but there were some clever enough jokes and solid descriptive writing. Doubtlessly influencing my opinion here is that my first two Balls Jr. books were straight-up romance novels that pissed me the HELL OFF, so anything would've been an improvement over that.

Am I going to continue on the series? Doubtful. It was an enjoyable way to pass the time, but I don't care all that much about the characters or what happens next. If I run into someone who offers to lend me the next book in the series, though, I might take it.

In short, more than passable popcorn reading, but not my thing.

(Technically this is my fourth book read, but it's the first review I've completed.)