what do we do with our times in-between?

we challenge our bosses to blog challenges 

and we write six word stories.

We: laugh, cry, menstruate. We're: magical.

It's not often that I equate myself with the fortunate few in the Wizarding World, (current Hogwarts headmaster, if you're reading this here, is your challenge: conjure up another Time Turner and make sure I get my letter this time. Also make sure that Sam Woolley receives his too and that see to it that he gets sorted into Hufflepuff with me) however, after much introspection, reading and googling, I have decided that I too am magical.

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I was on a six hour car ride in the middle of an especially hot August when I got my period. Yes, I had watched the awful "You're Changing!" video in 5th grade and yes, I had read the American Girl "What's Going On With My Body?" book, but nothing I could have watched or read would have prepared me for the nauseating cramps, insatiable hunger and cataclysmic mood swings that this new bodily development would bring.

I was at a 76 gas station the day I didn't realize my life was changing, and for some reason, I was excited. This meant I was no longer a girl - I was a woman. I was a woman with a valid reason to cut swim class and a woman with a sanctioned reason to overdose on chocolate. In that moment, I had no way of foreseeing the pain, cravings and emotional instability that would ensue outside of that 76 station. Had I experienced a brief moment of gnostic clarity, I might have opted for a preemptive hysterectomy, so (for the sake of my future children) it's probably a good thing I was not inchoately omniscient.

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Let me elaborate:

Last week, I sobbed my way through Glee, slept over 9 hours every night and couldn't concentrate on anything unless it was preceded by gooey chocolate cake.

This week, I inappropriately danced at work, laughed obnoxiously at unfunny things (I made Sam imitate the Screaming Pug for me an innumerable amount of times) and wanted to hug and kiss everyone and everything around me at all times.

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This pattern has retroactively repeated itself over the course of my post-pubescent life [with "Friends" and/or "Will & Grace" substituting for "Glee" and "disgusting quantities of cookie dough" replacing "gooey chocolate cake"] -- and no ladies and gentlemen, I am not suffering from Bipolar Disorder, I am simply at the mercy of my swirling cycles of estrogen -- but for the first time in 9 and a half years, I am unequivocally elated that my uterus molts once a month.

A long, long time ago, men thought that women were magical because they could bleed excessively and not die. 

Now, I know we are not actually "magical" in the Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter/Narnia kind of way, but its hard not to feel magical when you get to experience the monthly gamut of emotions that filter in and out of our 28 days.  

Men (and/or estrogenless women) I'm so sorry that you don't get to feel the things I feel. I'm so sorry that you don't find pop-music covers so emotionally moving that you cry into your Ben & Jerry's. I'm so sorry that you have no idea what it's like to cry one minute and laugh the next. 

But mostly, I'm so sorry that you (overgeneralized male) see our emotional whims as "negative" when they are very clearly the positive sparkles that make us the creative, unique and magical individuals who love and change the world every single day. 

photo: weheartit