and I didn't even faint!

when spook was younger, he used to get his Grandma cards with the specific intention of making her cry--in that nice way. Maybe he shouldn't have told me about it, because at times like my birthday, I suspect him of having residual make-her-cry tendencies. I suppose he did well to pick me as a life partner--my sentimental nature is famous. So when I got home from work on Saturday night to discover that he'd bought fuschia and apple-green balloons and hung them up all around our apartment, as well as getting me flowers even though it's a huge pain in the ass to keep the cats from knocking them over as he well knows but he also knows I love them...well, let's just say that tissue was involved. Little did I know about the sacrifice involved in lemon-coconut squares.

I was just beginning the arduous process of trying to cut still-frozen butter into a flour mixture with nothing but kitchen knives and determination when he said "Uh, I've cut myself." spook has a gift for understatement that is nothing less than astounding, and this could mean anything, including "Wow, my whole hand is missing." so when I said "Do you need a band-aid?" I wasn't clear whether I should be asking "Do you need a tourniquet?" It wasn't that dire, but there was an impressive amount of blood. Dishwashers, beware! Your new sharp knife that you used to hack the recalcitrant butter into smallish cubes may jump out of your hand and, well, land on your other hand. On the scale of good-with-injuries, I hover somewhere on the right side of useless, but they're not my best thing. I grabbed a dishtowel (yay, I had the presence of mind to get a clean one from the drawer) and said "You're going to wrap this around your finger and put pressure on it, and keep it above your heart." Then I went to the bathroom and got the bandaids. I managed to do it without alarming our guests. I got the bandaid wrapper off despite my really, really shaky hands, and all was well. I even went and washed the blood out of the dishtowel. As these lemon squares were not going to make themselves, we then resumed our baking.

Most of the way through mixing the filling, spook reports that he thought Why is there red food colouring there? We're not using--oh. What he said was "Uh, I might need another band-aid." I once again did not freak out at the sight of blood dripping over his whole hand, and instead went to retrieve the sterile surgical gauze we have in packets.

You'll be happy to know that after this incident, he was retired from the kitchen, and our somewhat disconcerted friends helped get the rest of the baking done. spook just sat and waved Mummy Finger in our direction until mr. pixie drew a little face on it. rrrrrrrr, Mummy Finger.

Although I wish to make it clear that a blood sacrifice is not necessary in honour of my birth, it was certainly impressive. And the lemon squares are really good.

armed with skill and determination, and grace too

I suppose it should come as no surprise that as the sequel to Bad Period Day, I woke up the next morning, sat up, and blew out my knee. You know, with the sitting up. I have a special gift, all right? So after I made a horrible puppy noise of agony and then sat there rocking back and forth with my lips pressed together for a while, I got up and had coffee. spook, a veteran of knee injuries, poked me a bit and prescribed two ibuprofen and an ice pack. I did still have to go to work, though, at the job where I stand up for eight hours a day.

In a small plot twist, I got to spend part of the day offsite at a book table, at a certain literary event which shall remain nameless. I confess that I hate book tables under almost all circumstances, but this was easily the worst one I have ever staffed. I include in that estimation the one which--surprise!--was at a centre for psychiatric patients and featured one guy who spent the whole day in the corner of the room screeching Prince songs with his earphones clapped to his head because some other guy was bugging him. That one also had many sweet people, most of them patients, who wanted to come by and talk about and/or purchase the books.

This one, not so much. At least I got to sit down.

Now, I work for a big chain retailer, and we're unclean in the eyes of the literary public. I get that, I do. But the tables technically opened for business at six o'clock, and the vendor across from us didn't even bother taking the sheet off of his books until eight. And he was from a tiny independent store who no one could possibly hate on the basis of politics or snobbery. He shambled across the floor toward us, easily avoiding the horde of five readers who had come to stand in the middle of the room and drink coffee.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"Earlier than you think," replied my co-worker wearily, searching for a watch. I should mention he'd been there all week. "Okay. Five to seven."
Other Book Retailer looked bemused. "Actually, that's later than I thought it was." I stared at him in a kind of awe.
"Wow." I said, "You're really correcting for disappointment, aren't you?" He gave me a little nod and drifted off again.

I don't want to be misunderstood. I love books. I love reading. I love talking about books with other people who love reading. I loathe literary events. Seriously, the next time you're at a reading, watch all the people in their hipster garb or their slacks-and-jackets, and then watch how they treat the bartender. Watch them leave the plastic cups of their complimentary drinks all over the room as though they have no idea there's a garbage can. Watch how they fawn over the authors without ever making eye contact with the people selling them the books. The level of intellectual disdain displayed by most of the attendees toward the people who staff said events is amazing, especially since they're not necessarily smart.

Case in point: at this particular unnamed event (guys, I just really don't want to get fired or sued, okay?) there was a table set up with a photo of a man and a sheet of signatures. According to one of the people who'd been attending all week, the man is an author, and he's imprisoned because of something he wrote. Oh, and the signatures are a petition to free him. But you'd never know that, because there's nothing at all on the table to indicate what it's about. I guess that they talk about it at the readings, but look, people, it's just not a good idea to sign your name on any page that doesn't say what you're signing. For all you know, you could be signing a petition to have the nice man in the picture burned at the stake. I suppose it's worthless to point out that the people working or volunteering might also want to sign such a petition (the freeing one, not the burning one) if we only knew what it was, because as we saw in figure A. the help aren't actually people.

I'm not bitter about this or anything.

Anyway I got to talk to my co-workers and eat Timbits, and that part was good, and they sent me home early out of pity 'cause my knee was hurting me and I guess I was starting to look kind of dragged out.

The next day I got to reprise my role as Limpy the Pirate Queen, and people laughed at me, as they were meant to. We might as well get a chuckle out of my misfortune, no?

too much information

How, you might ask yourself, can a thirty-year-old woman with reasonably regular menstrual cycles be caught completely off-guard by bleeding? I have no real answer. I just kind of forgot.

I started to think I might be in trouble when I realized that in terms of menstrual supplies, I had exactly one tampon sitting in the back of my medicine cabinet. Let us be clear: I hate tampons, but my Keeper is impossible for me on the first day. Too crampy. A brief digression, here; what the hell is wrong with the people who write copy for pads, tampons, etc.? I am thankful to be living in an age when none of the products I'm expected to use involve a belt, but there is no way in hell my period is ever going to turn me into the breezy shopaholic they seem to be targeting. For example, what's with the ad that shows a pantyliner shaped like a deck chair? Much as I might wish it were so, I do not get to spend several days a month lying around eating chocolate while someone brings me margaritas. I get to spend them doing all the normal stuff people have to do--going to work, changing the cat litter, setting the vcr--all the while feeling that there's someone new at the controls in my brain. Someone possibly not cut out for this kind of work. I walk into things. I listen in dismay as every other sentence comes out of my mouth addled. I feel generally crabby worrying that I'm reinforcing all the stereotypes of hormonally incompetent women. I try not to fall down the stairs. All the while I'm forced to listen to oozy voice-overs about comfort and convenience while someone uses what appears to be antifreeze to demonstrate the absorbency of their overpriced, overpackaged, dioxin-filled "hygiene products."

Some of this was what was running through my mind as I made my first trip in years to the lady aisle of the drugstore. The aisle heading listed "feminine paper" as one of the products I might find there. I don't even know what that means. There was no enlightenment to be had in the softly-coloured boxes lining the shelves, either. I stared in growing horror at my options. Everything bleached, of course. Plastic applicators. Lavender-scented pantyliners!? (I think they were pantyliners anyway. I pray to god they're not scenting anything that's supposed to go inside you, but hey, some of the other things they've suggested to women are so spectacularly bad that I wouldn't be surprised.) Just when I thought I was going to freak out completely, I spotted a box of Instead cups in the forlorn bottom corner of the display. I grabbed them and fled.

In case there's anyone who doesn't know, Instead is a flexible cup that sits just under your cervix and catches your blood. If you're squeamish about such things, this might seem pretty gross, but consider: you can leave 'em in longer than tampons without worrying that you'll die of Toxic Shock Syndrome. There is no horrible cotton string. They're painless going in and coming out, at least for me. And they have never once leaked in my experience. Their only drawback is that they're disposable, and that's a whole other post, which I'm not going to get into here.

By ten o'clock, which is when I finished work, I was very very sorry about the policy which prevents my employer from giving me painkillers. "Take a bath," Suzanne said. (One of the things about working with other women is that I get sympathy and good advice.) Because our bathtub takes, no joke, half an hour to fill, I called home to spook and asked him to start running it for me. "Put in Epsom salts!" Suzanne said over my shoulder into the phone.

I should say here that spook has spent most of this week on the verge of a freakout of his very own. This coming Sunday is Canzine, and he was very late this year in starting the latest issue of misfit toy. Between printing tshirts, making sure his back issues are in order, making more copies of his beautiful but extremely finicky memory zine sepia and trying to put together an entire cut-and-paste masterpiece in a week, he's been a little stressed. Did I mention he also hasn't been feeling that well? I want you to bear this in mind when I tell you that I arrived home to discover that he had cleared the bathtub of all its usual flotsam (empty shampoo bottles, cleaning sponge, soap dish), filled the bath with water that was exactly the temperature I wanted, and set along the windowsill and the edge of the sink what appeared to be every tealight in the apartment. It was beautiful in the flickery glow of all those candles, and I think it was maybe magic because it made my cramps go away.

spook said once that he doesn't like to talk about our relationship in public because it's like showing people naked pictures of his heart. Reader, I take the liberty of showing this one to you because I am frankly baffled by the depth of his kindness, by all the things that one act says to me about what I've got here. I hope that ten years from now when I'm grousing about some petty issue, someone will remind me about that bath. I hope to feel a little small and a whole lot lucky.

concerning our new pull-up bar

"No, you've got a prop. That's not mime. This is mime." [mimics swinging along, exaggerating all hand movements to demonstrate either 'I'm grabbing a bar' or 'I think you're a moron'--maybe both.]
"Purist. Who knew you'd be a purist about mime?"
"Dude, how long have you been with me? Three years? Long enough to know I'm a purist about everything."
"I know, but--dear god, woman, mime! Surely you draw the line somewhere, and I would have thought it was this side of mime!"

It's funny, he doesn't usually get so worked up about things.