Wednesday, October 10, 2018

A Rags To Bitches Story

So I found out, and never mind how, there's no reason to get into it on a Sunday, that my fine young friend buys reusable cotton flannel menstrual pads, which I didn't even know were a thing, but they are. And I was grateful yet again for being a post-menopausal liberal.

Because if I were a liberal woman still in the throes of unasked-for fertility, I would then have to go purchase these myself, and use them and wash them out in order to keep yet another single-use throwaway item out of the landfill, because that is the curse of a liberal, to worry about such things, and because it's not as if the throwaway kind ever saved much on laundry anyway, since there wasn't a single month in forty years in which I did not manage to doody on something I shouldn't have, even if I wore two corks and a pad so large it has a tag on it that says DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

If I were a pre-menopausal conservative I wouldn't have to give this a second thought. I would be worried about some colored person breaking into my house or being blown up by a Muslim war refugee or raped by a Mexican or the fact that God is both all-powerful and somehow kept out of the schools or that some liberal is going to force me to use curly light bulbs or some stinking Socialist is going to steal my Medicare or someone is going to call me a racist just for having the guts to call a spade a spade or, and this is the very worst thing, my own husband might some day be accused of something he didn't do, something that totally never happened on account of there being no witnesses except that one really drunk dude who hasn't remembered anything he's done in thirty years. Any woman could accuse him of such a thing at any time and then go cash her check from the First National Bank Of Libtards and it wouldn't matter how many creative explanations my husband made up to explain the naughty bits in his yearbook. And his life would be ruined unless he makes it to the Supreme Court and is right back on top. As it were.

As a conservative woman I would be able to assume that life began when I was born, and being able to wear sweaters inside in the summer and drive my Ford Extortion to the corner store and throw away a plastic pod every time I make coffee is just what the world owes me. Certainly I would assert there was no life before pads and tampons. Just because women survived for a million years without them until a hundred years ago does not mean that we could survive without them today.

They did, though. Admittedly, history has not been overly interested in the concerns of women. Hypatia is an exception. That 5th-century mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher once discouraged an unwanted suitor by smacking him with her menstrual rags, although some scholars dispute this account, pointing out that she could have just waved them around and he'd have dropped dead of his own accord. Unfortunately, Hypatia was a woman of great and beguiling beauty, otherwise known as Satanic wiles. She and her big brain and beauty got into a nest of early Christians and that was pretty much that, for soon enough she was murdered, sliced up, dragged in pieces through the street, and burned.

And for this alone I might have donned the cotton rag in Hypatia's name. But now I don't have to, thank God. Or whoever's in charge.

36 comments:

  1. So much fodder for comment here:

    1. I, too, am thrilled to be post-menopausal for many reasons. Not having to use birth control is one. More importantly, though, is not having to contend with hemorrhaging every few weeks. For the first day or two, I was constantly retreating to the ladies room or else suffering the consequences on laundry day. I am glad that I can now not only wear light colors, but even go commando. (TMI?)

    2. That second pic should be entitled "Tramps for Trump." Are fake boobs and spray tans what it means to be a conservative these days?

    3. Coffee pods. Jesus, don't get me started on them! How fucking lazy does one have to be to find it too difficult to measure out a teaspoon or so of coffee and put it into the coffeemaker? It's not rocket science, people! One can even get coffeemakers that don't need paper filters. It's not that difficult to make coffee at home. Starbuck's baristas do not have some arcane knowledge on brewing techniques.

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    1. 1. If you ever want to hear a bunch of women laugh their heinies off, tell them that "the average woman sheds three tablespoons of blood per cycle."

      2. Gotta look good for the boss.

      3. Also, I'm rethinking my Costco membership. God, things come cheap there, but you could kill ten albatrosses per trip with the plastic packaging.

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    2. About the 'fake boobs and spray tans'....Here in Washington DC, that look has become the laughingstock of most of us local residents. So, from the epicenter of all this madness, I can confirm that there is a veritable epidemic of fake boobs among conservative women. And the silicone tits parading around this town are about as subtle as the fins on a 1959 Cadillac.

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    3. What happens to fake boobs anyway, once their hostess has begun to age? Do they stay right up there where her chins can droop over them?

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    4. I posed that question to my god-daughter who is in the last few months of her doctoral program at Cal. She said she'd put it on her priority list at around #150, so it may be a bit before we get the answer.

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    5. oh how I wish I hadn't looked :(

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  2. I was grinning as I read this, but when you said Ford Extortion I started quivering and shaking with tears like a justice being asked a question about his drunken sexcapades and assaults. Why I have never even heard of an Extortion let alone driven one. I don't care what the other fleet drivers say. That wasn't me behind the wheel. Yeah, that's it.

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  3. Just bought a single cup coffee maker that does not use pods but makes great coffee and fast! Don't get too smug, many women move into "pee pads" before you can say "Bye menopause."

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    1. Yeah. Fact. I almost had to but things seem to have shifted in my favor. I do not anticipate they will stay that way. There's no sphincter like an old sphincter.

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    2. An old sphincter is like no sphincter.

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  4. Yet another one of your posts that my now invisible wife taps me on the shoulder and whispers "You have nothing to add, dear. Move along."

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  5. Keep tellin' it like it is!!

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    1. I can only speak my truth, which is indistinguishable from The truth.

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  6. It isn’t enough that I share your blog. I must also read aloud to any who pass...

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  7. Replies
    1. I believe in a much earlier post I referred to it all as "forty years of pointlessness and laundry."

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  8. I read this twice out loud very fast, because it’s so much fun to speak of the Unspeakable in wildly irreverent, run-on sentences. Several Unspeakables all at once, in fact! Think I’ll do it again.

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    1. I like run-on sentences but I don't always know if they work. So thanks for that. (I think it's a holdover from rebelling against my father's semicolon usage.)

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  9. Did he use his semicolon right there in the living room? Ewwwww.

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  10. Love this blog! Glad I know James Torbert!

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  11. I'm thankful to have been born in a time where sanitary pads were the accepted thing to use and we had backyard incinerators where we could burn them instead of putting them in landfill. Later there were tampons which got flushed away without a single thought as to where they ended up.
    Washable, re-useable seems to be a sensible idea, it's no different to cotton nappies (diapers) for babies which got rinsed, soaked and washed, then re-used for several babies. No one likes the idea, but if that's what you do, then that's the way it is. My mum once told me that growing up in Germany, she had to knit her own supply of pads, which were then washed and re-used until she had to knit a new batch.

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    1. At least I would've learned how to knit. Can't really come up with another upside to this whole scenario.

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  12. Breathtaking!! What could there be to add?? Nuffin'!! I'm just glad you're the one out there sayin' it!! Just sayin'!! (Double punctuation is when I'm really excited). Damn, I feel sooo timid around you, Murr, when you've got a mad-on. xoxox j.

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    1. Honey, you couldn't even be collateral damage. My aim is true.

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  13. OMG I love you! You know, it gets worse -- my daughter asked me to buy her some medieval-looking rubber cup thing, because, um, my dog chewed up the one she had. Menopause was a bitch and thank goodness for it!
    P.S. I forgot I had "Make America Kittens Again" turned on, and scrolled back up to see Tramps for Trump but all I found were 2 cute kittens. Life is good.

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    1. Good planning! I do remember them coming out with a menstrual cup back in the '70s and being a thoroughly modern gal I tried it. Tassaway, I think it was called. Um, only tried it once. It was terrific if you were going for a horror-movie bathroom stall scene.

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