Thursday, May 14, 2009

When Mully Grumbies Attack

Today is the new worst day of my life. It’s the sort of day where, if I’m going to go to all the trouble of keeping breathing, I want to be compensated for it. That’s right, I’d charge God overtime. I may even demand extra days off and spa coupons if this keeps up. If Will were around, I’d be clinging to his leg like a whiny barnacle. The sad thing is, my life couldn’t be going better, but it’s amazing how physical discomfort can trash everything. I have a full blown case of what my late Uncle Buddy called the “mully grumbies.” The mully grumbies is a vicious mood disease that can only be cured by hanging the afflicted upside down and shaking her vigorously by the ankles. Since I’m at work, my cure is going to have to wait.

Still, I do think the angst is justified. Try having what the cheerful Scottish nurse called “a raging UTI, love,” and see how you like it. Then, when you start feeling a smidgen better and are blessing the marvel of antibiotics, life drops the proverbial grand piano on your head and you realize Old Faithful is about to blow. For those of you who have minimal-pain periods or are male (shouldn’t there be a circle of hell devoted to both of those crimes?), let me give a very graphic description. Imagine a tray of biscuit dough. Nice, inoffensive biscuit dough. Biscuit dough with clean karma. It’s never slapped a baby or said anything nasty about anybody’s tacky prom pictures. That dough is your innards. Next, sprinkle that dough with a lethal assortment of thumb tacks, two inch nails, and rusty razor blades. Season to taste with motion sickness. Now, ever so gently, roll that dough into a cylinder. Here’s where it gets fun. Take a baseball bat, poker, rolling pin, mace, or other weapon of your choice, and BEAT THE DAYLIGHTS out of that dough. That is what cramps feel like when you have dysmenorrhea.

Even though I feel like doom on the half shell, I am trying to focus on the things that aren’t making me hurt. Like the fact that Will dropped by my work this morning to share his Coolatta with me. Like my Little Yellow iPod. I drove home for lunch this afternoon and on the way back, somebody apparently declared it monsoon season because I was creeping along the highway with negligible visibility in the downpour. Suddenly, lightning cracked close to my car. My first thought was, lightning can hit the car, but it can’t fry my iPod. The Castlevania Playground remix is the only thing keeping me from shaving my head and walling myself into a cell like some medieval anchoress. Will’s perky video game remixes are keeping me from wallowing in bleakness too much. Although with the low barometric pressure, everybody at work is so testy, I doubt I’m standing out. Oh well, maybe all the rain will coax my snow pea vines to flower. A chow mien full of home-grown snow peas would be a fine thing indeed.

Another thing I’m very happy about is bravissimo.com. I just found out about this company yesterday and I’m already obsessed with it. Bravissimo sells tops by cup size! This is genius! I’ve been saying for years that somebody ought to, because uniformly cutting clothing for a B cup is lunacy when the average American woman is a C. Read that somewhere, anyway, and I believe it. Bravissimo caters to the D cup+ market (but not plus-sized. Sizing runs from a US 4-ish to a US 12-ish, if I figured the UK size conversion correctly), and their stuff is fashionable, but not too trendy, just the way I like it. The models all have builds very similar to mine so I didn’t have to guess what I’d look like in the clothes. The pricing was equivalent to Ann Taylor: a little expensive, but doable. I’d much rather pay more for one blouse that fits than buy three or four that gape at the bustline. As soon as I get paid again, I will probably place an order. I’m dazzled by the opportunity to have matching lingerie sets! (A frustration of having a plus-sized boobage and misses-sized rumpage) Button-down blouses that don’t require a camisole underneath because the buttons might pop off if I try to button them over my mountainous outcroppings! Dresses I don’t have to take in at the waist because I had to buy the next size up! The head swims with possibilities!

All that retail goodness is definitely lifting my spirits. Today wasn’t a total loss at work, either. I turned in two documents several hours ahead of the deadline. The work day is almost over. And I’m remembering that I have Haagen Dazs coffee-and-almond ice cream bars in the freezer at home. I’m not usually the “eat to cope” type, but some days….