June 2006

I love colours. I love dragonflies.

You can find more beautiful artwork (and colours!) here.

I found a place nearby that sells boxes. Nothing fancy, just cardboard boxes that are strong and un-mangled and free of cooties. I ventured over to fill up the back of Cybele and was once again thrilled by just how much I can cram into her trunk. I folded down the seats and it just got better and better. Who needs an SUV, anyway?

As I was paying for said boxes, the woman in the office was asking me about where we were moving to and whether I might need more boxes in the future and generally making small talk. She gestured to my car, full of boxes and said, “You can’t have THAT much to move, already!” which made me raise an eyebrow. Already? I’m sorry, do we know each other? She smiled at my obvious confusion and said, “You’re moving out of the university? Right?”

I started to laugh and she smiled and said, “You’re not?”

I explained that no, I hadn’t been in university since 1995 and that I was married and owned a home and had a LOT of stuff to move. More than a lot, actually.

She was silent for a second, looking me up and down, then said, “Well. Huh. Wow. I wouldn’t have said you were a day over 24.”

It’s a good thing I didn’t have chapstick in my pocket because I would have whipped it out, slathered it on and smooched her like there was no tomorrow. Instead, I thanked her for making my day.

I am so in love with my “Bare Escentuals” mineral foundation. I mean, obviously it takes YEARS off of me. (Or, y’know, the woman had a liquid lunch. Whatever. Don’t bust my bubble, people.)

I was a late bloomer. My first period didn’t happen until I was sixteen years old, though I had lied through my teeth on a few occasions by proclaiming I had started to bleed at the ripe old age of thirteen. I didn’t want to be the last one, and I didn’t want to be a freak, and I wasn’t actually positive I would EVER bleed. I mean, it seemed a little.. strange, this ‘period’ thing. Even after the first one, my periods were never regular and they were either unspeakably heavy (“Ohmygod, I think I’m dying!”) or exceptionally light (“Is this a period? Really?!”) and my PMS symptoms were all over the map.

A year before I started university, and somewhere around the age of 17, I sprouted three dark hairs on the underside of my chin near my throat. I grabbed my tweezers and I yanked them out and I didn’t think about them again for quite some time.

In my second year of university, they grew back and they brought friends. There were ten of them, if I recall correctly, and I was pretty much convinced that I was going to grow a full goatee and never get laid again. I purchased some cold wax strips that were about as effective as scotch tape, and I yanked and tweezed those hairs with great enthusiasm.

One year after that, those ten hairs had developed into a small patch of hair, and had invited some friends to grow on my shoulders. My shoulders! I became obsessed with hair removal techniques – shaving, waxing, plucking – and made a half-hearted attempt at bleaching. It turns out that a white goatee is no better than a dark haired goatee when it comes to feeling attractive. Who knew? I became adept at tucking my chin down and making sure no one was EVER in such a position as to see the underside of my throat. I flinched if someone tried to touch my neck and I skittered away if someone tried to duck beneath me for any reason whatsoever, even if they weren’t looking in my direction. Thankfully, I’m only 5’5″ and most people are taller.

Over the years, I complained about this problem to various doctors who informed me that “sometimes women grow hair in strange places”. Not a big deal and nothing to worry about and oh, hey, just wax it or shave it. I should note that all of these doctors were men and not one of them seemed concerned about my impending sasquatchness because, hell, THEY had big ‘staches and beards and THEY were still sexy. I didn’t know what else to do, so I lived with it. Unhappily.

After my periods grew more and more sporadic, and after I missed an entire year’s worth in a row, I demanded that my doctor DO SOMETHING. I enjoyed not bleeding every month, but I assumed it meant something wasn’t quite right with my body. I was also contemplating getting knocked up in the near future. Oh, and hey, I’m getting hairier and hairier here, dude. My doctor sent me for an ultrasound that revealed what I already assumed – I had cysts all over my ovaries. Polycystic Ovaries, to be exact. PCOS, for short. The only solution anyone could give me was birth control pills. Birth control pills make me..crazy. I took them, and then I stopped. I couldn’t handle the mood swings, the 30 pounds of weight I gained overnight and.. the urge to kill everyone was growing.

I did my research and found that all of my body issues were related to the PCOS: difficulty losing weight, rapid weight gain despite excellent eating habits, excessive hair growth, painful ‘snapping’ feelings in the abdomen (exploding cysts!), irregular periods and infertility, depression and anxiety and a very very high testosterone level.. The hair continued to grow – my butt, my shoulders, my upper back, my chest, my stomach, my throat, my cheeks. I became increasingly agitated about people noticing it. I regularly visited a salon to have everything waxed. The first time I had to ask, “Um, could you, uh, wax my shoulders?” I wanted to die. I was mortified and humiliated.

When laser hair removal had been around for a while I decided to go and see if I could have it done. No matter how painful it may be, and no matter how costly, anything that would diminish even the slightest bit of hair would be welcomed. I was at the point of needing to remove hair from my throat and face daily.

The truth is that I had been spending upwards of half an hour in the bathroom with a pair of tweezers and a mirror every single morning. Even then I was self-conscious and miserable and twitchy because my throat/face was bumpy and red from plucking and there was still hair below the surface looking a lot like..stubble. I have ultra-sensitive skin – plucking and tweezing and shaving is not the best way to keep it from hating me.

At my consultation for laser hair removal, they walked me through the process and explained how it worked. I didn’t go to a salon because I wanted it done as professionally and accurately as possible. At the clinic, they took photos of my throat and cheeks (I had to let the hair grow for the appointment – and it was incredibly hard for me to walk out of the house that morning as a result) and then the nurse took me in to see the dermatologist. He took one look at my chart and said, “No. I can’t do it.”

No?! No.. what?!

He explained that a good portion of women who have hormone imbalances (a group that includes women with PCOS) have the laser hair removal done only to discover that the laser has prompted NEW hair growth. They have their unwanted hair zapped and a whole new patch explodes out from the skin. Sometimes it’s the same hair growing back thicker and darker, and sometimes the hair sneaks over to a new location and pops up there. I was stunned, horrified and unbelievably depressed to hear this fact. It was my last hope to feel ‘normal’ and it was.. gone.

I actually came home and cried. Then I cried some more. Then I went and plucked my chin for a while.

In January when I went to my cardiologist for a checkup, he remarked on the excess hair growth that was visible on my stomach. I told him that I normally wax it, but that it only buys me a week or, at most, two of hairlessness. I told him my stomach wasn’t the only place it was growing, and he went immediately over to the medical journals and started leafing through them for more info about PCOS. While it seems strange that my cardiologist was doing this, the truth is that PCOS can have a significant impact on things like insulin levels and blood pressure and the obvious issue with weight gain. All of which is not healthy for my heart.

He asked whether I’d like him to refer me to an endocrinologist – to have my PCOS formally diagnosed and treated by someone who specialized in it. I could barely speak. I wanted to hug him. I accepted. After a bunch of effort on his part, having never needed to refer to an endocrinologist before, he found one who would take me on. It probably goes without saying that I love my cardiologist. And I hate my regular doctor.

Tomorrow I see the endocrinologist for the first time. Part of me is anxious – I hate having to show off my hairy body to anyone, even a professional who has definitely seen worse than what I’ve got. I’ve been letting the hair ‘grow out’ for the past week in order to be able to show exactly how bad it is. Part of me is giddy – maybe I can get rid of the hair for good! Regular periods! Healthy body weight! And yet another part is reluctant to get even slightly worked up in case it doesn’t work out the way I want it to.

It’s funny, though. Coffee has no issues whatsoever with my hair-growth-in-weird-places. He plucks and waxes and removes the hairs I can’t reach any time I ask – but he doesn’t care if I don’t remove them at all. He understands how hard it is for me to wear a tshirt or a tank top and he doesn’t bat an eyelash when I ask him to please “defuzz” me when needed. He’s the only person in the entire world who I’ve allowed to touch my throat in .. years. I can joke with him about the stubble or the hair and it makes me feel.. normal. Okay. And, to be honest, that acceptance on his part has helped me accept it myself.

I used to hide/remove/bleach the hair growth and wouldn’t talk about it with anyone – I like to believe some people reading this may actually be surprised to hear about the problem. Or they may be glad I finally acknowledged it so they can stop wondering why I have stubble sometimes. It feels, of course, like I’m a sasquatch/gorilla/baboon – I’m so aware of each hair that it seems impossible for anyone to NOT know about it. But recently I’ve decided to stop freaking out about it – it’s a conscious choice I’ve made. I don’t intend to embrace it (ha!) but as Coffee pointed out to me, it’s not “my fault” that the hair grows. My body is just rebelling in its own special way. I still wax and pluck and shave, of course, but I don’t get hysterical when I can still see stubble beneath the surface. I don’t walk around with my chin tucked into my chest. Some days I don’t remove a single hair.

There are a LOT of women with PCOS out there – I know, because I see the stubble and the hair growth on women of all ages, everywhere I go. I see the contortions of their heads as they try to hide their own goatees. And when I see them I want to walk up and tell them that I know how much it sucks and that I’m sorry they have to go through it too. But I don’t because I know it won’t be any comfort to them. They don’t want to know that I can see it – because I know how hard I tried to hide it, myself.

It feels strange to write about this – strange to admit to this embarassing, humiliating problem that isn’t as embarassing or humiliating anymore. It just.. is. And hopefully, very soon, it won’t be a problem at all.

• Profanity. Please use it wildly when communicating with me. I need to learn new words.
• Chocolate. Milk chocolate.
• Every single detail about my husband.
• Sleep. It’s where I’m a Viking.
• Books. Magazines. Email. Words words words.
• Adventures. Big or small.
• My friends. Oh, I have good friends.
• Laughter.
• Sex. Boinkboinkboink.
• Bare feet and ponytails in hot weather.
• Dogs. Rats. Hamsters. Birds. Animals, in general.
• Being able to write crappy lists in my blog.

The Beag is very clearly feeling better now that the drugs have kicked in. She all-but exploded from her crate when I woke the dogs up this morning, leaped all over me, beagle-yelped a bit (which is not a yelp of pain but a yelp of, “OhmygodI’mabeagle!wheeeeeee!“) and flew downstairs like she was being chased by rabid wolves. So much for keeping her calm and quiet.

If there is one thing that can be said about Zooey, and there are actually many things that can be said about her, it’s that she is always willing to let you know exactly what’s going on inside her head. Daisy, on the other hand, seems somewhat perplexed by The Beag’s renewed enthusiasm for the world and has been giving me sideways glances that indicate she’d like us to stop medicating said beagle so she, Daisy, can have some peace and quiet for a while.

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Dear Migraine,

Why? Seriously. Fuck off.

Love,
Dana

I write, mostly, because it makes me feel better. I write the things that pop into my head, of course, and I write the things that sit inside my brain and repeatedly flip themselves around. Subjects like sex and gender and feminism and whether or not it’s wrong to daydream about chocolate are always waiting to appear on the screen or a scrap of paper. My brain is always pondering a variety of subjects but, truthfully, a lot of them don’t make it here to my blog.

I’m always aware, to some extent, that there are people reading what I write. My husband, of course, is forced to read by my repeated mentions that I “wrote in my blog today. Did I tell you I wrote in my blog today? I did!” and some of my friends check in here from time to time to see what I’m up to as a means of staying in touch. There are links to my blog on some unspeakably amazing sites, too.

I try to write about what’s going on in my world – the day to day activities, the feelings and moods and ideas I’m living with. I like blogging because it’s just me, here, at my laptop. And when I’m finished, I get to read comments and emails and I meet more people and find new idas.

But I am always more reluctant to address the Big Issues.

It’s not that I don’t have opinions – oh my, I have opinions – it’s that I tend to change my mind fairly easily. The world ceased to be black and white for me quite some time ago, and I seem to grow more aware of the things I don’t know more than the things I do with each passing day. I’m more aware than ever that my situation is different from yours and hers and his, and that the things that seem perfectly clear-cut-and-dry never really are. I’m working to be less judgemental, as a rule, and more open. For the most part, I’m doing just fine.

It makes it hard to write in anything but the passive voice. I hate my passive voice.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve posted something – anything – and found myself wishing I could totally revise it the next day. Not because I’ve changed my mind, necessarily, but because I reread the entry a few times and thought, “That’s just not right” for any number of reasons. This is why so many of my blog entries end up sitting in “draft” while I post meme after meme after meme.

I have eleven posts in draft right now. Eleven! Some of them have been sitting there for more than a month, festering and bubbling and growing stagnant. Subjects like married sex and competitions and being passive-aggressive and comparisons and.. well, there’s a lot of good stuff there that I can’t seem to post. It’s making me insane. It’s cluttering up my screen. So I am vowing to finish every single one of those entries by the end of this week.

Every. Single. One.

Suffice it to say that I am not one of the yellow people in this commercial, even though I laughed heartily while watching it.

Mornings suck.

The Beag is stoned. She is stoned and she is placid and she is calm and, if I may speak frankly, she’s quite lovely at the moment. It’s a bit like having a beagle-rug in that she’s soft and fuzzy and.. lying very still. In other words, very un-Zooey-like.

This morning, as she was yelping and freaking out about the pain in her leg, we decided we’d try to get in to see the vet ASAP – while Coffee was home and could help carry her in and out of the car and the house. She’s not happy about climbing up or down stairs, and when she’s not happy she has a tendency to be a little…feral. Scary. Evil, even. Evil enough that I don’t want to deal with her on my own. Four hands are always better – plus, she’s not good at making decisions and with 20 fingers to nip at we could hope she’d be too overwhelmed by choices to actually remove one for us.

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