Many years ago, I burned my childhood journals.

I used to journal all the time.

But when I was 19 and 20, I was in a bad relationship.

I knew he was jealous, which was I was familiar with, since my mother had always been in violently jealous relationships.

I told myself that at least my relationship wasn’t physically violent.

It’s a long story, and there were incredible mistakes on both sides leading up to this, but I was incredibly unhappy. And this relationship had been legalized, which made it harder to get out of.

At this point, I thought I couldn’t get out of it. I sometimes prayed that I would die or that he would, mostly the former because I didn’t want to be the kind of person who would pray for the latter.

It’s hard to hide that kind of unhappiness.

I came home one day to find that he’d been reading my journals. And he was yelling at me about them.

Why didn’t I love him the way I loved that guy I had a crush on when I was 14?

(The guy I had never really had a conversation with.)

I tried to explain how fourteen year old brains work.

And I also tried to explain that he shouldn’t read my journals (trying to explain back then, by the way, was yelling and crying).

He said he had every right to–that since we were married, we were one flesh.

I didn’t have the right to privacy.

I knew he believed that–that he would always feel justified in reading them, whenever he wanted. Every thought I had written down, every thought I might write on the blank pages would be used against me in his struggle to make me into what he thought I should be.

So I burned them.

And I stopped journaling.

It’s been over twenty years–I haven’t gotten back into the habit of regular journaling.

But I want to.

Here’s what we know: Access to contraception and comprehensive sex ed are what lowers abortion rates.

Banning it usually has the opposite effect, because those doing the banning also oppose contraception and comprehensive sex ed.

In general, the banners also oppose universal healthcare, funding education, raising the minimum wage, and women’s equality in the workplace.

In other words, what they’re doing will cause more unplanned pregnancies.

We will also have more:

*Women forced to be pregnant in a job market that will often lay them off for it
*Women forced to give birth in a country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western world
*Women thrown into poverty
*Children born into poverty
*Women with pregnancy/birth-related problems that will make them ineligible for insurance if they try to get it later
*Women who might be able to get healthcare for their child in some states, the same states who tell them they can’t have it (even though most would agree a household can’t survive when a parent is fighting chronic or potentially life-threatening illnesses)
*Women struggling to support their families with low wages, which have not caught up with inflation
*Women struggling to go to college and to send their child to college, considering tuition is over 1100% higher than it was in the 1970s
*Children struggling to stay alive in a school system where they might be murdered on any given day
*Women struggling to feed their child, as there are actually politicians who say children should be made to feel shame if they need free lunch
*Children struggling to learn in chronically underfunded education systems
*Women who will forever struggle to find firm financial footing, along with their children often trapped in a cycle of poverty
*Women struggling to pay for their child’s daycare (they have to work; they aren’t allowed to be on public assistance to stay home with their child (they will be made to feel guilty for not staying home with their child)), since daycare is sometimes more than a women will get paid

These women will be told that all of their problems are their fault for having a child.

(These same people will say that if poor women don’t have a cellphone, which employers count on them having, all of their money problems will disappear.)

Most women who get abortions are married women who already have children, who are doing what they have to keep their marriage together, to keep their existing children fed. They know the cost of a child in a struggling household. And we can’t tell them to be abstinent.

There is a three-step process to lowering abortion rates:

1. Give access to contraception

2. Provide comprehensive sex ed

3. Work to fix societal problems, so that women can choose to have that child in a world that won’t leave them and their children to starve

Hmmm . . . what’s behind that door?

Ummm . . . is that a chain?

WTF, UC Davis, why is there a weird closet with a bed and a chain in the ladies room?!?

I’ve spent a great deal of my life trying to avoid migraines in all their forms. A particularly nasty one I can get is a menstrual migraine, signalling the start of my period; it used to ruin 2-3 days of each month.

Once I had insurance (and thus a PCP), we tried a lot of different types of birth control pills, usually with a very low hormone dose to try to have the line between non-period hormone levels and period hormone levels be close (it’s the change in hormone levels that triggers the migraine).

And then a female pharmacist found a solution:

“Why do you keep changing your pills?”

“We’re trying to find one that won’t give me a menstrual migraine.”

“Then why don’t you just take your pills straight through and not have menses?”

And that worked. For years.

For many glorious years.

Several months ago, however, I started having menstrual migraines and some bleeding.

I thought it might be menopause, even though I’m young.

(Why not? My body breaks in all the other ways despite my youth.)

I made a note to bring it up to my PCP and decided to embrace it, if that’s what it was. Naturally, I embrace things by bringing them up to the cats all the time.

“Graymalkin! Stop scratching the couch! I have menopause!”

My PCP, though, said I was too young for menopause and that I probably had a uterine fibroid instead.

A vaginal ultrasound* showed a fibroid.

Mystery solved, I thought.

I was then referred to a gynecologist; I hadn’t had one because I make my poor PCP do the annual exams.

She said a) the fibroid wasn’t causing my migraines and b) I had to change my birth control pill because of my stroke risk.

I let her have her way with the pill change, but I told her I wanted one that would keep me migraine-free.

She said that wouldn’t be an issue, because she was sure I hadn’t been having menstrual migraines again anyway.

???

She said I was having regular migraines that happened to coincide with breakthrough bleeding.

“Except menstrual migraines feel different from regular ones,” I said.

I started the new pill several months ago. My boobs hurt now. All the time.

And once a month, I’ve had a menstrual migraine, followed by bleeding that lasts for several days.

Having established a pretty clear pattern, I emailed my gyno.

Don’t worry, everyone. She said I’m not having periods. I’m just having breakthrough bleeding at regular intervals and coincidental migraines.

“How do I stop the migraines and bleeding that so effectively mimics menstrual migraines and menstruation?”

She said I could try an implant, but that I would definitely have breakthrough-bleeding-that-is-totally-not-a-period.

So I’m waiting it out, hoping that my body will get used to this new medicine. Menstrual migraines used to be my most controlled pain.

I know menopause can be awful, but I look forward to a time when I can at least know for certain what’s going on.

*For those who don’t know, they have to stick an ultrasound wand in your pussy and take a look around; at one point, they have to do the shocker; since I had had this procedure before, I wasn’t surprised at the shocker, which pleased the poor technician who has to break the news to people all day long (and then put her finger in their unhappy asses).

This week, I got a small envelope in the mail. I opened it to find this.

Nothing happened.

So I flipped it over.

And now I’m very happy indeed.

My grandfather taught me about St. Urho’s Day many years ago.

Last year, I wrote about how I was spending my first St. Urho’s Day without him in the world.

Today, my nails are green and purple. I’ve made our cookies. I’ve opened my favorite wine, and I’m drinking it out of a wine glass he gave me.

Last night, just as I was falling asleep, my son asked if Thoth, our black kitten, was with me.

He wasn’t.

I assumed he was on our fenced porch.

He wasn’t.

Our adult cat is indoor/outdoor. He jumps the fence regularly.

When we discovered our other kitten, Graymalkin, was blind, however, we wanted to keep the kittens inside.

Graymalkin, strangely, figured out the cat door first (he also tore up the carpet in front of the cat door when we locked it, which led to us deciding he should be allowed the few feet of porch).

Thoth watched it all, but didn’t follow to the porch until earlier this week.
He only figured out how to jump on to the bathroom counter two days ago, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

Apparently, once he gets going, he progresses quickly.

The boy went out to look for him around the neighborhood. I did too, but I stayed closer to the house. After calling him for a while, I heard his distressed cry.

He had jumped the fence, but only made it into the neighbors’ fenced porch.

The neighbors weren’t home, but I found a loose board (sadly, we all have loose boards). I was able to gently bend it just enough to reach my hand through near the top–and I asked him to climb up to me.

He did, and I was able to get him out.

Once we were back inside, he ran to the now-locked cat door.

[A Davis doctor’s office. This last Tuesday.]

My doctor came back into the room.

“Are you sure you want the shot?”

“Yes.”

“The nurse is afraid to give it to you–she’s thinking about what happened last time she injected you with this drug.”

“That wasn’t her fault–I’m just that weirdo that all the weird stuff happens to. Send her in.”

“Okay, but she really doesn’t want to.”

Several years ago, my back went out. My doctor ordered a shot of Toradol, a drug I’d had before. It usually breaks the pain cycle enough for the back to even out after a few days.

On that day, I made a noise when the needle went in. The nurse and I were both surprised it hurt that much, especially since it has to go into the thick ass muscle. But I got my bandaid on and went home.

I went to sleep early that night. When I woke up, I thought I had rolled over on a book.

A hardcover book.

Something was under me.

Except there was no book–just a giant blood bruise–six by four inches–across my ass cheek.

I was scheduled to see my GERD doctor the next day, so I ended our appointment by making things uncomfortable–

“I have a weird blister from a shot on my butt–can you look at it and tell me if I need to see someone else about it, officially?”

He declared it big but fine and fled the room. His nurse, who had had to come in, since I’d dropped my pants, said it was the largest blood bruise she had ever seen.

Two days later, I was getting my allergy shots. I hadn’t been able to sleep, due to the discomfort, so I asked my allergy nurse if there was something I could do to ease the pain of my bruise/hematoma.

“What bruise?”

I showed her.

“Oh, hell!”

The original nurse who had given the shot was summoned, as was my doctor. There was consternation all around.

My doctor cleaned the wound and bandaged it. He said I would have to come back the next week to get the bandaged changed.

“I can’t–I’m gonna be at a conference in Oxford.”

And then they started telling me that I couldn’t go, in case I got necrosis. I over-rode them, explaining that I would keep a good look at for necrosis and that I was going to a country with better healthcare than ours.

The 9 hour plane ride was not fun.

When I had to change the bandage, halfway through the conference, what I saw was truly gross–it wasn’t black or red or green, but there were multiple layers of skin that were simply gone.

Having promised to check in, I sent a message to my doctor’s office: “No necrosis, but it looks like something took a big bite out of my ass.”

In the years since, the nurse has checked my ass whenever she’s worked with me–there’s a scar. My doctor told me he had to counsel her quite a few times after the bruise–she kept trying to figure out what she had done wrong.

But she hadn’t. As he explained, when you give thousands of shots, one of them will eventually create a hematoma.

Tuesday, she walked into the room. “When I saw your name, and the drug, I didn’t want to come in.”

“I know.”

She made sure to give me the shot on the other side, away from the scar.

It’s two days later, and there’s no bite.

My (grand)daddy died almost two years ago–the one thing I wanted of his was his salt shaker. Those close to me know how much it means–I’ve written a whole creative nonfiction piece about it.

Alas, others decided it was not to be mine.

The other day, my son expressed frustration–he said he thought he had found a business that makes them. After months of trying to communicate with them, though, he still hadn’t gotten anywhere.

And my heart about burst.

My son has apparently been trying to find a new salt shaker–one that will still remind me of daddy, but one I will be able to hold and to pass down myself.

And that’s exactly what my daddy would be doing right now.

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers.

Love each other, like the meat loves the salt.

Update: May 2019

My beloved friend Vanessa found a shaker like Daddy’s on the day she read the original blog. She sent it to my son, who presented it to me as my mother’s day present, which coincided almost exactly with Daddy’s death anniversary.

It’s an antique (like Daddy’s)–I know now it’s a teak Dansk shaker–the “Rosie.”

When I showed it to book group, I explained that I was having trouble figuring out how to refill it. Much Googling later, we discovered that one has to remove the pegs, which were unmovable.

Within moments, an expert friend of book group was found.

And so this shaker is full, in a home far from my original one. With the best family one could ever have.