Day 9: Waiting to Pee. Again.

I wake up this morning all excited to take yet another surge indicator test and I'm extra happy because I totally have to pee and the directions tell you that the "first morning" pee is the one you want only they call it urine, not pee. So I pee on the little stick and the little readout is reading it and I set it down because it takes a couple of minutes.

And then I go into the kitchen and eat an grapefruit. Then I put the kettle on to boil. Then I try to scrub the muffin pan that I made mini-quiches in last night in last night. They egg is stuck to the bottom of the goddamned little muffin cups and curse myself for forgetting to put little paper muffin liners in the little cups, and then I remember I want to put in a load of laundry...Do you know where I'm going with this? If you have taken these tests, then you know that you have a small window of time when the readout is displayed and then it clears itself out and goes blank. Yeah. I remember the surge test and I run to the bathroom, and: blank.

Now I have to wait until I have to pee again and I totally don't have to pee right now and drinking more water just sort of dilutes the whole thing, so I have to wait for a real pee, not a forced just-drank-a-gallon-of-water pee. I'm am a huge, multi-tasking dork.

Day Four: Egg Pop?

So, I heard some disturbing news the other day. My friend, O., informed me that, if I've never experienced it before, this month, I should definitely feel an egg being released from my ovary.

What the WHAT?

I've been menstruating for 26 years without feeling that little egg pop through to my tubes, and I certainly don't want to start now.

Maybe all of these years when I thought I had indigestion...?

Just for fun, I decided to Google this whole concept. You know what? You know how you can enable that feature in Google where it finishes the phrase you're thinking about writing for you? Well, as I typed the words, "I can feel myself ovu--"...it finished it for me!

There are a whole lotta ladies out there talking about their ovulation sensations. One blog, appropriately titled, "VaginaPagina" --yes, really-- features several posts from dozens of women happily engaged in shared ovulation sensation experience. That's it, no other questions, just statements about how ovulation feels.

All but one. She posted that she was jealous cause she never felt a thing. (No, it wasn't me.)

But I think I'm starting to figure out this shared-experience thing.

As we grow up, nformation about our reproductive systems is passed along surreptitiously: in darkened classrooms in the fourth grade when we're forced to watch grainy movies about "Your Body"; between the dog-eared pages of Judy Blume novels; through whispered old wives tales'("don't kiss him in a wet bathing suit"); and the ever-present, omniscient voice of "a friend of a friend."

Being a woman has so many upsides -- pink lipstick, platform sandals, Gloria Gaynor songs -- but also so much that's kept way underground. I'm glad all of the friends of friends are finally banding together. We'll figure it all out.