Fresh Scent. New Pants.

As regular as the turning of the earth and the return of high tide, my period comes each month on the same weekend as this "Executive Certificate Program" at my work. During "Executive Program Weekend" a bunch of executives have classes at a law firm downtown, and I am the official caterer, coffee bitch and dishwashing scullery maid.
I also work six days a week during Executive Program Weekend, and this Friday was a thirteen hour day for me. Saturday was a lot better... my day started at 7:00 am and ended at 5:45 pm! Lots of fun stuff happens during Program Weekend, such as pre-ordered bagel platters going "missing" from a bagel shop which shall remain unnmamed, even though I not only ordered the bagel platter from a girl with the same name as me, but I also called to double check and confirm my order the day before the event, and my caterer showing up at 12:20 for a 12:30 lunch.

But perhaps the BEST thing that happened was that my period started, and it wasn't like some courteous little trickle... it was like a scene from a horror movie, or from the latest novel in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, wherein a baby half vampire rips its mother apart when it's time to be born. I'll skip the gory details, but I had to walk down Market Street with a sweater tied around my waist and go and buy a new skirt to wear, and my pants had to be discarded. There is no saving them. That's how much of a bloody mess it all was.

Why did this happen? Well, yes, I knew my period was coming, and I did buy an anticipatory box of tampons a few days prior, however I accidentally bought "Fresh Scent" tampons, which I realized with horror at 6:00 am Friday morning. They smelled like Raid ant and roach killer. I cannot stick a Raid-scented tampon inside my body. I'm afraid I will get instant cervical cancer if I do. So I was relying on my last wimpy "regular absorbency" non-scented tampon to carry me through from the time I left my house at 6:35, went to the grocery store, shopped for last-minute food for the Executive breakfast (and more tampons) drove to the law firm, unloaded my carload of food, piled it onto a rolling delivery pallet, got my security badge, and finally took the freight elevator to the law office where I would hopefully get to the bathroom in time (at around 8:10 am) to insert a new tampon before bathing the entire city or just the crotch of my really nice pants in my menstrual blood. Yeah. Didn't happen. I ended up spending $98 on a skirt (couldn't get pants because I'm so short that all my pants have to be hemmed before I can wear them) and $18 on a new pair of panties. But hey, there is no time to shop for bargains when one has bloody pants and about 11 more hours of work. I just don't understand why some people's periods trickle out in a predictable, manageable way and mine is more like someone pouring out a glass of water for a day, and then it pretty much ends. I've been to the doctor and they say there is nothing wrong with me down there. Executive Program weekend is just not a good weekend for my gushing geyser period. It's really best to be close to home, or at least to the bathroom at work. One time I even dropped blood on the floor of Macy's downtown, and had to stand there squeezing my thighs together while my friend ran to the bathroom to get me a wad of toilet paper. Now that was really awful. That was probably the worst thing that ever happened with my weird explosive period.

And since a skirt is not really a replacement for a pair of work pants, I also bought a new pair of work pants this weekend, bringing the menstrual financial toll to about $220 this weekend!