i’m all weepy again

I’m home today.  I crawled over to the computer to do this.  You see, I have learned that as wonderful as my new allergy medicine is (and check out their website— it’s pretty scary), it causes terrible pain once a month.  Not that I wasn’t already in pain, but now it’s heightened in such a lovely way that my spine hurts and when I wake up in the middle of the night (which you do all the time on this stuff- it’s got some sort of non-drowsy formula that works while you’re sleeping, too) I find that my body is tightly packed into the fetal position.

Speaking of the fetal position, I’ve been watching a series on TLC for the last two nights that is incredible.  It’s called The Human Body (which I’m sure there’s like nine thousand other series called that but, whatever), and in this miniseries they are showing things that have never been filmed before.  They showed the moment of ovulation.  They took a series of ultrasounds and layered them together to show what a fetus would look like.  This eight part series only showed the first four last night and the night before, and the other half airs in August (do not think that I don’t feel like a big geek for getting hooked on a science mini-series that isn’t airing the other half until August just to keep me in suspense), so if you get a chance, do check it out.  If you like Biology like I do.  Because if you don’t, you’ll just end up going to sleep like Eric did.

So I end up watching these shows alone and I know that I’m in a weak and vulnerable position emotionally right now, but I didn’t know how much until I started watching this show.  We follow a woman named Phillipa for nine months through her pregnancy, and they have a film that shows her entire process in less than a minute of her body growing to term and all…. did you know that a woman’s heart has to grow so that it can pump enough blood for both mother and baby and since the baby is pushing all of the mother’s organs up high into her body to make room the heart turns on its side?   Anyway, sixty minutes later the baby is born and I’m crying along with the mother.

Next part of the miniseries:  little babies are demonstrating the diving reflex (see above) and I think these things are so cute swimming around like little fish that I start tearing up.

This is where my brain kicked in:

[scripty]
BRAIN
Yeah, uh, Pamie?  

PAMIE
Yeah?  

BRAIN
Yeah, hi.  You okay?  

PAMIE
The babies!  They’re all swimming around with their eyes all big.  

BRAIN
Yeah, it’s real cute.  Look.  You need to do something else with your evening, I think.  

PAMIE
But I want to watch the show!  

BRAIN
Okay.  I don’t want to take away the “Adventure for Your Mind,” but can you throw away all the drama and waterworks?  You think?  

PAMIE
You’re the one flooding me with these emotions anyway.  Doctor Robert Winston just told me so.  

BRAIN
See?  This show just fills your head with ideas.  

PAMIE
Look at the baby swimming.  He doesn’t even know how to talk and he can swim.  

BRAIN
Christ.  At least feed me some chocolate if we’re gonna be here all night.   And we were there all night.  We watched Zach take his first steps:  I’m crying. We watched triplets get dropped off on their first day of school:  buckets.  We see children trying to understand puberty:  sorta crying just in the memory of having gone through it.And while I sat there wiping my tears and drinking my chamomile tea an Allegra commercial came on, and because the commercials are now so informative and honest about all of their side affects, everything made sense.
[/scripty]

But I’m stupid.  I’m really stupid.  I don’t listen to my brain.  Or all of it, or whatever Dr. Winston said that the hormones do, (I don’t know, babies were swimming!).  So I turn on HBO.  And I watch Dare to Compete:  The Struggle of Women in Sports.

Now my hormones are freaking out.  I’m all filled with Estrogen and getting pissed off about things.  I’m crying and shivering when Billie Jean King wins the Tennis Battle of the Sexes.  I’m all excited about Title IX enough that I wish I had known about it just so I would have played sports in high school… I thought about how not all sports were available to girls back in my high school… I wished that I had done something about it.  I wished that I had more time as a kid to do extra-curricular activities.  I wished that I had gotten to join a soccer team or play field hockey.  I wished that I hadn’t stopped track and field.  I looked at my Tae-Bo tapes and just got disgusted at myself for not being a real jock.  I thought about finding out where there’s an ice hockey team around here and making sure I get myself on it.  I thought about giving up shows or work or whatever just to make sure that I fulfill my duty as a woman to be athletic.  To be somebody’s hero.

And then I got hit with a cramp, and I sat down, and I whimpered a little, and then I just sort of hummed the Rocky theme to myself and made plans for the future.  Besides, what was I going to do at eleven o’clock at night, anyway, right?

And after yesterday’s sports discussion, I’m feeling all Sporty Spice lately.  That and I got some new sports bras.  Hey, now.  Tae-Bo works quickly on your upper body.

So today I sit here feeling stupid for being in pain, feeling like a big puss for not wanting to move, wishing I was doing something strong and productive.  I’m drinking Naya, does that count?