Period.

The Madonna mega-million tickets have FINALLY been confirmed as being received by the eBay stalker girl. You have no idea how much this relieves me as I had visions of our uber-expensive tickets floating in the lost world of postal hell. Enough of that. Don't talk to me about Madonna for at least a month. Period.

Here is a photo of the new wood floor. I know, I know, that is not very exciting for you, dear blog reader, but it is exciting to me. Boy, the room looks teeny tiny from this view. It looks bigger now that the wife has put back some of the furniture (she hasn't put it all back in the room as Floor Man has to return and put the transition piece and the quarter round in). The wife wants this finished NOW as she does not like to have things left undone. Floor man is doing this as a side job and thus can only come over when his other jobs are canceled due to the weather. This means the wife has to wait and fret and obsess. I just look at the floor and smile because it is so beautiful. I remain amazed that a floor can make me smile. The wife is not smiling and won't be until the floor is done. I tell her that patience is a virtue, which is REALLY funny coming from me because I have no patience of my own. She wants it done. Period!

Speaking of periods (and you SHOULD have seen where this was going), we went to "Game Night" last night our friends' house. This is an event where we go to Chick-a-hello and Dizzy's abode, eat ridiculous amounts of food and don't ever play any games. There is so much food you want to vomit. (It's like being on that cruise ship but only you are on land, but there is that much food, all home made. Chick-a-hello gets crazed when it comes to having food for company.) Anyways, Chick-a-hello's daughter turned 16 this week, so we had Game Night in her honor. As you can imagine, it is probably pretty embarrassing to have a bunch of your mom's friends over for your 16th birthday, but that's what happened and that's what "I-want-a-car-Katydids" had to endure. She's known all of us her entire life; in fact, many of us were present for her actual birth, so she should be used to this behavior from her mother by now. IWAC-Katydid is also used to us yipping about embarrassing (to her) discussion topics and so it should have been no surprise to her that last night--during her birthday-game night party--the conversation somehow turned to having your period.

Can you imagine how mortifying this is for some poor 16 year old? Grown women sitting around a table full of food talking about menstruation. I'm sure IWAC-Katydid wanted to DIE right there and then.

We, of course, were hooting and hollering during this stroll down memory lane. We're talking "Do you remember the sanitary napkin belt?" kind of laughing. It all started because Chick-a-hello mentioned that she still has her high school gym class gym suit. (Why she has this when she is 50 years old, we do not know.) This somehow tangentially led to talking about getting your period, learning that this event that was going to eventually happen, memories of what happened when the blessed event arrived. There were stories of going to "the lecture" in 5th grade where the school nurse took all the girls to talk about menstruation and not knowing what the hell this lady was talking about to initial tampon triumphs. There was talk of the problems associated with sanitary napkin belts to the problems with winged maxi-pads. But, my absolute favorite story of the night was when Chick-a-hello talked about her first attempt at using a tampon.

This was a very in-depth story, of which I shall not recall here, as the details are too much for you delicate blog devotees. But, I cannot leave out SOME of the details, as the story was so funny the wife was turning red and trying not to snort while laughing. Poor Chick-a-hello. She had to figure out the whole tampon thing on her own, without verbal or written direction. Seems she was somewhere not near home and got her period. The only thing the person she was with had was a tampon.

Girls of the world, I swear this is true. Chick-a-hello took that tampon out of the wrapper, stared at it, took the plunge (literally and figuratively) and put that puppy in where the sun don't shine.

Problem was that she didn't know you weren't supposed to leave the cardboard applicator in.

Chick-a-hello couldn't figure out why, wow, this whole tampon thing wasn't very comfortable. In fact, it pretty much was painful. So much for all the girls saying how comfortable tampons were to use.

Thankfully, her pained expression and inability to walk normally clued in someone and they explained to her that you don't leave the cardboard applicator in. Too bad someone didn't explain to her how long a tampon might actually "work," as her next problem was that she thought she could just leave it in there and it would magically work all day. You can imagine the result of THAT misunderstanding.....

I think I saw IWAC-Katydid crawl under the table at this point.

If you were 16 years old and your mother was talking about tampons and having your period .....wouldn't you crawl under the table, too?

Ah well, that's what being a teenager is all about--being mortified by your parents. Period.