1 August 2002

PMS does weird, weird things to a person.

For one thing, I can tell when I'm PMSing because I'm hungry all the time. Yesterday was a case in point: Ate breakfast at 8:45. At 9:30 I was hungry again. I forced myself through sheer will not to eat until noon. At 1:30 I was hungry again. I tried to exercise willpower again, but my willpower is only good for so long. At 3:30 I gave up and had a Snickers bar from the vending machine.

At 4:30, home from work, I had some Fritos. I went down to Newport News and picked up K.T. and Kevin and we went to the movies to see K-19: The Widomaker. K.T. and Kevin have a "MovieWatcher" card, so we all got tickets for a free small popcorn. Probably the only reason I didn't finish mine is that I hate putting my hand all the way into the bag. (In case you're wondering, K.T. hated the movie; I thought it was okay but could have been paced better - they couldn't decide whether to make it a drama or a documentary. I'm not sure what Kevin thought.)

Afterwards, we went to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner. Popcorn grease lingers for a long while, and I had a splitting headache; I didn't think I could eat much. I planned to eat half my dinner and take the other half home.

Twenty minutes later, I looked down and it was all gone. I didn't (miracle of miracles!) have a snack after I got home, though.

This is why diets fail me, at least in part. I simply don't have the sheer willpower to get through an entire day - much less a whole week of constant craving.

Weird things happen to your brain on PMS, too. Here's an example. Here's a bit of conversation:

Friend: When I was at the grocery store last night, this guy tried to pick me up!
You: Oh, really?
Friend: Yeah, I was right there at the salad bar and he asked if I wanted to go to dinner sometime!
You: Wow, that kind of thing never happens to me!
Friend: Of course I told him I was flattered but married. I couldn't believe it!

In non-PMS mode, what you are thinking is, She seems excited. That's kind of cool. I wish stuff like that would happen to me once in a while. Maybe it does, and I just don't notice. Or maybe it's because whenever I actually go anywhere, my husband is with me. But it's neat! We still got it!

It's not that simple on PMS. On PMS, you think, She seems excited. That's kind of cool. How come stuff like that never happens to me? I'm just as pretty as she is, aren't I? Except I don't think a random stranger has ever in my whole life tried to pick me up, so I guess not. What's she got that I don't? The only guy who thinks I'm pretty is my husband... and he could just be faking it because he has to. Gods, why doesn't she shut up? I said that stuff never happens to me; doesn't she get it that I'm ragingly jealous? She wants me to be jealous, that's why she keeps talking about it. Okay, okay, I get it: you're more appealing than I am and always have been and always will be, now will you just shut up? ((Maybe she's just excited?)) Yeah, right! She's feeding her ego at the expense of mine. Why do I always get the short end of this stick? Everyone I know is better than me at everything. Why can't I be on top for once? Gods, I'm pathetic and useless. And ugly. And hungry.

And then you have to go either kill your friend, kill yourself, or eat a chocolate bar.

And your friend, rambling on in her excitement, wonders why you're suddenly snarfing down a whole bag of Hershey's Kisses and snarlingly irritable.

And your only consolation is that eventually, when she's PMSing, you'll happen to say something perfectly innocent that her brain will warp into eventual proof of her utterly pathetic and horrible lack of reason to exist.

Worse yet, you have the normal version of the conversation, and then two weeks or so later, when PMS kicks in, your brain - lacking any immediate material with which to torture you, dredges the conversation up out of memory and replays it while you're in the shower and forces you to have this absurd surrealist conversation with yourself that ends with something like,

Gods, that's so ludicrous... but so true. I should write a journal entry about it.

--Liz