It's day 29. Does your computer know when your period starts? My iPod just warned me that I'm about to be incredibly cranky. Using my past blog posts as a guide, by searching for key words like "horrible cramps" and "PMS", I found some details of my last few periods to set up the background data. For years I've found myself blogging in the middle of the night while crying and complaining. Then some commenter, usually my sister, will go "Your life sucks? You mean just like how it did right about this time last month?" How embarrassing that it always hits me as a giant surprise.

That can lead to its own endless loop of wondering whether I'm having a "real" emotional reaction or whether it's "just my period", or whether blaming actual emotions which are *all* real on PMS is a big old bunch of hype and lies and cultural conditioning. I used to believe that, probably because in my teens and twenties I bled like a delicate little bird-fairy made of mist and lace and rubies. Then I hit 30, went through pregnancy, and realized other people weren't just making that stuff up. Cramps can be horrendous. That scene in The Long Secret when Beth Ellen lies around for a whole day absolutely overcome by ennui? Suddenly understandable. Bouts of despair and irrational sobbing? Check. Ready to bite everyone's head off? Going to kill anyone who says the phrase "Just a cramp" as I moan in pain clutching my belly? Yes!! Making dumb jokes about getting a six-pack of Big Red? Uhhh no. Well, not until just now.

Then there was that time I Twittered, "It's like there's a murder victim in my pants." Did everyone need to know that? Probably not! But what a relief it was to say. It made me laugh. It reflected the reality of what I was dealing with that day. And a lot of people wrote me back to commiserate. That was amazingly comforting.

Do you blog about your period? Do you announce it to all and sundry, or do you draw a merciful curtain for the sake of your readers, co-workers, family, friends, and your own dignity?

Here's a quick link round-up:

* Womanist Musings warns us all of the perils of tampon theft! Especially if you're her children, and are playing… tampon bumper cars?!

I sent the unhusband to the store to get me a brand new box.  When he arrived home, I read them all the riot act.  “There is no reason for any male person in this house to be using my tampons,” I announced.  "I have absolutely had it and from now on Mommy’s tampons are off limits”. 

* Heather from No Pasa Nada gets cranky about politics and television and gets in fights and feels icky: Guess what! I'm getting my period!

* Sarcastic Mom with her short but heartfelt Letter to PMS:

Dear PMS,
I do not like you. You do not actually make me more powerful, you just make me want to break people in half all day long. You do not help me deal with my emotions more effectively, you just make me cry at things that should not be cried at (the fight scene in Ice Age? Really? No. Really?)

Her blogging muse apparently fled in terror from her rampaging uterus!

* Blogger Queen describes her ideal PMS hospital ward completely cracked me up.

* Rita Arens in Mommy's Bloated and Bleeding. Get Excited! has some previous link-roundup action going on and some hilarious commentary. "You will need to explain to your daughter what it is going to feel like to have her period.  Like hot, buttered squash is filling your tummy, but not in good way. Oh, and you're leaking."

* Loralee's Looney Tunes recommends the PMS Buddy app for men. I confess, I tried this app, because my relationship with my period is so deep in denial, it might as well be happening to another person. Now I have a little warning meter graphic that goes "into the red". Note that you can put all the women you know into it too. Find out if you're all synchronized. But for actual usefulness, I prefer iPeriod, which has a calendar with little mood icons and, amusingly, a checkbox for when you have a "love connection". You know that someone had a lot of creative business meetings to think of that name for it.

As a final low yet uplifting bit of humor, I leave you, dear readers, with the Poke-Mons Pikachu menstrual pads from Helen Killer's Regretsy blog, thewomen's underwear with Robert Pattinson's face on them for Twilight fans who really, really want Edward to drink their blood, and Craftastropher's highlighting of the Bedazzled Menses felted, rhinestoned fake tampon finger puppet.

p.s. Usually I advise you all to "Enjoy" and I love your blogs and love everything but NOT TODAY. Thank god I'm finally done with this post that I hate, the way I HATE EVERYTHING.