Miracles of Nature-- male readers beware

I found myself obsessively cleaning tonight. This is not an overly bizarre occurrence, as I tend to go through cycles of neat-freakery (invisible to my more obsessively clean friends, but within my messy world true marvels of dusting, organising and even sweeping. Dust pan and all.) followed by descents into slobbery, followed by denial and then sudden outbursts of frenzied clearing up. What is interesting, however, is that as I paused after picking up my 37th object-- yes, I count the things I pick up. I pick up in cycles of 5, 10, 25 and 50-- and I recalled the lesson we had on menstruation in my Female Sexuality class. Apparently, along with such glories as cramps, bloating, and irritability, one of the signs of an encroaching period is compulsive cleaning, which is apparently related to nesting behavious or something of that sort.

Do I fit the signs? Well, I'm due to start tomorrow or the day after, I have spent the combined total of a couple hours examining my stomach in the mirror and wondering when it got so darn puffy, I accused Jon of implying that I was fat not once, but four times over the course of the weekend (poor, long-suffering man), and I almost burst into tears while reading an article in Vogue. I am officially premenstrual. What is of interest here is not sharing ruminations on my cycle with my faceless and not-so-faceless tiny audience of readers, but the crazy fact that as a female, my hormones govern me to the point of making me clean up after myself, to attract a potential mate or something? Utter insanity. The body is a crazy crazy thing. I grow more fascinated by its workings by the day.

And now, continuing with this theme, I leave you with a link to an utterly hilarious Gloria Steinem article, entitled "If Men could Menstruate". I read it to Jon and he guffawed, so it's not feminaziesque in the least, and also male friendly. Do go look.