I'm (not) on Alesse!

Note: I'm going to be talking about birth control in this post. Some of you might feel more comfortable reading this or this instead...

Girl, you'll be a woman soon...

Anyway: I’ve been thinking about the birth control pill since yesterday, when I read Eidolon’s post about having cystic acne on her pill. I have very mixed feelings about the pill, and sometimes I feel trapped between the ‘your body, your choice’ ideal of feminism and my own (bad) experiences with hormonal methods of birth control.

My own experiences with the pill go something like this:

1. Go on the pill in high school to help with acne
2. Love the pill, despite gaining 15 pounds and 2 cup sizes
3. Encourage all of my female friends to go on the same brand of pill
4. Randomly bleed for a whole month after 2.5 years on the same pill; decide to stop taking it, against my doctor’s orders to keep using it with a ‘this too shall pass’ attitude. Right.
5. Do not lose extra weight or cup sizes for 5 years!!!
6. Find out that said brand of pill has been recalled due to higher than average risk of blood clots (4x the risk); tell my friends to switch brands
7. Start learning about alternative methods of contraception (in my case, fertility awareness and/or condoms)
8. Get a phone call one night that my youngest sister is in the hospital emergency with a serious blood clot in her leg… from the pill
9. Begin plotting the destruction of the Ortho-Jansen headquarters

Despite my own experiences, many if not most of the women I know use the pill with no problems and they love the freedom it affords them. They generally don’t (need to) worry about condoms, and some of them even use the pill to delay a period if it happens to fall during an inconvenient time (though that kind of skeezes me out…)

Maybe I’m not only suspicious of the pill but also envious of the women who can use it without issues… ‘Easy, breezy, beautiful’ kind of thing. For me, I love the intimate knowledge of my body that comes along with fertility awareness and charting my cycles, but sometimes a teeny tiny part of me just wishes I could just turn my fertility on or off when it was convenient for me. No more of this ‘watch and wait’ natural approach… Then again, I never felt disgruntled about my natural method until I got pregnant a few months ago.

For over three years, I tried to challenge people’s assumptions about fertility awareness methods of birth control and proved by example how effective it could be at preventing pregnancy. Then I got lazy and decided to ‘wing it’ for a month in the Czech Republic… Be thee not so relaxed on your holidays!

Getting pregnant was a giant wake up call for me. Not only was I suddenly confronted head on by a rash of doctors chastising me for not using a more ‘reliable’ method of birth control, but I also felt a profound sense of sadness, like I had abandoned my body and was therefore no longer allowed to share in her secrets. I always imagined that I would be one of the women who knew she was pregnant right when it happened, but I didn’t find out until I was staring in disbelief at a positive pregnancy test four weeks later. Even then, I thought for sure there must have been some mistake.

Having lost touch with the daily signs of my body back when I decided I didn’t really ‘need’ to chart my fertility every day, my nine weeks of being pregnant were dazed and confused. I was indecisive, foggy, and I felt like an outsider in my own body. In between visits to the hospital for spotting, I looked longingly at old fertility charts of mine, and I wished I hadn’t lost my sense of awe and wonder at the workings of my body. I made a promise to myself that if I were given another opportunity, I wouldn’t take my fertility for granted, and I wouldn’t neglect my charting again unless I was planning to become pregnant.

Then I miscarried.

I am back on the charting bandwagon now, but even so, I still think about the birth control pill a lot. Do I have a responsibility to tell other women about the risks of hormonal methods of birth control, knowing like I do that real people end up with lifelong health conditions because of them? (My sister still injects herself daily with blood thinners to prevent another clot from forming, and it’s been over two years now). Can I still speak highly of fertility awareness methods, knowing firsthand like I do that any slip in diligence can mean an instant pregnancy? Ultimately, I still believe that every woman has a right to use whatever method works best for her, but that doesn’t negate the hunch I have that none of the available methods are ideal.

Delurk-a-long

OK, OK—I’m not the best at these ‘a-long’ things, but de-lurking is something I think I can handle. Call me an exhibitionist (or not. Actually, on second thought, please don't). Anywho, for future reference:

I’m the oldest of three girls in my family, and I’m also quite possibly the nerdiest. (Before I would have resented the title, but now I call dibs!)

From left to right: The nerdy one, the cute one, and the creative one!

I’m going to be a first-time aunt in April.

I met Marty on a Saturday night, fell in love with him by early Sunday morning, and (being the good Catholic girl I am) moved in with him on Monday. Since then, we have spent a maximum of 10 nights apart from each other.

I believe in guardian angels, and I feel like Marty was a gift to me from the spirit of my Dido.

My husband is closer in age to my mother than he is to me (one of the zanier fallouts from a teenage pregnancy. Also a lesson from karma—see below).

I learned to knit when I was seven years old (in good ol’ Red Heart Acrylic—gotta [heart] the Red Heart!), but I didn’t pursue it seriously until it was too late for me to show off my hand-knit items to my teacher, my dear Baba.

I have been a vegetarian since I was 12 years old. Having to force down tiny pieces of meat is what prevented me from going vegetarian earlier (my parents—god love them—didn’t know much better at the time). Cheese is what will forever stand in the way of my being a vegan. I. Love. Cheese.

I have O negative blood. Thus, if I were to follow the Eat Right For Your Blood Type diet, I would subsist on red meat, mostly.

I take a twisted pride in shirking all of the essay-formatting skills I practiced diligently in my 6 years of university. I especially like the liberation that comes along with using random punctuation (dashes, commas, brackets, and too many exclamation points!!!), sentence fragments, and altered spelling for laffs. Grammar, be gone!

People used to make fun of me for having a space between my front teeth. It used to make me self-conscious, but now it makes me proud. (Me + Madonna = BFF. Or if not BFF, then at least co-presidents of the Gap Tooth Club.)

My hair has spanned the gamut in length and colors. It’s been shaved, short, medium, long, and really long; brown, red, orange, navy, black, burgundy, and even platinum blonde (Never. Again.) I think the ‘true me’ is locked up in my short, spiky hairstyle of yesteryears, but I appreciate my current cape of long hair, too.

<-- People change. Luckily, so do hairstyles and make-up!

I’ve had to learn (the hard way) that you become what you judge on numerous occasions. I’ve even found myself asking a random grocery cashier out on a date after making fun of people who hit on me when I was bagging their groceries. Don’t mess with karma, man. Anything is possible with her.

I am a Cancer-Gemini cusp, and horoscopes for both zodiac signs often ring true for me. I guess that makes me a two-faced romantic with rollercoaster emotions and a dislike for all things feelings-related…?

I can talk about menstruation, fertility cycles, and healthy sexuality for a lot longer than most people care to listen. As somebody dear to me once summarized: “My name is Dana. I like to knit and bleed.” True dat.


And what about you, my loyal readers? Are you ready to join the delurk-a-long? Post a comment! Come out of those cyber-shadows! Do what you will, but please do the delurk!

Quick and Dirty

So yesterday we decided that a gentle stroll along the ocean beaches was in order. It was Marty’s birthday, the sun was shining, the tide was low, and there were many crabs and tiny fish to be located in the tide pools.

Well, we turned over rocks and saw many crabs, we played with other people’s dogs on the hard-packed sand, and we sat on a bench overlooking the pristine blue ocean waves. However, we also ended up getting lost in a bog, caught in an overgrown raspberry bush (in a down vest, no less), and stranded on one side of a random moat dug in between a park and a residential street.

This is how my once-pink runners came to look like this:

Today there will be no walking. Only patient scrubbing of the shoes.

Birthday wishes!

Oh, that happy feeling!

Happy birthday to Kathy today, and best wishes to Marty for his birthday tomorrow! Both of them were born in the same year, but what’s interesting is that Kathy was born on the last day of the Year of the Dog and Marty was born on the first day of the Year of the Pig. Just a bit of zodiac trivia for y’all…

See you next week, dear readers!

Two's a Charm

Well, I’m happy to announce that the universe takes care of its young! A mere 1.5 days after I kinda bombed a certain job interview question, I was in another interview— this time for a position I was more interested in— answering the same question like a downright natural. A natural, I tell you! Thanks for all of your input, and bonus points to Mama Tangerine for her woolly sheep answer (see comments). Anything that can bring farm animals into a job interview setting is an instant classic, if you ask me. It reminds me of that time back in Computer Science class when my friend dared me to ask the prof if our resumé assignment had to be typed. Instant. Classic.


So, after two job interviews in one week, I’m feeling a little exhausted. Having to be ‘on’ (and preparing to be ‘on’) can really take a lot out of a girl! That must mean it’s time for a movie and some feel-good knitting.


Everything about this scarf-in-progress makes me feel good: the colour, the mindless but pretty lace repeats, and the fact that it’s from a charity pattern. When I make it again (and you know I will), it will be thinner and shorter, but this one will be perfect as a cover for my meditation table. Blissful, peaceful sighs all around!

And then there's my latest e-bay purchase to get the creative juices flowing: a 60s hat pattern book!



This pattern really blows my skirt up: (as does the top left cover shot of the sequined lamp shade hat... does that mean I'm strange?)



This one, not so much:



Though I'm sure a spaghetti beret does it for some people... (and as a side note, doesn't the bottom model look like Bree from Desperate Housewives?) Well, take care for now, dear readers. I'll be back again tomorrow with a birthday post for Kathy and Marty!