LGBTAitP Part 23: Et tu, ~Bianca?

[Qaera]

She is male to female, yes. I'm not following your logic in asking.

Sorry, missed half a word.

~ ♅

[noparlpf]

Thought you might enjoy this, Kender. And others interested in similar things, of course.

I laughed all the way through.

[bluewind95]

Re PMS:

Spoiler

Show

I'm sorry, but I can't help but cringe when someone says they'd like to have PMS (or, as I term it... MS). Take a look at this pretty little chart. Now, for some comparison. The chronic joint pain that disables me and has me walking around with a cane and unable to work? That ranges from 4 in a good day to 8 when I'm curled up crying and writhing. OK. Sounds bad, right? Well. My MS cramps? They pretty darned often get to 9. And yeah, that description isn't kidding when it says you demand ANYTHING to stop the pain. I once managed to get enough of a painkiller overdose that I ended up with a pulse of 40 or so and I don't want to know what happened to my blood pressure. All I know is that I finally was half-knocked out and slept for hours before I started to recover. So not only do I get completely excruciating pain every few months or so (THANKFULLY they don't always get to 9 in that scale. Sometimes they stay 7-8).

The thing about what's termed PMS (the cramps and such) is that it's not even a normal thing. It's a disorder. The proper term for it is dysmenorrhea. It's really not normal. A little pain or discomfort can be normal. But the PMS that makes some of us want to murder everything in sight in the most sadistic way possible isn't. So yes... it kind of makes me cringe when people day "Hey, I want that!". No you don't. You should want a normal cycle.

[KenderWizard]

Like me. Well, I'm not that incapacitated, but there are times I am hardly able to function or think properly. I don't know what I would do without my handy monthly painkillers.
And yet I've met girls who didn't understand that and emphasized the "natural=good" part of PMS... *seething anger*
I feel like it's the wrong parts that are overdramatized. Hormones? Yes, they're involved, but it's not what turns some women into rabid monsters or agonizing trainwrecks (having been both, I feel these terms apply to me, yes). It's the pain. And occasionally, the utter annoyance of inadvertently staining clothes. If people understand prolonged pain is a huge factor in what makes Gregory House extremely cranky, they should be able to understand the same goes for many individuals every month.

Yes, exactly! (I suspect women who go in for "I love PMS because it means I'm in tune with my body" don't get bad cramps. It's the only thing that makes sense.)

You're unfamiliar with Pratchett's stuff? That shocks me.

I have a feeling you'd be happiest starting with the Tiffany Aching stuff. It's young adult-y (even moreso than most of what he writes), but good young adult-y. Plus, it's where the pictsies are introduced.

Starts here.

Ohhh. No, I'm very familiar with Pratchett, I just never got into the Tiffany Aching stuff. I did read Wintersmith, ages ago.

No, in the cases I mentioned the pain plays no role; SSRI help, and SSRI have no painkilling ability. This is something else.

I didn't mean to imply that no one gets menstrual cycle hormonal problems, I mean that the popular idea of PMS as a thing that makes all women (the idea that some women don't menstruate or that not all menstruating people are women is not usually a feature of these conversations) irrational and "crazy" and it's best to just ignore what they say and ascribe any assertive (AKA bitchy) behaviour to being "on the rag" is total bullpoopy.

Also, Natalie of Sincerely Natalie Reed has had a hell of a month. She has been misgendered and mocked at McDonald's (and had to stand there and just take it), and then some [redacted] trans women heaped further abuse on her by mail. I don't know the details, but it was a lot about how she looked and ****. Please, go to her blog and show your support - she needs it right now.

That's awful!

Us, having similar responses? No way!

Oh my gosh!

RE: PMS.

Used to get it. Threw up once, and that was due to insane levels of pain that humans should not be allowed to endure. Used to get awful pain each month that sometimes paracetamol wouldn't do anything about.

All changed when I went on the combined pill. Now I get no negative effects, except the very occasional headache which I'm not sure is related to PMS or stress in general, and I have shorter periods that I know exactly when they're going to happen.

Wow, I'm glad the pill helped so much with you! It's definitely helped some. I went on it so I would be able to skip a period when sitting exams, actually, since at the time I was getting the awful cramps and the frequently vomiting and basically missing a day of school each month (on top of all my various infections!). I was hoping it would make the periods I did have better too. The vomiting has stopped, but the cramps are still awful. It is great knowing when it'll happen (although mine still likes to surprise by starting at a random point in the four off-days) and being able to skip it. I'm skipping one right now because I'd be getting it sometime in the next four days and exams again!

What do you all think are some of the effects of a language being inherently gendered, like the romance languages are?

I think generally, it's not a problem, but I did hear about an ad campaign in France that was for a support service for people who had suffered physical or sexual abuse, and the language was gendered female, and they found that men who suffered abuse didn't see the ad as being aimed at them, even though the service wasn't just for women. So I suppose you'd have to think about that kind of thing. Or else fix that thing culturally where women are included in male terms but men aren't included in female terms because god forbid a man would be associated with femaleness.

Thought you might enjoy this, Kender. And others interested in similar things, of course.

That is brilliant! Thank you for sharing! What is up with yogurt being womanly? I have never understood it!

Is it bad that I was laughing the whole time while I read that?

Also it reminded me of a mitchell and webb sketch

I love that sketch!

Re PMS:

Spoiler

Show

I'm sorry, but I can't help but cringe when someone says they'd like to have PMS (or, as I term it... MS). Take a look at this pretty little chart. Now, for some comparison. The chronic joint pain that disables me and has me walking around with a cane and unable to work? That ranges from 4 in a good day to 8 when I'm curled up crying and writhing. OK. Sounds bad, right? Well. My MS cramps? They pretty darned often get to 9. And yeah, that description isn't kidding when it says you demand ANYTHING to stop the pain. I once managed to get enough of a painkiller overdose that I ended up with a pulse of 40 or so and I don't want to know what happened to my blood pressure. All I know is that I finally was half-knocked out and slept for hours before I started to recover. So not only do I get completely excruciating pain every few months or so (THANKFULLY they don't always get to 9 in that scale. Sometimes they stay 7-8).

The thing about what's termed PMS (the cramps and such) is that it's not even a normal thing. It's a disorder. The proper term for it is dysmenorrhea. It's really not normal. A little pain or discomfort can be normal. But the PMS that makes some of us want to murder everything in sight in the most sadistic way possible isn't. So yes... it kind of makes me cringe when people day "Hey, I want that!". No you don't. You should want a normal cycle.

Oh no, that's awful! Are you on the pill, or have you tried it?

[Triscuitable]

My brain is going "drag is fun, feel like a lady" and "work out, hang out with girls, play bass, dude".

Seriously, gender identity out-of-whack. On the bright side, my date is asexual, so we both benefit.

You go! Have a good time.
What kind of movie are you seeing?

The Hunger Games; the first book movie I never read the book to.

[Asta Kask]

I heard of a woman who - at a vampire Live - played a vampire that had been 'turned' right before her menstruation. She had spent two-hundred years with constant cramps and was noticeably short-tempered.

[bluewind95]

Oh no, that's awful! Are you on the pill, or have you tried it?

I've tried it, but it made me gain a lot of weight that I never could properly lose, and unless I'm much mistaken it increases my chances of breast cancer, which are already higher than I feel comfortable with.

... And they didn't even do anything about the pain.

[noparlpf]

Re PMS:

Spoiler

Show

I'm sorry, but I can't help but cringe when someone says they'd like to have PMS (or, as I term it... MS). Take a look at this pretty little chart. Now, for some comparison. The chronic joint pain that disables me and has me walking around with a cane and unable to work? That ranges from 4 in a good day to 8 when I'm curled up crying and writhing. OK. Sounds bad, right? Well. My MS cramps? They pretty darned often get to 9. And yeah, that description isn't kidding when it says you demand ANYTHING to stop the pain. I once managed to get enough of a painkiller overdose that I ended up with a pulse of 40 or so and I don't want to know what happened to my blood pressure. All I know is that I finally was half-knocked out and slept for hours before I started to recover. So not only do I get completely excruciating pain every few months or so (THANKFULLY they don't always get to 9 in that scale. Sometimes they stay 7-8).

The thing about what's termed PMS (the cramps and such) is that it's not even a normal thing. It's a disorder. The proper term for it is dysmenorrhea. It's really not normal. A little pain or discomfort can be normal. But the PMS that makes some of us want to murder everything in sight in the most sadistic way possible isn't. So yes... it kind of makes me cringe when people day "Hey, I want that!". No you don't. You should want a normal cycle.

Dang, that sucks. Sounds horrible. And the pill doesn't work? Are you particularly attached to your uterus? Because if it were me I'd probably get it removed.

Also, by that scale, the worst pain I've ever had was a seven, which was one of the two migraines I've ever had. For some reason headaches go much higher than anything else for me. Last time I threw out my back I went for a jog, and last year when I had developing tears in both calves it didn't stop me from running. And muscle pain when I work out too hard actually feels good.

[Ninja_Grand]

That trans woman I told you about. I'm trying to get her to come here so she can meet other LGBTA people in a friendly environment. So if she decides to pop in y'all be nice to her, ok?

ONE OF US ONE OF US
Dont worry we will be nice, but warn that hugs are commen

My girlfriend's a Fine Arts student, and we've just come up with an awesome idea. Over summer, she'd like to use me as a model to make a project on gender and gender expression!

Dunno if this is going to happen or not, but it sounds like fun if it does!

I hope you have fun! Send us the link!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay~ ^_^


~Bianca

Is their any overwelming fellings of bilss? Any sights of unicorns due to mind overload *Studys cafuly*
[QUOTE=pffh;13139570]Is it bad that I was laughing the whole time while I read that?
QUOTE]
I hope not, or we are both going to "The bad place" *DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN*

Missesd ya'll. Dibs on next 12 armed hug. For..um...!!SCIENCE!!

[Mono Vertigo]

The Hunger Games; the first book movie I never read the book to.

That's the last one I went to see (haven't read the books either)! I didn't enjoy it immensely, but I freely admit I'm picky when it comes to movies, and I liked the secondary characters more than the main ones. That's also something I do too often. And it was entertaining while it lasted, which is the most important part in a movie.

[Ninja_Grand]

My brain is going "drag is fun, feel like a lady" and "work out, hang out with girls, play bass, dude".

Seriously, gender identity out-of-whack. On the bright side, my date is asexual, so we both benefit.



The Hunger Games; the first book movie I never read the book to.

I hope you feel better later *hug*


and on the fact you seeing the Hunger Games. TAKE ME WITH YOU *fake sob* Ill die if I dont see it.... *Curlls up in the conner and pouts*

[bluewind95]

Dang, that sucks. Sounds horrible. And the pill doesn't work? Are you particularly attached to your uterus? Because if it were me I'd probably get it removed.

Sadly, as far as I know, that'd induce menopause, and that has its own number of side-effects, which I can't afford either. I've considered surgery to sever some nerves there, but the doctor tells me the side-effects and risks are too high.

So I make do with painkillers. Sublingual painkillers (used for things like migraines and other such horrific pains) still work, though not entirely sometimes. Paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, and others... don't. Ibuprofen MAYBE works like 2 hours... if I take 6 pills. Oh yeah. Of the strong ones.

[noparlpf]

Sadly, as far as I know, that'd induce menopause, and that has its own number of side-effects, which I can't afford either. I've considered surgery to sever some nerves there, but the doctor tells me the side-effects and risks are too high.

So I make do with painkillers. Sublingual painkillers (used for things like migraines and other such horrific pains) still work, though not entirely sometimes. Paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, and others... don't. Ibuprofen MAYBE works like 2 hours... if I take 6 pills. Oh yeah. Of the strong ones.

That sounds miserable. I'm sorry. *hugs*

[SMEE]

Oi, PMS...

I am one of the few unlucky ones that start suffering from it due to HRT.
I can say that I wish that no MtF get to go through it. It's AWFUL.

For obvious reasons I don't suffer from the bleeding, but everything else is there, every 21 to 28 days.

[Mina Kobold]

What do you all think are some of the effects of a language being inherently gendered, like the romance languages are?

I think it has a negative effect, as it supports the gendering of most other things as well. Do agree that it is not overwhelmingly big, though, but it seems unnecessary.

Granted, that may be because my native language is Danish, which do not use male-female for linguistic genders, so it might just be my irritation at having to put everything into the male or female boxes when speaking French showing. ^_^'

Thought you might enjoy this, Kender. And others interested in similar things, of course.

That was quite a fun read, if saddening. ^_^

I wonder how advertising to genderqueer, intersex and similar people would be. I imagine it would involve distracting us with shinies, but that might just be my preferences.

Re PMS:

Spoiler

Show

I'm sorry, but I can't help but cringe when someone says they'd like to have PMS (or, as I term it... MS). Take a look at this pretty little chart. Now, for some comparison. The chronic joint pain that disables me and has me walking around with a cane and unable to work? That ranges from 4 in a good day to 8 when I'm curled up crying and writhing. OK. Sounds bad, right? Well. My MS cramps? They pretty darned often get to 9. And yeah, that description isn't kidding when it says you demand ANYTHING to stop the pain. I once managed to get enough of a painkiller overdose that I ended up with a pulse of 40 or so and I don't want to know what happened to my blood pressure. All I know is that I finally was half-knocked out and slept for hours before I started to recover. So not only do I get completely excruciating pain every few months or so (THANKFULLY they don't always get to 9 in that scale. Sometimes they stay 7-8).

The thing about what's termed PMS (the cramps and such) is that it's not even a normal thing. It's a disorder. The proper term for it is dysmenorrhea. It's really not normal. A little pain or discomfort can be normal. But the PMS that makes some of us want to murder everything in sight in the most sadistic way possible isn't. So yes... it kind of makes me cringe when people day "Hey, I want that!". No you don't. You should want a normal cycle.

*Hugs*

That sounds terrible. ;_;

I really hope they find a way to help with severe PMS soon, it sounds like a horrible situation to be in every month.

*Hugs again*

I heard of a woman who - at a vampire Live - played a vampire that had been 'turned' right before her menstruation. She had spent two-hundred years with constant cramps and was noticeably short-tempered.

That sounds like an interesting take on the Promethean-style eternal torment story. Although, I fear what would happen if one was turned with that kind of vampirism while being tortured or severely ill.

*Hides in basket*

[Asta Kask]

Sadly, as far as I know, that'd induce menopause, and that has its own number of side-effects, which I can't afford either. I've considered surgery to sever some nerves there, but the doctor tells me the side-effects and risks are too high.

I don't think you would have to remove your ovaries, and then you wouldn't enter menopause. But I'm not a doctor.

If you decide to remove it, can Lix have it?

[KenderWizard]

I heard of a woman who - at a vampire Live - played a vampire that had been 'turned' right before her menstruation. She had spent two-hundred years with constant cramps and was noticeably short-tempered.

Dayum. You'd think if you were that kind of frozen-in-time vampire, you'd not get cramps since menstruating is a change... well, whatever! I suppose her uterus wasn't making any new lining, it was just cramping forever trying to get rid of lining that was long gone.

I've tried it, but it made me gain a lot of weight that I never could properly lose, and unless I'm much mistaken it increases my chances of breast cancer, which are already higher than I feel comfortable with.

... And they didn't even do anything about the pain.

Well, if it's not helping, not much point then! Also, I find the pain chart strange, it seems all wrong to me. But then, I have weird pain tolerances; I become incredibly angry and unable to deal with some kinds of pain, but I just power through other kinds. When my class learned self defense, we learned that I am not incapacitated by pressure points. I did pass out on injury once, and not from blood loss, when I caught my finger in a fire door.

On the subject of periods!!
I cannot let the topic pass without talking about my favourite menstruation-related subject: reusable menstrual cups. I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it, even though menstruation is icky, so I'll spoiler, but seriously! If you menstruate or are interested in menstruation, or might menstruate, or are close enough friends with someone who does menstruate that it wouldn't be too weird to talk to them about their menstruation options, this is important!

Spoiler

Show

So, apparently, the average menstruating person goes through 11,000 sanitary objects in a normal puberty-to-menopause life. That's 11,000 pads, tampons or whatever being produced from usually cotton, bleaching chemicals and plastic, and then going to landfill or (hopefully not) the sea, or being incinerated, or whatever.

I heard about reusable menstrual cups quite a while ago, and was interested, but I couldn't find any, and I forgot about it. Then late summer last year, I saw an ad for one (the Mooncup) in a British magazine saying they were available in a pharmacy chain that also has shops in Ireland, so I went to check it out, they had them, I got one, and a beautiful friendship was formed.

I won't go into too much detail (unless I already have, in which case ... sorry!) but this paragraph is the icky one. You only need one cup, which you fold and put in like a tampon, but it sits a bit lower. It makes a seal against the walls and catches all the stuff. You can keep it in for 12 hours, so whenever it's convenient, you pull it out (that bit takes a little getting used to, but I was a pro by the end of my first period with it), dump the stuff in the toilet, rinse or wipe the cup and pop it back in. Every day or two, I wash it properly with some soap and hot water, just make sure to get all the soap off. Every few months I sterilise by boiling it for five minutes in a saucepan. It lives in a little cotton bag (that came with it) between periods. You can carry it around like you would a spare tampon. If you need to change it when you're out and about, it's a good idea to bring a bottle of water with you so you can rinse it, or you can wipe it with toilet paper. I usually change it morning, when I get home and right before bed on heavy days and just morning and evening on light days.

Benefits!
1) Save the environment! Take 11,000 pads/tampons out of landfill!

2) Save your vagina! The only thing that goes in there is medical grade silicone. Tampons are bleached to look snowy white, and I personally don't like the idea of putting too many chemicals in such a sensitive area. I used to get a lot of skin irritation from pads, which are also bleached and can trap blood against your skin. Menstrual fluids are sterile until they hit air, so keeping them inside is actually safer!

3) Save yourself! Menstrual cups appear not to share the danger of Toxic Shock Syndrome that tampons do, which is a huge plus. People do die of it (my mother's friend did), so really, the less I rely on tampons, the happier I am!

4) Save money! Okay, it costs more than a packet of tampons to buy a cup; mine cost 27euro, which is on the expensive end of the scale but not unusual. You'll have a better chance somewhere you could buy them online or have a few to choose from, but this was the only one available to me. But! It's been about 8 periods since then which cost nothing at all! A cup seems to last about 6 years, depending on make and how you look after it and when you personally feel you want to replace it. I think it was costing me about 3 euro a period, so I've almost broken even already and I'm about a tenth of the way into its lifetime.

5) Save time! Once you've got it, and you know how to use it, it's so quick and simple. You wash it when you're in the bathroom anyway, and boiling for five minutes now and then is way less time than shopping for pads used to take me.

6) Save panties! You never run out and they hardly leak at all. I used to leak everywhere with my ridiculously heavy flow.

7) Don't save good times til later! I haven't tried swimming, but they're less likely to have a problem than tampons are, so if you'd swim with a tampon, you can swim with these. What I do know is, I went climbing with it, on my very first time using it. I climbed and sweated and scrambled over rocks and slid down things and generally did everything that would mean a pad would have simultaneously leaked everywhere and got uncomfortably wedged in my... self. I would have been really aware of a tampon and the potential for disaster if (when!) I overflowed. I couldn't even feel the cup, and it didn't leak a drop. (I kept telling my mapping partner about it, which I'm sure she appreciated! )

No, I am not employed by a menstrual cup company who are paying me lots of money. Maybe I should be!

In further green-period news, I'm planning on making some cloth pads to try out as an alternative for really light days. I don't bother using my mooncup when I'm just trickling, because it's no big deal, but I'd prefer to have little pads than to keep getting blood on my panties!

This has been a KenderWizard Menstrual Announcement!

[bluewind95]

I don't think you would have to remove your ovaries, and then you wouldn't enter menopause. But I'm not a doctor.

If you decide to remove it, can Lix have it?

Despite the problems it causes me, the long-term side-effects of not having it are more dangerous (... if less debilitating), so I must say it's not likely I'll actually remove it (I'd go first for severing the nerves to it). But if I were to? Yes. Lix can have it if she doesn't mind agony-inducing pain if the uterus is to blame for these delightful cramps.

[Asta Kask]

I hope they'll find some way to treat you. You seem like a good person who doesn't deserve this. *hug*

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Sorry for the abrupt change of topic, but I could use some support at the moment. It's been a really bad week.

Spoiler

Show

Last week, one of my friends from high school (I'm a college senior right now) committed suicide. We weren't extremely close--he was 3 years below me and I met him because he was in my sister's grade, so we kept in touch but didn't chat on a regular basis--but he was one of the happiest people I know and it really came as a shock. The worst part of it was that the news traveled via Facebook, and though our mutual friends and my sister all know that I don't really use Facebook, no one thought to tell me about it until the following weekend, so any chance I had of making plans to head home for the memorial service and such is gone thanks to that delay.

So far as I know, the suicide isn't directly LGBTA*-related, but you're the most supportive people around, so I figured I'd share...and there's sorta kinda an LGBTA* connection for me personally. Like I said, he was one of the happiest people I know. I've been slowly coming out to my friends at college and the reactions have been mostly positive, and I've been thanking my lucky stars that I don't have it as bad as all the kids who have committed suicide due to bullying, rejection, etc., but I've still sort of been in a funk every time I told someone and they didn't react well (which, thankfully, has been rare). I figured I could tough it out, and sure I've been losing sleep and stuff but that's just because of final projects, right? And then out of the blue the person I thought absolutely least likely to even consider suicide does it without any warning--no note, friends didn't see anything coming, nothing--and, well, it's really ****ing depressing, you know?

Like, if he can just snap like that, how do I know I won't go off the deep end? I still haven't come out to my parents (much less mentioned the boyfriend ) and with the stress and anxiety and lack of sleep and everything else I don't know (A) how well I can maintain the façade for the folks between graduation and when I move across the country and don't have to really worry about the fallout and (B) how well I'd be able to take a bad reaction from either or both of them. I mean, I would never ever ever ever consider suicide myself, so far as I consciously believe, as I'm one of those people who'd love to download myself into a robot body and live forever and see the universe, I believe even a sucky life is much better than the alternative, etc. etc. etc., but such is the stuff nightmares are made of.

I've actually already had a nightmare or two: since this friend shares the same first name with my best friend in all the world who's practically a brother to me who's been having some family issues of his own, when my sister called and said "Hey [Dice], did you hear? [First name] committed suicide..." I experienced a few moments of absolute gut-wrenching, heart-stopping terror before she explained the situation, and those few moments came back to haunt me one particularly restless night.

So...yeah. Motivation to finish final projects is shot, haven't slept in two days, feeling depressed, life sucks right now.



EDIT: WHAT THE ***ITY **** ****ING ****!!



HIS FACEBOOK PAGE IS GONE! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHERE EVERYONE WAS POSTING MEMORIES! THE FACEBOOK PAGE KEEPING EVERYONE UP TO DATE ON THE CEREMONY FOR HIM HAPPENING AT OUR HIGH SCHOOL AFTER GRADUATION! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHICH, ACCORDING TO MY SISTER, WAS GOING TO STAY UP THROUGH THE CEREMONY TO COLLECT THOSE MEMORIES! GONE IN A ****ING EYEBLINK! ALL THE PICTURES, ALL THE STORIES, VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE OR A BY-YOUR-LEAVE!

That damn well better have been due to his family deleting it after saving all the info and just not getting the news around, and not because of some glitch or some "well-meaning" employee who saw the news story or some bull**** like that.

NOT COOL, FACEBOOK, NOT ***ING COOL.

[Lix Lorn]

*Hugs* :<

~Bianca

(huggles)

Didn't we have a link a while back pointing out that PMS is a fallacy?
But yeah, I feel ya there. It's like being told a teaching position is a bad job because all that reading would give you eye strain :D
Or any other instance of listing the reason you want something as a downside.

Something like that, yeah.

Re PMS:

Spoiler

Show

I'm sorry, but I can't help but cringe when someone says they'd like to have PMS (or, as I term it... MS). Take a look at this pretty little chart. Now, for some comparison. The chronic joint pain that disables me and has me walking around with a cane and unable to work? That ranges from 4 in a good day to 8 when I'm curled up crying and writhing. OK. Sounds bad, right? Well. My MS cramps? They pretty darned often get to 9. And yeah, that description isn't kidding when it says you demand ANYTHING to stop the pain. I once managed to get enough of a painkiller overdose that I ended up with a pulse of 40 or so and I don't want to know what happened to my blood pressure. All I know is that I finally was half-knocked out and slept for hours before I started to recover. So not only do I get completely excruciating pain every few months or so (THANKFULLY they don't always get to 9 in that scale. Sometimes they stay 7-8).

The thing about what's termed PMS (the cramps and such) is that it's not even a normal thing. It's a disorder. The proper term for it is dysmenorrhea. It's really not normal. A little pain or discomfort can be normal. But the PMS that makes some of us want to murder everything in sight in the most sadistic way possible isn't. So yes... it kind of makes me cringe when people day "Hey, I want that!". No you don't. You should want a normal cycle.

Meep. (HUGS)
I was under the impression that it was an all-pervading thing that all women ever got to some degree.
...if it's optional I think I'd rather not?

Despite the problems it causes me, the long-term side-effects of not having it are more dangerous (... if less debilitating), so I must say it's not likely I'll actually remove it (I'd go first for severing the nerves to it). But if I were to? Yes. Lix can have it if she doesn't mind agony-inducing pain if the uterus is to blame for these delightful cramps.

Meep. ._.

Edit: (offers pair 'o dice a LOT of hugs) :(

[Selpharia]

I love Mitchell and Web, so the whole gendered advertising video and article selection sent me into convulsions of laughter.

Re: PMS and associated agonies

That just...ow. I've dealth with some pretty severe pain from various things, but some of the more agonising things described sound miserable. My body's already a jury-rigged collection of bits with all sorts of weird malfunctions, so I don;tr know if I would do the whole transplanted uterus thing either, but I certainly couldn't see myself wanting PMS no matter how feminine it is. If it has to come with the set, then so be it but...ngh

Oh, and *hugs*

Re: Katawa Shoujo:

I've really had a hard time deciding what to think about this game.

I have a disability, and I actually do think this game is a good thing, and I like that it treats the characters like normal people for the most part. I'm sort of annoyed at some of the shortcuts they take though, even though I recognize that they have to do that to make the game more appealing. For example, the girl with fantastic and beautiful prosthetic legs that look more like mecha-legs than the actual prosthetics people use. It's also a bit of a cop-out to have the whole thing take place in a "separate" school, as so much of the difficulty of having a disability is how people without view and make assumptions about the person with a disability. From my personal experience for example, I know that the way I walk looks more like a zombie shamble and that weirds people out.

Plus, while it is the style of the work, I find it darkly funny that all of the girls, despite often having conditions that would normally involve a good deal of disfigurement, are the same button-cute characters as usual for this type of game.


TL;DR I like emphasis on the people involved as primarily people, but I feel it does a disservice by glossing over the common difficulties that people with disabilities face.

*Waits politely in line for next 12-armed hug*

EDIT: And I'll step aside for Dice because i think he needs it more than I do at the moment. That's really awful. I hope it's not just Facebook being callous. I'll add extra *hugs* here too

[Mono Vertigo]

I see a bunch of people need hugs here.
Good thing my avatar I have a bunch of arms!
Don't move, I'm just gonna hug you all at once.
*HUGS*

[Glass Mouse]

Sadly, as far as I know, that'd induce menopause, and that has its own number of side-effects, which I can't afford either. I've considered surgery to sever some nerves there, but the doctor tells me the side-effects and risks are too high.

So I make do with painkillers. Sublingual painkillers (used for things like migraines and other such horrific pains) still work, though not entirely sometimes. Paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, and others... don't. Ibuprofen MAYBE works like 2 hours... if I take 6 pills. Oh yeah. Of the strong ones.

That sounds terrible. *hugs*

All this talk about PMS makes me feel incredibly lucky to only have one painful day a month (close to crippling without pain killers, but completely gone with them - my body must take them well).

The conclusion about the emotional aspect leaves me puzzled, though. You're saying it's complete bull? I'm just confused because I've been having a strong, emotional reaction the day before my period - without fail - for the last couple of years. I'm notoriously unorganised, so it can't even be because it's expected. I just have a day where I break down crying over the smallest things, and then the next day my period comes, and I'm like "oh, so that's why!"
Guess I'm just a freak of science, then

On the subject of periods!!
I cannot let the topic pass without talking about my favourite menstruation-related subject: reusable menstrual cups. I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it, even though menstruation is icky, so I'll spoiler, but seriously! If you menstruate or are interested in menstruation, or might menstruate, or are close enough friends with someone who does menstruate that it wouldn't be too weird to talk to them about their menstruation options, this is important!

Spoiler

Show

So, apparently, the average menstruating person goes through 11,000 sanitary objects in a normal puberty-to-menopause life. That's 11,000 pads, tampons or whatever being produced from usually cotton, bleaching chemicals and plastic, and then going to landfill or (hopefully not) the sea, or being incinerated, or whatever.

I heard about reusable menstrual cups quite a while ago, and was interested, but I couldn't find any, and I forgot about it. Then late summer last year, I saw an ad for one (the Mooncup) in a British magazine saying they were available in a pharmacy chain that also has shops in Ireland, so I went to check it out, they had them, I got one, and a beautiful friendship was formed.

I won't go into too much detail (unless I already have, in which case ... sorry!) but this paragraph is the icky one. You only need one cup, which you fold and put in like a tampon, but it sits a bit lower. It makes a seal against the walls and catches all the stuff. You can keep it in for 12 hours, so whenever it's convenient, you pull it out (that bit takes a little getting used to, but I was a pro by the end of my first period with it), dump the stuff in the toilet, rinse or wipe the cup and pop it back in. Every day or two, I wash it properly with some soap and hot water, just make sure to get all the soap off. Every few months I sterilise by boiling it for five minutes in a saucepan. It lives in a little cotton bag (that came with it) between periods. You can carry it around like you would a spare tampon. If you need to change it when you're out and about, it's a good idea to bring a bottle of water with you so you can rinse it, or you can wipe it with toilet paper. I usually change it morning, when I get home and right before bed on heavy days and just morning and evening on light days.

Benefits!
1) Save the environment! Take 11,000 pads/tampons out of landfill!

2) Save your vagina! The only thing that goes in there is medical grade silicone. Tampons are bleached to look snowy white, and I personally don't like the idea of putting too many chemicals in such a sensitive area. I used to get a lot of skin irritation from pads, which are also bleached and can trap blood against your skin. Menstrual fluids are sterile until they hit air, so keeping them inside is actually safer!

3) Save yourself! Menstrual cups appear not to share the danger of Toxic Shock Syndrome that tampons do, which is a huge plus. People do die of it (my mother's friend did), so really, the less I rely on tampons, the happier I am!

4) Save money! Okay, it costs more than a packet of tampons to buy a cup; mine cost 27euro, which is on the expensive end of the scale but not unusual. You'll have a better chance somewhere you could buy them online or have a few to choose from, but this was the only one available to me. But! It's been about 8 periods since then which cost nothing at all! A cup seems to last about 6 years, depending on make and how you look after it and when you personally feel you want to replace it. I think it was costing me about 3 euro a period, so I've almost broken even already and I'm about a tenth of the way into its lifetime.

5) Save time! Once you've got it, and you know how to use it, it's so quick and simple. You wash it when you're in the bathroom anyway, and boiling for five minutes now and then is way less time than shopping for pads used to take me.

6) Save panties! You never run out and they hardly leak at all. I used to leak everywhere with my ridiculously heavy flow.

7) Don't save good times til later! I haven't tried swimming, but they're less likely to have a problem than tampons are, so if you'd swim with a tampon, you can swim with these. What I do know is, I went climbing with it, on my very first time using it. I climbed and sweated and scrambled over rocks and slid down things and generally did everything that would mean a pad would have simultaneously leaked everywhere and got uncomfortably wedged in my... self. I would have been really aware of a tampon and the potential for disaster if (when!) I overflowed. I couldn't even feel the cup, and it didn't leak a drop. (I kept telling my mapping partner about it, which I'm sure she appreciated! )

No, I am not employed by a menstrual cup company who are paying me lots of money. Maybe I should be!

In further green-period news, I'm planning on making some cloth pads to try out as an alternative for really light days. I don't bother using my mooncup when I'm just trickling, because it's no big deal, but I'd prefer to have little pads than to keep getting blood on my panties!

This has been a KenderWizard Menstrual Announcement!

Spoiler

Show

Since you're my official goddess on all things feminist and womanly, I'm gonna look into this. Thanks for the recommendation

Sorry for the abrupt change of topic, but I could use some support at the moment. It's been a really bad week.

Spoiler

Show

Last week, one of my friends from high school (I'm a college senior right now) committed suicide. We weren't extremely close--he was 3 years below me and I met him because he was in my sister's grade, so we kept in touch but didn't chat on a regular basis--but he was one of the happiest people I know and it really came as a shock. The worst part of it was that the news traveled via Facebook, and though our mutual friends and my sister all know that I don't really use Facebook, no one thought to tell me about it until the following weekend, so any chance I had of making plans to head home for the memorial service and such is gone thanks to that delay.

So far as I know, the suicide isn't directly LGBTA*-related, but you're the most supportive people around, so I figured I'd share...and there's sorta kinda an LGBTA* connection for me personally. Like I said, he was one of the happiest people I know. I've been slowly coming out to my friends at college and the reactions have been mostly positive, and I've been thanking my lucky stars that I don't have it as bad as all the kids who have committed suicide due to bullying, rejection, etc., but I've still sort of been in a funk every time I told someone and they didn't react well (which, thankfully, has been rare). I figured I could tough it out, and sure I've been losing sleep and stuff but that's just because of final projects, right? And then out of the blue the person I thought absolutely least likely to even consider suicide does it without any warning--no note, friends didn't see anything coming, nothing--and, well, it's really ****ing depressing, you know?

Like, if he can just snap like that, how do I know I won't go off the deep end? I still haven't come out to my parents (much less mentioned the boyfriend ) and with the stress and anxiety and lack of sleep and everything else I don't know (A) how well I can maintain the façade for the folks between graduation and when I move across the country and don't have to really worry about the fallout and (B) how well I'd be able to take a bad reaction from either or both of them. I mean, I would never ever ever ever consider suicide myself, so far as I consciously believe, as I'm one of those people who'd love to download myself into a robot body and live forever and see the universe, I believe even a sucky life is much better than the alternative, etc. etc. etc., but such is the stuff nightmares are made of.

I've actually already had a nightmare or two: since this friend shares the same first name with my best friend in all the world who's practically a brother to me who's been having some family issues of his own, when my sister called and said "Hey [Dice], did you hear? [First name] committed suicide..." I experienced a few moments of absolute gut-wrenching, heart-stopping terror before she explained the situation, and those few moments came back to haunt me one particularly restless night.

So...yeah. Motivation to finish final projects is shot, haven't slept in two days, feeling depressed, life sucks right now.



EDIT: WHAT THE ***ITY **** ****ING ****!!



HIS FACEBOOK PAGE IS GONE! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHERE EVERYONE WAS POSTING MEMORIES! THE FACEBOOK PAGE KEEPING EVERYONE UP TO DATE ON THE CEREMONY FOR HIM HAPPENING AT OUR HIGH SCHOOL AFTER GRADUATION! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHICH, ACCORDING TO MY SISTER, WAS GOING TO STAY UP THROUGH THE CEREMONY TO COLLECT THOSE MEMORIES! GONE IN A ****ING EYEBLINK! ALL THE PICTURES, ALL THE STORIES, VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE OR A BY-YOUR-LEAVE!

That damn well better have been due to his family deleting it after saving all the info and just not getting the news around, and not because of some glitch or some "well-meaning" employee who saw the news story or some bull**** like that.

NOT COOL, FACEBOOK, NOT ***ING COOL.

Eep. That's rough.

I don't know if it helps, but in all probability, your friend has been harboring these thoughts and feelings for some time. In my experience, many people with depression seem like the happiest of people, but they're still very aware that they're depressed.
So... I wouldn't be scared, Dice. You'll know it long before you're tempted.

Still, *lots of hugs!*

[pffh]

Sorry for the abrupt change of topic, but I could use some support at the moment. It's been a really bad week.

Spoiler

Show

Last week, one of my friends from high school (I'm a college senior right now) committed suicide. We weren't extremely close--he was 3 years below me and I met him because he was in my sister's grade, so we kept in touch but didn't chat on a regular basis--but he was one of the happiest people I know and it really came as a shock. The worst part of it was that the news traveled via Facebook, and though our mutual friends and my sister all know that I don't really use Facebook, no one thought to tell me about it until the following weekend, so any chance I had of making plans to head home for the memorial service and such is gone thanks to that delay.

So far as I know, the suicide isn't directly LGBTA*-related, but you're the most supportive people around, so I figured I'd share...and there's sorta kinda an LGBTA* connection for me personally. Like I said, he was one of the happiest people I know. I've been slowly coming out to my friends at college and the reactions have been mostly positive, and I've been thanking my lucky stars that I don't have it as bad as all the kids who have committed suicide due to bullying, rejection, etc., but I've still sort of been in a funk every time I told someone and they didn't react well (which, thankfully, has been rare). I figured I could tough it out, and sure I've been losing sleep and stuff but that's just because of final projects, right? And then out of the blue the person I thought absolutely least likely to even consider suicide does it without any warning--no note, friends didn't see anything coming, nothing--and, well, it's really ****ing depressing, you know?

Like, if he can just snap like that, how do I know I won't go off the deep end? I still haven't come out to my parents (much less mentioned the boyfriend ) and with the stress and anxiety and lack of sleep and everything else I don't know (A) how well I can maintain the façade for the folks between graduation and when I move across the country and don't have to really worry about the fallout and (B) how well I'd be able to take a bad reaction from either or both of them. I mean, I would never ever ever ever consider suicide myself, so far as I consciously believe, as I'm one of those people who'd love to download myself into a robot body and live forever and see the universe, I believe even a sucky life is much better than the alternative, etc. etc. etc., but such is the stuff nightmares are made of.

I've actually already had a nightmare or two: since this friend shares the same first name with my best friend in all the world who's practically a brother to me who's been having some family issues of his own, when my sister called and said "Hey [Dice], did you hear? [First name] committed suicide..." I experienced a few moments of absolute gut-wrenching, heart-stopping terror before she explained the situation, and those few moments came back to haunt me one particularly restless night.

So...yeah. Motivation to finish final projects is shot, haven't slept in two days, feeling depressed, life sucks right now.



EDIT: WHAT THE ***ITY **** ****ING ****!!



HIS FACEBOOK PAGE IS GONE! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHERE EVERYONE WAS POSTING MEMORIES! THE FACEBOOK PAGE KEEPING EVERYONE UP TO DATE ON THE CEREMONY FOR HIM HAPPENING AT OUR HIGH SCHOOL AFTER GRADUATION! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHICH, ACCORDING TO MY SISTER, WAS GOING TO STAY UP THROUGH THE CEREMONY TO COLLECT THOSE MEMORIES! GONE IN A ****ING EYEBLINK! ALL THE PICTURES, ALL THE STORIES, VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE OR A BY-YOUR-LEAVE!

That damn well better have been due to his family deleting it after saving all the info and just not getting the news around, and not because of some glitch or some "well-meaning" employee who saw the news story or some bull**** like that.

NOT COOL, FACEBOOK, NOT ***ING COOL.

My condolences. Suicide is always ****ty. I have been in a similar situation (close friend killed himself out of the blue) so if you need someone to talk to my PM box is open.

Other then that all I can say is I recommend seeking out a grief councilor or a therapist. It may sound silly but it really does help in working out your emotions and mental state.

[noparlpf]

On the subject of periods!!
I cannot let the topic pass without talking about my favourite menstruation-related subject: reusable menstrual cups. I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it, even though menstruation is icky, so I'll spoiler, but seriously! If you menstruate or are interested in menstruation, or might menstruate, or are close enough friends with someone who does menstruate that it wouldn't be too weird to talk to them about their menstruation options, this is important!

Spoiler

Show

So, apparently, the average menstruating person goes through 11,000 sanitary objects in a normal puberty-to-menopause life. That's 11,000 pads, tampons or whatever being produced from usually cotton, bleaching chemicals and plastic, and then going to landfill or (hopefully not) the sea, or being incinerated, or whatever.

I heard about reusable menstrual cups quite a while ago, and was interested, but I couldn't find any, and I forgot about it. Then late summer last year, I saw an ad for one (the Mooncup) in a British magazine saying they were available in a pharmacy chain that also has shops in Ireland, so I went to check it out, they had them, I got one, and a beautiful friendship was formed.

I won't go into too much detail (unless I already have, in which case ... sorry!) but this paragraph is the icky one. You only need one cup, which you fold and put in like a tampon, but it sits a bit lower. It makes a seal against the walls and catches all the stuff. You can keep it in for 12 hours, so whenever it's convenient, you pull it out (that bit takes a little getting used to, but I was a pro by the end of my first period with it), dump the stuff in the toilet, rinse or wipe the cup and pop it back in. Every day or two, I wash it properly with some soap and hot water, just make sure to get all the soap off. Every few months I sterilise by boiling it for five minutes in a saucepan. It lives in a little cotton bag (that came with it) between periods. You can carry it around like you would a spare tampon. If you need to change it when you're out and about, it's a good idea to bring a bottle of water with you so you can rinse it, or you can wipe it with toilet paper. I usually change it morning, when I get home and right before bed on heavy days and just morning and evening on light days.

Benefits!
1) Save the environment! Take 11,000 pads/tampons out of landfill!

2) Save your vagina! The only thing that goes in there is medical grade silicone. Tampons are bleached to look snowy white, and I personally don't like the idea of putting too many chemicals in such a sensitive area. I used to get a lot of skin irritation from pads, which are also bleached and can trap blood against your skin. Menstrual fluids are sterile until they hit air, so keeping them inside is actually safer!

3) Save yourself! Menstrual cups appear not to share the danger of Toxic Shock Syndrome that tampons do, which is a huge plus. People do die of it (my mother's friend did), so really, the less I rely on tampons, the happier I am!

4) Save money! Okay, it costs more than a packet of tampons to buy a cup; mine cost 27euro, which is on the expensive end of the scale but not unusual. You'll have a better chance somewhere you could buy them online or have a few to choose from, but this was the only one available to me. But! It's been about 8 periods since then which cost nothing at all! A cup seems to last about 6 years, depending on make and how you look after it and when you personally feel you want to replace it. I think it was costing me about 3 euro a period, so I've almost broken even already and I'm about a tenth of the way into its lifetime.

5) Save time! Once you've got it, and you know how to use it, it's so quick and simple. You wash it when you're in the bathroom anyway, and boiling for five minutes now and then is way less time than shopping for pads used to take me.

6) Save panties! You never run out and they hardly leak at all. I used to leak everywhere with my ridiculously heavy flow.

7) Don't save good times til later! I haven't tried swimming, but they're less likely to have a problem than tampons are, so if you'd swim with a tampon, you can swim with these. What I do know is, I went climbing with it, on my very first time using it. I climbed and sweated and scrambled over rocks and slid down things and generally did everything that would mean a pad would have simultaneously leaked everywhere and got uncomfortably wedged in my... self. I would have been really aware of a tampon and the potential for disaster if (when!) I overflowed. I couldn't even feel the cup, and it didn't leak a drop. (I kept telling my mapping partner about it, which I'm sure she appreciated! )

No, I am not employed by a menstrual cup company who are paying me lots of money. Maybe I should be!

In further green-period news, I'm planning on making some cloth pads to try out as an alternative for really light days. I don't bother using my mooncup when I'm just trickling, because it's no big deal, but I'd prefer to have little pads than to keep getting blood on my panties!

This has been a KenderWizard Menstrual Announcement!

Two responses--see bolded bits.

Spoiler

Show

1. When you said it "lives" in a little cotton bag I squirmed a bit because for a second I imagined it was a living thing that you're sticking in your vagina. And obviously I know it's not because I've heard of these before, and it's silicone, and stuff, but imaginations are weird.
2. Is it weird that the first adjective I thought of there was "cute"? Because you are. I find it adorable when somebody is really excited about something. Even if that something happens to be menstrual hygiene.

Sorry for the abrupt change of topic, but I could use some support at the moment. It's been a really bad week.

Spoiler

Show

Last week, one of my friends from high school (I'm a college senior right now) committed suicide. We weren't extremely close--he was 3 years below me and I met him because he was in my sister's grade, so we kept in touch but didn't chat on a regular basis--but he was one of the happiest people I know and it really came as a shock. The worst part of it was that the news traveled via Facebook, and though our mutual friends and my sister all know that I don't really use Facebook, no one thought to tell me about it until the following weekend, so any chance I had of making plans to head home for the memorial service and such is gone thanks to that delay.

So far as I know, the suicide isn't directly LGBTA*-related, but you're the most supportive people around, so I figured I'd share...and there's sorta kinda an LGBTA* connection for me personally. Like I said, he was one of the happiest people I know. I've been slowly coming out to my friends at college and the reactions have been mostly positive, and I've been thanking my lucky stars that I don't have it as bad as all the kids who have committed suicide due to bullying, rejection, etc., but I've still sort of been in a funk every time I told someone and they didn't react well (which, thankfully, has been rare). I figured I could tough it out, and sure I've been losing sleep and stuff but that's just because of final projects, right? And then out of the blue the person I thought absolutely least likely to even consider suicide does it without any warning--no note, friends didn't see anything coming, nothing--and, well, it's really ****ing depressing, you know?

Like, if he can just snap like that, how do I know I won't go off the deep end? I still haven't come out to my parents (much less mentioned the boyfriend ) and with the stress and anxiety and lack of sleep and everything else I don't know (A) how well I can maintain the façade for the folks between graduation and when I move across the country and don't have to really worry about the fallout and (B) how well I'd be able to take a bad reaction from either or both of them. I mean, I would never ever ever ever consider suicide myself, so far as I consciously believe, as I'm one of those people who'd love to download myself into a robot body and live forever and see the universe, I believe even a sucky life is much better than the alternative, etc. etc. etc., but such is the stuff nightmares are made of.

I've actually already had a nightmare or two: since this friend shares the same first name with my best friend in all the world who's practically a brother to me who's been having some family issues of his own, when my sister called and said "Hey [Dice], did you hear? [First name] committed suicide..." I experienced a few moments of absolute gut-wrenching, heart-stopping terror before she explained the situation, and those few moments came back to haunt me one particularly restless night.

So...yeah. Motivation to finish final projects is shot, haven't slept in two days, feeling depressed, life sucks right now.



EDIT: WHAT THE ***ITY **** ****ING ****!!



HIS FACEBOOK PAGE IS GONE! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHERE EVERYONE WAS POSTING MEMORIES! THE FACEBOOK PAGE KEEPING EVERYONE UP TO DATE ON THE CEREMONY FOR HIM HAPPENING AT OUR HIGH SCHOOL AFTER GRADUATION! THE FACEBOOK PAGE WHICH, ACCORDING TO MY SISTER, WAS GOING TO STAY UP THROUGH THE CEREMONY TO COLLECT THOSE MEMORIES! GONE IN A ****ING EYEBLINK! ALL THE PICTURES, ALL THE STORIES, VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE OR A BY-YOUR-LEAVE!

That damn well better have been due to his family deleting it after saving all the info and just not getting the news around, and not because of some glitch or some "well-meaning" employee who saw the news story or some bull**** like that.

NOT COOL, FACEBOOK, NOT ***ING COOL.

:<
*hugs*

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Eep. That's rough.

I don't know if it helps, but in all probability, your friend has been harboring these thoughts and feelings for some time. In my experience, many people with depression seem like the happiest of people, but they're still very aware that they're depressed.
So... I wouldn't be scared, Dice. You'll know it long before you're tempted.

Still, *lots of hugs!*

It's not that I'm scared of being tempted about anything, really, it's like...I have a major fear of heights, and even though intellectually I know that e.g. a high, narrow bridge is well-engineered, isn't going to randomly give way, everything is fine, blah blah blah, I still have that momentary twinge of fear whenever I walk across it because my overactive imagination is whispering the "what if"s into my subconscious. So I highly doubt I'll ever actually do anything rash, but the little voice in the back of my head likes screwing with me anyway.

My condolences. Suicide is always ****ty. I have been in a similar situation (close friend killed himself out of the blue) so if you need someone to talk to my PM box is open.

Other then that all I can say is I recommend seeking out a grief councilor or a therapist. It may sound silly but it really does help in working out your emotions and mental state.

A therapist would probably be a good idea. One of my classmates went to a therapy session on a lark and discovered that she'd been dealing with textbook cases of depression and severe anxiety for months which she'd been putting down to "just a bit of stress from classes." I don't have enough time in my schedule now (I know, I know, don't put off my health...) but I'll try to make an appointment for soonish. Thanks for the PM box offer, though I don't know yet if I'll take advantage of it.

[Heliomance]

So G called me her girlfriend today. There are no words adequate to describing the strength of the happies this gave me.

[noparlpf]

So G called me her girlfriend today. There are no words adequate to describing the strength of the happies this gave me.

D'aww. Cute couples are cute.

[Heliomance]

D'aww. Cute couples are cute.

We are ridiculously cute. She's worried, because apparently she has a reputation as a bit of a tomboy romance-sceptic, which I'm doing my absolute best to ruin.