Now Norma Knits

Dear People

Norma is busy right now. She is steaming her head and rinsing her sinuses and gargling her throat and drinking hot tea and lemon water and taking elderberry syrup and making chicken soup.

I guess you know what that means.

Sincerely,

The Blog

Our (Diva) Cups (Almost Never) Runneth Over

Oh, how you had me entertained with your comments yesterday.  I'm so glad we could make each other laugh.  The comment emails are fixed now, thanks to the good people at Typepad who listened to us and answered our call.  They're a little different than before, in that they won't have the content of your comment inside, but at least we can answer them with a minimum of headache.  I still can't promise I'll answer them all, but I'll do my best, as I used to do.  And thank you for each and every one.

So it's another estrogenized day here at Now Norma.  Every now and then I do acknowledge that I am a woman (heh), and this blog is used as a vehicle to discuss women's issues.  So today, following the craziness that was yesterday, let's talk about menstrual cups, shall we?  (Sorry, men.)

Wow.  A good number of people who commented yesterday use Diva cups (or their other-branded equivalents)!  I'm pleased to hear that, because yes, I'm one of them. Here's mine, discreetly concealed in its cloth pouch.  

I never used to carry it with me until after the episode I wrote about yesterday, though, which explains why I was caught off guard.  Now, it's with me!

I kinda thought I was a bit odd for using this -- at my gyn appointment recently, I mentioned it to the nurse and doctor.  They both said they had heard of them, but had never seen one.  (I showed it to them; they were interested.)  This is Vermont, where just your average person is prone to doing all kinds of hippie and independent things, and yet they had not seen one before, so I figured it was just another one of my idiosyncrasies.

So all those comments and testimonials yesterday made me smile.  It sounds like a lofty claim, but it really has been life-changing, as many of you mentioned.  I discovered it about five years ago, and wish I had 20 years before that.  A fabulous thing -- hygienically, economically, and ecologically.  And the convenience can't be beat.  It can be put in and be untouched for a long day of working or shopping, or a night of sleeping. Only once have I ever had a leak with it, and that was because I had not put it in right.  And wearing it is MUCH cleaner-feeling than anything else, including tampons.  Sooo much better at the gym, in the shower, in Bikram yoga, on the massage table, or whatever.  Clean and invisible from the outside. No string!  No odor!  No wetness!  (Have I gone too far with the matter-of-factness? Sorry.)  

It takes a little bit of getting used to (about two cycles) putting it in and taking it out, and you have to be fairly comfortable putting your hand "up there," but once you get the hang of it, it is the best thing ever.  So go buy one and stop throwing all that unhygienic crap in the landfill!  Have green periods! Save the earth!  And save a lot of money in the process -- all the while feeling much cleaner, more discreet, and more in control.  

Thus ends my infomercial about the Diva Cup.  I really oughta get paid for these things.  Srsly.  But I don't.  And I have no affiliation with the company.  They're just seriously cool.  

A New Old Saying

Apparently a watched tree never ... um.....boils turns red?

I kid you not, this photo really was taken a week after the last photo. It looks even greener to me - you, too? Silly.

And now, I hear the clamoring. Everybody wants to know the magic. Do I really need to give you the regular disclaimers? I'm not a doctor, I don't even play one on TV, I'm not even an herbalist or a homeopath. I'm just a girl from Macon, Georgia...no, wait...that was somebody else.

I'm just a woman who was a sickly child and a sickly teenager and a sickly young adult, and until I took hold of my own health, I was sick. Doctors did not help me....EVER. They gave me lots of medicines to suppress symptoms, some of which were later taken off the market for causing liver disease and various other lovely (some unknown) things. And I kept getting sicker and sicker and they kept wanting to give me more and more drugs. You know: To counteract the effects of the other drugs. And more and more antibiotics and more and more steroids. And they wouldn't listen to me when they had given me a steroid nasal inhaler and I said to them, "something horrible is happening to me from this. I am gaining weight at a scary rate. I feel odd in my abdomen. Things feel really swollen and horribly painful in there. I'm having periods more often than I should, and the cramps and pain and bleeding are horrific. And I'm tired all the time and I feel SICK." 

"Can't happen," they said to me. "It's only local. And the dose is so low and so localized that you couldn't be having those side effects." 

Well, you know what? One day I woke up and I said, "BULLSHIT."  They don't know squat about my body.  SQUAT. And they don't care. So I started reading.