Five minutes can be a very, very long time

So, I don't know if you've ever used those ovulation predictor sticks.

Some of you have; you're the ones who told me about them. But for those of you still having sex for fun, let me tell you.

First of all, we bought this package of 20. They come in this big resealable purple bag. You pee on the end of the stick for five seconds, then you wait five minutes. When your luteinizing hormone (a term I just learned) goes up, a second line appears.

This means you are getting ready to ovulate. Which of course is when the magic can happen.

The instructions say to pull a stick out, and then reseal the bag as quickly as possible. And approximately 2:00 pm is the time they recommend testing.

Practically speaking, this is what these instructions have begun to mean in my life.

They mean carrying the whole bag of 20 sticks to the bathroom daily. Actually, it diminishes by one stick every day. So 20 the first day, 19 the next, etc. The only cosmetic case I have that's big enough for the damn bag-o-sticks is leopard-print vinyl. It's not exactly subtle.

The awkwardness, though, is in the bathroom. Because who cares if people think I have a shitload of makeup to reapply in the afternoon?

I pick the last stall, if available. I put the paper down on the seat, unzip the makeup case - ZZZZZZP, open the plastic bag - CRINKLE, pull out one stick, and reseal the bag as quickly as possible. CRINKLE again.

And I know I don't have the best time with this kind of thing, but the peeing on the stick is not as easy as it seems. My pee isn't always pointing the same way. It shifts. Sometimes it's hard to get that stick in the right place.

Or maybe I am just urinarily challenged.

Anyway, so you pee for five seconds: one-one thousand, two-one thousand. . .And then - and this is the hard part - then you have to just sit there.

On the toilet. For five minutes.

Doing nothing but holding your leopard-print bag and looking at your stick.

Because - and believe me, I have contemplated it - you cannot carry a plastic stick on which you have urinated back to your cube. You simply can't.

I thought about wrapping it in toilet paper putting it in my bag, but you're suppose to keep it flat, so you'd have to carry it between your fingers, out in the open. With the possibility of drips.

No. Just, no.

So the waiting.

One afternoon, all four stalls filled up, and I heard the voices of a couple people I'm friends with. "Wow! When is there ever a line in here?"

There isn't.

And I was thinking, oh, they're going to recognize my shoes!

I wanted to be all "I'm not pooing! I'm just waiting for a pink line!"

Do you know how long five minutes can last?

Just so you know, urination looms large in this post

I love the idea of Founding Farmers. The philosophy behind the restaurant is great - combining socially responsible, sustainable behavior with fresher, tastier, more healthful food. I totally support this.

I know Lemmonex didn't have a great experience. But I still wanted to try it. And overall, I liked it, although it is loud. Our server, who was great, had to struggle to make herself heard. Which is particularly hard when there's a long explanation about the place.

Our friends Sam and Amanda met us there. We hadn't seen each other in ages, and while the visuals are charming, the noise level - music on top of really high conversation volume - made it a difficult place to catch up. Easy to lean into the person next to you, but you needed to bellow across the table.

I had chicken for dinner. This statement make me laugh, as years ago a friend shared her diary and that was an entire day's entry. "Tuesday, September 5. I had chicken for dinner."

So I try not to write things like this.

But I had chicken with mashed potatoes and root vegetables. All tasty, but I wouldn't rhapsodize. In fact, everyone liked their meal, but none of us were dancing on the table. I will say, though, that Amanda is currently on a very severe salt-restricted diet, and they were extremely accommodating. And they made her no-salt french fries, which made her night.

So because we're juvenile, when they brought us water for the table Sam and I immediately began conferring on whether we had to give it back before the end of the meal. Nobody could leave until they peed, which would then be recycled into fresh water and brought to a subsequent table. Kind of like Dune, except without special suits.

Amanda was the first to, um, recycle, and came back and said we had to check out the hand dryers. You stick your hands in these slots and they power dry them in like 15 seconds.

Nick was next. He came back looking embarrassed. Because, he said, he'd mistaken the sink, a long white enamel farmhouse-looking one, for the urinal. He figured in keeping with the theme, they were just having men pee in a trough. Just as he was about to unzip, he realized that there were urinals behind him.

Awkward.

Me, I went to the single bathroom downstairs. And Amanda was right - the dryers are the best I've ever used. You hold your hands pointed downwards and really strong air blows them dry. Fast.

Although both Sam and Nick were shockingly resistant to my suggestion, if I had a penis, I'd totally stick it in that power dyer.

I have a boot problem. A tarty boot problem.

I realized last week I have relentlessly tarty taste in boots.

Also, I have a boot problem.

There, I've said it. I feel better.

So the fabulous, above-the-knee boots? The zipper broke the first time I wore them. Zappos didn't have another pair in my size. And quite frankly, I was worried that if they broke that fast, maybe they were poorly constructed. And they were expensive. So I returned them.

Thus, I no longer had hottie-hot new boots.

And then I went to New Jersey.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Nick and his parents headed up to see his older sister and her kids. Me, I got to spend the day with Tori, who lives a couple towns over from Nick's parents. Yay!

Since it seems like a travesty to be in the land of No Sales Tax on Clothing or Shoes and not shop, we went shopping. I was looking for Christmas presents, but of course one cannot pass a DSW without poking one's nose in. Don't you think?

I cannot even tell you what possessed me to put these boots on, since I thought "prostitute" when I first saw them. But these were a total bargain (as much as a pair of boots like this can be when you're not going to make money wearing them), and I figured I'd just see how they looked.

As soon as I put them on, I kind of really wanted them.

And it was shoe money already spent. In fact, these were less than half of the prior boots. So I was pretty much losing money if I didn't buy them, you know?

And then Tori was all, "Those are awesome! Look at the buckles!"

"Too much like buckle up, big boy, and pull out your wallet?"

"Not on you."

"Are you sure? They're kind of extreme."

"Honestly, Lis, of all my friends, you pull off the whorish boots the best. And you never look the least bit slutty. I assure you."

She meant this in the most sincerely positive way. Even though it sounds kind of suspect.

And then another woman walked down the aisle and was all, "Those boots look great on you!"

Which almost made me put them back, considering I'd already been complimented for trying on some pointy purple velvet paisley boots. (Who could resist? Not me.) Also, a woman at another store had told me she loved my blue nail polish.

Except for the myriad reasons I could never live there, I could so live in New Jersey, you guys. The shopping public is good for my self-esteem.

Our museum is not under the water but most of the artifacts came from under the sea

Some days this is exactly how I feel. And today, today is one of those days.

Do you ever go to bed upset about something that is out of your control?

And then you maybe wake up completely discombobulated, having dreamed that practically everyone you love turned into zombies, including your husband? And while he was trying very hard to stay away from you and not zombify you, the rest of the world was after you?

And so you maybe went to your favorite (fictional) French place and slept with the hot French server? And then were left with whether you should tell your zombie husband or not, realizing that it would probably destroy your marriage?

Because of course the fact that he was a flesh-eating zombie wouldn't.

And then you maybe wake up and tell your husband and he is much more focused on the fact that you slept with someone else than the zombies chasing you?

Even though you assure him that you were really drunk and it wasn't all that fun?

And then the rest of your day so far looks like it's going to be exactly like that? Not under the water but, well, you know the rest.

If that ever happened to you, today would be one of those days.

Which makes you realize that penis envy and actually wanting a reconstructed penis are very different things

Or, now for something completely different.

You really have to want to be a man if you're willing to go through that whole sex change operation. Do you have any idea how much there is to it?

I said as much to Nick when I got in the car yesterday.

And instead of saying he had no idea how much was involved, he was all, "I guess we're done with rabies?"

This I can't promise. But here's how this started. So the other day, Betty learned that one of her neighbors, an older, married man, had passed away. She simultaneously learned that he had been a cross dresser.

This, on their street, in Virginia? Big news. They knew a cross-dresser! She told me immediately.

How, she had asked the neighbor who told her, did she know this?

Turns out she used to see him get into the car dressed as a woman, off to the grocery store. Apparently, she added, sotto voce, it was quite hard on his wife.

So I Googled, which led me to Wikipedia, and sexual reassignment surgery. I looked at female-to-male, which seemed somehow more compelling.

I knew about the hormones. And the mastectomy. But I hadn't really given any thought to how you might wind up with man bits.

Although, if pressed, I'd have assumed that even if gave you a new penis, they left the vagina to pee with. Wouldn't you need it as a pee hole?

No! Because it turns out "...the urethra can be rerouted through the phallus to allow urination through the reconstructed penis."

Yes. They can either enlarge the clitoris through hormones (how much, one wonders, but truthfully, one hasn't yet investigated) or create one through skin grafts. And then, they can reroute the urethra. They can also implant an erectile prosthetic.

They build you a whole new penis out of your own skin. And then they put something in that allows you to have an erection. And they redo your plumbing so you can pee through it.

It's really quite amazing, isn't it?

By comparison, the balls, they seem relatively easy. They form a scrotum out of the lips and then stick in prosthetic testicles.

And that's really all I've got there. Anything else you'd like to know about anything?

And yes, this is the kind of post that makes Nick worry that you will think there's something very wrong with me.

So hi! Hope your holidays were great! Happy Monday!