There is a uniquely female horror that I am experiencing today. I don’t think men get this. I don’t know how they could.

It is the horror when you call in your prescription for birth control pills, and you discover that it’s been a whole year since you had a pap smear, which means that they have to call your doctor and see if they can get a refill, but they can’t get ahold of him, so they send a fax, and you call the doctor’s office and make an appointment, but since it is, after all, at the end of said birth control cycle, it’s like a friggin’ war zone down there, and you can’t possibly get a pap smear in this condition so you have to wait a week. And the office isn’t sure if it can order a refill, since the doctor’s not around to clear it, and so I am waiting around to see if I get my required progesterone jolt today, or if, god help us all, I may actually ovulate for the first time in over a decade.

I don’t particularly wish to ovulate. My ovaries have been asleep at the switch for so long that if they are woken up, I fear the repercussions. They may go mad with power. They may run amok with butcher knives, attacking the other, more peaceful organs. I just don’t know. Anything could happen!

God help us. God help us all.