On a jollier (is that correct?) note....

Periods arrived yesterday, so this has thrown some light on why I was feeling so depressed.

PMS!!!

It really does affect me emotionally. I remember a friend at Uni, used to have a go at me whenever I had PMS, saying "You don't have to give into the negative emotions. You can fight it!" A few years later, I heard that this same friend was undergoing serious clinical depression. My vindictive side wanted to phone her and say "Aha!" (I didn't... but really wanted to)

If only there was some way to predict when I get PMS. Maybe if I recognised that I was going through it, I'd plan to avoid company, or stop blogging...
The thing is, I never know when it will hit me because my periods are soooo irregular. I used to have them at the middle of the month, then at the end, now I have them at the beginning of the month!

Perhaps I could use the Natural Rhythm method.
I remember learning about it in my Catholic High School. It is based on three ideas.

1. Firstly, that women ovulate 14 days before menstruation begins, give or take two days.
2. Secondly, that sperm can survive inside a woman for three days.
3. And lastly, that an egg can only be fertilized within 24 hours of being released from the ovaries.

Based on these assumptions, the rhythm method requires a woman to count back 14 days from the first day of her period. This will presumably be the day on which she ovulated. In order to avoid pregnancy, she will need to abstain from sex (if she is a 'good' Catholic.... try saying "No" to a horny husband!) or for the rest of us, use another form of birth control.

Come to think of it, assuming that married people don't have sex when a woman is in her periods (yuck....GROSS), does this mean that they only do it for just ONE week of the month?
Hmm...somehow marriage doesn't seem so appealing after all...
On the other hand, that's 12 weeks more sex than I'm having so... not bad at all!!!!

Obviously the system is not 100% reliable. The presence of large Catholic families (including mine) is testament to this. In my whole lifetime (32 years), I have only met ONE woman for whom the rhythm method has actually worked!

I'll probably never use it, with my 'shifting' periods.

So I can't predict my PMS!

Oh bother!