That Time of Year

It's that time of year.  The air is crisp and my lips are chapped.  My asthmatic cough brought on by the cold dry air is back and I won't use an inhaler because I DON'T HAVE ASTHMA!  (If I keep saying that it will be true.) And I left my chapstick in my jeans pocket and ran it through the wash again.  Why do I always do that?  On top of that, it's birthday season has begun.  (75% of my family and friends have November and December birthdays.)   Thanksgiving is just around the corner and now the stores are starting to play Christmas music.  I hate Christmas music!  In fact, I hate the whole holiday season because it's so stressful.  But, this post isn't about that.  It's about my vagina.

You see, it's time for my annual pap smear.  That I haven't had in 3 years.  Because I never got a reminder card in the mail urging me to make my annual appointment.  Or maybe I did and I lost it.   And then when I realized I did, it took me a couple of years to pick up the phone.  What is it about making a phone call that is so exquisitely painful?  Making an appointment and preparing for the appointment make me more anxious than having a stranger touch my vagina and stick a cold metal device up it.  Wait, I forgot to factor in my anxiety of peeing or farting on the stranger fingering my lady bits.  Nope, making the phone call and worrying about the appointment are still worse.  Plus, I get to lay down a table in the middle of the day, amidst the stress of birthday/holiday season.  I mean, how restful is that?

I am never more immaculately groomed than when I go to the gynecologist.  My legs are shaved perfectly smooth.  With special attention given to my knees and big toes, which I usually half ass.  But, when your legs are in stirrups and the doctor is sitting on a stool in directly in front of you, knees and toes tend to be quiet prominent.  And it's not that I take off my socks.  I don't, because it's always freezing in there.  But, I didn't take my socks off when I got a mole check at the dermatologist either.  Turns out, I was supposed to.  Then, she proceeded to take my socks off for me and spread my toes to look between each one.  Which totally freaked me out.  Because who knows what's in there?  I don't look.  Maybe I've got an embarrassing fungus.  Or sock lint.  I'll tell you what I don't have there, I don't have a cancerous mole.  So, now in addition to wearing nice, cute, coordinating underwear (just in case someone walks in when I'm still disrobing), I'll have to check between my toes before I put on a pair of unholy socks.  Wait...do I have any of those?  Oh man, I might need to buy new socks for the gynecologist.

Nothing quite prepares you for stepping on the scale at your appointment and coming to terms with  the reality that your jeans did not in fact shrink an entire size (or two) in the wash, you've just* gained weight.  And now, you've got to peel those tight jeans off to put on a paper gown and lay on a cold and crunchy paper lined table with your legs spread in stirrups, lady bits bathed in florescent lighting for the doctor.  I don't know what my vagina looks like, but I'm going to venture to guess that this isn't the best lighting or angle at which to appreciate it.  I also wonder if I have some of those outlying, long, straggly pubic hairs on my inner thigh.  Until the doctor mentions the bruises I have there.  I'd forgotten I have bruises all over my body that make me look like a battered woman.  I had to explain them to my dermatologist when she inquired too.  No, no...my husband isn't abusing me.  I'm just abusing myself.  With a metal pole.  Because I'm a pole dancer.  

 It's always the season for awkward conversations.