Surrogate Monday

I realize that today is Tuesday, but so far, it is feeling quite Monday-like. My male readers may want to take this opportunity to switch over to CNN.com or ESPN.com or some other gender-neutral website. Unfortunately, I am not going to be gender-neutral today. I started my period this morning and it sucks. I am incredibly crampy and bloated. So bloated, in fact, that I got up this morning, grabbed all of my clothes and headed downstairs to get dressed. I pulled my pants on and could not even button them. As a matter of fact, I could barely get them pulled up all the way. What the hell?! I understand being bloated to the point that your pants are a bit tight....but to barely be able to pull them on?! That's a bit ridiculous.

In addition to the bloating and cramping, I have a sore throat this morning and a lingering cough that is still hanging around from when I was sick a few weeks back. Most of the time, I do not cough. But occasionally, I will get a sudden tickle in my throat and begin hacking my head off quite out of the blue. It always hits at the most inopportune moments...like when I have an already-agitated customer on my phone. And let me tell you....that Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor. To inflict a coughing fit on a woman whose bladder endured nine months (well....seven months, actually) of two babies doing the moonwalk all over it is a particularly fiendish joke.

Despite the cramping and bloating and coughing and constant scratch in my throat, I arrived at work on time and in one piece this morning. I sat at my desk with my huge cup of coffee, turned on my computer, and attempted to log in as I do every day. And of course, since today is my surrogate Monday, I am having computer issues. I can't log into our database. Therefore, I cannot access any customer information or take any phone calls. My coworker, the only other one manning this phones this morning, is being bombarded with calls while I sit here completely impotent until my phone calls and emails coax our lone tech guy out of bed and to my aid. As if that is not frustrating enough, I feel the constant need to apologize to my coworker. As if I purposely bewitched my computer. Why do we women feel so guilty all the time? Not to imply that guilt is a strictly feminine phenomenon, but we certainly seem to excel at it. Being female AND the product of twelve years of good Catholic education, I may as well give it up. Forget Gail...I am going to change my middle name to Guilt. And I could keep my same initials. Sweet!

Surrogate Mondays suck.....