Calling all Midol

Disclaimer: If you are not comfortable with the workings of the female body, this would be a post for you to skip. Don't say I didn't warn you.

With the RA (rheumatoid arthritis), there are a few things which make it worse. These are things I dread. After all, I quite like walking. At least for now. Even if most days I do look like I'm 80 already. In no particular order, those things are:

• cold wet weather, especially storms where the barometric pressure falls (and yes I am aware that I now also sound 80).
• stress (at this point, my life is so nuts that it really is only extreme stress)
• lack of sleep (I never get more than 6 hours a night, but anything less than that is excruciating).
• Hormonal shifts, primarily my period (which I should also note I only get warning for in the way my hip hurts. Seriously. How can the two possibly be related?)
  

It's been raining for a few days now; we've had a friend of Rebi's staying with us since last Sunday; I have been working round the clock to get the stupid accounting mess figured out at work and I'm still not able to make it reconcile within less than $1000.00. I can't go into the stress portion of my life without violating confidences trusted to me by my friends, but the stress in several areas is sky high right this second. (have you ever noticed how one friend will share something and then the phone starts ringing and you spend days listening to secrets? Does that just happen to me? People have always had a compulsion to tell me things, which I am fine with, but it's always feast or famine for the personal trials).

So, when I woke up and felt that familiar and peculiar pain gnawing at my hip, I just rolled back over and grabbed another blanket. Someone bring me the Midol, please! (And maybe an exorcism since I seem to be channeling Faulkner today. He loves the parentheses too).