Screw you, too, uterus.

I really kind of hate being a girl. In fact, the only real benefit I see to it is that my husband married me. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty huge benefit, but the rest of this is fucking bullshit, if you ask me.

Oh, by the way, I think my period is coming. Oh, you already guessed that? What gave it away, my cheery, sun-shiny attitude? I thought so.

The cramps have been around for a good two weeks already. I finally got so sick of them that I called and asked for some pain medication to deal. I asked for Percocet, and got Vicodin instead. There's a pretty big difference in strength there, but it's better than nothing, so I didn't complain. Honestly, at this point, if they offered an epidural and a catheter, I'd be all, "YES. BRING IT. THAT SOUNDS LOVELY."

My uterus is a total bitch. And I really have no idea what I ever did to deserve this kind of treatment from her. She's been this way for 15 years, with no provocation whatsoever from yours truly. And she's only served her real intended purpose once. OH, I'M SORRY, HAVE I OVERWORKED YOU? HERE, SIT DOWN AND RELAX WHILE I RUB YOUR SHOULDERS, WHICH ARE PROBABLY REALLY SORE FROM ALL THAT HEAVY LIFTING YOU DID ONCE TWO YEARS AGO.

Bitch, please.

Anyhoodle, I'm finally starting to see some forward progress toward a period. Normally, I wouldn't say that with a tremendous amount of happiness, seeing as how all this pain will become 10 times worse when I get a full-on period, but at this point it's more of a rip-off-the-Bandaid situation. I'm tired of feeling like shit with no moving forward, and I just can't wait to get to the part of this process where I get to jab huge, sharp needles into my ass three or four times a day.

Wait.........maybe I should rethink this..........

Everything else on the home front is pretty normal. Ellie has an appointment with an allergist in early March that I'm excited about. We already know she's allergic to eggs, and we were hoping that would be the extent of it. But, alas, no. We gave her a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich a few weeks ago, and she had a reaction. Just some redness and a little swelling that Benadryl took care of, but -- and this is the AWESOME part -- we don't know if she's reacting to the peanuts or the strawberries, since both are pretty common allergens. Super fun stuff, right?

I called her pediatrician to see if we could have some tests run, and, I swear, the minute the words "reaction to peanut" left my mouth they were all, "FUCK!!! NOOOOOOO!!!" and they referred us to an allergist. And who can blame them, really? Peanut allergies are really scary. I didn't really even get a chance to mention the strawberry component to them.

I'm glad, though, honestly, even though the appointment with the allergist was set out almost two months. They're going to do a crapload of tests to see what she's allergic to, rather than letting us continue to play Russian Roulette with various food items. I like this approach much better.

Ellie is starting to understand her food limitations. A little too well, honestly. I roasted a chicken with potatoes and baby carrots a few weeks back, and as she sat at the table I said, "Have a bite of your carrots." To which she responded, "I can't." When I asked her why she couldn't, she said, "My carrots have eggs in 'em."

You know what else has eggs in it? The shaved chicken I put on her sandwich a few days ago. Also, possibly green beans. And definitely broccoli. But she's positive that the peanut butter patty Girl Scout cookies are perfectly safe, even though we've tried to explain that they have peanuts in them, and she can't have peanuts for the same reason she can't have eggs. She just keeps saying, "No, they don't have eggs in 'em," while she smacks her lips, waiting for a bite.

And before anyone jumps all over us for keeping things she's allergic to in the house, we both really feel that it does her a disservice to make her environment a place where she doesn't have to question anything she ingests, because the real world isn't like that. In the real world, they throw eggs and peanuts into food items just for the bloody hell of it. In the real world, food is a series of land mines she'll have to step over. And, as much as we'd like to keep her ignorant and happy all the time, we'd much rather prepare her so that she doesn't have an anaphylactic reaction on her first day of kindergarten, or at her first sleepover with school friends, etc. Maybe it's overkill, but we feel like we're doing what's best for her.

We like her alive, is all I'm saying.

Ellie had a little case of the flu a week ago, but, thankfully, it passed in about two days, and neither Brian not I ended up getting it. Which is really just some kind of freaking miracle, in my opinion, because I brought her home from daycare the day she got sick, and she puked all over me. If I was the betting type, I'd have laid down a pretty huge chunk of money on the odds that I'd be sick within 48 hours. Somehow, I got through unscathed, as did Brian, which was good, because he had a trip for work that he really couldn't miss last week.

Have I mentioned how much I love all this traveling my husband is doing? Have I also mentioned how, every time he leaves, I have a complete panic attack, wondering if it's the last time I'm going to see him because something terrible could happen to him? Yeah, I'm sure all of that is totally normal.

Here's a new picture of Ellie. I don't have a good "wrap things up cleverly" paragraph today, so this will have to do.