Written Tuesday, September 15:
I did it! I popped the proverbial cork in my cervix, nourished a healthy nesting ground for a welcome parasite and said, “go to town, little dude”. I couldn’t wait to get to the drugstore after my last entry. Good thing I biked there – it helped with the anxious shakes. I had a $10 off coupon to go towards a $20 purchase so I took an unnecessarily long time shopping.
It was taking me forever to find a little tube of Vaseline lip stuff and when I finally asked someone I found out they don’t actually carry it. Seriously? How hard can it be to find plain petroleum jelly to put on my lips? Why does everything always have to have some kind of extra added shiny feature? Cherry flavoring? Yuk! Menthol? Am I buying cigarettes? It’s meant to moisturize my lips not make them tingle or smell minty or whatever it is menthol does. Camphor? I don’t even know what that is, but old people are often described as smelling of camphor so I don’t think I need it just yet. Forget about it, I’ll just keep using it out of the big jar until I hunt down a plain little tube. Maybe I’ll find it online; the internet has everything.
I walk the entire length of the store, including the section with “feminine products” before I finally find the home pregnancy tests, appropriately shelved right next to the condoms and Mandalay, the specialty delay product for all persons of the male persuasion.
Now begins the game of extended open-mouthed staring. The longer I stare the closer I’ll be to a decision, right? Well, not if my mind suddenly becomes an empty vessel devoid of all thought. This is what the meditation guides mean by clearing your mind of all conscious thought. They should send their pupils to pick out a pregnancy test. I’m sure they’d catch on much faster.
Alright, let’s start with the cheapest one. Ooh, this one has a $2 coupon. Oh, but I’d have to get their stupid membership card to get the discount. Ok, the cheapest without a gimmick seems ok, but there’s only one test. What if I F it up? A false negative is more common than a false positive, right? So I may wanna try again if it doesn’t work out.
I notice there’s a two pack and next to it a three pack, but three just seems like overkill. What would I do with extra pregnancy tests? Give them out to friends? “Here you go, my kid needs someone to play with. Get on that.” I’ll only need more than one of the result is negative and there’s only a 50% chance of that. Wait, that’s not how statistics work, is it? That’d only be if there were a 50/50 chance of getting pregnant each month and that’s not right. Gah! Now I’m over-thinking this.
People are passing me down the aisle. I think I’ve seen that same woman pass three times in the past ten minutes. Crap! Have I been here that long? It feels like my personal life is hanging like a neon sign around my neck. It’s blinking on and off, “no vacancy” and pointing downward with a big flashing arrow. I’m usually not terribly private about, well, just about anything, but I’m not used to sharing the status of my uterus with strangers with whom I haven’t even spoken a word.
Scanning the remaining pink boxes (c’mon seriously? Do they think women really like pink THAT much?), I find the most expensive one. Ok, what makes you so special? What am I really missing out on if I go the cheap-ass route that I love so much? They all state 99% accuracy if used on the first day of a missed period or later. But this $18 one advertises a digital display. Ooh! I love digital! Then I don’t have to count all those stupid dots and try to figure out where exactly that big hand is pointing.
Wait a minute, what the heck is there to digitize when you’re peeing on a stick?! There, on the pretty pink box I see a picture of the potential results and the words “pregnant” and “not pregnant”. Are you kidding me? Either people with too much money are really stupid or they just like to unnecessarily spend money because they think it’s funny. I mean, does it hurt the brain that much to think, “does a blue line mean pregnant or not pregnant or abducted by aliens or maybe it means I’m a democrat. What if there’s no line at all? What if it’s a plus sign? do I need to pee with the lights on or off? Should I shake it like a thermometer before I get started? (hopefully not after the peeing part!)”
I save myself $6 and head to the register, confident in my ability to understand the meaning behind two blue lines.
