I’ve filed my recent discovery of the menstrual cup in the “Why did I not know this when I was 26?” folder, along with deciding to use hair masks and deciding not to use a notebook at work, because really, how often does one go back and read that stuff anyway?  Though I’m positively tingling with excitement to share my monthly management device-related glee with you all, I fear I may lose roughly 65% of my readership to the ick factor in this case, including two dear guy friends from my real life who are now aware of my secret literary identity (word up, GG and KP).  The Silver Fox will be reading this too, of course, but since he’s married to me, he’s required by law not to be grossed out.
But I digress.  In order to maximize overall engagement and minimize overall nausea in my effort to impart to you my menstrual cup exerience, I shall make use of the handy creative vehicle of analogy.  My Aunt Flo is in no way as fabulous as the version dreamed up by Trey Parker and Matt Stone years ago, but I think she’s still pretty bloody cool.

Aunt Flo and I have been tight for almost thirty years.  She’s come to my choir concerts, tagged along on a couple of beach vacations, and even surprised me on location during a few international business trips, the saucy broad.  She’s prompt most of the time, and never stays too very long at a clip, which I appreciate. And boy does she ever have a sense of humor.

However, she’s a slob.  Whenever Aunt Flo comes around, she always leaves her paraphernalia strewn everywhere, and then I have to clean up the mess.  It’s like she doesn’t give a rat’s ass where she deposits her random possessions, or when–I haven’t the first clue what she gets up to at night, but sometimes the place looks like a murder scene in the morning.  Give her enough space, and she’ll color over all of it.

Then one day, it dawned on me like the crimson blush of morning–maybe Aunt Flo needs a more defined receptacle for all of her goodies?  To test out this theory, I gifted the great dame a nifty new medical-grade silicon … handbag.  Yeah, a handbag, that’s it.  A coral colored one with air holes on the sides and an inch-long stem at the bottom (which I cut off right away–it chafed Aunt Flo’s cousin Betty a little bit when they walked down the street together).

The change has been remarkable, my friends!  No more is Aunt Flo’s shite distributed all over the place.  No siree–she now gets a clearly defined space in which to operate, which means everything she’s got goes right inside.  Fill it up, clean it out, repeat.  This is one huge bag–it holds all of her trinkets and thingamajigs easily–but it folds up into a teeny little unit that she can really shove anywhere. Easy to clean, well-made and as soft to the touch as her Mary Kay-laden hands, Aunt Flo’s new handbag is an invention for the ages.  And now she’s totally tidy.

There were only a couple of problems that Aunt Flo and I had to work through, which were easy enough to manage:

• First, logistics. This little handbag is mess-proof and compact, but it does fill up after a while, and it’s not easy to clean out just anywhere. From that perspective, it’s way easier to use something disposable that you can simply toss in the trash when it’s at maximum capacity.
• Second, reliability.  Though this fancy new accessory is pretty darned dependable, with an admirable capacity, I still give Aunt Flo some disposables too when she comes over, just in case she happens to overflow with personal effects. So, we’re minimizing her environmental footprint, but not totally removing it–yet.
•  Third, technique.  It takes a few good tries and a swear word or six before you really get the gist of folding up this thing and popping it into the … closet. Simply put, you’ve got to know where to stick it and how.

Aunt Flo and I truly have a new lease on our relationship.  I can take her anywhere with me and not worry that she’s going to leave something behind.  And now that she’s not cramping (get it?) my style so much, we have even more fun together.  Still and all, I can’t lie and say I’m not happy when, after 5-7 days of visiting, she takes her shiny handbag and all her personal effects and hauls herself back down to Boca for a few weeks.

Image Credit: “Granny Gumshoe” (by Gill Fox, published in National Comics #57, December 1946 by Quality Publishing) via Wikia