Transformative Experiences

First, I am not dead. Second, I'm writing something. It seems that traveling is good for the blog-idea-generator. Third, it's about burping, so I apologize right now, but I'm writing it anyway because I finally thought of something to write, dangit!

Recently, I started taking a new medication. Never fear, gentle readers, it's not for anything squicky or life-threatening. One of the side effects listed on the little package insert for the new med is "may affect digestion", by which I can only assume they mean "give you a chemical sex change." This right here is about to get hip-deep in sexism, y'all, so brace y'allselves: Dudes belch more often, and more foully, than women. And they comment on it more, but I think that's social and not biological. Also, don't bother commenting with examples that disprove my assertion. I just told you I'm being sexist, here, but I'm also generalizing. So, insert all the "on average" and "generally" and "as a group" disclaimers you need up in there to feel comfortable with the accuracy of the statement, and let's roll.

Right. So. Belching. The new medicine "affects my digestion" in much the same way that the flippin' Napoleonic Army affected Russia in 1812. For one thing, aside from the occasional swallowed-air-while-drinking-Dr-Pepper sort of thing, I've been a very low-volume belcher all my life. I am presently belching about once per 10 French soldiers after every meal. For another thing, I've never belched flavors before. These new ones taste like the thousand marching feet of snow-bound, unwashed French mercenaries. So, as far as I can tell, my gut has been turned into a man-belly.

This brings me to a completely unsurprising point that probably seems unrelated just now. I don't like having a period. Don't get me wrong, I love being a woman, and I like all the symbolic, spiritual and otherwise intangible implications of that state of affairs. But I can safely say that I hate the visceral experience of having a period. I don't like the headaches, the mood swings, the bloating, the hormone roller-coaster, or the inconvenience.

Which brings me back to the belching. I would gladly trade the hassle of having a period to forgo the stompy, gassy, smelly French army feet marching across my tongue right now. *buuuuup*