a day in the life...

The girls lost TV privileges last night for not listening.  For three days, because that's the number that came out of my mouth with exactly zero forethought or consideration when I was doling out their punishment.  They're actually being punished because they poked a hole in Daddy's air mattress, by jumping around on it when they'd been told over and over not to do that, to lie down and watch their movie or we'd put it up.  It was patched easily, but still, when you don't listen and you break things that belong to other people, there needs to be repercussions.  Television and candy are the only currencies my children recognize and in my efforts not to give them food issues I'm trying really hard not to give them candy and treats as a reward for good behavior and, as such, I don't withhold those things when they've been naughty, either.  But TV, that magical rabbit hole, I can take it away and they feel it to their core.  They're like little junkies, and those first few hours without are always rough, but even more so if you don't have something else planned, which, of course, I did not last night as I capriciously bellowed out their sentence.  But whatever.  It's not like I planned the second kid, either - living life by the seat of my pants over here.

Cora is in a phase.  She'll be 3 in two short days, so I'm going to rely on the old fall back and straight up blame her wild behavior lately on her tender age.  She is wild, though.  WILD.  If you're reading this, maybe you've noticed the Instagram feed over there on the right - did you catch the picture of her covered in enamel model paint?  She'd been upstairs for a few minutes.  Geneva was up there too, but it's a large space for two little girls, and it's not unusual for them to play separately.  I don't know what I was doing downstairs - laundry, dinner, cleaning, drinking - but I realized I hadn't heard from her in a few full minutes.  I started up the stairs as I called her name, and I smelled it immediately - you know the smell, that fumey paint smell.  Oh shit was my only thought, and then she came around the corner and I said it out loud, "Oh shit."  Her right arm was a swirl of sticky purple and red and white and black enamel paint, the sort that comes in tiny glass jars to be applied to miniature figurines with tiny little brushes; her left hand was the same, up past her wrist, and her chin and cheeks were similarly styled.  Cora had found these 10 year old glass bottles on a shelf in a closet, unscrewed the lids, and had, I can only imagine, poured the paint into her hands and rubbed it onto her face and arms as if it were lotion.

In a blur, I checked her over with my hands and eyes the way a mom will, making sure she didn't have it in her eyes, her nose, her mouth - somehow, she didn't. I was yelling for Jimi at the same time, thinking in the back of my head, "He'll know what to do, he'll know an easy way to fix this, he knows something about everything."  When he put his head into the stairwell and saw us there, saw colorful Cora, I saw the oh shit in his eyes, and his words only backed that up - he had no idea was to do, and he sounded a little higher pitched than normal.  I don't want to say he was panicking, but he was close - he was scared, and that scared me too, but also, strangely, it made me calm down nearly immediately.  I used my calm serious voice, the one that is very matter-of-fact, and as he stripped her down in the bathroom, I walked into the kitchen, grabbed the Dawn dish soap and my phone and delivered the Dawn to the bathroom as I googled "how to remove testors model paint from skin".  The answer, if you're not interested in googling, is vegetable oil and glycerin soap.  We had vegetable oil, and the CVS up the road had glycerin soap I figured, so I left Jimi and the paint-covered child in the bathtub with a gallon-bottle of Crisco Vegetable Oil and headed to the CVS.  They had glycerin - not soap, but in a little squeeze bottle.  I figured it would work well enough, and it did, with the Dawn, and with poor Jimi rubbing and sudsing for nearly an hour.  He even got it out of her hair.

That's sort of the way it is with her right now.  The Friday before the paint incident, thirty minutes after I'd left to head over to visit a friend, she apparently decided to try to change her own poopy pull-up and covered the bathroom in shit.  I missed that completely, thank goodness.  Poor Jimi.

But yeah, 2 days before 3. She's sunshine and rainbows and silver linings - she wakes up happy every single morning; she's quick to tell me she loves me and that I'm her favorite and that I'm beautiful; when she gets in trouble she says "I'm so sorry, Mommy.  I'm so so sorry." But she's also into everything, like a little tornado.  She bounces from one thing to the next without a break in between.  I'm regularly surprised to find myself cleaning one mess while she makes another mess, again, for the 4th time, and we've only been home for an hour.  I should stop being surprised, probably, but how realistic is that?  I'm still ever the optimist, thinking all day at work about how much I miss my precious little angels and how they are going to be so sweet and loving and well behaved once I pick them up from daycare and we head home to a fabulous evening of family dinner, a game or two, maybe a walk around the block, then bath, story, bed...and then I actually pick them up and one of them is in a shitty mood and the other just wants to play but it's at the absolute most inopportune time because we're in a parking lot and there are cars and also other parents but I don't give much of a fuck about what they think but I do still care a little because i'm not going to yell "get the fuck over here right now!" the way I'd really like to do.  And then the pouty one pouts her way into her carseat as I wrestle the playful-turned-screaming-banshee one into hers and by the time I'm buckling myself into my seat I'm angry and my heart is racing and what the fuck I looked forward to THIS all day?!

But I am still an optimist, because some nights are nights like tonight, when Geneva had a good report from her teacher and was giddy with the praise, and Cora ran into my arms and hugged me and said "I missed you so much!"  We laughed our way to the car, the three of us, and got buckled without any breakdowns. Cora is newly forward-facing, so she can talk and interact in a brand new way.  We talked and sang the new Taylor Swift song on the drive home, then we danced to Katy Perry and Psy in the dining room until it was dinnertime, when we changed the playlist to The Avett Brothers.  Dinner was delicious, and so was the piece of Halloween candy they each got to choose from their stashes after dinner. 

They wanted to paint, so we made it happen.  Cora had a shower, then we played Baby Store.  We can't watch the store being built, aka them getting naked down to their underwear/pull-up (presumably because new babies are naked under their blankets?)  and into their blankets, so if we don't hear them the first time they call us to come shopping, or if we don't come to the store quickly enough, Geneva - who up to this point has given instructions to us in her lilting sweet voice "Pretend you wanted two little girls who were perfect for you but you had to go to the baby store to buy them and me and cora were the babies you buyed" - will break character and scream out in her angry voice "Mom!! You have to come buy us!"  When we go into the store (usually the living room), they'll be laying on the floor or on the couch in pretend baby beds, wrapped in bedsheets or quilts that have probably been found in the basket of clean blankets and sheets I've just carried up from the laundry room, where said blankets and sheets were just as likely to have been washed because they'd been drug across the floor by these two versus having actually been used as bedding on a bed.  They'll be goo-ing and ga-ing and making little baby-like noises, and my job as the mom is to walk up to each one of them, fawn over how precious they are, and then ask them if they want to come home with me and be my new baby girl.  They always say yes, and I never have to actually pay anyone - I just pick them up and carry them to whatever part of the house Geneva has designated our pretend home, and then we either play kitchen or start all over.  Sometimes Cora is already my baby and she and I go to the store together to buy her a sister.  Tonight the game was Jimi didn't want any babies, but said I could have some if I wanted them. I went to the store, picked out each baby individually, then carried her to her daddy, who cooed and gooed over each girl in turn. 

They were both thrilled with their game of make-believe, and didn't argue a bit when I announced bedtime/story time.  We read a PeppaPig story about George and his dinosaur balloon.  I held Cora a moment and snuggled her, but she wanted down - and promptly climbed over the rail and into her crib, where she covered herself up and said, "Goodnight, Mommy, I love you."  Jimi came in to pat her as he sang to us all. Geneva was mad when I said I was going to sit with her rather than lie down in her bed - I've slept in there a lot the last few nights at her request and my back is a wreck because of it.  She pouted, but I held her until she was over it and she let me tuck her back in without argument.  She told me she loved me, I fluffed her blanket three times, and the night, that part of my night, the awake electric bright white part of my evening, was over.

And here I sit with the dregs of hot tea turned cold, surprised at how long it took to tell you those things and at how good it felt.  At how good it feels.  These are the days I want to remember.  These are the stories I want to tell. 

Also:  Last night, Cora fell asleep early, so we sat at the table and ate dinner as a family of three.  We were probably 2 hours in to our television moratorium.  Geneva loved the mashed potatoes and asked for seconds.  She loved her family.  She was so happy to be eating dinner as a family.  She liked the green beans a little.  (These are all things she told us, verbatim.)  She and I played Go Fish after dinner until bedtime - we tied once and I won once.  She didn't even pout - she kept proclaiming how much fun she was having.  There's seriously something to this no TV thing.  I think our Netflix is suddenly broken...

Alanis, would you define irony as...

An anonymous 20 year old left a comment on my birth control post from 5 years ago, talking about how this particular brand of birth control failed her, as she is now the winner of an unplanned pregnancy. 

My first thought was "she could give me her baby". 

Birth control falls into that "wish I'd know I didn't need it" category, like the insurance you buy to cover a package that is delivered safely intact. 

It's just a bottle of pills.

I bought a bottle of prenatal vitamins about a year ago, the day I peed on a stick and it showed two lines.  I was so excited.  I bought a pregnancy book, too, which promptly scared the shit out of me and was banished to my bookcase.  (Who knew ham was bad?  Holy crap!)

My surprise only stuck around for a week, and then a week after that it was all over; my life was back to "normal".

I banished the prenatals for a couple months, then my hormones went into overdrive and I could think of nothing but getting pregnant again; I dug them out of the closet and started taking them nightly, so I would be prepared, covered, all set when the next set of double lines appeared.  

It's been almost a year; the vitamin bottle is empty, the book has been passed to my pregnant sister/cousin, and if peed on a stick right now, there would only be one line.

I think I'm okay with it all, with the way everything has played out.  I'd say "no big deal", but then I'd have to ascribe another cause to these tears welling up.

I thought I'd be a mom by now.  I really did.  I thought for sure nothing would go wrong and everything would be perfect.  When things went wrong, I was shocked.  How cruel reality can be.

Then I was going to be pregnant by Christmas.  When that didn't happen, I thought, "Surely by summer."  It's September.

I'm accepting that maybe "parents" isn't a title we're destined to claim.  As I type those words, I'm thinking in the back of my mind, "but I'm only 31.  Lots of women have babies at 32, 33, 34..."

Getting pregnant is something I always thought I'd be able to do whenever I decided I was ready to do it.  Even now, I still hold this little thought that says, "If I bought some of those ovulation predictor things, or charted my temperature; if I really TRIED, I'd be successful."  Maybe it's true.  The fear that maybe it's not is what keeps me from taking those steps.

I thought we'd be parents by now.  I thought for sure it was our reality.

I believe things come to you when you're ready for them; that the universe has a way of putting people, places, things in your life at precisely the right moments, just when you need them, or maybe not until you're able to cope with them.  I hope it's just not our turn yet, not our time.  I fear it may never be our turn, but maybe there's something different, better out there for us.  The not knowing is the hardest part; I feel like I could accept the answer either way, if only I could just know what it is.

The crazy, I has it. Bad. Well, not SO bad...

I'm proud of myself and feeling a little less crazy today - I've managed, for the first time in 9 months, to go through an entire cycle without over-analyzing everything my body's doing and wondering "Am I Pregnant?!"  I didn't even pee on a stick this month, guys.  That's sort of a big deal.  Maybe my hormones are back to normal? Maybe I'm starting to not be quite so obsessive?  Maybe I'm not quite so crazy?

I still think about having a baby and getting pregnant every single day, but now the thoughts lean more toward "It's probably better if we don't have children" and "Think about all the fun things we can do now that we wouldn't be able to do if we did have a baby..." and "If we saved up for the next year what we would've spent in daycare costs, we could go on the most awesome European adventure next summer!"  These thoughts feel more hopeful and optimistic, and not so narrow and focused and do-or-die as the "MUST HAVE A BABY" thoughts from just a few short months back.  These thoughts feel wide open with endless possibilities - those thoughts felt obsessive and all-encompassing and so fixed, set, unmoving.  Then, there was only one option for happily ever after - now, I'm remembering that I'm right in the fucking middle of my happily ever after and I should enjoy it and not waste it away wishing for something more.  

Yes, of course I realize I'm totally faking myself out.  Kinda.  I guess.  Am I?  I'm starting to wonder.  I always wanted to be a mom because, well, that's what girls do, isn't it?  We grow up, we get married, we have babies...right?  What if I'm realizing that maybe I don't think cleaning up after someone else's messes and losing sleep and worrying constantly sounds like it fits with my definition of awesome?  And life right now?  It's pretty awesome.  

God.  Whatever.  No one cares.  I don't even care.  It's not even worth writing about.  It's just the crazy that is in my head all the time, trying to justify my choice either way, assuming, of course, as always, that it is a choice I actually have.  

Kimmie got her treadmill last night, so tonight begins our "walk 30 minutes a day" challenge.  I'm not sure how we're going to make this work beyond pure guilt and competition, but whatever, I need motivation however I can get it.  And I'm feeling particularly fat today, so it couldn't happen at a better time.  

Oh, and I've managed to keep the kitchen clean for two whole days.  I even cooked in there and everything!  I'll keep you updated on my progress.  (Let's not discuss the state of the laundry, the litterbox, or the vacuuming.)  

Back to work. 

I need you to tell me this isn't true.

Hel, over at Dal, Hel & Bel, posted this.  


Tell me this is a horrible exaggeration.  It is, right?  

11 Step Program for those thinking of having kids...

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.

2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.

Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

I can't believe I'm blogging about this shit.

I play a game with myself every month. I call it "Am I Pregnant?" The rules are simple: I listen to the ticks and tocks of my body, pay special attention to how much alcohol I consume/how much I smoke, silently measure the pros/cons of my bullshit diet, remember to take my multivitamin each night (folic acid is important in early stage development!) and wonder if the last time we had special mommydaddy time if we may have inadvertently made ourselves a mommy and a daddy. This is the risk you take when you're of child-bearing years, uninterested in and/or unwilling to deal with the side-effects of hormonal birth-control (and similarly disinclined to other non-hormonal methods like condoms, spermicide or the rhythm method), and just as nonchalant about the concept of "accidentally" becoming knocked up. It sounds fucked up, doesn't it?

I don't know if I want to be a mother. I'm fascinated by the concept of becoming pregnant. At 30, I've never been pregnant. I was married in my mid-twenties, and for at least 2 of those years, my former husband and I didn't use birth control, but I never got pregnant. We tried for a few short months, but everything I read said it was completely normal for it to take more than 4 months from "Let's have a baby!" to "We're going to have a baby!" The fact that he wasn't all that into sex and that I was under a ridiculous amount of stress at work furthered my conviction that it wasn't any big deal that we didn't make a baby right away. When he lost his job right when we were getting into the real "Okay, any month now" part of trying, we gave up because of our suddenly tenuous financial situation. I never went back on the pill, though. Our infrequent coupling was more than effective. Jimi and I used condoms, most of the time, for the first 6 months or so. Then we tried to use good timing. Eventually, i tried the pill again, but when it made me batshit crazy, I gave it up, deciding that the risk of having a child outweighed the risk of him committing me somewhere. 3 years later, we've not had a single pregnancy scare.

So yeah, I wonder if I'm infertile. Or if he is. Or if we've smoked too much pot. Or if I've pickled my ovaries with Busch Light and vodkas with cranberry.

But every month, I feel every gurgle in my gut, every small cramp in my belly, every twinge in my nipples, and I wonder, "Am I?"

I once, naively, unintentionally smart-assedly, told my mother, "Surely I'll just KNOW the second I become pregnant. Won't I? Won't I feel differently? I think I know my body well enough that I'd be able to tell."

"I didn't," she semi-scoffed at me, wanting to laugh at me for my youthful ignorance and bold, nearly-egotistical assumptions, but not wanting to hurt my feelings, for she could tell I was speaking honestly. "I didn't have any idea until I was late and even then, I couldn't believe it. I felt completely normal until a few weeks later."

I want to know what it feels like to be pregnant. I want to know what it feels like to feel the baby move, to see little elbows and knees and a forehead press against my belly. But I don't know if I want to be a Mom after it's over.

Does that make me a bad person? Does that even make any sense?

I don't know if I'm ready to give up the freedom of being responsible for myself and myself alone. I can do what I want, buy what I want, go where I want, sleep when i want, watch what I want, drink what I want, eat what I want, smoke what I want. I get frustrated with the dog when he wraps himself around a tree and can't figure out how to unwrap himself. What sort of mother would I make?

And then there's Jimi. He'd be a wonderful father, but I don't know that I want to share him. I like being the one who makes him smile and who eases his mind at the end of a long day. I like being his favorite, his everything.

See how selfish I am? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

But I also want to see a little clone of the best parts of both of us. I want to mold another person to be a good, kind, contributing member of a fair and equitable society. I want to bake cakes and read books and sing songs and play in the park and learn the beauty of the world all over again.

So I play this game every month. And I honestly don't know for what result I'm hoping.

Loe.strin 24 fe

If you're thinking about it, don't do it.

I was on birth control pills years ago (Ortho Tri Cyclen, to be exact). I stopped using the pill in 2003, but had never had any trouble or side-effects other than slight weight gain. My periods were light, my cramps were almost non-existent, and the acne that was a hold-over from high school cleared up. All in all, it was a good experience. When Jimi and I talked over our birth control options, he had reservations about me going back to the pill because of the dramatic changes it puts your body through. I assured him it was no big deal. Boy, was I wrong.

I went to the doctor for my annual exam. I told her I wanted to go on the pill, and that I'd been happy with Ortho Tri Cyclen (OTC, for the sake of brevity) years before. She seemed hesitant. She explained the mood changes that are common with pills that give a changing dose of hormones, not to mention the ever-feared weight gain. She recommended Loestrin 24 Fe, singing praises that included a two-day period (NEVER on the weekend if you start the pack on Friday) and the fact that it has the lowest dose of hormones available. She sealed the deal when she told me it's what she uses - surely my doctor wouldn't prescribe this medication if she wasn't personally happy with it. I followed her instruction and began the first pack of pills that very day (despite already being 6 days into my cycle).

At first, my experience with this pill was no different than my experience with OTC. I took the pills at the same time each day. I forgot a dose, but took it as soon as it was remembered. In response to my request for help remembering to take them each day, Jimi velcroed the pack to the bathroom mirror. (It's the only place in the house that I'm guaranteed to look every day.) I started noticing a change about a week in: my dreams were becoming increasingly odd, my breasts were sore and tender, I felt bloated, my face began breaking out. Worse, though, were the mood swings. I'm generally a happy-go-lucky person - it takes a lot to get me down, and I rarely stay down long. Suddenly, though, I found myself sad. If I wasn't sad, I was anxious or angry. I was apologizing a lot for my behavior, and I cried almost once a day. Then came the bleeding. It started a week after my period had ended, 14 days into my cycle. That was 9 days ago. It's light, but constant - and more than enough to piss me off. My doctor warned me that there would be "breakthrough bleeding" (her words, obviously). She did not warn me that I would have a second period this month.

I'm lucky. Jimi is a very understanding man and, so far, has been able to brush off my insane mood swings and bitchiness and tears. He knows what's causing them, and hopes, along with me, that they're temporary. I promised him I'd give it a second month before I threw in the towel.

That was last night, though. This morning, exhausted after another night of creepy dreams and frustrated by another pair of stained panties, I googled Loestrin. First, I found their website. (Maybe now is a good time, in the interest of full disclosure, to let you know that I hate our current healthcare system in this country. I loathe pharmaceutical companies and feel that they are much more interested in making money than curing disease. I don't have a lot of faith in doctors, because I worry that they live in the pockets of those pharmaceutical companies.) So, I found the Loestrin website. I read the FAQ, and felt my spirits drops when I came to "These side effects, especially nausea and vomiting, may decrease or subside within the first 3 months of use.". You're shitting me, right? 3 months? Something told me there was more. (And oh, there was, but not yet.)

After reading the FAQ, I began perusing the rest of the site. I found a coupon for $35 off my first month's prescription and printed it out, thinking that saving $35 is always a good thing. The verbiage on the certificate grated my nerves a bit:

To the Pharmacist: Please submit this claim to Therapy First. The patient pay amount will be reduced by up to $35.00 and you will receive this in your next reimbursement from Therapy First plus a handling fee. (NEXT reimbursement? Apparently, this is rather common. And how much IS that handling fee?)

But I've already admitted to hating pharmaceutical companies, so that really should be taken with a grain of salt. It was Cammie's Story that pissed me off. Are these scientists working on providing me with the best, most-effective medication, or are they public-relations and advertising professionals just trying to move a product? My vote is not with the former.

I needed more impartial information. Back to google. I found Medications.com, and their page on patient reviews of Loestrin 24 Fe. Mood swings, depression, breast tenderness, bleeding, acne, weight gain, nightmares, insomnia, reduced sex drive, headaches - all things I've experienced since beginning this pill, all things other women are experiencing. It's nice to know I'm not crazy. It scares me when I read tales of other women experiencing these symptoms for months. I'm not interested.

I called my doctor, but of course, she's out today. I left a detailed message that included my symptoms as the reasons why I need a prescription for a different medication. I will not accept a reduced enjoyment of life in exchange for something as simple as birth control. At this point, condoms almost seem romantic.