Things Found While Cleaning My Room

• Five buckeyballs
• My RSI Summerbook
• The block of wood I cut when first learning to use a table saw (note: this was two weeks ago)
• Money
• More money
• Saudi Arabian money
• JSHS Pen
• A broken watch
• My Princeton Preview lanyard, which I'm keeping for the summer because it is very high quality.
• A "This is what a feminist looks like" bumper sticker
• A sexy silver lanyard I have no recollection of previously seeing
• 5 towels in various stages of dirtiness
• The bookmark I got for buying a prom ticket 
• 70 more buckeyballs
• Approximately 600 tampons (note: hyperbole)
• My MIT CPW folder (MIT! <3 <3 <3)
• This was the point at which I became fed up and threw everything remaining into one large bin.

In other news, I went prom dress shopping and came home with two new pairs of shorts and some chocolates for my beloved mother, but no prom dress. Sweet success!

Things I Do Not Like

People who willfully cause pain to others.

Computer software with a trial period.

Ubuntu partitions that don't function.

Cellphones with diminished battery capacity.

Poorly written books.

Poorly written fan fiction.

Poorly written scientific papers.

My lab partners.

My scientific paper.

My inability to properly work a scanner.

The lack of image editing software on my computer.

My innate stinginess.

The fact that I still haven't practiced piano.

How loud my leg-twitching habit is.

Undercooked cookies.

My ex-not-boyfriend.

Mean people.

Whoever invented menstrual cramps.

Evolution deniers.

Feminist haters.

Feminist haters who argue incompetently.

People who talk faster than I can think.

College applications.

The fact that I am still obsessed with MIT (even Yale couldn't break me).

Headaches.

Menstrual cramps.

Menstrual cramps.

Menstrual cramps.

I was going to talk about falling over...

but Kathrya has it covered, although she did miss the one where I fell off of my own chair during math.

In that case, I'll have to use an alternate story.

One fundamentally awkward aspect of the school bathrooms is the presence of those little communal tampon bins, particularly in the cases where the bins were removed from the door and instead sit between the stalls, displaying their bloody contents to the world.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't really want the acquaintance in the next stall over seeing the evidence of my menstrual cycle as it seeps through the toilet paper I wrapped my tampon up in. It's a private, personal part of being a woman. And I'm proud of my vagina and all that jazz, but I still think the blood is gross, and I generally avoid announcing the current state of my bits to the world, this blog and Nyx aside.

However, today, as I was swapping my own feminine hygiene products, Becky (an extremely petite senior in my physics and government classes) dropped an applicator into the bin. My first thought was "How odd, I thought seniors were post-menstrual and didn't get their periods."

Plumbing

The plumbing in my bathroom, my sister's bathrooms, the living room powder room and basement is out. Although my Dad has not yet determined why, we still aren't allowed to so much as wash our faces in this half of the house.

When I was taking a shower this afternoon, the toilet, which I hadn't even used, started bubbling. Yes, that's right, bubbling. It sounded exactly like the bubbling noise I managed to produce using a small stack of notecards held between the pointer finger and thumb of my right hand last week. It totally freaked me out, and I actually stopped mid-shower and stared at the toilet for a while (it bubbled a couple more times, then stopped). After I was all dried off, I went and told Dad. He attacked the toilet first with a plunger, then with some odd contraption known as a 'snake.'

At first, we thought my cousin had flushed a tampon, which, due to our old, decrepit pipes, always stops everything up. However, I got her phone number from Shelby's cell, and Mom called, and she said that she doesn't even use tampons, so that was out. The new theory is that my other cousin, who is mentally disabled, flushed half a role of toilet paper at once. Regardless, I'm going to go walk across the whole house and brush my teeth now. Then, when I wake up at 4 am after a weird dream, which I inevitably will (last night, my cousin's girlfriend got the schnazziest engagement ring), I'll have to traipse over to the offices just to pee.

Oh, what fun.

Tampons

Awkward conversation with my 12 year old sister, Shelby. Be prepared for graphic discussion of female anatomy.

S:Tea?

T:Yes?

S: I'm trying to use a tampon

T: okay...

S: I'm having trouble.

T: You just take the tampon and stick it up there. It's not that hard.

S: Yes it is! I can't find the up there!

T: What?

S: I can't find the hole!

T: Urgh. I was trying to read Questionable Content.

S: Sorry.

T: No, it's fine. I'll draw you a picture.

*tea grabs paper and pen*

T: You know where your vagina is, right.

S: Uhhh.....down there?

T: *sigh* Where does the blood come out?

S: In between the foldy things?

T: Gaaaahhh.

*draws picture of two squiggly things with some holes in between them*

T: Okay. Those are the labia.

S: They look like snakes.

T: Psh. Okay, that's the clit.

S: Ummm.

T: You don't know what that is. I suppose you'll learn eventually.

S: Okay.....

T: look, that ones where the pee comes out. That's the vagina.

S: Wait- the pee doesn't come out on the bottom?

T: No, it does not.

S: Really? Cause I always thought that-

T: No, it doesn't.

S: I still don't understand how I'm supposed to fit a tampon up there.

T: It fits, alright?

S: But it's so small.

T: When you have a baby, it reaches 10 centimeters.

S: what?

T: this big.

S: EEEEWWWWWW

T: How else are you supposed to get a baby out? Honestly.

S: What about penises. How do people have sex?

T: (thinks: why am I the one teaching my little sister about sex. Shouldn't my mother be doing this? or her health teacher? or the internet, even, just something other than me?) says: When you're going to have sex, you make lubricant.

S: What's lubricant?

T: Slimy stuff.

S: Oh. How does that help?

T: I don't know, it just does. Do you think you can find your vagina on your own now?

S: Probably?

T: Good.

10 minutes later...

T: Shelby, you alright?

S: Yeah. It feels funny.

T: But you found it?

S: Yeah. It still feels weird though.

T: You'll get used to it.

*end conversation*

Well, at least I probably will not have to do that again until I have my own children.

Thank god.