I love Christmas, but I hate shopping for gifts. I never know what to get for others, and don’t want to waste money on something the recipient does not need. Luckily, I’ve been able to avoid the stress and strain that comes with gift-giving. My parents only want Taiwanese snacks–stuff they cannot get on their own because the only 99 Ranch Market in the state went out of business–and my sister and I don’t exchange presents to begin with. And my friends and I don’t buy gifts for each other we’re all living on a budget, and are well aware of each other’s need to save. Of course, working with this system means I don’t receive many presents–but that’s okay because it also means I get to avoid crowded malls, traffic jams, irate last-minute-shoppers, and all the tension and frustration that comes with Christmas shopping.

That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the plight of the Christmas shopper. I feel really bad for all those people who are still running around on Christmas Eve, trying to find something for every single person on their lists. Last-minute shopping sucks ass, and if you’re still struggling right now–don’t worry. I have created an emergency backup plan that will help you get out of buying presents for the remaining people on your list–and might even make it so that you won’t have to buy a gift for another person ever again!

To understand how the plan works, you have to ask yourself something: Why would you give a gift to A but not B? The holidays are when people are feeling most generous, but not to the point where we’d give a present to a random person on the street. And we don’t give presents to everyone we know either. We instead limit our generosity to those we feel more connected to, e.g., close friends, family members, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, etc.

So if you don’t want to buy someone a gift, all you have to do is change his status from being “closely connected” to “ehhh…” You have to weaken the connection. And the methods you need to use depend on whom you are dealing with:

    1. Family Members

How do you break a blood connection, you ask? You say you’re adopted, of course!

Can’t buy a gift for a family member who isn’t really family!

    2. Friends

You’d only buy gifts for someone you’re good friends with…but what if she’s someone you’re not all that friendly with?

Friends no more!

Note: Obviously, you’d have to tailor whatever you say to the specific person you’re dealing with. For instance, if your friend is single then say you’re banging one of his relatives. I have found that using one of the grandparents is especially effective.

    3. Co-Workers

Some of us might not necessarily give our co-workers anything, but you might have to if your office is doing some Secret Santa thing. In that case, you’d have to buy your co-worker a gift–but only if he’s actually a co-worker.

You’re probably wondering: Now that I’ve successfully demoted myself in the eyes of my friends and family, what happens once Christmas has passed? How will I ever change things back to how they were before December 25th?

Don’t worry about stuff like that! Everything will be back to normal by April!

Saved!

Happy Holidays!

I’m really, really sorry about the late post. I’m in the middle of finals again, and studying has taken a huge chunk of my time. But the good news is this is the last round of finals I will ever have! And after next week, I’ll officially be done with law school! And then I can sit back and look forward to…to…OMG, I have to study for the freaking bar exam. Two months of cramming dry-ass law! And then I’ll have to take a multi-day exam about that dry-ass law. And after that I’ll probably get a paper cut, which will then become infected with some flesh eating bacteria…and who knows when I’ll ever be able to relax.

Anyway, I wanted to take some time out to tell you all how much I appreciate your patience. Every time finals week comes around, you guys have always been super supportive and really understanding of my time constraints, and I just wanted to thank you all for being so awesome….by telling you a story about explosive diarrhea and menstrual fluid.

First of all, I don’t like having a period every month. I hate how messy it makes my bathroom trips, and how it looks like I’m recreating the prom scene from “Carrie” every time I shower. And the pads–they’re the worst part of getting your period. They always trap all this moisture down there, and it can make the crotch area really humid. Airing it out helps, but how often can a girl really do that? The smell alone could kill someone.

I’ve been trying for years to come up with ways to keep my pad from creating a mini-monsoon season in my pants. I’ve done the bikini wax, thrown in handfuls of baby powder–and while those have helped keep the moisture levels down for an hour or two, the best method has always been the tampon.

Tampons don’t cause moisture buildup because they’re just cotton plugs you shove up your hole–unlike their cousin, the Pad, that prides itself on being a tiny vaginal shroud. Tampons have made my period cycles a lot less unpleasant, but I don’t use them very often because doing so can apparently cause health problems. So I limit myself to only using them after showers because that’s when vaginal humidity is at its highest. When I’m feeling particularly daring, I’ll use one even though I haven’t yet taken a shower. That doesn’t happen very often…nor will it ever happen again. When I deviated from my usual routine last week, it must have made the sanitary napkin gods upset because the decision came back and chomped my ass off.

It all started after I’d eaten something my stomach really did not enjoy…

Sidebar: A couple of people told me that pulling it out after I’d just taken a hearty dump was a tampon foul. I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s not like the string was long enough to become contaminated by any fecal matter. What would be the less disgusting alternative? Pulling it out after a pee? Or after handling raw chicken? 

So anyway…I was sitting on the toilet and reaching down to take the tampon out….

That’s right: the string was not hanging there! It wasn’t even in the vicinity, and I had looked everywhere twice. I also fished the applicator out of the garbage to see if the tampon was still in it. Who knows? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and threw it away after I unwrapped it? It doesn’t matter anyway. The applicator was empty…and so was my vagina!

As for the freak out, it was fast and it was furious:

I’ve never lost a tampon before. It’s always been where I expected it to be–so when it wasn’t in its usual spot this time, I had no idea how to handle it besides scream and flail around. And I was scared. The thing is, I know very, very little about human anatomy. At the very least, you’d think I’d know something about female reproductive organs–but I don’t. In fact, I know so little that what I was really afraid of was the possibility that my tampon had traveled to my stomach and was going to wreak havoc on my internal organs and kill me.

So sad…

Luckily, a few quick Google searches helped clear a few things up: (1) a tampon cannot escape into your stomach; (2) if one gets lost in your vagina, you can actually take it out yourself; and (3) the real thing I should have been worrying about was Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Toxic Shock Syndrome, or TSS, is nature’s way of telling women not to put absorbent foreign objects between their legs. Every box of tampons has a warning about TSS printed on it. The label on my box says, “TSS is a rare but serious disease that may cause death. Read and save the enclosed information.” What enclosed information? Oh! They’re talking about that little pamphlet I threw away because I didn’t think I’d ever need it! It probably had some useful stuff in there, like how to tell if you have TSS.

So I went back to Google and did a search on TSS symptoms. I had hoped to achieve some peace of mind by educating myself on the warning signs. The plan was that if I started TSS-ing, I would be able to get medical treatment before it evolved into a serious health issue. Unfortunately, that was one of the worst ideas I’d ever come up with. Here I was, freaking out about a serious disease that I had a chance–however remote–of contracting, and I think I can keep myself calm by looking up its symptoms.

And surprise, surprise, the plan totally backfired. Instead getting peace of mind, I went into hypochondriac mode and started feeling like I was experiencing all the symptoms I read about. Light-headedness? Check. Headache? Double check. I was on the verge of death! And what should you do when you are faced with a life-threatening emergency?

You would probably call an ambulance–which would be the highly sensible thing to do–but I called my sister. I always call her whenever I’m down and in need of advice, and potentially being at risk of getting TSS because my tampon was hiding all up in me was making me down and I needed advice.

My sister’s cell phone, however, went straight to voicemail, so I decided to leave a message:

Now I was faced with another problem. I wanted to tell her about the lost tampon debacle, but I didn’t want to actually say “lost tampon.” “Lost tampon” just sounds so gross, doesn’t it? And it’s one of those terms that’s often accompanied by an unwanted mental picture. I didn’t want to imagine what this rogue tampon was starting to look like, and I’m the one who had it stuck in me. So if I was all nasted out by the thought, then my sister was definitely going to feel the same way times 10.

But after two minutes of “uh…uhh…” I still couldn’t think of anything to say. And then, in the spur of the moment, I glanced at my laptop screen.  My browser was still showing the results of my Google search and one was a link to a Wikipedia entry about TSS, along with a few lines of the actual text. So I just read those sentences aloud:

Nice…

I hung up the phone and decided I was done playing Hide-and-Seek with a Tampax Pearl. No more freaking out over TSS symptoms or scaring my cats with my constant wails of despair. That tampon was coming out whether it wanted to or not!

The extraction was going to require some handy work, so I threw a dark blue towel on my bedroom carpet, sat down, put a mirror between my legs and–ughhh! *barf* That thing I was looking at was not a vagina! It was a sea cucumber’s mouth, and it was throwing up blood! Mind you, this was all happening during the middle of my period when the flow was at its heaviest. And when I reached in and tried to search around it was like wading through my own body fluid. The whole time I was wishing I was Moses and could part this very red, very smelly sea.

Despite my amateur Carrie-Prejean-doing-Japanese-fetish-porn act, I still could not find that damn tampon! There wasn’t anything in there. Nothing! Just more blood!

It was over for me. That tampon was going to stay in my body, and I was going to get TSS and die.

And then…!

It was my sister! She had heard the voicemail I left her and rushed over from work! I was so relieved to see her that I ran out of my room to give her a hug!

We later determined that the tampon came out when I was taking a dump. My period was that heavy.