The Bluestocking Women's Pub, in which we wait excitedly for the next instalment of Gosie's adventures. Gosie, Glass and the Gerbils' Dilemma.

[AsWithGlad]

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5559589-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-in-which-gosie-returns-to-the-trail?page=1

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the best (perhaps only) online women's pub. Nothing in the food or drink can harm you, everything is served by a very enthusiastic crew of gerbils, and any curious menfolk are welcome at the Staunch Ally down the road.

Decades ago a high end chef was congratulated by customers for his genius in stuffing pheasant with risotto. It wasn’t rice, it was the maggots that had migrated into the pheasant’s body cavity as the heat of the oven cooked them alive.

No reason you can't have both sets of boots. Just saying...

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!

I agree. I might even go as far as

EEEEEWWWWW!

My SIL is probably eating btw, not ignoring me on purpose.

Is it me, or is it really quiet in here?

There don’t seem to be as many gerbils on duty…

I'm put off pheasant for life now!

Instead... hot chocolates all around! Extra whipped cream and marshmallows for anyone having a really 💩day.

And here's some extra chocolate things
🍩🍫🍪

All the chocolate please. I wish to report my body to be in breach of the Geneva Convention. It's having another go at a period, a week after the last one. 16 years of peri, and counting.

Pass the hot chocolate, I'll take it to bed with me.

I pluck or breast out pheasants well before they get to the maggoty stage. I have standards...

It's a good stuff if you cook it properly - it can be dry if you don't.

And Magpie, your new boots are beautiful, but the life I lead would trash them in minutes.

Everyone seems like they're in a daze. It has been a very strange day altogether, and now the contracts have appeared.

I'm on two nights no sleep now, having some weird, irritating problems with overseas finances and taxes (believe it or not, still working on sorting out our late mother's estate, a few years on! it's a complicated mix of things, selling a house and plus having two siblings 8 hours apart timewise really complicates things), and my package seems to have gone AWOL.

Now the gerbils..
I think I'd better try to get to bed early.

Oh Lord, I remember that.

DH: "But you've just had your period."

Moi: "Yes! I'm bloody well aware of that - I'm not doing it on purpose!"

If it's any comfort. I'm about 12 or 13 years in and still sometimes get a hot flush.

But commiserations. You must be sick of it.

The lady who sits next to me at Senior Flex is in her 80s. She told me that she still gets the occasional hot flush.

I know, right?

I once let my son and his girlfriend look after our house and live there for two weeks, whilst we were on holiday, got home to a strange smell downstairs.

lifted the top of the bin off and what i thought was rice fell all over my feet.

only to realise they were maggots.

i actually threw up.

Off to bed, lovely Bluestockingers. I hope gerbils don't have a sleepless night with everything to consider, and the same for all of us! Nos da 👼🌙

Good night everyone.

Kitty is curled up by my feet & we’ve just been having a cuddle. She has catnip breath.

OFFS.
There is so much about this womanhood lark that no one ever warned me about when I was 12...
Period leakage
Period pain (up to and including the completely incapacitating)
Realising that you have been caught unaware by your period and have no Tampax or towels, so have to make do with a wodge of bog paper till you get home
Morning sickness that lasts until lunchtime/ early afternoon/ whenever it feels like it
How it feel to be kicked in the ribs by your unborn baby
The details of childbirth, even of the most straightforward delivery
What childbirth can do to your perineum
Lochia
Sore nipples that send you through the ceiling every feed for the first few weeks of your baby's life
Mastitis
Squirting milk down the sink at 4am because your baby didn't wake for the night feed, and you want the little blighter to sleep through, but your boobs are about to explode
Leaking milk through several layers of clothing
Leaking milk when you hear your baby crying
Dealing with the baby going through of phase of increasing your milk supply, so that you're feeding for 60+ minutes out of every 90 and can barely get to the loo
Knackered stomach muscles after a couple of pregnancies
Being told you're miscarrying when you're not
Being told you're miscarrying when you are
Bleeding so much you're surprised you're still alive
Having a D&C
Cervical smears
Being told you're being referred on after a cervical smear
Having five people look up your vadge in the space of ten days
The after-effects of having your vadge poked and prodded by all those people
Mammograms
Hot flushes
Brain fog/ forgetfulness/ crap balance/ random aches and pains/ etc - all of which do finally lift, but not before you've wondered if you should see your GP about your neurological system
Patchy periods - the flood followed by the hardly worth bothering with followed by another flood etc, for several years
Your skin going to hell during/after the menopause
Your bladder ditto
Your ladygarden migrating to your chin

I'm sure there are more.
Plus I think I got off relatively lightly compared to various friends and acquaintances (c-sections, forceps, life-threatening placenta praevia, IVF, breast cancer, polyps, PCOS...)

None of this seems to be what TRAs mean by 'being a woman'. Funny, that.

The gerbils are all a bit discombobulated this evening. Gubbins wants to know why no famous orchestra is offering her sunflower seeds to ting her triangle. She wonders if she practices more if that might help.

I told her probably not.

I did give her a matching outfit to mine though. I honestly don't know how she manages to get so dirty so quick. She looked spotless 5 minutes ago after her shower.

My first experience of pheasant was with DH's family who believed that you should hang it up by it's tail and then cook it when it fell on the floor. I couldn't eat it. I quite like gamey but I can't eat rotten. I now get game cooked after 4 days in a cool, dry room and I am happy.

Ooh, I wonder what the gerbils think of their offer. It isn’t very generous, is it, or is it?

I wonder if we should mention:

Ten days of holiday per year, plus one birthday, is less than a fortnight when you’re working six days a week, 42 hours in total. They won’t have time to join in any of the wonderful gerbil performances, for instance.

The Bluestocking may be reasonably close to Wicken Fen at the moment, but that’s not guaranteed. If they are travelling home every evening it’s going to mean very long days sometimes. I hope it’s not a cunning plan on Fenella’s part, leading to suggesting it would just be simpler to sleep under their workbenches and only go home for their one day off each week.

No mention of Tunnocks, or who will make their lunches.

Are we generous with each gerbil’s seed allowance? Do we even count them?

Having had to have a hysterectomy at 43 I missed all the irregular periods, but still got the hot flushes when I reached my early 50s and my ovaries called it a day. The worst bit of my breast cancer recurrence when I was 59 was the 5 years of anti-hormone treatment that followed which brought with it yet more hot flushes. 😓

Does nobody else think it suspicious that Fenella seemingly has no other employees in her workshop but now wants to take on three at once, without clearly defined duties for them? Perhaps she is not a thoughtful employer?

@EdithStourton , added to which nobody talked about it in them days, so you didn’t expect it, soldiered on, and thought it was just you.

None of this seems to be what TRAs mean by 'being a woman'. Funny, that.
They wouldn’t know about it. See above.

Hot flushes may be discussed nowadays, but nobody talked about how they hurt.

Or maybe that is just me.

Fenella has an apprentice hamster. Who has a clipboard.