Roxy Hammond

Men, stop reading this now. I’m going to start talking about girly things. Things that make you cringe when your girlfriends/sisters/mothers bring them up in front of you. Things like … PMS.

You see, as a female, there are times when I suffer from PMS. Surprise, surprise. I know it may seem that my attitude has me suspended in a constant state of anger anyway, but there are actually times during the month when it is worse.

Scary, right?

I found myself with a particularly bad case of this the other day. Sometimes I don’t actively notice when I’m crabby, but in this case, I did. I started my morning by almost breaking my alarm clock just for being annoying. Things proceeded downhill from there.

I wondered, midway through the day, why do I want to choke the life out of most of the people around me? And most importantly, who shrunk every pair of my pants?!

I ruled out a lack of sleep and/or caffeine, and then remembered … oh yes, I know what week it is. Suddenly the world became clear … but still really annoying.

The thing is, I’m not quite sure many men understand the dynamics of PMS. I’ve heard men ask before: If you know you’re going to be crabby, why don’t you just make an extra effort to be nice to people?

Well, isn’t that just a novel idea? Because when you’re already pissed at the world, I know what you REALLY want to do is grin and bear it. Uh-huh.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be nice to people. The other day I found myself being mad at myself for being mad at everyone else. I tried smiling and lightening up, but I found that my scowl quickly resumed its solid position on my face. Jokes weren’t funny, normal interactions between people were a chore and I had daydreams of violence.

Yes, I realize right now that I sound nuts. But if you read my columns regularly, this will come as no surprise to you. And you can probably ask any other woman that suffers from PMS – I’m not crazy. This crap actually happens.

What men really don’t understand is how much we can’t prevent this. I have normal bad moods. They can usually be cured by watching a funny TV show, or talking to someone I like, or eating an entire pint of ice cream. PMS is not like this. It requires some serious medication, the clich