Road trips, dilemmas, misconceptions

Blogger Vic is hitting the road this weekend. I need no persuading to leave the cold and drudgery of this particular part of the countryside. Even though I've been living here for the past (shit is it really that long?) eleven years I am still a coastal child at heart. Give me sun, bare feet and the beach and I'm happy. This town is absolutely beautiful in autumn and winter, and I could photograph it all day. But there lies the problem... I could photograph it all day if I wanted to remove myself from the heater and step outside. While wearing five layers, a beanie that makes me look like a cartoon condom ad and a pair of fingerless hobo gloves. Yeah right.

I've been looking forward to this trip so much that I have a mental list of things to do before going, which includes packing, cleaning out the car, making sure I've got camera batteries. All the usual stuff. But yesterday afternoon something occurs to me. What is one thing I really don't want to have to deal with this weekend? A quick mental count and I start to get paranoid. Sadly, I had to check my Monday Melee posts to be sure...

My period is due soon. Fuck. I don't want to have to deal with that for my weekend away.

When I left my boyfriend for a girl I threw out my contraceptive pill packet with the relieved thought of well, won't need those again will we? and I've been living a relaxed schedule of taking it as it comes for years now. But this weekend? No way do I want that to happen.

So Blogger Vic goes into damage control mode. Can I stop this thing in time? Who do I know that I can snavel some pills out of, if only to get me through the weekend and deal with the rest later on? I look through my phone book. Mostly I know gay women. Not much love there - they're in the same boat as me. So I end up calling my friend who also happens to my boss at work. Oh shameful. This has the potential to make me the laughing point for weeks to come, but I'm determined.

Um... I know you're gonna laugh. But... are you on the pill?...
Okay, you are. Cool. Can you... hmmm. Sell me some?

Turns out she's on her last lot. Shit.

So Blogger Vic heads off to a rehearsal with calming thoughts of it's okay. Your weekend is not ruined. Just a little inconvenient. It's not the end of the world. And at the rehearsal, like a shining light, there happens to be a doctor. With a book of scripts. My saviour. Hopefully I've caught it in time to stop any annoying occurences...

But the story does not end there.

I turn up to work this morning to face my boss grinning at me. 7am in a freezing and deserted veggie shop, just the two of us. She says to me Vic, it's not going to work.

Don't tell me that. I've got to try. She says You know Vic, you're better off with the morning after pill.

Why? I look at her blankly. Gently she says well... you just... take it after.

And that's where I get what totally different trains of thought we're on. Oh hell, she thinks I've decided to jump the fence and go away on a cock hunt! Standing in a freezing deserted veggie shop laughing at each other like total idiots, we got that one cleared up.

Walking past her office later, I poke my head in, looking at her very seriously.
Mate, if I was going to jump the fence what makes you think I wouldn't just use a condom? Then I laughed and went back to work.