Call for Submissions. Period.*

Brilliance is inspiring. Two days ago, I read a very funny/mortifying story by Jessica, who is hilarious, about how she learned how to use tampons. It occurred to me that many of us delightful women bloggers have shared these "my first period" stories with the wide world of the web at some point. I love reading them. Everyone has a different experience, and yet they are so easy to relate to and universal in their own horrifying ways. It's good stuff.

As I tried to leave a comment for Jessica about how much I enjoyed reliving her painful adolescence (fucking Blogger ate it), it dawned on me: we should put together a book of essays about getting our periods. Or about coping with getting our periods, as some of the better stories don't involve that first fateful day of doom. Maybe a book like this already exists since it's not exactly an original concept. (A quick search on Amazon for books about menstruation yielded only treacly guides for girls and anthropological and cultural studies and criticism, but not fun essay books. I jaunted over to Barnes & Noble and saw nothing on the topic, either.) Even if it does, we can spin the book as the first book of essays about getting our periods written by non-famous blogging women. (How can any publisher resist?)

If this idea interests you, speak up and I will investigate how to get this off the ground. Since I love reading all your blogs (and the writing of my non-blogging friends, several of whom I think would come up with really awesome essays), I know this will be great. If not as a book (for which you'd get paid for your contribution!), then maybe we can have one of those blogging carnival things that always happen but I don't understand at all. We'll call it Bloody Bloggers Day or something.

*Apologies for leaving out the two or so men who read CUSS. Maybe you can write a funny essay about your first nocturnal emission or something equally embarrassing. Actually, that would be an awesome book/blog day, too...