hello friends. I will undergo Trans vaginal ultrasound this coming Sunday. I just want to know how painful is it at my age. I'm only 19 years old and this is my first time so I really don't know what to expect? Please help me. Thank you.

This is actually the Chatter Post from last Thursday, which I accidentally posted in my own journal instead of here! Oh, the perils of being without WiFi for a few days!

Editing assignments this way!
Writers, here's your Week 3 topic!
Flamers, it is time to cast your ballots here



My husband and I managed to take advantage of a work-trip he had to take and turn it into a very inexpensive last hurrah for us as a two-person family. We are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the U.S. right on the shoreline of Lake Superior, the largest, deepest, and most oceanic of the Great Lakes. This lake has claimed countless vessels and lives. It is often like glass-like one moment and can quickly turn into a churning blue-gray monster. Lake Superior is my favorite of the Great Lakes (although I have yet to see the only one that doesn't touch my home state of Michigan, Ontario) because it is so unpredictable and wild.

Because it is so far north and so deep, it is also very, very cold. I promised some friends I'd stick my toes in. I did and my feet were in pain and numb before my husband could snap the photo to prove it! I wish I had a thermometer. It had to be around 40-45 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees is freezing, for reference).

There is tremendous beauty up here. We hiked to several waterfalls today, and hiked to this strange-looking structure that jutted out into Lake Superior. This is Miner's Castle. It is a natural formation of sandstone that has eroded away into this shape. We actually hiked from where this photo was snapped down to Miner's Castle and took more photos from there.

It's been way too long since I immersed myself in nature the way I did today. I used to hike and backpack all the time out in Idaho and California. I didn't realize how much I missed it or needed it until I was out there today and felt lines of poetry sneaking into my thoughts as I took in the landscape. It is in the wilderness that my creativity flourishes. No small wonder that I've been so blocked.

Do you have any wild places you go that jump-start your creativity? What about them compels you? Post a photo if you have one!

OK, so I have kind of an embarrassing problem to ask about but you folks are always so lovely that I thought I'd ask you.

( Cut for graphic and personal infoCollapse )

Anyway, sorry if I'm being ridiculous, but I just want to make sure that I'm normal and that this will go away eventually; I don't want it to affect any future partners!

Ok, just some basics - i've only "been with" one guy, the guy i'm currently dating right now and he's been with other girls before me but gets tested for stds on the regular when he was "around", i take birth control at the same time every single day, i've never missed and only been late by MAX an hour (i'm obsessed) and i'm much too paranoid to even on top of that, have sex without a condom, so we're on birth control AND use condoms every time. Recently i started a new form of birth control. i used to be on a 3 month type, but now i'm on the kind that you get a period every month. but my obgyn told me that if i wanted, i could skip the sugar pills if i wanted to still have my 3 months regime, i was only planning on having a 2 month regime this time simply because my period would have started the first week of summer and i didn't want to be bloaty and gross feeling at the beach, so that means i'm on my 5th week of birth control pills on a pill pack that is "designed" for 3 weeks of birth control and then a placebo week. does that make sense? anyways! Earlier today we were having sex and it was like usual, tralala, and then after it was over i went to the bathroom and wiped and noticed some bright red blood coming out (only when i wiped, not dripping) of my vagina. it was about quarter sized at first and then i just stayed in the bathroom until it stopped bleeding which really didn't take but a few minutes. and since it didn't look like period blood, i just assumed that it might have been a cut/tear on the inside from something, i dont know. i dont remember the sex being particularly rough or that i was particularly dry or anything, but whatever. about an hour or two later, i went to the bathroom again and noticed brownish period-looking blood in my underwear. it was almost as if i had JUST started my period (i'm a week away from the placebo pills) it was not like brown mixed with discharge, it was brownish blood that you usually get in the beginning or end of a period. it was enough to cover the bottom of my underwear, but it appeared as if the "blood" had already stopped flowing since it didn't look too wet or anything. and that was the last that i saw of it.
i've never had spotting or breakthrough bleeding on birth control and i'm BEYOND paranoid. i'm just wondering what this could possibly be and if i need to get a morning after pill just in case?
sorry if i sound like a rambling mess, i dont want to worry myself sick thinking i'm pregnant or something of that nature if i don't need to, but i also would like to be as educated as possible. i can't seem to find any answers that sound like my situation.
thank you! xoxo

t's MMMMonday! Each Monday, we bring you special, maintainer-curated content intended to enrich your VP experience. Please note that you can find past MMMMonday posts using the "mmmmonday" tag.

Also, a quick reminder about the other places you can find VP: vp_bulletins for local announcements; contact_vp for questions and feedback on the way VP is run; the Vulvapedia for basic questions; and don't forget about our sibling community over on Dreamwidth!

I stumbled upon this piece and thought it was a perspective that might be interesting to our members: Why I Believe Bra-Fitting is a Feminist Issue.

An excerpt:
"On a somewhat similar note, I feel bra sizing can play a huge role in body acceptance. I feel that accepting that you should wear (for example) a 30HH, rather than a 36DD, can be one of the biggest things you can do when it comes to accepting your body. Women are constantly told they need to be smaller, to be daintier, to take up less space, and bra sizing hasn’t escaped this."

If you want to share, what is your bra size? Have you always worn the correct size for you? What has your experience with bra sizing been like? How does bra size affect your feelings about your breasts? Do you agree that bra sizing is a feminist issue? You're invited to share any thoughts on the piece, these questions, or whatever in the comments!

For the past two weeks my nipples (not the actual breasts) have been really sore! Like, if something brushes against them, the pain is really strong and feels like someone is pinching them as hard as they can. I've also been constantly thirsty, which is weird becaus e I'm not a big water drinker. I've also been really tired and not feeling like myself. Its kinda like getting up in the morning and feeling groggy before having a cup of coffee. But this super tired feeling I can't shake no matter how much coffee or redbull I drink or how much I slept. Anybody know of anything that can cause these things? I'm not sure if they're all related or not. The extreme thirst is probably the strangest symptom.

I took plan B 3 times. March 4th, April 4th, & April 6th. My last 3 periods were February 23, march 24, & April 18th...now it's march 20th and I still don't have a period..but I have cramps. I have had sex in between April 18 and now. It was protected so I didn't take anything. I have taken 2 first response tests and one Walgreens test and all are negative. I've been feeling naseaus but I think that's because of being so worried! What do you guys think is going on? Is there still a chance I'm pregnant or do you think my cycle is just really messed up from plan B?

Sliding into the week here - hope everyone is safe! We were between the major tornadoes Sunday, so the worst we got was adrenaline and hail. Are you all okay?

UI stuff - What's up this week? I went and found some updates for some of my mods this week. Glad to see them.

I'm going to keep this short and go back to monitoring the storms - everyone stay safe, k?

UIs, mods, screenshots, GO!

G'morning, loves!

Yep, another Monday morning.  These weekends fly by far too quickly for me.  I miss teaching, when I had all my days off in one big lump -- although I remember basically sleeping the first month of summer to catch up.

A few reminders!
- The Week 4 Topic is here!
- Editors!  Thar be Edits!
- Your daily eye candy

---

I called my friend the other day. She wasn't there, so I left a message.

I haven't called her much lately. Part of the reason is because she had agreed to be part of my wedding ceremony and arrived more than an hour late, missing her role completely, while still managing to be one of the first to leave. No call, e-mail, or text to anyone to say she was running late happened. She didn't say goodbye to Jessi on the way out.

But another, larger, more chronic reason is that I don't like her boyfriend. Or virtually any boyfriend she's had so far since I've met her.

I mean, these guys are just terrible to her, and she openly admits it. They lie to her, disrespect her, ignore her, abandon her in London, use her, and turn a blind and insensitive eye to her needs, wishes, and dreams. She will sacrifice, and has sacrificed, just about everything she has for these guys, and to me, it's nothing but pearls before swine.

She was in the state when she came late to the wedding – staying with her latest beau. She claims to have left an hour early – the trip should have taken her about an hour, but by those calculations, it took more than three hours late. She was the only person who arrived late to the wedding.

So in my eyes, clearly, the reason she was late has something to do with this guy. This pale, sketchy looking dude (and not just by my accounts) that didn't talk to me or anyone else at the wedding, who she described beforehand as a “southern gentleman”. I feel confident enough that this is his fault that I'm positive that it is. I mean, she let him do it, but I'm sure he's at the source of the issue somewhere.

They're engaged now, and given how I feel about the circumstances, I just can't quite bring myself to hear her talk about him. I don't want to know how he makes her miserable, or how she should leave him, or how she'll never leave him. I especially don't want to hear about how they're getting married.

There's a big part of me that's blaming myself for all this. Maybe I shouldn't have put her in that position in the first place. And maybe I should just suck it up, forgive my friend, and be over with it. And I am trying to do that, but it's just that this is the one thing I really needed to count on her to come through with, and now that she hasn't, I find that I've lost the energy to pour into those long sessions where she understands the problem in its every facet yet lacks whatever it is she needs to do what she says is healthy for her. Courage? Self confidence? Self respect? I'm sure.

So I feel like I've lost a lot of this friendship, and it's largely his fault. And this isn't the first time something like this has happened – I can think of at least one other time in my life that I let a friend's bad significant other drive me away, as well as one time when a friend pushed me to break up with Jessi (now my wife), and that caused me to eventually break off the friendship.

Is this situation unique to me, or have you been in this situation yourself?Am I wrong or unusual to feel the way I do about this?

Has a friend's significant other ever lead to the ending of that friendship?