rough week

Saturday was roller derby bout, which = 6+ hours of being at a skating rink I already spend too much time at, doing various tiring things. (I wasn't skating, so at least there wasn't any real injury potential.) Sunday I had a scrimmage / practice, and then spent a bit over an hour with my team afterward; I was gone from 9:30am until 2pm, and skated for a bit under half that. Monday I worked 9-5, and then went to roller derby practice that night to try out for the travel team squad. That practice went from 8pm until a bit after 11, and was pretty hardcore. I had trouble unwinding afterward, as I sometimes do when I skate, so I didn't get to sleep until after 2am. Then I worked Tuesday 9-5, had to run a few errands, spent the whole day nursing a pinched nerve in my neck/shoulder/back, nearly killed the new girl with my teeth, collapsed into bed for a half-hour nap, then hauled myself out the door and went to practice again.
At practice I had to cope with not only the pinched nerve but also sore muscles from the previous accumulated two days' worth of lactic acid buildup, mostly in my lower back and arms (wtf? why arms?), but a little bit in my thighs as well. (My thighs are pretty fucking diesel if I do say so for myself; I rarely have sore thighs anymore, but it does happen sometimes.) So I couldn't turn my head well at all. Then blisters began forming in my insoles, I don't know why. (I was wearing socks I've skated in many times before, so that shouldn't have happened.) And then I started feeling all kinds of pain in my abs, and my thighs started getting really weak and sore...

By the end of practice I was crying, as I was so tired and so sore and so exhausted that I couldn't understand the directions we were being given in the drills. I don't think many people noticed. It was embarrassing. We skated right up until 10:30, and then I collapsed onto the floor in the middle of the rink in the fetal position hugging my helmet and waiting for the pain to stop.
Finally I realized that my thighs were weak and my abs killing me because .... oh yeah, those are cramps. Oh right, I'm female and it's been 28 days since I last did this.
DUH.
I figure this has been happening monthly for well in excess of 50% of my life by now, and I still don't have the hang of it.
It explained a lot. I'd been feeling like a wuss, but at that realization I dragged myself off the floor, took my skates off, went home, and crawled into a nice long hot bath and took a handful of ibuprofen.

I am full of simmering resentment at the fact that it is intrinsically painful to be female. I mean really!! Isn't sexism bad enough, isn't the systematic oppression of womankind for generations bad enough? No! We must be also stricken with exceedingly painful muscle spasms monthly, for days on end, for the sheer audacity of having been born with vaginas. Bah and fie.

So anyway. Tonight I am hell-bent on getting to bed before 9pm. I need it badly, as I am horridly sleep-deprived. But I had to mobl post with a picture of the sushi we were eating at the Fuji Grill on our way home from work, because, it was awesome. Awesome and just what I needed.