Thirsty Thursday: From estrogen patches to gang patches
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law.
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law
THIRSTY THURSDAY 21
I’m patched up!
I’ve spoken about this before I know, but lest The Men think menopause lasts 6 weeks I need them to be aware that I am less bangy and shouty and sweaty because I am sticking cute little patches to my abdomen twice a week. I prefer the term thorax because the word abdomen, for me at least, somehow implies something with a big space inside and we all know that my insides are full of spite and chips with no room to spare, but regardless of what the part is called I’m covered in little linty sticker marks, much like all of my furniture.
You say to the children “oh can we please not stick those onto the wardrobe doors” and then next thing you know there is an ostrich sticker on the roof that will drive you insane over the course of the few years.
I’m terrified that I will get to the chemist at some point and there will be no patches for me.
I’ve been exceedingly lucky so far - and Men who may be confused as to why I, a person living in a first world country in 2024, may not be able to access the medicine I need, it is because there is a chronic shortage of estrogen patches, something to remember next time you swallow a little blue pill without a thought of whether or not you’ll get another, and that not having access to these patches will be not a mere bubble-gum-in-a-parking-meter situation and more of a Kill Bill state of affairs.
I had wondered, idly, as I sit on the couch being cross at the furniture because I am still stumping around with my stupid poorly trotter, whether I could taunt the Po Po with my patches now that they are illegal. (I’m also someone without a uterus using the ladies’ toilets but again, nobody seems to care. It’s like the breastfeeding thing, where I would practically wave around a dripping breast in public daring some old fogey to come and have a go but nobody ever did. I’ve hit the invisible part of middle age and nobody seems to care what I do, unless it’s Mr mr about my credit card. God that man asks a lot of questions.)
Anyway, I’m not sure of the actual rules around the gang patches but I think, as I read the other day, that the actual people who will be affected by this new legislation will probably not be the kind of people to be troubled by keeping track of the ins and outs of the legal system and the intricacies therein.
I’m not sticking up for gangs as a whole at all, and patches are a fashion no for me because I don’t like being matchy-matchy. But like at schools, where uniform violations can be used as an excuse to punish someone that may or may not be up to no good in another area, patch banning just seems like, and again I’m paraphrasing someone smart and probably not middle-aged, something to get voters who want people to be tough on crime feel like someone’s getting the job done, while kids go to school with empty tummies and cucumbers have a pink in-season sticker on them but cost $5.
All of this to say that I meant to come here to bitch to you all about my big kid and his reluctance to eat onions in a meal yet will gleefully eat both onion rings and onion bhaji, and then tell you all how I used to also refuse to eat onions in a meal but would destroy a serving of my mother’s vaunted and much beloved curried pickled onions, and now my hands are cold with rage about the Government again and I will have to go and have a lie down and a biscuit.