Geeks get the Monthlies

Candace, 08 April 2008, 2 comments
Categories: Aging, Bodies, Feminism, Life, Sexuality, Technology

I’ve been playing with calendars on my fresh install of SuSE Linux – experimenting with customizing Lightning for Mozilla Thunderbird and trying out kOrganizer. I’ve got all of my calendars (kids here, kids at their dads, Rob’s kid, campus activities, due dates, birthdays, etc) on the home network so that I can see my events no matter which computer I’m on. Rob’s got the same thing going and we (theoretically) can try and keep track of what each of us is doing.

The only calendar I hadn’t set up yet was for my menstrual cycle — currently the data for the past year is sitting in a MozBackup file on a flash drive that I’ve misplaced. I’ve got the last two months sitting on a gmail calendar so by grabbing that and setting a customized 28-day repeat cycle I can predict approximately when I’m likely to be crampy, miserable and/or cysty for the distant future (until of course perimenopause decides to visit).

woman and girl walking on the beach at sunset

This is why it’s better to put the calendars on the network instead of saving only a local copy — I never want to go through setting this up again.

The first thing I checked was how things line up with my family week-long summer vacation to the beach. Go figure, my period is due the first day of vacation. How’s that for timing? No guarantees since it’s still a few months away, but since I’ve been pretty clockwork at 28 days for the last 2 or so years there’s a pretty good chance I’ll continue to be regular. I’m happy with my Diva cup so it’s not the need to pack supplies that annoys me, it’s the thought of packing, driving, and being on holiday — and needing copious amounts of pain medication.

That said, I think this is a great application of organizer-calendars. It definitely beats counting out 28 days over and over again. I wonder if the Mozilla Foundation would like an add-on? What would it need to include?

flickr photo by CaseyLessard

Comments

2 Responses, Leave a Reply
  1. jacqui583
    09 April 2008, 9:51 am

    A-HA-HA! I thought I was the only one who tracked her period on her Palm Pilot. Problem for me is I’ve syncronized my Palm with my Yahoo online calendar, but everytime it syncs it come up with a bunch of errors. Not sure what the problem is there.

    As far as your cycle vs vacation, I’ve been known to manipulate my cycle via birth control pills. I did this last spring when I was going on a cruise (wasn’t sure what facilities would be available when on beach stops) and again in the summer when I was going to be in England for two weeks and didn’t want to be dealing with it. The doctor was a little concerned to prescribe them at first (due to my “advanced age” LOL!) but I don’t smoke and it was short term, so he went ahead and prescribed them.

  2. Candace
    09 April 2008, 9:58 am

    That’s awesome Jacqui. Can’t help you with the Yahoo calendar except recommending that you try Lightning. 😉

    I knew there were online ovulation calendars for people trying to conceive but I have never seen much talk about a general menstrual calendar like this. Another useful tool could be for women charting fertility to try to prevent getting pregnant: a digital calendar that could count days, track the rise and fall in basal body temp — maybe even with a bluetooth thermometer that could send temps directly to a computer without anyone having to get out of bed.

    Of course maybe this already exists and I just don’t know about it.

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