civil disobedience

It's started raining more and more these days.  Slowly easing us into the months of drizzle and dampness that are fast approaching.  I love these late summer evenings where it's raining because it's still warm enough to have my back door open to listen to the rain.  Soon enough it will be too chilly at night for such things. It's so pleasant to let the cool rain air waft in. Confession time: this jacket doesn't really fit my clothing purchase standards that I set for myself.  I've been eyeing it on ModCloth for something like a year, maybe more, and when I saw it was 70% off at ModCloth's last hurrah sale, I gave in and finally got it.  I have to say, though I feel guilty, I'm totally and completely in love with it.  Like, it hasn't been cool enough to wear a jacket like this yet, but I wear it anyway even though I get super sweaty.  Same with these jeans.  Actually the entire outfit has been worn multiple times this past week.  It's becoming a bit ridiculous.  


 

top/courtesy of lulu's :: jeans/courtesy of modcloth :: boots/lulu e. bebe bag/courtesy of hearts jacket/modcloth :: necklace/courtesy of adorn by sarah lewis

real talk: menses, yo // sponsored by U by Kotex

So, who wants to talk about tampons?  Right, no one.  I didn't think I did either, but we all have funny stories.  About periods, tampons, and mishaps.  I think it's kind of weird that it's such a non-discussed subject, especially since we all deal with it.  Well, those of us with XX chromosomes, at least.  When I was contacted by U by Kotex to do a post about feminine products, at first I was like, "LOL, yeah no thanks, I'll pass."  But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write about that lady stuff.  I mean, we get periods, we use feminine products, and sometimes funny things happen.  But it's life, and it's real, and we deal with it on a regular basis.  So, I thought I'd start this post off by getting the vagina vibes flowing (hahah get it?) with some funny and embarrassing stories about me and Aunt Flo.

 My mom was out of town when I got my period.  I was 13.  It was weird.  I was playing Pokemon on my brother's gameboy, took a break to go to the bathroom, and BAM.  OH HAI WOMANHOOD.

 Can we talk for a sec about how annoying cardboard tampon applicators are?  So uncomfortable.  When I discovered those smooth plastic ones I almost died of happiness.  Shoving a tiny cardboard toilet paper roll up in my business?  No thank you.  No cardboard shall ever enter my nether regions ever again, I vowed.


 I rode horses from age 10-20, and having my period was the bane of my existence when I rode.  Avoiding leaking and such while straddling a horse, posting, cantering, sitting the trot... wearing, thin, beige riding pants?  So above my pay grade as a teen.  Tampons kind of freaked me out when I was younger, so I tried my best to get away with wearing pads, but after every riding lesson I'd run to the bathroom to check if I was still wearing non-blood-stained pants.  I cursed the fact that rust colored riding pants were no longer in style.  How perfect would they be for hiding an unsightly "feminine" leak?  Ugh, damn you equestrian clothing trends!

 When I was younger, before I got my period, I stole a tampon from my mom's stash to try it out.  I was super anxious about my mom finding out, so I tried to be really sneaky.  I was horrified when she walked in my room later and somehow I'd just thrown the wrapper on the ground and she picked up.  I was so sneaky about everything else, how did I possibly overlook throwing away the wrapper discreetly? DOH.


  My current favorite use for tampons is wearing them during yoga/pilates classes to keep from queefing.  Yes.  That's right.  Real talk, ladies.  I'm not the only one right?  Please tell me my vagina isn't just the most rude vagina on the planet.  After going though an hour long yoga class, loudly disrupting it multiple times with my vagina's unkind noises, I vowed NEVER AGAIN.  I never go to a yoga class without a tampon now, regardless of the time of month.  You guys now know more about me than I ever anticipated.  Kthxbye. *

  I almost never get bad cramps or sick before my period but 3 or 4 times I've gotten violently ill (okay I think once was aided by being ridiculously hungover on top of it).  The first time it happened I was in school and started getting suuuper bad cramping/nausea, so I went to the bathroom between classes.  I ended up missing my next class while I sat on the toilet, doubled over, and ended up vomiting up my breakfast... which happened to be fluorescent sour gummy worms (health nut, yo!) while the Junior High girls were getting ready for P.E. class in the same locker room/bathroom.  AWESOME.  Also awesome?  I was given a detention for skipping class (they had a "no truancy rule), because I hadn't informed my teacher I was in the bathroom... because I was already there when class started... vomiting.  Hey school!  I would've, if I could've walked down the hall to my class to tell my teacher... without vomiting on her!  Despite sharing all of this with the school administration, I still had to serve my detention.  Because if you let one girl skip class for being stuck in the bathroom throwing up because of her period, everyone is going to start skipping class and blaming their PMS vomit.  Obviously.

Anyway, I'm sure you guys have equally, if not more, hilarious stories of period craziness.  I remember looking through the embarrassing story section of magazines like Seventeen, and there was always at least one horrifying period story.  The more I think about it, the more it upsets me that periods and period mishaps can be so embarrassing and horrifying.  At the beginning of this post I was going to say something like, "sorry if there are any male readers out there, we're going to talk about periods now," but apologizing seemed stupid.  I'm tired of periods and feminine products being taboo or gross.  It's normal, and really, it's beautiful.  I get that it's weird for guys, and even girls, because bleeding out of your who-hah for a week is honestly a rather strange experience, especially at first.  But it's normal.  Almost every woman who has ever existed has experienced menstruation.  So no, I'm not sorry, any of you male readers out there.  Women menstruate.  Get over it.  It's a reminder that women's bodies are capable of creating new life.  How awesome is that?  Super awesome.  I know that not all guys feel weird about periods, but I do know some who are so grossed out by it that it makes them gag, and from my experience, it at least makes most men uncomfortable.  It's upsetting that something so normal for women has become a source of shame and embarrassment.  If there's one thing we need less of it's shame focused on the vicinity of the vagina.


I've used the same tampon brand since high school, mostly out of habit, and creature of habit I am.  I'd never used any Kotex products before, to my knowledge, so I was interested in seeing how they stood up.  Honestly most feminine products I've tried seem relatively the same to me, and I was relatively pleased with U by Kotex tampons.  It's not like I have a wide-set vagina and a heavy flow, or anything, so I don't need a high performance tampon personally.  This has nothing to do with the function of the product itself, but I'm a fan of the fact that the wrapper is black.  Way more nondescript and discreet than the bright white and neon wrappers of other brands.  What really stood out to me about U by Kotex was their website.  I love how the website is geared towards teens and is focused on helping them figure out the whole menstruation/becoming a woman thing.  When I was 13 the internet was still relatively new (what up, Netscape Navigator), and I don't remember thinking to myself, "oh I bet I can find that out online!"  Knowledge about my changing body and what it all meant seemed limited to science books which were always more about the biology of menstruation than how to deal with it as a newly minted woman.  I remember being so confused by the menstrual cycle diagram with the cross section of a uterus building up the lining, dropping an egg, and then menstruating.  There's a lot of shame associated with menstruation, a lot of messages being sent young (and old!) girls that it's gross and disgusting and something to feel ashamed about.  I deeply appreciate the lengths U by Kotex goes to to empower girls and give them knowledge, useful knowledge, about their periods, biology, how to use feminine products (something that's become second nature to me as a 26 year old woman, but a terrifying, foreign idea at 13), and female health.  I would've loved to have that kind of resource as a 13 year old!  A lot of girls don't have a mom they can ask, and even if you do have a mom you can ask, it can be weird.  Having access to great information on a safe website is awesome.

If you want to give U by Kotex a try they're giving out free samples, which you can get by clicking here.  Want to find out more about U by Kotex?  Check out their website, facebook, and twitter!


I wrote this review while participating in a content series through Clever Girls Collective on behalf of U by Kotex, and received products to facilitate my post and compensation for my time to participate. All opinions and thoughts are my own. Thanks for supporting those companies which keep Delightfully Tacky alive and kicking.

*U by Kotex wants you to know that they don't advise you use tampons for uses other than for, you know, periods and stuff.  

pretty ladies

While in Austin I took a lot of outfit photos for other gals, and they helped me with a few of my own as well.  It's so much easier to do one another's outfit photos, especially since we all know each other and how we like our photos to look.  Plus, no one feels bad for asking for a detail shot, or a few of the shoes, or maybe a couple more just a little further away, or let's try a different background.  I always love being solely behind the camera, so it was fun to shoot other girls' outfit photos instead of just my own.  I grabbed shots of Julie, Moorea, Chelsea, and Tieka over the course of the weekend and here are a few of my favorites from the outfits photos I shot for them!


 


 

 

bottom photo taken by Tieka

this guy

On Sunday I was walking home from watching Ten Tiny Dances and ran across this handsome dude and the cutest bebe corg going for a stroll.  As I was driving home from Gresham I realized that it was two years ago last Thursday that he proposed to me.  I had just finished working as a high school mentor at summer camp, and he came up so we could do a sunrise photoshoot down on the beach.  We had very few photos of us together, since I was usually the one behind the camera.  I hadn't gotten to hang out with him much all summer, except for a bit on the weekends in between camp sessions.  I secretly hoped he would propose.  He had asked about what gemstones I liked, and we had talked about marriage, so it certainly wasn't completely out of the blue.  I think the proposal was perhaps even more special to me than our wedding.  It was just him and I, watching the sun rise, and making a promise to one another to commit our lives to each other.  It was intimate in a way our wedding simply couldn't be.  It was special to be able to share our wedding with all our friends and family, but that August morning on the beach when we chose one another to go through life with remains one of my most precious moments.



When I met this red headed 18 year old boy back in 2005, something was different.  It wasn't like meeting other people.  I wouldn't fall in love with him until later in our freshman year, but I still remember meeting him on a meet-new-people binge with a friend.  He was sitting on his bed with a bunch of other people in the room, playing his purple acoustic guitar.  I finished a diary entry in my Xanga in February of 2006, "We'll just have to see how God plays this all out."  If current me traveled back in time to 2006 me and told her how things actually played out, she'd probably kick me in the vagina, claim I was playing a cruel joke on her, and shove me back into 2013, because honestly I couldn't have even wished for anything better than this.  I would never have dared to dream that this man could love me as wholly and romantically and hilariously and deeply as he does.  It's easy to fall into the doldrums of every day life and forget how incredible it is to be loved so wholly.  I'm so grateful for the life we're building together, and to have such a steadfast partner to build beside.

here + there

Yesterday Dusty and I took an impromptu road trip to Gresham to visit my dad, brothers, and family friends.  My brothers were coming back from Alaska to head back to college, and my dad was helping them move in to their new places, and since none of them had met Dusty yet, they begged me to come down and bring her.  It was great getting to see everyone, if only briefly.  Dusty met our family friends' Jack Russell and Italian Greyhound and had entirely too much fun prodding them until they acquiesced into playing with her.  She's a wonderful car dog, which is nice to know.  Dan and I would really love to go on some camping trips with her, so I'm happy she gets along well in the car.  
Last week I got to do a fun photo shoot with Moorea for her collaboration with Madewell, which was really awesome.  I love getting to be behind the lens, instead of being behind and in front simultaneously.  It's nice to have more control over the images I create.  Plus, it's just great to get to work with someone awesome like Moorea.  Head over to her blog to check out all her outfit posts in collaboration with Madewell!

I won a ticket to MLK Ballet's Ten Tiny Dances, so on Sunday I walked up to Jazzbones and got to see some incredible dance performances!  I had remembered hearing about Ten Tiny Dances last year, but wasn't able to attend.  I danced a bit in college and I love it.  I'd like to get back into dance somehow, even though I'm not technically trained or anything.  Something about dance is just so genuine and authentic, I love moving my body and experiencing life through movement and rhythm.
There were so many talented performers, some breathtakingly gorgeous, some hilarious, some emotional, some fun.  It was a great night and I'm glad I brought my camera.  I wasn't planning on taking photos, but once the show started I couldn't not take photos.

Gratuitous pictures of Dusty, because obviously.  Also, this photo, which cracks me up: