Why you shouldn't wear a heating pad around in the summer months

Today I have The Menstrual Cramping.

In most areas, I have a fairly high tolerance for pain: I have a tattoo, I used to dance around on blistered toes for hours, and one time I broke my arm and then pretended it wasn't broken for a full day before seeking medical attention because, WHAT THE FUCK MY ARM IS SWOLLEN TO TWICE THE SIZE.

For some reason, however, menstrual pains get me. And not like they get me as in:

me: I was so freaked out! It was a total mistake.
menstrual pain: Like that time that Michael Showalter shot a guy in "Stella" and was like "I. THOUGHT. HE. WAS. A. TURKEY. I SWEAR TO GOD."
me: (pregnant pause) That is exactly what I mean.

I mean that they get me in the way that I feel like I've been shot in the lower back and just want to cry about it all day and eat cookies.

Anyway, I was saying that today I am experiencing this type of pain. Since I'm stuck at work and can't be a little ball of miserable, I decided to at least invest in one of those little heating pads that you just slap on to whatever part of your body is acting up. After a few minutes of being THAT girl in CVS with my Midol and my heating pad and my laundry detergent (to make it less obvious that I'm obviously on my period) I was back in my office wrapping that magical heating pad around my belly.

And it was good. Friends, the next few hours sitting at my desk were a glorious blur of warmness. The heating pad felt so natural that I completely forgot it was on me!

This is where it gets good. At lunch time, I decided to run into Georgetown real quick to pick up a new concealer from Sephora. I'm sorry this post is so insufferably girly.

I was about ten minutes into the walk when I started thinking to myself, "Oh my is it warm out today. Especially around my midsection!"

Then a few paces later, "I mean, it's like the sun is lasering in on my lower back! How odd!"

Then about a block later, "That freaking heating pad is still on my back isn't it?"

I guess I can count myself lucky because the shirt I'm wearing today camouflaged the heating pad. But Christ, once I realized I was wearing it, and that I had no safe place to duck into to take it off, it seemed to just get warmer and warmer.

By the time I got to Sephora I was a sweaty mess. This is generally always an embarrassing thing to be, but in Sephora I'm always hyper aware of the judgmental, mascara'd eyes of the gays who work there. I always feel like I need to immediately apologize for my fashion, makeup and hair choices whenever a salesperson approaches me in that store.

Thankfully, I knew exactly where my concealer was, picked it up and got out of there pretty quickly. A steamy 20 minutes later, I was in my office bathroom frantically peeling the heating pad off my person then chugging a bottle of water. Not spazzy at all.