In case you missed the title to this post, I am about to talk about my penis. Oh, and peeing. Trigger warning or whatever.

I had genital warts. That’s had, in the past tense. But we will get to that.

It started when I first noticed that my urine stream was bifurcating. Two streams, not one. I thought, that’s weird. But I wasn’t experiencing any pain and it was more of a curiosity than anything else, so because despite my intellect I have the mentality of a preschooler, I figured it wasn’t a problem and stopped thinking about it.

And that continues as my urine stream got more and more scattered until I was basically a sprinkler. Seriously, I could aim directly at the center of the bowl and have it still not catch it all. This was getting inconvenient.

Then, after way, way too long, I thought “Gee, maybe I should give myself an inspection at the source of the problem to make sure this isn’t an edema or something. ” ^[1]

And to my horror, I found that the entrance to my foreskin (I am uncut) covered in little knobby things. Uh oh…. that can’t possible be good!

Once more using my practically kindergartner level of maturity, I more or less ignored the problem after that. Again, it didn’t hurt and didn’t cause me a lot of problems, and it freaked me the hell out to think about it, so…. I didn’t.

Think about it, that is. This is known as the Ostrich Defense. Ignore it, maybe it will go away! Either way, at least you are not upset about it any more! Problem solved. In the most childish way possible.

This lasted until the next time I had to go in to see my GP to get my meds refilled. He could tell I was really worried about something. I dropped trou for him, and he took one look at my happy little friend, grinned, and reassuringly said “You appear to have genital warts. ”

I said “Really? How’d I end up with them?”

His grin got a little bigger. “Well, they’re believed to be sexually transmitted. ”

I said, “That’s impossible, because I haven’t had sex with anyone but myself for like a year. ”

I don’t think he believed me. But he added some kind of medicated cream to my prescriptions. End of story, right? Un, no. Because when I went to get my prescriptions filled, the pharmacist had never even heard of the cream in question, and when he looked it up, it turned out to be really expensive and not covered by my MSP.

So, stupidly, I said I would go back to my doctor and get it all straightened out. What I should have said was “You know what? Why don’t you call my doctor’s office for clarification on Monday. That will be a lot faster than me getting an appointment, and the result would be the same. ”

But I didn’t say that, and so it was up to me to make an appointment and go back. And so I went right back into Ostrich mode, and never made that appointment, and so forth.

But then, just today, I was urinating and noticed I had a normal urine stream again. I checked myself out, and lo and behold, the darn things had gone away all on their own. Every now and then I repeat the inspection just to make sure they really are gone and I didn’t dream the whole thing.

So, yay erectile liberation day! I would love to be able to say I learned a valuable lesson from all this, but nope. All I learned is that ignoring your problem really does work sometimes, and that’s a terrible lesson by anyone’s standards.

Even Donald Trump.

And perhaps that is why I have not found myself feeling depressed today, even though I once more ended up with no clean clothes to wear on Saturday and so I have been nuding it up all day. That little bit of lovely good news, that I once more had a wart free tallywhacker, buoyed me up enough that I haven’t really minded today being so quiet and lonely.

Plus, I think I am learning to just relax and be cool about it. I’ve made peace with the fact that I am going to be lazy and unproductive on Saturdays, and heck, maybe that’s for the best.

I mean, everyone needs a day off, even students, right?

And if, at some point, I decide I want to get something or other done, I would approach it without pressure and without fear, knowing that I can do it or not, and both are totally cool, and there’s no need to get frustrated about it.

If I am bored and restless, I know the cure. Do something. There’s a world of possibilities at my fingertips. I have lots of things I can do, some productive, others just for fun.

Or I could sleep all day. That’s cool too. The problem comes when I let the sleepiness freak me out and make me feel like I am drowning in a somnolent sea. If I am tired of sleeping and don’t want to be sleepy any more, I know the cure for that too : get up and move around. Do something active. That is usually enough to switch gears into drive.

And if not, maybe I really need that sleep and I should do what my body wants me to do.

The trick is to not get too attached to outcomes. Especially when they don’t really matter at all. If I never get around to doing something important, that’s a problem. But if it’s just something I thought I might try, then what does it matter?

Right now, I am going to go lie down. Maybe I will sleep. Maybe not. Either way is cool.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[1]] I know a weirdly large number of medical terms for someone who hasn’t so much taken a biology class since Grade Ten. Just part of my enormous bulging vocabulary, I guess. [[1]