Odd things about German hotels

1. They're unabashedly stingy about providing guests with towels - you typically get one washcloth, one hand towel that can be coaxed, albeit with a prodigious amount of effort, to wrap around one's head, and one "bath" towel that is thin and too small to effectively encase your wet, shivering body.
2. They don't believe there's any need whatsoever to have coffee makers available in one's room. Now, I'm prepared - I carry around instant coffee for those hotels that only provide electric water pitchers, but most German hotels I've stayed in do not automatically provide even those. They obviously have no idea what a raging bitch I am when forced to wake up, get ready, and emerge from my room without a healthy infusion of caffeine.
3. You can smoke in any room without repercussion. This is the case in lots of European hotels. I find it hard to complain about this one; it's ever so convenient for us evil smokers, but once I do quit (soon! I SWEAR) it'll probably be a vicious invitation to fall off the wagon.
4. You usually get about a minute of free porn a day. I've stumbled on this odd phenomenon in Frankfurt, Leipzig, and now, here in Landstuhl. Apparently it's a free preview meant to entice you to purchase said porn, but it's always odd to be channel surfing, trying to find something on in English other than CNN, and to suddenly be confronted with images of jiggling fake boobs and fellatio. Man, I don't get how other people get off on porn. Their contorted faces fill me with alarm and it all seems kinda perfunctory and gross.

The Nuvaring has taken my sanity.

Those of you out there with odd and ever-changing schedules struggling to remember to take your birth control pill at the same time daily will understand why when the Nuvaring came out, I was ecstatic. Constantly hopping time zones and varying my sleep schedule had wreaked havoc on my birth control regimen - I'd end up either taking the pill sometimes in the mornings, which for me led to a full day riddled with bouts of nausea, or taking it it irregularly and risking ending up, as the British say, "shot in the giblets." (Which, by the way, is the best euphemism for pregnancy ever.)

So a couple months ago, I made the switch to the Nuvaring, which promised to be both revolutionary and convenient. At first, the apparent rigidity and hardness of the thing in its little foil package made me a little apprehensive about its ability to be manipulated in such a way it could be painlessly shoved into my hooha. Thankfully, I was wrong and getting the thing to its proper locale wasn't difficult or uncomfortable.

But then.. the side effects. The side effects began straightaway (I'm in British mode now) - slight headaches, sudden onsets of nausea, decreased sex drive, and mood swings. VIOLENT mood swings. I'm talking getting upset about something and instead of working through whatever annoyance or situation brought it on, collapsing into heaving, uncontrollable sobs - the kind that are appropriate when you're eight and your dog just died.

I decided to give the Nuvaring a fighting chance; maybe my body just needed a period of adjustment at first and that eventually my hormones would even out and things would once again be kosher. Well, currently I'm on Nuvaring #3 and the side effects don't seem to have abated. For the first week after I put one in, I'm prone to debilitating nausea and still seem to forget sometimes that sex is something I highly enjoy. Continuing past the first week is the most difficult one - the mood swinging.

Yesterday morning I got in trouble at work for not being where I was supposed to be when they called me to send me on a trip. The end result of my fucking up is that I will apparently receive a verbal rebuke and may have to send in an apologetic letter. No danger of losing my job, nothing beyond some crow-eating.

I reacted as though I'd been diagnosed with a fatal disease that I'd contracted due to my own stupidity and worthlessness. I felt as though my entire world were collapsing and it was all my fault. True, I've been under a higher degree of stress than usual because my work (and therefore pay) has been woefully inconsistent for the past few months, and I'm contemplating returning to school or switching careers, which I find very intimidating. However, I got so upset over this incident that I found myself so nerve-wracked I was shaking, couldn't bring myself to eat, and began vomiting uncontrollably (that may also have something to do with the stupid nausea).

I was so irrational the types of thoughts going through my head were along the lines of, "My life is ruined. I'm so stupid, I fucked everything up. Nothing is okay anymore. Nothing will work out. Things keep getting worse. They'll never get better," and while fleeting moments of self-flagellation and doubt probably strike everyone once in awhile, the bizarre thing was I couldn't get out of that mindset. It wasn't until ten hours later or so that I finally started to calm down. This can't be normal. I miss the good old-fashioned pill.