Well, Natalie is in season. Sigh. She's an early bloomer. Most of our females have not come into season until at least (or almost) one year of age. I don't know why but I thought of that old song by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap 'This Girl is a Woman Now.' So the equivalent for an unspayed female, for my non-dog show friends, is a bitch. Right now she is sporting the rather large panties we had for Hailey when she became incontinent. We just call her Bone Butt because their are large bones all over the panties. We need to buy her some real seasonal panties today that fit her better.

Don't you remember your mom saying to you after you started your first period, 'you're a woman now!'  Oh yippee. Thank you for giving me a curse every month for the next 40 years of so of my life. Wonderful. What a joy, what a blessing! NOT.

It seems like it was just yesterday that I couldn't wait to start my period. I was jealous of girls who had theirs. What little I knew then! All I knew was that the girls that had started wore their new-found 'womanhood' like badges of honor and I wanted to be part of that club.

The first girl I knew that had hers was Stella Marianni. She was in my 6th grade class in Elfers Elementary School in Elfers, Florida. (This was right after my parents moved the family to Florida and ripped me out of my own lovely school in Staatsburg, NY at the end of the 6th grade school year just after Easter. Stella was my first friend in that alien place.) She had large brown doe eyes that she enhanced with plenty of blue mascara. I also remember a dress that she wore —baby blue voile with pale pink polka dots. She would whisper to me before she got up from her desk, to please check and make sure she hadn't overflowed onto the back of her dress. 

Now, really, can you please tell me why anyone would be jealous of that? But like I said, they were part of something I was not. They were moving on and leaving me behind in the world of children while they were entering the world of grownups. 

Silly me.