My period has changed since I quit wheat. It’s weird now, yet totally predictable. I get two days of really light spotting, which is my warning. Then the floodgates open and I have about six hours of terrible cramps. The worst is over in about two days. It’s kind of like going down the chute all at once. When I was eating wheat my periods were super light and I would hardly notice them, but the PMS was killer–super sore boobs, sore back, headaches.

I’ve been dreading having my period at work, so naturally in my second month it hit me full force. All weekend I was spotting and wishing it would come on fully, so I could suffer quietly at home with sad yet noble dignity. NOPE. I woke up Monday morning and BOOM, there it was.

So I strapped on my big girl jeans (Goodwill, $5.99) and went to work. I was doing deck work, which means climbing around and over a bunch of rebar, trying to fix or place our conduit. A deck is basically a dark living room full of Lego times 1000, and sharp and rusty to boot. I was bending and squatting, cutting pipe, tying wire, and feeling generally miserable from forcing myself to move and work while my insides were trying to fall out of my body.

Luckily we were all busy so I was left to my own devices, especially since we were getting help from a fifth-year apprentice. My jdub would MUCH rather work with this kid than with me, since the other apprentice knows what to do without directions. I liked the temporary guy. He was about 25, cheerful, gave me a lot of simple stuff to do that my jdub doesn’t trust me with (“Are you BAFFLED?”), as if I’m a drunken toddler.

The heat was off me, so I was quietly gritting my teeth and trying not to even hear what time it was. I was kicking myself for forgetting to take any painkillers before leaving the house. I had also forgotten to pack a fork and so ate my chicken with a spoon for lunch. That’s what kind of Monday it was.

I started feeling better near the end of the day when the throbbing/stabbing ache was subsiding, and I was left with that heavy feeling like my crotch was made of sawdust and had sucked up a lake of something viscous and awful. The young apprentice mentioned it was 2:45, which meant it was 15 minutes to quitting time.

“Oh thank god,” I said, realizing I hadn’t spoken in hours. “I need this day to be over.” I was cutting the flaps off a box that I could fill with couplings to store in our little parts house.

My jdub delights in any misery or annoyance I encounter so naturally he demanded details that he could relish.

“What’s wrong with you today that you want it to be over?” he asked.

“WELL,” I said. “I STARTED MY PERIOD THIS MORNING AND MY SHIT HURTS! I AM HAVING A HARD DAY!”

“I am learning things right now,” the young apprentice said, not making eye contact with me.

“AND MY VAGINA FEELS LIKE IT’S ABOUT TO FALL OUT OF MY BODY!” I threw the empty box I was holding into an empty crate because it felt right.

“Okay, I’m sorry I asked,” my jdub said. And he was, too.

I’m much better today.

Oh man, I am so wishing my new phone would get here, like, yesterday. I finally bought one after…gosh, five years? My phone won’t even go on the internet anymore. I really want to take some decent pictures. I’m in Ye Olde Yesler housing projects, which are partly still in existence, except now I am helping to densify them and make them 8+ storeys instead of 1-2. I can see Smith Tower, Columbia Tower/downtown, the mountain, the bay, and the old VA hospital. It’s a neat place.

Today we did something called pour watch. This means you stand at the bottom of the future parking garage and a big articulated straw thing comes over your head and spits concrete down onto the floor non-stop. IT IS SO COOL. I get to be behind the barriers and actually see what happens now, which I have wanted to do since I was a kid. And to be honest it was kind of fun just to stand there and make sure our conduit didn’t get knocked over or kicked so it would stay in line with future walls, while the cement guys scrambled around to smooth and level everything.

Later I had to put on a harness and climb about twelve feet up some pre-pour rebar walls/forms to attach some big pipe so power can come off the street into the building. My jdub thought I was going to be scared or act like a little bitch up there but verily I did not.

“You okay up here?” he said.

“Yep, I was just thinking about dinner…deciding on a marinade for ribs.”

“I guess you’re not scared then?”

“NOPE. I do think this thing is some form of birth control, though. Totally riding up.”

There followed a story about This One Time when the rebar caps were not replaced properly, and This One Guy fell, and it was INCHES! INCHES FROM HIS HEART! This happens every time we do something new–you get to hear about 27 ways people died doing this exact thing

It was totally fun. I busted into the job shack after with my harness all up my butt and my foreman was like, “And how was that.” I guess this is kind of a litmus test or something. When, when will we crack the new apprentice??

“Welp, I’m quitting,” I said.

“Really??” my boss asked.

“PSYCH, I love my job!”

I get to tell jokes like this at work as well:

A man was admitted to Harborview with six plastic horses in his ass. They say his condition…is stable.

via GIPHY

I have been dispatched to a muddy hole full of rebar, puddles, giant machines such as backhoes that swipe and chomp at the mud feet from my head, and irritable electricians. I am being tasked with helping to create the electrical system for this apartment building as we all make it crawl up out of the mud. At the end of the day my main journeyman asked if I was going to quit and I was like FUCK NO can I come back on Monday? (A: yes.)

I actually thought that I would be put on one of the half-built new highrises downtown, starting with things like lightswitches and outlets and using my pliers a lot, but I am really pleased with this. It’s shovels and giant power tools, and pulling massive high voltage wires that are crazy heavy. I dug the trench and buried the grounding wire and grounding bars for the main power source of the building, and watched the journeymen finish connecting the main panel. In four months we will be “indoors”–there will be slab over our heads while we run conduit and systems through walls.

The company seems fine–very safety focused. My two journeymen have been with the company for about 15 years each. I had something specific explained to me that I didn’t know about L&I yet–the higher your safety rating is, the less Labor & Industries “bills” the company, and that deduction on your paycheck is lower. There are plenty of tools, parts, and safety equipment, which I am hearing from some boot camp attendees is not always the case.

There were a few women on the site, and a woman running the whole project. While I was filling out paperwork at the electrical company I now work for, she called one of my bosses who was “orienting” me and this other apprentice who was being dispatched. I could overhear her giving him an earful about me. I think the problem was they didn’t want an apprentice. My boss argued with her and said the ratios were right (two journeymen to one apprentice is totally legal), and it was his job to staff the site with electricians. “HER,” he kept saying. “The apprentice I am sending is a WOMAN.” He hung up and said to me, “…And that’s your new job.”

When I arrived on site to finish paperwork and got a brief safety/procedures/drug talk by the foreman, the woman I heard on the phone was sweet as pie to me. I wasn’t worried about it; she’s just managing her business. If I am unsafe the foreman can fire me. If I fuck too many things up the journeymen will send me back to the hall. She said she was happy to have another woman on site. “There’s more coming, too,” she said. “I have to get some more portapotty keys made.” There’s a small handful of women on site now. No iron workers, cement masons, or carpenters, as I expected, but what looks like some laborers.

I had been worried about this day since I decided to pursue becoming an electrician a year ago. It’s the moment of truth–what if I hated it? Then on Thursday night I found out I would be sent to a Seattle Housing Authority project mudhole or a tunnel project on an interstate, both projects that I knew would be kind of a grind mentally and physically.

I didn’t want to wear myself out by lunchtime, but I felt exhilarated running up and down the dirt hills, being a fetch n carry, climbing over rebar, and pulling wire. It reminded me of being a little kid and being really happy running around outside, building forts and wishing I was allowed to use tools. Now I have my own tools. I’m not too sore, even though I spent about a week being laid up with the flu. My back recovered immediately and now I have some very bearable soreness in my shoulder, biceps, forearms. It just feels like I had a good workout. I don’t think this physical transition period will be too bad.

Next plan is to get a couple of paychecks under my belt (I am making about 60% of what I was in tech, but will get regular raises) and then buy a phone that goes on the internet. My poor pathetic phone. All it can do is Maps, which is why I haven’t been forced to replace it. But it has to be plugged into my car while mapping or it will instantly have a seizure, wet itself, pass out, and wake up with about 30% battery left. Probably will only be of interest to me, but I want to start instagramming all this mud–my first job. Finally I am excited to go to work. I have never had this feeling before.