"What is the best day in my cycle to hit Gabrielle Lichterman over the head..."

I think you answered your own question here!

"According to the Lichterman, you should basically write off the premenstrual Days 23-28. Who wants grumpy women standing in checkout lines and jockeying for parking spaces anyway?!?!"

You've got six full days of rage to take out on her. Put it to good use!

Clearly, Gabrielle Lichterman is a ninny. Everyone knows that real women enjoy shopping and ogling babies and puppies during every day of their menstrual cycle. Whatever else would we do with ourselves? But I do appreciate her suggestions for helping me get organized. Off to Target, I guess, where I'll look to slog through the aisles with the other tired women on days 14 - 22.

Proof this woman is a moron: When you're ovulating and tired, best to stick to "department stores, like Sears and JC Penney". Because JC Penney and Sears at Christmas won't tire you out or make you lose all faith in humanity and want to spend days 23-28 browsing at your local Home Depot for some blunt objects to wield or turpentine to drink.

Crap, it's Christmas? Yeesh.

Look, for some of us, the monthly cycle and moods are strongly related. I finally learned that instead of fighting it, I could use it to my advantage. For example, I used my grumpy PMS days as the perfect time to follow up on billing problems while I was freelancing.

And if I were the sort to take advantage of such services, I'd be much more likely to enjoy a visit to that new Stud Farm around ovulation, slightly later than the predicted window for adventure and travel....

We all know that PMS has been used as a legal defense (http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/158/articles/dershowitz1.htm), not to mention making the lives of men miserable wherever it rears it's ugly head. Are you prepared to state that women are NOT effected by their cycle? Biology IS destiny, as we all know!

My husband too claims that he can "tell" when I'm PMSing. I assure him that on the contrary he's capable of turning me into a raging bitch a straight 365 days a year.

As far as shopping, I loathe it unless I'm sitting on my ass in front of a computer, just have to reach for my credit card, and tote only my empty wine glass to the kitchen & back.

As far as what I'm buying this Christmas season, it's the impersonal-one-size-fits-all-always-appreciatedsincenobodyhasanycluewhatIwant gift certificate.

Of course they do. I suspect that the majority of adult women have experienced the phenomenon of their moods and feelings changing over the time of their menstrual cycle.

The problem is the ridiculous assertion that all women have the *same* cycle, and respond to it in the same way.

For some women, these suggestions might make sense and work well with their cycle. But if the book suggests that *all* women are going to follow the same pattern, then it implies that if you don't, you're abnormal. The truth is that every woman has a different menstrual cycle. So many women complain about PMS mood swings; PMS is *pre-*menstrual. I don't have a single mood issue until the period actually hits, and then it's mostly related to being in pain until the one-day depression at the end of the cycle. So from my perspective, suggesting that I'm going to feel more up to shopping *during* my period than just before is frankly insane, as is the suggestion that I might have any part of the cycle that makes me more "tired" than the menses themselves do.

And also, women have very different opinions about SHOPPING! Many people will explore "neighborhood craft stores" when they're feeling "adventurous", not when they want to stay "close to home"; if they want to stay close to home they'll go to the nearest big box store because that's where they always go and it's what's familiar. And if you're feeling like bargain shopping, why are you going to the mall? Don't most malls price everything higher than if you found the same item at a big box store? Maybe the mall is where you go when you feel like exploring and being adventurous, and your neighborhood stores are where you go when you want to get all your shopping done at once because you happen to live near a variety of them.

So the basic idea -- that your cycle affects your mood, and your mood should affect what you set out to do, and knowing what your mood is likely to be and thus controlling what you do accordingly is probably good for you -- that's sound. But the idea that there is one way to feel during a menstrual cycle, or one way to respond to specific feelings... that's just unbelievably stupid.

I firmly believe it's a myth, like so called 'sugar highs" for kids. Anyway, if anyone is affected by hormones, wouldn't it be the much more prone to violence men?

Men are totally affected by hormone shifts. Studies have shown the fluctuations in testosterone affected *by* things like getting chewed out at work or getting a promotion, and affecting things like immune response and mood.

But unless a man is checking his T levels every day with a blood test, he doesn't *know* how his hormones are fluctuating. So he's never going to be able to do better than guess -- "Today feels like a high-testosterone day, so maybe I'll go jogging!" Most men actually don't know what exactly T does for them anyway.

It's funny, because people make stupid comments about "how can we trust a woman with her finger on the button? What if she gets PMS?" When men as a class are much more likely to push the button than any woman, with PMS or no, and when you can't actually *tell* when a man's hormones are screwing with him. People think hormones don't affect men, but the only truth is that men's hormonal shifts are invisible and not nearly as cyclic or predictable as women's. In my opinion that makes them *more* dangerous than women's hormonal shifts are, to be honest.