I was in bed with the flu and a kidney infection, and then I got my period. The cherry on top of a really s***ty cake. Due to my being floored in bed, I hadn’t had a chance to do my usual shopping and only had one tampon left.

My boyfriend called on his way home from work.

Boyfriend: “Needed anything picking up?”

Me: “Yes, tampons please.”

Boyfriend: “Eww, gross.”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Boyfriend: “I can pick you up and drive you to the supermarket so you can buy them yourself.”

Me: “That won’t work.”

Boyfriend: *Whiney.* “Why not?”

Me: “Blood and gravity.”

He huffs and puffs but finally agrees to go to the supermarket. He calls me from the tampon aisle and whispers.

Boyfriend: “I’m here. Which ones do you need?”

I explain, and he is about to put them in the basket, but then:

Boyfriend: “Hmm, there’s orange ones here.”

Me: “What orange ones?”

Boyfriend: “Super plus plus.”

Me: “Nope, too much. Just regular and super, please.”

Boyfriend: “Babe, I dunno if you know, but when you’re, well, doing that, there is a lot of blood.”

Me: “Now I know you’re not trying to mansplain to me my own f****** flow.”

At least that’s what I WANT to say, but I have to stay calm and polite because he’ll just leave without buying any if I kick off.

Me: “No thanks, just the ones I asked for.”

He comes home with the f****** orange ones.

Boyfriend: “Trust me, these will be better for you.”

I had no other choice but to use them. It was like pulling a London bus from out of me every time I changed one.

And he wonders why he’s now my ex.

My girlfriend and I live far enough north in Canada that we get a white Christmas most years. This year, Christmas Day had a snowstorm heavy enough that we both agreed it was safer to stay home and not go to see our families.

On the morning of Boxing Day:

Girlfriend: “Highways are still closed?”

Me: “They’re open. It didn’t snow overnight, so most of it’s been cleared, although my car is still somewhere under Mount Snowverest.”

We both look at each other, wrapped in blankets, sipping cocoa, surrounded by snacks.

Girlfriend: “You know… both our families wanted us to drive out today to make up for missing yesterday.”

Me: “What if we just… didn’t?”

Girlfriend: “They’ll be mad.”

Me: “Well, we could still be snowed in.”

Girlfriend: “So… lie?”

Me: “You either help me get the car out from under that snow for an hour to be rewarded with family drama and, “when are you getting married” questions, or we stay under the blanket with cookies and a Lord Of The Rings marathon?”

Girlfriend: “You know what? It looks like it might start snowing again.”

I look out at the clear blue skies, without a cloud in sight.

Me: “Well, your vision was always better than mine.” *Grabs the remote and snuggles deeper under the blanket.*

My girlfriend’s little sister was doing a “spend a week as something you’re not” assignment for school and was being a GIANT pain in the a** about it. 

I was visiting from out of town (my girlfriend and I were long-distance at the time), and so we were all sitting down to lunch and dinner and whatnot.

Little Sister: “Ugh! There’s no vegan option!”

Girlfriend: “They have a bunch of salads.”

Little Sister: “They’re all not vegan enough! I’m not gonna be like those fake vegans! This salad has figs, and did you know a wasp has to die to make a fig?!”

Girlfriend: “Well, I don’t think—”

Little Sister: “—and I can’t have any sugar in my coffee! They use charred animal bones to make it whiter!”

She goes on like this for every option. She eventually settles on avocado on toast.

Me: “Is that really vegan enough?”

Little Sister: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Some places ship in bees to pollinate their avocados, and is it vegan enough of you to ignore the labor of animals?”

She was NOT happy with that.

It’s early morning on Black Friday. My boyfriend’s scrolling on his phone, reading off store ads while I’m brushing my teeth, still feeling tired from Thanksgiving the day before. We’re discussing which stores we’re going to hit up for some deals.

Boyfriend: “TVs, laptops, air fryers, toasters… fifty percent off everything and everyone’s already in line.”

Me: “Remember last year? You worked at [Electronics Store], and I was over at [Department Store].”

Boyfriend: “Yeah, we had to leave Thanksgiving dinner early to get to work at 9 PM to start setting up for the midnight opening.”

Me: “I had a woman threaten to ‘manifest a manager’ if we didn’t price match a toaster.”

We both stare at the half-eaten pumpkin pie between us.

Me: “Why don’t we just… not go?”

Boyfriend: *Pauses, mid-scroll.* “Wait… we can do that?”

Me: “Yeah. Like… no stores. No lines. No people fighting over towels. Just… stay in?”

He looks at me like I’ve just cured everything.

Boyfriend: “So you’re saying… stay in, eat leftovers, watch anime?”

Me: “Exactly.”

He tosses his phone aside, grinning.

Boyfriend: “That’s it. That’s our Black Friday deal. A hundred percent off stress.”

Me: “And unlimited mac and cheese refills.”

We clink our forks together like champagne glasses and hit play on the next anime episode.

My girlfriend and I are in university together, studying different subjects but at the same campus. 

At one point, we realised that we used a certain meme phrase to a truly absurd degree. It started ironically, but it ended up appearing in most sentences. Naturally, we decided that the best way to combat that was to completely cut it out of our lexicon, using competition!

We’d tally up the number of times we said it, and the person who said the most would get a punishment proportionate to the number of times they said it.

By the end of the first day, my girlfriend had accidentally said it seven times. I hadn’t said it at all.

Girlfriend: “How did you manage this? Not a single slip-up!”

Me: “…My course is about working in schools, remember? I’m going to be working with kids. Of course I can censor myself!”