Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

I’m in my 20s so I live on the cheap. Usually that means cooking at home more often or shopping at Aldi. But sometimes my frugality leads me to owning sheets stained with 4 girls’ period blood. I’m not talking straight-out-of-Dexter blood stains – just a couple spots here and there. Girls have asked about the spots and I just tell them I get nighttime nosebleeds. I wash my sheets every couple weeks so the stains are purely cosmetic. I can’t afford to go out and buy new sheets every time a little monthly red wine gets on them; high thread counts are expensive. I sometimes worry about treading in psychopath territory, but I refuse to buy new sheets. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

There’s a difference between living “on the cheap” and living “in abject squalor.” When you explain to your guests “This place is infested with mice because mousetraps are expensive,” they don’t think, “What a frugal young man!” They think: “Okay, the last person I texted was Allie about 30 minutes ago. She probably won't think it’s weird if I don’t text her again tonight, but Kristen will be concerned if I'm not home tomorrow by lunch. You have to wait 24 hours to file a missing person’s report...What do I have in my pocketbook that can be used as a weapon? Maybe a pen, definitely an eyeliner pencil. My keys!”

It’s time to buy some new sheets.

Given that what you have to offer the ladies is a dish of rotting Aldi vegetables and a romp in your menses-covered bed, it’s no surprise that you have a flair for making girls’ panties wet. Unfortunately, they are wet because they are filling with blood. What an odd gift you have.

How is it possible that four (4) separate girls have bled on your bed if you are not a murderer? I don’t think I’ve done it once, and I’ve had a whole ellipses of periods. A woman’s menstruation is not like an Eli Roth film, with blood gushing out of her, spraying everything in sight. You can usually tell when it's occurring and it generally starts out pretty low-key. Whatever is happening in your bed, it deviates grossly from the norm.

Maybe consider sticking with one girl for a few weeks before motoring on to the next one? Under the current system, you seem to be catching everyone at the end of their cycles. Move your wooing schedule up or back one week.

Your weird “nosebleeds” lie is flawed for a number of reasons.

  1. No one is going to feel more comfortable sleeping next to you because you tell them there’s a chance your face might just start bleeding in the middle of the night.
  2. Do you usually sleep with your nose dead in the middle of the bed?
  3. Women who ask you to ask you about the dried blood stains in the middle of your bed aren’t asking you to explain the stains. They know what the stains are from. They’re asking you to answer to them. The unspoken word in their query is “doing,” as in: “What are these dried blood stains [DOING] on your sheets?”

You know who would love to buy you a nice new set of sheets besides me, right now? Your mother. New sheets can be a Christmas present. They can be a birthday present. They can be a “MOM, HELP, MY SHEETS ARE COVERED IN BLOOD” present. Until your high threadcount new sheets arrive, spring for a cheap set at TJ Maxx. Throw the other ones away, or hang them out your window to celebrate your happy marriage.

After you have your new sheets in place, be sure to treat the (apparently inevitable?) incoming blood stains ASAP after noticing them so that they don’t have time to “set.” Martha Stewart, who undoubtedly knows a thing or two about cleaning up blood, advises using cold water + an enzyme cleaner. Don’t toss your sheets in the dryer to bake the stains in before you have adequately treated them.

Also — “a little monthly red wine”? No one says that. I did a web search for “monthly red wine” and all I found were subscription services from wine merchants. Even when I put "PERIOD" after it. The fact that you refer to menses as “monthly red wine”—and the fact that, according to you, women are forever spilling great big glasses of red wine all over your sheets—makes me think that perhaps the midnight bleeds excuse is real and the sex with women part is a lie. If so, there’s no need to feel embarrassed about your lack of experience. One day you will meet a woman whom you like very much, and she will consent to have sex with you, and she will not transform your bed into a vivid Jackson Pollock canvas every time she has her period.

But you will not woo her with sheets covered in your old nosebleed stains.

My girlfriend, age 25, has recently begun to refer to female, well, anything, as "girlfriend." Cats, infants, whatever. I know. I know. Just, bear with me.

We're now engaged. I have politely mentioned to her that this is kind of crazy. She is unrepentant, as is her right. I think her coworkers, all in their 40s, are to blame.

It's only once a month so far, but if she ever does this in public, I might have to flee in terror. Running, with my feet, far far far away. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

Calling things “girlfriend” even if those things are not “girlfriends” in the traditional sense of the word is a common practice in your relationship, because if you are engaged to this woman, she is not your “girlfriend”; she is your fiancée. And what your fiancée is doing sounds hilarious!

I love the idea of this young lady saying to a cat “I gotta run, girlfriend, but I will talk to you later!” It warms my heart to picture her confronting a baby for “acting really shady, girlfriend.” I wish she would start to call MORE things “girlfriend.” I hope she expands it to inanimate objects. Like, if she bumps into a chair at a restaurant, I hope she leans down to give it hug and squeals, “Oops, sorry girlfriend!” I hope she mumbles to herself “I’ll just take a couple of these girlfriends…” as she stuffs spare ketchup packets into her purse at McDonald’s. I hope the last thing she does before she falls asleep is whisper “Goodnight, girlfriend” to the darkened room. I just want her to own it, girlfriend!

Also, she’s only doing it once a month?

First of all, that is nothing. Let’s assume that the average woman says 16,000 words a day. September is a 30 day month so, by your calculations 1 out of the 480,000 of the words she says this month will be “Girlfriend!” directed at something that is not her girlfriend. Is that a big deal to you? Is that a sin for which she must repent or be damned?

Secondly, WHY ARE YOU KEEPING SUCH PRECISE RECORDS OF YOUR FIANCÉE’S SPEECH PATTERNS? Are you building a linguistic corpus for later statistical analysis? THAT IS CRAZY.

And if she’s not doing it in public, I’ve got news for you, girlfriend: she is teasing you by saying this because she knows it drives you nuts. Your 24-year-old fiancée is not battling Early Onset “Girlfriend” passed on to her from 40-year-olds she knows (by the way, in 16 years, she will be 40, so you better get over your idea that 40-year-olds are a bad thing); she’s just niggling you in private. So there are two ways to look at your issue.

One is that if your hatred of this verbal tick is so great that it consumes your thoughts, you might look into marrying someone who doesn’t drive you to madness just by being herself.

The other is that, if her occasional use of the honorific “girlfriend” to address something that is NOT EVEN A GIRL WHO IS HER FRIEND is the biggest fault you can find with her (and it sounds like you are looking!), she is a great match for you, and you should marry her, girlfriend.

Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions here (max: 200 words). Photo via Picsfive/Shutterstock; stains by Jim Cooke.