The other day, I was pretty sure I was about to get my period. But it’s sort have been punking me with days lately, so I wasn’t sure exactly when it going to make its lovely presence felt.

And of course it picked the worst possible time. I had just arrived at the gym for a quick lunchtime workout. I was there with a friend, but obviously she was no help.

I searched my gym bag. No tampons. I searched the gym’s restroom. No tampon dispenser. Then it hit me — WTF? If a woman was in charge of this place, this would NEVER happen.

It made me start thinking about all the ways the world would be so much better if women really did rule the world. I know we’ve made tremendous strides over the past couple generations. One of the biggest gains we’ve made is in education. Female college students now greatly outnumber male college students.

But for a variety of reasons, that advantage disappears in the workforce.

Here are just a few frightening statistics, courtesy College Times:

— Women only make 77.5 cents for every dollar a man makes.

— Four in 10 businesses worldwide have no women in senior management positions.

— Women earn less than men in 99 PERCENT OF ALL OCCUPATIONS (this stunned me).

— Women business owners employ 35 percent more workers than all the Fortune 500 companies combined. (and this one thrilled me!)

(you can read the full list 10 Surprising Statistics on Women in the Workplace by clicking on the link above)

I think any of women (and the men who love us) reading this have noticed some disparities and things that just suck, for lack of a better phrase, about our current state of affairs.

The list that follows certainly doesn’t deal with the greater, deeper issues, such as pay inequality and finding ways to promote women leaders, but it illustrates just a few (mostly annoying) things that I think would NOT be an issue if women were in charge of the whole shebang (there’s got to be a reason it’s called a shebang and not hebang).

So, without further ado, my list of things that would change if Women Ruled the World:

—  Since this whole post was inspired by my desperate search for a tampon, I think it’s only appropriate I start with declaring that all public restrooms should have an emergency stash of tampons. Sure, there would be the moochers who only took, took, took, but I’d like to think that eventually tampon baskets would be like the ubiquitous “give a penny, take a penny” trays at cash registers. Need a tampon? There’s one there for you. Got an extra one in your purse? Leave it for the next lady in need. It’s just good ladyparts karma.

— I’ve said before that if I ever run for political office it will be on one issue — federally requiring changing tables in every public restroom — male and female — in this country. I can’t tell you how many times I desperately searched for changing tables during the diaper days, only to have to change my poor baby on a gross bathroom floor. Thankfully, a friend eventually taught me to keep clean garbage bags in my car for these emergencies. But until you’ve scrambled to get off a highway, pulled into a nearest fast-food restaurant’s parking lot with a screaming, diaper blowout baby in your car, then carefully extracted her from the car, grabbed the diaper bag and rushed inside only to find no diaper table you may not understand the rage the follows. I think I taught some scared bathroom patrons some four-letter words they’ve never even dreamed on one more than one occasion.

And sometimes they look like this:

(IMAGE SOURCE)

It just doesn’t make sense to me. At all. How hard is it? I sometimes joke that we started going to Disney so often for its plentiful, spacious and clean changing areas. But to be honest, it’s pretty much my number 1 reason.

I often fantasized about creating a diaper changing table app and becoming an instant millionaire (name a parent who wouldn’t want that?). But the thing is, when you’re in a diaper blowout emergency, you don’t want to take the time to use the phone’s GPS to find the nearest changing table. You just want it to be there. Now. Is that too much to ask?

— E. was a notoriously terrible napper (still is). So I can’t even count the number of hours and miles I put on my car in a desperate attempt to get her to sleep. I used to hate wasting those valuable hours (the gas I didn’t care about. Mother Earth and my wallet were worth sacrificing for some much-needed sleep. Sorry I’m not sorry). One day it occurred to me: life would be awesome if I could phone in/place an order online for places like Target and the grocery store. Then, they would give me an assigned pick-up time and I could just pull up to the curb. Do you know what kind of convenience fee I would have paid for this service? A big one. Think of how helpful this would be to mothers of small children or people with injuries who aren’t up to the daunting task of walking around Target for an hour. Or the lazy. Think about it Target. And I expect free curbside service for life for this awesome idea.

–And as I drove around aimlessly with my child, I developed one nemesis — traffic lights. Why must they be so frequent and how is it possible to hit EVERY red light? What if parents could drive around on a race-track style loop? There could be different lanes for different speeds. You could put on cruise control, drive long enough to get the kid to sleep, then there would be a SHADED parking lot to pull into where you could order a Starbucks from a drive-through and then just relax with a book while the kid slept for an hour. It’s gold, I’m telling you. Gold. OK, sure, it might require a lot of capital costs to actually build the track. But again, I would have paid a not insignificant convenience fee for this service.

And are you seeing a trend here? Parents of small children dread getting out of the car and avoid it at all costs. Between the unbuckling of the carseat, disturbing a likely happy child, schlepping all their stuff inside, then just praying they’ll behave long enough to get in and out without crying/screaming/spitting up/throwing a tantrum/having a diaper blowout, well, it’s enough to make moms especially never want to leave the house until their children are 3 years old.

I still drive to a dry cleaner that is nowhere near my house and costs more than the ones closer to me only because it offers drive-through service. I probably should switch now, though. Note to self.

— One day off a month for all employees — male or female. I thought about limiting this to women, but I knew if we really want to make this a thing, we’ve got to get the men on board. Let’s be honest, we could all use one mental health day a month. Yet we all feel guilty just taking “me days” from time to time. Personally, I’d love to have the first day of my period off every month. I always have a pounding headache the whole day and just feel so blah. But maybe you’d like to use your day to fill it with hair or doctor appointments. I think everyone would be so much more productive if they just had one required, paid day off a month to themselves while the rest of the world is at work. Makes sense, right?

What would you add to the list? I have some other, as yet undeveloped, ideas about golf course business meeting alternatives (spa day meetings?) and mom and baby only movie theaters with new non-kid movie releases.

If you ruled the world, what would be your first decree?