Menopause: The Blog Post

Warning: The title should have already put off the weak, the scared, and the male. Anyone else that sticks around is definitely a glutton for punishment, or engaging in that nasty little brand of schadenfreude that revels in other people's misery.

Which one are you?

There was a time when I would have laughed at older women in my life, had they been as open about this fascinating phase of their lives as I'm about to be. There's still time to go read about Paris, instead.

Inexplicably, you are still here, reading, no less. Well, welcome to my nightmare. And a nightmare it is. I haven't slept through the night in a couple of years. It has resulted in some really weird dreams, let me tell you. Not as weird as Vicky's recent dream involving a moose, my van, and a dead pedestrian, but pretty darn close.

The dreams, however, are not as bad as the night sweats. Sounds disgusting, huh? You have no idea. Waking up in a pool of sweat is no fun. I confuse the husband by sleeping at the foot of the bed, like a puppy, because it's cooler there. Go figure. If anyone ever catches me panting with my tongue out, walk me, or slap me back into my senses.

There are other indignities that I will spare you here, but I assure you, I already went through puberty once, this second go round, blessedly without the acne, is no less emotionally challenging. Teenage angst and middle age angst are kissing cousins. Instead of yelling at my parents, I yell at my teenagers.

There's actually a certain amount of satisfaction in that, although I've lately noticed the conspiratorial glances exchanged when I go over the top and ground a kid until 2037 for not folding the socks properly, but hey, I figure I have to give them something to tell their therapists one day.

The consolation that this, too, shall pass is no consolation at all. Maybe it has something to do with the misnomer--I mean, meno-pause? I'm not liking these "pauses." I need it to end. Definitely. Permanently. And now.

I'm thinking, everybody who lives with me is thinking the same thing, times 10.