I am so happy to learn there is a Facebook page called "Intelligent, Classy, Well-Educated Women Who Say Fuck A Lot."

It is nice to have company.

I never used to say "fuck." Never. I am of Dutch Reformed stock. We are a reserved people. We don't even say "golly" or "heck" very often.

But then I had children. And you know, there are just so many maternal moments when only a good curse word or a string of profanity will do.

But even so, I held the fucking in check. (I mean, the saying, not the doing, not that there was a whole helluva lot of doing either, once the kids came along.)

Until menopause. Motherhood may have breached the levees but menopause swept them away entirely. These days, profanity and curse words gush forth from my lips without plan or permission. I don't think this development is good or admirable but it's rather like the sagging of my boobs or the thinning of my hair--I hate it but it just keeps happening.

So, it's nice to know there's a Facebook group that I can join. And I may be way off-base here, but I'll bet that many in the sisterhood of intelligent, classy, well-educated women who say fuck a lot also find that their boobs have lost their bounce and their hair suffers from anorexia.

Just a hunch.

Earth Tones

I'm a primary-colors sort of person, drawn to kitchens done in black and white with splashes of red or bright blue. We, however, have a Craftsman-style old house, complete with original wall stencils, and so decided to stick with earth tones to reinforce the "in harmony with nature" feel of the building. Somewhat to my surprise, then, I'm comfortably ensconced in muted olives and forest greens, rich browns, dusky oranges. It's all good, except for one eensy-teensy detail:

Cat poo comes in earth tones.

Cat poo, therefore, blends in perfectly--is, in fact, indistinguishable, even invisible, when resting on our rugs and even wood floors.

This has become A Problem.

Our once shy but affectionate and completely litter-box oriented kitty has taken to pooping all over the house. Because we can't figure out what's wrong, I now call her Menopausal Kitty--I figure I blame everything weird about my physical, mental, and emotional states on menopause, so why not the kitty, too?

Meanwhile, I'm adapting. Evolving, really. I now step with such lightness, such tentativity (there is no such word, but there should be), that my foot can hit poo and rebound so quickly that not a speck of poo adheres to my sock. Perhaps over eons I could pass this adaptation on to my offspring, and womankind and pooing kittykind could live in ecological harmony.

But I don't have eons and the males in the household remain their primitive stomping selves. Oblivious to the squish and stink, they track kitty poo around the entire house and are utterly amazed when I point out the fecal footprints.  Do men never look down? Is there something in testosterone that prevents the neck from bending? Given this male intransigence and my own growing impatience with scraping cat poop out of the rugs, Menopausal Kitty's future as an indoor cat looks limited.

Which makes me a bit nervous. Now granted, I have yet to poop in odd places but I do find myself and my body doing the strangest things. How long, then, before I'm mewing pitifully on the back porch, wondering why no one will open the door and let me inside?

And suddenly I get the point of male obliviousness--this wonderful evolutionary adaptation, this remarkable means of ensuring ecological harmony between the male species and menopausal womankind.

Fergus

I've written before about the geological processes of aging--the shifting of tectonic plates, the cutting of new valleys and the pushing out of hillocks where all used to be flat and smooth. And of course, as part of this process of formation and erosion, soil shifts, rocks tumble, cliff sides suddenly give way. This last month has seen lots of shifting and tumbling. Take my teeth: a typical morning; I'm chewing on my usual peanut butter-and-whole wheat breakfast waffle and CRACK, my tooth falls onto my tongue. Much choking and spitting ensues. Or take my skin: suddenly white bits shower down like stones and sticks cascading down a hill. For the first time in my life I have eczema patches because, well, why not? there's all this other weird shit going on, so why not massive skin flaking?

And then there's Fergus.

About a week before Christmas I notice this large black thing in my left eye. Kind of like a fly, with a circular body and a squiggly tail. I figure it's eye strain, shrug it off. But the fly won't leave. And then comes a 24-hour massive bout of pain in that eye. Scary. So off I toddle to the eye doctor. Turns out the pain was coincidental--sinuses? psychosomaticism? who knows? But the fly--the fly, the doctor tells me, is permanent: my eye cavity is deteriorating; bits and pieces are detaching. The fly will always be with me. "But it will only be really obvious if you're looking at, say, a white page." Umm, you mean like a book page or a computer screen? "Yes, exactly." Right. I'm a historian. Book pages and computer screens. There's my life. Hello, permanent fly.

So, I decided to make the best of it. I've named him Fergus. He's my new pet. Like many of my pets, he's incredibly annoying and won't let me alone. But he's mine.

Geology at Work

I was prepared for the wrinkles.

Well, ok, not actually. But I at least knew in my head they were coming, even if my heart assured me that as long as I drank lots of water and found just the right moisturizer, all would be well. (My heart lives in La La Land.)

The bumps, however. I had no idea about the bumps. And so, oh youthful reader, let me warn you: Age Bringeth Bumps.

I'm not talking about rolls here--yes, age brings rolls that spill over one's waistband and slurp over one's bra straps. But there again--one was warned.

I am talking bumps. Like the tiny bumps on the inside of my knees that are now spreading down my calves and migrating to my upper arms.  "The technical term for that is 'chicken skin,'" my doctor said. "So what do I do about it?" I asked. "Oh, put on moisturizer. It won't actually help, but that's what you do." She smiled brightly. She's young. But soon she will be old and bumpy. May she be afflicted with chicken skin.

The worst, though, are my bumpy feet. There is, for example, the bump on the joint of my second toe--remember back when we wrote with pencils in school? And your middle finger on your writing hand would get that lump on the top from holding your pencil? Just like that. And then there's the perfectly circular bump on my right foot, just at the base of the little toe--looks like someone inserted a little ball bearing in there. All of this culminates in the really big bumps bursting from the bones under the big toes, the harbingers of arthritis and old-lady afflictions like corns.

So here's my theory. It's about geology as much as biology. As crevasses and caverns cut their way through a plateau, they push out and upward elsewhere, producing cliffs and mountains.  With valleys come hills. With wrinkles come bumps. My body is a geological demonstration.

Ick

Marple the Kitty has tapeworms, Cleaning Sarah informed me when I got home today.
"They were all over the chair, you know, the rocking chair that he sits in."
I'm confused. "But, how in the world, I mean, I thought tapeworms showed up in poop."
Cleaning Sarah is embarrassed. She doesn't like discussing bodily functions. Too much cleaning of other folks' toilets, I imagine. "Well, yeah, but you know, they crawl out of, well, you know, down there. . ."

Oh good lord.

Ick.

So in less than one week we've got Kitty Wimsey crapping in our bed, Ol' Dog Rowan vomiting twelve times one morning before I left for work and another five times after, and now feline tapeworms.

I'm thinking maybe a goldfish.

Maybe not. I remember goldfishes. We had a series of them, plus beta fish, when the boys were little. You start with all that enthusiasm, a fresh bowl, a little filter, a couple of plastic plants and a castle, plus the fish. You end up with lots of slime, a horrible odor, and a dead fish. Which was the whole point of it all, from Hugh's perspective. He loved our fish funerals. He never actually actively killed a fish, but he certainly thought they were far more interesting dead than alive. Of course, he had a point.

So maybe hamsters. We had a successful run of hamsters when we lived in England. Cute, containable, fairly cheap. You put the little guy in a ball and watch him run around--a couple of glasses of wine and hey, it's like you're at the Olympics. But you have to remember to put him back in his cage, or you'll find one really traumatized hamster and a plastic ball filled with hamster pee and little hamster feces, stuck behind the sofa late one Saturday afternoon.

So maybe not hamsters. Can't remember basic things these days, let alone hamster balls.

Maybe menopausal women and pets are a bad combo. Like menopausal women and teenaged sons. And menopausal women and husbands. And menopausal women and work colleagues. And menopausal women and neighbors. And menopausal women and telephone survey takers. And menopausal women and pizza delivery guys. And menopausal women and supermarket checkout clerks. . . .

Maybe the isolation ward. I hear the drugs are really good.

Big Foot

I read once that the only two body parts that keep growing throughout one's entire life (apart from parts that grow due to weight gain, that is) are the nose and the feet. Could this be true? Surely not. Wouldn't all old people have humongous noses and gargantuan feet? And yet. . . I swear my nose is expanding at an exponential rate. And my feet. . . well, I used to be a 6 1/2 or a 7, depending on the style and brand. Then I moved into a 7 1/2. OK, I thought, sizes shift. I mean, I used to be a 6  in clothes but now I'm a 4, even tho' I'm almost 20 pounds heavier, so umm, maybe shoe sizes went the opposite direction. Could be. It's possible. But yesterday $500 worth of Zappo's boots arrived at my door. How I love Zappo's. You go click click click on your laptop, and a couple of days later, there it is, this enormous box filled with gorgeous boots. Except in this case, the box bore a bounty of absolutely gorgeous boots sized 7 1/2  that are all too damned small.

Maybe sizes shifted downward again.

Or maybe I'm suffering from some sort of menopausal or seasonal foot swelling disorder thing.

Or maybe it really is true. One's feet do keep growing. One will soon have to walk like a clown, flipping and flopping in one's boat-like feet.

Better order a bunch of size 8 boots and enjoy normal (ish)-sized feet while I can.

Longing for a lubricated life

I had a family wedding in Atlanta last weekend. Three days away from home, and then six days in recovery. It didn't used to be like this. I used to be able to break routine and then slide right back in. It's as if the post-menopausal vagina (dry as all get-out) becomes a metaphor for one's entire post-menopausal life. No easy sliding. No just slipping in and out. Sigh. I miss a lubricated life.

Flummoxing Netflix

I suppose it's an indication of the limited, somewhat pitiful life I lead that one of my greatest pleasures is flummoxing the Netflix computer.

Netflix (which is, for those of you living on another planet, the extraordinary dvd-by-mail company that has wiped our strip malls clean of video rental stores) keeps track of what you order and then suggests other movies you might like, the results of a complex algorithm about which I once read a really interesting article but of course can no longer recall any of the details or even any of the significant facts. (Gimme a break. I'm a middle-aged woman in menopause.)

Anyway, humanist that I am, I find the idea that I can be reduced to an algorithm profoundly disturbing. Thus it gives me great delight to know that I regularly give the Netflix computer conniption fits. But "I" in this case isn't actually just me. "I" embraces both my sons, for both of them know my Netflix password, and both of them regularly stream Netflix movies to their computers. (Me, I prefer the old-fashioned, out-of-date dvds that come in the cheery red envelopes.) The result of this password/account sharing is, from the Netflix computer's point-of-view, one really weird customer who enjoys indie movies about suicide, anything Jane Austen, and adolescent comedies about farting, vomiting, and masturbating. You should see what comes up under "Our Recommendations for Facing-50."

Tho' it does dawn on me that we have here the makings of a great reality tv show. A kind of American Idol for filmmakers: Come up with a movie that will please this Weird Person. Must be set in Regency England and contain a brooding but appealing aristocratic hero and a spunky but still gentlewomanly heroine, must also contain a suicide and weird camera angles and lots of awkward silence and an alienating soundtrack, while also being a rousing  and earthy comedy containing frequent references to body exhalations of all sorts. An Oscar awaits.

And here's to you. . .

In earlier posts I've likened menopausal women to toddlers and to teenagers. And to my dog. But lately I'm feeling more like Benjamin Braddock in the early scenes of The Graduate. (As opposed to the later scenes with Mrs. Robinson. I am not looking for my own young Benjamin. Nor my own older Mr. Robinson. Just to be clear.) You know, the scenes where he's floating in the pool, or sitting underwater in his scuba diving equipment. The aimlessness. The detachment. The lassitude. The disengagement.

I keep waiting for someone to stick their face in front of me and whisper, "Plastics!"

Pondering the Inner Bitch

Today a friend forwarded to me an article entitled "The Bitch Factor: Irritability in Perimenopause." My first thought was, "Geez, have I become such a bitch that my friends feel impelled to address it via email?" But I quickly cast that uncomfortable notion aside and instead sat and pondered the meaning of menopausal bitchiness. I wonder if it's all really about hormones. Couldn't it be, instead--or perhaps in addition-- the result of a new sense of urgency? Turning 50, I've realized I probably have less time left on this earth than I've already lived and that, unless I'm extraordinarily lucky, a good chunk of my remaining earth time will be spent in an increasingly physically and (gulp) mentally limited state. I gotta get moving here. So much to finish and to start and to try and to see and to eat and to share and to buy and to read. . . so, dammit, wouldya shut up and just get the fuck out of my way?

And then, of course, there's always the possibility that actually I've always been this bitchy, deep down inside, but menopause just gives me the excuse to shrug off any self-censorship and give the Inner Bitch total control.

Whatever. She's out now. It's best to kneel and pay homage.

The horror! The horror!

Lately my dreams have been dominated by food and poop. I think I'm regressing to infancy. I blame menopause: It reduces a complex, sophisticated, multi-faceted woman to, well, to an animal, a very advanced animal, a bundle of physicalness. Hot flashes and inexplicable weight gain and hair loss and the absence of moisture and lubrication in areas that really need a bit of wetness--suddenly all of life is a matter of The Body.

Me? I'm more of a Mind Person. I wasn't one of those "in-touch-with-primal-earthiness" pregnant women. I just longed to have my body back under control. And sex--yes, the body's certainly there but if the mind's not, well, might as well forget it. Yoga and meditation and relaxation techniques, all those "release the mind" activities? Total failure. For me, this whole menopausal journey back into the body is like Marlow's journey up the Congo into the Heart of Darkness.

"The horror! The horror!"

Zits

For all you menopausal sisters out there: One of my all-time favorite comic strips, "Zits," has been playing with the explosive combination of Menopausal Mom and Teenager Son. Here's the link to Dec. 27; check out Jan. 5 and 6 as well.

It's Complicated

Got my period again--twice in three months after two years of sterility. Weird. And it raises perplexing questions, like do I actually go out and restock supplies of maxi-pads and tampons, or do I continue making do with constant changes of pantiliners, on the assumption this can't go on? And do I keep taking my cancer-causing, heart attack-inducing, hot flash-relieving hormones or do I stop until I really don't have any more periods?

Who knew aging was so complicated?

Rejuvenation

I've gotten my period. Not exactly headline news for any female over the age of 12, except I'm 50, and haven't had my period for two years. So, quite frankly, I'm shocked. And perturbed. I'm doing my best, fighting hard to settle into my new identity as Crazy Menopausal Woman, and suddenly here I am, fecund, gushing blood. Is this fair? Two years of sweat springing forth from my pores as if I were some kind of garden fountain; two years of reduced sexual drive to the point where "drive" is hardly the right word, more like "slight inclination now and then"; two years of mood swings and weight gain and hair loss. . . . and now I have my freaking (downright freaky) period??

Acupuncture Guy tells me it could be the result of my thrice-weekly, oh-so-expensive needle sessions plus herbal regimen. I'm restoring my "chi". Hmm. It seems to me--I dunno, I'm just sayin'-- that if this rather well-known thousands-year-old treatment could actually reverse menopause, well, wouldn't women have cottoned onto this by now? Wouldn't all of us over-40-ish female types be getting little needles stuck into us regularly? But then again, maybe not. Who, after all, wants periods forever? I, for one, think fecundity may be over-rated.

Still, Acupuncture Guy's assistant told me in my last session that I had the best-looking tongue she'd seen all day. Sadly, I felt quite pleased.

Pale Tongue

I have a pale tongue. I didn't know that my tongue was paler than most; I guess I haven't paid much attention to tongue coloration. I know now about my pale tongue because my acupuncturist told me so. Yes, my acupuncturist. I now have an acupuncturist. And I am now ingesting massive quantities of Chinese herbs. I feel so totally alternative, like I should dress in flowy, ankle-long, brightly colored skirts and hiking boots while I grind my own flour. This plunge into alternativity is motivated by my never-ending quest for relief from chronic daily headaches. Western medicine has failed me; I turn to the East.

But back to the tongue. Turns out possession of a pale tongue is Bad. So Acupuncturist Guy is hopeful that sticking me with needles and plying me with herbal concoctions will help with not only the headaches but also clogged sinuses, insomnia, menopause, depression, and my inability to understand football. OK, not the last one.

Am I hopeful? Hmm. Over the last several years I have worked with many a hopeful medical-type person, ranging from the Svaroopa yoga therapist to the neurologist, the sleep specialist to the TMJ dentist to the chiropractor, the osteopath, and the deep-tissue masseuse. I have learned much. I have spent much. And still I am more of a Headache with a person, than a Person with a headache. "Hopeful" means "full of hope" and I can't say hope is sloshing over my brim, but still, yep, there's a bit of it swirling around in the bottom of the cup.

In a funk

I'm in a funk.

Could be a menopausal funk--the gloom brought on by increasing quantities of facial fur--matched only by the decreasing volume of head hair--and the pounds that seem to fly on and stick to my stomach like flies on a dead squirrel and the ever-decreasing libido that makes me feel like the Frigid Bitch of the North.

Could be a generational funk--the fear that I've failed to realize my potential as a scholar, the sense that my students regard me as this sometimes amusing historical relic, my longing to Do Something or Be Someone Important.

Could be an existential funk--the doubts about meaning and truth and purpose, the growing restlessness with going through the motions,the impatience with answers that used to satisfy and arguments that once seemed convincing.

Dunno.

Just know that I lay in bed last night and thought, "Life is just a bunch of orifices, just a matter of in and out." You eat, you drink, you poop, you pee, you have sex, you listen, you repeat, you smell, you sneeze. . . hydration, consumption, defecation, urination, copulation, communication, organization. . . all just a matter of in and out in and out in and out. . .

in and out in and out again and again on and on and on just life in the lower-case no capitals no highlights no need for punctuation and the more you go on the more the highs and lows level out and it's just this vast plain this tundra and the colors all fade and the whites turn dingy and the blacks lose their vibrancy so it's all the same dreary grey grizzle and you can't hear the laughter or the screams just the low ceaseless moan and the monotonous buzz buzz buzz of fake lighting and soon itjustallcollapsesinonandtheresnothingintheuniversebutfakepolitepeopleataneternal cocktailpartywithwatereddowndrinksandpackagedtastelesssnacksandsoyoubegintowonderififif

So. I'm thinking, brownies.

Baby Love

A couple of days ago, I found out that a friend of mine, who's older than I am, has just adopted a newborn baby. I'm happy for him and his partner. Really. So very very happy. Honestly.

Excuse me, it is possible for one to be be genuinely happy for someone while at the same time consumed with jealous rage. One is a complex being. One is capable of multi-tasking one's emotions.

One really wants a baby.

Ridiculous. One is a menopausal mother of two teenaged sons.

So--Babies? Done and dusted. Shoot, I've even done it both ways: the birth-via-my-body thing and the adoption-via-massive-bucks thing. (Tho'--full disclosure here--I didn't actually go thru with the entire birthing process. I tried. I did. 24 hours of labor before the doctors jumped in with great glee, wielded those knives, and C-sected that baby outa there.)

And I have so many friends who've been unable to have a baby either way. I've hoped with them, screamed with them, cried with them. And I've mourned with friends who have lost their babies and agonized with friends who struggle daily with the horror of watching disease devastate their kids. I know how very very lucky, blessed, rich I am. I know I've had my share, more than my share, of beautiful, healthy babies, gorgeous sons with the world wide open before them.

I know all this. But. Dammit. I. Want. A. Baby.

It's sick. I find myself in the wee hours of the morning secretly hoping one of my boys will knock up a lovely young girl who will bravely decide to have the baby but will recognize she/they can't provide the baby with all that she/they want for that baby, and so, yes, I will get the baby.

Part of it is that I just really enjoy babies. Some people like football. Or Coen Brother movies. Or Andy Warhol. Me, I like babies.

But there's also the sad and dirty fact that when I had my babies, my beautiful boys, I was fairly fucked up. To put it mildly. (Not on drugs, mind you. Never done those. OK, yes, I've done lots of drugs--for allergies and tummy disorders and headaches and vulvadynia and depression and anxiety and chronic strep throat and yeast infections. But none of the fun stuff. ) Nope, no drugs, not that much alcohol. Just, well, basically, back then I was a total wingnut. Torn apart by the demands of scholarship and teaching and motherhood and wifedom and sisterhood and friendship and daughterdom and sex and laundry and lawn care and the desire for a really good brownie. I do not regret, then, that I returned to work right after the boys came into the world. Had I stayed home with them, they'd have ended up fairly fucked-up little fellas as well. Instead, I gotta say--despite the fact that neither seems capable of shutting a cabinet door, closing a dresser drawer, hanging up a towel, or flushing a toilet; despite the march of tattoos across Owen's body; despite Hugh's Republican leanings-- my guys are all right.

And, even in the context of total wingnutdom, I enjoyed them as babies.

Most of the time.

Sometimes.

When I wasn't crying because I feared that any kid with a mom like me was doomed.

But these days, despite menopausal mania, I think it's fair to say my wingnuttiness has moderated. I'm no longer shredded by the various demands of my various roles. I've learned to say, oh, what the hell. I've accepted that I will never be a Scholar Star. And (most of the time), I'm ok with that. These days, I could and I would stay home with a baby. We'd hang out, chill in the mornings over Cheerios, nap on the sofa, watch some Baby Einstein, do some park swings, snort some formula, while Springsteen played in the background. I do know that you're supposed to flood a baby with Mozart if you want him or her to be a math wizard, but the world has plenty of quantitative geniuses. Me and the imaginary baby, we prefer quality--political passion, concern for the underdog, respect for the way words work, sound narrative sense, and thumping rock 'n' roll. So we'd scrap the Mozart and follow Scooter and the Big Man into the swamps of Jersey.

Instead, I'm heading to the mall. Gotta go buy a baby gift for my friend. Which I will send with lots of joy, much love, an abundance of good wishes, and a hearty helping of good, old-fashioned, deep dark green envy.

Jim who?

It's a bad sign when one finds oneself confused by tv commercials.

There's this I-Pod Nano commercial in which the camera never moves from a close-up on a woman's torso, as her hands clip her Nano here and there, while this really quite interesting song plays. Something about "I want a girl with a something something and a long, looong. . . jacket." I like the song. But what I don't know is, is it really a song? Or is it just something made up for a cool I-Pod commercial? Who's singing? Should I know this? Does everyone know this--except elderly out-of-touch folks like me? Have I become the 21st century equivalent of that person who doesn't realize that the "I can see for miles and miles and miles" on the Windex commercial is actually a Who song? or the "Our house, is a very very very fine house" on the commercial for umm, something to do with houses, is really a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song? And is the fact that I remember those commercials--which probably haven't been on for years, now that I think about it--is that fact yet one more reason for despair?

And yet--I remember returning to Chicago from six months' Ph.D. research in London. 1985. I was 25--thin, fit, sexy, definitely not elderly or out of touch. This commercial for scooters--the Vespa type, not those metal kid things--came on and there was this guy, this really horrible actor, pitching the scooter. I turned to my then-boyfriend and complained, "Geez louise, what were they thinking when they hired that guy?" And Boyfriend stared at me in amazement, shook his head, and then said in this horribly patronizing tone (which really summed up the whole relationship but let's not go there), "My dear, you have got to be the only person in this entire city who doesn't recognize Jim McMahon." "Jim who?" I replied.
[In case you, like me, are clueless: In 1985, the Chicago Bears won the Superbowl. And Jim McMahon was The Quarterback. If that explanation doesn't help, if you don't understand the significance of the Superbowl and have no idea why a quarterback is important, well, hey, let's get together and can I marry and have babies with you?]

It helps to remember that I can't remember Jim McMahon. After all, I chalk up lots of things these days to menopause and aging, and get frustrated and anxious and angry. Which is pretty dopey because a. really, there's only one alternative to growing old, and really, is that what I want? and b. actually, I've been doing or not doing most of this stuff most of my life. As Keith has frequently reminded me, if I should be afflicted with Alzheimer's, who will notice?

The Ad Thing

A couple of friends convinced me I should allow ads on my blog. So, as you can see, I have done that. I don't know much about this sort of thing, but I pretty much assumed the ads would somehow link up to what I write about --you know, that they would advertize products and services for menopausal women and crazed parents. So why then, did an ad for patriot missile defenses pop up? I mean, do people actually buy these things?

And--even more alarming, really--what's it got to do with menopause?

Leaks

I'm leaking.

I'm not yet 50 and I'm leaking. This is ridiculous.

All I have to do is realize, "Oh, I need to pee," and I leak. Or sometimes I'm just standing there, and all of a sudden, there's a dribble. It's not yet peeing in my pants, but I have no doubt that will come.

And I think this disturbing new sign of physical decay and degradation speaks, metaphorically, to my ongoing intellectual decline. I'm leaking mentally as well. It's not a gusher yet, not even a steady drip--but everyday there's a dribble here, a sudden spurt there, and bit by bit I can feel my brain drying up, beginning to crack and flake.

On the bright side: maybe by the time I need adult diapers, I'll be too far gone mentally to know it. So that should be ok, then.