Browbeaten

 For those who don't know, I'm in menopause.

I don't know why it's called menopause, by the way. It's meno-full-fucking-stop. My monthly flow isn't coming back, you guys. Neither is my youth, vitality, or natural lubrication.

I still have a sex drive, but the road is permanently closed, if you know what I mean.

The detour is DEATH, ha ha!

Anyway, I've experienced a particular physical side effect of menopause that no one ever told me about. Female Drunkards of a certain age, tell me if this is a thing for you, too.

I've lost my eyebrows.

I mean, they're not gone. No one broke in and stole them. They didn't fall off my face and get mixed with the dust bunnies under the sofa, never to be seen again because I don't know the last time I vacuumed under the sofa.

It's just that, apparently, whatever hormones are responsible for producing and maintaining those little strips of hair over my eyes have dried up along with those that used to make me bleed out of my hoohah every 28 days or so. Because my eyebrows, never actually lush to begin with, now resemble that streak of sticky soda you once spilled on the floor and didn't realize you hadn't cleaned up properly until it began to attract stray cat hairs and crumbs and look like something out of a petri dish growing in the doorway.

Or Minty, the Candy Cane That Fell on the Ground

We've all done that, right?

I think the last time I regularly went around without drawing in my eyebrows was back in the 90s. It's not that they looked great even way back then, but I was young enough and cute enough that I didn't care. Also, carefully groomed brows didn't fit in with the borderline hippie-chick aesthetic I was attempting to rock in those days.

But for years  I've had to enhance my eyebrows years to avoid looking like some kind of alien, or Florida Senator Rick Scott. Which I realize is redundant.

Gah. He doesn't even have the menopause excuse like I do.

And once I hit the menopause milestone, my already quite light and quite thin eyebrows simply gave up the ghost. I didn't stop growing hair in other places: not under my arms, or on my legs, or around my lonesome funhouse. In fact, I strongly suspect that most of the hair that no longer thrives above my eyes is trying to take up residence on my upper lip, where an old-lady mustache keeps threatening to sprout. 

But my eyebrows are sad, people. They consist of, like, 16 colorless strands that peter out to bare skin as they approach the outer corners of my eyes.  I used to have to tweeze them on a regular basis to maintain their shape and size. Hell, I even used to carefully shave them. They now sell cool little battery-operated gizmos that will give your eyebrows a precision trim. But old-school me just took my double-blade Lady Bic razor and scraped away at the delicate skin above my eyes, you know, in the name of beauty. If that's not a metaphor for GenX, I don't know what is.

We all wanted to be Molly Ringwald on the outside, 
but we were all Ally Sheedy on the inside.

Anyway, nowadays I carefully apply brown makeup to my eyebrows as part of my morning routine. It's not easy, because honestly I can barely see the skimpy hairs I'm attempting to darken and define. One of these days, if I'm not careful, I'm going to end up looking like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. 

Bring on that close-up, yo.

But you know what? That's OK. Of all the quirky physical changes that come with menopause (I didn't think it was possible to lose muscle mass in places where I never had muscles to begin with, for example), sparse eyebrows are among the least likely to constantly remind me that I'm advancing rapidly through middle age. Unlike, say, the jelly roll that has taken up permanent residence around my waist.

So...gals and guys, what physical symptoms of aging have taken you by surprise?

I Have Discovered the Phenomenon of Menunpause.

Today's word is:

menunpause n. (men' un 'pawz): the condition of going almost 12 cycles without a menstrual period, signaling the official onset of menopause, only to wake up one random morning with blood coming out of your wherever.

If there are any males still reading...sorry.

But dammit, I was so close.

Shut up, LeBron.

At 48, I realize I'm a few years shy of the average age of onset of menopause. Which is 51, which by the way I will never be 51 because I plan to stop aging next year, possibly by means of drinking snake venom or burning incense or something.

Chicken sacrifice, maybe.
This part of my life plan is still in the "research" stage.

But damn, I was ready to be menopausal. Perimenopause began a couple of years ago: hot flashes, female...um...dryness...skin issues. Yeah. Good times. Also, I gained a crap-ton of weight. Ugh.

Then, over the last year or so, I lost about 15 pounds. Granted, a good part of that was stress-related. You know, that whole selling-my-house, getting divorced, starting-my-life over stress. Hey, 15 pounds is 15 pounds. It wasn't anywhere near my fighting weight, but it was a bright spot in an otherwise dark goddamn period.

Shown here: 2015.

So here I am, a single, independent woman, happily perimenopausal. The hot flashes have faded, the emotions have leveled (OK, somewhat), and months have passed since I last experienced menses. I am cautiously optimistic that my period is, finally, an actual literal full stop.

And then...

Well, over the last couple of months I've regained almost all the weight I lost. I'm eating well: almost zero sugar, lots of lean protein, as many veggies as I can manage. Still, I'm packing on pounds like a fucking Kardashian after a bad breakup.

Insensitive AF, but I'm pre-menopausal.
Bite me.

Normally I would have assumed hormones were the culprit. Except, you know, I'm thisclose to being in menopause, so hormones should no longer be an issue, right?

Sigh.

Yesterday was my day to spend with Drummer Boy. We had a Cowboys game to watch. We had Ro-Tel dip (WITH SAUSAGE) to eat. Precocious Daughter was with her dad for the day.

We were going to get freaky, you guys.

We were going to get Snorkledorf.
Look it up, millennials.

Then I went to the bathroom.

If any guys are still reading...women periodically (swidt?) wipe themselves and see blood on the TP. We know that we're not hemorrhaging, we're just having a visit from Aunt Flo. We can handle this because we are awesome. It means our period has started.

For several decades, our reaction is: ho-hum, time to break out the tampons/pads until my uterus has emptied itself of non-essential baby-nurturing blood and tissue.

Again, we are awesome.

On the rag RIGHT NOW.

But you know what? When you're a certain age, and Aunt Flo hasn't visited since last winter, you're not expecting a random wipe to reveal the 28-day curse. You're just...not.

Go ask Alice, I think she'll know.

So let's sum up.

I now have to wait until at least October 2017 to declare myself in menopause.

My tenuous truce with gaining middle-age weight for no goddamn reason has been broken.

I did not get laid yesterday.

I love being a strong, independent, self-sufficient middle-aged woman...except for the part where I still have to buy Kotex like a teenager.

Menunpause, you guys. Make it trend. Support my cause. Pity me.

Fuck.

In a Mood. Not in THE Mood. That Would Be a Good Thing.

I'm in a mood today.

Today was a snow day here in North Texas. Actually, it was a "millions of tiny pellets of ice descending from the sky to bond with the concrete" day, which is what typically happens during a Texas winter.

Winter in Texas is a real dick.

Anyway, the schools were closed, and I wasn't about to get on the freeway with a bunch of clueless drivers. Since we had advance notice of the bad weather, I had my work computer at home so I could remotely connect to my company network and pretty much work normally.

That's the theory, anyway. In reality, connecting remotely is a painful, frustrating, inefficient process hamstrung by a network infrastructure that has remained static while demand for connectivity has grown threefold.

In layman's terms, this.

So I made a game effort to get some work done, but there were lots of things I simply couldn't accomplish, and the things I absolutely had to do left me feeling tired and drained.

Which brings me to the fact that I spent today feeling tired and drained, and I don't think it's entirely because of the limitations of my computin' machine. I didn't feel particularly well today - it's possible that if today hadn't been a snow day, I might have called in sick anyway.

Sick-sick, not Ferris-sick.

I feel run down and lethargic. I took two naps today, and not the awww-yeah-lazy-time kind of naps - the I-think-I'm-gonna-need-to-be-unconscious-for-a-while kind. The not so fun kind.

I'm pretty sure I'm not sick, but I did get my period this morning. And by "this morning," I mean I've been having raging PMS for at least two weeks now - including anxiety, irritability, sleeping problems, and boobs that feel as if they've been replaced by twin water balloons full of pain - and the actual menses finally decided to make an appearance today.

This is my cycle now. I hardly ever get a period any more, but when I do, it's a complete fucking diva. It's like the worst houseguest ever, disrupting my schedule, getting on my nerves, and expecting me to be at its beck and call, all so that it can make its grand entrance when it decides the time is right.

It's like "Real Housewives of Perimenopause"
in my ovaries.

So I don't feel great, and I'm not in a great mood. And last night's Oscar telecast didn't help.

I'm supposed to be writing a recap of the show, because I said I would. But the fact is, it was boring. It bored me.

It had its moments.

This. It had this.

But everybody on the internetz has already weighed in on Gorm Gizonga and Neil Patrick Harris in his underwear and the stupid, stupid bit with the predictions in the briefcase. I have nothing to add.

I'm just so grumpy about the whole thing.

How I felt by the end of the night.

So that's left me feeling bitchy, because I wanted to post a fun, witty wrap-up of the Oscars, but I can't. Maybe it's because the show itself was neither funny nor witty, or maybe because I'm not. Either way, I'm irritated.

Sensing a theme here?

With my go-to topic taken from me, I needed something else to write about. My friend Bill the Butcher recently sent me a new guest post, which tickles me to death, but I simply lack the energy to edit it for publication (not that it will need much editing, but I want to format and illustrate Bill's wonderful writing to do it justice, and I can't do that right now). That's also irritating.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I mean, other than the laundry list of things I've just written about. Maybe that's enough.

Oh, and they've already canceled school for tomorrow because more bad weather is coming. Joy.

I'm thinking this would be a very bad time to watch The Shining.

Tomorrow there will be an amazing post in this space.

Most likely it will be Bill the Butcher's and not mine, but I'll take it.

All of you...get off my lawn.

Girl Talk

Here's a conversation between me and Precocious Daughter.

But first, here's a little background.

In the bathroom we share, there are two packages of, um, feminine napkins. Why the hell are they called that? I will pay an Internet dollar to anyone who sends me a photograph of them using a maxi pad to wipe their mouth after nomming on some particularly greasy pizza pie.

It's so absorbent! And fresh!

Anyway, there are two packages because PDaughter likes the pads with wings. I don't. They're the training wheels of feminine hygiene products: If you even remotely know what you're doing, they're unnecessary. Also, they tend to stick to my pubes, if you must know. And that is unpleasant in the extreme.

Shown here: Ripping a piece of tape
from your genitals.

Anyway, I don't like wings, but she does. So OK, we stock both kinds. Except that I'm not exactly running through my supply. On account of impending menopause. On account of getting old. On account of...well, I don't really know why I'm getting old. It's not something I ever considered a goal.

Woo-hoo! I win, bitches!

And tonight, there was this:

PD: We have to go to the store.

Me: Why?

PD: I need pads.

Me: But I'm so tired. Just use mine.

PD: I don't like yours. They don't have wings.

Me: It makes no difference whether they have wings or not.

PD: I like wings.

Said in exactly this tone of voice.

Me: Can't you just use mine until tomorrow?

PD: NO.

Me: You know, it's starting to look as if I'm never going to use mine.

PD: What do you mean?

Me: I mean, you've had, like, four periods since I last had one.

PD: Really?

Me: Yes, really. I think my eggs may be dried up.

PD: *does this, basically*

PD: You're all dried up! *laughs gleefully*

Me: Whatever. Get in the car.

She got her goddamn winged maxi pads. I highly resent that she even menstruates, to be honest. After all, she's only six. In my mind. 

I don't even want to think about her ever asking me what it means if she misses her period. Wings seem like a pretty good goddamn thing when you look at it that way.

Sorry, male Drunkards. I'll write about something slightly more gender-neutral next time. I promise/hope/think.