The Pregnant Pause

I am blogging today about a topic that has been written about and talked about by baby-boomer women ad nauseum….menopause. My apologies to my male readers….and young women for that matter. Today’s blog is for my sisters out there that are between 40-55 years of age. I can’t believe I am in that group, my inner voice refuses to age past 28, but my organs and exterior tell the truth. This piece is not about hormone treatments or other medical topics related to menopause. This blog is about the relationship a woman has between what she sees in the mirror and that inner voice. Just who the hell is this old bitch in my mirror? (bear with me, there may be outbreaks of rage through-out and the occasional hot flash)

Menopause is a term used to describe the permanent cessation of the primary functions of the human ovaries. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? My ovaries have decided to take a break…for the rest of my natural life. There goes any hope of my popping out a Juju 2.0. I am egotistical enough that the finality of that makes me want to shed a tear or two…let’s take a caesura and think about that. (I like words and the chance to be any kind of pregnant at this point is comforting to me…even a pregnant pause.) Okay…so my well is dry, I am no longer needed in society as a possible baby making receptacle. I can deal with that….okay, I will never be anyone’s baby-mama. The only thing disturbing about that is the fact that idiots reproduce like rabbits in America….the gene pool could have used my 23 chromosomes….just sayin.

So I looked in the mirror this morning and wondered who the stranger was looking back at me? Why does the fact that I am no longer dropping eggs make me feel like I am looking at a computer generated older version of myself? I am not ready to get the senior citizen discount at the movies!! Hold on a minute….slow this mother down…I want off this runaway train! Is it me or does that crease on my forehead look deeper today….the one that Linda says makes me look mean or pissed. It is bigger, you could park a 1974 VW in its crevasse! I am convinced that women increase trips to their plastic surgeon right about the time they see a stranger in the mirror. Their inner voice is startled into thinking a nip and tuck will make their outer facade match the girl within. It doesn’t work girls…there has to be another solution! Is it me or did it just get hotter in here?

If you are reading this and you don’t quite know for sure that you are beginning the big pause, let me help you. If you find yourself doing one or more of the following…you may of unknowingly joined my club.

1. you fight the urge to slap the girl at Starbucks that forgets your whipped cream.
2. some days you feel so much bloat, you check to see if “Goodyear” is painted on your back-side.
3. your face gets beet red NOT while watching a hot love scene on TV but by walking to the restroom during the commercial break.
4. you break into a sweat sitting on your porch swing.
5. you cry while watching a tennis match.
6. your bones and joints ache like a middle-linebacker on Monday morning.
7. you start thinking the days in front of you are out-numbered by the days in your past.
8. a good night’s sleep is sometimes 4 hours.
9. your Facebook status strikes fear in your friends.
10. bitch for you is a verb and a noun.

I about lost my cork the other day when a waitress delivered a basket of bread to my table. I was dining with Linda and a couple of our friends…there were three rolls in the basket and four of us!! Linda could tell my blood pressure was going up and reminded me of the time my mother threw a peanut at a waiter to get his attention! We had taken my mother out to eat at a restaurant that had a bowl of peanuts on every table. The waiter assigned to us was flirting with a couple of girls by the bar and ignoring us! My mother lofted a peanut across the room hitting the waiter square on the head! Needless to say, he walked over to the table and got an earful from Jewel. She always ended conversations like the one with the waiter with the phrase, “I am complaining about this…or I am trying to teach you this …FOR THE NEXT GUY.” Why are you flirting with those girls when there are two waters on the table and clearly three of us sitting here?

My mother was not going through menopause at 80, if only I could explain her behavior that way….the point is that I am blogging this today….to help the next guy…or girl as it were. Your inner voice may still be dancing to Duran Duran while wearing leg warmers….but your physical self exists here in reality, ten years into the 21st Century. So don’t get irritated with me for blogging about this topic today….just calm yourself down! Resist your desire to bitch-slap me across the face and understand this…I am only doing this for the next guy.