According to my local Walgreens, October was Menopause Awareness Month, and I have no reason to doubt them. It’s as good a month as any, and you don’t want something like that sneaking up on you, although in my experience that’s exactly what it does, almost by definition. Am I in it yet? Is it over? Are we on fire? Could you all BE any more irritating?
Menopause, defined as the cessation of menstruation, has actually been going on a long time without even a special month for it. But according to Walgreens, over 66% of women are unprepared for their menopause journey.
Everything is a journey these days. I mean, cargo pants are part of someone’s fashion journey. People have facial-cleanser journeys, stone-cold sober. There are cancer journeys. Don’t sign up.
I’m not sure mine was a journey so much as a flat-tire-on-a-rutted-road adventure wherein you lose half the cargo at the second pothole, but still.
Yes, my middle-aged darlings, okay, we’ll say you’re on a journey. It gives you the illusion that you’re going somewhere instead of, say, starting out in diapers and ending up in diapers. I’m not sure how prepared a woman needs to be. Nobody’s exactly springing anything on her. Women have been hosting this particular hormonal circus for a million years. Should she, to prepare, begin reading up at age 33, and then start stocking a contingency closet? Begin a spreadsheet, preferably unstained, to track periods and dietary intake? Acquire a white noise machine, a plan to cut down on alcohol intake, a stout stock of alcohol in case the first plan isn’t helpful, practice mindfulness? Stock a go-bag with exercises, probiotics, Vitamin D, vaginal estrogen, Clonidine, black cohosh, and a short baseball bat and pepper spray for correcting annoying people?
God knows you don’t want to be caught unawares by menopause. Menstruation, of course, is something one is famously caught unawares by, so you would think one could manage, but I guess modern women want to feel like they have a handle on the situation, so that they don’t immediately call 9-1-1 at a particularly irksome symptom, unless it results in homicide.
It would probably be more helpful to think of this not as a journey but a road trip!! Not your current model road trip, conducted in comfort with redundant safety features and money right in your phone. No. The old-fashioned road trip with a car that a hundred percent is going to break down and a folded paper map and no cash machine and no cell phone. Just you and a pup tent and some doobies and a cooler of Annie’s Green Springs and a thumb and the inevitable, life-affirming kindness of strangers. Your own stress level is marinated in poor-quality pot and your loved ones’ stress level on your behalf is at a minimum, due to their complete and blessed inability to monitor your location.
At many points in your Menopause Road Trip you will be stranded on the side of the woods in a state of hygienic anarchy, but you will be less jacked-up about it because you have been given no information with which you can compare your own experience. You’re just going to blunder through with a diet from the Esso station snack rack and some fellow travelers who still have a sense of humor, and at some point, as God intended for the fortunate, you will have had a final period and you will see that as the good news it is and revel in the erosion of your youthful beauty, and count the number of shits you will fail to give about it. You will revel, I say.
Recently we had a new deck built. We used a manufactured product instead of real wood. (Willing to discuss.)
I received this email from the decking company.
“This is Chris from the Homeowner Journey Team at TimberTech.
I wanted to check in on the status of your decking project and answer any questions you might have.”
Cool. It’s MY “homeowner journey,” NOT to be confused with THEIR “customer service.”
See, now, this sort of thing just makes me giggle.
After counting all the shits about which you now fail to give, you’ll start counting all the hairs that’ll sprout on your chin and upper lip. And then you can add in all the pimples that’ll sprout on your nose and cheeks.
They never told me “The Change” was into a 14 year old boy!
Hey! I didn’t get the zits! I thought I had the whole package but there’s always a screw missing, huh.
Amen. Road trip! Road trip!
You and me, bud.
I’m 88. I have 12 chin hairs. I like to stroke them. It makes me feel quite wise. Not socially acceptable, but wise. I call it my beardle and I love it (looking bashful).
I have a neighbor who is in her mid 70s. She has a beard. Not just chin hairs that you can easily pluck. And it’s not just short whiskers. THIS is a full-blown beard. Kind of a billy-goat beard. You can’t just pluck this mofo. You have to SHAVE it. This helps keep my “adult acne” in perspective. Yeah… it NEVER goes away. Some days my skin looks good. Other days, acne out the wazzoo. What changes in the course of a day? Dunno.
Hair has been doing weird shit since menopause. More face hair, that i pluck. Less eyebrows, eyelashes, body hair, thinner head hair. Everything gravitating downwards. I used to have a swan-like neck. Now, it’s more a turkey neck. Eyelids took a downward turn, too. And don’t get me started on the tummy. I don’t weigh any more, but everything has shifted. I can now wear Paul’s jeans (rolled up, of course) which is economical, as he can no longer wear them. Or anything. I am also shorter by 2 inches. And I was short to begin with.
And yes, Menopause IS a journey. But it’s a journey to death. Let’s face it, Nature wants us outta here. If we can no longer procreate, we’re useless. At this point in my life, I’m just thumbing my nose at Nature and yelling, “Fuck you, Nature!” I just want to have the best life possible in the short time I have left.
” If we can no longer procreate, we’re useless.”
Fuckin’ ‘ell. So Nature is MAGA?
Fuckin’ ‘ell.
I swear, next time I’m in Portland, I’m gonna summon you and we can all meet at Murr and Dave’s!
Please do, Carolyn! I’ve got a contact form.
Yeah, way to introduce a little ray of sunshine, Mimi! Useful is overrated. Not in a natural-selection sense…but I think we can give humanity (and some other species) at least that much credit for caring and recognizing our strengths that are not strictly procreative! I know I feel more like a real person. A lot of existentially insignificant stuff gets stripped out, and that is something to celebrate.
Agreed!
I never got the thinning hair and I’m grateful, didn’t lose any height either, another thing to be grateful for.
My hair thinned drastically in the last year. So hold on–it might still be coming!
Post-menopause has been the most joyful era of my life! Yes, I have the chin hairs (too many to pluck, I’m too lazy for that so I shave them), the thinning hair everywhere else (yay! no more shaving pits or legs!), etc. But I’ve been lucky about the acne. I actually love being this age, except for the deterioration of my feet and knees. I love not having to worry about whether someone is hitting on me, I know they aren’t. I love being able to just be weird in public and people will ascribe it to my advanced age and possible mental deterioration. I’m good with that.
Yeah, who the hell cares?
My wife’s migraines stopped at menopause. She has no regrets.
Mine did, too! I used to get a really bad headache, with nausea and light and sound sensitivity. It would be preceded by an “aura”. Now I sometimes get the aura, but without all the other things. I can handle that.
Marsha had what they used to call (and maybe still do) “common migraine” — pain but no aura — every month if she ate certain things in the preceding days. I get “ocular migraines” — visual aura but no pain. An MD told me that could turn into common migraine some day, but if I’m lucky it won’t.
Back when I used to get migraines, I was getting a therapeutic massage for a shoulder problem, and the physical therapist asked me if I had anything else he could help with. I told him about my migraines. He basically said, and I’m paraphrasing here: “Pffft… that’s easy.” He manipulated something along my vertebrae in the back of my neck. And for a long, long while I had no more migraines. Unfortunately, the place went out of business. I tried other places for a therapeutic massage, but they turned out to be what I call “foo-foo massages”: done merely to pamper and not to work out problems in the body. I don’t need to outsource pampering; I’m perfectly capable of pampering myself, and in the comfort of my own home, and in my jammies, and not just in a sheet.
My sister Margaret’s migraines stopped at menopause too, and it was a BFD because she had excruciating headaches four days out of every seven from puberty to menopause. I think she had a week off, and then she needed to go on oxygen. She didn’t really catch much of a break.
My migraines with pain stopped when I got a concussion. I used to have the whole sequence: aura, extreme pain with nausea and photophobia, then an after-headache. Afterwards, I would sometimes have the aura and the after-headache. Now that’s stopped, too. However, I would not recommend concussion as a migraine treatment.
The longer you live, the more you know. Old women are a walking – well , living – library of essential knowledge. A dab of olive oil and a scrub with a paper towel will remove the adhesive goo from that really nice bottle you want to save. Now, let me show you how to darn your socks.
OMG, yes! And if you don’t have good reception on your radio (yeah, who has THOSE anymore?), wrap some foil around the antenna. I even have a darning egg to darn my socks. (Though I’m opposed to darning them; it’s more likely I’ll damn them, or even goddam them.) In fact, I actually have some darning to do. Which I put off, even though it’s not difficult and doesn’t take much time. I just don’t enjoy it, but it’s cheaper than getting new socks.
Roxie, can you show me again? Here’s another pair. I didn’t quite get it. Show me again?
Hiding my darning egg. I recognize that ploy!
As a man, I think it best just to stay out of the way or just stay away.
As a man, Jono, you are exceptionally wise.
“I mean, cargo pants are part of someone’s fashion journey.”
I’m looking back at you quite squinty-eyed.
I have chin hairs and acne and I’ll be damned if I have to go through this without ALL the pockets.