Somewhere Over The Meno-Rainbow

It arrives like clockwork, around 2:00 am, with the speed of a bullet train. Next thing I know, I’m flying out of bed, tearing at my clothes like I’m on fire, because that’s what it damn sure feels like. When it ends, I’m drenched in a cold sweat, groggy, sitting on the toilet naked, and hoping I can return to sleep unmolested.

It appears I’ve bought a ticket on the bullet train to menostop.

I have no idea why they call it menopause – my “meno” ain’t “pausing.” “Pausing” implies that it’s going to resume at some point in the future. Nope, my “meno” is hitting the brakes. Hard. I guess this is my belated forty-fifth birthday present.

When it first started, I wanted to blame my husband, BMNB. He is his own nuclear energy plant. The man has an extremely high metabolism, and he kicks off a lot of heat when he sleeps. Could meet the electricity needs of a California prison, that BMNB. I just assumed it was because it was summer, I was sleeping too close to him, and I was heating up because of him.

But BMNB was out of town all last week, and these bullet train hot flashes continued in his absence. No one to blame but myself and my aging infrastructure. Maybe I can do like the State of California and issue infrastructure bonds for my aging body. To pay for a tummy tuck and a lifetime of Botox and Restalyne.

When I could no longer blame it on BMNB, I had to ask my sister, who is, shall we say, somewhere over the meno-rainbow and damn happy to be there.

“Are you having mood swings?”, she asked.

“How would I know? I’m a b***h all the time,” I replied.

“Do you have this urge to choke the living crap out of people?”, she asked.

“Well, not everyone, just the stupid people. But I never had much patience for stupid people to begin with.”

“Sounds like you’re transitioning,” she smiled through the phone.

“Well, when did you start your, uh, ‘transition’?”, I asked.

“When I was about 50.”

“BUT I’M ONLY FORTY-FIVE!!!,” I wailed, as if that was going to stop the hands of time.

Time waits for no one. And now I’m going up in hormonal flames like a freakin’ Roman candle every morning at 2:00 am.

I, too, want to be somewhere over the meno-rainbow, blissfully beyond the need for feminine products, assuming my brain doesn’t get singed from these hot flashes first.