I have a lot of lists, as I wrote about recently, but this morning I ran across a list of possible blog topics. I writeWrinkly Bitsblogs twice a week and some friends tell me I’m a bit daft, but I like them, and so far, I haven’t run out of fun topics. (Suggestions are always welcome, though!) At the top of my list of possible topics is menopause. Oh, dear God.
I liken menopause to a pickpocket, stealing away items that are MINE, bit by bit, in no particular order. FIrst she stole my temperature control, then my libido (my husband would have said it was the first to go, but I beg to differ), and twenty, no thirty years later, she still rifles through my pockets looking for bits and pieces of Gail to steal. This was way before all the bad things that happened in 2020, but they seem to fit together. Sneaky devil that Ms. M. is, I don’t feel her thievery until the item it is gone, kaput from my pocket.
For example, Ms. M. pulled out my hair, but sneakily, strand by strand, so I wouldn’t notice until I had to use a close-toothed comb to stroke through my once long, flowing locks. She stole my sharp-as-a-tack memory and put it somewhere, I don’t know where, but occasionally some little memory byte reappears, giving me optimism that Ms. M. has fled the scene, but then that memory byte disappears again, removing any hope of Ms. M.’s demise. She stole my appetite, but magically kicked up the bloated feeling, simultaneously providing me with extra pounds, go figure, which made me irritable and cranky, something I had never been before, just ask my kids or my former students. Wait, on second thought, don’t ask them.
And now, she’s out for my sleep. She tries to fool me by pressing me to take a nap, but I’m onto her. If I nap, even for a few minutes, she drenches me with night sweats, screwing up whatever relief I might have gotten from the temperature control pill that my doc prescribed.
My most recent encounter with Ms. M. has been with my feet, specifically, the second toe on my right foot. It itches like crazy and I recently learned that unexplained itching, like fingers and toes and ankles is another sign of Ms. M.’s desire to do me in. I guess she ran out of things to steal and is now aimed at annoying me in other ways. I’m sure she has something else in mind for 2021, I loathe to find out.
