I'd like to thank the Academy...

"We're really doing this?" asks David.

"I'm willing to try anything," I respond.

"All right, lie down."

He pulls the sheet over me before hefting up a weighted blanket.  Filled with 8 lbs of plastic beads, the blanket is deliciously cool against my body despite its weight.

I am forgoing a sleeping pill so that I that the results from this experiment will not be skewed.  If the weighted blanket relaxes me enough and stays cool enough, perhaps the night sweats won't come. Gratified with the sense of well being, I fall into a deep sleep...

Which lasts until my core temperature apparently melts all the little plastic beads and I find myself trapped under a molten weighted blanket pretty fucking sure that I'm being buried alive.

"GAH!!!  OFF!!  OFF!!!"  I kick and claw at the weighted blanket until it falls to the floor.

"Too much?" says David from beside me, reading a book on his phone.

"Too much!  I've melted the beads."

"I don't think that's possible love. Do you want a cool pack?"

"No, I don't want a cool pack!" I say petulantly.

"Do you want me to set up the fan and you can turn it on if you get too hot?"

"NO, I DON'T WANT A FAN!  I WANT TO SLEEP.  NIGHT SWEATS ARE AN EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN FLAW!!! HOW CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE USEFUL TO HUMANITY?!?"

"Would you like..." he begins, grasping at any straw to help ease my discomfort.

I take a breath. 

"I want to thank you," I say apologetically, clutching his hand, even though the feel of his warm skin makes me want to jump out the fucking window.  "I want to thank you for everything that you've done and do for me.  I want you to know that I am incredibly grateful for your support during this trying time, and I will do all that I can to continue to earn your support."

"Would you like to acknowledge the other nominees too?"

"Yes.  And I would like to..." I pause as a wave of heat-induced nausea hits me. I sprint to the bathroom. "GRAVOL!!"

"Take a sleeping pill too," he suggests.

I swallow two Gravol with two glasses of water, trying to recoup the liquids that I've lost through my sweating.  "Do not take any other sedatives with this medication," I yell to him as I read the label.

There's a pause as we both consider what the odds of my overdosing would be if I ingest a sleeping pill after two Gravol.

I climb back into bed.  "I will wait another two weeks to see if the natural herbs begin to work and then I'm going on HRT."

"Yeah?" David says, lying close, but not touching me.  He's been with me for the last 6 weeks. And he was here for the bout of night sweats last spring. He knows, insofar as a man who can't possibly know, what I'm going through. He knows that I'm perilously close to completely losing my shit.

"Yes. If my choice is to go the natural route and not sleep for possibly decades or to take HRT and cut my life short with associated risks to HRT?  I'm willing to give up those years and remain a relatively sane member of society with a sense of humour."

He takes a breath to say something, rethinks, then blows cold air all over my face.

"Imagine," I say.  "Imagine the worst sweaty balls that you have ever experienced.  But this bag sweat is so hot that your hand nearly burns if you touch them.  Those sweaty balls soak your boxers 5 times a night and make you want to puke your guts up every time."

He pales.

"And every time it happens you have a panic attack. Every single time."

"Whatever you want to do love, I'm with you."

The Suicidal Hand

Appendage depression doesn't get a lot of air play.  Unless of course the appendage is a penis and  then any story therein related will fill your news feed.

My left hand has a death wish.  To look at it, you wouldn't think that it's any different really from my right hand.  Fingers the same length - pretty much as strong.  In fact it should be happy, it has a saucy little mole  and I wear my wedding ring  on that hand.  My left hand should be all "Hey, check me out suckas!!" Instead it tries to commit suicide at least twice a week.

I walk or run daily on the treadmill.  Every other day in the midst of this obligatory cardio, my left arm randomly flails whereupon I whack the hell out of my left hand on the treadmill.  Without fail, my middle finger knuckles feel the brunt of of this flailing,  resulting in near permanent bruising and the inability to interlock fingers with anyone.

Perhaps it's not my entire hand that craves death, but rather only the knuckles of my middle finger.  Science has yet to create an accurate communication system with one's body, so I can't check this theory.

David has offered to wrap the body of the treadmill in protective foam for me.  And although having the treadmill encased in split pool noodles for my safety would add a certain je ne sais quoi to the equipment, I have graciously refused.  Mostly because being a grown woman who has to have things padded for her safety is patently ridiculous.

I will agree to wearing these though.   My workouts will now begin with revving noises.

Slept hard and woken up scarred.

With the maximum recommend dosage of Tylenol and Naproxen in my system to combat the migraine spike in my right eye, I collapse back into bed.  I adjust the cold beanbag on the back of my neck and another over my eyes.  Two and a half hours later, I awake pain-free and ready to head into work.

Catching my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I do a double take. My right eye is criss-crossed with disfiguring lines of dermatographia.  I look like the survivor of an aggressive sloth attack, ten years post trauma.  My scars, having healed, while still deep, are no longer angry and red.  I guess that during my drugged morning nap, I'd snuggled with the neck beanbag a little too intimately. I poke at the lines.  They're not going anywhere for awhile. Naturally, I had to take photos.

25 minutes later,  after having enjoyed breakfast, I'm back in the bathroom and find myself snorting at the longevity of the lines upon my middle-aged face.   While attempting to procure the first in a series of time-lapse photos showing the lack of elasticity in a peri-menopausal visage, I twist my head, and yowl as pain shoots through my left side.

I can't breathe!  There must be a carving knife lodged in my side!  Holy shit - I need to get to the hospital!  Where's the phone?  I need to call 9-1-1.  I need to...  Okay calm down Heather. Take a breath...  MOTHER FUCKER!! 

I KNOW this feeling.  I have displaced a rib.  Apparently, women of my age mustn't  snap self-mocking selfies while turning their heads at the same time.  What's next?  I'll pop a rib by blinking too hard?   I'd laugh at the ridiculousness of the circumstances if it didn't hurt so fucking much.  I haven't popped a rib in a couple of years, that must be why the pain is so brutal.  

"Or," says my chiropractor, upon examining me two hours later, "it could be because you've popped three ribs, not one."  

From turning my head.  

I'm drugged enough now that I can laugh.

  

Who let the lava queen in?

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh."

"Hmmm?  What?"  yawns David, before falling back asleep almost instantaneously.

It's 1:30 a.m. Moments ago I was curled next to David, really loving being the Big Spoon.  Now I am temperature of the sun.

The Lava Queen by Wasudo (Deviant Art)

Covers off.   I'm sweating from every pore in my torso...  neck...  scalp.  Ugh.  The Lava Queen is back and she's doing a floor show of excretion.  I stagger to the bathroom, drink two glasses of water, then lean against the sink, panting from my near self-inflicted drowning.

It's my own damned fault.  I had two drinks this evening.  One at dinner and then a Rusty Nail as a nightcap.  Too much alcohol.  Plus I'm on these stupid pills to regulate my period which I think are just fucking my hormones over.  Double whammy there.   Stupid.  It's been a few months since I've been hit this hard.   I thought it was done.  More the fool me.

No problem.  I'll just snuggle back into bed now that I'm cooler and... the sheets are all damp.  I look over at David.  Can I possibly re-sheet the bed with him still in it?  Unlikely. Fuck it.  If I have another flash, the cold sheets will feel fantastic.  See that?  Silver fucking lining.

The only problem is when I start to make the bed in the morning.  I probably shouldn't make the bed with wet sheets.  I could leave the covers off all day and then make the bed right before I go to sleep, or...

"Why are you taking the blow dryer into your bedroom?" asks Rissa.

"MacGyvering."

Two brassieres, both alike in elasticity...

I hold two white pull-on sports bras in my hands.  I hadn't thought I had two exactly the same.  I lay them side by side on the bed, trying to find the well-washed sizing labels.  AHA!  Maybe if I put one on top of the other!

Yes!  The one on top is definitely smaller.  I lift it up and can see a very faint "S" on the inside back. 

"This is totally Rissa's.  I have just averted disaster!"

"Glad to hear," says David.

"If I had tried to stuff the girls in there?  Pandemonium."  I give a self-congratulatory fist bump to the air.

I start inserting my person into the correct brassiere.

"Oh for the love of..."

"You okay over there?"

"I'm good."

One full arm is through the sports bra.  I am struggling with the other arm.  My elbow is caught.  Then it's not.  The bra is now tight around my collar bone - a man-made fabric boa constrictor. I wrestle with the brassiere's band.

"SWEET MERCIFUL MOSES!"

"What?"

"I just stabbed myself with my fingernail."

"How?"  (David has yet to look at me.)

"Because," I pant, "this brassiere is made to keep breasts down, so it's super..." SNAP!  "Oh COME ON!"

 "You need some help there?"

"No, I'm fine."  I continue my struggle.  I pause.  Struggle again.  Stop.  "Yes please."

"We could make money from this on pay-per-view."

"Har-dee-fucking-har."

He notices my bleeding finger.  "Jeeze.  You weren't kidding."

"I'm telling you.  This is a full-contact sport.  Just imagine if two women were doing this."

"I say again - we need our own pay-per-view channel."

Does anyone's carpet match their curtains?

For once I am not talking about my pubic hair, or even referring to yours.  ('Cause let's face it, the boat carrying that particular shade of carpet sailed decades ago when I discovered Flirt hair colour.)

It's all about lipstick.  Please follow my idiomatic extrapolation.  I've been testing lipstick shades on the back of my hand for many years. Okay, I'm lying.  I haven't really been using the back of my hand, which I only just discovered, according to the internet, is the recommended body part you're supposed to test lipstick on.  I've been using the inside of my wrist, because when I started trying on cosmetics (probably with the leftovers from Avon parties), the inside of the wrist was the rumoured place that one tried lipsticks.  I began lipstick trials when I was about 10, and haven't thought that I needed to change my methodology because why mess with a good thing - unless one realizes it's not a good thing - which is what happened last night.

My pattern has been this: I go to Shoppers Drug Mart for something other than lipstick.  Somehow on my way to find the random 'other than lipstick' item, I wind up browsing the cosmetic aisle.  Whilst in the cosmetic aisle, I find several shades of lipstick that I think might be 'the ones,' which I then test on the inside of my left wrist.  I haphazardly hold that wrist next to my face in the bad fluorescent lighting, and then, based on the best of the 'wrist test,' I take my prize-winning, exorbitantly-priced colours home.

I get home, properly apply said lipstick and immediately think the lighting is bad, my eyes are bad or maybe I was really high when I chose the colours in the first place, because the new lipsticks make me look like a clown hooker.  I easily have 10 different shades of the perfect 1950s red for this reason.

Now some of you might be saying to yourself, why don't you just use the testers?  On your actual lips?  If you are one of these people, Are you OUT of your fucking mind?  A cold sore will be the least of your worries.  Cold, flu and viral meningitis anyone?

If you want to apply the testers at Shoppers to your lips, you need to come prepared.  You have to have a bottle of alcohol handy, something you can wipe those suckers off with, and little lipstick palettes or swabs to get that colour onto your lips. Or you ask for help from the gal at the cosmetic counter, which you never generally do as a Canadian because you don't want to inconvenience anyone, and let's face it, choosing the 'right' lipstick with proper empirical testing is going to take you upwards of 16 hours.

Last night, dissatisfied and confused by the practical results of my two new "wrist-approved" lipsticks - I turned said wrist to my face.  As I gazed into our bathroom mirror, an epiphany struck, whacking me upside the head while singing out the word  DUUUUUU-FUS!!!  at the top of its epiphanic lungs.  My face is nowhere close to the same shade as my wrist nor the back of my hand.  Not even a little bit.  It use to be, before peri-menopause hit and my skin went all sallow and melasma-y, but no longer.

No wonder lipsticks never look the way I think they will - the comparative skin I've been using doesn't exist on my face! The closest thing to the skin on my face is the patchy, freckly bit on my decolletage that got badly sunburnt last April which has yet to return to the 'fish belly white' skin that exists on every other part of my body but my face.  My sun-damaged decolletage is the perfect lipstick testing spot!  And really, apart from the odd looks that I'll get when I start drawing on my boobs in Shoppers (plus the subsequent jumping up to get a good look at these colours in any of the face-level mirrors), I am confident that this technique will serve me well. 

*I wasn't sure of the correct phrasing for the idiom 'Does the carpet match the curtains?' There were conflicting reports online.   So  I called my parents.  When my Dad answered the phone I asked him, "Is it 'does the carpet match the curtains or carpet match the drapes?' " He replied that it depended upon what side of the Atlantic you were on.  He's British, so he went with curtains.  When I asked my Mom, she went with drapes.  I liked the alliteration of the double c's, hence the post's title.  What's great? Neither of them batted and eye when I asked.  They get me.

Never use the magnifying mirror.

"Do you see this?" I ask.

"What?"  David is towelling his hair.

"This."  I turn the left side of my face to him.  "This."

He comes closer.  Looks.  Then looks again.  "I don't see anything."

"This."  I use my finger to show him what I'm talking about.  

"I don't see anything."

"I'm growing a beard."

"You are not growing a beard."

"I AM!"  I pull the fine hair from my jawline between my thumb and forefinger now.  "Right here."

"You're crazy."

"I can see it!  In the mirror HERE!"

"You mean in the mirror that magnifies things 5 times their regular size?  That mirror?"

"Here in this light here!" I twist my jaw up to the light and then pull his face closer.  "HERE!  See that?"

"Well, when you twist all around like that, and under the blinding light, and all up close, yeah."

"I TOLD you.  It's a beard."

"It's not a beard.  It's... down... like goose down."

I shoot him a look.

"Swan," he says quickly.  "Swan down.  You're very swanny."

"One morning I'm going to wake up with Mutton chops."

"But they'll be mostly invisible."

"But they'll still be there."

"Then you can be really confident in your application to the biker gang."

I absentmindedly tug at my downy mutton chops as I think about the possibilities.

"Just maybe don't use that as your go-to gesture when you're deep in thought," he says.  Then he ducks.