And that's why David needs to wear a cup at home....

WARNING: There are inferred epithets in this post.

"HOLY $*&!  MOTHER - &@%!%#  JESUS! "

After dinner, on the nights when we're not over-programmed to the nth degree - David likes to change into his pj pants and a nice warm sweater.  We'll snuggle in on the family room sofa and he'll either read or work on his laptop or we'll watch TV.

Our cats, it seems, have pre-cognition.  As soon as David's pajama'd lap becomes available - all three of them appear.  Never when he's in jeans.  It's like the sound of him sitting in the cotton jersey has special appeal.

Minuit is usually the first up.  She hefts herself on to the couch and starts kneading his leg.  David will absently pat her on the head.  This is when she either a) begins to feel a little amorous herself and wants to reciprocate or b) has a mean streak in her.  Her paws move to David's groinal region and she'll invariably locate his balls.  At 15 lbs, Minuit provides a fair amount of weight behind her palpation of his, uh... boys...

"MINUIT!  NO!  NO!  #$*&-SUCKING FELINE!!"

"I think, for accuracy's sake that should be #$*&-PRODDING feline, hon.  The other just goes way over the line into bestiality."

If he has patience, Minuit ends up thrust onto my lap where I have no external organs to be damaged.   If he doesn't have patience, she may wind up testing the "Do cats always land on their feet?" theory.   On a really good night, say after Minuit has conferred with her furry siblings, there will be a parade of pussy cats all wanting to enjoy the thrills of David's lap.  Maybe it's like their own version of A Night of Living Dangerously.

"I need a cup to watch TV."

"Maybe if you're good, you'll get one for Christmas." 

Cat proofing the kitchen...

thump...  thump...  thump...

I didn't think they were that smart.  Minuit, in particular, seems like she doesn't have two synapses to rub together.  Steve will frequently roll off the ottoman by accident and Lola - well Lola is the sneakiest of the bunch - but it's not like she's doing cat calculus in her spare time.

Someone may have been slipping them some organic brain stimulant.  They are now remembering things.  Like where we keep the cat kibble.

thump...  thump...  thump...

I'm not saying that we have a CATS of NIMH case on our hands, but two days ago, they all looked at the kibble bag as if it was some master illusionist, magically appearing from NOWHERE, and then yesterday?

They started opening the cupboard door where it's kept.    It's not really like they can open the bag itself, because they don't have opposable thumbs (yet), but they can sure as shit bite through the side of the bag  guaranteeing that their food goes stale.  Although really, fresh cat kibble and stale cat kibble... I've tried them both and neither is particularly tasty to my palate.

So now we have the toddler locks on the cupboard.  And the sad sound that we hear from our starving felines is...

thump...  thump...  thump...

...as they attempt to circumvent our security system.  I'll have to be on the watch to see if they mount a B&E into David's makeshift workshop in the basement.  If they learn how to use tools we're totally screwed.

Period comfort foods...

There are the foods you should be eating...  You know, iron-fortified foods, brown rice, lentils, dairy products, fish... all supposed to help with PMS and all, frankly, bullshit. We don't want them, we don't eat them.  We find our own ways to get through the inconvenience of bleeding from our vaginas.

My Top Ten Period Comfort Foods:

Leftover tortilla chips all crunched together with salsa in a bowl, eaten like it's cereal.  (That way you know an appropriate portion size.)

Nutella on anything, especially something salty.

Smoked mussels or oysters.

Cream Cheese icing - out of the can.

Dill pickle chips.

Chocolate Raspberry Martinis - from my emergency freezer flask.

Cheez-Whiz on toast.  Or, if it's really bad, Easy Cheese sprayed from a can directly into your mouth.

Chocolate covered pretzels.

Ridiculously priced Ben & Jerry's or Hagen Daas from the tub.

Home made Turtles*: Chocolate chips, pecan pieces drizzled with caramel sauce into a bowl - eaten with a spoon.  Repeat as necessary.

*If you have the patience to make and then wait for the actual candies try this recipe.
  http://candy.about.com/od/kidfriendlytreats/r/turtles.htm

I'm entering my second adolescence.

For the second time in my life I am catastrophically clumsy.  I didn't get the memo.  The one where it tells you that when you hit peri-menopause you enter your second adolescence.  I trip,slip, bump into things, drop dishes, stub my toes and fall up the stairs.  Not down, but up.  My dork factor is at 11.

In the space of two days, I gave myself a black eye with the chest freezer door and pinched a nerve in my neck rolling over in bed.  If they'd happened at the same time I could have done a great impression of a pirate with a health insurance claim.

This is NOT me sporting a jaunty cap,
I have a cold pack over one eye

Dorky McDorks a Lot

There's nothing quite like believing you've paralyzed yourself to push you directly into hysterical hyperventilation.  Still half-asleep, I realized that my chin was stuck looking over my left shoulder.  When I tried to move it at all, sharp stabbing pains shot through my neck and then stabbed down into my right shoulder blade.  David was awakened by the sounds of my panic.

"Wha...  what is it??"

"I can't move!  I can't move!"

"WHAT?!?"

"My head, it's stu... stu... stu..."  If I could have moved my head at all, I would have searched the room for a paper bag into which I could  hyperventilate/vomit in terror.

"It's okay, it's okay.  You need to breathe."

"Can't! I CAN'T!!!"

Now I would have slapped me at this point.  David didn't of course.  I was still trapped on my side, so he would have been slapping my head into the bed.  If I'd been sitting up, he might have been able to slap the neck loose if he hit me from the other side. There must have been lots of the whites of my eyes showing because David was starting to look pretty terrified himself.  He managed to get me sitting up - my head still trapped looking left.  I had those hiccuping sobs going - still half asleep and by no means rational.

"What if it stays like this?!?"

"It's not going to stay like this."

"You don't know that!!  YOU DON'T KNOW!!!  Did we write about this in our living wills?  I've changed my mind, don't pull the plug."

"You've pinched a nerve.  I'm going to get you some anti-inflammatories."

"DON'T LEAVE ME!!!"

"I'll be right back.  I promise.  Just breathe."

It took David 33 seconds to come back with drugs.   "Now I'm just going to go downstairs and heat up the bean bag for you.  You need to stay calm."  He helped me lie back down.

I was awake enough then, that I tried to put on a brave face. I didn't claw at him, I didn't wail.  I wasn't going to be a baby about it.  The panic was still there, but fuck it!  I could pretend that it wasn't.  I counted while he was gone.  While counting to 197, I deliberately moved my head through the pain so that I could at least look straight up at the ceiling.  There were some crunching sounds, but as I was much less panicked with my head facing up, it was totally worth the pain.  David came back, armed wtih a cold pack, a heating pad and his lap top.  "Hey!  You're looking at the ceiling!  How did you do that?"

"Determination."

"It says that you need to alternate ice and heat.  Muscle relaxants are helpful.  You can have massage." 

If you are in desperate need of massage therapy or chiropractic adjustment, you will injure yourself at 4:00 a.m. on the Sunday of Thanksgiving Weekend.  I was on my own until Tuesday.  Sure, we could have trundled down to the ER, but it was a pinched nerve; they would have pumped me full of drugs, but not much else.  

This injury also coincided with the beginning of tech week for my latest play.  I had to be in rehearsal that night - it was a slapstick comedy.  To ensure that I wouldn't move my head when I was at rehearsal, David took me to Shopper's Drug Mart to get me a neck brace.

"I'm going to look like a dork!"

"Yes, but you will be a dork who won't hurt herself more."

If you ever want attention?  Show up anywhere with a neck brace on.  Complete strangers will ask you what you've done.

Now, 10 days later, after two massages and a chiropractic adjustment I have almost full mobility and the complete certainty that I won't survive paralysis.

Rissa's new career path

Last night at bedtime.

"New career path Mummy!  No longer will I be a chiropractor or massage therapist.  I will now be... a NINJA.  My catch phrase shall be "You will never see me coming!"  From her position lying in the bed, Rissa launches herself up at me, pulling me flat against her chest, her arms iron bars against my back.  "See? You didn't see me coming!"  Releasing me, she takes a deeply satisfied breath.   "I'll have a cool ninja name too.  Like Lotus Flower or Turtle Swan..."

"Turtle swan...?"

She mimes the action of a turtle retreating into its shell before morphing into a swan.  "Does this look like a turtle swan?  Or more like a frog elephant?"

"Hard to say."

"Or maybe I'd be more like Ninja who attacks at dusk because she has a curfew...  or Ninja who attacks before dawn so that her parents don't know what she's up to and she has time to change before going to school... "

She gets a crazed glint in her eye.  "You'll never see me coming!!!!"  She grabs me again, clutching me tightly to her torso once more.

Trapped in the crook of her neck, I manage a muffled, "I totally saw you coming!"

"No you didn't."

"I'm thinking that you might want to go with the catch phrase AFTER the attack."

And that's why I'm supposed to cut down on my alcohol...

Cause it gives me hot flashes.  And now, apparently... Night Terrors.  Not just regular nightmares, but crazy-ass, finding out that Nate Berkus, in addition to being an interior designer, is the leader of a boy band who has people eviscerated when you discover that they are 100% auto-tuned, full-on NIGHT FREAKING TERRORS.

I had two drinks.  Is my ability to handle my alcohol also being compromised by peri-menopause?  (That would be incredibly sad, given my Scandinavian heritage.)  Or is it because the second drink,  "Oh, don't worry, the ice is displacing the alcohol - it's really only a double," actually was a quadruple?   Plus?  Over Thanksgiving - to cope with the pinched nerve in my neck?  I may have imbibed a bit to take the edge off.  During the full course of the day, I might have had a couple of pina colada coolers and a couple of glasses of wine.  And again - the hot flashes were like rocket liftoffs.   One drink?  I'm fine.  More than one?  You can BBQ on my torso.

And then there's  caffeine.  Not only will it keep me up at night if I ingest it after noon, but waking up with the night sweats adds a certain - I was about to say je ne sais quoi, but I totally quoi - it's just that I don't have enough adjectives to adequately describe the sensations in a way that men will understand.  Other women of a certain age get it.  They know all about it.  But most dudes?  They have not one freaking clue as to how those hot flashes can turn you from rational wife and mother to slathering murderous wielder of words and weapons.  My middle name during one of these spells could truly be 'harangue' - not necessarily at other people, but towards the universe in general.  Men not in the know, pass it off as us being hormonal and 'tut-tut' us and give us patronizing little pats on the shoulder.  Experienced husbands and partners know the drill.  They duck and roll - find the safe spot in the house - don't make eye contact - stay under the radar - hand you a bag of frozen peas to put on the back of your neck.  They are the ones who know not to mock, at least not while you're in the room... Mostly, methinks, so that one's harangue doesn't devolve into a crying jag that could rival Biblically proportioned floods. 

So no caffeine or alcohol for me... not now.  Most doctors will agree on that point anyhow.   I'll be smart - it's for my own good.  I anticipate quite a bender though, when I've actually made it to menopause. 

Canada: Back to the Dark Ages

Allow me to wax hyberbolic for a moment.  I love being Canadian.  It is the absolute best country in the galaxy!  I LOVE it.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!!  I love living in Canada.  The people, the wildlife, the breadth and scope of our land, the change in seasons...  I am proud to be a Canadian and to live in our democratic, and yes, somewhat socialist state.  I revel in our beauty and spirit of bon amie.  Very little in the Canadian experience causes me true ire because the abundance of good that we have as Canadians is so vast, so spectacular, so unlike anything else in the world...  But Holy crap, do I DESPISE losing the sunlight in the winter! 

Every year, come October, the sun rises a little later - which means that when you get up in the morning you're staggering from your bed in the dark.  And not in that fun, because you've just had that drunken hookup with an ex and have to make it home before work, kind of staggering.  You're staggering because without your bedside light on, you literally can't see.  And, with due respect to our hardworking farming communities, unless you're a shift worker, waking up when it's still dark outside, just seems fucked up. 

They say that Daylight Savings Time helps, but really??  At 7:00 a.m. in November?  It's pitch black.   And then, by about 4:30 p.m.?  PITCH FREAKING BLACK.  Three words: Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I don't personally lose my mind (well not completely anyway) in the winter months, but my get-up-and-go gene tends to lay dormant, and I know plenty of folks who bring out their inner cave dweller for the duration of the winter... Monosyllabic, furrowed of brow and prone to beating things with sticks.

And those sunrise lamps for your bedroom?  Not sure if they actually work.  Over the course of 30 minutes, our light comes on very gradual-like to simulate the sunrise.  Now it might just be because right now we're still staying up too late because we've got shit we need to get done, but in the morning, even with that gradual increase in light in our room, when you step into the hall, you still trip over cat toys because it's so freaking dark.  WAIT!!  WAAAAIIIIIT!!!  Every home north of the 49th parallel could have an entire house that's set up on solar battery powered sunrise simulators!!  So that, no matter where you are in your house, it seems like it's actually day time.  You acclimatize yourself to that state for the the 1/2 hour 45 minutes before you leave for work and then... you step into darkness.  CRAP.  Suggestions?  Anyone?