TMI Musings on perimenopause

Let me start by saying that Al Gore is an idiot. I don't deny climate change and I can accept at least some of his postulated effects as probable. What he has wrong is the cause. For 30 years Gore has purportedly studied the causes of significant global warming. At the same time, researchers around the country have put forth numerous theories on the aging "baby boomer" generation and what effect this demographic group's advancing years will have on the world as we know it. How in the HELL did they miss the most glaringly obvious point?

Global warming is a direct result of the increasing numbers of hormonally volatile women radiating ridiculous amounts of heat while attempting to go about their daily routines. Carbon footprint, my sweet aunt petunia. I need to decrease my estrogen footprint.

I went for my yearly physical this week. This female equivalent of "turn your head and cough" is one of life's little annoyances which has, like the dreaded mammogram, proven too valuable in maintaining women's health for me to skip it. This does not mean I look forward to it. I've done my part by finding a nurse practitioner who can at least relate. For this aspect of my life, I avoid dealing with any testosterone-controlled physician who dismisses female complaints of hormone-laden symptoms as hormone-laden whining. If my dear husband, who loves me above all else, understands me better than anyone, and supports me unquestionably, is fairly clueless as to how to handle the emotional perimenopausal female lurking in my psyche, I sure can't expect a virtual stranger to get it.

There was a time when heading into the doctor's office having not had a period in three months would have had me sweating bullets and calling for the severed head of a certain urologist to be served up on a silver platter with faba beans and a nice chiante. I'm not sure when I lost that. It was humbling. Instead of fearing sleepless nights and burp cloths and Catholic School tuition until retirement age, I found myself considering hormone replacement and empty nests and comfortable shoes. After a series of questions, answers, and the typically awkwardly reassuring examination, I am comfortable in the knowledge that whatever hormonal flux I might be experiencing, it will indeed not result in a tax deduction for the year 2012 and beyond.

I have been told this is the next exciting phase in the wonderful journey of the sisterhood, and I can embrace the changes with awe and exhilaration. Every day I am becoming more of the woman I am meant to be--rich in wisdom and experience, filled with the warmth of thousands of suns, secure in the knowledge of who I am. Fully in tune with those wonderful women who went before, I am able to offer an untold wealth of treasures to those who will come after me.

Well, maybe not all that. Whatever the Creator's plan when creating the great female circle of life, I suspect there were hallucinogenic mushrooms involved a couple inopportune moments. I amy be rich in experience, but I am woefully short on stamina. The warmth of a thousand suns is just beginning--I have yet to find myself in the shower at 3am or suddenly looking for the closest polar bear plunge in which to participate, but I do occasionally feel as if I will burst into flame during my personal power surges. I a certainly becoming more of the person I was meant to be--and I could do with significantly LESS of that person in various regions of my physique--my hips, my ass, my upper arms. I fear, as part of this wonderful process, that I am forgetting all my treasured wisdom. The next generations aren't likely to be inspired by the woman who calls her children by the dog's name, can't find her car keys, and finishes one of every 12 things she starts in a day.

So here you go. I am woman, hear me roar. I'm ok, you're ok. My life on Venus is a bowl of cherries. I stand ready to take on the world, one hot flash at a time. If those who observe the process cannot learn from me, they can damn well be amused by me, because I plan to go through it laughing, singing, bitching and rejoicing, with a glass of wine in my hand!