Dear Catherine

My Dear Friend Catherine:

Yes. You are starting to go into menopause and let me tell you why.

You have days where you are irritable beyond belief. Not necessarily to me and not necessarily to anyone else but you just are. Things bother you that don’t bother a twenty, thirty, or forty year old. If someone wait’s a second longer than you think they should at a greenlight, you are irritated. If you can’t find stamps in your drawer at the office because you need to send some bills, you get irritated. If it is too windy and you are having a “good” hair day, you are very irritated. These things didn’t used to bother you but they do now but only on certain days of the month.

Another reason you are probably going into menopause is that the one monthly thing you have been able to depend on since you were probably 12 or 13 is no longer so dependable. Your body may feel like it’s going to bleed but honey…it ain’t gonna bleed.

My theory is that the blood that used to come out…now goes the other direction. What other explanation can there be for that mid-life bulge above where the jeans wrap around our waist? It’s got to be the blood going up instead of down and why the medical community hasn’t figured that one out is beyond me.

Another sign you are going “through it” is the fact that you’re hot and you’re cold and then you are happy and then you are sad and then you are foggy and then the brain-clouds go away and then it comes back. You can’t even say that you just ate something sweet so your blood sugar went whacked. Bottom line, everything is whacked. Get used to it.

But never fear…your friends are still here and even though you can’t explain it away and make any sense of it all and it drives you crazy to slowly lose control…we will always be here to remind you that this too, my dear friend, shall pass.