The Sizzler

God knows I love my male readers. I don't hate men, though certain of them may get up my snout from time to time, but I'm sure I get up theirs as well. And so, I don't want to tell my male readers to leave Betland, to vacate the premises and let us women take control of the rides. I'm just saying that at this time they may want to congregate at the snack bar, or take a cosmic trip to the bathroom.

I'm a woman of a mature age. If you haven't figured this out about me yet, you're way behind in your blog reading. For I seem to mention it in about half the blogs I write. I'm in my mid-forties, and even though I live a little like a twenty-something, without many of the responsibilities of a mature woman, which is kind of pathetic when you think about it, I get along OK, I suppose. Actually, I live a little like a twenty-something without benefit of the sex. Or the drugs. I guess instead of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, I'm Abstinence, Coffee, and Bluegrass.

Anyway, as a mature woman, age-wise if not emotionally, I've been having a bit of a problem of late. And now that the men are ensconced at the snack bar, I'll tell you what it is.

I seem to be having quite the rash of hot flashes.

Now, hot flashes are one of those "joke items" in the world of What Women Talk About In General. And I've been joking about them too, even as I'm having them. Because if I don't, well, it's joke or die, and I'm not ready to die quite yet.

I knew that these little fiendish things existed, and that women of my age and even younger suffered from them. And I guess I knew as well that I wasn't getting any younger, and that even though I don't really think of myself as old I was going down that long path and the view behind me was getting pretty damn distant. But somehow I just never imagined myself as being one of those women who fanned themselves and went "whoo" and sat around with their legs sprawling apart.

But I've kind of become one.

And I wasn't really prepared for it all.

I guess what I wasn't prepared for was - well, I've heard women talk about hot flashes and seen women have them. But I just thought a hot flash consisted of getting hot. You know, you're going through your regular day and all of a sudden you get really hot and then you cool off and go back to your day. It doesn't work like that.

Trouble is, I don't know if I can really explain what it does work like.

Because when one gets hot in a hot flash, it's not like going outside and standing in the sun. It's more like the bowels of hell have been put in a cast-iron pot over a flame, with a healthy helping of humidity and a dash of heart attack stirred in, and the whole thing has been sat right there in your central nervous system. Then you get the sweat, the palpitations, the near emotional breakdown, the breathing through gauze, and just when you think you can't take it anymore, it subsides to the point where you think you might live after all. For about another half hour, when it all starts again.

So I've been trying to cope with the world of the hot flash. And it's not working well.

I have my little "flash fan," as I call it, a little battery-powered hand-held fan I flip on at work and hold right up to my face to dry the sweat and cool my face a little, and sure, it helps, but they don't make those in the "full body" size. Which I suppose would negate it being hand-held, but I'd put up with the inconvenience.

At home it's worse. Because at home I tend to try to soothe myself by upping and downing the heat and air conditioning. This is a very bad thing to do, mainly because you're fighting a losing battle and you know you're fighting a losing battle even while you're doing it, but also because I'm afraid I'm going to break my furnace, heat pump, and thermostat all at once, which would be expensive and cause me to have no at-home treatments to my flashes other than jumping into the creek in my back yard. And it's muddy, and probably also has a lot of duck doo in it.

But here are the worst things in the world of the hot flash. The Unholy Triumvirate, the three things that make me wonder many times daily just why God, Mother Nature, or Earth Science, whichever you take to, must hate us women so much. Ladies, most of you who read me are younger than I, and so this may read like scary science fiction to you right now, but don't be like I was in my younger years and think this will not happen to you.

1 - Naked In An Igloo or Swathed in Wool In Hell. This is a little slice of heaven wherein as a woman gets to be my age, there is no happy medium of temperature. I'm never comfortable anymore. I'm either freezing, and need a jacket, blankie, or to stick my arms inside my shirt to cuddle up to myself for warmth, or I'm burning the fuck up, and taking off jackets, blankets, socks, shirts, hair clips, or rolling my pajama pants above the knee. And for added laughs, just when you get to the point where you've done one of those and are starting to feel normal, the other begins.

2 - Get Offa Me! This is one of the weirder highlights in the world of the hot flash. This is where, for me anyway, the moment a hot flash begins, I feel like I've been jumped from behind and someone is hanging off my back. Therefore I have to get out of anything, everything that's causing me to feel so oppressed. If I'm in my little office there at TheCompanyIWorkFor, I have to immediately pop up out of my chair like I've been goosed, and basically I have, and get out of the office. Because it's suddenly become roughly the size of a sleeping bag. If I'm in my car I have to open a window because it's suddenly like being in a thermos. Hell, even if I'm outside, my clothes are suddenly some sort of flannel-lined iron maiden, with locks I have no keys for, and, well, it's no fun feeling like the Hands of God Themselves are around your throat, squeezing, and no matter how hard you're reaching up for them, they're not about to budge.

3 - Beached Whale At Midnight. This is the worst. This is the piece de resistance, my buddies, the one that makes a woman wonder what in the hell she has done to deserve. This is the hilarious laff-riot wherein the hot flashes go into super overdrive the minute I go to bed. It doesn't matter what I've chosen to wear to bed, what the covers consist of, whether windows are up or down - nothing. I go to bed as usual, then fall off into a slight sleep, 10 minutes after which I wake up with a start, on fire, kicking off covers and flailing my arms around. Then I lie there in bed, bloated, sweaty, heart pounding, panting, just like in the clips of those poor beached whales you see on CNN, the ones with ropes tied to them and people pulling like nobody's business trying to get back into the sea. Then things die down a little bit, and drowsiness sets back in, and I realize just how absolutely freezing I am there with my pajama pants legs pushed up and no covers, so I cover back up and roll into a comfy position, only to fall asleep, for 10 minutes, then - well, you get the idea. This goes on over and over and over. All fucking night long. I sleep about two hours a night, in ten minute stretches, and is it really any wonder I need all those alarm clocks set at different times to try to get me up and to work within an hour of the time I'm actually supposed to be there. The Beached Whale At Midnight is the biggie because it's all-encompassing. It's itself (no sleep), the Get Offa Me (pajamas and blankets), and the Naked In An Igloo Or Swathed In Wool In Hell (freezing and burning with each sleep and wake) all rolled into one.

I either can't eat one morsel of food in a day's time, or I can't find enough food to shove in my cakehole to satisfy myself. Some days even drinking my morning coffee is a chore, and others I could eat the Golden Gate Bridge, then, after a healthy burp, head off to eat Alcatraz for dessert.

My parents probably think I hate them, because I'm so cranky all the time. This is because, as you know, they love to stare at me, and when they do this now I just want to poke both of their eyes out. Both sets. Four eyes, all poked out with my fingers, with me laughing maniacally. I'm not the nice pushover at work everyone used to want to speak to on the phone. I actually smarted off to someone this week, but he was such a cantankerous dolt I'm sure he didn't realize I was even doing it, which I'll admit took some of the satisfaction of doing it away.

Only my dear co-workers, women all older than myself, understand me. They let me be as bitchy as I want, as long as they can be bitchy right back at me. Tuesday was one of those days in our office where all three of us dragons were having serious flashing problems. We were hostile. We were women on a rampage. And we decided amongst ourselves that the only relief we were going to get from how we felt was if we could kill somebody.

We debated it over most of the day. At one point we were mulling just killing the next person who randomly walked in, but that could be someone we (at least once, before all this) liked, or a family member, or a police officer.

We finally decided we'd kill Richard, who works in the regional offices of TheCompanyIWorkFor. Richard is the laziest, dumbest, most mush-mouthed employee at any regional office of TCIWF, and the smiles on our faces when we decided we'd kill him lit the enitre room. (Or that might have been the collective heat coming off all of us at a given time.) Each of us was in silent reflecting thought, hoping it would be our own kick or punch or knife in the sinuses that would be the final blow, the one that did him off.

Then we got to talking about it some more and realized that Richard was a good four hours from us, we'd have to close down the office and drive all that way, and somewhere in all that time we'd probably lose heart and decide not to do it, to let him live, then we'd just end up going out to eat and getting drunk once we got to the town where RegionalCompanyWeWorkFor is, and we'd have to drive home all dejected and hungover, and then when we got back home - we'd still have to deal with Richard on a regular basis.

And the trip home would take all day because we'd have to keep stopping the car so we could get out and fan and flail our arms.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* New Hucklebug podcast! http://hucklebug.blogspot.com or iTunes!
* I got my hair cut really short tonight. Shorter than it's been in years. Hopefully, it'll help when things get hot. Oh, who am I kidding....