I’ve searched the internet and found dozens of tried and true ways to combat those annoying little menopause symptoms. Of course, that’s not what you’re going to find here. I’m here to help you … in my own, honest way. Buckle up. 

 1.     Missed Periods- Fuck. Count this one as a blessing. If you are complaining about missing your periods, you’re an idiot.

 2.     Hot Flashes- This one pisses me off. Hot Flash triggers are as follows: stress/anxiety, sugar, caffeine, coffee, alcohol, spicy foods and hot beverages. So what do you do? Sit naked in a quiet room, drinking cold water with lemon, eating plain crackers … screw that. Just turn the air to 60 and have a few rum and cokes and shortly thereafter you won’t give a shit. 

 3.     Weight gain- It’s important to get more exercise when you start menopause. I have a few suggestions that would certainly kill two birds with one stone – knife throwing, mixed martial arts- oh, oh, oh, or midget tossing. Remember, it’s totally illegal to toss a midget without expressed written consent. Yes, I’m perfectly aware midget is not the “PC” term – BUT, in my defense, if I said “little person” tossing, you might think I was referring to children and that would make you far angrier.

 4.     Sleep Deprivation- Whatever. How much sleep do you really need? There’s so much more you could be doing with your time, like worrying about bills and contemplating how little time you have left since clearly you are so old you are going through menopause. But if you insist on catching some z’s, I would suggest referring back to #2 and just increase the rum and cokes by 2 or 6.

 5.     Vaginal Dryness – I read an article that fish can help improve vaginal dryness. It seems pretty weird to put a fish in your vagina and I’m pretty sure that even if it does increase lubrication, no guy will care, stinky puss.  Unless of course they meant you should eat the fish?

 6.     Mood Swings – Awe come on … these are fun! I love that feeling of wanting to hug someone one minute, then choke the living shit out of them the next. They should have mood swings on every playground. On the way up, you get to soar into the beautiful blue sky filled with rainbows and lollipops and on the way down you get to drop kick someone over the fence. Just an idea.

 7.     Sore Breasts – Prevention magazine list 19 ways to combat breast tenderness, one of which is cutting out pepperoni pizza? Is that supposed to be funny? Basically, after kids, most boobs look like a pepperoni pizza. Their next idea is to “Keep them cool”, so stick your titties in a freezer I guess? Another genius idea is to “Keep Calm”. Fuck off. It’s menopause, not yoga.  

 8.   Chronic Headaches –those are called husbands and children. Not much you can do about them. You   can’t live without them and you can’t lock them in a closet … because that is illegal.

 9.     Decreased Sex Drive –Take the number of years you have been married multiplied by the number of times you received flowers, divided by the number of times you’ve cooked dinner and done laundry. That’s how many times you should be having sex a week. If the number is less than one, which I suspect it is (like .0015), it’s not “decreased sex drive”, you’re just fucking tired.

10.    Incontinence – Oh who doesn’t piss themselves once in awhile really? Just remember when you laugh … or sneeze … or cough … or pretty much any other time you exert yourself to tighten up “down there”. Otherwise, get some granny panties (Poise or Depends, depending on personal preference) and then, not only will you not have to worry about the incontinence, but you will also solve the sex drive issues, because once your husband sees you in those bad boys, he’ll lose his, too.

I hope I have provided you with some solutions to some of menopause’s pesky little problems. If you were at all offended by any of this, you are clearly not in menopause yet. Come back repeatedly and when it no longer offends you, you’re there.

Three B's

My daughter is beautiful, there is no denying that, both inside and out. She has just enough confidence with her appearance to be happy, yet not arrogant. She is incredibly caring and we have taught her the importance of being strong, kind and intelligent before anything else, stressing that it will get her much further in life. Sometimes hard to convince your child though, with the "role models" kids are exposed to these days. They are basically taught that being beautiful and ignorant can get you pretty much anywhere.

In addition to beautiful, she is also brilliant and I don't use that term lightly. She excels in school and has picked up every musical instrument and sport she has been exposed to. Which honestly is a little shocking to me because she will trip over something, often her own two feet, just walking across the room, but can waterski, play tennis, soccer, sail, dance, all which require some coordination. She is also inquisitive and has an active imagination, which I truly feel plays a pivotal role in a child's level of intelligence. Brilliant.

Oh Bummer, It's Summer

Summer is here and you know what that means? Well, I'll tell you what it means, a whole lot of "Mooommm, I'm bored"s and "Mooommm, I'm hungry"s and I can't for the life of me figure out how the fuck they make it through the whole school year without dying of boredom or starving to death. Because I know for a fact they only get to eat once the whole day and I am pretty sure playing outside  with your neighborhood friends is a whole hell of lot more exciting than sitting behind a little desk for hours at a time and pop quizzes. But somehow or another, they are still bored and hungry.

So now it begins, finding things to keep the little monsters amused. Anything to keep them off the iPads and video games. Summer camps, vacations, movies, the beach, museums, water parks. It's like a god damned olympic sport piecing together a summer schedule for two kids. But, I am for sure going to medal this year. I have a perfect plan mapped out...

Little White Lies

May 1^st was National Honesty Day, the day where a person may ask another person any question they like and that person has to provide a truthful and straightforward answer. Now, I am not sure about you, but this sounds dangerous to me.  Picture it now … “Do these pants make my ass look fat?” You politely, automatically say no, but it’s National Honesty Day and you’re thinking, “The pants have nothing to do with it. Your ass was working alone on this one.” Now, if you say that, being honest, it is likely that you are going to lose a friend or fat ass is going to punch you … hard.

I think little white lies were invented for a really good reason … to save people’s feelings and prevent total chaos in the world. If everyone were completely honest, all of the time, I think friendships would end, relationships would suffer, businesses would fold and the world would probably implode.

My Son likes to Sing “Let It Go” so Let it GO.

My five-year old son has loved the movie Frozen since we first sat down in the theater the day the movie was released. I would venture to say, he loves it even more than my daughter. He was thrilled when it was finally released digitally, so much so we bought the streaming version on Amazon even earlier than the DVD release. Needless to say, my house is a constant echo of “Let It Go” and “Do you Wanna Build a Snowman”, in the hallways, the shower, even with friends in the backyard.  Yet, it is not always my daughter’s voice I hear, mangling the words, it is just as often Ethan’s.

So just the other night in Target, we were standing in an aisle, Ethan was singing the song as he usually does and a man and woman standing next to us kind of chuckled. The woman noted how cute it was, to which the man said, “Yea, because he is only four. It wouldn’t be so cute if he was twelve and still singing it” and he laughed. I, however, did not. (He is five, by the way, jerk-off.)

I've Got a Tween Ache

Tween girls. Well, someone should write a book about this shit. I am sure they have, but unfortunately I am too busy dealing with attitudes and hormones to have time to read the darn thing. My soon to be 10 year old daughter, though beautiful and loving, has slowly started to become what other people have warned me about, but I never believed possible, a pre-teen or tween as they call them now.

Tween, the term used for girls between the ages of 10-12, the preadolescent stage. Tween: termed for that “in between” stage. Tween: too old for toys, too young for boys. More like,  “I like some dude and have lots of attitude.” Tween, the precursor for the dreadful teen years, when boys replace toys and friends are much more important than mom or dad and of course, we could never understand.  Tween: what is staring me right in face

Yesterday my little girl was in pigtails, happily holding my hand when we walked anywhere, everywhere. She still loves to hold my hand, only now, it’s dependent on who is around. I still catch glimpses of that little girl every now and then. I mean, she is only nine after all. She still is my little girl. My little girl in size 7 shoes.

So exactly how do we handle these “tween” years? How do we keep our sweet little girls, sweet, as long as we possibly can? Lock her in a closet? Not legal. Force her to wear dresses with pink polka dots to school every day with a Hello Kitty book bag and matching lunch box? Too far and even I couldn’t stomach that much pink. What to do, what to do?

Well, here’s my plan. I will give her as much love as I can so that she knows that no matter what happens, she can always count on me to be there. I will give her as much guidance as I can so that she knows right from wrong and can make informed choices, but also know that even when she makes the wrong one, I am still there to help pick up the pieces. I will give her the discipline she needs because I am, in fact, her mother first and without discipline, she will never understand consequences for her actions.  I will give her as much freedom to explore as you can possibly, safely, give a tween girl these days so that she can find out who she is and what her boundaries are going to be in this life. I will teach her to have a vision, her own vision, so that she has something to strive for in her life. Finally, I will remind her that no matter what she does in this life, do it with a purpose and with passion so that she will always feels full.

My little “soon-to-be” tween, oh how I love her and want to tape her mouth shut at the same time. But, like all other phases that we have survived, we will survive this one, too. She will test her boundaries (and my patience) and I will love her even when it is hard to like her. She will make me question my parenting skills and bring me to my knees, but in the end, I will always win because that is the best part about being the mom. Ok, so maybe not the best part, but it is pretty dang cool.  I win. The end.

Take your crazy somewhere else. We are all stocked up here....

I sometimes feel like I am on the verge of a mental breakdown. Not the well planned and perfectly played ones that the movie stars like to have when their careers are in the shitters. But rather a full-on, bat shit crazy, running down the street naked in bright red lipstick and black eyeliner, meltdown. And trust me, that is something none of my neighbors would be happy to see, but I am quite sure one of them would film it and put it on youtube. 

It’s all the noise. It’s bad enough I have so many voices in my head, but now that both of my kids know how to talk, it’s their voices, too. Add to that a tv, and the dog barking and my husband barking and phones ringing and, well, I just want to freak the fuck out.

So one by one I try to eliminate the noises. Put some food in my husband’s mouth and that shuts him up. Put some poison in the dogs dish… (Just kidding all of you goddamned animal rights activists. Learn to take a joke and people might like you, too.) Get the kids in the shower because it is hard to talk with water smacking you in the face.  Turn off the phones. And for all of maybe 5 minutes it’s somewhat quiet. Even the voices in my head are cooperating.

It is so rare that I actually get to experience real peace and quiet that I would actually like to meet the person that coined that phrase and find out how they do it… and then kick them in the nuts. I assume it is a man by the way, because they can tune out a plane crash in the back yard.  

Even though it is unlikely that I will have an actual breakdown or find peace and quiet for that matter, my life has given me greater understanding of the need for the creation of certain medications. My kids may not be the "strong arguments for birth control" because I could not imagine life without them, but they are a pretty good argument for Valium. My husband is a strong argument for Vodka.

WTFOMGROFL

ac·ro·nym  

/ˈakrəˌnim/

Noun

A word formed from the initial letters of other words (e.g., radar, laser). ***Totally have to admit I did not know radar and laser are acronyms!!

I will never admit that I am getting old, or that I am anything resembling my own mother, but there is probably some truth to both. I was sitting next to some teenage, CW watching little…. Anyway, she was texting a hundred miles an hour and I noticed that it was all acronyms, no actual words.  It was unbelievable, but she literally had a half an hour worth of conversation with only acronyms. She only looked up occasionally to shoot me an angry glare.  I was completely fascinated regardless, trying to guess what they all could mean. I couldn’t read every one without looking like a creepy, stalker old lady, but I was mesmerized. 

I got home an hour later, busted open my laptop and quickly googled  “stupid text acronyms”. WTF!!! There was a full page of at least two hundred ridiculous acronyms. At first I was thinking how much we have evolved that our teenagers now actually have their own language. But then I realized, it is exactly the opposite. We are going backwards. I think during the time of cavemen (if the horrible movies I have seen are correct) they just grunted to communicate. At the rate we are going, it won’t be long before we are grunting. Because honestly, how the fuck do you pronounce UKTR?? Defined as: You know that’s right. Which by the way, also proves how dumb we are becoming, since it should be YKTR.

We as a society, are either so lazy or in such a hurry that we are always searching for shortcuts in every facet of our lives and that has now bled over into our children’s lives. They can no longer even speak in complete sentences. Just the other day my eight year old daughter said “what ev” to me. “What ev?”  She couldn’t even put the “er” on there? Really?

I guess I am a little more harsh because I am an “anti-acronym” person. I think the medical community is the worst culprit and have another blog devoted just to the topic of over labeling kids and over using acronyms.  (A Nation of AOL: Acronyms and Over-Labeling)  Even still, you have to admit, it is getting a little annoying. I know I am not as cool as I once was, at least not to a teenager. In my age group, however, I am a God.

Anyway, maybe it is just the cool thing to do or maybe it saves time.  Either way, just spell it out you lazy asshole.