So far 2013 has not been stellar.
You may want to stop reading here. If you're male, you really may want to stop reading here. (A couple of you men are still reading. I know who you are. I'm waving, and you've been warned.)
Here's how January first went: I woke up still sick with The Great Winter
Head Cold Round Two (which is merely an extension of the same cold I've been
fighting since Thanksgiving), and by "woke up" I mean "pieced
together four hours of dozing patches while struggling to mouth-breathe as my
sinuses were impersonating the waterworks."
In addition to being sick again, I awoke and discovered that
I still have no working furnace, and by "still" I mean
"repeatedly breaking down over the years and sometimes temporarily
restarting much to my consternation, my landlords' bewilderment, and the
puzzlement of multiple plumbers and contractors hired to fix it." (To be clear here, I do not believe this is
anyone's fault, and my landlords have been great about getting people here even
on holidays, but the damn thing done died, and it may well be time to admit
defeat on our part.)
The icing on this whole thing, though, was that I woke up
with my period. Oh yeah, like this is a big deal, you're saying. She's a
grown-up, you're saying. She's a woman, you're saying. Suck it
up, you're saying.
Well, screw you.
Do you not remember the cheetah dress
debacle mere months ago? The doctor is
trying to medicate me to keep me from bleeding out every month, but the truth
of it is that I have a fibroid the size of a softball (that's not an
exaggeration - the damn alien thing really is that large). Every few weeks it's another round of Wheel of Hemorrhage!
PAT: Hey,
everybody, it's time for your favorite menopausal game show, Wheel of Hemorrhage. Welcome to the show, Heliand.
ME: Thanks,
Pat. Totally sucks to be here.
PAT: I hear
ya!
ME: No you
don't, fuckhead, you're a man.
PAT: Well,
that IS true, but I do HEAR ya!
(chuckles to himself, smiles at the camera, holds pose for a screen shot) So why don't you spin the tampon, Heliand,
and let's see what you're playing for.
(Heliand grabs giant tampon wheel, gives it a spin, and
steps back with hands clasped in nervous anticipation. Tampon wheel makes strange gurgling sounds as
it sluggishly moves in a lazy circle.
Suddenly it stops on a space.)
PAT:
Oooooooooh, so sorry. Medication
isn't working today! You lose half a
pint of blood in twenty minutes, totally ruin your clothing, embarrass yourself
in a team meeting when you have to crawl to the staff bathroom, and get sent
home in shame. (Turns to the camera and
flashes that million-dollar smile.)
Vanna! Tell Heliand what she's
won!
ME: But … wait
… I don't--
VANNA: You've
won a case of ultra-super-dee-duper tampons, a gross of super-absorbency pads,
and another month of attempting to medicate your problems away! BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME, SUCKER!
ME: I don't
wanna win! I don't wanna play! FUCK MY LIFE!
PAT: Well,
Heliand, we'll see ya again next time, and we'll see which piece of furniture
you wreck and who you'll scar for life when you bleed out in public right here
on…
PAT, VANNA, AND AUDIENCE: WHEEL …
OF … HEMORRGHAGE!
(Cue applause and music.)
Anyway, a day has
passed, and today I'm driving to work, I don't feel well, my car is almost as
cold as the inside of my house, and I start getting the tell-tale cramping on the
right side that indicates a vein has just let go. As I am tooling along, I start mumbling to
myself, "Damnation. You had better
not." Then I get louder and progressively
louder until I am careening along, fisted hands gripping the wheel in white-hot
anger, screaming in near-tongues:
"Oh no you don't! I will have you removed. I will go to the doctor and have you cut
right out and put in the trash like the piece of garbage that you are. If you want to keep residing where you are, I
suggest you just learn to behave yourself in there. I can take you down, and I'll do it,
too. I'll get rid of you faster than
yesterday's lunch. You piece of shit
alien life form. You interloper! Just behave your damn self in there!"
At this point I realize I am driving along route 28 and
pretty much anyone and everyone on the road can see me ranting and gesturing
wildly as if I am having an actual altercation with someone in my car. I imagine for a brief moment what I will do
if I get pulled over.
Then I smile because I know exactly what I will do. I will drift to the shoulder of the road, put
the car in park, roll down my window, look directly at the cop, and then the
top of my head will split open like the dog in that movie The Thing, and in a voice rivaled only by Mercedes McCambridge's
overdubbing of Linda Blair in The
Exorcist, I will hiss loudly:
"Get back in
your cruiser! If you know what's good
for you, you'll walk away right now before somebody gets hurt. Trust me, officer, I'm menopausal, and you're
not nearly armed well enough to tangle with my mood. Just … walk … away."
To be honest, because every once in a while I feel that I
probably should tell at least a fraction of the truth, my mood has more to do
with the fact that it's the first day back to school after a vacation, I feel
like my head is full of semi-gelatinous goop, and I've had no heat for days
during the coldest snap we've had yet this winter. Menopause truly has very little, if anything
at all, to do with today's a-hole mood.
But it's a helluva lot easier to poke fun of my
softball-sized uterine fibroid than it is to admit I'm having a crappy day of
my own volition. It's easier to blame an
alien life form that has no business residing in my body. Besides, making fun of my snotty, raw
nostrils is for tomorrow's fodder.
That is, if I don't bleed out first. Damn game show.
