dandelion swirl © lynette sheppard

“I’m sorry about your weight,” said Marcia, the checker at my local Safeway.
“Wha… what?” I stammered, wondering if I’d worn pants that showed the two extra pounds I’d regained over my HCG diet weight.
“I know it took a long time, but her credit card wasn’t working and…”
I burst out laughing. “Oh, you’re sorry for the wait! If you knew what I heard…. I wanted to say that you couldn’t possibly be as sorry as I am… I’ve been practicing avoidance maneuvers to get around the scale in the bathroom.”
Marcia is a woman of Menopause Goddess persuasion and began to laugh, too.
“Don’t even go there,” she giggled. “I’m way ahead of you.”

Just when I was beginning to feel that I’d gotten a pretty good handle on the mental changes that have alternated between distressing and hilarious, I now find that my ability to process information is on the blink.

I’ve been taking my acetyl-l-carnitine religiously and my memory has been pretty good (for my age.) And I am definitely less spacy – the brain fog has  mostly cleared leaving just a few misty spots. I even caught a problem in a legal document recently that saved us a lot of time and trouble.

So while I wasn’t all the way to smug about my mental faculties, I felt like I could hold my head up pretty high.

Until today. When I had trouble understanding words in context in my native tongue.

I do think I have discovered the best thing about Menopause, though. It’s not the lack of monthly cycles (although that’s pretty good.) It’s not the transition to elder (with its assumption of wisdom, although that’s pretty good, too.) It’s not even the feeling of comfort in my loosening skin. (Although that’s great…just sayin’…)

Nope. The very best thing about Menopause is that I will be kept laughing for the rest of my life. Because what else can a Menopause Goddess do when confronted with the shifting sands of time? It is just so freaking funny. My sense of humor is in better shape than ever. Thank heavens something is!

River Eddy ©lynette sheppard

Theresa Venus sent me this horrifically funny clip about a woman of a certain maturity. Yes, I said horrifically. Because this video describes too much of this Menopause Goddess’s life. Maybe yours too?

I wrote about this phenomenon back in 2007 claiming that HDD (Hormonal Deficit Disorder) leads to Menopausal ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). While I can honestly say that the severity of the ADD has eased, I still have days that are reminiscent of being caught in eddies on a river. You know eddies. Those parts of the river, usually behind some obstruction near the bank, where the water swirls around in a circle actually heading upstream of the normal flow. Every good river boater knows that you can lose a lot of time and momentum in eddies.

One thing I have learned in my five plus decades as a woman and a river runner: don’t fight the current. Work with it, harness its power, use it to your advantage, and try to achieve some degree of harmony with the flow. Struggle never works. It will exhaust you and you won’t achieve the desired result anyway. We are not in control. And maybe that’s a good thing.

So on those days when my attention gets caught in multiple eddies, I just become part of the flow. And try not to leave anything burning on the stove.

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