Category — Uncategorized

My apologies for not posting a blog entry in the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if my paucity of ideas and motivation were due to post-traumatic stress, laziness, or some weird sort of combo effect. Shortly after my last posting, my hometown was swept by a wildfire. It was huge, fanned by strong winds and exacerbated by an extremely dry winter. Summoning heroic effort, firefighters fought the blaze which threatened the entire town of South Lake Tahoe, bringing the conflagration to its knees. Over 200 homes were lost, yet it could have been so much worse. Thankfully no one was hurt. (My house was fine; several friends were not so lucky.) Strangely enough, you can’t see the scars unless you know where to look – the lake and town look beautiful as ever to the casual observer.

Menopause and midlife challenges definitely took a backseat these past two weeks to a more immediate and massive metamorphosis. Now that the process of rebuilding, restoring, and healing has begun, things are returning to some semblance of normalcy. And our more personal changes are asserting themselves once again, so expect the blog to start heating up again. Let’s hope that’s all that heats up for awhile!

"Middle-aged women are the people most likely to watch the Weather Channel," my husband read to me from the newspaper. "Isn’t that strange?"
"Not really," I said sheepishly, as if confessing some secret desire. "I think The Weather Channel is interesting."
"Why?", my husband asked, mystified. "You can check the weather you need to know on the internet in a matter of minutes. Why watch it as entertainment?"

After prolonged musing, I think understand why the demographic of The Weather Channel might be women of a certain age. We feel intimately connected to weather. The only thing that is changing as much as we are moment-to-moment IS the weather.
Some of the changes (in weather and in us) are dramatic upheavals – tornados, hurricanes, and the like, turning everything upside down. Other changes occur over time – prolonged heat and drought desiccates and desertifies the land. We can relate to this all too well, as hot flashes singe our individual landscapes and lack of hormonal rainfall leaves us hot, parched, and dry.

Watching the weather is comforting and reassuring for this menopausal woman. While these climactic changes are sometimes uncomfortable and hard to bear, they are NORMAL. The Earth recovers from weather’s onslaughts and new growth appears. A landscape may be trashed for a time, but it ultimately rejuvenates. It may never be as it was before, but it will be fine. And so will we.

I broke my toe the other day when I tripped over the wrought iron coffee table legs. The doctor has admonished me to keep weight off my left foot. And no hula or power-walking or golf is allowed for 4-6 weeks. My first horrified thought is that I’ll be as big as a house if I don’t exercise, thanks to the menopausal side effect of weight gain.

In the midst of all the changes wrought by Menopause, we goddesses find ourselves in dire need of succor. We turn to our favorite comfort foods for solace and healing. Alas, we cannot splurge without paying a fearsome price these days. Food sticks to our ribs, our thighs, our hips, and our buns. Our metabolic rate has slowed to a crawl. You would think that this slowdown would be more than offset by calories burned through our hot flashes. Literally. And those goddesses who suffer 30 hot flashes per day should be wasting away, regardless of caloric intake. But in seeming defiance of all natural law, the scale tells us we are getting heavier. We look at our favorite fatty, sweet, carbo-loaded treats and we gain weight. We eat "healthy" food and we gain weight. We don’t change our eating habits at all and we gain weight. Some of us starve ourselves and we gain weight. We diet fiercely, trying to shed extra poundage. South Beach, Medifast, Ornish, Atkins. Jenny Craig, Nutrisystems., Weight Watchers. Among the Venuses, we have collectively tried ALL of these at one time or another with varying (read not permanent) success. And each year, it gets harder to fit into our skinny clothes.

Oh yes, we goddesses divide our wardrobes – not into summer and winter garb, but into fat clothes and skinny clothes. We may get into the skinny clothes, but we are not dumb enough to throw away our fat clothes. Because those pounds are always lurking out there somewhere, hoping to come home. And it is just too freaking hard to get rid of them. Anybody know any exercises I can do without putting any weight on my left foot?