I'm hot, and not in a good way.

This is how bad a blogger I am: it just took me a half an hour to find and log into my blog. That is pretty pathetic. What I did find, however, is that there are many others who go by the handle "befrazzled" so I might have to think of another. Who knew? Maybe if I blogged enough to actually know how to easily access my account I would have been aware of this.

Today we are going to discuss something that all my friends and family and pretty much anyone in my immediate vicinity are sick of hearing about: hot flashes. I talk about them incessantly because they are ruining my quality of life. Sleeping is the biggest issue. Sleeping used to be a very pleasant pastime that I remember fondly. Sleeping has now become something that happens briefly between hot flashes. I who could sleep through pretty much everything and then lounge happily around in bed for a hour even after waking up can now only sleep for a couple hours at a time before waking up and feeling like someone has set my bed on fire. When someone asked me to describe the feeling (or maybe they didn't ask me, I just volunteered it) I told them it's like being a pizza: one moment you're lying on this nice wooden slab, and the next thing you know you are sliding into Hell. And the attractive feeling of lying in a pool of sweat, we wouldn't want that to go unmentioned.

One of the problems with sleeping so intermittently is that when I do catch a couple of hours between sweatstorms I tend to sleep heavily. That means I snore. This is a subject for another blog but yes, ladies, let's admit that snoring is not just for men. My own mother snores like a buzzsaw. In fact, in my household, my husband is the quiet sleeper. He plays the traditional woman's role of telling me to roll over or poking me until I readjust my position. So the other night he woke me up several times to get me to stop making noise and even yelled at me (quietly, it was the middle of the night after all). In the morning he had to face the wrath of a sleep deprived maniac. I pretty much told him that I could have killed him and no jury would have convicted me. I think that I will not be awakened for mild infractions like snoring in the future.

I was thinking of the time 40 years ago when I had my first visit from every woman's monthly killjoy. When I was told I would continue to have this monthly visit every month into my '50's with only brief interludes for pregnancy, I was suitably horrified. And here I am, at the end of my 4 decade joy ride and what greets me? Hot flashes.

You just know God is a man.