Barking at the Moon

I am a loon.

Certifiable.

The stuff of pink padded rooms, trimmed fingernails and soundless screams.

NUTTER.

One of the most challenging parts of sashaying my gravity-challenged ass down the path of middle age is the wild hormonal changes. In some respects, they are welcome but for one week out of most months, I am batshit crazy.

And as time passes, I become less able to control my mood. I sometimes find myself sitting in traffic, frustrated for whatever reason (children, job, Chinese QC) and I get this insane impulse to smash into the car in front of me. I actually have to grip the steering wheel, white knuckled, and talk myself out of it. I become a woman whose rage bubbles just under the surface and unfortunately, it is my family that takes the brunt.

Recently, I was having lunch with my husband and the way he chewed his cucumbers caused me to want to reach right into his mouth and pull them out of there just to STOP THE NOISE. He wasn't smacking his lips like Andrew Zimmern (don't even get me started on that guy) or munching away with his mouth open but the fact that I could hear the consumption his meal through the walls of his cheeks made me want to hurt him, which is horrifying considering I would shrivel up and die without this man.

Then there are my poor babies. Yesterday morning, I was trying to wrestle Olivia's hair into a sensible coif. Water, a brush, a comb and coloured bands were involved. Several of those things when wielded improperly can cause a measure of pain. Olivia protested, violently moved her head away from my clumsy ministrations and I immediately saw red. Sensing serious danger, she stood motionless while I finished and then she quietly left the house with two, enormous, you-hurt-my-feelings, tears running down her face.

For two seconds, I was all, "Yeah, you get your sorry butt to the bus stop," and then I shook my head, disgusted with myself and thought, "Fuck." I ended up driving by the bus stop to apologize because besides the fact that I was totally wrong, who sends their kid to school in that frame of mind? When I was hugging her, she said, "What's wrong with you mummy?"

I don't think she would have understood me if I had told her that perimenopause is a Gong show. Chuck Barris was before her time.

I might need a pharmaceutical intervention. At the very least, I should have a sign hanging around my neck that says,

DANGER! I AM A PERI-MENOPAUSAL WOMAN WITH PMS. STAY BACK 20 FEET AT ALL TIMES. I AM LETHAL.

(Mum, that is NOT an invitation to send me another book about raw foods. If my diet were any closer to a cow's than it is right now, I'd have to grow another stomach.)