Menopausal Mother

Meno Mama is on vacation this week enjoying time with her family for the holiday. For those of you recovering from a holiday hangover, I thought you might enjoy a little blog post that I wrote a long time ago, when I had only 23 followers if I was lucky....and half of those were family members. This is one of my favorites from back in the day---hope you enjoy it!





     Devil juice can be defined as: "Juice made from a winery in hell, designed to create multiple personalities in those who imbibe by introducing their alter egos to the general public."
     My husband is an avid beer drinker, but once he switches over to the dark side of wine, he becomes a different person.  Just like a woman with raging hormones in the throes of menopause, his mood can change drastically.  I never know which alter ego of his I will be dealing with---McBastard, Cuddle Bear, Sleepy from the Seven Dwarfs or a Teletubbie.  These personalities don't kick in until he has uncorked his second bottle of red wine.  He could paint the house, wax the car or install new plumbing and not remember a thing in the morning.  Sometimes he morphs into Jimmy Hendrix and plays air guitar to Purple Haze, while other nights he dons a cat mask and dances to the Meow Mix theme.  I don't worry too much about his alter egos as long as he's not scratching in a litter box, marking his territory or trying to lick my ankles.
     My husband claims that devil juice alters my personality as well.  He says that I change from lamb to lion to human gummy bear after a few glasses of vino, which has convinced me to buy cheaper wine and dilute it with ice water.  Gross, I know, but we can't have two comatose adults in the back yard.
      Years ago we owned a gift basket shop and were fortunate enough to come across case loads of good quality champagne at a discount price from a local wine dealer.  Most of the bottles ended up in our kitchen cabinets instead of in the baskets they were intended for.  A close friend of ours who bought several cases called it forget-me-not champagne because she woke each morning after drinking it not remembering what she did the night before.
     We have plenty of wine that could sport the same forget-me-not label.  Wine comas rob you of chunks of time you can never get back, until one day you find yourself crawling around on all fours in a video on YouTube.
     After enough glasses of devil juice, my husband is convinced he's the next Iron Chef.  He fixes weird sandwiches like bologna with garlic croutons or peanut butter, jelly and roasted turkey, then tries to get everyone else to eat his creations.  Guy Fieri he is not.  Vino turns me into Paula Dean---I want to slather butter on everything.  Some of my tastiest concoctions were created after a few glasses of devil juice---problem is I consumed major calories and I don't remember what I ate, only that it was more difficult to zip up my jeans the next day.
     You would think two middle age adults would not want to lose track of precious time by blurring their weekends with devil juice.  There's just something not right about a man in a cat mask drinking wine.  Next weekend he's changing his own litter box.
      What can I say?
      The devil made him do it!