Menopausal Mother

     Everyone experiences insomnia at one point or another, and I'm not talking about the I-shouldn't-have-had-that-double-espresso-shot-before-bed kind of sleeping problem. I'm talking about full-on insomnia that occurs night after night and leaves you looking like The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, when you skid sideways into menopause, it's not uncommon for insomnia to become the unwanted  BFF who short-circuits your dreams.

     Most menopausal women I know don't have a problem falling asleep; they have a problem staying asleep. For me, it's the demanding bladder, sporadic hot flashes, and the fact that my brain believes 3:00 a.m. is the ideal time to wake up my muse and share some brilliant ideas.

     There are different trains of thought on the amount of sleep required to stay healthy. Some people need a solid eight hours to function normally, while others perform best with only five. But one thing is for sure; when you aren't getting enough sleep, your body lets you know in a variety of ways, such as frequent yawning (which is really just a silent scream from your body to return to your bed). Here are 14 signs that you're not getting enough sleep:

1. You have the sales pitch from every late night infomercial committed to memory.....and you are now the proud owner of a corduroy cat condo (even though you don't own a cat).

2. Your feet have created crop circles in the carpet from numerous night time trips between your bed and the bathroom.

3. Every morning your eyes appear bloodshot and your coworkers suspect you've been staying up late to party with the spirit of Bob Marley.

4. You toss and turn so much during sleep that you've worn bald spots on either side of your head.

5. You're cheating on your spouse with your new, favorite sleep partner----Melatonin.

6. Yawning is a chronic problem at work. Each time you yawn, it creates a chain reaction around the office, which lasts two hours and goes several rounds before it stops. I'll bet you're yawning right now.

7. Your neck is often sore from craning your head sideways every five minutes to check the glowing numbers on your bedside clock.

8. Other than the Cleveland Clinic, you own the second largest collection of orthotic braces for aching knees, feet, and wrists in your desperate attempt to sleep pain-free at night.

9. You're always in a fog. You wake up one morning to find your pillow in the refrigerator and a frozen lamb chop in your bed. No amount of coffee is going to improve your brain fog. You will always do stupid shit and be forgetful until you get more sleep.

10. You engage in mental warfare with your brain nightly around 2:00 a.m. The brain doesn't want to sleep, but you do. You tell your brain to shut up, but it just keeps asking the same questions: "Did you lock the front door? Turn off the stove? Pay the mortgage on time? Did the dog poop when you walked him at 11:00?" No sleep for you until you get out of bed and check all the locks. Well played, brain.

11. Mr. Sandman ran out of sand before he made it to your  house, which explains why you have large, empty sand bags under your eyes every morning.

12. You've reached the end of your rope and have signed up for a sleep study despite the fact that you will get NO SLEEP at the clinic. How can you, when you'll be required to wear Medusa-like coils around your head and electrodes attached to your body? What little shut-eye you get will be plagued with seemingly acid-induced dreams that will make you feel like you're back at Woodstock in 1969.

13. You've counted so many sheep at bedtime that you now have a wool sweater with a matching set of mittens. Keep up with the sheep herding, and a free scarf comes next.

14.  Although you need 3.0 readers during the day, your night vision is 20/20 since you've inherited the sleep cycle of a nocturnal rodent.

     Still worried that you're not getting enough sleep? The good news is that Amazon has a BOGO sale on sheep. You can order as many as you want for counting.....which means you won't have a shortage of wool sweaters this winter. Sweet dreams!

     It started with a recipe. I misread the amount of flour that was to go into a cake and added too much of it to the batter. That night, I served a frosted hockey puck to my dinner guests. I was certain the mistake was due to my lack of attention while baking. Note to self: Do NOT watch "America's Hottest Firemen" on cable TV while making a cake.

     There were other slip-ups that soon followed….little things I stubbornly ignored, such as squinting while reading a book. Or leaning over the car steering wheel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame just so that I could see the road beyond my dashboard. It wasn't until I backed my van into a telephone pole one rainy afternoon that I knew it was time to face the painful truth: MY MOTHER LIED ABOUT THE CARROTS.

     I really couldn't blame Mom for feeding me an abundance of carrots when I was young. The myth that they help our vision dates back to WWII with the British Royal Air Force. They attributed the success of their pilot's night vision during German reconnaissance missions to the vast consumption of carrots by their airmen. Perhaps if they had consumed mass quantities of cauliflower instead of carrots, they may have needed less fuel to get their planes off the ground.

     It was my love for books---and the fact that I was struggling to read the small print---that prompted me to purchase a pair of glasses from the drugstore (it was either that or buy all my romance novels in Braille). This tactic worked for a little while until everything around me became slightly fuzzy. I had trouble reading the numbers on my cell phone, and instead of dialing my gynecologist, I called the pest control guy to complain about my irregular periods. My typing skills had also diminished considerably, and the emails I sent out were often questioned by the recipients: "When did you start calling your son Zarf?" "What do you mean you ate the dentist?". My husband had already threatened to enroll me in the Helen Keller Institute For Typing if I didn't do something about my poor eyesight. I finally admitted that he had a point when I could no longer tell if I was petting the family cat or my uncle's toupee. It was time to find an optometrist.

     After having my eyes dilated by the doctor, I strained to read a chart that was a mile away and filled with ridiculously small letters. By the end of my appointment, I had two sets of glasses; one for reading, and one for driving.

     It wasn't long before I was stockpiling glasses of various strengths----some for working on the computer, others to watch TV, and another pair for walking the dogs at night. But no matter how many pairs of glasses I accumulated, I lost them as quickly as I lost my socks every time I did the wash.

     Fed up with wearing (and losing) my glasses, I returned to the optometrist's office to be fitted for contacts. I learned how to insert the flimsy lenses into my eyes and returned home, optimistic that I'd solved the problem of my glasses disappearing into the same black hole that my missing socks were orbiting.

     It was all fun and games until it came time to remove the lenses. The harder I tried to slide them out, the farther they slipped under the folds of my eyelids. Panic set in when both contacts disappeared into the caverns of my eye sockets. You know what true love is? A man who uses a magnifying glass and a mini flashlight to probe his wife's eyeballs for missing lenses.

     Ten minutes and two scratched corneas later, I swore off contacts and decided to live my life as a blind mole. My only comfort was in knowing that at least my eyesight was a step up from the rhinos, who are notorious for attacking trees and large rocks due to their poor vision.

     Living life in a blur became too difficult ( I was tired of walking around with bruised knees from walking into furniture) and eventually I caved, buying more glasses along with several pairs of brightly colored contacts. I needed to be prepared in case I was forced to go on another eye expedition in search of my elusive lenses.

     The way I see it, putting up with lost glasses and slippery contacts is worth it to be able to see the world clearly again. And I may add a few more carrots to my diet, just to be on the safe side.

 
     It happens one morning when you wake up, glance in the bathroom mirror and realize your face looks like an un-ironed shirt. You wonder---is it from stress? The kids? Too many libations the night before? You vow to get more sleep, take your vitamins and spend a fortune on miracle face creams. If spackle can fill the cracks in a wall, then an expensive wrinkle epoxy ought to do a damn fine job covering the crevices on your face. Unless, of course, your skin looks like a lunar landing strip. The good people at Lancome have yet to invent a facial epoxy that will fill cracks that deep.


     When I was in my mid-thirties, it was no coincidence that I sprouted my first wrinkle around the time my fourth child hit the Terrible Twos. A deep furrow formed across my brow, giving the impression that I was angry all the time. Or constipated. I began slathering my face nightly with rich emollients that promised to erase my worry lines (and the remnants of a youth spent poolside with a rum runner in one hand and a bottle of baby oil in the other). I was terrified that after all those years of sun tanning, I'd end up with a face that resembled a potato left too long in a microwave.

     Once I reached my forties, the deep grooves that bracketed my mouth were evidence of my inability to defy the laws of gravity. They formed parentheses when I smiled, acting as a dam to prevent the tsunami of cheek flesh from falling forward. As much as I tried to conceal the signs that I was, indeed, a middle-aged woman, the wrinkles on my forehead were Mother Nature's way of revealing my true age like the concentric circles inside a California Redwood.


     There were other unavoidable tell-tale signs that I was well past the carefree days of my youth. The so-called "laugh lines" around my eyes were not funny at all once the wrinkles reached my eyebrows and formed tributaries similar to those near the Mississippi river.

     Now that I've accepted the fact that I can no longer disguise my age behind expensive makeup and creams, I realize that facial wrinkles are the least of my problems. There are other parts on my body that the wrinkle cadets have invaded while I've been busy trying to prevent my face from looking like a peach pit. The other day, I noticed several rings around my neck. Four, to be exact. I now have a neck that resembles a Slinky. How have I missed this delicate area during my nightly ritual of slathering creams heavier than margarine on my face?

     And that's not the only section I've overlooked. I've got wrinkles on my hands now, too. The skin has become so thin there that my veins have popped up like the Appalachian Mountain range. There are also deep creases on my elbows and knee caps, for God's sake. My joints look like a wrinkled rhino's butt. "Excuse me, dear lady at the Lancome counter, do you have any rhino butt wrinkle cream in stock?"

     I prefer to think that the lines on my face show character, not the actual stress of aging or too many summers spent on a beach with a silver reflector beneath my chin. Undoubtedly, I'll be picking up a few more wrinkles along the way, but that's okay. These little creases are the merit badge I've earned from years of laughter and a life well lived.

     And no cream can take that away.