Menopausal Mother

     I love sleep, but it does not love me. I either sleep like the dead or I'm wide awake all night. There is no in-between for me. The nights I sleep deep, a tornado could lift my house from its foundation and drop it into a cornfield in Kansas and I STILL wouldn't wake up. For this reason, naps also make me nervous. I never know if I'll fall asleep for twenty minutes, two hours, or two years. Naps are risky at best, and my poor husband has no idea who he will be dealing with when he interrupts my sleep----the Kraken or a disoriented Rip Van Winkle.

     The nights insomnia shares the mattress with me are the worst. I don't count sheep to fall asleep. I count calories. And sadly, that's enough to keep me awake all night. My mind flips through a gazillion thoughts in record time, like cards being shuffled during a poker match. I can't shut my thoughts off, much less dim the commanding voice of insomnia that nags my subconscious.

     On a typical sleepless night, these are some of the strange thoughts that keep me tossing and turning while the bedside clock ticks away the minutes:



That recipe for chicken chow mein turned out really good tonight. I'm craving it again. Right now. I wonder how it will taste cold, straight out of the fridge....

So, if I add Hub's paycheck to the balance in the checkbook, then subtract what I owe on the mortgage this month, plus figure in the $200 I owe for the water bill and another $300 for the electric, that means......beans and rice. I eat bean and rice every day for a month.

My underwear is too tight. I need new underwear. This pair has holes. Geez, what if I got in an accident today and the EMTs saw them?

It's hot in here. The sheets are sticking to me. The thermostat must be set on a temperature compatible to Mercury.

How do penguins mate?

Wait----what are those suspicious noises coming from the garbage cans outside? Possum? Raccoon? Hungry neighbor?

Let's sing a song: "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down...." Karen Carpenter.....what year was that?

Did I turn off the oven?

Is that a lump under my armpit? It IS a lump. What if I have cancer? Aunt Sally had it, and look what happened to her! I have all the symptoms---I'm constantly tired and achy, and my weight has been fluctuating....OH MY GOD I'M GONNA DIE. Wait.....no....it's not a lump. It's a mosquito bite.

Why didn't the dog poop tonight? Maybe someone gave her too much cheese. I like cheese. I really like cheese on chicken parmesan. Maybe I can order some for lunch tomorrow. Maybe I can order some now.

Don't leave a leg sticking outside of the covers.....something or someone might grab it. Ghosts. Creepy clowns. Deranged serial killers. I need to stop watching American Horror Story.

Is that the toilet water running again? I need to get a plumber out here. Life would be so much easier if someone invented disposable, biodegradable toilet plungers.

Hubs needs to mow the grass tomorrow. I'll wake him and tell him. It's 2:00 a.m. but he won't mind.

If I could redesign this house, I would add an extra sink in the master bathroom, knock out the wall that divides the kitchen from the living room, add another bathroom to the east side of the house, because we can never have too many bathrooms.....wait, do I need to pee? Welcome to "Bladder Roulette." Spin the wheel and it lands on..... "You gotta pee. RIGHT NOW!"..... dammit.

Was my closet door cracked open all this time?

Let's sing again: "Cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon..."

Stop. Practice fake sleep. Close your eyes, breathe deep. Relax. Just go to sleep....hey, what was that kid's name in Mrs. Johnson's third grade class who puked whole blueberries by the classroom door?

I wonder who the first person was to eat an artichoke?

I need to find out what that weird sound was coming from my car today. What if it was my transmission? What if it blows up tomorrow while I'm driving down the highway? I'd better wear new underwear just in case the EMTs show up.


   
     Hopefully tonight will be better. I really need to get more sleep. I'll get the toilet fixed and make sure the thermostat is set low enough for icicles to form on the ceiling. And it wouldn't hurt to order a plate of chicken parmesan for dinner while I'm at it.....

    Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall, a group posting hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. My issue this month is not with flies, but with mosquitoes. Those blood suckers are EVERYWHERE this summer! They're like the annoying, uninvited guest who crashes your BBQ, drinks all you beer and steals the last of the potato salad. I'm fed up with these bionic insects from hell  and would rather deal with the flies.


     If you were a fly (or a mosquito) on the wall at my house, this is what you would have heard at the BBQ:

"The dog snores so loud, she sounds like she just inhaled a pig."

"I don't understand why we still have so many mosquitoes in our yard when we've done every method possible to combat the little vampires from sucking our blood."
"Obviously, we have the Russian Chernobyl strain."

"I love our Tempur-Pedic mattress!"
"I don't! If I'm near the edge, it sags downward and makes me feel like I'm free-falling off a cliff. The memory foam remembers that I'm not a rock climber."

"There was a free tree giveaway at the park today."
"I know, but by the time I got there, all the good trees were gone. The only thing left were the tiny trees. I thought I'd stepped into a chapter of Gulliver's Travels."

"When I'm lying in bed at night and I have the urge to pee, I slap my bladder to stop the urge."
"So…..what does that make you? A bladder slapper?"

"Let me get this straight…..you sent a taxidermy raccoon to The Bloggess for publicity purposes?"
"Yep. And it worked. Got a nice thank you message and blurb from her for my book cover."
"Maybe from now on I need to send in taxidermy rodents along with my job applications."
"If I catch you hovering around my chinchilla cages too long, I'm kicking you out."


"Why do you stand so long in front of the open refrigerator? I'm beginning to think you're looking for the Museum of International Foods."

"Thankfully we have hurricane impact windows, otherwise they would have shattered by now over our granddaughter's wild banshee screams."

"My stomach hurt so bad that I thought it was either gallstones, a hernia, or I was having labor pains."
"Since You're a man, you know you can rule out one of those things right away."
"Yeah, we can rule out the hernia because the last heavy thing I lifted was a six pack of beer."

"What did I do to deserve a dirty toilet brush on my tongue?"
"That was an accident! I didn't mean to tap your tongue with the brush!"
"It was like licking a lollipop with bristles….or a Charms Blow Pop the smelled like feces."



     I hope you enjoyed your voyeuristic view of my crazy family life. Don't forget to visit the other 13 bloggers participating in today's Fly On The Wall.  AND REMEMBER: Beware of the brown toilet brush!


****Want more Meno Mama? This week you can find me TWICE on the Huffington Post! Holy Moly! First is my serious post about raising an ungrateful generation of children over at The Huffington Post here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-kester-doyle-/rude-children-_b_5589057.html and then they featured my funny one on colonoscopies here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-kester-doyle-/i-need-a-what_b_5615732.html. I also have a humorous post for you about my husband's unemployment featured over at the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop. You can read that one here: http://humorwriters.org/2014/07/19/5314