Menopausal Mother

     It's Christmas Eve, and I have just finished all the baking and wrapping for the big day. Now that I'm done with the hustle and bustle, I have time to reflect on the last few weeks and how crazy my life is at times. It's so easy to get bogged down in the details of work, taking care of a family, making sure the bills are paid on time, keeping the house clean.....that I forget to stop and breathe. 2015 has certainly had its ups and downs, but for the most part, I feel blessed by the wonderful things that have happened in my life. I have an incredible, funny family, my Smoochie little pugs, an International Bestseller under my belt, and I have you, my dear friends and followers of Meno Mama. I owe the success of my blog and my book to you, because you have always supported me on this journey and have been there for me through it all. I feel your love, and I want you to know that I love you ALL so very much. Here's to wishing you a very Merry Christmas, a happy holiday and a VERY happy New Year!

     Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall group postings, hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Today 12 daring bloggers are inviting you to catch a glimpse of what you’d see or hear if you were a fly on the wall in our homes. 

     The fly has been dizzy in my house with all the holiday festivities going on (or maybe it was just the champagne that got to him). We've had a lot of great family gatherings and the usual Doyle craziness. I'm looking forward to spending Christmas with my loved ones and hoping the weather will be cool enough to have a fire in the backyard fire pit. Yes, here in Florida, the temperatures have been in the 80's. Then again, temps in the 60's are freezing to us!  I'm planning on having a relaxing holiday week, and I hope you do, too.

As I'm writing this post, the fly sees me jumping up and down with joy. Today my book, WHO STOLE MY SPANDEX, is  ranking #1 in Parenting Humor in the US, Canada, Australia, and in the top 100 overall Kindle sales in Canada and Australia. It's officially ranked as an International Best Seller, y'all. HOLY MOLY! I just might share my celebratory glass of champagne with the fly!

So......if you were a fly on the wall in my home this past month, here are some snippets of strange conversation that you would have heard:





"I'm so broke I can't afford to buy Christmas wrapping paper. Don't be surprised if your gift comes wrapped in baby shower paper or wedding paper....and possibly toilet paper."

"That politician in the debate shoots himself so many times in the foot that I'm surprised he has any feet left. "

"I need my coffee strong enough that it's like crack."

"All of our Christmas lawn decorations fell down in the wind last night. This morning it looks like they're hung over from a holiday party."

"The dog just nipped my side while I was playing with her on the floor. I think I only have one kidney left now. "

"You're the type of person who gets so overly-emotional during the holidays that you cry when one of your SIMS characters dies."

"Trying to get everyone in this family out the door at the same time is like herding cats."

"Thank God our party-happy house guests don't live here permanently, or else my liver would shut down within a week."

"You have way too many ornaments on that Christmas tree. You're an ornament hoarder."

 "She's about as affectionate as a porcupine."


"No, you're not having another powdered sugar war this year while we're making these Christmas cookies. I don't want my house to look like a winter wonderland again. "

"I want a shovel for Christmas."
"Why? Who do you plan on burying in the backyard?"



"I still have some moments of sanity....in between the hot flashes and mood swings."

"Never, ever shop online after you've had one too many glasses of spiked eggnog. You'll end up ordering two 15 ft. inflatable Christmas Elves for your yard.

"Christmas is almost here. Time to get out all the clothes that have elastic waistbands and spandex."


Time to shoo this drunk fly out of my house and get back to wrapping some Christmas gifts in toilet paper. Do you think anyone will notice? Enjoy the holidays, everyone!



***WANT MORE MENO MAMA? I was recently featured on Mom For The Holidays with my humor book, "Who Stole My Spandex? Life In The Hot Flash Lane." Check out the review here: http://momfortheholidays.com/2015/12/06/meet-marcia-kester-doyle-of-who-stole-my-spandex-life-in-the-hot-flash-lane/ 





WANT THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT? THE EBOOK IS ON SALE FOR .99 CENTS. YOU CAN'T EVEN BUY A CUP OF COFFEE FOR THAT PRICE! THE SALE ENDS DEC. 22, SO GRAB YOUR COPY NOW:           

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Click on these links for a peek into some homes of the other bloggers participating in today's Fly On The Wall Posts!

     While getting older isn't always a picnic, there are plenty of steps you can take to maintain your health and quality of life. Taking care of your feet is one of the best things you can do to maintain your mobility and well-being through the journey of menopause. If you're experiencing foot pain, it's important to schedule an appointment with a podiatrist as soon as possible to treat the cause of the pain before it worsens, potentially leading to disabling pain or numbness of the feet.

     I'm sure that by now you recognize the name of the guest blogger on the site today. I've featured Vikki Claflin several times on Meno Mama because she's one of my favorite writers. Not only does she write an entertaining midlife blog called  Laugh Lines, she's also the author of not one, but TWO humor books! I loved her first book, "Shake, Rattle and Roll With It", and was beyond thrilled to learn that her NEW book, "Who Left The Cork Out Of My Lunch?" will be released February 14th 2016, and what a perfect Valentine's gift this book will make!

      I'm sharing one of the many hilarious chapters from her book, and this one happens to be one of my favorites since it deals with aging. Vikki's book will be available for pre-order on Jan. 12 2016 (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes) in case you'd like to reserve your copy early of this funny lady's book (c'mon, you know you want to!). Enjoy!

     Normally I love the holiday season, but the older I get, the more difficult the preparation becomes. I don't have the patience it takes to endure the crowds, the parties, the hours decorating, cooking and standing in long lines at the mall. If elves existed, I'd hire them in a nanosecond to take care of everything so that all I had to do was wake up on Christmas morning and enjoy my day. Oh wait---that already happened when I was young. The elves were my parents. And now it's my turn to play elf.

     I'll admit that menopause has made me more irritable than usual, but there are certain things about this time of year that really bring out my grinchy side:

   

   The Weather 
   
     I feel for my northern friends during the winter months. I have no clue what it's like to shovel my way out of the house each morning just to go to the Starbucks, or to search for a car buried under pounds of the white stuff.
 

    We have a different problem here in south Florida. Our winter lasts five days if we're lucky, and the only changing of the leaves occurs when the occasional palm frond turns brown and drops to the ground. I'd like a little bit of a change in the weather during the holiday season----temperatures in the sixties for a few months would be nice. It's hard to feel Christmasy when it's 80 degrees and I'm sweating through my tank top.

     I also envy the people up north who can make snow angels on their front lawns. The closet thing I have to that is thrashing around on the beach to make a sand angel. Even worse----while my northern friends are coating their pale skin with spray-on tans, I'll be coating my ridiculously green Christmas tree with spray-on snow.

I Get Fat

   The 12 days of Christmas should be called the 12 days of gorging. Why? Because the eating begins on Thanksgiving and doesn't stop until January 2nd. It's five weeks of no holds barred binging, and everything I eat contains butter. Before the Thanksgiving turkey gets cold, I have to move all my outfits that have zippers or buttons and replace them with clothing made of stretchy fabric or elastic. Whoever said the Pajama Jeans can't be worn to dinner at a nice restaurant was wrong.

Shopping

     First off, let me just say that you will NEVER catch me shopping on Black Friday. I don't want to end up in an internet video with all the other crazies elbowing their way through the electronics department. Long lines, greedy customers and rude sales people have nothing to do with the spirit of Christmas.

     I usually wait a week or two until the frenzy dies down before I hit the local mall. But it never fails that the day I decide to shop, I run into everyone from my high school graduation class. And of course this only occurs when I've left the house without a stitch of makeup on and hair that looks like a hiding place for a family of stowaway mice.

     The other thing that makes me stabby is the supposed "sale" prices that stores offer. Give me a break, Mrs. Department Store Manager---that memory foam pillow was always $50. You just wrote $100 on the tag, then slashed through it with a marker and called it a bargain at 50% off. No thanks. I'll just grab this $5 canister of tri-colored popcorn from aisle six and call my shopping day a success.

Secret Santa 

     Who the hell came up with the dumb idea of drawing names from a hat to buy cheap gifts for complete strangers at work? Nothing says "I-don't-know-you-and-I-don't-care" more than a plunger made in China from the dollar store. And what happens if you're paired up with the one co-worker you really do despise? Do you give them an enema kit?

     When in doubt about what to buy for a total stranger, grab a bar of chocolate, even if it's an off-brand and a bit stale. That's gotta be better than receiving a can of Silly String or a gift certificate to the adult video warehouse from Gerald in Accounting.

Decorations


     I don't mind decorating for Christmas, but my husband hates it. Every December this causes more strain on our marriage than our finances, our children, or the in-laws. It doesn't help that I'm a holiday hoarder, and my husband is easily overwhelmed when he sees twenty-three boxes of decorations that need to be opened. While I do all the indoor decorating, my guy is in charge of the outdoor part. The swearing begins the minute he opens the first box and sees the snarled mess of lights inside that will take at least an hour to de-tangle. This is followed by more boxes of legless deer, flattened sleighs, and a wobbly Santa that looks like he's been nipping at spiked eggnog. Putting together these holiday figurines for our front yard display is worse than trying to piece together furniture from Ikea.

     Every year my husband swears that this is the time he's putting up our holiday display and threatens to donate all twenty-three boxes of decorations to the Salvation Army. Little does he know that I plan to hit the after-Christmas sales at the store. I hear they'll be selling their Santa stock for 50% off.  

Wrapping The Gifts 

     I advise people to tackle this holiday nightmare by wrapping just a few packages at a time. Otherwise, you'll be overwhelmed after the first hour and your thumbs will be stuck together from pulling out yards of tape from the dispenser. Believe me, I've done Christmas Eve wrapping marathons before, and by 3:00 a.m., my packages looked like they'd been wrapped by rabid squirrels.

Holiday Parties   

     Every year I get invited to an "ugly sweater" party. This would be fine if it was 40 degrees outside instead of the usual 80 degrees here in December. There's nothing fun about sitting around in a hot,  hideous sweater that causes perspiration to pool under the breasts. South Floridians need to switch up this event by hosting an ugly thong party instead.

     Another thing that sucks about holiday gatherings are pot luck parties. It never fails that the one  neighbor down the street who's proud of being crafty with her budget shows up with an odd concoction made from leftover turkey gizzards, green beans and mayonnaise. Hey neighbor, if your dog won't eat it, what makes you think I will? And don't even get me started on fruit cakes. I'm convinced that there's only a handful of these nasty things in existence, and it's the same ones that just keep circling the globe, year after year. I'm pretty sure there are enough preservatives in these cakes to last a millennium.

     The other type of party that's known to scar people for life is the annual office holiday party, especially if alcohol is involved. All it takes is for some fool to sneak a little Fireball Whiskey into the punch bowl and pretty soon shit gets real. Sure enough, two hours into this fiasco, the young intern from cubicle B is yaking up cocktail wieners at her desk while the nerdy guy from the fourth floor tries to impress his female co-workers by doing The Worm. Even more nauseating is the company boss disguised as Santa, trying to coax employees to sit on his lap and whisper what they want for Christmas. You know what I want for Christmas, Santa? A fat raise and a Netflix marathon followed by eight uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Out Of Town Guests  


     I understand the concept of gathering the family together during Christmas to create the perfect Norman Rockwell moment, but if you're the person who has surrendered your home to relatives you haven't seen since you were in diapers, you're just asking for trouble. Within days you'll know every intimate detail about their bathroom habits and just how far they'll go to avoid washing the dishes after dinner. It doesn't matter if you give them a dilapidated sofa bed to sleep on or just a leaky air mattress---once they've settled in your home, they'll be harder to get rid of than a swarm of termites.

 Hip Christmas Carols  

     Call me old fashioned but I love the classics. Give me music from Handel's Messiah sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or even a little Bing Crosby, and I'm happy. But once I hear "Silent Night" transformed into a rap song, I'm ready to stick a fork in my eye. The same goes for department store muzak. How can I pick out the right size jingle bell jock strap for my husband if all I can hear blaring from the sound system is Christmas music sung by the Kardashians?

Travel

     I feel awful for the poor souls snowed in at airports during the holidays. I can't imagine what that must be like. I don't fly anymore, but I remember the frenzy of racing through the terminals after a delayed flight to make the next connection, losing my luggage, and being sandwiched in-between two men the size of sumo wrestlers on the plane. There is nothing worse than crawling over a complete stranger's lap to get to the bathroom before your bowels burst.

     Long road trips aren't much better. Icy roads, traffic jams, impatient drivers and five hour trips that turn into twenty-four hour trips....this is the reason antianxiety pills were invented.


     Hopefully my grinchy little heart will grow three sizes larger before Christmas and I'll be humming to the rap version of Silent Night while shopping for gifts. But if someone sends me a fruit cake, all bets are off.



***WANT MORE MENO MAMA? Last week I was featured on Purple Clover with a new version of my couples' colonoscopy story. Check out my story, "Two Royal Pains In The Ass" here: http://www.purpleclover.com/health/5622-two-royal-pains-ass/





 

    Several years ago when I was complaining to a friend that menopause was sapping me of all my energy, she told me she had a secret weapon to staying active all day. I asked if she was making her coffee extra strong in the morning or if she had just discovered a new way to survive on only three hours of sleep. That's when she told me about  Celsius, a HEALTHY energy drink that gives you an extra boost during the day and burns 100 or more calories per serving.

     I've never been a fan of energy drinks---the artificial ingredients have always scared me away. The few I tried tasted like overly-sugared drinks from a Kiddie party and left me feeling jittery and restless. My friend promised that Celsius was different, and she gave me a can of the Sparkling Orange flavor. I drank it with my lunch that afternoon, and was surprised by how delicious and refreshing the beverage was.

     Within thirty minutes of drinking the can of Celsius, I was wide awake and ready to get back to work. I couldn't believe the difference it made in my energy level!  I went out that afternoon and bought several more cans, and have been drinking Celsius ever since.

ABOUT THE DRINK:

     Celsius drinks are certified gluten-free, contain no sugar or preservatives, no high fructose corn syrup, no aspartame, no artificial flavors or colors and it only contains low amounts of sodium. Celsius contains a proprietary blend of ingredients such as green tea, EGCG, ginger, calcium, chromium, caffeine, guarani, and vitamins B & C, which work together to provide 93% greater fat loss, plus improved cardio fitness and endurance. Best of all? It's the world's first negative calorie drink and the winner of 15 International Awards!

     Celsius comes in five flavors: Sparkling Orange, Peach Mango Green Tea, Sparkling Wildberry, Sparkling Cola, and Raspberry Acai Green Tea. My personal favorites are the orange and cola flavors.

     Another thing I love about this energy drink is that it's available in powder form, too. You can buy it in a canister with a pre-measured scoop, OR, even more convenient, 14 on-the-go sticks in a box (Flo Fusion Pre-Workout Formula). Just add one stick of powder to your water and you're ready to go to the gym, to work, on a road trip or anywhere else you might need an extra boost of energy during the day. Celsius Flo Fusion is powered by scientifically tested, calorie burning MetaPlus and is clinically proven to enhance metabolism and to burn 100 calories or more with each serving.  *Studies published in the International Society of Sports Nutrition show that Celsius Flo Fusion, when combined with moderate exercise, will significantly increase fat loss, endurance and cardio fitness.*

     Celsius is available just about everywhere that energy drinks are sold. You can find it in various grocery chain stores, drugstores and vitamin shops.

A CELEBRITY FAVORITE:  

     There are quite a few celebrities who are fans of Celsius. To name a few:

Mario Lopez
Flo Rida
Blake Koch
Sofia Vergara
Leann Rimes
Russell & Kimora Simmons
Neil Patrick Harris
Howie Mandel
Jordin Sparks

MY EXPERIENCE WITH CELSIUS:

     I've been drinking Celsius for several years now and still love the product---so much so, that I've been handing out packets to my friends at the gym for them to sample. Every person I have introduced to Celsius has become a huge fan of the drink. I've even given it to several of the Zumba instructors in my class and now they carry packets with them to stay energized throughout the day.

     Who else would benefit from this drink? Parents of young children who find it difficult to stay awake during the day after only a few hours of sleep the night before. People who work long hours at a time. Mid-lifers who find themselves more tired as they get older. Menopausal women who battle fatigue daily (loss of energy is a common symptom of menopause). This product is perfect for ANYONE who needs an extra boost during the day or who wants to lose weight and enhance their metabolism. **Celsius is NOT recommended for people who are caffeine sensitive, children under 18, or women pregnant or nursing.

SUMMARY:

     Celsius did not ask me to write this review; I actually approached them and offered to write the post because I LOVE the product and wanted to spread the word to all of my friends who are struggling with fatigue and/or weight loss. In return, Celsius was kind enough to send me a big box of samples and information so that I could share it with my readers. Do yourself a favor and pick up a can (or a Flo Fusion stick) and try this tasty beverage. I promise, you'll discover a big boost in your energy levels and will most likely lose a few pounds if you combine a healthy diet and exercise plan with your Celsius. Enjoy!

***For more information, visit the Celsius website at: celsius.com or their Facebook page.

   I recently discovered a gem in the blogosphere----a talented writer with a quick wit and a humorous perspective on marriage and midlife. Please welcome Molly Stevens of Shallow Reflections! I recently met Molly in one of my blogging groups on Facebook, and when I stumbled onto her blog, I found myself scrolling through each post and laughing out loud at her quirky sense of humor. I'm thrilled that she agreed to let me share some of her hilarity on my site today. Please welcome Molly to Meno Mama's site with lots of comment love!