My internal thermostat is thoroughly buggered.  It’s thirty-three point two degrees outside with seventy-five percent humidity; and five hundred and sixty two and a half thousand degrees inside, with my reproductive organs currently at a gazillion percent humidity.  It’s a thing.  Don’t even think about questioning me.  There is a fire raging somewhere between my fallopian tubes and uterus and my ova have been issued with a severe weather warning of an impending drought.

Actual scan from my recent tests

Let’s not beat about the bush here – phnar – it’s bloody (or not) inconvenient and annoying.  Peri – menopause is a thing, which I thought was called pre – menopause, but apparently not.  I have to thank a Twitter follower for alerting me when she knowingly said ‘ahhhh, peri……?’, accompanied by, I imagined, a smile and a nod of her head; and I thought she assumed I’d eaten too much spicy chicken.

Dictionary reference

PERI: prefix meaning “about” or “around” (perimeter, periscope), “enclosing” or “surrounding”

PRE:  prefix occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, where it meant “before”.

So, why exactly is it now arounding the menopause, not beforing it??  Or have I always had it wrong and need to have a stern word with my mother?  It’s not logical.  Anyway, it’s definitely happening.  I definitely think that it definitely might be happening.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   I had to guess that my current absent-mindedness, perpetual tiredness and insomnia were due to the onset of ‘peri-menopause’, and not simply my fondness for a large G & T at the end most days (and sometimes in the middle).  The lack of regular periods however could not be attributed to that – so I have done three, paranoid frenzy pregnancy tests in the last two months.  Even though the likelihood is about one percent, one can never be too careful if one does not want a Ross and Rachel situation on one’s hands. You know what I’m saying? *wink*

There is a tiny shift in my hormone levels, discovered in recent blood tests, but not enough to warrant a hardcore prescription. Apparently I have to wait until I’ve grown a full beard for that.  If The Fly – style hair springing from my Adam’s apple every couple of months is anything to go by, I won’t have long to wait for that.  Before it’s really begun, I can’t wait for the whole process to be over, but that’s not going to happen, is it?  Of course it’s not.  I was reading yesterday, while waiting for my friend to arrive for brunch, that the whole process can take between four and TEN years.  TEN.  TEN WHOLE YEARS.  Are. You. Kidding. Me???  Why can’t it just change in a month?  In January your *’Aunty Jane comes to visit’; and by February she’s dead. 

I’m not in the slightest bit sad about it.  I just don’t want to believe it’s such a long drawn out process.  It’s as though Father Nature (because let’s face it, no woman would impose this on her sisters), is saying, “you still can, you know.  Go on, there’s still a little time. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to squeeze a couple out?”  No, no I don’t, now turn off the taps already. 

In fact I’m thinking of throwing a petit soirée when it’s all done and my tubes are dusty – where I build a bonfire of all the ‘luxury’ sanitary products I have left over, and invite my girlfriends to dance around it swigging cava.  I certainly won’t be signing up to My Second Spring dot com to look at pictures of laughing women rollerblading, who are secretly dying on the inside.  And I  most certainly will not be joining the chat forums to lament my lost **womanity.  To my periods I say, adiós amigas!

*my Nana’s name for periods 

**what even is that?  Thanks Mr Thierry Mugler for that word.