Women of a Certain Age

It is becoming clear to me now--why women of a certain age are weepy, emotional, irrational, fearful, homicidal, hysterical, subject to panic attacks......go ahead and fill in any other extreme emotional tendencies you like.  Or don't like, whatever.

Is the problem the lack of sleep?  Is that where those irrational thoughts and fears come in?  When I'm lying awake at 3 am, thoughts are racing through my brain like a mountain river.  They tumble and splash over boulders and pebbles, sometimes creating a mist that rises off the water--refreshing, creative, energizing.  Sometimes these thoughts drag me down into a deep dark hole, becoming silent for awhile, only to rise up out of the ground in full force with the roar of a waterfall.  Or is the lack of sleep created by the hormonal tide I'm getting in various doses each month? 

(Hmmm.  I don't know about the alliteration in the previous paragraph, but surely, if you're a woman or are married to one or know one, you can get my drift, or catch my current, or ride my wave, or whatever)

Women of a certain age have reached that stage in life where our kids are about safely grown, our jobs are fairly secure, and we are comfortable with our personalities and appearance.

Some days.

Other days, well, you know how they are.  Nothing fits.  Hair is an uncontrollable disaster.  Stupid things make you cry--really stupid things, like the hangers in your closet not matching, or the spoons in the dishwasher are not all turned the same way.  

The job stinks.  And those almost safely grown kids--you worry about drugs, alcohol, pregnancy....  Those last worries might not even be about the kids--they might be about you--the what ifs--what if I got pregnant?  I'd probably need drugs and alcohol....  No, no, I jest, truly I do.  

Irrational thoughts!

There is something that works though--something to control your irrational thoughts, uncontrollable emotions...

Pie!  Or Cookies!  Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa Mix!  Coffee!  A Sonic Diet Coke! 

Go ahead, buy that box of Godiva Chocolates for your family.  Then eat them while you are up alone at 5 a.m.  Stir a packet of Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa Mix into your coffee to go with it.  You'll be glad you did.

I'll never tell!

(in all probability, this post will be far less amusing to me later today, than it is right now, early in the morning at dark thirty.  It was even wittier when I began it in my brain at 3 this morning before I got out of bed.)

(yes, Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa Mix and Sonic Diet Coke all need capitalized because of the importance of these nouns, in case you're wondering.)