Menopausal Cuckoo

I think I’m losing my mind. Seriously. I used to be a compulsive organizer and proud of it. The spices in my spice rack were placed in alphabetical order from anise to turmeric. My closet was color coordinated along with the contents in my under ware drawer. Shoes fit snugly in shoe trees according to heel length and seasonal use. And all of my photo albums were neatly labeled and shelved in chronological order. Freakish to some, but at least I wasn’t cultivating a dust bunny farm.

I was never late for a function, and I could easily juggle work with the kids’ karate/cheerleading/gymnastics/choir/ballet classes effortlessly while entertaining company and serving up a homemade five course meal Martha Stewart style. Wonder Woman had nothing on me.

And then something changed when I entered my menopausal years. It started with the keys. Took me thirty minutes one morning to find them…in the refrigerator between the yogurt and an old bag of potatoes that were starting to grow roots. I kept forgetting to throw them out—something the pre-menopausal me never would have done. The keys? I swear I didn’t leave them in the refrigerator. Surely someone was playing a prank on me—had to be my mischievous kids playing that “Lets-Drive-Mom-Crazy-Until-She -Is -Willing-To-Increase-Our-Allowance-And-Never-Make-Us -Clean-Our-Rooms-Again,” game.

My glasses disappeared the following week and I walked around like a blind mole bumping into furniture and eating what I thought was a brownie but turned out to be a charcoal briquet. How do you find glasses if you need your glasses to find them?

It wasn’t long before I was forgetting appointments with my hairdresser (which explains why my hair looked and felt like  worn out Brillo pad). It also explains  why the last time I showed up at the doctor’s office to get my cavity filled for a tooth that ached, the nurse reminded me I was there for a colonoscopy and that yes, they were certainly going to fill a cavity while I was there.

What the hell was happening to me? Did all the crazy, drunken weekends from my college years really destroy THAT many brain cells ( I knew that weekend in St. Louis with my sorority sisters was going to cause some long term damage some day)?

Continue reading this post on Marcia Kester Doyle’s blog, Menopausal Mom