Tag Archives: road trips

Menopause Diaries: But we don’t even eat that…

1

My love and I are planning a one-day road trip for our five-year anniversary (thank you, it’s been amazing) and I’m at the grocery store. Mission: Road Trip Snacks. It’s not going well. I’m paralized. I can’t remember what we like to eat. What works well as car/picnic food. Basically, I can’t remember how to think. There’s a big hole where my brain used to be. I’m not actually a living human being right now. I’m a photo-zombie, low-key animated by my medulla oblongata and my reptilian brain. The higher functions are non-existent.

One of two things will happen now I will leave the store without being a single thing or I will put a bunch of random things, none of which we actually like to eat, in my cart. The proto-zombie is aware of this and unhappy, in a zombie-like fashion.

Secret option number three: Fuck road trip snacks. We can just get food on the way. We’re not going that deep into rural Alberta. Right?

(This does not seem to be a viable option, because, like, what is a road trip without car snacks?)

Secret option number four: I outsource the problem and get my partner to pick up the snacks. This does not seem to be a viable option either. I don’t feel good about it. Because, like, it’s our anniversary and I should put some effort into the pre-game plan, you know?

The photo-zombie remains paralyzed. The reptilian brain enters flight mode. Staring at shelf upon shelf of chips, I am on the verge of tears.

Thanks very much, Menopause. Thanks a lot.

2

Ok, so I know—snacks will be gotten. Somehow. And if they are not, food will be acquired en route some other way. We will not starve to death in a ditch in rural Alberta, leaving our carcasses for the vultures to feed on. Nor will we spend the day hungry and hangry. The stakes here are very low. My problem is not a real problem. But the part of my brain that knows this does not exist right now. And the part that is animating my photo-zombie body is, well, crying. In the chip aisle of Safeway.

Fuck. My. Life.

3

The mantra: Everything passes.

(It’s not helping.)

4

Talking with older women—the survivors—about menopause is a lot like talking with breeding women about child birth. The recollection is foggy. Also, in the handful of cases where I can verify their recollection with my own recollection of what they did, said and said they felt at the time—false. They’re not lying, mind you. It’s just—selective, protective remembering. Like childbirth. Even if they (we) recall the facts (“I was in labour for thirty-six hours!”), they don’t really remember how awful it was (“And then, the baby was in my arms and it was all worth it.”)

Myself, I actually remember the moment when I fog it all, in my one non-epidural birth: The baby popped out, the happy hormones flooded me, and the preceding hours os screaming and contemplating death erased in a blink, worth it, all worth it, nothing was better than holding this tiny perfect miracle in my arms.

But ten minutes earlier, I was in so much pain, I did not think I could endure another minute… 

Do I really remember the pain?

No.

I remember the after, the pain is the faintest echo.

Anyway. Talking with the survivors? It doesn’t help. They remember it through a fog. And, they don’t really like to remember it, not even them Gen X women who can’t shut up about it while going through it. And who can blame them?

It really, really sucks.

(I’d like to thank, though, all the Gen X women who can’t shut up about it. Create that record while you’re in it. No one before you has.)

5

I’m not on HRT because, reasons, and I don’t have to justify them to you any more than I would have to justify going on HRT, choosing an epidural or unmedicated childbirth, getting an IUD or an abortion, ok? But I’m doing all the other things. No caffeine (god I miss it). No alcohol. Excellent sleep hygiene. A healthy diet, vitamins, fairly regular exercise. Dancing and sex. Getting out of the house on a semi-regular basis. Socializing almost against my will, because we all know isolation makes nothing better. Making lists of all the things that make me happy and trying to do them. Etc.

It’s hard.

I don’t think I’ve ever found the simple act of living so hard before. And I haven’t exactly led a charmed life.

6

Still in the grocery store. Chip aisle. I don’t like chips. I’ll eat them every once in a while—corn tortilla chips, zest of lime, smothered with cheese. Why did I even start the shopping trip here?

Suddenly, I’m outside the proto-zombie body with a hole where her brain used to be—but still in the chip aisle.  Outside the body, this body that’s betraying me constantly, I am, suddenly, more myself. I still can’t remember what we like to eat or what foods make good road trip snacks.

But my situation, including my misery, is kind of hilarious. I can spin a story about it. A little funny. A little poignant. Maybe a little useful.

The story grounds me. And suggests secret option five: Going to the neighbourhood bakery and getting a baguette, maybe some pastries. Hardboiling some eggs at home, already have eggs, don’t have to buy. And oh, maybe I could pick up some Hungarian sausage at the Farmer’s Market? And some good cheese?

This is a plan I can execute.

Why all of this seems more doable than just picking up chips and Gatorade at Safeway, I can’t tell you. 

Menopause. Right. Menopause.

xoxo

“Jane”

P.S. Road trip was amazing. So were the snacks. Peak happiness experienced. Grocery store crash forgotten. I wrote it down for you, against the day when I forget all of this and claim it was just a few months of hot flashes and not that big a deal. You’re welcome.

Road trip survival tips when travelling with infants–not

We leave for Manitoba tomorrow, a 1600-or-so kilometre drive (1000 miles) that we’re planning to do over two leisurely days of at least eight hours in the car each day. The kids are aged 10, 7.5 and 2.8 now. The elder two are awesome road trippers. The littlest one… well, there’s a reason we didn’t go anywhere last year. We think we’re prepared (we’ve got snacks, games, electronics, strategies galore AND ear plugs)… but we’re also a little worried.

On the plus side, no matter what happens, it can’t be worse than our first car trip after Flora was born. In this vignette, she’s five months old. Cinder’s three. Their parents are in… hell.

June 27, 2005—Calgary to Edmonton. 300 km. 

6:45 a.m.—Both children in the car, unfortunately awake but, fortunately, notscreaming. So far, so good. We’re leaving only 15 minutes later than planned.We will still beat the rush hour out of town. We hope.

6:53 a.m.—Speeding at 120 km/h in the far left lane on Deerfoot Trail whenCinder starts rocking back and forth and saying, “Oh, oh, oh, oh.” “Do you have to pee?” Sean cries out, panicked about spending the next 300 km in a pee-smelling car. “No,” says Cinder. “Oh, oh, oh. Yes. Oh, yes! Oh, oh,oh! I have to pee! I have to pee right now!” “Hold it, sweetie, hold it!” Sean hollers. “Mama’s going to pull right over. No, what are you doing, not onDeerfoot! Wait until 32nd…” Mama pulls off a wicked lane change, screeches around the corner on the 32nd Avenue exit, and comes to a bumpy stop at ared light. “Oh, oh, oh!” cries Cinder. “Hold it, hold it, hold it!” screams Sean.

“We’re almost there,” say I as I take a sharp right into a parking lot. Sean leaps out of the car before I stop and runs around to get Cinder out. He scoops him out of the car seat and pulls off his pajama pants just as a fountain of pee starts flowing. And back into the car. A quick wave to the building security guard, who watches, mildly amused, or possibly disgusted, as he chews on the end of a cigarette.

6:54 a.m.—Aborted attempt to get coffee and TimBits (“for the peeing, Mama, I need a treat for the peeing!”) at the 32nd Avenue Tim Horton’s. There are two dozen cars lined up at the drive-through, and, with the three-year-old freshly peed and the five-month-old not-yet-screaming, we are not wasting any time waiting in line. We pull back onto Deerfoot.

6:55 a.m.—Three-year-old starts agitating for his TimBit. The commotion starts the five-month-old meowing.

7:00 a.m.—The meowing escalates into shrieking.

7:05 a.m.—The shrieking starts shattering eardrums. “Cinder,” Mama pleads into the back seat. “Can you give Flora a toy to settle her?”

7:06 a.m.—Exalted silence.

“Thank you, Cinder,” I say. “What did you give Flora?”

“My toe to suck, Mama,” Cinder says happily.

“????”

“Don’t worry, Mommy. I remembered. I took off my shoe.”

7:20 a.m.—We pull into the Tim Horton’s at Airdrie, Cinder’s toe no longer inFlora’s mouth (“Flora’s trying to bite my toe, Mommy! I’m taking it back!”) .Sean goes in to get coffee and TimBits. I free Flora from the restrains of thecarseat; she latches onto the nipple while I’m still struggling with the buckles.“Can I go in with Daddy?” Cinder asks. I counter with the “you have no shoes”argument. “But, Mommy,” he says, “I took my shoes off so Flora could suck my toes. We can just put them back on.”

7:25 a.m.—Flora interrupts her boobie-sucking to explode. I commence changing her, in the car, on my lap. “Stinky!” cries Cinder, not being of the camp that maintains breastfed baby poops don’t smell. “Gross!” cry I, as Irealize that the diaper contains only about a quarter of the total poop amount.

7:35 a.m.—Sean returns with the coffee and TimBits. He stares at the dirty diaper and pile of mustard-coloured wipes on his seat. He thinks about saying something, then sighs instead and gathers them up. “Give me the sleeper,” he says, extrapolating from the number of wipes—and the fact that Flora is now wearing new clothes—that we had a blow out. “I’ll go rinse it off,” I say. “I have to wash my hands anyway.” “I wasn’t going to wash it,” he says, appalled. “I was just going to throw it out with the diaper.” “But it’s a brand new sleeper!”I protest.

7:37 a.m. —Having succeeded in transferring some of the poop on the sleeper to my hands, elbows, and clothes, I toss the sleeper into the Tim Horton’s garbage.

7:45 a.m.—We leave Airdrie. “It took us an hour to get to Airdrie?” Sean laments. “The TimBits are all gone,” Cinder announces. Flora falls asleep. “Don’t worry,” I say. “They’ll both sleep the rest of the way.”

7:50 a.m.—I stand knee-deep in water in a ditch beside Highway 2, a barefoot Cinder, pants around his ankles, squirming in my arms. “Okay, baby, pee,” I say. He squirms some more. “Mommy, take off my pants. Quick! Quick! I’m going to poop.” And a row of transport trucks zooms by……

11:45 a.m.—We meander through the extremely slow traffic on GatewayBoulevard past the Edmonton city limits sign. “Remember when this used to be a less-than-three hour drive?” I say wistfully. Cinder, who fell asleep a mere four minutes earlier, snores gently. Flora lets out a loud belch.

A more common losing cup.


I’m on the road and then in the wilds for the next 10-12 days, and generally unplugged. I’ve got a few posts auto-scheduled for your enjoyment, but I won’t be able to respond to comments until I get back.

Did you catch Happy Canada Day, made complicated yesterday? It’s worth reading.