Menopause FUQ.

WARNING: This post is bold. In fact, my husband is pretty much convinced that I'm destroying my blogging career with it. Do I care? Not really. Both my daughters and my own mother burst out laughing viewing these drawings. But anyways, if you’re at all squeamish or easily offended by anthropomorphic lady bits you should stop reading now and click away from this blog post. I’m taking no prisoners.

“MENOPAUSE.”

Yeah, I said it out loud. Seriously, nobody* wants to talk openly about this fact of female life. I grew up, got married and had three children, and was all the while blissfully unaware of anything to do with menopause. I only learned how to spell it properly when I got my first attack of the sweaty-undertits. No one wants to talk and no one wants to listen.
*A group comprised of most people.

Just for fun, I Googled some of the female-exclusive reproductive words to compare interest levels (I included a Google search of "sex" just for laughs.):

9.1 billion mentions of "menopause" on the Internet seems like a lot. But is it? I mean, it has a tad more presence than "menstruation", which kinda surprised me, but is still nowhere near the search results for "pregnancy", or "sex", which is totally off the charts.

I’ll say it again:

“MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE. 
MENO - wait for it ......pause.”

I feel like sharing. Here’s a list of things no one told me about menopause - think of it as a PSA falling kerplunk! into the category of answers to Frequently Unanswered Questions, or FUQ:

1.  First off - Tweezers will be your new best friend. You'll want a magnifying mirror to see the nasty black bristles you've been oblivious to for the past six months since your eyes have been going bye-bye.

2.  When you look in the mirror, you'll sometimes see a man staring back at you. This is especially true if your teen-aged daughters steal borrow your tweezers. Weirdly, make-up tends to enhance the masculine effect. It’s kind of a drag.

3.  You will need three different bra sizes in one month. Randomly undulating breasts are fun! Try to enjoy it.

You're looking at my star qualities aren't you.

4.  My Hot Flashes are probably contributing to Global Warming. I'm sorry about that. If only there was a Think Tank clever enough to dream up a way to harness this sustainable energy resource...

5.  Night sweats can totally happen during the day. (Note the sweaty- undertits.)

6.  Things that you used to be able to set your clock by, suddenly go haywire. And just when you think you're in the clear because it's been months and months since you've had to tear off a strip, your period will come raging back into your knickers like an old acquaintance that you never liked very much cornering you at a cocktail party.

Wear white at your own risk and above all, avoid swimming in shark infested waters.

7.  Oh the mood swings! Oscillating between crying jags and vicious snarls is exhausting. Too bad those hot flashes are keeping you awake at night.

See what I did there?

SCROLL NO FURTHER IF DIZZY, NAUSEOUS OR UNABLE TO MAKE A FIST.

Still here? Well alrighty then, don't say I didn't warn you.

8.  Vaginal dryness happens to OTHER women. Nobody wants to admit they have it because our plump, juicy vagina is tied directly to our core sexuality. But one day you'll be innocently going about your business when suddenly there'll be a scratching sensation. The closest thing I can liken it to is having sand in your bathing suit and you'll wonder how on earth it got there.

Life is a beach, and then you get sandy shorts. THANKS A LOT, MENOPAUSE.

Sex can be ouchy! You might be well and truly turned on but it still feels dry and it hurts. Some days it feels like if your vagina had a face it might look like this.

But don't freak out - it doesn't have a face.

Actually, I looked "vaginal dryness" up on a reputable site, and guess what?! The vagina is not necessarily dry; it could just be that the tissues are all thin and shriveled due to a decrease in estrogen and progesterone. So yaaaaaay.

Also known as "Reasons to die young".

9.  You will lose your memory. You will even lose the memory of your memory.

10.  What was the question again? I'm sorry I can't hear you above the wailing wind whistling through my empty cranial cavity.

11.  Somehow, through this tornado of bleck and uncertainty, The Huz still finds me hawt. Hurrah! I will keep him.

Yay! Someone loves me, vadryna and all!

On the bright side, I've only got another five to ten years of this menopausal crap. I wonder what's supposed to happen after that...?

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Exercise & Bras.

I've been making a few incremental changes in my life lately. Most of them are small things, like quitting drinking, spending time with loved ones, and brushing my teeth before bed. But they also include exercise. I am smart.

So today I'm going to talk to you about exercise and bras (my favourite fashion item). Have a look at the animated GIF here:

When I go running I wear a regular bra with a sports bra on top. Even so, I noticed that when I run around the park my bra straps fall down. I have to interrupt my rhythm to push them back up but they just fall down again. This is so frikkin' annoying it makes me want to give up! The health benefits of exercise are surely outweighed by the stress of having to return those dumb bra straps to my shoulders over and over. Right?

Anyways I was thinking, maybe I could do some kind of exercise that builds up my shoulder muscles. The muscle bulges would keep my bra straps from falling down again.

OK geniuses, what kind of exercise do I need to do to achieve this goal?

Sometimes I do a mini-workout first thing in the morning. It can be tempting to roll out of bed and do jumping jacks in my pyjamas before I'm completely awake.

It never occurred to me that my un-tethered gazongas might render me unconscious with their wild swinging.

Jumping-jack TKO.

It was a big mistake and I won't be doing that again.

Next time I'll just put my bra on, on top of my jammies.

Exercise is good for you!

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The Animated Mammogram.

WARNING: Squished boobies.

In animation, we have this thing called “conservation of volume”. This means that while an object can change shape, it’s volume should be respected (unless it is moving towards or away from the camera). In the classic case of the bouncing ball, for example, the effects of gravity on the ball affect its shape as it travels, but the size of the ball remains the same.

This animation tidbit was running through my head as I was about to have a mammogram.

A kindly Alien being named Sylvie placed one of my breasts on the slab.

She told me not to move, not even to breathe...what is it with these Alien probes? You hafta hold perfectly still for all of them?

Then she lowered the presser thingie down on top of it.

Lower…

and lower…

and lower.

I thought, "surely she's going to stop right about now?" But no, she just kept lowering the gizmo and squeezing the living fark out of my girl.

I literally thought my tit would split.

Amazingly, they bounced back to their usual shape afterward. I hadn't lost any volume either. Thank goodness for good bras!



I'm rather fond of my boobs and I'd like to make sure they're ok. What do you all think about mammograms?

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#bewbLUV - A message of love and hope.

The #bewbluv hashtag was started on Twitter by the well loved Brandie McCallum AKA @lttlewys - who bravely underwent surgery for breast cancer this morning. Her story is here on her blog.

But it has become so much more than just a hashtag - it's a message of love, hope and friendship, fueled by the power of social media. You may have noticed some avatars popping up with Venus de Milo in the Twitterverse and a #bewbluv Twibbon as well. Feel free to grab them and use them to tweet the hashtag for breast cancer awareness and support.

These days  it seems that cancer is all around us. One thing is clear - we need each other.

The Internet has got your back Brandie!

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My BOOBS.

This is the story of a lifetime. The story of my boobs.

When I was a toddler, I went topless.
I was young, and unfettered by preconceived notions about boobs.

When I was teenager, I didn't want anyone to know I had boobs. I was deeply embarrassed by their existence.

But then, one morning I woke up and I was eighteen and lovely. I knew that my boobs had some kind of awesome power. People were being hypnotized by them, left, right and center.

The boob-powers went wild for a while, but eventually they settled down. When I married, my boobs seemed to swell with love.

The love in my boobs grew even more with pregnancy.

And when my babies were born, I discovered that bras went all the way up to H.

But then, my babies sucked away my boobs! This was actually cool, because people would finally look at my face when I spoke. My professional life flourished.



These days, thanks to she-who-shall-not-be-named MENOPAUSE, my boobs are up and down. I had a little scare a couple years ago, but everything turned out ok....anyways, I try to take care of them and check them every now and again. My husband helps me with that sometimes.

I wonder what the future holds for my boobs...

Tell me about your boobs.

You have the opportunity to make someone else smile by sharing.

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