You know how some women glide from one stage of life to the next effortlessly because their hormone changes are perfectly calculated and naturally administered with little disruption bringing only the good aspects of what is yet to be with none of the suffering?

Yeah, me neither.  And if you're such a woman be grateful and I'm happy for you, but if you leave comments to that effect on this post I'll leave mean memes on your status.  Fair warning.

My hormones never bothered to calibrate themselves in any way....my body doesn't shift from one gear to the next as a car with an automatic transmission...mine slams into new gears with a force that will bounce your head off the windshield and leave bloody marks - stripping the gears every time.  

So as if PMS (PMDD if I were to be honest) wasn't bad enough guess what?  Let's go 0-160 into peri-fuckmylifesideways in a week.  AND keep the mittelschmerz because why the hell would I not still ovulate while my body is trying to spontaneously combust at random intervals?  Because a couple years after a partial hysterectomy ovulating is certainly a productive thing for my body to spend time on.  My body is an idiot.

How do I know this delightful season of life is upon me, without a uterus to send the usual signals?   Let's count the ways...

In the last week I've:

1. Been absolutely 100% convinced I told @Curious and @Destiny that I'd be AWOL until yesterday or today because of work shitting the bed - but I didn't.  I meant to, I intended to, and with my newly super faulty memory I forgot to actually do it - while remembering as if I had.  
2. Several hot flashes which are no joke - holy shit.  I thought it would be warm, like feeling as if one had a fever.  Nope.  I now have a change of clothes, dry shampoo, and cleansing cloths at work in case I need to recover again.  I've never been prone to sweating, but I am apparently now prone to randomly turning into a really gross cranky fountain.
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3. I can typically sleep through a murder - not that I've ever tested that.  No matter what was going on in my life, I could sleep.  Last 2 months or so having a lot of trouble which I now know is a precursor to peri-iminabsolutehell insomnia.  I read somewhere that women in this season of life (if it's a season it's winter in Chicago - the suck ass season) slightly rouse an average of once every 8 minutes - not enough to register being awake but enough to make sure there is little restorative REM sleep to be had.  In addition to the min 4x a night I actually wake up, swear at the clock, and lay there too tired to read but too awake to sleep...
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   1. I've confirmed sleep deprivation is a real thing and it fucks with your head on so many levels it's impossible to quantify.  Good thing I have a stressful job where I think for a living so this doesn't affect my work life at all.  Cannot roll my eyes harder.
5. Did I already mention my memory going to shit?  Oh yeah, item 1.  See,this is why I write things down.  I forgot to eat twice this week.  Monday I had a bagel for breakfast and forgot to eat dinner...Tuesday I forgot to eat at all except for a shameful amount of mini Hershey Special Dark.  Like more than 7 less than 100.  I have access to food - I'm allowed by both my employer and my family to partake of nourishment.  I just forgot.  But I am craving chocolate to a degree that I may need some kind of intervention.
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6. Did someone mention mood swings?  If you're wondering how I can tell since I'm not exactly Pollyanna on a good day, I would tell you to STFU and then agree you had a point.  And say...whatever baseline for bitchiness I've set (and it's been high) I'm clearing it in street shoes now.  Some examples:
   1. Four facts you need to understand the depth of the crazy:  (1) I love my parents. (2) Until last weekend I never doubted that they had loved me unconditionally (3) My parents have been dead for over 22 years. (4) Neither are immortal beings so I haven't spoken to them since their deaths. Out of nowhere I became consumed with rage at both of them for a conversation that happened decades ago, and was so furious at the two of them for dying before I realized how much I hate them and denying me the chance to never speak to them again.  Beyond angry that my mother let me name my daughter after her knowing she never loved me.  This was literally out of nowhere because it wasn't something I had even thought about in a long time - just sprang to mind in fully formed fury as I was getting some orange juice.  For about 10 minutes...and then a puddle of tears and anguish on the couch for a good half hour.  Sorry.  Confused.  Broken.  Then I was hungry and surprisingly calm.  
      1. Did you know that this is a thing that happens to some women?  Anger and emotional upheaval over issues from the long distant past?  That little secret is fun as fuck all - apparently due to oxytocin getting out of whack.
      2. Did you know that when your husbands response to the above melt down is "I think you should try not to think about it if it's going to upset you." won't end well for him?  Because it didn't.  (it's okay - he redeemed himself.  Mr. Buffy moved faster than I'd have thought possible to get me Baskin-Robbins Rocky Road when I said it might make me feel better.  He's an enabler so someone else will have to call A&E for my intervention.
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1. I burst into tears at work thinking about the death of a cat.  It was a cat from a YouTube series I really enjoy and it was sad...but it wasn't new information nor was it my cat.  Fortunately I got to the ladies room to have my ugly cry for about 2 minutes.  You'd have thought someone just called to tell me one of my family members had just died.  Then I was fine albeit befuddled at how extreme my reaction was.  And also angry at this added layer of complexity on top of an already aggravating job.
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2. More anger at Mom, this time in the bathroom mirror as I yelled at her in my head for giving me all the bad genes on purpose and contemplating plastic surgery or colored contacts; not because I thought it would improve my looks but because I have my mother's eyes so it felt like she was looking at me and that was pissing me off.
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3. A giant zit - the likes of which I'd never seen in all my 40+ years on this planet.  Because that's necessary, mother nature.  
4. Weird lapses of brain activity.  I needed to revise some code I had written...nbd should have taken 10 minutes tops.  I stared at it for 15 trying to understand the math.  I knew I once understood it because I WROTE IT.  This was my code / my formulas embedded within.  Had a very real fear of early onset dementia, despite knowing this is one of the symptoms of both my hormones being at war with my brain and serious sleep deprivation.  Went to the bathroom to ...you guessed it...cry over it and when I got back to my desk everything made sense and I pushed out the new revision in 5 minutes.  
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5. Multiple occasions of bursting into tears upon seeing the kids, hugging them, and telling them how they deserved so much better and I'm so lucky to have them because they are so wonderful.  My youngest is still in shock at my reaction to seeing his invisalign trays laying on the bathroom sink.  The usual reaction is to sigh/eyeroll/tell him to put them in their trays.  He wasn't prepared for the sob fest of how much I'll miss seeing his trays laying around because once his teeth are finished he won't be my little baby anymore.  
   1. Same reaction to the toast crumbs he left on the counter...I'm getting a lot of "you'll miss this when I'm gone" when I'm not in a mood swing and tell him to pick up after himself.  Smartass.
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Upside?  Somehow know Stevie Nicks went through this is making me feel better.  I don't know why, but we're not going to question it.

I know it's probably unseemly to discuss this publicly and I also know that the number sequence above is fucked up and ...I don't care about either of those things right now.