I was out the door by 6:30 yesterday morning to get an in-depth analysis of how I’m fucked up. I already knew my internal clock was jammed. I didn’t need the confirmation when I showed up at the specimen collection laboratory five minutes before opening — or so I thought — when I realized it was Sunday. They weren’t open for another 1445 minutes.
I suspect my body might’ve gotten hasty about its descent into middle age and might be experiencing a soft launch into menopause: perimenopause. One of the symptoms of perimenopause is mood swings. I’d been dealing with those monthly for the past 30 years. In fact, aren’t mood swings the mortal coil of womanhood?
Additionally, which specific moods fall under this symptom? Since I’m currently taking a break from work, I generally feel upbeat, with my moments of anger mostly directed at dangerous drivers. It’s the other symptoms that have me wondering if I’ve started perimenopause earlier than expected.
My self-directed schedule allows me the freedom to sleep in. In theory, this should help me recover from nights like last week’s Hell of the South Island ride, except that my body refuses to get up later than 7am these days. And that’s if I’m lucky. Typically, I wake up two, three, or four times a night, sometimes with my sweaty t-shirt clinging to my body. Then once it’s 5am, my body goes, “Fuck, no, you are not going back to sleep this time.” So, I get out of bed, peel off my damp t-shirt, put on a fresh one, and make myself some toast.
Even if perimenopause isn’t the culprit, I hope there is a cream for my sleeping problems. Or a pill. I’d even consider rubbing a dollop of mellified men on my inner thighs if it meant I could get restful sleep again. I listed my symptoms to a doctor last Friday, who, rather than default to the Victorian times diagnosis of hysteria, printed off a blood work requisition for me to take to a lab, during opening hours, of course.
Whether I’m well-rested or not, my enthusiasm for adventure remains strong. On Friday night, I hosted Alexa and Mary for an evening of weaving and grieving. This high-octane activity had me spin yarn into what could best be described as a granny spiderweb when the assignment was to crochet a granny square.
It was my Jack Skellington makes-a-paper-snowflake moment.
Once I realized my granny square wasn’t so square, I decided to keep trying, hoping to develop muscle memory. Until I can hook without looking, that mushroom toddler project will have to remain on the shelf, until the shelf collapses under the weight of all my unfinished projects.
Sunday was a further exercise in socializing. I met up with Matt and Jenna at their place, where I was reunited with a bunch of the beverages Matt and I had purchased earlier in the week. The three of us rode out to Jordie Lunn bike park, where the final CX race of the year was happening, with my new crocheting coach, Mary, as one of the participants. The beverages we’d toted there were to be divided into disposable shot glasses for the racers. We were only mildly diabolical in our beverage selection: nothing was gross, merely surprising.
Out of curiosity, we sampled all the drinks which we’d bought from an Asian supermarket and found them all to be pleasant. Even the sour plum iced tea was quite good despite having a slightly medicinal finish. We’d combined forces with another group of people doing handups. This group’s offerings included beer, Fireball, and soy milk.
According to Matt, a racer, also named Matt, voiced his appreciation for the shot of aloe vera drink. One of the racers who grabbed a handup from me looked into their cup, grimaced, and threw it out in disgust upon discovering glutinous chia seeds floating in red liquid. Their loss: it was a delicious pomegranate chia seed drink.
I tried several handup techniques: the follow-through vs the static offering; gripping the cup from the bottom vs the top; smiling with intense eye contact vs smiling with light eye contact. Ted, from the other group, seemed to be having good success, so I tried emulating his methods, which included holding the cups at the bottom with pinched fingers. Matt made fun of me for changing up my technique, possibly because my nail extensions lent a daintier air to my presentation of these mini thirst quenchers.
Not every rider had the skill to get the cup’s content from the hand of one of us wonderful volunteers into their mouths. I received a faceful of Korean cream soda when a rider fumbled their cup. Surely, that left me feeling more refreshed than the racer. They had a very tough course to do repeated laps of, and Ted’s soy milk handups weren’t doing them any favours.
I was inspired by the tenacity of the racers; most of them appeared to be a strange mix of happy and miserable. There was an especially steep, muddy hill on the course that required the racers to carry their bikes up. If anybody slipped on their butt and slid back down that hill, I did not see it. Or, it did not happen, because I wasn’t one of the participants. I’ve long decided cyclocross is not for me, as it is an outdoor activity that takes place during the wet and cold months of the year. The potential for getting hurt is also too high for my liking. And now, it doesn’t even matter because the season’s over. Those thirsty dorks are going to have to find another sport to suffer through spiritedly. I suggest ice climbing.
The book I am reading involves some of that. The Terror is a fictionalized account of Franklin’s lost expedition, incorporating supernatural themes. The sample hooked me, but so far I haven’t fully warmed up to the story. The narrative shifts back and forth in time between chapters, which I didn’t realize until the fourth or fifth chapter, when one of the characters who had died suddenly reappeared alive. Not to spoil the story, which I am far from finishing, but this character goes back to being dead in the later chapters.
Not skilled or tough enough for cyclocross, nor sharp enough for book clubs.
squaremeat.com 