Decorated

We did the Christmas decorating this weekend, and I don’t know if it’s age finally catching up with both of us, post-two time covid infection exhaustion or menopause for me, but it knocked both of us out and I hate to admit it but I didn’t enjoy it at all. I just wanted to be done, but between the tree buying and decorating, light hanging and living room decorating, it pretty much took the entire day, and halfway through I was officially done. I did, however, enjoy that the kids seemed to get a kick out of looking at our old familiar ornaments and hanging them, and that was delightful. I do have some Christmas-loving kids, and I’m here for it. The H badly injured his knee putting lights on the house and has been stressed out and limping around all week, worrying about work and not letting it heal. 

I had an odd weekend of emotional upsets that I’m still not recovered from. Sunday I had a very stressful gig in which we played for a fellow dancer’s memorial service, and there were several people there that I can’t stand who normally I can avoid, but, you know, funerals, where everyone comes out whether you want to see them or not. I just hid backstage when I wasn’t singing, so I couldn’t socialize or really be present, and I felt guilty about that, but I also knew the people I didn’t want to deal with would 100% approach me if I made myself available (one finally just barged backstage “to say hello”). So it was basically four hours of torture. Then - and this sounds petty, but hear me out - the goth festival I’ve been waiting to hear an announcement for suddenly put up next year’s lineup, and…apparently it’s now a lame 80s Top 40 festival, because that’s where the money is. I was, and am, absolutely gutted. I feel like I was enjoying a seance in a cemetery and then some cheerleaders showed up. I posted my dismay on the festival’s group (I wasn’t alone in this), got relentlessly attacked and laughed at until I had to block some guy and leave, and then spent the rest of the night trying to calm the adrenaline surging through my body. Once again, the jocks and cheerleaders ruin everything. 

I also am starting to feel like, as much as I’m enjoying the work and feel like I’m doing something important, doing this podcast is kind of fucking with my mental health. It’s digging up a lot of ugly memories and making me feel like a broken person, which I’m not. I think I’m going to just do a couple more interviews this month - one today, one in a couple of weeks - and give myself a break for the holidays. I need to get some distance from it. Then regroup in January and start up again until I’ve made my way through all the people that wanted to talk to me, which could only be a few more at this point. But since I can schedule episodes for whenever, I definitely have enough to fill up December. Then I may find I’m done with the whole project. We’ll see. 

My period is now nearly three weeks late. I’ve been through this before during this year, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone quite this long. I feel the same sense of uncertainty that I had as a young girl, waiting for it to appear - when will I get it? What if I never get it? What if it stains my clothes and everyone laughs at me (I saw Carrie too many times)? Now I have similar but opppsite questions - when will I get it? What if I never get it again? What if it stains my clothes and everyone laughs at me? I always secretly hope my period will just stop appearing and I won’t have any other symptoms - a friend had this experience - but considering how much my mother suffered and how my sister dealt with hot flashes for years, this scenario is fairly unlikely. So for now I just play the waiting game. My prediction is I will get it sometime in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll continue to have irregular periods for a few more months or a year still. We shall see. Other than rapidly gaining weight and a fair amount of bloating and cramping, I feel fine. Exhausted all the time, but fine. Welcome to life in your 50s.