I Put the Mess in PMS

“How is your day, ma’am?” When the dude at the fast food counter asked me this question the other day, the first thought that came into my mind was, “Well, it began with a mammogram and hasn’t really gotten much better.”

Today the grocery store clerk asked me a similar question, and not surprisingly I had still not rehearsed a socially acceptable response. “I have this uncomfortable sensation kind of in the middle of my chest, that is the emotional equivalent of having a moderately overweight hairy man standing on me. The pressure feels like my head will burst apart at the temples--or maybe implode, which doesn’t actually make sense but describes it more accurately. And right now I really, really need to vomit tears.”

Instead I lied; a nice, safe, uncomplicated lie. "I'm great, thanks." No one is made to feel awkward. No one needs to summon feigned and fabricated sympathy. But I felt morally compromised in my equivocation. Still, I smiled at the grocery store clerk, and I lied. At least I think it was a smile because I forced my lips to curl back over my teeth. Judging by the startled look on the bag boy’s face, however, I may not have quite hit the mark.

Today’s tsunami of hormones left me feeling self-destructive, too. Rather than simply wallow in my misery, I’d throw myself in head first.  When the hormones hit this morning, I could have chosen to suck down the pint of chocolate brownie gelato in the freezer-- no one else was home to stop me, to question me, or even to look at me condescendingly. Instead I deliberately turned my back on sweet and comforting frozen goodness, and ate a bagel chip. When I got back into the car after shopping, I willfully did not put on the radio to cheer myself up with some tunes. Instead I allowed the grocery store muzak to continue its incessant loop in my brain (“Sad eyes, turn the other way. I don’t wanna see you cry [cry, cry, cry]. Sad eyes, you knew there’d come a day [hey-ey] when we would have to say good-bye….”) until it dug a pit in my brain that would take years of intense psychotherapy to heal. When the dryer signal went off for about the 20th time, I just stood in the laundry room doorway and absorbed it, letting its high-pitched chirrup pierce my brain...like a bunch of very sharp objects. And just to rub a little dirt in my mood, I later switched on NPR, hoping to find a replay of the piece about what life might be like after humans become extinct and rats take over the world (which they played twice today already), or the program about the controversial topic of fragrance-free workplace policies. However, had I really been intent on harming myself, I would have simply bought that box of donuts across from the dairy aisle. Raised glazed, jelly-filled, or sprinkled--it wouldn’t matter. The only things more nauseating are Circus Peanuts. Or pork rinds. Or Bazooka bubblegum.

A friend of mine recently suggested that we start a support group called hormones anonymous. I suggested a 12-Step program: Steps 1-11 would involve the indiscriminate and wanton consumption of chocolate; Step 12 would involve activities which one might find on personal injury attorneys’ Top 5 lists. Instead I sit here writing. Perhaps writing will make me feel better. But if it does, I can always dip into some banana flavored marshmallow candy and listen to Robert John. And then lie about it all.

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN

It feels like there is something going on in the cosmos lately (although upon reflection there could quite conceivably be more than one thing going on in the cosmos lately). But I am referring to a cosmic condemnation kind of thing. Yesterday for example, I rode around a small vacation resort in a golf cart with a sweet little octogenarian, who seemed to have absolutely no sense whatsoever for the weight of her foot on the accelerator. As we jerked our way around the resort, I wondered if this was somehow divine recompense for an incident which occurred many years ago when I was learning to drive.  A college-aged friend of mine was more or less patiently trying to teaching me how to drive stick shift in her Mazda. After several minutes of lurching down the streets of my neighborhood, looking unquestionably sloshed, schnockered, and three sheets to the wind, and by the way, feeling completely humiliated, I simply opened the door of the car, after killing the engine for the umpteenth time, got out, and fecklessly, if not recklessly, sauntered back down the street to my house. I’m pretty sure I did not even close the door. My friend jumped out and started yelling at me, “What the heck are you doing?!? Get back here! You can’t just leave a car in the middle of the road!” But I did. And although at the time, I avoided any actual repercussions, this morning the cosmos spoke. And I did my penance--with Myrtle.

I am on my way to a “New Parent” orientation at my daughter’s new school. (I’m not entirely sure what to expect at a “new parent” orientation, but it sounds like something that would have come in handy 26 years ago, when Ken and I were trying to figure out how to sponge bathe a newborn without damaging that little brown twiggy thingy stuck to his belly button.)  Despite having left early enough to arrive five minutes early, I choose the wrong route--curse you Google Maps-- which causes me to sit through three changes of lights in the after school pick up traffic for another nearby school. Fine. I have lost five minutes, but I should still be there right on time by ducking in behind the speedy drivers on the freeway. However, I have not driven this route frequently nor recently enough to be confident of the directions, so I am still naively and inadvisedly relying on Google Maps. As I zip  down the road, listening to a riveting report on NPR about the variety of hums and thrums made by leafhopper insects, I miss a critical direction stealthily whispered by Google Maps. Suddenly aware of an upcoming fork in the road, I have no time to think, but a consequential choice to make: northbound or southbound turnpike? Milliseconds before Google Maps repeats the specific direction at the fork, I choose poorly. But instead of a swift, albeit inopportune, time-lapse sequence wherein I age a few hundred years and then turn into a pile of bones and ashes which mysteriously and ominously blow away, stage right, I am consigned the agonizing, arduous, and awful fate of driving northbound on Florida’s turnpike.  I am now unavoidably cursed to arrive at the parents’ meeting unpunctually.

My doom thus sealed, I invest several minutes, and far too much emotional energy, yelling at Google Maps for not notifying me sooner. And when I am completely spent-- emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually, grammatically, and vocabularily --in the now quiet of my silver tomb of tardiness, I realize that maybe it is not truly Google Maps’ fault at all. Maybe, as insanely improbable as this might sound, it is my own fault. From somewhere in the celestial realms, really large words come to my mind. MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN: I have been weighed in the heavenly scales and have been found wanting. This, too, is punishment...for something. Scenes of myself running dozens of yellow lights, neglecting to use my turn signal just because there were no other cars on the road, and willfully ignoring my “time to change your oil” stickers-- for an extra 6,000 miles or so-- flash before my eyes. How could I have ever been sufficiently deluded to think that I could with impunity perpetrate such egregious atrocities?

Speaking of punishment, let’s talk for just a minute about Nebraska and Kansas, which are technically the same thing; North and South Boring-- despite what you might have been led to believe upon viewing billboards along I-70 for the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or  World’s Largest Prairie Dog Village. For the record, I am reasonably confident that all maps of the United States are incorrect and that these two states alone actually take up about 70-74% of the country. Somehow I feel that reparations, or at least redress and remuneration, are in order for all of us who have suffered significant brain atrophy from driving through these states. But I don't even know how to end this blog, let alone how to lodge a formal complaint about the misleading nature of U.S maps or how to turn that into personal financial gain.