This little kitchen experiment was loads of fun, and didn’t go at all as planned.

But it still worked!

***

A week in food, including a pincho party, lots of leftovers, and the first asparagus.

Have a good weekend, friends! xo

So . . . where are you in perimenopause? 
I went seven months without a period . . . only to get one. It was disappointing because I felt like I had gotten so close to the finish line. Now I’m on month five without one, and I’m holding my breath that I won’t get another one.

When did you notice things were changing? 
My early forties. I got an itchy rash on my face around my nose, so I went to the doctor and discovered I had developed a form of rosacea that is common among “fair skinned women of a certain age.”  Basically, I was told it was menopause related, but because I didn’t yet have any other noticeable peri symptoms, I was told to wait a few years before considering hormone replacement, or other remedies. 

A few years after that, my periods began getting wonky. They started coming every three weeks. Some were extremely light, but then I’d have one that’d be a deluge, as though it was trying to make up for the light ones. 

And then the anxiety kicked in. It’s the worst.

What is it like?
It’s weird, because I’ll feel fine, mentally, but physically I want to crawl out of my skin. I’ve also lost my energy and have brain fog. I have read that living through times of stress (hello, covid!) can leave one’s brain in a fog, as can peri, so who’s really to say why I’ve lost my energy and finally learned to just sit and stare off into the distance? Could be peri, could be covid, could be a combination.

What other symptoms have you had?
I’ve had a garden variety. My allergies are the worst they have ever been. My skin is irritatingly dry in weird places (like my inner thighs just above my knees), and I have all sorts of aches and pains and weird injuries. Also, I’m cranky. I mean, REALLY cranky. I’ve never had a lot of patience, but any that I had has completely flown out the window. Some symptoms, like anxiety (FUN!), sore boobs, restless legs, and, of course, insomnia, have woken me up in the middle of the night and led me to google them to see if they were somehow related to perimenopause (or if I was dying). I stumbled across this list last winter and it was an Eureka moment. Of the 34 symptoms, I had at least 30 of them.

Strangely enough, I’ve yet to really have a proper hot flash, although my internal hot & cold are definitely on the fritz. After years of living quite happily without central air, this past summer I admitted to my husband that I could see the appeal, although I’d rather have a walk-in restaurant freezer so I could just go in and cool down as needed. So far, he’s not entirely sold.

(Update: I finally got some proper hot flashes. They were more like power surges really and they were always coupled with a physical feeling of anxiousness that sort of dissipated into just feeling warm.)

Since you have so many peri symptoms, I’m curious: did you have bad PMS, too?
Prior to peri, my periods were all over the place, and I had some wicked PMS, too. The symptoms would fluctuate — certain months would be more difficult than others. Sometimes I’d get “period belly,” where my stomach was just not happy with anything I put in it. And I’d have insomnia leading up to my periods. By the time I reached peri, I couldn’t sleep at all the night before I got my period. In some ways, peri has actually been a relief (with the exception of the anxiety).

How has perimenopause impacted your body image?  
I was never one who really cared what other people thought about me, and that’s only intensified, which doesn’t bother me, really. I’ve definitely put on weight, but some of that is due to a variety of factors, including Covid (between stress-baking cakes regularly and giving up my gym membership, my waistline was doomed). 

I went through a phase where I felt like I was becoming invisible and irrelevant. At one point, I had an altercation at my office with a rather misogynist male colleague who actually told me I didn’t matter. That sent me spinning. He ended up leaving the company and I got a raise, but it did a number on my ego. When I finally left that job a few months later, I started to realize how deep the damage had been. It really degraded my confidence and my self image.

Emotionally, how have you been feeling over all? Do you still feel like yourself?
I honestly don’t even know anymore. Going through a pandemic with the current national affairs, and then walking out of a job with zero plan, all while becoming an empty nester and going through peri has been a whirlwind of emotions. Some days I don’t know up from down. As I like to say, “It could be The Change, it could be Covid, it could be part of empty nesting — or all three.” I’m just sort of waiting to figure out what I want to do next while avoiding any huge decisions. Some nights what to make for dinner is too much of a decision. (I am happy to report I did quickly find a new job and now I’m working with other women in support of other women, so that’s been a good change!)

How has peri affected your close relationships? 
I’ve talked about peri with my husband (we’ve been together for close to 30 years) from the get-go. I wanted to normalize it, mostly for my daughter’s sake, since women’s health issues are horribly overlooked and understudied. They (my husband and daughter) even listened to a podcast on menopause so they could be better informed. It was one they came across on their own and, sadly, neither one remembers the name of it.

What has surprised you about this experience? 
The mental part. Girlfriends would mention that approaching empty nesting while going through menopause was a lot. We knew of a few couples that got divorced when the woman went through menopause, so there were so flags there. But still, at first I thought my anxiety issues were just another symptom of PMS. 

And then when Kate Spade died in 2018, I happened to glance at a comment section on an article about her, and every few comments was a woman saying “we need to talk about the effect of menopause on women’s mental health.” After that, I became slightly obsessed with reading every article I could find, and I started asking girlfriends, particularly those on the other side of menopause, if they had experienced anxiety as a symptom and many of them said yes! 

I’ve noticed that even reputable medical websites often dismiss anxiety and depression as a symptom of perimenopause, but to me that’s just further proof that women’s issues get swept under the rug. But perimenopause is like puberty: our hormones are going berserk and our bodies (and minds) are changing. Why do we so readily recognize and acknowledge puberty but not perimenopause?

What are your thoughts on hormone replacement therapy?
I know some people that have done it and found it useful, but I haven’t really explored it for myself. My primary care provider retired in the middle of the pandemic and I haven’t replaced them yet, which has thrown a kink into this.

What are you learning about yourself?
Perimenopause is part of the journey, as they say. The fact that it’s coinciding with other major life changes (my job change and empty nesting) makes it all feel like a giant swirl of, well . . . I don’t know what. I’m still figuring it out.

This same time, years previous: strawberry syrup, the coronavirus diaries: week eight, the quotidian (4.29.19), graduated!, besties, back to normal, learning to play, church of the Sunday sofa, Sunday somethings, juxtaposed, shredded wheat bread.

Here’s a trick for keeping the side stitches at bay when running: push out your stomach on the inhale.

It’s hard for me to do — like patting your head while rubbing your stomach — but if I start feeling tight in my belly, I do a half dozen of these stomach-puffing breaths: breathe in, push out my stomach, exhale. I don’t know what it’s doing exactly (stretching muscles that might otherwise cramp?), but it works. I’ve been doing it for months.

Still doing those PT exercises for that hamstring injury (and then a knee injury, sigh).

***

Have you seen The Lost City yet? 

One of my girlfriends saw it with friends and then raved about it, and then my son went to a drive-in theater to see it with a friend and came back blathering on and on about how funny it was and can he please go to the theater right now to see it and, we should all go, Mom, come on. And now, after all that hype, I’m rather looking forward to June when it’s supposed to be released at RedBox. 

***

I’ve always let my shaped loaves of sourdough rise at room temperature for several hours before refrigerating them overnight and baking in the morning, but a few weeks ago I forgot to put the loaves of bread in the fridge before heading to bed. I remembered in the middle of the night and jolted wide awake — what else was I forgetting?! — but it was too late to do anything, so I didn’t bother getting up. I couldn’t sleep, though. I kept picturing my ruined loaves, the dough spilling out of the pans onto the counter. (As my mother says, everything is worse in the middle of the night.) But when I went downstairs in the morning, the loaves were enormous and beautiful. They didn’t sink when I scored them, and in the hot oven, they somehow managed to rise even higher.

Ever since, I’ve been shaping my loaves right before bed and letting them proof overnight at room temp. When the happy accident happened, it was a cold night, so now I replicate that by keeping the loaves in the downstairs bedroom or, if it’s a warm night, in the cheese fridge (though 52 degrees might be a little too cool — I think somewhere around 60 degrees is the ideal temp).

***

This historical hair video is entrancing — and long. I watched half of it, and then I started over again so the kids could watch it with me from the beginning.

I wonder how long it took her to research and plan the video. Not to mention execute it.

***

Do you ever marvel at all the cool people you know? Every now and then something clicks in my brain and I think, Wow, my people are pretty darn incredible. Take, for instance, one of our friends in small group. He’s a photographer and spends all his free time out on the river by their house photographing beavers and foxes and little creatures that none of us normally even notice. His attention to detail, enthusiasm, and extravagant patience are just, I don’t know… him. He’s our friend, so it’s no big deal. But then I came across this video and I was like, Wow, what he’s doing really is quite fascinating.

And here’s the thing: Steve is special, yes, but we’re all doing regular little things that, over time, add up to something that is often both ordinary and incredible — all at the same time. Think about it.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (4.26.21), that fuzzy space, an ordinary break, life can turn on a dime, thank you for holding us, taking off, Sally Fallon’s pancakes, mango banana helados, cauliflower potato soup, drama trauma.