Another one for da' ladies. Sorry, fellas. ;)
So, since I clearly have no shame on TMI Thursdays, I'm gonna come clean about something that happens to me for about two days every month that I can't seem to control or avoid despite the fact that I'm painfully aware that it's happening. You see, sometime in my early thirties I started to experience the delightful hormonal surge known as Pre-Menstrual Syndrome.
I'd never really noticed it during the first, oh, twenty or so years I'd been having monthly periods, but now it's undeniable and unmistakable.
So, 98% of the time, I'm just going along, doing my bevtastic thang, thinking, "La la la! Life is pretty cool. I'm just chillin', smelling the flowers, soaking up the sun. All is well with the world...."
Then, without warning, this happens:
AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!
(Cue Psycho theme)
I wake up one morning with a scowl on my face. I am annoyed, but I don't know why. I'm quick to anger. I'm irrational and insecure. I want to be told I'm loved, but by god if you touch me too much I might just snap your neck, so watch it.
Being self-aware, I always confess to my husband (like he doesn't know already) in an effort to buffer any nastiness I might inadvertently hurl his way. Thank goodness he's an easy-going guy who knows when to lay low.
The other night I was making dinner and had just discovered that our dishwasher, which is just over a year old, wasn't working. I felt myself becoming increasingly irate about the broken piece of Whirlpool garbage, so I was angrily stirring sauce & aggressively shaking salt into it when my husband wandered into the kitchen. Moments before, I had pushed the "Cancel & Drain" button on the dishwasher and had restarted it to see if that would help. After all, my days in video production taught me one rule of electronics that is simple and finite: turning it off and then turning it back on fixes anything.
But it hadn't worked, and that made me even madder. Jim leaned over me and speared a piece of chicken from the sauce I was stirring, which pissed me off for some reason. "Back off, buddy!" My brain screamed, but I kept quiet and started to tell him about the broken dishwasher.
Me: "So the dishwasher isn't working."
Him: "What's wrong with it?"
Me: "It's not starting the wash cycle. It says it is, but it never starts. I pushed the--"
Before I could continue, he reached over and pushed the "Cancel/Drain" button again, and for some reason... that infuriated me. I went from "moderately peeved" to "OMG I WILL RIP OFF THE SKIN FROM YOUR SKULL AND WEAR IT AS A HAT" angry.
Me: "Why did you do that? I was trying to tell you that I just did that! Now it has to drain and start all over! You never listen to me!"
Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I was overreacting. Of course I knew it. But PMS is crazy, yo - it's like Rational Bev gets put in a little cage in my brain for a few days, so she can see what's going on but can't intervene.
Jim did his typical, "Whoa whoa whoa, calm down, Uncle Leo," thing, which normally would make me laugh, but this time all it did was take the wind out of my sails long enough for me to mutter a parting shot about him never shutting up long enough for me to finish a sentence and turn back to my cooking.Sigh.
Thank goodness, it doesn't last long and it goes away as suddenly as it came on. This is why men get it wrong when they say someone is "on the rag" when she is cranky; by the time the period starts, we feel fine. By then, I'm great, aside from dealing with... well, you know. But mood-wise? Even Steven!
It's those two days sometime in the week BEFORE the period... that's what'll git' ya. Oh, and you'll never know exactly which two days, so have fun with that.
Anywho. I'm better now, thanks for asking. All of this PMS talk reminds me of one of my very favorite SNL clips of all time, so here it is:
"Hold on to your F*CKING HATS!"
Ladies, back me up here, please? I'm not the only one... right?