Gentlemen, you may be excused. Don’t blame me if you don’t care for the content of this post. You have been warned by the title and the category and, well, this warning.

You know, I think we already discussed how I have reached that phase of my life where I would cheerfully strangle, well, everybody if they’re around me at the wrong time. And no, I’m not exaggerating. In fact, I would have had words with God Himself if He had the nerve to be around me two weekends ago. And they wouldn’t be kind words, either.

The weekend before last, I was furious with Ukrops because their U-Scan machine a) didn’t accept my putting canvas bags on the bag rack, b) didn’t have an attendant around to make the machine accept my bags and c) stopped allowing me to skip bagging after the sixth item so that I had to pile everything on the bag rack and then put the articles in my bags after finishing up. I was furious. And by “furious” I mean “approaching Hulk-level rage.” I got to my car in the parking lot and was wondering what on earth was the matter with me, and why I was so angry. I was still angry, but it wasn’t making a whole lot of sense for me to be furious with Ukrops over some stupid computer problems. And then it hit me. Raging hormones. Teenage-level rage. The one I described in my last post about this subject.

It is absolutely astonishing to me that I have to relive the worst parts of my teenage years when I am supposed to be leveling off in my mellow fifties. And I am very, very mellow compared to the person I used to be. (Yes, really. No, I’m serious. You should have seen me in my twenties and thirties, when I didn’t bother keeping my anger in check, like, ever.) I mean, I know life isn’t fair. But to feel like I’m thirteen again? That’s just wrong on so many levels. These hormonal fits of rage are unpredictable. But they feel exactly like the ones I had when I was a teenager. And may I say: This sucks. This really, really sucks.

The good news is that my cycle is, indeed, settling down. (You boys can stop reading now. The ones that get all weirded out over women talking about—menstruation.) (EEEEK!) So phew, no 150 days a year for me, and no every three weeks. I’m approaching my old 28-day cycle. The bad news is that I also have unpredictable hot flashes. There are nights where I wake up drenched in sweat every hour. My usual time seems to be early morning, six-thirty-ish. But sometimes four, and sometimes seven. Not a day goes by when I’m not suddenly sweating in a room that was otherwise perfectly comfortable until that moment. I keep looking at the thermometers to make sure the AC is working.

I would say I now feel some kind of sympathy for what my mother went through, but that would be a lie. Really, I don’t care about anyone else’s hot flashes. Only mine. (Or is that the raging hormones speaking again? I can’t tell anymore.) I mean, I know what they’re going through, but it seems far less important than what I’m going through. Yeah, I think the hormonal fluxes are making me a little more selfish, too. I don’t recall being this way.

I have a couple of friends who are watching me keenly, what with their being about to go through the same thing in a few years. So I get to be a guinea pig on top of everything else.

“Golden years” my ass. This isn’t golden. It’s annoying.

I think I have figured out the true source of the Hulk’s rage. It wasn’t exposure to gamma rays. It wasn’t being beaten by his father.

It’s hormones.

Who knew the Hulk is really a woman?

And the reason I know this is because I am currently undergoing hormonal fluxes of Hulk-like proportions, thanks to something called perimenopause, which is apparently nature’s practical joke on women, forcing them to undergo puberty for the second time in their lives. And for me, that’s a rerun of the worst years of my life; years that I never, ever, ever wanted to repeat.

I have never forgotten one particularly stupid incident, when I was unable to find my brush, and refused to leave for school without it, and raged up and down, searching for it, until I finally had to give up and head downstairs for the car or be late for school. For whatever reason, I put my hand on my back pocket. And found the brush. And did not, of course, tell my mother I found it.

That rage has suddenly returned, and for equally stupid reasons. Tonight, I found myself internally raging about something that in no way deserves any kind of emotional investment, let alone anger. And even as I write this post, the rage is going away. And not because I’m writing it. I know the difference between getting something off my chest, and inexplicable anger. Well, except this anger is explicable. It’s effing perimenopause. It’s a rerun of my teen years. It’s a really, really, really bad practical joke on women.

And by the way: Not funny.

And that isn’t even the worst part. For that, you boys can turn away and stop reading. Or you can continue to read after the prompt, in which case my response to anyone who thinks he’s just read TMI and is stupid enough to say anything about it is going to be: I told you not to read it, so shut up.

If I’m feeling polite.

Yeah, that’s the hormones talking. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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In honor of Women’s History Month at work, we were given a talk on women in computing. Part of the presentation was playing this YouTube video of the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper on Late Night with David Letterman. It was extremely entertaining. Letterman seemed a bit unsure of the technical side of Adm. Hopper but he was a gracious host.

Admiral Hopper was known for many things including writing the programming language COBOL. She also found the first computer bug. (Go to the bottom of the page.)

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found”. They put out the word that they had “debugged” the machine, thus introducing the term “debugging a computer program”. In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I just want to say:

Stupid hot flashes.

Now I think I’m getting cold flashes, too.

Can you get cold flashes?

I thought I had chillls this afternoon. Then they went away.

Stupid pre-menopause.

I want my youth back.

Fifty isn’t that old. Dammit.

I just felt like putting this picture up.

I’m thinking he was aptly named. Yep. That’s an Apollo, all right.

Sorry, ladies, he’s took. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy.

This is what Hamas calls “order” and “justice.”

Palestinian civil servants said they came under gunfire from a Hamas-led force as they tried to report for work on Thursday, which Hamas has decreed a day off.

Dozens of employees arrived at their offices in Gaza to find entrance doors chained and Hamas’s Executive Force threatening to arrest them, witnesses said.

No one was hurt in the incident.

“The (Executive Force) fired into the air first and then when employees did not (leave), they fired on the ground, near women employees,” said Finance Ministry worker Mesleh al-Kilani.

“Yes, they fired,” many of his colleagues shouted.

Guidelines for the working week by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s emergency government set Sunday to Thursday as working days with a Friday/Saturday weekend.

I guess in Hamas’ world, “women and children first” means kill the women and children first. And of course, we won’t hear much about this in the mainstream press.

Chatting with Sarah this afternoon, we were discussing the various types of girls that her daughter could grow into, and both were expressing our thankfulness that she shows absolutely no sign of becoming one of those hothouse flower types that lives only to be frail and served by Manly Men.

“Oh, I hate that type,” I said. “Grow a pair. I mean, I know you’re a woman, but grow a pair!”

But that reminded me that I almost never use my status as a woman to get guys to do things for me. Well, except when I really, really don’t want to do something. Like, put on a new pair of windshield wipers. I bought a pair of them on the way home from NJ last summer, and mentioned to the man behind the counter that I wasn’t sure I could remember how to put them on.

“Give me a minute, I’ll do it for you,” he said. Which he did, faster and more easily than I would have done, I’m sure.

Then there was the time I simply did not want to be thrown in a pool. I was in college, at a student government leadership weekend. I was lying by the pool fully clothed, and a few of the guys were throwing people in the pool. When they came to get me, I said, “Uh, guys, I have my period.” They all hemmed and hawed and moved on to the next person, evidently unaware of the invention called “the tampon.” Besides, I wasn’t having my period at the time. I just didn’t want to get thrown in the pool.

I think this one comes under the heading of “Messing with a control freak” rather than “abusing your gender role,” but shortly after I moved in with my father, he was watching me mop the kitchen floor one day and told me I was doing it wrong. After a few words were exchanged, I said, “Show me” and handed him the mop. Then I pretended I didn’t get the difference between his mopping and mine until he’d done about half the kitchen, which, of course, he figured out by then and wasn’t very pleased about.

So. Ever used your gender to get a result from the opposite sex, girls? How about you, guys?

Hey, it’s something for a lazy Friday afternoon. Although it may get me thrown out of the Feminist Bloggers Society. Oh, wait. There is no FBS. Never mind.

Patrick Stewart did play the mutant on life support in Moira MacTaggert’s scenes in X3.

And I recognized him from, er, his nekked chest. The one we saw in the Star Trek film where he climbed up a ladder, bare-chested.

It’s good to know that he wasn’t wearing chest prosthetics, like Ricardo Montalban did in ST2: The Wrath of Khan.

Patrick Stewart is a very sexy man. And that voice… I loves the baritones, I does.

This one’s for the ladies: Britain’s started a new trend: Naked butlers. Well, mostly naked. (My buddy Stretch sent me this in email. I’d read the story but didn’t know there were pictures, so blame Stretch. Or thank him for it.)

Presented, for your amusement: Butlers in the buff.

Yep. That’s all they wear. And oh, the picture is from this link. It’s a gay news site, guys, so don’t blame me if you see something you don’t want to see.

Yeah, I remember the pink houses link. I said it was for women only, and you guys went and clicked, anyway. Hmfph.

I suppose this must be the lead-up to the second annual Blog Nekkid Day. Mike’s Matt’s trying to get me to sign up again. Dude, that’s a work day.

Do you remember this post?

An open letter to a blind man
When I was twelve, you moved into my apartment complex. We kids liked you immediately. You had two kids of your own, and you really seemed to like kids. You took us to do fun stuff, like hang out at Newark Airport and watch the planes from the observation deck. You took us to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Statue of Liberty. You once took us sledding in the trailer of your 18-wheeler, telling some dozen kids to stay absolutely quiet until the truck stopped so that the cops wouldn’t pull you over and arrest you. It’s one of the coolest memories I have: A bunch of kids and their sleds in the back of your truck, shushing each other as you drove it through the snow to the nearby park so we could take advantage of the great sledding hill. You accepted us all, and we were a group of kids from all ages, four to fifteen.

Except.

Except now, every time I think of you, I think of her, and what you did to her. She was fifteen.

She was fifteen, and you were thirty-six. She was fifteen, and you were in a position of power and authority. She was fifteen, and you abused your power and authority. You had sex with her. She was fifteen. Your oldest child was two years younger than she. You were thirty-six. And you were married.

Well, the blind man wrote me again. This time, he’s bragging about how young his current wife is.

Disgusting.

I copied the post into the email I sent him back.

Can I get a restraining order on email? Or should I just put his email address in the killfile?

When I was twelve, you moved into my apartment complex. We kids liked you immediately. You had two kids of your own, and you really seemed to like kids. You took us to do fun stuff, like hang out at Newark Airport and watch the planes from the observation deck. You took us to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Statue of Liberty. You once took us sledding in the trailer of your 18-wheeler, telling some dozen kids to stay absolutely quiet until the truck stopped so that the cops wouldn’t pull you over and arrest you. It’s one of the coolest memories I have: A bunch of kids and their sleds in the back of your truck, shushing each other as you drove it through the snow to the nearby park so we could take advantage of the great sledding hill. You accepted us all, and we were a group of kids from all ages, four to fifteen.

Except.

Except now, every time I think of you, I think of her, and what you did to her. She was fifteen.

She was fifteen, and you were thirty-six. She was fifteen, and you were in a position of power and authority. She was fifteen, and you abused your power and authority. You had sex with her. She was fifteen. Your oldest child was two years younger than she. You were thirty-six. And you were married.

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You know, if women went into season the way certain animal species did, for only a few weeks a year, we wouldn’t have cramps every 21-28 days.

Not to mention all the other stuff that comes with.

The IDF has an all-female reserve unit.

“Over the years, we had quite a few female instructors who served here and constituted the basis in all matters related to preparing troops for a variety of actions,” one officer at the base told Ynet. “We always used to call up some of the females for a short reserve stint, but this was never organized under one roof.”

“The IDF instructors deal with a variety of areas, including shooting practice, mortars, and various aspects related to infantry and armored corps forces,” he said. “We realized we needed to set up an orderly unit so we can always call up the required instructors and not undermine regular training sessions.”

“We certainly see the girls are motivated,” the officer said.

Sigh. Girls. I understand Israel has a sexism problem. Go read the talkbacks to the article, and you’ll see.

There’s also a video. Now if I were working for the IDF PR team, I’d subitle it in English and send it around the web.

I’ll betcha any one of these women could take on David Duke with one hand tied behind her back.

It’s a good thing that we shave our legs and tweeze our eyebrows. Could you imagine what a pain in the ass it would be if those processes had been reversed?

Several weeks ago, no, wait, it was a couple of months ago, I discovered a leaky pipe underneath my sink. The reason I discovered it is because after it had been leaking for quite some time, it rotted out the wood in the cabinet and grew a mold that smelled like something crawled into the pipes and died. But I couldn’t pin down the damned smell for days. I cleaned everything that could possibly make that smell, and finally, one day, thought to check underneath the sink and was overpowered by the source of the odor. So I call it in to Maintenance, schedule a day, and tell them I will stay home for Maintenance Guy so can I be first on the list for that day? No problem, they tell me. Of course I had to call them again that morning, because the people who run maintenance at my complex are not the brightest bulbs on the tree, and of course, they had forgotten to tell their guy I was first on the list.

Anyway, Maintenance Guy turns out to be Contractor Guy, which means he’s about six times as smart and ten times as good as anyone who works for my apartments. He fixes the leak, rips up the wood, puts in a new bottom, and then goes to Home Depot to buy more wood so he can fix the rotted wood framing my picture window because maintenance is too cheap to clean the gutters regularly, and a heavy rain causes an overflow onto my apartment wall (and into my apartment, sometimes). Contractor Guy also cleaned the gutter. I knew him from a previous maintenance call, I forget what for. But it was a hot summer day, so I made sure he had plenty to drink, and we chatted the whole time he was working, which is probably why he decided to replace the wood instead of just seal the windows for me. He did everything but paint the wood beneath the sink.

Which brings us to this week.
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You gotta love medical studies. Because they make no sense if you believe them all.

Newswise — High levels of daily stress appear to result in a lower risk of developing breast cancer for the first time, says a study in this week’s BMJ.

Stress? Got it covered, babe. But wait! What about high blood pressure and heart attacks due to stress?

But high stress may put women at risk of other serious illnesses warn the researchers, a team from Denmark.

Denmark? They studied Danes for stress levels? What kind of stress could they have in Denmark?

The findings follow an eighteen year study of over 6,500 women in Copenhagen. At the start of the study researchers asked the women what levels of stress they experienced routinely in their lives, and classified the results into low, medium and high levels. Stress was defined as tension, nervousness, impatience, anxiety, or sleeplessness. (Stress levels were not measured throughout the study.)

Did you catch that last sentence? Let me repeat it:

Stress levels were not measured throughout the study.

They started studying stress levels, then stopped. And they now say that high stress can lower breast cancer. On crappy data.

Medical studies. Ya gotta love ‘em.

I think I’ll just ignore the ones like this.

I have wanted to have this more prompt for the longest time, because now I can write about things that only women are interested in, and not get grief from the guys about it. Because, gentlemen, you don’t have to read the post. Ergo, the more prompt. Go. Shoo. Seeya.
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