Menopause FUQ.

WARNING: This post is bold. In fact, my husband is pretty much convinced that I'm destroying my blogging career with it. Do I care? Not really. Both my daughters and my own mother burst out laughing viewing these drawings. But anyways, if you’re at all squeamish or easily offended by anthropomorphic lady bits you should stop reading now and click away from this blog post. I’m taking no prisoners.

“MENOPAUSE.”

Yeah, I said it out loud. Seriously, nobody* wants to talk openly about this fact of female life. I grew up, got married and had three children, and was all the while blissfully unaware of anything to do with menopause. I only learned how to spell it properly when I got my first attack of the sweaty-undertits. No one wants to talk and no one wants to listen.
*A group comprised of most people.

Just for fun, I Googled some of the female-exclusive reproductive words to compare interest levels (I included a Google search of "sex" just for laughs.):

9.1 billion mentions of "menopause" on the Internet seems like a lot. But is it? I mean, it has a tad more presence than "menstruation", which kinda surprised me, but is still nowhere near the search results for "pregnancy", or "sex", which is totally off the charts.

I’ll say it again:

“MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE, MENOPAUSE. 
MENO - wait for it ......pause.”

I feel like sharing. Here’s a list of things no one told me about menopause - think of it as a PSA falling kerplunk! into the category of answers to Frequently Unanswered Questions, or FUQ:

1.  First off - Tweezers will be your new best friend. You'll want a magnifying mirror to see the nasty black bristles you've been oblivious to for the past six months since your eyes have been going bye-bye.

2.  When you look in the mirror, you'll sometimes see a man staring back at you. This is especially true if your teen-aged daughters steal borrow your tweezers. Weirdly, make-up tends to enhance the masculine effect. It’s kind of a drag.

3.  You will need three different bra sizes in one month. Randomly undulating breasts are fun! Try to enjoy it.

You're looking at my star qualities aren't you.

4.  My Hot Flashes are probably contributing to Global Warming. I'm sorry about that. If only there was a Think Tank clever enough to dream up a way to harness this sustainable energy resource...

5.  Night sweats can totally happen during the day. (Note the sweaty- undertits.)

6.  Things that you used to be able to set your clock by, suddenly go haywire. And just when you think you're in the clear because it's been months and months since you've had to tear off a strip, your period will come raging back into your knickers like an old acquaintance that you never liked very much cornering you at a cocktail party.

Wear white at your own risk and above all, avoid swimming in shark infested waters.

7.  Oh the mood swings! Oscillating between crying jags and vicious snarls is exhausting. Too bad those hot flashes are keeping you awake at night.

See what I did there?

SCROLL NO FURTHER IF DIZZY, NAUSEOUS OR UNABLE TO MAKE A FIST.

Still here? Well alrighty then, don't say I didn't warn you.

8.  Vaginal dryness happens to OTHER women. Nobody wants to admit they have it because our plump, juicy vagina is tied directly to our core sexuality. But one day you'll be innocently going about your business when suddenly there'll be a scratching sensation. The closest thing I can liken it to is having sand in your bathing suit and you'll wonder how on earth it got there.

Life is a beach, and then you get sandy shorts. THANKS A LOT, MENOPAUSE.

Sex can be ouchy! You might be well and truly turned on but it still feels dry and it hurts. Some days it feels like if your vagina had a face it might look like this.

But don't freak out - it doesn't have a face.

Actually, I looked "vaginal dryness" up on a reputable site, and guess what?! The vagina is not necessarily dry; it could just be that the tissues are all thin and shriveled due to a decrease in estrogen and progesterone. So yaaaaaay.

Also known as "Reasons to die young".

9.  You will lose your memory. You will even lose the memory of your memory.

10.  What was the question again? I'm sorry I can't hear you above the wailing wind whistling through my empty cranial cavity.

11.  Somehow, through this tornado of bleck and uncertainty, The Huz still finds me hawt. Hurrah! I will keep him.

Yay! Someone loves me, vadryna and all!

On the bright side, I've only got another five to ten years of this menopausal crap. I wonder what's supposed to happen after that...?

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Exercise & Bras.

I've been making a few incremental changes in my life lately. Most of them are small things, like quitting drinking, spending time with loved ones, and brushing my teeth before bed. But they also include exercise. I am smart.

So today I'm going to talk to you about exercise and bras (my favourite fashion item). Have a look at the animated GIF here:

When I go running I wear a regular bra with a sports bra on top. Even so, I noticed that when I run around the park my bra straps fall down. I have to interrupt my rhythm to push them back up but they just fall down again. This is so frikkin' annoying it makes me want to give up! The health benefits of exercise are surely outweighed by the stress of having to return those dumb bra straps to my shoulders over and over. Right?

Anyways I was thinking, maybe I could do some kind of exercise that builds up my shoulder muscles. The muscle bulges would keep my bra straps from falling down again.

OK geniuses, what kind of exercise do I need to do to achieve this goal?

Sometimes I do a mini-workout first thing in the morning. It can be tempting to roll out of bed and do jumping jacks in my pyjamas before I'm completely awake.

It never occurred to me that my un-tethered gazongas might render me unconscious with their wild swinging.

Jumping-jack TKO.

It was a big mistake and I won't be doing that again.

Next time I'll just put my bra on, on top of my jammies.

Exercise is good for you!

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New baby.

I miss having a new baby. Part of surfing midlife is leaving all that behind, I guess, but I still remember how much fun it was.

My nose was always buried in them, I was always breathing them in, always gazing at them, as if I could somehow freeze time and live in a perfect moment forever. I felt like I could never get enough of them.

What were your most precious moments with your new baby?

These drawings first appeared on World Moms Blog.

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Book cover sneak-peek! (and Goodreads Giveaway)

Where was I? Oh right, so my next book, Motherhood, is set to launch on April 28th. JUST IN TIME FOR MOTHERS DAY.

"This is the universal story of motherhood, from the gentle moment of birth to the inevitable letting go. In the playful and poignant simplicity that is her signature style, JC Little has captured the tender bond between mother and child. A timeless and wordless picture-book for mothers, sons and daughters of all ages."

Some of you might remember the bare bones of the story as blogpost. I want to bring it to a wider audience, so I fleshed it out into a book with completely new drawings.

1. This book is wordless. Pictures only. And if you get the Kindle version, the page flips animate. So it's like watching a little film. Feel free to hum a little soundtrack to yourself as you read.


2. It's for all ages. It's the kind of book that might be given by anyone experiencing mother-appreciation sentiments. Sons and daughters can give it to their moms. Moms can give it to their sons and daughters to help foster an understanding of the experience of motherhood. I'd want to give it to a new or expectant mom, a teen or young adult leaving home for the first time...and children who like to make up the words to the story themselves. I loved doing that when I was small.

NB: some teenagers react to this book by sobbing on the sofa and needing cuddles.


3. Did I mention that this book will make a perfect Mothers Day present? It'll be available as a paperback. Think of it as a really, really special card. I even included a clear page at the beginning for you to write or draw a little note (I am nice).


4. This is happening:
   
   
   

   
   

   Goodreads Book Giveaway

   

   Motherhood

   by JC Little

   Giveaway ends May 01, 2014.
   See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

   Enter to win


5. If you'd like to review the book ahead of Mothers Day or soon after, please reach out to me for a review copy. I would be honoured...and humbled.
   

As always, I love you all very much.

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Letters from my SELF.

New Years Eve was rushing up at me again. But I could feel a creeping despondency all week threatening to derail me. To defy it, I decided to go ahead and host my usual Impromptu Black-Tie Potluck New Years Eve Party. Make-up, high-heels, dress and perfume on, I pushed that vulnerable darkness down and threw open my arms to greet my guests.

I have an old friend named Pascale Girardin; Pascale and I grew up together, meaning we went from wild young women in university to responsible mid-lifers. The foundation of our friendship was laid in our twenties, most of which time we spent being insane rollerskating punklets, dating guys, partying and doing art.

I hadn't seen Pascale in a few months - she's pretty busy running her high-end ceramics company, traveling around the world and creating fantastically beautiful installations in hotels, restaurants and fashion houses. As I type this, she's designing what will be the world's tallest *something top secret*. Is that not the cool? She is a true and original talent.

So anyways, when she showed up at my party I was super happy to see her. We settled on the chaise longue to catch up; this turned into reminiscing....

Pascale was reminding me about that time in 1983 when I talked her into going to some tacky downtown bar to ply free drinks from unsuspecting tourist dudes; being poor artistes we had to be inventive about partying.

To escape their eventual expectations we climbed out the bar's toilet window and went to Les Foufounes Électriques to hang out with our friends. That's back when Les Foufounes was new, decrepit and sooooo coooool.

We used to be so crazy.

I suddenly felt my happy-mask dissolve. The tears welled up...

I frayed and fell apart at my own party.

I had been feeling lost lately. As I mentioned before, the creeping darkness can be tamed but it always comes back. When you grow up, get married, have a family and spend years and years perfecting your craft, dedicating yourself to earning money and raising the kids...even if you find happiness in that, you do somehow forget who you were when you were newly formed. You look around and you can't remember how you got where you are now.

All of this came out in the safety of Pascale's embrace, on New Year's Eve.

She let me cry and made some comforting noises. The party went on.

*     *     *     *     *

Later that week, Pascale came by to visit. She opened her bag and pulled out a bunch of old letters.

"I was leaving my place and I just thought I'd grab these. They're the letters you wrote to me when I was travelling..."

"Look at these things! This is who you are, JC."

I blinked.

Pascale went on, "I don't know how, but the mail courier always managed to get these crazy letters to me in Georgia, San Francisco and even Australia! Look, this one's written completely diagonally..."

I opened one. And in my handmade pencil and ink marks on paper, partly written and partly drawn, I saw "me".

In a case of seemingly random serendipity, Pascale had reached deep into our past and brought me back my self. 

The self I thought I had lost.

She has always been a great friend.

The HUZ went up into the loft and brought down all my old shoe boxes full of handwritten letters from Pascale and many other friends from before I was married; before the days of faxes and emails! Pascale and I spent the rest of the evening poring through them, making new memories from the old.

Here's some exerpts from my letters to her.

I was obviously obsessed with sex. No change there.

I was confident.

Vapidity reigned! This is a rather terrible drawing.

Too funny not to share.

It's been brilliant for me to reread my old letters from my self. I think I will return some of my shoebox letters to their senders so they can have a peek at their own pasts.

Have any of you ever done this? Those of you who have never written or received a hand-written letter, should try it. Email, texting, and Facebooking doesn't even come close.

Thank-you Pascale.

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The Spotter.

This is a story I wrote and read this weekend at my dearest and oldest friend's 50th birthday party.

*   *   *   *   *

Do you know what a spotter is? It's someone who stands across the room on the gymnastics mat, knees bent, arms outstretched and ready.

You run towards them as fast as you can, skip once and round-off back handspring. They're there to guide you, and support you in the more difficult and dangerous acrobatics. Having a spotter gives you confidence until you can do it on your own.

*   *   *   *   *

Dear QQ,

It was 1977. I was fifteen and you were thirteen... but you acted sixteen and I acted fourteen. It somehow seemed to even out.

You went to a private school for girls high on the hill and I went to public high-school down near the train tracks. By rights we never should have met....but meet we did!

We tumbled our way through weekly gymnastics classes at the YMCA where the high walls of school-only friendships didn't exist. Somewhere in those Saturday cartwheels, walkovers and handstands, between the balance beam and the vault, a friendship sprouted that would last a lifetime.

We spotted each other in those days; I wanted to do a back handspring - you would spot me.

You wanted to do an aerial ....wait, no... actually you never needed spotting for that. You could do that and so much more all on your own.

One night we had a sleepover at one of our houses:

"We need to find some boys!" one of us said.

"Boys? I know where there's some boys," said the other. "There's a home for juvenile delinquent boys just behind my house!"

"No way! Let's go sneak in there!"

Off we went and we managed to find our way into the very quiet and dark building. We giggled in the halls, creeping around for a whole ten minutes but found no boys and retreated back to the house for a mid-night snack.

I'm sure the parenting jury is still out on who is a better influence on who! It matters not. One is always there to spot the other.

As high school concluded, gymnastics petered out and I didn't see you for a few years until one night I caught a glimpse of a vivacious blonde in a downtown bar. I was seventeen and you were fifteen.*

*Please never ever tell my own teenage daughters this story.

I called your name and when you saw me you ran right over and hugged me. It was like we'd never been apart.

This phenomenon of timelessness was to endure through the years. You moved to Toronto, I moved to England. For a few months we intersected in Vancouver before you moved back to Toronto and I returned to Montreal. No matter how long we miss each other, nothing changes between us.

There were broken hearts, terrible losses, risks and leaps in our professional lives and also great successes in love and work. Betrayal and weariness wounded other friendships, but never ours.

We lived in different cities, traveled around the world, bought homes and cars, changed jobs and hemlines. Through all this the spotting continued. When I faltered, you reminded me of who I was. When I doubted my abilities you reminded me what I could do.

You were at my side for our wedding, witnessed the birth of our daughter and taught our ten year old son to snorkel while I trembled in the shallows, afraid of sharks. I wonder how you will spot me next?

How can I describe the depth of our friendship? Are there any words that can go there? Loyalty comes close...understanding, care, and love, all evident in abundance. But none of those words is exactly right.

My husband, our children, my mother and brothers, aunts and uncles and even my grandmother before she died, consider you to be part of the family. The meaningfulness, purpose and love that you bring to our lives is unwavering and true. Because you are my spotter, my friend, and my family. You're the closest thing to a sister that I'll ever have. Sister is the word I'm looking for.

So Happy 50th Birthday!

May we have many, many, many more years of spotting each other!

*   *   *   *   *

I've known QQ for 37 years. How long have you known your spotter?

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