Warning: This Post Is For Women ONLY! ...

... OR, we could call this:

*The Hazards of Reading Young Adult Books IF You Are NOT a Young Adult*

periodsmenopausecrampsbleedingontheragmorecrampssanitarypadsperiods

(just to clear the room of any lingering males)

Well then. How to dish up today's fresh slice of hell pie?

Speaking of *start*... *sigh*. Okay, first off - to any of you *youngsters* out there (under 50)(no, I'm NOT kidding) reading this, just remember your day will come.

In the meanwhile, enjoy having normally regulated hormones and the ability to laugh while holding your bladder. Or walking across a room and holding your bladder. Or coughing and holding your bladder. Or blinking your eyes and holding your bladder.

While this post isn't about bladders, I just felt the need to throw that in there. Because I can. ;P

What this post IS about - is being 55 freaking years old, not having a period for two years and then getting the stupid period, ... ESPECIALLY when you thought all that crap was behind you (get it? *behind* you?! *snort*)(I always make these dumb puns whenever my nerves are shot to hell & back).

My family had a thought on the matter (besides pretending they weren't related to me) ... it was *suggested* that I have read SO MANY young adult books that ... wait for it ... my BODY now thinks IT, TOO, must be a *young adult*, hence the resumption of some semblance of you-know-what.

Just watch. Any day now I'll break out with zits on my chin. With any luck, my boobs will once again go *perky* instead of just dangling there like two socks stapled to my rib cage. By this time next week, I might try out for cheer leading or pom-pom squad.

On the down side, I'm kinda scared to go to the grocery store. What if I accidentally fall in *insta-luv* with the bag boy? What if there's a vegan vampire roaming the produce isle and he starts sparkling & twinkling like a Christmas tree? Can I resist his charms/wattage?

Seriously, the very weird thing is, is less than a week ago I had a precognitive dream in which I started my period. AND in this dream I was quite annoyed by the whole thing, and wandered around *bitching* about how could this be happening after TWO WHOLE FREAKING YEARS?!

Because it has been, almost to the exact day, two whole years.

Whoa. I am so glad that my psyche can give me the heads up about important things like periods, instead of the winning lottery numbers...

....

.....

Today's event is only eclipsed by my utility bill (remember the recent rant with the broken water pipe?). Oh, yeahs. That puppy showed up in the mail. I about fainted. Let's just say that small cities don't use as much water as what spilled out on the ground under my house. Of course, a utility customer's sewage charge is BASED ON THEIR WATER USAGE ... whether it goes through the sewer pipes or ON THE DAMN GROUND.

You could have bought a book shelf full of new releases for what the broken pipe cost. Which serves to illustrate the *maturity* of my thought processes - that now everything is measured in terms of *book* buying. ;D

Don't care.

What I *do* care about, is how on Earth did my mind/subconscious *know* that I was going to start my period? Especially as A) I sure didn't and B) it hadn't happened yet. Logically, my body & subconscious mind are in a certain *sync* that my conscious mind, or the *I of me*, is not ordinarily privy to.

And, that was not my only precognitive dream, not by a long shot. I've had a slew of such dreams (I dream in color, and also can *read* in my dreams, which is thought to indicate a more active *left brain* function that what is normally the case in *right brain-dominated* dream events). I've also had a great deal of *waking* precognitive experiences, like where you suddenly get a thought, or just know something is about to transpire.

Still waiting on those damn lottery numbers.

Anyway, as far as my scientific understanding goes, dreams are the means by which the brain stores information. It is a shortcut method of *memory retention*, by an associative means, developed by nature for nearly all mammals as a way of keeping the brain pan in proportion to the mother's physical ability to give birth, i.e. - pass the newborn comfortably (??) through the birth canal.

So then, analyzing further, it would seem (logically) that my subconscious had already picked up on biological clues, which foreshadowed the upcoming period, and then *informed* ME, the waking consciousness, of this event-to-be. Which is all very causal and tidy and makes perfect sense.

It's those seemingly *non-causal* events, that are harder to rationalize. For example, one day after I had taken my children to school, and was sitting patiently in my van, at the light, waiting for it to change to green ... something kept me sitting there. Even after the light changed to green. I wasn't *zoned out*, instead I had the funny feeling of being *stopped* in my tracks by something so subtle and nebulous that words fail me. Anyway, after a few moments of me just sitting there, for no good reason, a semi-truck blew the red light and went barreling through the intersection. Had I NOT been *stopped and still sitting there*, I would have been seriously injured, if not killed that morning (I know I've already talked about this, but it's one of those majorly strange things that bear repeating).

Now, this would have been a seemingly non-causal event, for it involved actions outside of my own being. Those of the semi-driver, to be precise. How was it that some part of me could foresee that the semi-driver would not stop at the red light?

Unless, of course, our consciousness is super-entangled as quantum physics suggest it may be?

And yet, people suffer accidents and/or die everyday. Where is the subconscious warning in those instances? Why the seeming lack thereof?

Now, without getting all *religious* here, because that is such a personal thing (okay, so are periods, I guess - but whatever lol) ... I do enjoy visiting a site called NDERF (Near Death Experience Research Foundation). I've mentioned this kind of thing before, and if you haven't yet visited it, you should. They have a tremendous archive of people's experiences, from all over the planet. Just go to the tab that says Current NDEs.

Anyway, what fascinates ME, is how the vast percentage of people who have had Near Death Experiences, report being told that *it is not their time*, or given the choice to stay or re-enter their bodies. Obviously, we are not hearing much from the folks who choose to stay, or those whose time it is to die, but still.

So, was it then NOT my time to die that day at the stoplights? Better yet, how large and complex of a system would it entail to monitor an entire planet's population, of who stays and who goes, and keep track of the whole shebang?

That's pretty serious stuff, there. And, what if it's not just our wee planet, but an entire galaxy? Or universe? Or multiverse?

Also, how are we *hard-wired* into this system? Which, as technical as I'm sounding, doesn't mean I'm not revering God or anything. I'm just curious as to the details & mechanics of His system, because I don't believe in magic. Of course, there's always the likelihood that I'm too shit all stupid to understand a fraction of it. Anyway, I'm curious (and also cramping like you read about).

Yet. And this is a big, thought-provoking YET ... whatever the *system* in place, by whatever means or Whoever put it there, it must not be a *perfect* system or else people wouldn't be almost dying and showing up when they are told that they're not supposed to be there yet, or that it *isn't their time*. Notice, I'm not calling this *there* place, Heaven. Maybe it's just the antechamber or something. Like a doctor's office, you sit around waiting and reading magazines. Maybe Heaven sourced out their *holding* station like we outsource electronics to China? I dunno.

Maybe this *staging* area is but a minuscule part of a picture/system so immense, so incredibly vast, that our puny little brains can't conceive it. Heck, I can't even conceive of how the world wide web operates, who am I kidding?

Still, it sincerely fascinates me. Like a monkey with a Zippo.

I suppose one day I'll find out (not in any hurry here, just in case *they're* listening). I also suppose one day I'll finally be finished with menopause (this one I am in a hurry to complete).

In the meantime, I'll just keep reading and wondering and eating cookies like they are going out of style. Right now I'm nose deep in Dust & Decay. And am actually liking it far better than Rot & Ruin. *YAY* for Zoms.

Ps. - this post took me way longer than I'd anticipated. I'm tired. I'm done. And the hell with spell check. I need more cookies.

Pss. - this cookie thing is not my fault. I think it's hormones or something. Yeah, that's it. Hormones.