There is nothing quite so comical…and annoying …as “the hot flash.”

When I was a child, I would laugh at my older women friends who would be fine one moment and ready to strip the next.

More than once I was warned, “You just wait,” but being young and all, I couldn’t relate.

That has all changed now.

What in the world was God thinking? How can it be possible to be comfortable one second and ready to strip the next, no matter where you are?

What logic is there to having your window open when it’s 5 degrees outside, because even as you need the heat on in the house, the heat loses to “the hot flash” every time?

A hot flash has power. Were we to capture the hot flashes of, say, two or three women at one time, and bottle it, I wonder how much energy from that heat we would be able to measure?

Case in point: I was at an event, dressed quite nicely, thank you, getting ready to make a presentation, when, BOOM! All of a sudden, out of nowhere, came “the hot flash.” I felt my face grow warm and beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I did the proverbial “look around:” Was this just me or had the heat suddenly gone up in the room? But no, nobody else looked the slightest bit bothered. It was me.

I wanted to fan, not just my face, but under my arms, between my legs …and I wanted to fan with much energy! But because I was in public, I had to do the dainty fan thing.

Ugh.

Menopause is quite hilarious, actually. It is amazing, what hormones changing around in us women do to us. It messes with our bones, it makes mood swings really interesting…but the funniest part (although not funny when you’re having one) is…the hot flash.

Mine aren’t really bad, and not all that frequent, thank goodness. I try to watch what I eat and exercise; I have heard that doing that sort of thing is helpful. I do not take hormone therapy; I’d rather let nature take its course…but these hot flashes are rude! They intrude in places and at times when they are not appreciated and where I cannot strip in order to cool down!

Sometimes, when I am getting my hair dried at the beauty shop, “hot flash” comes and sits with me, so even as my beautician dries my hair, it is getting damp again because “the hot flash” is making its way from my feet to my head!

Ugh!

I always say that when I die, I hope I have an opportunity to have a conversation with God. One of the questions I’ll ask is why we women had to have the menstrual period experience. Why don’t men have a lovely, monthly visitor with whom to deal? It doesn’t seem quite fair…

But clearly, one other question I would like to ask God was why He/She felt it necessary to make us women go through menopause and experience “the hot flash?”  Surely this isn’t all because Eve tempted Adam to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden, is it? If it is related to that, shouldn’t Adam have to bear some of this…experience, seeing as he had the power to say “no” to her but didn’t?

Something is wrong with this picture, I write, even as I need to stop to fan. Yep, you guessed it…I am having…a hot flash.

A candid (and hot) observation…