Dear Emily:

Why is my body always so cold at night and so hot in the morning? I haven’t traveled from Alaska to Mexico within those few short hours. I’ve stayed within the space of my house. In fact, I crank up the heat in the evening and turn it down just before I go to bed so the house is much colder in the morning. Yet during the night I toss and turn because I’m too hot and when I get up in the morning I could walk around naked, which no one would want to see but I sometimes do.

It makes no sense at all. But then not much does when a person lives inside a menopausal body. It’s like living in a Jeckle and Hyde existence. One minute you’re grounded in reality and the next minute you’re off like a space cadet or some kind of raging lunatic.

I drive to school in a car with barely any heater to speak of so here I am dressed like a mummy with my down filled coat zipped to the top, a heavy turtleneck sweater underneath, a pair of mitts, and a blanket wrapped around my legs like I’m riding in some horse drawn carriage in the horse and buggy era.

Half an hour down the road driving on through the snow covered mountains at the same sub-zero temperatures I was driving through minutes before, I become a towering (well not quite, but maybe a short one) inferno and I can’t rip the clothes off fast enough. First the mitts, then the blanket, then I fumble with the zipper on the coat and finally rip that off.

I wait for a second or two but the mercury on my internal thermometer keeps rising so off comes the sweater. Now the problem is the sweater won’t go over my head without first removing my glasses. So as I manipulate the steering wheel with my left knee, the right one being otherwise occupied holding down the accelerator so I can maneuver the winter roads, I rip my sweater over my head hoping I don’t get hooked on my big floppy ears and I can resurface within a few split seconds.

I do so just in time to catch a glimpse of the fellow in the pick up who’s pulled up in the lane next to me, glance over in my direction wondering why I momentary swerved to the right when the curve we’re heading into definitely curves to the left. I look over at him and give him a reassuring smile that everything is cool, and it truthfully is as I breathe a sigh of relief now that I’m in my skimpy little summery tank top.

The look on his face makes me think of the strange look I got yesterday when someone passed me and spotted me spooning the last few mouthfuls of soup into my mouth. By the way he glared at me and nudged his passenger to look while he pointed in my direction; I swear it was like they never saw someone eat before. What is it my daughter Brenda always says? “Shheesh…….what’s up with that?”