Comment: Drip, drip, drip.

I've spent the afternoon lying in balmy Mid-Atlantic heat, on a leather couch (what was I thinking?!) reading about night sweats, irritability and hot-flashes.

It's kind of gratifying to know that some of my more, ahem, challenging behaviors, can now be attributed to perimenopause.

What a relief! And I thought I was just a bitch.

I'm reading a book called "Menopause Sucks", which I had to buy, just for the title. It's kind of awesome. It's not all overly medical, but it gives you some idea about all the fun things in store for the relatively-newly middle-aged. (Sidebar: what number, exactly, constitutes middle age? 40? 45? I can't believe it could be 35, because that's the new 25, so it's got to be 40 or so, doesn't it? Let me know, would you, please?)

But back to the hot flashes and night sweats. I've been having the latter for YEARS. Does that mean I've been in perimenopause since I was 30? Doubt that, since I've given birth twice since then.

I do own some of those awesome moisture-wicking jammies made for sweating women. I got them about two months ago, before I was ready to face the fact that I'm in peri-men. Frankly, I don't care what level of pause I'm in, I've been sweating for too long and nobody likes to wake up with thigh sweat unless a partner is involved.

And amazingly, these things actually work! For years, I'd worn allegedly moisture=wicking athletic wear to bed, to little success. So maybe I should be wearing my wonderjams when I work out. Though that might garner a little more attention than I'm after at the gym.

At this time of year, everyone's having hot flashes, so it just doesn't matter. We're all sweaty, sunscreened balls of flesh at this point. Pass the popsicles, I've got more reading to do.