Leave a Message at the Tone

(Quote attributed to "Marilyn Monroe" & picture not by me)

I just can't get over how AMAZING Pinterest is!  I've found so many inspiring ideas and I just love every minute of it.  I could look and laugh and dream for hours.  I just learned that one can prolong the life of mascara?!  Generally mascara dries out before it empties.  By putting 2 eye-drops into the container and swirling it around, the mascara will become like new again!  I just did it the other day and the result is amazing, it isn't quite the same but totally better than buying a new tube!  Apparently this can be done 3 times and I'm pretty sure at this point I've lost all of my male readers (which actually turns out to be kind of a high number; I have a couple of friends and family members who's husband is a more faithful follower than their wife / my friend / my sister).  Anyway, if there are any die-hard men still reading, I really would stop.  You won't like this and you'll probably look at me funny in the future. 

I'm admittedly green-eyed jealous of my friends and family who have had a hysterectomy.  It is all getting really old, especially now that I don't need it anymore.  It is uncomfortable and inconvenient and annoying (especially when camping) but the worst part is that once a month I a make a colossal error.  Like a SERIOUSLY big mistake or two.  

21 days out of the month, I am motivated and even tempered.  I'm a good friend and a sweet wife and a patient mother.  I am thoughtful and careful and orderly.  I live a manageable, frugal, and intentional life.   I am disciplined, active, and healthy.  Okay TOTAL generalizations but I really am fairly balanced most of the time (at least in my own mind).

7 days a month I am insanely productive.  I start huge projects.  I've been known to be "in the mood" to paint the house or organize everything and throw a garage sale.  I make impulse purchases and don't think things through.  I eat peanut-butter cups, sour cream & cheddar chips, and beef jerky.  I go from super fun to super psycho without warning and in record time. It isn't all bad, I get more done in these 7 days than in the other 23 combined but I tend to make at least one big mistake at some point.  For example, I've accidentally:

• backed into the garage and taken the entire mirror off the car
• lost innumerable items of value (my iPhone, my DH's iPhone, my SLR, hundreds of dollars cash)
• washed things that are not washable (like ALL the curtains in the house until they were little shreds & my DH's best suit)
• donated /sold things we need (like a really nice big stock pot and my son's winter coat)
• broken some of my favorite items (like our wedding wine glasses & dropped my SLR)
• told friends "the truth" in the most embarrassingly regrettable of fashions
• started fights with people that I love over things that don't matter to me hours later

All during one specific week.  I have crippling guilt from this continually growing list.  Thankfully, 18 months ago, I met my beloved yoga "guru" (she claims to just be my teacher) who has given me permission to do something that my body demands but my mind and my guilt and our society didn't let me embrace.

2-3 days a month, I am entirely useless.  During that specific week of time, especially the first couple of days, when I am crampy and headachy and anemic, I have been permitted to totally embrace the exhaustion.  I guess in India, the culture allows you to do ABSOLUTELY nothing.  I can't really get away with that but for the past year, I've been giving myself the break I deserve.  Rather than running errands, exercising, and acting like all is fine, I only do what I feel like doing and I take a much slower pace.  Dinner is frozen pizza.  I relax with a book and play a little more scrabble.  I don't feel compelled to do anything.  I just do what I need to do and nothing more.  If someone says they have no pants, I ask them to look for a passable pair in the darks bin. 

I can't tell you how liberating this is mentality and physically!  I still make the monthly mistake and it could be coincidence, but the mistakes seem to be less drastic than usual or maybe I'm just handling them better*.  Quite possibly I'm alone in this and other women (especially in their not so mid 30s) are not the hormonal mess that I am (I fear menopause will be a decade of insanity), but if you are, I highly recommend this 2 days off deal.  It feels like an epiphany.  If I can't actually do away with it like some of my lucky friends, at least I can make it less dreaded.

I think I will teach it to my daughter, not that life must stop, but if you want to, it is okay excuse yourself from the rat-race, make some very sweet chai tea, obtain the strongest muscle relaxer legally prescribed, and just watch the day unfold from the couch. 

*last month in a cleaning frenzy, I washed our mattress pad and dried it on hot; it melted all over and a new one was $120 (I got a discount and it was only $60).  I also dropped my SLR on the concrete garage floor while juggling piles of stuff and rushing around like a chicken with my head chopped off.  Thankfully the lens I rarely use is the one that broke (not by brand new lens), but of course, it was the lens I needed that day for Safety Patrol yearbook pictures.

FYI - I'm not proud of this pattern.  It is one of the things that drives me crazy about myself.  I try REALLY hard (even sometimes medicate) to balance myself out, it just doesn't work.  I've come to this point recently where I don't deny it or try to stop it, I just try to manage the damage.

--Also, I wrote this blog before the Leap Day Modern Family Episode, although given its timing, it really made me laugh.