notquiteold

Nancy Roman

Glowing

Ase o fuku onna, wood print of woman wiping sw...

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Over the past several weeks, I have written and discarded several posts about hot flashes.

Like lots of women, I’ve got the hots, but it seems that everything I could say about these ‘special’ experiences has already been said. They’re annoying. They’re uncomfortable. They’re funny. They’re embarrassing.  Yada yada yada.  On the whole, I don’t have too much to complain about. I’m hot and sweaty for a minute or two. For years.

Boring.

Yesterday morning I had one of my usual post-shower ‘glows’.  I take as cool a shower as I can tolerate, but as soon as I dry off, my body turns its furnace on, and I need another shower.

I opened the window.  The master bath has lovely big windows; not those high lone rectangles that you could never squeeze out of if you were escaping from a slasher.  Of course, it would be a long hard drop to the patio if you were trying to escape, but my windows are nice and big.  I have to get into the bathtub to open two of the windows.  But the crucial window (the one near my makeup mirror) is easy to open.  The bottom half anyway.

The early morning air was cool and refreshing.  I needed that breeze on my forehead.

So I knelt down and put my face to the window.

And I slipped.  My chin hit the sill and my nose scraped the screen.  But not hard.  No damage.

Our bathroom floor isn’t normally slippery.  It was slick because my knees were sweaty.

Sweaty knees.

Now there’s a menopausal symptom that’s not quite so boring.

34 Comments

  1. Glad you’re okay!

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  2. Sweaty knees?? Oh great–another thing to look forward to!!!! Thanks for the warning!!! Glad you weren’t hurt….that would have been an interesting injury to explain to the ER doc!!!!

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  3. Great post. I have been thinking of writing about heat flashes too but haven’t for all the same reasons. I must admit, my knees sweat on the back side and not the front side along with every other crack or crevice in my body. Maybe I’m lucky!

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    • The front of my knees is wonderfully new!

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  4. funny! yes, another thing!

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  5. Snoring Dog Studio

    Very funny! I was fortunate to have missed all the symptoms of menopause. My sister has been experiencing hot flashes, though, and I feel for her!

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  6. Glad you weren’t hurt! Bet that scared you. Thankfully my flashes have eased a little; they seem to come during the night mostly. I refer to them as ‘power surges’! My hubby builds race engines, so ‘power’ is a good word in our world! 😉

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    • I like “power surges”. Only the power surging to all my pores seems to be draining the battery in my brain.

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  7. sweaty knees? you have so much grace. i love it. so, i have hot flashes AND falling to look forward to? sa-weet. ;o)

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  8. Talk to me...I'm your Mother

    Love a “LAUGH OUT LOUD”. Sorry it is at the expense of your sweaty knees. It’s a new one on me.

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  9. I thought that I have had every single part of my body leak water on a regular basis but I think you have me beat on this one! My problem is that I’m not experiencing hot ‘flashes’, they’re more like hot ‘never-want-to-end-miserable-sweating-dripping-episodes-that-go-on-forever-and-make-me-want-to-keel-over-and-just-die’….trying some new pills now to see if I can get some help. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, maybe you’d better start wearing a goalie mask in the bathroom! Gotta protect that beautiful face.

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  10. pharphelonus

    Ouch. Just reading about your chin hitting the sill made me think of biting my tongue, which always is painful. Did you get up and look around to make sure no one saw you, even tho you knew no one did?

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  11. You are hilarious, what a riot. You definitely came up with a new edge on menopause. Hope you have recovered, because I’d love to read more of your work!

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  12. I haven’t experienced the sweaty knees yet. That can be quite dangerous, yikes. Good to know! I have experienced wanting to sleep with my head inside the freezer a few times though.

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  13. Hope you’re ok! I just started the hot flashes this year. I’m a broken record: “Hey, is it just me or is it hot in here?”

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    • After a few years, you’ll stop even asking. You’ll KNOW it’s just you.

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  14. Rai

    My mom had those….it was horrifying.

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    • I’m sure it’s horrifying for the kids!

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  15. When I was a teenager, I went through a phase where I frequently wore black jeans and T-shirts. I thought I looked cool.

    Now I’m ready to re-enter the “black phase”. Black hides the sweat stains better than any other colour. I’m so cool… 🙂

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  16. Ah, yes,,,,,for me it is more of an internal building of the heat until it explodes in sweat and redness all over..yes, including the knees and the bottoms of my feet, and the palms of my hands, and….you’ve lived it, you know.I used to be the one who was always cold. Now I am the one trying to open a window in January (even at -20F.)

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  17. tmike4true

    I went through menopause at 20…so i feel your pain, but i am glad I got it out of the way 🙂

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    • That’s horrible. You can’t have hot flashes and hickeys at the same time!

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  18. I happen to know that Global warming is a myth created by scientists to explain what is happening to our world due to all the menopausal women having hot flashes all at once.

    Mine only lasted a year or so! Freedom!!!

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    • I love it! With the aging of the population, there are certainly a lot more of us hot people.

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  19. I wrote about hot flashes and menopause in general http://k8edid.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/its-not-the-heat/

    I hate the post-shower drenchings. I also have been having them mid-afternoon, as well. I am in a very hot climate on top on everything – so I am likely to burst into flame at some point. Glad you weren’t hurt.

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    • After all, September is National Menopause Month.

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    • Your great post was one of the reasons that I doubted whether I had anything new to say… until now.

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  20. Sweaty knees. Also a good name for a band.

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  21. Yeah, don’t you remind yourself that every woman goes through this, so just suck it up and glow? Then you meet some delicate flower who brags they ambled through menopause with nary a change a temperture and attribute it to tofu, 5 mile swims, and colonic cleansing. Sigh…back to the sweats. Thanks.

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  22. When I clean the house, I sweat from every pore (knees included). …Wait, I never clean the house.

    Glad you’re okay!! 🙂

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  23. My knees have gotten a little hairy while the rest of my legs have taken time off. I even wrote about it, which horrified my husband! What further horrified him was that even after bothering to post about 1/2-inch knee hair, I didn’t bother to remove same! >:-D

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  24. I had menopause for about five minutes when I was 38 (after surgery) so I have no idea why I get hot when I do NOW. Might be the wine; specifically the red one.

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  25. I can certainly relate to the hot flash thing. Walking through my kitchen one morning I felt this intense heat and thought I had left the oven on. I checked it twice before I realized the heat was actually coming from me! How I hated those things. I’d get up in the night just to stand on the cold ceramic tile floor to cool off my feet. Glad that’s over with.

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