Project Happily Ever After

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Yes, I Get Hormonal

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This is the Longest Post I’ve Ever Written

I like to think of myself as a normal, well-adjusted person. That’s why I make a sport out of telling other people about my neuroses—my catastrophic thinking, my fear of heights, my Mean Mommy personality, my social ineptitude, my persistently negative thoughts, my grumpiness regarding the holidays, my serious dislike of people who walk too slowly, and so on. Doing so prods others to say something like, “You? Neurotic? No! You are the most normal person I know!”

(Note to my readers: that was a hint).

For this reason, I’ve made a sport of deluding myself into thinking that I do not suffer from hormonal fluctuations. Me? Suffer from PMS? No! That only happens to other women—women who are weaker than I. No, I am strong. I am grounded. I am Mrs. Meditation Practitioner. I am at one with my hormones. I am the woman who jokes about being crazy, but who is really very normal and very well adjusted.

Except I’m not, it seems.

My actions this past Saturday proved that to me. And to my husband. And to my daughter. And to an elevator.

I can tell you the exact moment that the PMS took over my ability to think rationally, too.

Friday night? I did not have PMS. I know this because, just before going to bed, I told my husband that I absolutely had to take a shower the next morning because my hair was so greasy that I looked like a stripper. He said, “I wouldn’t say that you look like a stripper. I’d say that you look like a homeless person.”

Now a woman with PMS would not have done what I did next, which was say, “You are lucky that I love you so much” and then proceed to kiss him.

The next morning, I let my husband sleep in. A woman with PMS would NOT have done that. A woman with PMS would have banged pots and pans in the kitchen and, if that didn’t get her lazy husband out of bed, she would have paid a neighbor to walk a dog outside the bedroom window just so her dog would bark incessantly right next to her husband’s sleeping ear.

My husband got up around 10 a.m. At that moment I was in the shower and I still didn’t have PMS. I was thinking happy thoughts about how nice it is to have hot running water.

I stepped out of the shower and began to towel off. My husband yelled something about how I should hurry up so we could go to the Christmas tree farm near our house.

That, my friends, is the precise moment when the PMS took over my being. It was as if a flood of hormones invaded every inch of my body, changing each and every cell from happy and well-adjusted to diseased and anger prone.

“We don’t have time to get a tree,” I said in a very surly voice, one that was much more surly than needed for the situation.

I didn’t think we had time because my daughter and I had tickets to see A Christmas Carol in Philadelphia at 1 p.m. We were meeting her grandparents, three cousins, two uncles and two aunts there.

Philadelphia is an hour away, but that’s only if my husband is the one who is driving and there’s no traffic. The time of day when there is no traffic on the way to Philadelphia takes place roughly at 3 a.m. and that’s only if there isn’t an Eagles or Phillies game. I wouldn’t be traveling at that time and my husband would not be driving. Therefore I needed more like 1.5 if not 2 hours to get there.

My husband knew this.

He didn’t know that I had many things to do between 10 a.m. and 11ish, which was when I’d planned to leave, but some of the things that I wanted to do shouldn’t have been all that hard to figure out. I wanted to blow dry my hair, for instance.

I also wanted to get dressed.

I wanted to walk the dog.

I wanted go on the computer and find out exactly where the heck I was going because I wasn’t all that clear on that situation.

I wanted to pack a lunch for my daughter.

I wanted to fill my car with gas.

I wanted to get some coffee.

I didn’t have enough time to add “tree shopping” to my to-do list. Just didn’t.

“Can we do it tomorrow?” I asked.

“You don’t have to leave until 11:30. We have plenty of time,” he said.

“Okay, you go without me,” I said. “I don’t have time.”

“Okay, we’ll go without you,” he said.

I. Did. Not. Like. That.

Because. I. Had. PMS.

Usually, when I don’t have PMS, I am not remotely a sentimental person.

But, in my PMS state, I was thinking that tree shopping should be a family thing. It shouldn’t be a father and daughter thing. It should be a father, mother and daughter thing.

I was also thinking that this very thought would occur to my husband, too. At any moment—like a jolt of brilliance sent from the universe—he would say, “Self, I’d better not go tree shopping without her. Going tree shopping without her is a very bad idea.”

So I leashed up the dog. My daughter wrapped her body around my leg, whining that she didn’t want to go tree shopping without me. I looked at my husband with that, “See? You’re an idiot” look. He peeled her off me. I took the dog for a walk.

As I walked, I called him all sorts of choice words in my head. I thought things like, “Did he have to do it today? What’s wrong with tomorrow? Why did it HAVE to be TODAY?”

When I got home, they were pulling up to the house with the tree.

I couldn’t believe it. He’d done it. He’d gone tree shopping without me. What kind of a person was he?

He asked, “What time are you leaving?”

I said, “As soon as I can pull it off.”

In reality, I didn’t need to leave all that quickly, but I wanted him to know that I was ticked that he’d gotten the tree without me.

This was definitely the PMS talking. If you are a woman with PMS, you know that. Usually, at other times of the month, we are able to think rationally and tease out the fact that our husbands are not all that adept are reading between the lines of anything. When we have PMS, though, we think we can say something like, “As soon as I can pull it off” and our husbands will somehow hear, “I am sad that you went tree shopping without me. I wish you hadn’t done that. I feel unloved and down in the dumps. If you hugged me and told me that you loved me and that you were sorry, it would make everything better.”

I got on the computer and got the directions. I packed the lunch and talked my daughter into doing one last tinkle.

I walked outside and saw that my car was up on jacks. My husband was putting on my snow tires. He was doing this because we were supposed to get one of those storms of the century later in the afternoon, and he didn’t want me to lose control and die while on my way back from the play.

I said, “Do you really need to do that now? We’re in a hurry.”

“It’s not 11:30 yet,” he said, sounding a bit too cheerful for my liking.

“I need to go now. I need coffee and I need gas.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

Around 11:30, he got the last snow tire on the car.

I left without telling him that I loved him, because, in that moment, I didn’t. In that moment, I wanted him to drop dead, even though I knew that was irrational. After all, he’d been putting the snow tires on the car because he’s a good husband. That’s what good husbands do. They make sure their wives are driving around in cars that are safe.

I got the coffee. I decided I could make it to Philadelphia on a quarter tank of gas. If I did that, I would have just enough time to get to the show on time.

And that’s when I realized that my EZ pass was not in my car.

I pulled over. I called my husband. In my wicked witch of the East voice, I said, “What did you do with my EZ Pass?”

“Oh you are going to kill me,” he said. “Uh, um, I have it.”

“Just stand outside with it. I’m close enough to come back.”

When I pulled up, he ran to the car and handed it to me. He had a huge smile on his face, a smile that said, “I’m sorry! I don’t know what I’m sorry for! But I’m sorry! Because you look like you are about to cut my nuts off with a butter knife and I don’t like that look. So I’m sorry!”

Men may not be able to read between the lines, but women with PMS can read minds like no one’s business.

I took the EZ Pass and sped off.

As expected, I got into traffic on the main highway leading into Philadelphia.  As I sat in traffic and thought about how I wished I hadn’t just had a cup of coffee, I alternated staring at the clock on the dash with seeing how close I could get to the car in front of me without actually hitting it.

I was almost to my exit. According to my obsessive glances at the clock, I might still be able to make it to the show on time. I inched even closer to the car in front of me, because every inch closer to that car was an inch closer to the theater.

Finally. My exit!

Whoops. Not my exit!

I accidentally took the Broad Street exit. I should have taken the 8^th Street Exit.

I thought, “Damn the city of Philadelphia for not better marking the road! No wonder no one wants to visit this God forsaken place. There are no road markings, so people can’t help but get off on the wrong street.”

I might have said some of this out loud because my daughter said something like, “Mommy, keep it in your mind.”

I had to go through 6 billion traffic lights and navigate at least 10 different one-way roads that were not going in the direction that I needed them to go.

I started talking to myself again, at which point my daughter cautioned me to keep my thoughts in my mind again.

My dad called, saying that the show was about to start so they were going to leave our tickets at the box office.

I hung up and I worried that that my family hated me and that they all thought that I was a disorganized, spacey, always-late numskull.

My daughter whined, “I don’t want to be the last one there.”

I said, “We’re going to be the last ones, and it’s all your daddy’s fault.”

I got to a parking garage. I had trouble finding a space. When we finally parked and got out, I told my daughter to hurry. I dragged her toward the elevator. She kept whining, “But mommy, I don’t have my jacket on the whole way.” One arm was in one sleeve and the other sleeve was dragging on the ground. I said, “I don’t care. Keep walking!”

I’m sure other rational and loving mothers refuse to slow down on winter days when the temperature is below freezing so their five year olds can put both arms in their jackets. Even some good loving fathers do such things, right?

Don’t answer that question.

By the time we got to the elevator, I was talking to myself, saying things like, “Just calm down” and “take a deep breath” and “it doesn’t matter that you are late.” My daughter was looking at me with wide eyes and an expression that said, “My mother is just like that lady who stands outside of my daddy’s store, the one who talks to her imaginary friend.”

The elevator took too long to get to our floor, so I kept pressing the button over and over again as I said, “Stupid elevator!”

My daughter’s mouth dropped, because, at school, they had taught her that stupid is a bad word. She doesn’t say that word out loud. She refers to it as “the S-word.”

I looked at her and I thought, “I’ll teach you the S-word. Do you want to know the REAL S-Word?”

So very rational that thought was.

Finally, the elevator came. We got in. At ground level, it stopped, but the doors didn’t open instantaneously. I started kicking them. I started kicking those doors and I started yelling “Stupid elevator! Stupid elevator!” over and over.

I’m sure normal people kick elevator doors all the time. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this.

Once inside the theater, I realized that I was never going to find my dad and the rest of the family because it was so dark that I couldn’t see my own hand. So we sat down in an empty seat by the door.

As I sat there, I worried that someone would eventually come and kick us out of the seat. I thought about what snide thing I would say to such a person.

Soon, however, it dawned on me that the play, A Christmas Carol, was about a grumpy man who says things like “Bah! Humbug!” I thought, “This is a play about me. I am Scrooge.”

I spent the rest of the play thinking about how terrible I was. I was a rotten wife, a rotten mother and a rotten human being. I came up with ga-jillion reasons why I was rotten and deserved to be tortured and punished for it. I pledged to make amends. I would do whatever it took to get this rotten, evil, grumpiness out of my system. I would practice a million acts of good Karma. I would even sign up to stand in the cold and ring the Salvation Army bell if that’s what it was going to take.

You might think that, after all of this soul searching, I left the theater transformed.

You would think wrong.

On the way home, it started to snow. There were about 7 billion cars all trying to go in the same direction as we were. I was moving forward at about 5 miles per hour. My gas tank was empty.

He called.

I didn’t answer. I don’t talk on my cell while driving—because it’s dangerous to do that, you know.

If you gave me truth serum and shined and bright light in my face, then you might be able to get to me admit that I really didn’t pick up because I wanted him to suffer the kind of catastrophic thoughts that I tend to have. I wanted him to worry that we were upside down on the side of the road and stuck that way for days–with nothing to eat but my daughter’s leftover mac n cheese.

Yeah. That. Was. Rational. He didn’t even know there was a container of mac n cheese in the car. How could he possibly have thought that we’d be able to break into it while stuck upside down in the car for three days?

I pulled off to get gas. I called him, even though I’m pretty sure that you are not supposed to talk on your cell phone while you are pumping gas. It makes your car explode or something. If my car blew up while I was talking, I figured I would blame it on him.

I told him that it was snowing. He said, “I bet you’re glad that I put your snow tires on aren’t you?”

I said, “You made us late. We were late.”

He said, “Oh, em, okay, sorry.”

Back on the highway, I finally got out of the worst of the traffic. But soon it was snowing so hard that everyone was driving 30 miles per hour anyway.

It took us more than 2 hours to get home. I carried everything in from the car. I called my mom to tell her that we were home. Then I begrudgingly called my husband.

Later, when he got home, he asked our daughter about the play. She said, “Mommy kicked an elevator.”

He looked at me and said, “You kicked an elevator?”

I told him the story. I said, “I had a bad day. I wasn’t my best self. Kaari told me to keep my thoughts in my mind. I’m sorry,” and I was. I was sorry. For the first time that day, I felt like myself again. I felt like my usual garlic-in-my-soul self. I hugged him.

I said, “I think I’m hormonal.”

He didn’t say anything, because he’s well trained like that, and that’s why, when I’m not hormonal, I love him to death.

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