The Menopausal Ghost

There is a menopausal ghost that lives over my head.

It follows me to work in the mornings after a certain point in my daily commute. My car, which has been freezing for 20 minutes, suddenly becomes hot and stuffy. It's the feeling of being stuffed in a sweater in a room with tepid air and that has been stagnant for years. I claw at the window and flip on the air conditioner. For the rest of the ride, my faze is freezing and my armpits are sweating.

After I get to work, things aren't that bad. The ghost dissapears until around 9:30 when she's back with a vengence. While everyone else is wearing cardigans, I am flapping my hair and skirts trying to cool down. The ghost makes reappearances throughout the mornings, and settles in to stay around 1.

She sits over my head, hot flashes emmitting from her warm prescense every thirty minutes or so. Sweat pours down my back and my face feels greasy. I can feel my oily skin turning my makeup into a mask that could peel off on it's own. My cheeks are rosy and I am complimented on my glowing skin. I tell my co-workers that the heat is about to crush me. While others pile on sweaters and whine about the air-conditioning, I dip a towel in water to cool the back of my neck. I've threatened to come to work in a swimsuit, and was met with mild looks of confusion.

The menopausal ghosts that lives around my head does not like four o'clock. Suddenly, the room temperature shoots up about ten degrees, and people finally begin to peel off their cardigans. The ghost's hot flashes make the edges of my computer screen damp and my fingers sticky. The constant ringing of the phone severely annoys the ghost, who has been known to throw pens.

The hot flashes send me to an afternoon freshing up. I reapply my deoderant, blot my face, and re-fill my strofoam cup. The menopausal ghost causes me to drink eight glasses of water a day, which leads frequent trips to pee.

I am hoping the menopausal ghost will dissapear and quit following me home, like she has started doing recently. She always dissapears at the same point, but it is still quite disturbing. If she continues to lounge over my head, sweating and sighing in great pains of discomfort, I will have to move. I shall move inside the air conditioner and live in an igloo. For it seems the only way to escape the menopausal's mercurial moods is to satisfy her craving for a cool place. If that's what it takes, I am prepared to do so. I may soon be the Frozen Blonde Duck.