Rain in December seems kind of awkward -- like Mother Nature figured we could use some water, but forgot to make it cold. So you try to be grateful, but you're really wishing she'd remembered the cold and snow.

I miss snow in all of its textures and Christmas kind of seems odd without it.

Tahoe is far away.

I tried working a very physical job for about a month. I gave notice because every inch of me ached and my brain couldn't work correctly for all the pain and brainfuzz.

I find I miss being active, but I don't miss the pain.

I need a pool.

So a couple friends send me this link and after having read through a lot of the Cleveland Clinic's menopause book, I think, "Holy, crap! It's the mother ship!"

For the sake of all that is holy and several things that are not, I've been buying soap and facial creams. Me, the woman who doesn't wear rings with protruding rocks on them because I know when I was doing one of the very manual things I do with my hands like garden, dishes, etc., that I'd lose the damned rock -- I've been buying moisturizing soap and facial creams.

I know, right?

And add to that, my son's recent arrival into adulthood on his eighteenth birthday and I'm starting to realize that my life no longer has to circle completely around my kids, their appointments, their after school activities, and all that stuff that I have essentially blown off working a 9-to-5 job for, for so many years. Like what? I have not a flipping clue. I'm starting by taking a 40 hour a week job. It's not probably one I am physically capable of handling with fibro, too much weight, and crappy knees, but I figured that it's a start and that it might lead me places as one thing leads to another and that at the end of it, I might find where I'm going. But I could actually do stuff I want.

I even told the boy when asked if I'd drive into town (half an hour)and pick him up from work and then driver further into town (another half hour) to take him to school (then get to drive back home for an hour, only to have to go back to pick him up at school again at 930PM for another two hour round trip)that I'd give him the $6.50 to take the bus. When he didn't beg me to death, I wondered what the hell happened. I resented that he figured it out his big self (a little)and then realized that this is the beginning of something: Freedom.

Then I came across the idea of throwing the leg of lamb out the window. I realized that I've been feeling like that some.

I still have the girl. There will be some kind of sports practices and menarche and boys and all those other things, but those will blur compared to weekly runs to the doctor's office for allergy shots for the past 2.25 years, occasional emergency room visits and the latest health issue to afflict the boy. Some of the strain of being the parent of a very special needs child is lifted.

He can take the bus. (*sound of meat breaking glass and hitting pavement*)