And to think I once thought my PMS was annoying. The cramping, the headaches and downright bitchiness that was the bane of my existence these past decades was a cake walk compared to the hot flashes I’m having now. No articles, no discussions among matriarchs and friends – nothing had fully prepared me for the phenomenon of feeling my body go 98.6 to 689 degrees within the span of a single minute.

Let me tell you “Flash” as a descriptive of this is sorely misleading. Flash evokes the idea of something “short”, or “over with quickly”. Alas, except in relating to the intensity and speed of its onset, that is rarely the case. I’ve had flashes that lasted for 15 minutes or more where all time slows and each minute of that flash feels like an eternity in Hades’ personal sauna.

I have semi-jokingly called it “my own personal summer”, however it is considerably less amusing in the stifling heat of actual summer. I’m at the train station this morning furiously wiping at my face with a wash cloth, for mere paper towels cannot handle this, barely able to keep my sweat from stinging my own eyes. Being in air-conditioning hardly helps. Even within the, usually only slightly warmer than Siberia, confines of the training room, I watched helplessly as my students tried hard not to watch as beads of sweat form and drip down my face and neck as I conducted my class.

At home I’m feeling trapped, often too hot to move out of the blast from the Dyson fan in directly front of me. Dinners have sometimes turned into pints of ice cream and gallons of ice water in desperation to quickly cool off when my internal thermostat goes wonky.

Yes, and this too shall pass, I know. And I’m likely to have even more fun things to look forward to…

But in the interim, seriously – if I no longer have any buns left in the oven to cook, why is the heat turning on?

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Let’s hope my fellow slicers are having a cooler time of it – check ’em out:

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Two Writing Teachers