WARNING – The following may contain information that the men may want to avoid reading. If you continue, that is fine – but you have been warned. Okay, so I do not believe he does, but at 3:00 this morning I was seriously questioning it. I mean, we hit puberty in our teens and for 40-45 years we have a few days before our period where we are moody, bloated, crampy and just overall miserable, some worse than others, of course. Then we have a five to ten-day time where we have to wear uncomfortable protection, and until we have a regular cycle or are on birth control, we may or may not know when not to wear white to school. I would complain about the hormones, but teenage boys have that covered, so I will skip over that part.

Once we are sexually active, and some times before that we have UTIs and yeast infections to be concerned with, and that is just the basic stuff, not to mention some having problems with infertility and then those of us who are rather fertile, we get pregnancy. I hated being pregnant. I love my girls, and I am glad they are here and I would do it all again to have them, but for three and a half months I could keep nothing but greasy Mexican food down, I was miserable most of the time, and I got huge. I weighed 119 pounds when I got pregnant the first time, but I rolled through the hospital doors weighing 200. I gained all of that after my fifth month, as I lost weight the first couple and had my appendix removed at four and a half months.

Then the blessed event. Oh. My. Goodness! No one and nothing can prepare you for that experience, and I am sorry, I did not forget the pain. Who knew about an episiotomy? I did not, and to make matters worse, my epidural had not kicked in so I got to experience that bad boy in its full glory. My second child, who is 15 months younger than the first, was born without an epidural – they also did not warn me about the local pain killer – killer being the operative word in that sentence.

Later on in life, or for some, you might face having to have your bits and pieces removed. I had to have cryosurgery for precancerous cells, but they did not remove anything. I will say I want to sing the praises of the person who came up with the IUD! I love mine and highly recommend them for anyone not wanting children for a five year period.

Enter maturity. Now, because of my age, when we first moved to London, the doctor totally expected me to be in full menopause…she was wrong. It took nearly a year of me insisting that I wanted another IUD before they finally realized I really was not on track with my age, go figure. She told me I could wait it out and I explained that God has a sense of humor and I do not wish to be a part of that joke. Well, I am 54 now, and it would seem I occasionally have bouts of what I assume are hot flashes, thus the reason for me lie awake pondering why God would curse anyone with this. It is not that I felt like fire coming out of me or anything like that, I cannot feel cool air. So I wake up hot. I rarely get hot. I am always cold. I am that person who sleeps with the electric blanket on during the summer because I get cold, and I still do, but starting around the time between 12:30 and 1:30 am, I will wake up, go to the restroom and then lie there in front of the fan until I can feel the coolness, takes approximately 10-15 minutes. I do this again around 3:30 and sometimes I get a 5:30, but most of the time I can sleep until 8:00 am. Last night, however, I woke up at 2:20 and was unable to get back to sleep until nearly 4:00 am. During that time I wrote three blog posts in my head, mentally berated a few of my friends who are posting stupid stuff that is not true but written to rile up the masses, and planned my attack on sleep for the next night.

Therein is the reason I was pondering why God hates women, but as I stated in the beginning, I know He does not really, but that early in the morning, you have some off the wall thoughts. I will tell you this though, just moments after I ran through this in my mind, Chaucer curled up against me, after about two minutes he put one of his front legs over my arm, and then held on tight, like he was hugging me. Yeah, it brought me to tears…and then I drifted off to sleep.