Granny lust

Urban dictionary defines “granny lust” as… wait… urban dictionary doesn’t have an entry for granny lust.  OK, well, a google search reveals that “granny lust” is an expression that means…

Oh my god!  For the love of all that is holy, that is… just… just don’t do that search!  I need to clean my eyeballs with bleach now please.

OK, apparently I am the only person who uses the expression granny lust to mean something other than a preference for older ladies who can still fit too many… um… in their… um…

So.

Fine, then, Pam-a-rama ding dong defines “granny lust” as the strong desire to have a grandbaby.  Similar to baby lust (the desire to have a baby), but without actually wanting to, you know, have a baby.

Here’s what’s been happening.  A bunch of my contemporaries are procreating.  I’m 40.  We should be done with that malarkey by now, no?  But apparently no, because two of my college friends and one grad school friend have had kiddos in the past year or so.  Their older kids were old enough to be in the sweet zone.  The no longer diapers/not yet drugs sweet zone.

Why would they mess with that little slice of heaven by popping out a new one?

Well, I know why.  It’s happening to me too.  My twins are six.  I’m thrilled with their current stage.  Six is magical.  They can do things on their own.  Their minds are amusing and fascinating and wonderful.  They still believe in Santa and the tooth fairy, but are old enough to ask logical questions about it, or make up elaborate scenarios to justify their continued belief in the face of logistic breakdown.  They are amazing right now, and I could not love them more.

But then I see a one-year-old—that uneven toddle, a pretzel-crumbed mouth or sparkly-eyed giggle, the way they race headlong, letting inertia carry them while their legs struggle to keep up.  Or god forbid I smell a newborn baby head.  I can literally feel my ovaries popping out four eggs.  OK, not literally-literally.  But there is truly a physical sensation in my lower abdomen when I huff a baby head.

But I don’t want another baby. 

That thing about popping out four eggs?  I’m not kidding about that shit.  I had spontaneous twins, which means I didn’t do fertility or anything.  I just popped out two eggs instead of one.  Oops. 

My body was all, oh, you’re not using these things?  OK, then I’ll just dump em all out en masse before they go bad.  Like making omelets for dinner when the eggs get too close to expiring.  Except instead of omelets, it’s a litter of children suddenly jockeying for space with my bladder and winning, stretching my skin beyond repair, and making a comfy, smushy hammock out of my pelvic floor. 

Honestly, if I thought I could have one baby, I might be tempted.  But faced with the knowledge that my body is throwing eggs like a Jersey kid on Mischief Night, hell to the no.

So instead, I have decided to interpret my desire for a baby as, not baby lust, but granny lust.  If I had lived in another time in history, or if the wrong condom had broken back in the day, I could have a twenty-year-old kid right now.  Instead, I waited until I was done with grad school and had my babies at age 34. 

But my body doesn’t know that.

It’s starting the elaborate shut down of the hormone factory, if my erratic use of the thermostat and general bitchiness are any indication.  My body thinks I’m almost ready to be a grandmother.  It doesn’t know my kids are only six.

So I guess I’ll have to settle for being the crazy auntie for now.  Now someone bring me a baby to sniff.  I need a fix.

Is it hot in here?

I tend to run cold.  All winter, I sneakily turn up the thermostat, which gets sneakily turned down by my budget-conscious, warm-blooded husband.  He’ll be hanging out in shorts and a T-shirt, while I wear sweats and hide under a blanket.  So imagine my surprise when I asked recently, “Is it hot in here?” and he said no.  Well, I was drinking red wine, and had been cooking.  That must be it.  The kitchen was hot from the oven.  Yeah.

No. 

It happened again, both us in the dining room eating lunch.  “Am I have hot flashes?” I asked him, appalled, wiping sweat from my forehead and pulling my hair off my neck.  He said that maybe I was warm from the stress of dealing with my son, who had just put me through a challenging parenting half hour.  Yeah, maybe.  Yeah, no.

It keeps happening.  Sometimes it even wakes me up at night and I have to adjust the fan to point on me and pull off the sheets to let the sweat evaporate and cool me.  It’s been about a month, with a flash happening once or twice a week.  I’m having some weird sleep disturbances too, waking up early for no reason (and if you know me, you know how truly weird that is).  I’m 38.  I’m effing perimenopausal.  You’ve got to be effing effing mother-effing kidding me.

So, yeah, that’s happening. 

I went on the interwebs and found out that perimenopause usually starts around age 40, and can take anywhere from 5-10 years to fully resolve into actual menopause.  So I’m not out of the range, I guess.  But damn.  I’m not ready.  I went to grad school, which tends to delay child-bearing, so lots of my friends had babies at the age I am now, and into their early 40’s.  My family is complete.  I don’t want more kids.  But…  menopause?!  No.  Not yet. 

I feel like my mom only just finished hers.  She had a protracted perimenopausal period too, ten years?  Maybe more?  I remember her going to the doc claiming to be perimenopausal (At what age?  I don’t remember.  It suddenly matters.)  I remember the doc telling her that she could still have a kid tomorrow, hormonally speaking.  That lasted a long time.  So I know this is just the beginning.  But it’s the beginning.

I’m trying desperately not to think of it as the beginning of the end. 

The part about no periods sounds pretty good, but I’m on the Mirena, so that is already mostly true.  The part about osteoporosis is scary.  The part about losing my libido is the part that really freaks me the hell out.  My libido is so much a part of me that I can’t imagine what life would be like without it.  I can’t imagine who I would be.  I’m a woman, sexy, hot, curvy, awesome.  I’m scared of those things changing, of feeling less like a woman.  Terrified of feeling less sexy, less sexual.

I know there is more to me than sex.  Obviously.  I’m trying to think about wisdom and crap.  But crap.  Screw wisdom.  I want the big screaming O’s.  I want to boink without synthetic funny-tasting lube.  I want to feel that swing in my hips that comes from knowing that I am one sexy bitch.

Every woman goes through this eventually.  I’m not alone.  I should probably start reading self-help books and crap.  They’ll probably talk about the wisdom of being an elder and transitions and crap like that.  Blah.  Sigh.  I’m too young for that shit. 

In my own mind, anyway.  My body, apparently, not so much.