Sorry Seems to be the Commonest Word

Gold-soaked clouds layered in a blue parfait of sky, forest and ice.

Open mouth, insert foot.

Before the days of the internet, when Christ was still on the cross and my bathroom cabinet was full of Clearasil, there were only two ways I got myself in trouble. 

One was letting my mouth run away with itself.

One was letting my fingers do the yapping in my newspaper column.

Either way, it warn't a purty thing.

It didn't happen all the time, thank god, but once in a while I'd say or print something I'd later regret.

If I was honest, I'd say I'd get yappy once a month. Yappiness plus fits of bawling and the screaming reds all added up to tooth-rattling PMS.

I thought as I got older that PMS would gradually disappear.

HA!

HA!

HAR DEE HAH-HAH!

It wasn't until Oprah (who is about the same age as me and is a lot like me... you know, except for the fact that she's smart and she's rich and she's slightly more tanned) started going through menopause that I first heard the term perimenopause. Since then I have learned that this condition is like PMS on STEROIDS.  Like super-size-my-fries PMS. Like the CN Tower of PMS, only all bloated and puffy and tear-streaked and pathetic.

In the old days, before Oprah and the introduction of antidepressants and hormone therapy, perimenopausal women were declared crazy and sent to insane asylums, where they moldered away and died without bothering anyone.

And you see? Maybe if I was moldering away somewhere I wouldn't get myself into so much trouble! 

(I also wouldn't have to go to work, cook, clean, bathe or shave – oh, and that's something else they don't tell you. Once you get to a certain age you have to shave EVERYTHING. That? Oh yah, you have to shave that. And, ahem, THAT? Most definitely. Imagine every place on your body that you don't want hair to sprout from and that's where you'll be shaving when you get to my age. The good news is, there won't be as much hair growing in other places – like your underarms or your legs or, sigh, your head. Think of how much money you'll save on conditioner.)

But I digress.

These days I can get myself into trouble where millions of people can watch my humiliation – the internet!

You'd think I would know better that, when I'm feeling hormonal, commenting on other people's blogs is not a good option. Y'know, intellectually, I know that. And yet, when the hormones are making me crazier than a shithouse rat, I find myself pounding the keyboard, bitterness flowing out of my fingertips like syrup on Sundays, hitting the SEND button over and over in a delirium of angst-riddled unhappiness. (Cue evil laugh.)

The thing is, once the hormone tide recedes, I return to my normal happy-Cathy self. The nice Cathy. The good Cathy. The Cathy who feels hideously guilty and unhappy that she blew a gasket with an innocent bystander.

Sorry, Elizabeth.

Sorry everyone at work.

Sorry Mom.

Sorry Dave.

Sorry kids.

Hell. I'm just sorry.

But you already knew that.