I’ve found out more than ever before just how much an afternoon nap can improve one’s outlook on the world.
After, what, seven years?, I’m still surprised and delighted at how much of a nothingburger menopause turned out to be.
Had some initial moderate anger-flareup issues that I pretty easily learned how to manage, and maybe, literally, one or two physical experiences that resembled other women’s descriptions of “hot flashes”.
That was basically it. No depression, no hormone treatments, nothing. Feel pretty much the same as ever except no more cramps and no more bleeding and no more spending money on tampons. Compared to some of the horror stories I’ve heard about “the change” I think I was pretty damn lucky.
QFT.
Just sleep in general. The older I get, the more I love sleep.
I had my first arthroscopic knee surgery in my mid-30s, after several years of pain.
Occurs to me that one of the things that took me by surprise was actually needing less sleep.
I used to need nine hours a night, up through my 40’s or 50’s; often didn’t get it, but could feel the effects when I didn’t, and had to allow catchup time.
Now I really seem to only need about 7. That doesn’t fully make up for being able to get less done in a day otherwise, but it helps some.
– in my late teens and twenties I could stay up all night and sleep 12 hours the next day. Both of those abilities disappeared somewhere in, I think, my 30’s: staying up all night became next to impossible, but I also couldn’t sleep as long at a stretch.
You’re not supposed to pee in your hands.
Enjoy it while you can get it! Insomnia is one of the more common curses of aging.
You’ve obviously never had a uterine prolapse.
Oh, I’ve had insomnia all my life. It’s been better lately but I suspect that will always be a struggle.
I’ve never even had a uter.
I think 20-year-old me would be surprised at how complex the act of “going to bed” has become.
When I was 20, going to bed meant shucking off some clothes and laying down. At most a 1 minute affair.
Now, 60+ me goes through a complex process of pills/medicine, assembling a CPAP machine, acquiring and positioning various pillows including a wedge, putting down pads for the dogs, flossing and finding my favorite, soft shirt to wear. If I include the prior stuff of starting the dishwasher, sending dogs out to pee (and chasing them back inside), checking locks, garage, etc., the time from “I’m going to bed” to actually hitting the pillow can easily be a half-hour.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t expect so much time for such a simple task when I was young.
Agree ‘pullin’. Take out hearing aids, contact lenses, take pills and on and on.
What surprised me (but shouldn’t have) is that I will hire people to do things for me. Even change the oil in my car. When I was younger, pulling an engine was no big deal. Hell, just 15 years ago I designed and built a two story addition to my house. Fast forward 7 years and I HIRED a guy to build a small deck on same addition. Something I would never have considered doing when younger. I just never hired any help for anything. I think the writing was on the wall when I started ordering cords of wood for heat, instead of going out and finding, cutting and splitting the wood my self. But shit, that takes a LOT of time. And can be brutal work (I used to go through 6 cords a year)
That was a bitter pill to swallow.
Sorry about the withdrawn post: I composed a whole thing but couldn’t get rid of the “this is a reply to puzzelgal” part, and now the board won’t let me re-post the same message. {sigh} I’ll try again another time. 
(I’d originally quoted puzzlegal but then realized I wasn’t actually in the same boat, yet when I deleted her quote my post still showed up as a reply to her. Meh.)
Me, too… the same age! I remember thinking how close to 50 that was, and how I’d be so old I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the new millennium, y’know, due to being so feeble and all.
Thank you! I thought I was the only one who thought that way. 
In my late 50s but time after time I keep getting puzzled by the amount of amazing time acceleration that has me snookered and behind schedule for such a common task, especially on work nights.
I tell myself “OK, I want to be in bed, lights out at say 12:30” ( I work afternoon shift ) and think “alright, it’s twenty two after…no sweat”. By the time I put some coffee and water in the coffemaker and set the auto on timer, get two bottles of water from the fridge for the nightstand, undress to boxers and T-shirt, brush/floss/flouride rinse, piss, turn of the phone and bring it and my keys to put on a nightstand, take a swig of water, turn out the lights… In my mind, that should have taken all of 6 or 7 minutes, but then I look at the clock: It’s 12:46. Twenty four minutes??? WTF!!??
And it still alerted me that you replied to me. !
This software can be fiddly. Next time, I suppose you can just add “Oops, didn’t mean this as a reply to XYZ, but that’s what Discourse thinks”. Or whatever.
There’s gotta be a way to live a long life without getting old.
(Take two…and good suggestion, puzzlegal! D’oh!)
I’m 49 and post-menopausal, which has been in and of itself a surprise; I didn’t expect to hit menopause for a few more years. I had no family history to go by, because my mom had a hysterectomy before she could go through menopause and both of my grandmothers died before I was old enough to think to ask them about such things, but I still figured that I’d be in my 50s.
What I expected the least, though, is the stress incontinence that started a year or so ago. I thought peeing when you sneeze/cough was something that only happened to middle-aged women who’d given birth: no one told me it would happen to me!
Also surprising has been just how out of sync with my age I’ve started to feel. A lot of people feel younger than they are, but in my case I also look younger: many people assume that I’m in my mid-to-late 30s (even the tech at my mammogram a few months ago said she wouldn’t have guessed that I was over 40). I objectively don’t see a middle-aged woman in the mirror; in fact, my face has changed very little over the years. Except for my weight, I look much the same as I have for the past 20 years. I think my appearance exacerbates the mental disconnect (even though my body likes to remind me every chance it gets of how old I actually am!).
(Disclaimer: Any time I mention anything even remotely negative about having a baby face, there’s a chance someone will get snippy with me for “stealth bragging” and/or complaining about something that’s generally considered to be a positive. So, for the record, I am neither bragging nor complaining. )
Yes!!
This, too. I was surprised at how early I started to need reading glasses – on top of my contact lenses. Luckily, I’m not yet at the point of needing bifocals. It still annoys me every time the reading glasses help…heh.
Same here! I found that I simply didn’t care. A show primarily about My First Job (regardless of industry/location)? Not my bag these days.
And I hope I never do.
The variety of glasses is what’s doing my head in at the moment. With the last visit to the glasses place I got glasses for working at the computer, which means I can see the computer quite well, and more of my lens is dedicated for reading, compared to my walking about glasses, which are also varifocal. I think this used to be solved with tri-focals, but having two different pairs of glasses is a bit better. Except I don’t always have the right glasses on. And after a full day of wearing the wrong glasses for work, I had a headache. You’d think I’d learn by now.
I’m in the 3 glasses boat-a computer pair (wow, what a good idea), a progressive multi focal for walking around and a prescription pair for reading (and Doping, since I do that on an iPad at reading distance). The set ends up being $1400, but at least it is unusual to need to replace all 3 at the same time and I can reuse frames. It’s good until in the morning after reading a while I jump in the car to drive my teenager roomie to middle school and I have only my reading glasses on, not realizing it until we are too far (and too late) to turn around and go back after my progressives. Fortunately I’ve done the drive hundreds of times and all the streets were easy-going and well laid out so we made it. Nebraska licenses may state “corrective lenses required”. Mine oughta say : “the right corrective lenses required”. I have since put an old pair of progressives-one prescription back-in the glove compartment for my next senior moment. I never did tell my passengers and they didn’t notice, so it couldn’t have been too bad.