I Need Estrogen, STAT!

I'm so glad I am off to Arizona, I am losing my mind and I probably should be in a place with more crazy people than here for a while...at least until my hormone levels fluctuate and bring me back to my baseline state.

Today was a really weird day. I woke up this morning after a long hard day at work yesterday, with a 9 hour chemo, and lots of other patients, exhausted. When I left work Wednesday night I was so ready to go home and I had one thing on my mind.

Beer.

So I did that, and then went to sleep, and woke up to a busy day today. I had a gazillion things I needed to get done and only 24 hours to do them all, I had to pack and get ready for the race, I had to do some studying, and most of all, I needed to get my workout in. I had a lot of miles to do and I needed to get over to the track and at least get a short speed session in.

Well I just about had an anxiety attack, looking at this list of all the things I needed to get done today. I don't know why but I started freaking out, inside my own head. Nothing was stressful, there were a lot of tasks on the list, things like filling up the car with gas, cleaning up around the house, buying more dog treats, doing laundry, etc. But somehow I felt completely overwhelmed and unable to wrap my mind around it all.

I was tired, I didn't sleep well the night before my long work day on Wednesday. I knew I'd need a nap. But I felt crazy in my head. I talked myself down several times.

Then it occurred to me, I had just gotten a surprise before work on Wednesday. My damn period. I never know when it's going to happen anymore, and usualy I can predict it only because I have a race coming up. Usually I get this on race day, it never fails, it happened on race day in Oklahoma City last October, missed Across the Years by one day, so here it is, ready for the Pemberton.

So I'm freaking out because of hormones. Once I realized it was that, I tried talking myself down, out of the anxiety by saying, this is not real, it's just hormones. Did it help? I don't know. I headed over to the track. I needed to get my workout done, or I was going to LOSE IT.

But of course I never am prepared for such things, so I needed to make a trip somewhere to buy plugs, and I went over to the little pharmacy near our house and I walked in and selected a box of tampons and brought them to the counter to pay for them, and the woman at the register tells me, I'm sorry, our register is down, it's going to be a while.

I felt the panic rise in my chest. I said, sorry, I don't have time to wait. So I left, and stood outside on the sidewalk momentarily, feeling completely stressed. My brain was spinning inside my skull. What do I do? I have so much to do, I don't have time to go to another store. I have too much to do, I need to run, I need to lift, I need to pack, I need to print my boarding pass, I need...

Finally the light bulb turned back on, and I went next door to Sprouts, and fortunately they had plugs, the expensive, organic cotton kind, OMG I cannot justify spending $8.00 on a box of tampons that I might never need again (but I probably will). But since I was near the dog treats and food I managed to cross a few items off my list while there. That helped my mental state. Why didn't I think of that in the first place? I'm losing my mind.

One of my friends told me that for several years when she was going through menopause she had terrible anxiety attacks, for no reason at all. The only thing that saved her, she said, was running. I remembered that, and told myself that's all it is.

I went to the track and warmed up, fortunately the lady who runs backwards was not there, otherwise I'm afraid I might have freaked out. I got a rough start with the first 400 meter repeat, but after that I settled in nicely. I ran them very relaxed, without pushing hard. I didn't want to kill my legs before Saturday's race. I ended up running ten of them between 96 and 98 seconds, not bad.

I cooled down, then filled up my gas tank, and went home, and started chipping away at my long list. By 3 pm I had made decent progress, enough to take a break for a nap. And I slept...until 5:40 pm!

I finished everything on my list and then surfed Facebook for a while, and came across this amusing yet disgusting tidbit of information, about an event that's taking place in my old hometown, Fountain Hills, just down the road from the park where the Pemberton 50K will be held this Saturday.

Should I skip the Pemberton Trail 50K and attend this instead? Decisions, decisions...

Given my propensity toward freaking out this week, maybe the better thing to do would be to bag the race and feed my Random Perimenopausal Bitch this weekend, get Steven Seagall's autograph, and contribute to the volunteer effort to make Arizona's schools suckier than they already suck? Oh sure, let's put money into arming the schools when we can't even afford to fund a decent education. Makes sense. I'm sure in my demented hormonal state, I'd fit right in with all the other crazies there.

Fountain Hills, when I lived there, was known for having crappy schools, a big drug problem among the kids, and their parents too. But Fountain Hills' most notorious resident, Sheriff Joe himself, was known for flying his black helicopters around overhead searching for Hispanic males. Oh, and did I ever mention, Sheriff Joe is a racist freak.

Whatever happens this weekend, I'm off to Arizona, hopefully I won't be detained at the border...if I disappear, check the Maricopa County jail. I'll be the one with the pink underwear.