10 Years a Bitch

This is my bad week and anyone who knows me well enough will understand what this means. It doesn’t mean I’m a little gloomy or down in the dumps. It means that this is the week of the month when I metamorphose from being Mrs Nice-as-a-Bright-Blue-Sky to Mrs Bitch-from-Hell-and-Beyond.

Blue-Sky me is around for about three weeks per month, pottering about, chatting, laughing, cooking, reading, writing and generally being exceptionally normal and unexceptionally nice. Bitch-from-Hell is here for the other week and although she has been a part of my life since the not so ripe-old age of twelve, she still takes me by surprise, sneaking up first as an over-excited idiot, laughing loudly at anything and everything, then quickly turning into someone who could pull out her own hair but who would preferably tear out someone else’s, maybe even everyone else’s.

Hubby too is always suprised by her arrival, even though he has known her for almost thirty years. Of course he can’t stand her. I can’t stand her. And he has only recently learned to ignore her taunts and complaints as much as is humanly possible. But she has provoked numerous arguments with him because unfortunately he takes the brunt of her attacks. And if I noted on a calendar the days we have rowed then I’m sure they would all be when she’s around.

A quick calculation had to be done to see just how long she has existed. It reminded me of a horrible maths problem at school:

Mrs X is fifty years old. If she started menstruating at the age of twelve, and has one week of terrible PMT per month, how many years has she spent as a total bitch?

I couldn’t believe the answer, once I’d gone through the slow process of getting to the answer. One week per month, so twelve weeks per year, so three months per year, so almost ten long, dreadful, demoralising, angry, wasted years!

But how come I’m saying ‘she’ today when I am bang in the middle of her week-long visit? Simply because I am taking huge doses of a miraculous homeopathic treatment to keep her at bay. It’s working as I’m sitting here writing this, but who knows how long the effects will last? Until beloved hubby comes home tonight? Maybe, poor pet.

But I have another, more worrying concern. Surely this bitch can’t hang around for much longer? At fifty years old this must be nearly the end of her visits? So, the big question now is who on earth is going to replace her? And how long will SHE be staying?  Or will the next one just be around forever and ever amen?

Bloody Nora!  No, she’ll be gone. More like Sweaty Betty I suppose. Well, there’s something to look forward to in the coming years…