Continued from here, where we just learned that menopause is nothing more than a wrinkle in time.

It's the two-to-ten-year slog through perimenopause that's a bear of a burden to bear, causing sleep problems, irritability (who? me? shutup!), a drop in libido, mood swigs, cramps, fibroids, swollen feet, sweater pilling, lost socks, and multiple math mistakes. (Okay, so I added a few.)

Not made up by me, however, is statistical proof that after age 50, 65% of divorces are instigated by women. Grumpy, or just over it? Who can say ...

On the physical front, there's good reason for copping an attitude:

Brizendine suggests that as a woman's brain chemistry changes, she may, too -- and some of that has to do with oxytocin, that feel-good hormone women get from sex or a massage, cuddling a baby or simply hugging someone for a good 20 seconds. When her estrogen levels naturally decrease over time, so does a woman's oxytocin, and she may become less "we" focused and more "me" focused as a result.

"The estrogen and oxytocin that have been pumping through her brain for years have quieted down. Women just don't feel as much stimulation in their brain with their hormones to do the caretaking anymore."

Of course, many of us have that caretaking stimulation thing happening with and without the hormone action, so we end up being adoptive moms, and there's no shortage of opinion that it's a "me" focus that has us doing "we" all over again ... but I'm not going there today.

Somewhat at the mercy of the physiology, we are what we it (as Tom Robbins would say), and when our hormones tell us to be grumpy, we listen ... or we head for the OB-GYN with hopes that we can skip a few of the more unpleasant aspects of hormonal shifting and stroll into senectitude without creating too much havoc in the little world around us.

Take it from this old broad, once it's done it's done ... Halleluja! and pass the prune juice ... and believe it or not, living without menstruation can be pretty darned good.

Embrace THE Change, look forward to that 24-hour period that means the end of periods, period, when your ovaries stop speaking to your brain, and accept the fact that life is a process and we're along for the ride.

Just wanted to share that there's a town on Reunion Island, a French territory to the south of us, called Tampon. Thought you'd want to know that.