There's a huge difference between perimenopause and menopause; chiefly, during perimenopause you only think about killing your husband three to four times a day. Kidding! I meant three to four times an hour.

Of course, many women in my situation try to learn as much as they can about this stage of life. Some even embrace and try to celebrate this phase, which can include insomnia, memory loss, night sweats, fatigue, and memory loss (ha!). I like to call these women crazy people.

Others, like me, occasionally try to find comfort by discussing these very personal issues with trusted women friends. Who, if you must know, leave a lot to be desired lately.

The biggest problem is that we women are compet.i.tive creatures. If you want to talk about your menopausal symptoms, your women-friends will just try to out-symptom you.

Me: "I feel like I'm losing my mind! I have these little electric currentlike hot flashes all over my body and it happens about a dozen times a day!"

BFF: "Oh, yeah? At least that's better than forgetting everything like I do. The other day, I left my kid at the dry cleaners and took my husband's shirts to see Up.

Me: CAN'T I JUST COMPLAIN ONE TIME WITHOUT YOU TRYING TO ONE-UP ME?"

BFF: "Shut up!"

Me: "YOU shut up! (Cue wild mood swing out of no d.a.m.n where.) I'm sorry. You're the best friend I've ever had. PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME!"

BFF: "OK, so that's not needy at all."

I can't believe I was ever friends with Angie Romano. OK, sure I can. She's the one who taught me how to look years younger in pictures. You know how when a bunch of women friends get together and get just a little sloppy drunk? A few of you even flirt inappropriately with the kinda cute Marine who has just asked you if you're a veterinarian and when you say, "No, why?" he flexes his biceps and says, "Cuz my pythons are sick!"

In the heat of the moment, feeling younger and friskier, one of the posse whips out a camera and tells the waiter to, "Take our picture!" Well, Angie taught all of us how to put our arms around each other, right at the neck, and smile. So what? So this! See, each one of us reaches just under the hairline on the back of the neck and pulls like h.e.l.l on the neck skin so we all look twenty-eight years old again!

Try it next time you're having that ditzy, drunken photo taken. The one you'll have to beg your teenager to e-mail your old high school cla.s.smates so they can marvel at how good your neck looks. You have to ask your teen to email it because you have no idea how to do it because you are old.

So, really, it's hard to hate anyone who is wise enough to figure out how to make my horrendous pelican neck fat disappear for picture time.

Everyone my age likes to yak about menopause whenever we get together but I have a hard time talking or even thinking about my "females" because, let's face it: That s.h.i.t is gross. When my doctor told me one time that I had a uterine polyp, I threw up on his shoes.

Maybe because he's a lot like a nerdy nine-year-old boy, TV's famous Dr. Oz thrives on the gross woman stuff. Remember the time he made Oprah hold up a big lacy-looking piece of intestinal fat for all of us to admire?

"It's called the O-mentum," he said. And while I thought that was so like the wizard that's Oz to try to kiss Oprah's a.s.s by naming an organ after her right there on the spot, turns out that's the real name for it.

I looked up "omentum," saw a close-up picture of one, and threw up on my own shoes.

A while back, I had a little trouble with the ol' babymaker that led to a pretty significant case of anemia. And, no, you don't lose weight when you're severely anemic, which just p.i.s.sed me off even more. Doesn't blood weigh anything? It seemed that at least I'd drop a few pounds from not having any.

Duh-hubby responded to my illness appropriately. For about two days. And then, on Day Three, I heard him trudge, very slowly upstairs to our bedroom, where I was lying, surrounded by empty bottles of Lipton Diet Green Tea and Nilla Wafers boxes.

"I'm ... sooooo ... tired ... ," he managed before flopping onto my beds.p.a.ce.

Although I looked and felt as if the entire Cullen family had been over for dinner and I was the main course, I was expected to show sympathy for him?

"What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?" I asked with way more concern than I actually felt.

"I gave blood today and almost pa.s.sed out," he grumbled.

Now I am not proud of how poorly I reacted to this information. While it's unspeakably n.o.ble to donate blood, I selfishly wanted at least one of us to be running around with normal amounts of the stuff in our veins.

"Sooooo ... . tired," he said again, pulling off his socks and pants, tossing his tie and shirt onto the floor, and crawling under the covers. My covers. My anemia-wracked covers.

"Can you hand me the remote?"

Christ.

A few hours later, the NBA playoffs had worked their curative magic and Duh was feeling normal.

Me? I was still feeling as c.r.a.ppy as ever. If you've ever had anemia, you know exactly what I mean. Of course, because I come from a long line of hypochondriacs, I'd decided that I was dying. I'd written my last smart-a.s.s words. This was it for me.

I told Duh that it was time to discuss my funeral, which I want to be huge and splashy, just like that one in that wonderful old movie cla.s.sic, Imitation of Life, because that was the best funeral ever. Remember how there was a lavish funeral at the biggest church in New York featuring a gospel solo by Mahalia Jackson (who is, unfortunately, too dead to sing at my funeral but we could subst.i.tute Queen Latifah because after I saw her in Hairspray I knew she was up to the task). OK, so also in Imitation of Life, after the big, splashy funeral (at which you will wear a hat, a.s.sholes, this is my funeral we're talking about, show a little respect) there is a parade in the streets with drummers drumming and pipers piping and the body rides along in a horse-drawn hea.r.s.e and it proceeds through the entire city!

And everyone cries! Just buckets and barrels of tears and the best part is when the dead woman's daughter flings herself onto the casket. I just love it when people do that at real funerals. It's so raw and real, and if at least one person doesn't fling herself or himself onto my casket and scream, "Noooo! Nooooo! Take me instead! Here! Here's my omentum! I don't need it anymore in this dark world without you!" I'm going to be completely p.i.s.sed as I look down on all y'all losers. That's right. I said "down."

Maybe you don't think about your funeral, but that's how you end up with really c.r.a.ppy funerals where the whole thing lasts ten minutes and then somebody goes out for a bucket of Bojangles' chicken.

You will never get the anemia-induced Imitation of Life funeral unless you plan it. I plan to call the (snicker) "pre-planning" experts at my local funeral home and tell them I want the Imitation of Life special and, if they don't know what I'm talking about, they don't get my bidness.

I come from a long line of worriers, so it's not that bizarre that all this talk of anemia and menopause and omentums and such would lead to funeral planning.

The women in my family have always been chronic worriers. True story: My maternal grandmother once called the Atlanta airport to ask the pilot not to fly in a light rain because I was going to be a pa.s.senger on his plane that day. Oh yes she did.

She pleaded with the airline to spare the lives of her daughter and granddaughters, although, as memory serves, she didn't mention anything about my daddy, which was probably because he was a Democrat.

We worry about things in our control (did I unplug the coffeemaker before work?) and completely out of our control (will we get brain cancer?).

A few years ago, I realized that my favorite childhood book had been The Three Sillies, which is a fabulous book about how outlandish fears and worries can get in the way of living a happy, authentic life. In the book, the three sillies are a husband, wife, and daughter, who weep when they imagine that one day the daughter will have a son, and he will go into the bas.e.m.e.nt to fetch some ale, and an ax might fall from a beam and kill him. None of these things has happened, mind you; it's the thought of all the awful things that could happen that makes them weep so long and hard.

I bought copies of The Three Sillies for Christmas presents for my sister and mother. I would've bought one for my grandmother but she had already pa.s.sed by then, in her sleep, which was not how she envisioned her death, at the hands of an ax-wielding psychopath who would break into her house just after Johnny Carson went off the air.

We read selected portions of The Three Sillies in the same attentive, reverent manner that other families might read the Bible or Koran. After reminiscing for a few minutes, we realized all this talk of worry and death had worked up a real appet.i.te. It was time to carve the turkey, which is Duh's responsibility every year, after he's bagged an extra five-hour midmorning nap.

As he sliced into the turkey breast, we leaned forward and our faces fell.

"It's pink," I whined.

"So?" asked Duh. "What's the big deal? We can just put it back in the oven for a few minutes if you're worried."

"Great idea. That way the bacteria can really enjoy a growth spurt in that moist heat for a few more minutes. We'll all be dead within the hour!"

The turkey was obviously riddled with botulism. What was Duh's d.a.m.n problem anyway?

So we did the only responsible thing: Tossed out the turkey and ate the side dishes. Better safe than hospitalized, where, we were fairly certain, we'd never get out without contracting a horrible staph infection. Possibly in our omentums.

Maybe that all sounds silly to you, but we didn't want to take any chances. Go ahead and eat questionable turkey.

It's your funeral.

But it won't be nearly as awesome as mine. b.i.t.c.hes.

20.

"Arf! Arf! I Just Ate My Own s.h.i.t!"

You have to wonder how Mattel came up with the idea for Puppy Tweets. Dogs using Twitter? That's the kind of idea that college students get when they're exceedingly high and everything seems to be the most brilliant idea ever conceived and they're all going to be the next Bill Gates or Jack Black.

Of course, in the cold light of day, the notion of recycling your dirty bong water to run your car doesn't seem quite as clever as it did a mere eight hours earlier, but then you also thought your pizza was plotting to kill you along about that same time.

Puppy Tweets sounds like one of those dumb-a.s.s late-night ideas, this quirky invention that allows your dog to communicate with you about his day, his activities, his dreams.

But this time, the dumb-a.s.s idea paid off. Puppy Tweets was a big hit when it was unveiled by Mattel recently. Who can resist a computerized toy that allows your dog to post updates to its very own Twitter page?

And, yes, I'm serious.

How does it work? Magic. No, seriously. Puppy Tweet contains a USB receiver that dog owners then connect to their computer. This allows them to download the necessary Puppy Tweets software and create a Twitter account for their dog.

When the dog moves or barks, a signal is sent from its Puppy Tweets tag to the receiver, which updates the dog's Twitter page. Owners can then check Twitter to see their dog's latest posts.

What does all this mean? That's easy. It means that, one day, it's quite possible that you'll be sitting in a very important business meeting with the high muckety-mucks at your company and you will be alerted that your dog has just licked my b.a.l.l.s because I can.

Truthfully, I doubt that's one of the preprogrammed five hundred doggie tweets, but it could be.

How often can your dog tweet? Pretty d.a.m.n often because Puppy Tweets works by tweeting when the sound and motion sensor on the dog collar senses barking or movement.

Which, judging by the dogs in my neighborhood, should pretty much be every minute of every day. I can't manage to tweet more than once a month and the dog across the street who's so dumb he eats his own poo, will be embracing new media like a brand-new chew toy. What is wrong with this picture?

Typical tweets, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, include I bark because I miss you. There. I said it. Now hurry home. Another? I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and ... Ouch!

That's certainly "awwww"-inducing, but a bit boring, am I right? Wouldn't it be much more interesting to receive a tweet from your dog that said, Hey Doofus! You left the gate open again. So what? So this. Let's just say that Lady across the street is one mighteeeee satisfied Pomeranian.

Or how about, Yarf! Yarf! I just ate your kid's baseball socks and have no idea why! Let's go to the all-night vet and spend more than you make in a month! I call front seat!

The funniest response to the announcement of Puppy Tweets has been that of honest disappointment from some dog owners that the tweets aren't "real."

As one whined to the Times, it's entirely possible that even though Bowser tweets that he's enjoying chasing a ball in the park, he's really just napping on top of your favorite navy blazer at home.

Uh, yeah. Because, and I hate to break this to some of you, dogs can't really talk. Except for Fly in the movie Babe, of course. She could totally talk, no question. But the others? Not so much.

Once again, I have to wonder why cats get short shrift. I mean if you're going to just make up stuff, why not make a Kitty Tweets for cat collars?

I'm guessing their tweets will be a bit darker. Something on the order of: To find out who you are, you ask first what are you not. Then you are left with what you are. Oh, and the loud, s...o...b..ry thing just ate another sock. I hate my life."

Cats never get the love that dogs do, and this vexes me. Especially in light of a new study that discovered that cats do a lot more than you think when they're left home alone.

I know what you're thinking. Cello playing, right? Nooooo, but close.

Thanks to a study by cat scientists (not actual cats as scientists; that would be nuts, besides the fact that they don't make lab coats that small), we now know that house cats do a lot more than sleep while their humans are away.

And they're not pa.s.sively fake tweeting. Using strategically positioned "cat cams," programmed to take photos every fifteen minutes and attached to the collars of fifty (I'm guessing seriously p.i.s.sed off) house cats, the cat scientists were able to determine that cats actually only spend about 6 percent of their time sleeping. I have three cats and they've basically been asleep since Boy George was popular so this is shocking, to put it mildly.

Cat cameras revealed that cats spent 22 percent of their days looking out the window, 12 percent playing with other pets, and 8 percent climbing on furniture. The rest of the time, they did things like watch TV (because they believe their leader, Tyra Banks, is speaking to them personally). TV viewing accounted for 6 percent of a typical house cat's day, the exact same amount as "hiding under a table," presumably when The Marriage Ref was on.

Sometimes, the cats watched DVDs, which is a puzzler. I mean, I get how they can work the remote, but even those of us with opposable thumbs usually pry the case open with so much force that the DVD pops out, sails across the room and under the couch, never to be seen again. I've still got the neighbor's Slumdog Millionaire collecting dust bunnies under my couch somewhere, along with some old Disney princess movies and, quite possibly, The Wiggles.

During the very same news cycle, it should be noted, there was a heartwarming story about a dog who alerted his wheelchair-bound owner to the fire raging through their duplex by barking and pulling him to safety.

Firefighters said the dog deserved a commendation for saving the man's life. Look, I hate to break bad yet again on dogs but why doesn't anyone ever consider that maybe the firestarted because of the attention-mongering dog. Maybe it was the dog who left that cigarette to smolder in the recliner cushions. Hmm?

Meanwhile, across the way, I'm imagining a cat spending part of its 22 percent of the day staring at the leaping flames and making a sarcastic sad-face at the dog while holding a phone that he has just punched only a nine and a one into.

"Want me to call for help, a.s.shole?" the cat asks. "Oops, too late. Time for my cello lesson. But, no worries. You can tweet someone about it and maybe they can help. Yeah, that'll work. Did I mention I hate my life?"

Puppy Tweets will probably lead to all sorts of social networking for the dog world. Maybe dogs (and cats) will be on Facebook before too long, "poking" one another, playing silly Mafia Wars, and taking lame-a.s.s quizzes to find out which member of the Village People they are. They'll send one another imaginary food and drinks, and even sneak around trying to hook up with old lovers. (And they'll always put pictures of themselves as pups when you know they're at least 120 in you-know-what years.) They'll even post their "Random Twenty-five Facts" about themselves but, because they're dogs, will probably lose interest after about twelve and go sniff another dog's a.s.s.

I realize that it's trendy to put down Facebook (or, as Aunt Sudavee insists on calling it "The Facebook"). And I am nothing if not trendy.

I have a sort of fragile relationship with Facebook. The truth is, my cats would do a better job of keeping up with all their Facebook friends.

Status updates should come naturally to someone who makes her living with, uh, whatchamacallit, words. But, like my doc.u.mented tweeting problems, updating Facebook is also challenging. I don't want to be like the dullard who writes simply, I like grape jelly! Which would only be interesting if she added, in my shoes. So I worry and fret and end up posting nothing at all rather than risk posting a mediocre status update.

I admire Facebooks friends who are committed to putting it all out there. Face it, some status updates can be wrenchingly poignant. I'm thinking in particular of these: "My husband of 25 years is in a coma and I hear NBC may cancel Friday Night Lights again.

And even a Facebooking dog wouldn't have done the dumb thing I did one time, causing my precious niece, Lucy, to defriend me. Apparently it's a violation of trust to say things like, "Dude! How drunk were you at that sorority party?" with her parents right there at the dinner table.

Awkward silence ensued and Lucy wisely restricted my profile to the utterly useless limits of viewing a few carefully edited photos of her involved in wholesome study sessions and reading about the Facebook environmental groups she had just joined.

Having violated the sanct.i.ty of the aunt/niece trust, I now was subjected to reading about a young woman whose college experience was about as exciting as mildew.

A cat would've never let such a thing happen. Cats are mysterious creatures who never betray another's trust. So now I'm officially an a.s.shat in my lovely niece's eyes. Which looked just a little bloodshot the last time I saw her, just saying.

With Puppy Tweets' success, I predict more pet owners will set up blogs for their beloved animals who, I fervently hope, will figure out how to ill.u.s.trate their blogs with charming photos of humans drinking out of toilets for a change. Don't you imagine that your pets are sick and tired of all those pictures on your blogs showing them in "hilarious" positions?

A blog, to those of you who are named either Ezra or Zeke, is short for "weblog" which is Latin for "nothing good on TV." There is even a "blogosphere," which has replaced Pluto in the solar system and is peopled by many millions of life-forms that want to share endlessly about their lives and emotions. Some of them are scary-good, others read like a dog could've written them.

My favorite name for a dog's blog would be on the lines of "My Name is Fido and I c.r.a.p Excellence." Yeah, that's pretty perfect.

21.