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Book: The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones by Sandra Tsing Loh
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Authors: Sandra Tsing Loh
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Starbucks vitrine counting the calories in a raspberry cake pop? It’s all we can do to manage our own moods in a day. It’s all we can do to watch HGTV until noon and not overdose on antidepressants, and that itself is sad. Because are we not still women? Do we not still roar? Do we perhaps need our own female version of a Fight Club? All big questions and a bit too much to take on, but in the meantime, what’s wrong with a little extreme couponing? That’s a win-win. Because now I am no longer passive. And I am no longer focused on my usual also Sisyphean tasks. Mortage, what mortgage? Health-insurance premiums, what health-insurance premiums? So what if my IRA has so declined in value that my children will be able to afford only three hours of community college? That’s not what’s at stake here! My happiness projects have one goal: happiness!
• • •
I AM CONTINUING to build around myself a protective, ever-growing mandala of crisp new legal pads and folders and binders. Ever more ideas and lists and resolutions are coming to me—Pilot pen out:
I’m going to finally, for once in my life, drink eight glasses of water a day and see what actually happens (I buy a metallic blue water bottle—just admiring its sheen makes me happy)!
I’m going to get a sassy new haircut!
I’m going to get a pair of those new Shape-up-type thingies!
One of these days I’m even going to decide what version of Burnt Tangiers I want to go with, as my bedroom walls are covered with so many slightly different paint colors by now it looks like an insane asylum!
In fact, next level, I’m going to actually finally open all those old Pirate’s Cove cardboard boxes and rebuild my small personal library. I will perhaps even—oh hey, ding, ding, ding! —rebuy One Hundred Years of Solitude . I will commit to correcting my youthful past by even reading a South American magical-realist novel all the way through, and maybe at least one Henry James!
This will of course require bookshelves. Mr. X used to take care of things like bookshelves, but I doubt he will do that for me any longer. If I ask Mr. Y to procure shelves, they will be—I don’t know—like “stage shelves” (being that Mr. Y is not the handiest person). No matter: I dog-ear pages of the IKEA catalog for bookshelves that the new claw-free me will assemble myself!
I find I am thinking with unusual swiftness and clarity and penetration. My thoughts flow quickly and easily.
I have come up with ideas for three books, four one-woman shows, and a community-based (think Zip Car) Costco purchase-share plan!
I’m going to write a blog about my happiness project, a happiness blog!
I’m going to create a happiness app, a depression app, and a “what the hell is an app” app!
I am labeling all my ideas on color-coded charts in color-coded folders in color-coded files in my brand-new file cabinet. It is one from Staples with 237 individual screws and twenty-seven steps that it took me seven hours to hand-assemble. I am not kidding.
In moving several boxes of books to make way for the cabinet, with the Herculean energy of a crazed lumberjack, I see an old paperback on Southern recipes and hostessing. It is a book outlining what to serve at funerals called Just Because You’re Dead I s No Excuse. How very true! I laugh. In the mail, intrepid menopause specialist Ann has sent me some catalogs especially targeted for middle-aged women. What fun! With enigmatic names like As We Change and Solutions , they contain fascinating items like bathing suits with skirts and bathtub reading racks with a wineglass holder and special toe-bunion spreaders. Excitedly I mark my catalog and order up a storm! Sure! As We Change . . . Solutions !
CLARE HAS crashed.
She is still in her bathrobe at 11:00 A.M. Her two kids are home with the flu. They are parked on the living room couch, watching Nick 2. The TV wails and wails and wails. Clare’s ankle is swollen and wrapped in ice in an Ace
• • •
I AM CONTINUING to build around myself a protective, ever-growing mandala of crisp new legal pads and folders and binders. Ever more ideas and lists and resolutions are coming to me—Pilot pen out:
I’m going to finally, for once in my life, drink eight glasses of water a day and see what actually happens (I buy a metallic blue water bottle—just admiring its sheen makes me happy)!
I’m going to get a sassy new haircut!
I’m going to get a pair of those new Shape-up-type thingies!
One of these days I’m even going to decide what version of Burnt Tangiers I want to go with, as my bedroom walls are covered with so many slightly different paint colors by now it looks like an insane asylum!
In fact, next level, I’m going to actually finally open all those old Pirate’s Cove cardboard boxes and rebuild my small personal library. I will perhaps even—oh hey, ding, ding, ding! —rebuy One Hundred Years of Solitude . I will commit to correcting my youthful past by even reading a South American magical-realist novel all the way through, and maybe at least one Henry James!
This will of course require bookshelves. Mr. X used to take care of things like bookshelves, but I doubt he will do that for me any longer. If I ask Mr. Y to procure shelves, they will be—I don’t know—like “stage shelves” (being that Mr. Y is not the handiest person). No matter: I dog-ear pages of the IKEA catalog for bookshelves that the new claw-free me will assemble myself!
I find I am thinking with unusual swiftness and clarity and penetration. My thoughts flow quickly and easily.
I have come up with ideas for three books, four one-woman shows, and a community-based (think Zip Car) Costco purchase-share plan!
I’m going to write a blog about my happiness project, a happiness blog!
I’m going to create a happiness app, a depression app, and a “what the hell is an app” app!
I am labeling all my ideas on color-coded charts in color-coded folders in color-coded files in my brand-new file cabinet. It is one from Staples with 237 individual screws and twenty-seven steps that it took me seven hours to hand-assemble. I am not kidding.
In moving several boxes of books to make way for the cabinet, with the Herculean energy of a crazed lumberjack, I see an old paperback on Southern recipes and hostessing. It is a book outlining what to serve at funerals called Just Because You’re Dead I s No Excuse. How very true! I laugh. In the mail, intrepid menopause specialist Ann has sent me some catalogs especially targeted for middle-aged women. What fun! With enigmatic names like As We Change and Solutions , they contain fascinating items like bathing suits with skirts and bathtub reading racks with a wineglass holder and special toe-bunion spreaders. Excitedly I mark my catalog and order up a storm! Sure! As We Change . . . Solutions !
CLARE HAS crashed.
She is still in her bathrobe at 11:00 A.M. Her two kids are home with the flu. They are parked on the living room couch, watching Nick 2. The TV wails and wails and wails. Clare’s ankle is swollen and wrapped in ice in an Ace
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