The Great Slump of '09

Current Status... Last year when everyone else was flush, we were poor. This year, so far, knock wood and all that, we're doing well. Stuart's new business is taking off and, after a slow and nerve-wracking January, work is coming fast and furiously for me.

Lately I'm thinking... I have so many younger women friends, I have naturally become a menopause coach for some of them. Really a peri-menopause coach. It's the years leading up to menopause that are so crazy-making. In my mother's generation, when no one mentioned these words, women good- or ill-naturedly accepted their reputations for craziness and mental illness. But they were just quietly, desperately coping with embarassingly heavy bleeding, deep mood swings, immutable irritability, sleeplessness, hot flashes, pools of sweat in the bed, ignored complaints of the heat being too high and on and on. For those of us who lead anxious lives, there is no "natural" or "normal" to this phase of life. It is physical and mental torture of the highest degree. I thought it would, literally, kill me. But I survived. So can you.

This is really interesting... Not. Never have we heard so much about economics, economists and the economy. I'm becoming an expert, and I don't want to be. John Maynard Keynes this and Timothy Geithner that. Feh.

Currently reading... Gave up on World's End, for now. I've been reading the December fiction issue of The New Yorker. And my favorite writer is and always shall be Alice Munro. Gad, she is good! I love every story she writes.

The Soapbox: What is the enemy in a Great Slump? Fear that things will get worse instead of better; fear of losing your job, fear of an illness you can't pay for. What is the enemy during menopause? Fear that life will always be like this; fear of the next clueless doctor. What is the antidote? Hope. Always hope.

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