[menopausal woman stares blankly]

No cavities. I cannot tell you the “fuck yeah” factor I reached after my dentist appointment today.

Whatever money we didn’t have growing up, I don’t remember it ever impacting our dental care. Dad was a teacher. Good benefits, back in the day.

So, when I start the whole “oof, ANOTHER cavity” journey a few years back, it felt like an indictment of my travel lifestyle/health.

I was still in my trapped-without-a-doctor phase, too. I had so many health struggles. But I never knew it was all related. Instead, I just shamed myself and constantly felt like a failure for having yet another cavity.

It turns out, perimenopause and menopause create difficulties in staying hydrated. (It impacts everything else, too, from skin and hair to sleep and mood.) That, in turn, also creates saliva-production challenges that lead to increased gum disease and – (drum roll) …cavities.

So.

No cavities. Fuck... YEAH.

*

It’s another in a series of events heralding either the ending or beginning or both. Whatever it is, it ain’t the same old shit, and that’s the anything-new I’ve been wanting.

It was February 23, I believe, that e-File opened for electronically filing one’s taxes in Canada. Mine were filed by 9:30 a.m. A month later, I’m typing at a new computer and sleeping on a new mattress.

It wasn’t just a good tax return, it was my first return in over a decade, after having been in arrears with the government when Everything Went Wrong as a nomad and my accountant went AWOL. Try fixing tax issues when abroad and changing time zones constantly when you’re living with undiagnosed ADHD. Ha!

It took a couple years to sort out once I returned home, and then years to pay off.

My last payment was this month, but it came out of my return, then I went shopping for things that I felt critical for peace of mind if the world goes to shit — a good mattress, nice bedding, a high-powered air purifier, and a new computer.

Tick. Done. All present and accounted for.

But not only does it close the door, officially, financially, on my nomad chapter — it also ends the chapter of crazy that unfolded with my 2019 return to Canada.

*

It’s not all over — I have more debt to contend with, but that’s the next chapter. The important one is over, and now my focus is undivided.

Last year will very likely turn out to be the most pivotal in my life not influenced by outside events, like someone dying or that sort of thing. Last year, I was the cause, the solution, the champion, and the advocate for wll which had vexed me for so long.

Very long story. A story still playing out in a variety of ways for women in all kinds of places, because it’s a story about hormones and mysteries, frustrations and challenges, all of which we find so hard get support for, sometimes for years. Like it'd taken for me.

When you’re a blogger, people presume your absence is because things must have taken a turn or you’d be humblebragging it up on the blog. Half the time, that’s probably true. But it’s just life, isn’t it? If life is just good all the time, you’re a unicorn or some crazy mystical shit. Good for you, but holy smokes, “in this economy?!”

Sometimes, life gets complicated in a good way. For me, I not only started getting answers, I started getting action.

Like I said, a long story.

I’m still in the throes of many things happening and resolving, but I can see the end in the distance. I swear I can.

*

Anyone who’s been in my life for 15+ years knows I have prolonged periods out of writing. A few things come to mind when I trying to explain to people how a writer doesn’t write for long-ass times like that.

One, I spend too much time on social media, and while it’s not a full fix, sometimes a little dab’ll do ya.

Two, actor Daniel Day Lewis left acting a couple times now. One time to pursue cobbling, the art of shoemaking, which was actually a generational career in his family. Of late, to do fashion design, I believe. It’s easy to think because he’s an incredible actor, that must be his highest calling and his greatest reward. But, for him, it’s just another creative outlet. For many creative people, creating is an action, not an outcome.

Three, I can't find the interview I heard in the ‘90s with Canadian writer Robertson Davies, about how he was disciplined but not too disciplined, because writing needed inspiration or a direction. I recall him saying, “a writer ought not write until the thought of not writing is unbearable.”

Davies' advice is a little impractical, but if you can take a break for a while, it might do you some good, is how I think of it.

*

Menopause hasn’t exactly been a big walk through the Fields of Clarity and Peace for me, if you know what I mean. The American political situation just made everything so much worse, and I just needed to ‘peace out’ and figure out my own life. That’s a heckuva story or three, too.

Do I want to write now? Sometimes. Like tonight. And that’s a start.

Thanks to the miracle of science, the feeling of wanting to write — more importantly, feeling capable of it — is starting to bubble up again.

But that’s all I got for tonight, folks.