Five on Friday: Get a Clue . . .

 . . . about perimenopause! (If you say words out loud as you read them, please sing "about perimenopause" like it's a jingle.)

Like fifteen million other women in one hundred eighty countries around the world, I use the Clue app to track my period. I know there was a lot of concern about using such technology after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. but as a grown-ass woman who previously relied on the "uh, I guess it has been a month since I last shed my uterine lining" method of menstrual tracking (and I have plenty "period underwear" to prove it!), that was a chance I was willing to take. 

Menopause is so rarely discussed that I didn't even know what should be known:

Which means that the symptoms widely known as menopause are actually perimenopause. Menopause is one day and the symptoms that follow are postmenopausal. So much to look forward to!

If you're unfamiliar with the Clue app, it has tools to track your moods and sleeping throughout your cycle as well as your pain and flow levels. But it doesn't offer (at least in the free version I use) an appropriate selection for tracking perimenopause. So I would like suggest a new app that's called Get a Clue About Perimenopause (sing it)! It will offer options to track things like:

1. Today was an EATING day! As in non-stop eating. Cannot get full.

2. Closely related: In the entire history of humans and cookies (or other food of your hormones' choice), there has never before been a human that needed cookies (or other food of your hormones' choice) like you did today.

3. Day (drop down choice of 1-38) of the current bloodbath.

This wasn't the only article I found saying it could last up to 38 days.
I found that oddly specific. 

4. Insomnia day (drop down choice 1-1,000).

5. Sure it may seem like you've lost multiple pounds of blood and tissue in the recent (drop down choice of 1-38) days of the current bloodbath but you've also GAINED (drop down choice of 1-15) pounds in the same time frame!!