Martha Bolton - Cooking With Hot Flashes: And Other Ways to Make Middle Age Profitable

Cooking
With Hot Flashes

Books by Martha Bolton

FROM BETHANY HOUSE PUBLISHERS

Didnt My Skin Used to Fit?

I Think, Therefore I Have a Headache!

Cooking With Hot Flashes

Growing Your Own Turtleneck

Its Always Darkest Before the Fridge Door Opens
(with Phil Callaway)

Your Best Nap Now

Cooking With Hot Flashes
Copyright 2004
Martha Bolton

Cover design by Melinda Schumacher
Cover illustration by Mike Lester

When Im an Old Lady, copyright 2003 Joanne Bailey Baxter. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-7642-0002-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bolton, Martha, 1951
Cooking with hot flashes : and other ways to make middle age profitable / by Martha
Bolton.

p. cm.
ISBN 0-7642-0002-X (pbk.)
1. Middle ageHumor. 2. MenopauseHumor. 3. AgingHumor. I. Title.

PN6231.M47B65 2004
814'.54dc22

2004012176

After thirty, a body has a mind of its own.

Bette Midler

MARTHA BOLTON is a full-time comedy writer and the author of over fifty books. She was a staff writer for Bob Hope for fifteen years along with writing for Phyllis Diller, Wayne Newtons USO show, Ann Jillian, Mark Lowry, Jeff Allen, and many others. Her material has appeared in Readers Digest, Chicken Soupfor the Soul books, and Brio magazine, and she has received four Angel awards and both an Emmy nomination and a Dove Award nomination. Martha and her husband live in Tennessee.

Contents

1
Cooking With Hot Flashes

Tis not knowing much, but what is useful,
that makes a wise man.

Thomas Fuller

Im hot. Not the gorgeous, voluptuous kind of hot. Im just hot. My husband tells me I even sizzle. But that is not a compliment. It is simply a statement of fact. I am, at times, quite literally sizzling. So much so that I have been ordered to stay away from dry brush and dead Christmas trees until my body has finished going through this transitional period known as the change.

The change. Middle age. Menopause. Skin that doesnt fit us anymore. That is just some of what this book is about. But before you men get the misconception that this is a missive intended solely for women, let me remind you that both sexes go through the change. Men just seem to have a lot more fun with it than women. A man wakes up one morning and instead of putting on his usual conservative suit and silk tie, he tosses them both aside, slips on his jeans and unbuttons his shirt to the middle of his chest, adds a couple of gold chains, and goes out and buys a new sports car. Thats how the male side of the species faces the midlife transition. For them, its called a midlife crisis, and its practically a celebration. They begin acting younger, not older. They join health clubs, change their hairstyle, their clothes, their demeanor, and their lingo. They get a renewed zest for life. Theyre not like us. Theyve never been moved to the smoking section of a restaurant because they were still smoldering from a hot flash. They dont attend weddings just so they can hang around the ice sculpture. They dont sweat puddles every night, so deep they have to wear a life jacket to keep from drowning. The change is easy on them.

But for us women? We can rocket from a normal 98.6- degree body temperature to volcano in ten seconds or less. There are veteran firemen who havent seen that kind of spontaneous combustion. Im convinced the only reason any of us get invited to outdoor parties is to serve as the heat lamp.

Perhaps one of these days medical science will develop a thermostat patch for menopausal women that will automatically readjust our body temperature whenever it nears or reaches the boiling point. Who knows, researchers might already be working on this concept even as this book is hitting the bookshelves. I sincerely hope so because when it comes to hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause, we women have suffered far too long in silence!

Oh, all right, who am I kidding? Its never been in silence. If we menopausal women are anything, its vocal. We know the words Is it hot in here or is it me? in twelve languages. We live to let others in on our misery.

Are you sure Arctic Winter is the lowest setting on your air-conditioner?

So, how flexible is cryogenics? Cant I be frozen just until aftermenopause?

Thats the third sofa my body has set on fire this week.

Weve complained, yes, but until now, we have done little else. Weve left it up to the medical community to come up with whatever new and innovative ways they could find to help us handle the uncomfortable, and even dangerous, symptoms of menopause. We havent done anything significant ourselves to protect us from the symptoms (although flame-retardant pajamas have helped), alleviate our misery, or even find a positive side to menopause. Weve never organized a Million Menopausal Woman March on Washington. (What over-forty woman could deal with that kind of claustrophobia?) We havent spoken out on the floor of Congress. (We figure theyve already seen enough uncontrollable crying from the minority party.) As far as I can tell, we havent done much of anything to make this change of life not only more endurable for us, but perhaps even financially beneficial. That is, until now. That is, until CookingWith Hot Flashes... and Other Ways to Make Middle Age Profitable.

I dont mean to brag, but I believe this book, which is the first to introduce the concept of using hot flashes as an energy source, could quite possibly put me in the running for a Pulitzer or, considering the positive effect it could have on menopausal mood swings, perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize.

As with many other life-changing discoveries, this hot-flash energy idea came to me quite by accident. One day while clutching a handful of groceries to my chest, I made my way through a crowded supermarket, stood in the checkout line, then continued to cradle the groceries in my arms as I walked home, all the while having one of the worst hot flashes of my life.