Estrogen Overload

I love my ladies, I do. These days, though, I've been on estrogen overload. The other night I walked into a get-together with some seemingly very nice ladies, but their lack of a Y chromosome had me saying under my breath, "Ugh. Women."

First let's start with my home life. I am a woman, an annoying, estrogen-filled woman, and I get on my own nerves all the time. My daughter is a women, well a girl, but estrogen-filled all the same. She's a mini-me. She's charming and cute, but when she's not in the mood, her female qualities prevail. My dog is a woman, who suffers from an emotional attachment to food and frequent UTIs. Then there's my mom. She's a truly wonderful mom, but a woman all the same. I see these women everyday of my life, for hours at a time. If Bruce Jenner could siphon the estrogen I experience before 9 AM every weekday, he'd be a woman tomorrow.

Then, there's my work. First, I am social worker. I interact with no male social workers on a monthly basis. NONE! NADA! They're all women. Second, I work at a community-based day center for older adults. EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE from the director down to the custodian is a woman. Not one man works in my building. Not one. We occasionally get a visit from Bill, the building supervisor, but he runs screaming from the hills after correcting all our "manly" problems. Most of us are on the same cycle, and our recent "Greatest Loser" challenge has spiraled us all into complete female ornery. It's miserable at moments.

Given that I am a woman, I have to fight passive-aggression with the upper cut of Joe Louis. I like to think that I'm a pretty direct person, but the passive aggression I have to deal with on a daily basis is enough to drive the most well-adjusted person insane (and I'm not the most well-adjusted person).

These days, I'm craving male comrades. I long for a beer at the bar with my masculine mates who are happy to talk about nothing (I want to talk, but about nothing that really matters). I crave the directness and the if-you've-got-a-problem-with-me-we-can-deal-with-it-outside-now, mentality.

Don't get me wrong, I have no energy or time for romance in my life. That's not what I'm looking for. But I spent the first 30 years of my life figuring men out, and I made some serious headway. I just wish to shoot the bull with the guys for a few minutes a week.

It's just another frailty of singe-motherhood. Yet, I realize that at this point in my life, it's really complicated to access guy time. Sure, I can hang out with many of my girlfriends and their husbands who don't, at all, make me feel weird about being the third wheel (I have no problem with being the third wheel if it mean I have a partner with whom to do "car bombs"). College is over, and platonic male relationships are pretty much non-existent, and all my gay male friends live afar. It sucks.

There's not a lot I'm willing/able to do about it at the moment, but the estrogen just compelled me to vent. I know, full-well in the words of Gloria in White Men Can't Jump, that I don't expect anyone to bring me a glass of water. I just want someone to sympathize with my thirst (ugh, I'm such a woman I annoy myself).