The Beginning of a New Era?

My period has started getting weird. I remember skipping a month before we got married (not sure which year), but other than that my periods haven't been so weird until this year. My periods range between 31 - 43 days. I remember a few years ago it arrived on CD (calendar day) 45 and at that time I was scared of getting pregnant, so I was relieved when it finally arrived. At the beginning of this year, I had another period on CD 27. It had never happened before. Then this summer I didn't have any period for 65 days. Is it the start of peri-menopause, I wonder? 

In the beginning my period lasted 7 days and there was so much blood and for many years I almost always dirtied my uniform with some blood (ugh!), then for a long time now the length of my periods went down to 5 days and the amount of blood was thankfully getting less and less. The last period before this one only lasted 4 days and on the fifth day, I was squeaky clean. Not a drop of blood. I don't mind getting short and sweet periods, though. :-) If this is really the start of peri-menopause, no wonder I couldn't get pregnant when I started trying at (almost) 30. I thought I still had years of fertility left! After all, my mother had me at 32 and my brother at 34! 

How do I feel about the possibility of peri-menopause? Neutral so far. 

*******************

On an altogether different note, I'm almost ready with the preparation for my mom's visit. Can't believe the day is coming soon. Felt like ages ago when we first started talking about it. I remember holding my breath every now and then, hoping that she stayed healthy (and alive!) to make it for her trip and now it's finally right in front of us! :-D

The Japanese learning has been put on hold for a long time. I've been focusing more on healing my bilateral tennis elbow and spending time with relatives this summer. This year has been full of physical healing trials and errors. I've also been forced to learn to set my boundaries and stick to them (even if it means disappointing people). Two people have told me that it took them two years to heal their tennis elbow, so I'm trying to be patient with myself. I hope my bosses and coworkers will also be that patient. So far they've been awesome with me, but nobody knows how long it'll take for me to heal fully. I've learnt a lot of things about stretching, self-massage, and strength training as well as bought and tried different types of exercise/massage tools. My new fave self-massage tool is a spiky ball. I combine using that with my Pain Hook and Gymstick foam roller.

Yesterday I finally sent a story to the Finnish (non-fiction) writing competition. I started writing it months ago and then got stuck. After a long break I continued writing it, but almost gave up as I thought it wasn't satisfactory. However, I decided to push through. A coworker had promised to read it, so I had to keep my promise. I finished the story, sent it to my coworker and she gave me some positive feedback and correction (bless her!). :-) I'm not hoping to win (though it'd be a nice surprise - there are more than one prizes), but I hope that my story is one of those that will be published. However, my deepest wish is to see the faces of the judges as they read my story. That would be the best thing ever! :-D