Almost time to pause and celebrate.

Being a woman (okay, loosely defined) is no picnic. Madan reminded me of this awhile back. I had just returned from the grocery store. Evidently the Doobie was hungry, bored or both. As a result, he started rooting through my Baggu bags that were on the floor. And, I started observing him. He pulled a green one towards him, opened it and began examining its contents. Suddenly, he yanked out a box of tampons. (Sorry, male readers.) Perplexed, he held it in his hands and kept spinning it around and around and around. After a few minutes of turning my feminine protection into a disco ball, he finally determined that the box's contents were neither fun nor edible. (Right on both counts, Madan!) He drop-kicked the cardboard square across the room and continued foraging until he found mini-Oreos which, quite frankly, I needed more than him.

As I watched him feast on my fix, I made a decision. Well, two decisions. The first was to always eat my cookies while driving home from the store. The second was to have a menopause party. Yes. As I watched Madan projectile launch that hated blue box clear across the room -- and my womanhood with it -- I decided that I would celebrate the end of an era. I would celebrate the time when I can no longer bear children and no longer need to bury that damn blue box underneath all my other groceries -- only to have the male cashier twirl it around 60 times to find the damn barcode or a male neighbor engage me in conversation while I stood horrified that I could still see the words TAMPAX commingled in the cart with my ice cream, Reese's peanut butter cups and Motrin.

Now, this ain't gonna be all kitsch and caboodle like my bachelorette party. No phallus-shaped chocolates. No male blow-up dolls wearing undershirts with "Mike" scrawled on them. And, no Groucho Marx disguises with a penis for a nose. (I still want to know who the hell bought me that.) The "Big M" is serious stuff! It's the moment when the rest of my decrepit body finally catches up to my brain and says, "Hey! You're right. We really DON'T want any more kids. So sorry I didn't believe you for the past 15 years. My bad."

I want a classy affair to commemorate this undefinable moment, its wondrous temperature fluctuations, dramatic mood swings and blindsiding psychopathic tendencies. Lots of drinks, lots of good music and heaps of party-favor pashminas for all my female friends who can't decide if they're hot or they're cold.

I'm not looking forward to what I'll become, but I want to celebrate what I'll no longer be capable of. I just hope my guests aren't too scared to show up.