a_risky_time epitome of incomprehensibility I_joined_a_band_of_musical_pirates and it's hot backstage. It's mid-March, but the lights flood us with sweaty July. We, the Major General's daughters and chaperones, are waiting for our last entrance. In the wings, we swish our white nightdresses like restless but slightly goofy ghosts. Surprisingly, I'm one of the people less affected by the heat. Bethan lifts and swishes her skirt. Sandra seems calm as usual, but inside she's an oven, she says. She's frustrated with her body giving her premenstrual heat sensitivity and pre-menopausal hot flashes at the same time: "If you want to start the menopause thing, can't you at least stop the periods first?" After that, her voice returns to its usual register. Warm, but calm. Something about her doctor reassuring her that her symptoms are expected and non-excessive. I'm looking somewhere else, partly tuning out. And then she says, "He did warn me, though, that it would be a risky time to get pregnant. I told him: Don't worry, I already had my kids, I'm done with that." At first the "risky time" comment surprises me - was the doctor commenting on the state of the world? Wouldn't it a little off-topic, a little intrusive, for a doctor to go, "Do you REALLY want to bring a baby into a world like this...?" whatever his views on the world's problems are?? And then I realize the should-have-been-obvious meaning: the doctor meant a risky time for *her* to get pregnant. Not a risky time in general. But then I think how it's gotten a lot riskier for anyone to get pregnant in the (now) abortion-banning states. But I drag my mind away from that, bring it back to the backstage_conversations. 250506 ... e_o_i I might have been distracted by the blue light, the one that turned my white dress blue and my pink dress purple. Or by my faulty mental math as I idly decide that my age falls exactly between hers and my younger castmate's. "26, 36, 49 are all exactly 13 apart, right?" 250506 what's it to you? who go blather from