Testosterone

Testosterone has a lot to answer for. I am a feeble, floundering sole female in an all male household. As they all grow up (debatable) I am increasingly aware that the air is thick with this gun toting, hairy hormone.

The atmosphere if left on its own for more than a few hours feels like the fur on a dogs back that has been stroked the wrong way, all on edge and spiky. We cannot as a family, sit down to a lovingly prepared meal with out at least one of the other three “boys” (and that is what they are and what they will remain) sniping about something or the other. As the 10 minute enforced civilized sit down disintegrates, tweety bird chests expand and the fight over which bits of roast lamb are ‘theirs’ or which potatoes have their names stamped on them becomes unbearable. The subversive tactics employed to hide a few green beans could be better utilized in a career in the SAS. For a sex that claims to be the stronger, the sight of a bit of fat on an offending piece of meat sends them into a girly flat spin.

 My teenage ninja mutant first born loudly proclaimed last night, he didn’t like to “forage” for his lamb amongst bones and a bit of fat. “What have I given birth to?” I thought. "It’s all gone wrong- we’ve gone from hairy mammoth hunters to lazy, spoilt Neanderthals!"

 I struggle to bite my forked estrogenic tongue and try not to point out that it took me nigh on two hours to prepare this clearly unacceptable meal. However I was brought up to be a lady and my female heritage predisposes me to an uncanny and unnatural capacity for keeping my mouth shut. Perhaps it is a way of keeping that godforsaken evil apple, which haunts our sisters’ psyches, at arms length.

There is nothing like a nice piece of soothing music to help your dinner go down but when I conceived my two boy children and bequeathed my body and soul to that handsome lad from down the road I was unaware that the predominant background symphony would be nothing more than a consciously composed backing track of belching and farting in F major. To sit at a table and endure this daily, cannot but help bring forth a counter rage. It’s called PMS (post marital stress or pissed off mothers stress), lasts a whole month and is undoubtedly the hormonal bottling up of complete disbelief and horror that such an opposite species actually exists.

I made the grandiose mistake of taking some time out last Saturday.

Anyone would have thought I had deserted troops in Iraq. Exhausted and fully fed up with the monotony of weekend chores I retired to bed, leaving my manly trio with a wide-eyed, high eye browed look on their faces.

The fact that I had actually drawn the curtains and got into bed rather than sheepishly pass out for three seconds on the sofa whilst waiting in the wings for the muffins to be ready, seemed to shock them in to a few moments of being able to walk without leaving echoing footprints or demanding food. But within 10 minutes we were all back to normal and the kerfuffle in the kitchen resumed. Cupboard doors opened and shut with alacrity and I counted the fridge had been opened and shut about 12 times in as many minutes. “ Boy vision” had returned and I was being whispered at for culinary advice or the GPS of homework that was “lost”. The elder (but not always wiser) of my three boys, my husband, enthusiastically set about preparing a "best ever" dinner but “checked’ in on me three hundred times for step by step instructions until my progesterone depleted rage directed him to that same cupboard which had already been opened and shut 7 times, where a barrage of good cook books lay, which had in print what I have in my overburdened head.

All you good women know the outcome of this story don’t you? It’s all too freaking familiar. I now know why our planet and politics are in such a mess.

Too much testosterone!

It knows nothing of order, of beauty, of negotiating without war, of acting before disaster strikes. I left my intelligent brood for a few hours and our house is adorned with wet towels and bathers left casually slung on dining room chairs. Empty wrappers of food that have no nutritional content, grace the coffee table in front of the TV that wastes our precious energy as it blabs away to an empty room. The dishwasher is half stacked and on. The dog is going stir crazy because she hasn’t had a walk. Attempts at domesticity are evident- the ironing basket sits proudly in full view of who ever might walk in but oddly it’s still full. The energy is flat and flaccid, dull and dreary, devoid of a special kind of love and conscience that only a woman who has embraced a true feminine essence can replace.

By feminine essence I don’t mean the frilly pink kind. I speak of an energy that is used to saying ‘yes’ more than no’, one that works tirelessly to create safety and harmony; one that works from instinct and pure love, one that’s strong but always soft.

 It’s a shame we sometimes feel like a well-known toilet paper though isn’t it? Take heart girls, the world would literally be a shitty place without us!