Forecast: Sweaty with scattered hot flashes

The only good thing our daughter’s first boyfriend Freddie ever did was introduce our family to Old Spice Fuji deodorant. He was a real self-centered, French-speaking, elitist Québécois, Harvard-hockey-playing schmuck who dumped our daughter right after going on our family vacation. But his deodorant choice was spot on, and I’ve been using it ever since.

That said, the blistering recent weather has rendered most of my perspiration-minimizing products completely useless. This summer, with the excruciating combination of record high temperatures, stifling humidity and raging menopause, I’ve emitted gallons of sweat from my overworked glands.

If involuntarily oozing salty fluids 24/7 weren’t unpleasant enough, our old house’s only source of cool air comes from a few rattling window air conditioners and a stand-alone model that leaks water all over our dining room floor.

Each morning, I rise with the dewy-eyed aspiration that I’ll maintain my personal hygiene standards throughout my busy day. I ask the device on my dresser, “Alexa, what’s the weather today?” and brace myself for her answer.

She responds with her new “native conversational AI” speak, “Well, Lisa, it’s another sunny day in Jamestown, Rhode Island, with a current temperature of 73, but it will feel like 80. The high today will be 85.”

I shower with cooling mint shampoo and cucumber soap before deploying a super-strength combination of sweat-inhibiting powders, body sprays and my favorite Old Spice Fuji, applied to every crease, crevice and crevasse of my aging body. I work a bit of gloop in my hair to combat humidity frizz, and smooth a dab of SPF 30-tinted moisturizer over my face. Finally, before leaving my window-air-conditioned bedroom, I say a prayer to Saint Veronica, who dabbed the sweat from Jesus’ brow, to please, for the love of God, keep me cool and dry today.

But, inevitably, it happens. As soon as the air temperature around me creeps above 75, which usually happens as soon as I step out of my bedroom into the hallway, the process of hyperhidrosis begins. Thanks to menopause, my hypothalamus has become a total drama queen. She senses the slightest increase in temperature, and she freaks out, hysterically firing off messages to my organs like laser beams: “It’s gonna be another scorcher, folks! Dilate those blood vessels! Activate those sweat glands! Hose her down before she gets overheated!”

Next thing I know, my neck is slick and plastered with hair. Beads of salty moisture cling to my hairline and adorn my upper lip. Drops of sweat rain down my back. Sweat rings sprout in my armpits. My carefully coiffed hair does whatever the hell it wants. My tinted moisturizer runs, pooling into and thereby enhancing wrinkles and crow’s feet. My gardenia-scented body spray is replaced with an odor vaguely similar to Nacho Cheese Doritos.

All hope of feeling minimally attractive is lost.

An endless cycle of sweating profusely, drying out and lathering again is repeated multiple times until I peel my sticky garments off at the end of the day and burn them.

Meteorologists are saying that this month is on track to become the hottest August on record due to four scientific phenomena: The strongest El Niño cycles ever tracked causing a global heat “blanket” in the Earth’s atmosphere; all-time high ocean temperatures that don’t allow landmasses to cool down; stagnant high-pressure systems that trap hot air over vast regions; and flash-droughts that have depleted the soil of moisture in Europe and the Americas.

Hold up. Those dweeby meteorologists forgot the fifth unstoppable phenomenon contributing to the record-breaking heat this month — my hot flashes. My hypothalamus may be tiny, but she’s powerful enough to crank my internal thermostat up to “surface of the sun” levels, while mobilizing an army of 4 million sweat glands to release a deluge of saltwater from my internal floodgates.

At this point in life, I’m powerless to fight her. All I can do is slather on Old Spice Fuji and hope my rattling window air conditioners hold out before I spontaneously combust. I’m even thinking of forgiving Freddie for dumping our daughter, because that schmuck gave me the only weapon that has a fighting chance against global warming … and menopause.

Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com.