I'm two weeks late, which for all my years as a fertile adult woman has never elicited anything but two emotions: joy in the miracle of life. Terror in the same.

Now suddenly, at this stage of my life, as my hair turns to straw and my curvy bonsai waistline threatens to become straight-as-a-board beech, those words mean something altogether different: menopause. Time to become familiar with the protocol for hot flashes.

Let me propose, first of all, that, unlike the billowing pregnant belly, hot flashes are not cute to the outside world.

No matter how adorably interesting you think you look fanning your menopausal self in the frozen food section at the grocery store, nobody really wants to hear the details. Trust me on this one. I tested my first public hot-flash-voice on a cute and hip — read: younger and afraid — colleague of my husband's when I was at his office recently.

"Hey, Debra-Lynn. I haven't seen you since we got together for that hip dinner we had at my hip house in the hip garden district where we live. How have you been?"

"I'm really hot!" I said, fanning myself with a More magazine. "I think I'm having a hot flash."

His own eyes flashed behind hip rimless glasses as he fled the room without so much as a see-ya. Really, what was he supposed to say?

Thus, I suggest Rule No. 1: Do not confuse being flip about hot flashes with being hip.

Rule No. 2 has to be: Do not be a therapist during the hot flash stage of menopause.

My friend, who has such a job, had it bad enough during perimenopause, as she yawned and even nodded off during some sessions. Now, in the full-fledged stages of menopause, she anxiously jumps up and down, opening and closing windows, fanning herself and peeling off layers of clothing, all while trying to pay attention as her clients confide their own anxiety issues.

"Hot flashes make me feel crazy," says my friend, the therapist.

Rule No. 3 would be: Do not sleep with anybody while having hot flashes.

Sleep in this case is not to be confused with the euphemistic sleep, but rather is the sleep that brings REM and dreams, which will not be the case with a woman having hot flashes. Who can consider dreamland while their sleep partner is turning out pools of fluid, kicking off blankets and demanding the window stay open when it's 23 degrees outside?

There is a woman in my aerobics class who is three years older than me, who used to yell "Hot flash!" every time our Latin dance instructor put on anything by Ricky Martin. Every time she did, all the other women in the class smiled politely, but said not a word.

In the last year or two, she has stopped. She doesn't yell "Hot flash!" anymore but quietly sambas and mambos her way through the whole hour without a peep.

She's either gotten on the other side of hot flashes, or she has come to understand that no amount of shrieking will make them go away.