Fun Times

The post vacation blues - they're inevitable.  We had the best time at our annual vacation site, but we have rules.  It must be a beach.  It must be the same beach.  It must be relaxing.  And we must have people we love come with us.  That's really the only way to enjoy a great vacation.  Of course, Sweetie Pie and his parents came the first week.  And my sweet cousin visited the second week.  There was only one bad time - the day we had to leave.  It's always sad to come home.  We love our home, our town, our friends, but we always want to stay longer at the beach.  That was true when we were children and it's true now that we're old.  But we're home and now it's time to get back to the lives we were leading before the vacation.  Cousin and I like to talk a lot and we had so much fun chit chatting about the family and remembering fun times we had long ago.  I talked about my 5th birthday party at my grandmother's house in Kentucky. I had a birthday cake with a circus on top and my cousin brought me the most desired present in the world - a new coloring book with a big box of crayons.  Jackpot!!!  Coloring books presented an entirely new and fresh opportunity for me.  I can easily slip back into that world and see myself lying on the floor with the book spread in front of me, first sniffing the inside, then turning the pages slowly and taking my time scanning each page to decide what picture to color, how to color it, and think about maybe tracing around certain parts of the picture. The more intricate the picture, the more excited I would become.  And the crayons, oh, the colorful crayons.  Lordy!!!  I'm getting all giddy just thinking about them even now.  The best part of the crayons??  That fabulous, brand new, break open the box scent.  Looooove me a good smellin box of crayons!  I never failed to pull out every single crayon, read the names ( and back then the names never changed so I still don't know why I did that - remember brick red and cornflower?), and return them to their special places in the box.  That flip top box.  Soooo cool.  I was always careful with my crayons and I don't remember breaking any.  I do remember peeling the paper away at the top of the crayon so I could get as much from the color as possible.  I think I colored them pretty much down to the nub.  After I got older (I'm still waiting to grow up), I made sure my kids had coloring books and crayons.  And every now and then I would color with them.  I still love to color.  It's very relaxing - and it can trick you into believing you're still on vacation.

 

 

Migraine Madness

Today is Monday, one of my favorite days of the week because it represents fresh beginnings.  It sometimes represents what the week will involve, but if that's true of today's Monday, I need to rewind, back up, re-do, or whatever it takes to undo the scenario that created the frickin migraine that has decided to descend into the depths of my head (and truly, there's not a lot of depth involved) and take up residence like a squatter.  The pain began last night.  I  dutifully took my meds.   I woke at 3, pain was still there but I stupidly thought the meds I took at 10 would still work.  Loss of linear thinking also accompanies my migraines.  At 6 this morning, I finally, duh, realized the chainsaw inside my head was running at full speed, my migraine was not leaving and I needed more meds.  So here I am around noon and although most of the pain is gone, I'm now in the throes of the migraine hangover.  I just love it.  Every muscle in my body, even the ones that aren't there, are aching.  My earlobes hate me. Even my hair is sensitive.  My head is full of cotton.  Nothing new there, but it feels very airy.  I have no energy and I still have trouble gathering thoughts.  As I type, I've had to correct mistakes about every third word. Yes, I have triggers and I know what they are and yes, I dipped into one of those triggers last night because I made that choice.  Sometimes I can get away with smooth sailing, most times I end up with a migraine.  On a happy note, if I can catch the headache at the very beginning, I can head it off with a dose of meds and get relief.  This one wasn't caught in time.  I passed out fell asleep before I realized I would need meds.  Every now and then, I'll get a migraine sent by Satan and his minions and it will take multiple medications to get rid of it.  Back in the old days, I used to have to tough them out in the bedroom, head under multiple pillows, and barf and sleep it off.  Ugh.  Sooo thankful for good drugs!  I'm fit for just about nothing when I'm having a really bad migraine.  I know some of you have them, too.  Someone once told me her brain truly shut down and turned black during a migraine.  I wish mine would.  This painting is just about what I see if I look at a vase of flowers as I'm experiencing a migraine.  As if I would really do that.    My eyeballs would melt and drool down my face.  Too bad the colors aren't shooting in your eyes like they do mine.  Then you could enjoy a little of my misery.  Not that I would want that for you.  Ever.  Know your triggers and stay away from them.  Unless you can sneak one in every now and then.  And always, always carry your meds.  You may have nice shoes on and you don't want to puke all over them.

Hair Bizness

We're already in the merry, merry month of May.  Good grief.  Why is time flying?  Why is every day about 3 hours long?  Not so long from now, I'll be an older old lady!  Yikes!  I need to do all the things I said I was going to do and haven't yet done.  Like clean out the attic.  And finish my undone projects.  And become a hairdresser.  Yep.  That was my ambition when I was about 10 years old.  I was going to become a hairdresser and own my shop and run my part of the world!  I remember visiting the hairdresser with my mom and grandmother, but back in the fifties, it was called the beauty shop.  My dad said he could never understand that because my grandmother always came back as the same ugly old blue haired lady who went into the shop.  He was speaking of his mother in law, who, in addition to having blue hair, also had a very sour personality.  Therefore, no beauty shop could have helped her.  I've always been soothed by watching others getting their beauty on and I know it began way back in those days.  I found it fascinating to watch these women sit down and have their hair tortured every which way - the meticulous way the hairdresser would take about an inch of hair and wrap it around a metal tube curler and continue this process until every inch of hair had been "tubed." Then all the tubed heads sitting under the hair dryer, gossiping with one another, or with another patron sitting in the hairdresser's chair having her head tubed, or with the owner of the shop.  And after the hair dried and the curlers came out, then the backcombing would commence.  Lordy!  My mother looked wild as her hair appeared to have been electrically shocked, but the hairdresser would take her comb and begin to comb down the wild parts and using the handle of the comb, would continue lifting the hair that laid too flat for her satisfaction.  I always wondered what would happen if some catastrophic event occurred and all the ladies in their various stages of "beauty" would have to run from the shop into the light of day.  After mom's hair had been teased and lifted multiple inches off her head, it would need to be sprayed into an impenetrable helmet in order to last the week.  Even with a can of hairspray sprayed on her head like bug spray, she would need to sleep on a satin pillowcase - just in case one of the hairs became wild and tried to escape.  I found all of this to be right up my alley.  This entire place was a woman's place - no man ever dared enter.  Therefore, the conversation could cover any topic and usually did.  As I used to do under the kitchen table, I would keep very quiet and pick up the gossip of my mother's world.  It was a wonderful place full of wonderful scents and I wanted to own all of it.  My hairdresser recently told me she never learned to give a permanent - schools no longer teach this particular hair style.  My mother still gets them.  She's ninety years old and thinks no head is nice unless it has a permanent.  Geez, I really miss the beauty shop and it's scents.  Enjoy my sketchbook page.  Pretend there is scent there.