The Hurting Time ~ Annie Lennox

I am remembering my first bad headache.*

I was in my early teens. The pain at the top of my head had been nagging me all day. Slowly building. By nightfall I was miserable.

This was before I could swallow pills. Strange, but true fact about me: I did not learn to swallow pills (even the smallest ones) until I was in my early 20's. 

There were no painkilling options besides pills in my house.

I went to my mom seeking support and sympathy. She put me in her bed with a cool damp washcloth for my head and put the movie, The River Wild, on. I remember my misery being manageable because the movie distracted me just enough from my pain.

Since then I have had a lot of bad headaches.I don't remember most of them. A few stand out not so much because of the pain, but because of the circumstances. But that first headache. It was my introduction into a new and terrifying world of pain. Pain for seemingly no reason. My body revolting against me. And the pain was so significant that it has stayed with me some fifteen years.

I used to be afraid of pain. Terrified. Purposely avoiding anything that might cause me even the slightest twinge of discomfort. Now I know better. I know about what the human body can withstand and survive. And when the pain subsides, go on to thrive. And days like Tuesday, when my head hurts with the pain that almost no pill** can cure, it is that knowledge that I cling to tightly.




*I am going with the very medically accurate term "bad headache" because sometimes my very bad headaches are migraines, sometimes they are sinus headaches, and sometimes they are just my body screwing with me for funsies.

**I have tried lots of different stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Most consistently what works like a miracle straight from God is a massage (too expensive) or a Walitin D + generic OTC Painkiller cocktail (which is also too expensive, but then again so is everything). I have tried a variety of prescriptions and some have worked fantastically with few side effects, but those definitely fall under the category of too expensive. You know what is surprisingly cheap? Suffering. Suffering is a crazy good bargain. Also, you save gas because who wants to drive around when they are suffering? And you save on groceries. Because of the vomiting from the pain. Now that I think about it, suffering is kind of awesome and practical.

When Doves Cry ~ Prince

Dove Chocolates have been slaying me lately. Here is what happened: 

I was at the grocery store seeking chocolates to take to a friend's house and while Dove would never have been my choice, Dove was on sale. Two bags for $6.00. Done.  And the bags said Silky Smooth Promises. Which for some reason, I found to be the most hilarious thing ever. I pictured the chocolates saying to me all Barry White style, "We got it together, didn't we? Nobody but you and me. We got it together baby." Yes, Dove. We got it together. Me and Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Silky Smooth Promises. 

But it got better. I know. Hard to imagine, right? Inside the wrapper of each silky smooth promise was a crazy cheesy little phrase. Phrases like: 

"Daydreaming is free." 

"It's OK to be flawed AND fabulous." 

"You know what? You look good in red." 

"Dazzle your sense of flavor." 

I DIE. Seriously. Cheesy heaven. It feeds my cynical and sarcastic soul with endless amounts of material. Is there someone out there who reads these Dove wrappers and is moved? I need to meet this person. And make them cry. Dazzle them with my personality flavor. 

Russian Roulette ~ Van Morrison

If I believed in Mother Nature, which I do not, and I said crass things, which I also do not do, I would say:

I think Mother Nature is on her period this week month. Geesh.

Hot. Cold. Up. Down.

Seriously.

About a week ago I experienced my annual burst of anger at the heat. And when I say anger I actually mean: fury, ire, rage, violent outbursts, or apoplexy.

When I calmed down, I decided to take advantage and plan an evening with friends on my patio for a certain Saturday night.

Only to have my landlady inform me that Saturday was supposed to be raining and 69 degrees. I waffled as to whether to cancel or not and decided to tough it out. Until a few days later when I checked the weather again to discover the weather had been amended to 59 degrees and rainy. At best. So I cancelled.  And while rain and cooler weather does not create the hot, stabby, violent temperment inside of me that the heat does, it had ruined my plans. I fell into a pout.

But with all this complaining, sometimes there is this:

A pretty sunset, a soft wind coming through your car windows as you drive through town, a good song playing on the radio. It makes it hard to remember what all the complaining was for or even about. 

Update: The weather did not even end up being that bad on Saturday. I could have had my people over. DANG IT! 

Green Onions ~Booker T. & The MG's

So I am pretty famous for my adolescent appetite. Peeps? Yes, please! Kale? No thank you!!

My most despised vegetable? Onions. Why? Because not only do I not care for their texture (I have major texture issues) they are in EVERYTHING. And so ruin EVERYTHING. It does not matter how tiny they have been chopped, I still can feel and taste them in my food. Upsetting.

Enter Chelsea.

Chelsea, for lack of a better description, is a super human. She does like 80 kajillion things and does them well. For instance. Or perhaps this is more your fancy. My most favorite talent of the many that she possesses is her cooking skills. She is one of the few people who can get me to eat new and adult things.

Like onions.

And then she explained to me how to do it myself. And now I do.

Here's the drill:

Large skillet (one with a lid).

Drizzle a tablespoon or two of olive oil into the pan and put it on medium/low heat.

Add in thinly sliced yellow onions Sidenote 1: recently was told that the flatter the onion the sweeter it is, so I always dig around for a nice flat medium sized onion. Sidenote 2: I use a mandolin to cut my onions to guarantee even thin slices.

Next add in thinly sliced green peppers and give it a stir to evenly coat everything in olive oil. 

Let cook (stir occasionally) until all the onions and green peppers are soft. The onions should be pretty close to translucent. 

Then turn the burner down really low, put the lid on, and just let those onions and green peppers hang out there for a good long while. I left mine for almost an hour. 

Then you can do really amazing things with them. Like top roast beef sandwiches all Philly style. Or just add some salt and eat them. Or I don't know, anything basically. There is, after all, a reason onions are in everything. 

Also, in reference to the kale comment at the beginning of this post, I do make an exception for kale chips. Provided those kale chips are seasoned to an insane degree. 

Green Light ~ Beyonce

The past few months I have been promising myself that when I ran out of a chemically-laden product at home, I would try to replace it with something "green."

Guys, green is really, really, really hard.

For reals.

The two products I was out of and had to replace were hand soap and dish soap.

My requirements seemed fairly straightforward:
1. Not cost a bajillion dollars.
2. Smell nice.
3. Work well
4. Be available at Target because I did not want to have to make multiple stops.
5. Make me feel better about my exposure to chemicals and my carbon footprint or something like that.


First up, hand soap. In the traditional hand soap section of the store, Target has got a big ole fat lot of nothing. I should have been looking in either the beauty section or the section of the store that sells Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day products(laundry detergent section) but I did not figure that out until a few days later when I was at Target for my second product, dish soap.

So I ended up with Method foaming hand soap in the Sea Mineral fragrance because it claims to be "naturally derived."  Click here for an explanation of naturally derived. Do you know what that means? NEITHER DO I! Let's turn to the Method website shall we?  It lists the second ingredient as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate or SLS.  Let me just say that if you ever decide to Google the words "Sodium Lauryl Sulfate" you will come to the conclusion that SLS is actually devil juice. Or harmless. Or WHO THE HECK KNOWS???? Method works around the whole devil juice issue is by saying their devil juice is naturally derived from coconuts.  This article makes me think NOT SO MUCH on the whole naturally derived thing. SLS is SLS is SLS.

In the end, I can tell you that I like my Method foaming soap bunches and bunches but it makes me feel zero percent better about my chemical exposure or carbon footprint. It looks really nice in my bathroom though. So there is that.

If money were no object (it is a BIG object) I would buy NYR Organic US hand wash like this. A more reasonable option would be Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Liquid Hand Soap which still has some pretty chemically sounding ingredients but less so than Method and closer to the end of the list of ingredients. We all do know that ingredients are listed by order of most to least, right? Okay, good.

And then there is dish soap. Target had three viable options. 1. Seventh Generation 2. Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day and 3. J.R. Watkins Dish Soap.  All of them made some great claims but I found it almost impossible to figure out which was the best and in the end went with the Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day because it had the most interesting packaging and a different smell (Basil).  It works great, the website ingredient listing shows it to be devil juice free, and all in all I am pleased. Minus the part where I spent a $1.50 more than I normally would on dish soap.

Because the most vital lesson here is, going green costs green. Unless you are prepared to wash everything in "holy water" and by "holy water" I mean vinegar. And who does not want to smell vinegar all the time?

Tell me, what changes large or small have you made towards the whole "Green" movement?

Or do you wash your sins in the blood of the environment? And by that I mean petroleum.

Rainbow Connection ~ The Muppets

I currently am feeling a bit overwhelmed by my "To-Do" list.

So explain to me why as I tried to mentally review my list during my lunch break today, the only item I could think of was "sort the jelly beans I bought yesterday by color."

For the record, this is so unimportant it will not be making the official list of things to be done.

Also, is anything better than half-price Easter candy? I think not!

Talk That Talk - Rihanna

Separated ~ Avant

I have not posted in like two weeks. Which is kind of total craziness.

And I more than likely would still not be posting, if this were not an act of procrastination towards the no fewer than three things I should be doing right now. And when I say three things, I really mean upwards of ten. There is a long list of things more important than this blog post to be done.

Holy cow I do not want to do any of those things. At all.

Not right now anyway.

I would instead like to tell you the following things:

1. I still listen to songs over and over when the mood strikes me. Most recently, K'naan's Dylan cover of "With God On Our Side."   Also Usher's new joint because I love it when Usher channels his little inner Prince falsetto. It makes me happy.

2. I have eight (yes, 1234567...8) blog posts from the past two weeks sitting in draft status. None of them were quite right. So I have maybe gotten pickier about what I post? This post sort of answers that question with a resounding "NO!" doesn't it?

3. So I never saw any episodes of that Keri Russell "Felicity" show when it was actually on television but I happened across some episodes the other day. Is it just me or is that the most joyless show ever? It's like Reality Bites, My So-Called Life, and Gilmore Girls all co-mingled to produce the world's least happy hour of television. I think maybe there were parts that were supposed to be funny? Yet somehow, it is also kind of addictive. Anyone watch this show when it was on? Report your thoughts and feelings in the comments section. I feel a need to understand.

4. Any other Tucson readers feeling dread over the coming six months of hot oppressive misery? Just me?  I am so not ready for this.


More later I hope. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. Tell me your irrational fears in the comments. It will help me with a project I am working on.