Migraineur (Vacation Day #2)

I was up in the night, so I worked on my Christmas cards. Every year, one of the bloggers I hold dear invites her readers to join in a Christmas card exchange and I have been doing so for the better part of a decade. This year there are about 40 participants. Last year,  I feel like it was about the same number. Last year, I hand painted my cards (yes, girl, really), but this year, I just bought some cute cards from Target. The first year I did it, I treated the whole thing like a writing exercise, bought blank cards and wrote a full letter to each person in each card. (That year, I only signed up to do half the list.) That was fun, but too much work. Even though I'm done with writing and addressing the cards, I have yet to seal the envelopes and apply the postage, but that's done easily enough, right?

Anyway, that's how I whiled away those otherwise empty hours in the middle of the night.

It's Friday and I'm just starting the process of decompressing from the just-ended term. I spent a day and a half in bed--so far. I'm trying to keep the mandatory bed time to under a week this break. I think last break, I spent at least two weeks flat on my back in recovery mode. (And I don't think I fully recovered anyway, considering how unmotivated I was this term.) Anyway, I guess I'm going for "active recovery" this time around. We'll see how that works.

I fed the pups around 5:20 in the morning and made myself a cup of coffee. They scarfed their breakfast and went right back to bed. I skipped my own breakfast as I had had a snack earlier (leftover white rice from our Chinese takeout night before last and broccoli left over from last night's dinner with cheddar cheese melted all over it, which was not the best middle-of-the-night snack, but my personal food stores are limited, as I am pup-sitting). I think I may have a proper breakfast in a bit, maybe some eggs and toast.


Later:

I was felled by a migraine mid-morning that persists even now, ten hours later. I napped for about a couple of hours and woke up still in pain. Dave and I had planned for  at the dim sum/sushi place near us and so we went and by chance met up with Chris and LuAnn. It was Chris's birthday, so we joined them and made a party out of it.

I ordered some sushi (tuna maki, saba sashimi, unagi, and a few other things) and while I waited for that to arrive, I snacked on some dim sum (beef and garlic dumplings and a few tiny sparerib-ish things). I've never had sushi at this place before and it was okay but very expensive, far more expensive than I would have paid in Tokyo for the same quality. (Although I guess I should expect to pay a premium when I order sushi in the desert Southwest.) My headache continued unabated throughout dinner (and by then it had been joined by the classic migrainous visual changes and the nausea). But that didn't stop me from scarfing down my sushi. (The restaurant owner, a Chinese woman--'cause most of the Japanese restaurants in town are owned by Chinese, Korean, or Mongolian immigrants--expressed a dislike of the strongly flavored saba that I had ordered. And it was pretty strong stuff, not the beautifully subtle stuff that you'd expect in a Japanese place.)

Anyway, at the end of our meal, Chris got the restaurants funky recorded birthday song played to her along with some fried ice cream and a birthday candle.  That place cracks me up. Also: If we ever dine out together on my birthday, I will strangle you if you tell the restaurant staff--any restaurant staff--that it's my birthday. Seriously.

After we bid Chris and LuAnn goodnight, Dave and I stopped by the co-op. Each year, there's a gift tree at the co-op where the organization in town that cares for underprivileged children places those children's Christmas gift wishes on the tree. We always choose a couple of kids to buy gifts for, but we had forgotten to make note of the deadline for delivering the gifts. (It's December 17th, in case you were wondering.)

This year, Dave chose a 2-year-old girl who requested musical instruments and I chose a 10-year-old girl who asked for art supplies. We have yet to buy Dave's gifts, but I've been assembling a little arsenal of art supplies (ordered from Amazon) that so far includes Cray-pas (water soluble oil pastels), chalk pastels, a set of watercolors, markers, colored pencils, and two pads of paper. That's probably enough--still, I want to buy more. (I'm an art supply hoarder from way back so I assume that everyone else is, too.) I think I'll sew up a little tote to put the supplies in. I have a green-and-white canvas printed with large flowers that will make a good little gift bag. Then I can wrap each thing individually and make it more fun to open.

Despite all that b.s., I'm not remotely in the Christmas spirit this year. It waxes and wanes with me. Some years, I feel like the universe will fall apart if I don't make an effort to have a tiny rosemary plant that we decorate as if it were an actual Christmas tree with tiny battery operated lights and the whole bit. (One year, my aunt accused me of lying when I said we hadn't had a Christmas tree in decades because she had seen photos of our "tree" online that made the rosemary plant look as though we had a six-foot spruce tree in our tiny little casita. Seriously, you can see the photos here and the actual "tree" here. Hahahaha!!) This year, I'm kind of like: Meh.

I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign.