The little man who lives in my skull tried to escape early this morning, perhaps following the example of the fantastic fox whose tunneling exploits I had witnessed earlier in the night. I woke up at 5:15 to the sensation of wonderfully stimulating pain, which I fought with a stiff wall of denial. Once that failed, I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes marveling at the sensation. “Wow!” I thought. “Wowowowowow ow OW! This is more than a feeling!” Never before had I enjoyed a headache so sociable that it brought nausea to the party.
(Right now, the thoughtful reader will inquire: did you give this headache to yourself? In short, I don’t think so. I admit to ingesting a couple of beers last night, but not near enough to invite the Most Amazing Headache Of All Time.)
When I finally decided that I would rather be asleep than in pain, I staggered to the bathroom in search of relief. I’m back at home in Nashville right now, which meant that my normal supply of Ibuprofen was not at arm’s length. In the bathroom, I found that the supply of medicine I laid in during August had been pilfered. Of course, I blamed my brother.
Stagger stagger stagger across the hall to his bedroom, I did, where I found that there was a similar deficit. At this point my headache had passed through adolescence to adulthood, and was on the verge of securing a $300,000 a year position at a major Wall Street firm. It was time to get serious. I scrambled, pawing through my drawers and cabinets in search of ANYTHING AT ALL. I found a single pain relief pill which had been buried (wrapped) in the bottom of my suitcase for six months, and a packet of alka seltzer. I slurped them both down, stopping when the ingestion of beseltzered water started to worry my tummy. Finally, I fell asleep.
On waking, I was saddled with a chore. The night before I had planned on visiting the local Kroger (a lovely supermarket) to purchase the makings of a Thanksgiving side. (Beans!) I had forgotten. Although my head remained foggy (and still feels that way), I was too proud to give in to sentiment, and pressed on. The roads were empty; the store was ransacked. Once again, I scrounged. I came away with their last pack of sundried tomatoes, and the last few handfuls of sad green beans.
Thanksgiving bounty: straight from the bottom of the barrel.
UPDATE 3:45
They were the last beans for a reason. These guys are so limp we couldn’t snap them, and had to use a knife to separate the ends. Time to roast that apathy out!
