Recovering (slowly) from my first migraine in about 6 months. I don't get these often, but when I do, I know they are coming. I had a huge mug of coffee this morning (believe it or not, a little bit of caffeine usually helps...see
Excedrin, below...), then some dark chocolate-covered espresso beans (curse you, Trader Joe's!!), so I hesitated to take Excedrin (65 mg of caffeine per dose), but finally I was forced to, around 6:30p. Severe headache + nausea + the world swimming in green flashes = MIGRAINE ALERT!
Warning Will Robinson. So, I will be up late tonight.
What better time to update
my book blog? I've given up on uploading book covers (tinypics.com is being cranky anyway; most of my previously uploaded book covers are not showing up right now) and Amazon links (
teh, look it up yourself!), just to get my reading list up to date.
Perhaps The Migraine was brought on by my mother's recent visit. She was a bit ticked to begin with, having offered to come down and watch Tess for the week (while, it was assumed, E & I would get the heck out of Dodge), but alas! we could not make up our damn minds as to where we wanted to go. Funny, we almost picked New Orleans about a month ago...
sigh.
We also realized we'd be needing a new roof before the first snowfall (which could happen in January, or next week; this is Michigan, after all). So, we decided to stay put. E took off a morning here, an afternoon there, we met with roofing contractors, yet still invited Mom down for a couple of days. She is very isolated living up north, not good for a former real estate broker and general social butterfly.
My mistake was in describing my week, and how my evenings are affected by E's tennis schedule. It's enough to make anyone's head swim. I will spare you the details, since they will all be changing soon, but I will say he has been getting away with murder...he plays EVERY STINKING DAY of the week, either early in the morning or in the evening (on Wednesday he manages BOTH). As long as he does not make me put Tess to bed on my own more than two nights running (and I get my Tuesday nights, Friday nights, and Sunday afternoons in), we're golden.
Mom hit a snag when I described our Sundays. "So...you've wiped church right off your calendar?" Icy silence, followed by a 20-minute sermon (pun intended) that displayed every reason I avoid church:
1) "You have a wonderful opportunity to bring someone to the Lord..."
Not if he's not interested. Believe me, I tried.
Apparently my effort was "not good enough," which sums up my experience with (some) people who do make it to church every week. And that, in turn, proves my point, that most people who go to church every week and "give their all" are only in it to show others how it "should" be done. Forget praising the Lord. It's all about punching the holy time clock, and making sure your co-workers notice.
2) "You are depriving your child of her chance to know the Lord..."
Did me a lot of good, didn't it? On the upside (for my Mom, at least), is the knowledge that your children usually behave in a manner exactly the opposite of you; thus bleeding liberal hearts beget young Republicans (I call it "the Alex P. Keaton effect"), and non church-goers beget fundamentalists...gee, I'm so looking forward to Tess's teenage years...
3) "You should be thanking the Lord for all the wonderful things you have in your life."
And I have to suffer through church every week to do this? Thanks, but no thanks, Jesus (see my rant under point #1). Oh, and I was a good, church-going girl when He put the wretched ex-fiance in my life. I only got the Good Life when I met a man who had never been to church (thanks to the policies of the former USSR), and finally quit going to church altogether myself. Do the math.
Also, my FIL is terminally ill (and my mother knows this). So, instead of letting Tess get to know
him by spending Sundays with her grandparents (the ones who live near us) before it's too late, she should be wasting half of the day at church? More math.
And my all-time favorite attempt to induce guilt:
4) "What if God wiped you off of
his calendar?"
Um, I think He has, and we've both been better for it. After all, he has fanatics like her to make up for it.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that pretty much summed it up for me: "Dear God, please protect me from your followers."
