Oh boy, I still have this debilitating migraine. You ever get those? Well, I certainly hope not. I had to set my hot pink roses my husband gave me for my birthday outdoors just now, because even the faintest scent makes you feel even worse, if that is possible. Once he had given me THE MOST GORGEOUS bouquet of mixed flowers I'd ever seen, but they had bad girls in them . . . lilies. You ever smell a lily? You really don't have to try very hard, you'd have to be in a coma to miss their distinct and overpoweringly frightening odor. Actually, if you waved a bunch of lilies under the nose of a comatose person, they'd probably snap right out of it. So I was getting ready for my students' piano recital and I was getting sicker by the second - as in throw up sick, and the recital was going to start in a couple of hours so I was just short of panicking. Finally, I thought, It might be something in the house. Then I started sniffing around and my nose led me to a room, and the bouquet was in that room and I could smell those flowers, and upon closer examination, the lilies stood out. Reminded me of when someone had done something bad back in the days of the Israelites wandering around the wilderness, how God would tell the leaders to gather all the tribes and then pick one tribe, and then pick one clan from the tribe and then one family and then finally one person, who ended up being the culprit. Scary. Those flowers went out on their hiney, too, but at least I could see them through the French doors. But, seriously, migraines are ridiculous. I had a friend who had them ALL THE TIME. Even her husband so much as rattling a bag of potato chips sent her into orbit whenever she had one, which was most of the time. She had to just lie down in a dark room with a cool washcloth on her face, bless her baby heart.

So, I have to pass on this great quote I came across a few years ago. It was so great I locked it away into my memory forever. And I pull it up at suitable intervals to reinspire myself. My friend had given me a Calendar for Too Busy Women. That must have been a best-seller, as every Woman I ever heard of on the planet is Too Busy. So every day, of course, there was an inspirational message, or verse or quote . . . something to keep you on the straight and narrow . . . one . . . more . . . day, because, of course, we're all gasping for our final breath by the minute and need to be defibrilated. But a quote will do instead. Are you ready? Here it is (and I like the second half of it the best, which is the part I committed to memory):

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. -Lin Yutang

Isn't that MARVELOUS? Can't you see how that particular arrangement of words is a gust of fresh air to fill those lungs? I don't know who Lin Yutang is, but he or she is brilliant! Hey guess what? My middle name is Linn. By the way, you can see I write as I organize - not very. Hold on, DTD just breezed in to print something off the computer. Be right back.

Well, DTD stayed an exorbitant length of time tonight as she was viewing cell phones online. Almost two months ago her cell phone broke down, part-way due to overuse. She could still text (she's so spectacular at texting that I want her to enter that speed texting contest and win $10,000, because she would win), but the good old-fashioned voice to voice speaking had ceased to function. It was annoying at first; she adjusted but now she is OVER IT. Anyway, she came in announcing she had just signed up for NetFlix, did I say that right?, and we could use it sometimes. I said, Oh goody, I've been wanting to do that. Then I said, How does it work? and I did a little hip wiggle and squat, with perky eyes. She gave a withering glance and drolly replied, If you act like that, I'm not telling you. So, we moved on to Blackberry talk. My husband, Mike, helps her out a lot with all these tech things, 'cause I'm certainly no help, rather a hindrance. DTD said, If you buy a Blackberry now, you get a second free one. I piped up, Oh boy!, I get a new Blackberry! Droll teenage daughter (DTD, you know), shrinks me down to size with her sneering expression and says, You don't even know what it is. True. But I still want it because I think it's kind of like a cell phone and I just got a new cell phone recently, the free kind, but it was new and slick and shining and I liked it and right off the bat it dropped out of my unzipped tiny, stuffed purse, kerplunk!, onto a cement walkway and it got all chunked up. So now every time I go to use it, I think, Oh darn, my new cell phone isn't pretty anymore, it's all chunked up. That takes up a lot of brain space to say that each time, so I need a new one. Our computer is in the kitchen, so I'm doing dishes and get to eavesdrop. They are reading customer reviews, which is a futile effort. The first one will say, BEST CELL PHONE IN THE UNIVERSE . . . EVER. And the next one will say, RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU. But one of the phones in question, the first person said, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, so we were knowing the next one would say HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT, but instead it said, GO GET IT . . . NOW! So, what do I know? Mike says, Blackberry is for people who like to email a lot. I say, I like to email, I could email you all the time, DTD. Who says, You just talked me out of it. I persist, Come on, I want a Blackberry. Mom, you are not getting a Blackberry, forget it. After a long time she finally leaves, but not before she thumbs through Sunday newspaper coupons, another item that keeps her coming by the house. (I am very generous, she doesn't know it yet, but coupon talk will be saved for another day.) Mike, thanks for all your help, she sweetly says. I said, I helped, too! Well, I DID help, too. After she narrowed her phone choice to two she asked me which one I liked best and when I pointed and said, I pick this one, she said, Perfect, I'll take the other one. Out the door she goes, disdain and eye rolls wafting behind her.

Well, I have to go for now, I have a little job in the morning, but Mike might have to do it for me if Migraine sticks around. Two weeks ago I had to leave my little job early, thanks to Migraine. I just ate four Heaven Scent Vanilla Angelica cookies. They come individually wrapped in a bag, well four wrapped individually together, is that still individually? So, once you open the nice plastic, you have to go ahead and eat all four. Three in a sack like that. That's 28 cookies, 2.33 sacks a week. They are the ultimate. I offered one to DTD, who pierced me with "the look" and said, I'm on a free-free-free diet and you offer me one of those? Oops. She does think the diet is helping, at least. Her stomach is better. I should probably cut out everything in my diet, kind of like getting rid of all personal possessions to tame the housecleaning beast. If I don't eat anything, I KNOW I will feel better. For a while anyway.

Okay, tomorrow I have to elaborate, no problem there, on the above mentioned dazzling quote.

See you then,
KEM