I woke up this morning with a migraine.

A more verbose and accurate description, however, would be to say that I came to in my bed, aware of a blinding pressure/pain behind my eyes, as though someone were trying to push them out of their sockets and into my lap. This was accompanied by a searing band of pain that extended from temple to temple, across my eyebrows, and felt no more than a quarter inch in width.

I crawled out to the kitchen, made coffee and drank a cup to wash down the 600 milligrams of ibuprofin. Then I crawled back to bed with hot washcloth over my forehead. Here’s a science experiment, kiddies: why is a wet washcloth, when heated in the microwave for 1 minute and 22 seconds, too hot to touch, but can dissipate all its heat in the 20 seconds it took me to get in bed and put it over my face? Whatever. I tossed and turned in writhing agony for about twenty minutes, then stood under a hot shower in the dark for another ten. I let the water pound onto my skull. It helped. Then I got out of the shower and threw up.

Five hours later, I came to again, and watched the last half of Malibu’s Most Wanted, ate a handful of strawberries and went back to bed. It’s almost 9 pm, and I’m not sure if the session is over. Not what I had in mind when I asked for a big weekend. Tomorrow is the Super Bowl. I hope that when I get up, I’ll be fit to make the bean/kale/winter squash mole, and watch the

commercials

big game.

Blurgh.