Oh, my aching head...

Every once in a while I get the sort of headache that just fells me. My doctor tells me they're hormonal, and so far I've not found a medication that does much for them, really. But they're pretty infrequent and I tend to just take an Aleve and go nap and 12 hours later I'm fine.

One of these struck yesterday. Unfortunately, on Monday night I'd happily packed up my stuff and gathered my "show and tell" for the Pointless Sisters, my guild's art quilt group, and I'd planned to be there on Tuesday morning. I've not been able to get to a meeting in ages and ages, so I was determined. And then I woke up with familiar feeling of a bad headache coming on ("Frank, it's one of my sick headaches..." Remember Darrin's mother on Bewitched?). And even then, I was going to brace myself and go, still. But at 9am, only minutes before I was going to leave, the lawn-mowing guys (who are supposed to come on Monday and never have come on Tuesday before) opened the gate to get the clippings bin and let Gemma out.

AARRGH. So Gemma had a happy dash up the street (she always heads straight to her friend Sadie's house), and I had to hop in the car to follow her and bring her home. (Note to self: read up on dog training and the command "Come.") We can call until our heads fall off, and Gemma just looks at us, grinning, and then dashes off. But pull up in the car, and she hops right in. Go figure.

So by the time I got Gemma back inside, I was irritable and headachey and I opted for a BIGGER headache pill. So to my Pointless friends? I WILL be there one of these times, really I will. I don't know what it is about the 4th Tuesday of each month, but lately it's been a very uncooperative day. But I keep trying!

I rallied around lunch time to try out the new Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner we agreed to test out. As we have 2 cats, 1 dog, 1 school-aged child and 2 fairly messy adults, our floors are rarely spotless for long...and our old vacuum cleaner is acting, well, weak. Yes, I bought into the idea that the Dyson is MADE to suck up animal hair. So, here's the test I performed: I vacuumed the family room vigorously with the old vacuum ("OV"), as I would for a regular vacuuming session. THEN I unpacked the Dyson (which came with the worst --bar none-- product instructions I have ever seen with any product, ever) and, eventually, gave it a go in the same room. I was fascinated (and then sort of horrified) at the amount of gunk and dirt and animal hair that showed up in the Dyson AFTER I'd just vacuumed to a state I'd thought was sufficient cleanliness. Oh, my. There is something rather satisfying about seeing all the gunk you vacuum up. Makes the task seem worthwhile, frankly.

But the Dyson is BEASTLY heavy, and there appears to be easy storage method for the various attachments...Or maybe there is but I sure couldn't decipher it from the incomprehensible product information.

So we're not sure the Dyson is here to stay. Will we really haul it up and down stairs, with it being that heavy? Or should we keep the OV for upstairs and use the Dyson downstairs, where the floor mess is the worst?

Evening found me back on the bed with a heated pad on my head while I listened to Terry Gross interview Valerie Plame Wilson on Fresh Air. Plame, you will remember, is the undercover CIA operative "outed" by Cheny and Scooter Libby etc because her husband's writings challenged the positions the Bush administration was taking about the Iraq war. I was so impressed by Plame's articulateness. She's plugging a new book, which I will have to read.