Off day...

As in "day off". Whew! I just love the sound of that.

I woke up early with a migraine. I think that all the excess emotion last night surrounding having finally finished my semester set off some sort of weird chemical reaction in my brain that churned around and eventually came out pain.

As a side topic, Michael said to me about a month ago, "I'm glad I'm not the type to get headaches."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I'm glad I don't get headaches," he clarified.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I mean I'm glad I don't get headaches."

I've been with this boy nearly a decade. At that moment, I realized that I could not remember a single instance of him complaining of, or even mentioning in an off-handed sort of way, ever having a headache. In all honesty, the concept of 'never getting headaches' is so foreign to me that it had never occurred to me that people existed who didn't get headaches. And so, I stared at him, blinking, and allowed seconds to pass while I contemplated this new idea.

"You don't get headaches?" I said.

Here, even still, I was thinking the phrase "not that often" would be included in his response. I thought I was stating the extreme and that he would laugh and concede a more reasonable line.

"Well," he said, "I think I might have had one or two, like while I was sick or something."

He thinks he might have had a headache sometime while he was sick. Or something. He thinks. What?! How is this possible? We clarified this many times. Michael doesn't get headaches. In reality, he doesn't get headaches. Lucky bastard.

Anyway, I got up early today, took some naproxin, went back to bed. Got up a little bit later, took some more naproxin, and grumbled about my headache. But you know, even with a budding migraine, I still couldn't help but be giddy with the idea that this was the first of many days to come in which I am not in the Fall 2008 semester. So happy.

Michael made me grits. It turned out that this is a miracle cure. That, plus naproxin.

Now, deadening migraine pain (for those of you that don't get them) opens you up to some peculiar sensations. Because while the pain itself dulls, all the migrainey things that go along with the pain remain. Light sensitivity. Sound sensitivity. Well, heightened sensitivity in general. Intermittent nausea. Lightning flashes inside my eyelids. The feeling that someone put a little extra stuff inside certain parts of my head and there's just not enough room to accommodate. Fun stuff like that. It's actually kind of interesting to experience all that but without all the pain. It's certainly way better than when there is pain involved.

Today, being my first day of freedom from the hectic craziness that was the Fall 2008 semester, was going to be a good day. And it was. I took two very long walks. During the first, I went to the public library and checked out three novels that guarantee fun without all that tedious "thinking" business. It was morning still and acting out some pre-storm weather in which a pleasantly cool wind flows about your highly sensitized skin, and rainclouds have gathered but it's still too bright for your light sensitive eyes for you to take off your sunglasses. Really, it felt awesome. I felt... free.

Later in the afternoon, I took a long, slightly less well-timed walk to a guitar shop about a mile and half? two miles? from my place. In the rain. Storm hit about halfway there. I watched it coming up the street, heading right for me. I got soaked through, even with my umbrella, and even catching a bit of shelter beside a tree when the rains really came down. I also got my guitar strings.

Walking in rain is fun stuff. It is not, however, as fun as it was when I was three. Earlier, while I was home, a downpour erupted and so Michael and I went to watch from the front door. The kids in the neighboring building shrieked and ran off the street to some shelter. But they quickly grew bored of the shelter and ran back into the street to splash around in the huge puddles that were forming, dancing around and shrieking and jumping up and down and kicking water.

"Man," I said, "Puddles were so much fun!"

"Yeah, I know," said Michael. "They were awesome."

Those kids knew how to have a day off. But so did I. I've got a newly strung guitar. I've got a book halfway finished. I've got two long walks under my belt--the first and second long walk I've taken in I don't know how long. Maybe tomorrow, if the weather's not entirely crappy I'll go down to the beach and reacquaint myself with the ocean. Maybe tomorrow, even if the weather's crappy, I'll go down to the beach anyway. Ooh. And maybe I can find someone to have a beer with me.

Yeah, I definitely like this part.