PAINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! I’m having a stroke or a seizure or a heart attack or possibly an ‘an-your-it’ aneurism or a concussioned contusion convolution or mega-migraine or something bad…really bad… maybe… or maybe not… CRAP I don’t know… all I do know is it can’t be good when I think my head is going to explode like a grape in the microwave or like the dude in that old Scanners horror movie or Panic Pete or or or.

That’s the damn problem with getting older. Shit just seems to go kablooie louie for no apparent reason and I don’t know whether to worry or not. Do I tell my wife (she is sitting all peacefully on the sofa, it would ruin her night if I told her that her Husband’s skull was about to splatter grey matter all the artwork on our walls)? Do I call a doctor? Do I call an ambulance? Do I need to get one of those ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ Life Alert necklaces? SKEE-YAAAA… OK let me back track but keep in mind that I might not have a lot of time left so read fast.

Last night I was doing the dinner dishes because I am the designated dish doer in our house. Years ago the wife and I made simple rules to improve our lives. We discovered she would rather take a bath in a tub full of jagged broken glass shards than wash dishes and I would rather play the Oedipus Rex Game, by gouging my eyeballs out with steel rods after discovering I’m in love with my Mother, than fold laundry. So early in our relationship we split-up chores based on our personal level of intense hatred. I clean toilets and change cat litter while she pays bills and balances the check book; all arguably shitty jobs just some just more literally than figuratively and all despised more by one of us than the other. There were other negotiations but that is really not the point here but if I am about to succumb to a anur-strokey-migro-sieze any second now, you can humor me and listen to my ramblings.

So I had gotten all the dishes into the dishwasher, the pots all scrubbed and dried, unused ingredients all re-pantry-ed and the kitchen deemed as ‘spicidy and spanied’ as it was gonna get. My last task of the night was to refill that ‘olive oil pumpy, spritzy tube-like thing’ that magically mists a pan with oil in lieu of just splooshing in a few drops from the bottle and shaking it around to coat a cooking surface. Now I’m assuming the thing has a real name since I have never heard one of those smugy Food Network personality chiefs say ‘olive oil pumpy spritzy tube-like thing’, but if you have ever lurked the aisles of any William Sanoma-ish type kitchen store in the past couple of decades you probably know what ‘olive oil pumpy spritzy tube-like thing’ I am talking about.

A few years ago those ‘olive oil pumpy spritzy tube-like things’ were all the rage to give as a gift to anyone that cooks because they were sorta cheap yet gave the appearance of being a handy healthy useful needed kitchen appliance. I think we got ours when my wife got roped into going to one of those house parties that in reality is less of a party and more of a trapped audience selling event where you are guilted into buying something you don’t really want but because you are sitting in a friend’s living room nibbling from a trey of cruddy hors de overs while being forced to listen for hours to a cheesy sales pitch, you get suckered into buying a bunch of semi-useless junk on the spot to be delivered in three weeks after you forgot you bought it, even though you don’t really want any of it and if you did, you know it would be smarter to just go to a real store and buy what you really need made by a reliable company you have actually heard of, in a retail environment where the items can be returned if they suck. (forgive me, this sieza-stroka- migro-izm is throwing off my ability to actually end a thought or sentence or paragraph).

So I reached into the pantry to get the olive oil and BLAMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOO. Suddenly everything went a hazy white googly blur and it felt like somebody shoved a thorny rod through my skull. I froze. I blinked. I strained to see through the white bubbly streaks that suddenly clouded my vision. Was this it? Is this how it ends? Is this how Dan permanently checks out of Hotel Life? Wife watching the tube while I’m doing my evening chores? At least if I die right now, right here it won’t be like Elvis on the toilet… then again the King dying on the throne did seem right…Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!… Horta… Painnnnn !!!!

Reluctant to call this moment the end of my existence, I went on with my task while straining to focus as my brain was feeling like it was about to visit the outside of my skull. I kept pouring olive oil into the ‘pumpy spritzy tube-like thing’ but it just seemed to never fill up. This ten second task was taking hours. Time was warping, my head throbbing, my vision disappearing. I felt like an Astronaut on acid out of the capsule on a spacewalk in a pile of outer-space tapioca pudding seconds before my facemask cracked open letting gravity suck my insides out through my face. I tried to smile to my wife but I’m sure it was the expression of a constipated Koala being handed to 500th tourist of the day for a souvenir photo from Australia.

I somehow finished with the damn superfluous overpriced ‘olive oil pumpy spritzy tube-like thing’ and made my way to the cabinet to find a dozen or so aspirin to swallow. Pained and struggling to squintily keep my eyes open without letting any light touch my retinas, I could not find the pills. I dug past what felt like mountains of bottles of flu meds, zinc, sinus crap, diarrhea cork pills, constipation uncork powder, iron, vitamins, Pepto… EVERYTHING BUT MY DAMN OLD SCHOOL PLAIN OLD BOTTLE OF ASPIRIN. I was about to suck down all the remaining baby aspirin that I normally just take one of each day when I remembered my travel kit had real aspirin. I strained through the pain and white blotchy fog to the bedroom where I had started to gather things for a trip. I gobbled a few pills and wanting to distract myself from my possible impending death, I plopped into my chair by the computer. Not a smart move. Trying to read the screen was as enjoyable as being thrashed in the skull by a gang of teenage thugs with sticks using my head as a cigarette and beer filled piñata.

It was barely 10PM but I announced I was going to bed. What was happening to me? I know I should tell my wife but the last time I had a creepy scary unknown pain they sent me for a ton of tests, x-rays and scans until after a few months while the specialists debated how many more tests to run, the problem just went away by itself. Am I over reacting? Am I under-reacting? Am I going to make it through the night? Even though I feared that my brain blew a rod, sleep rolled over and engulfed me like a Big Sur evening fog.

I woke up this morning. I WOKE UP THIS MORNING!!!! First victory. My head was a little dunkled (as my friend Mike calls a beer hangover) but I survived what I think was my first real hard core migraine. Whoa… those suck. Those are even worse than those ‘sell you junk house parties’ where you end up with an ‘olive oil pumpy spritzy tube-like thing ’, But I think I might of mentioned that already. Sorry my head is a little foggy.

Horta, Panic Pete, Wall, Olive Oil Mister, Scanners