Like a palmprint on my brain.

Hello, again.

Just another meandering collection of mind-detritus.

Firstly, the title. I've had a headache for four days solid. The dizzy spells have passed, but it still feels like a hand has been pressed against my forehead, above my eyes, and the fingers are stretching back into the meat of my brain in distinct channels.

I'm past cranky, skirting cantankerous and approaching churlish.

It's not that it's particularly bad. And it's slightly better than it was, since it's more diffuse. It's more that it has been four days with no reprieve.

My casual joking about brain tumors seems to bother people a little. It's not that I want to die, I just don't really see it as such a terrible thing. Sure, there's nothing afterward for me; I just work really well with a deadline.

But I guess it is kind of distasteful.

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About a month ago I spilled a brown sugar and butter sauce that I had boiling on the barbecue (for sweet potatoes) on my foot. I raised some lovely blisters but didn't fuse my sock to my skin or anything. And really, after the first 12 hours there wasn't any pain. It's just been a matter of keeping it protected.

This morning I noticed that the blistered skin is starting to dry out and there is new skin underneath it.

I'm hesitant to help it slough off because I'm just so used to the purple mark on the top of my foot.

I don't know why, but I've grown... not fond of it... but it's familiar now.

Maybe it will scar and I'll get to keep it.

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Lucky:

About a week after the butter-and-brown-sugar incident I was taking my car to get the exhaust system fixed. I don't drive a great deal. I walk to work, but the grocery store close enough to walk to is too expensive to shop at all the time, and most of my family is spread out around the province - so I'll run my car while I can afford to.

On the way there, my brakes started to fail out on me.

I had just enough juice left to stop the car in the garage's parking lot.

He told me later that I was lucky not to have needed to go any farther because the next time I tried to stop I probably wouldn't have.

So it was lucky, but still expensive.

I'll be eating ramen for awhile.

Lucky I like ramen.

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To go along with that week, I also managed to catch a cold or the flu or something. I'm always sick, since my immune system has always been pretty shit, but especially in the last two years since I had mono.

It kicked my ass pretty hard, and mostly on the day that I had to leave my apartment because it was being sprayed for bedbugs. I know, it's gross, but they're not a filth-seeking insect, they're just hematophages. Either way it was a fairly minor case and the experts are pretty sure it's taken care of but it was really disruptive. Luckily I had help for the work that needed to be done to prepare for it.

I went to the movies and sat by myself with a pocket full of snotty tissues.

Between the boils on my foot, the intense sickness, the insects... It was starting to feel pretty Biblical.

Had I forgotten to let someone's people go?

If I were religious, I'd be freeing the shit out of everything.

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I don't think my headache has anything to do with listening to Gallows a lot lately. I'm ignoring the fact that I'm probably too old to really be into angry punk anymore. And that I'm more firmly entrenched in the establishment than most punk ideology would permit. But Grey Britain is an exceptional album.

I've also been listening to Beirut. It makes me walk slower and chills me out. It's a little hard not to want to sing along in public places, but I always have that urge.

The only thing they've got in common really is that they both have rather complex arrangements that the Youtube quality doesn't really show - but that's coming from someone who only listens to music rather than plays it. And they're both good.

That's all the commonality I need, anyhow.

Now if only this headache would slip into the sea.