Monday: Well, at least my headache is gone. What in the world is causing them? I know they are migraines because my doctor, after a complete CT scan and many hundreds of dollar$$$$$ later, told me what they were. The point is, my migraines happen without warning. Other people, and there are many of you, have offered to share their own horrid experiences and how they dealt with them. Some people actually don't experience real pain, rather a sort of dizziness and falling down feeling, with orbital flashing white spots that happen just before the onset. One woman told me she usually knows she's going to get a migraine hours before they occur. Evidently there are many triggers and warning signs to pay attention to. And there are thousands of triggers. Guess what? I haven't found mine yet. I'm still in the avoiding the migraine-enhancing foods stage. I do know one for sure: Red wine. I avoid red wine like the plague. And I'm beginning to think that sugar and sweets are a problem. Chocolate, in particular. Chocolate?! Chocolate is a form of soothing comfort, like a warm quilt. How does one suddenly become "allergic" to chocolate? This is sooooo not fair. A favorite of mine is a recipe of my mothers called $100,000 Chocolate Cake, with an equally delicious chocolate fudge frosting. This I made for my cousin's birthday (Admission: I ate a large chunk at the party, plus the secret licking of the bowl as I made the cake). I woke up during the night after the party with a heaviness behind my right eye, a sort of pushing out feeling like my eye was getting ready to give birth. I took the recommended medication, eventually falling back into a fitful sleep. I can't even imagine how awful I'd have felt the next day at work if I didn't have migraine medication. It sort of dulls the pain, but oh yeah, you know it's there just waiting to surface again, even before it's time to take your next pill. Two days later, the pain was gone.

Friday: The court reporter's meeting. Felt wonderful. Refreshed even. The fall leaves we saw that morning on the hillsides were amazing. The steakhouse in Rogers, where we ate lunch, was just as delicious as the menu pictures, which is a rarity anymore. The staff was friendly and pleasent and full of smiles, a huge rarity, a nice surprise. The prices were so good that we even decided to splurge on dessert, Whiskey Pie. The specialty. YUM! I don't even know what all was in that thing, but it was topped with a round of vanilla ice cream that was melting into the pie before we even dug in. We shared the one dessert, which was rather large. My only worry was would I be so full that I'd fall asleep in the afternoon yawn meetings? Another court reporter, who I sat next to, lives in the area. She told me of a local restaurant that we just HAD to visit for supper, even drew me a map on an Embassy Suite napkin. The specialty? New Orleans food, with an amazing Cajun chef. And I have to say, it didn't disappoint. In fact, we had to wait in line. Dwain and I shared a bowl of seafood gumbo, ate our lunch-size entrees, then shared a dessert the waitress highly recommended, something I can't pronounce, let alone spell, but it involved flaming bananas tumbling over a spongy cake with a pudding middle, all doused in a sauce with a bourbon base. I couldn't even finish my part, that's how rich it was.

Saturday: The pain started sometime during the night. I took medicine and went back to sleep. Saturday's meetings began promptly at 8:30 a.m. The day droned on, and if you can believe this, my headache actually got worse. Much worse. I'm just glad they don't test us on what we learn at those meetings because all I heard on Saturday was ear ringing and head drumming. Everyone at my table asked me what was wrong. I guess because I kept holding a hot caffeine tumbler against my eye and forehead rather than drinking it. Or maybe it was because I looked like that woman in the migraine commercials, you know, the one holding her removed head in her hands?

Obviously, the pain is gone today or I wouldn't be writing this post. I'd be in bed with an ice pack against the back of my neck, a hot pack over my face. No noise. No light. The good news is that I slept all night (about 10 hours) with only one bathroom interruption. Migraine headaches just wear me out, as if I'd run a marathon -- as if I'd ever actually done such a thing.

So Dwain and I are on a mission to discover the cause. Dwain's such a good guy. He was browsing the Internet first thing this morning looking for answers. There is a place called Spark People where you can track the food you eat and your daily activities. On the site are pages devoted to specific issues and interests, but nutrition and weight control is key. I joined a SparkPeople team who deal with migraines. But there are other teams who blog about subjects such as aging, shutterbugging, exercising, allergies, pets, camping. Oh wow, the list goes on and on. Here's one I love, Spark People Arkansas. The problem is, trolling through the site can eat up your whole day. I haven't started a blog there myself, but I love reading what other people have to share. I'm truly hoping that somewhere along the line I will find some answers that will work for me.

Rambling. This post will be a lot of rambling. And it will be rambling because my brain is going 100 miles an hour -- too much caffeine maybe -- as well as my physical self is running hither and yon like a frightened mouse, except that I'm not frightened. I'm trying to do a million/trillion/billion things before tomorrow.

The Car: My Scion (a car made by Toyota, in case anyone wonders - and it's pronounced like this: sigh-on, not sky-on, which is the way Dwain and I pronounced it until the dealer set us straight) eats up highway miles like nobody's business. Because of that, it has to have it's oil changed way more often than I like. AND a Scion can not be serviced at just any Lube-It-type-place. Oh no. It has to go to a foreign car place. This means you can not simply drive up and say, I'd like my oil changed, please. No, you've got to schedule the oil change at least a week in advance and then go somewhere and wait until Dale the foreign car guy calls your cell phone. But anyway, before I could drive anywhere tomorrow, this oil change was a major requirement.

The Grocery Store: Dwain let me borrow his car -- another foreign model, just a wee bit older, say 10 years. It's truly in remarkable shape. Still looks sleek. I should age so well. I dropped him off at the Times office and me and my list took off for my favorite grocery store. As usual, I always forget to put something on the list. Always. Today my list said: peanut butter, bananas, milk and Sweet & Low. You'd think I would learn to quit carrying one of those little plastic baskets the grocery store provides for people who are there to just pick up a few things. Usually by the time I've made it to Aisle Four an employee will ask if he can bring me a regular cart. I think my problem is that I actually love wandering around in grocery stores. I can dream in a grocery store. It's like I'm in a trance because I end up with all sorts of odds and ends. My favorite is produce. This particular grocery store has really lovely produce colorfully displayed on either side of the wide aisles. And they have seasonal displays to catch your eye. For instance, right now they have a spook house thing going on, with pumpkins and apples (caramel wraps sold separately) and candy corn and tortilla chips (Velveeta cheese, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes and onions) all arranged creatively around fake spider webs and bats and witch-y hats. Just for a moment I thought about peeking inside to see what it looked like. Can you believe that this baby boomer would do a thing like that? And yes, there was an actual spook house entrance and exit. This grocery store is a terrible place for an impulse buyer.

The Beauty Shop: I make my hair appointments five weeks in advance. My new stylist is Amy F. who became my stylist when new bride Jayme D. left for South Dakota so she could be with her husband, the welder. Can you imagine? She'd seen me through some rough times, completely knew my history and my hair. Now I have Amy who is still getting to know me and my hair. This summer Amy and I decided to do something fun, go a bit shorter. A bit. I could either use my flat iron to straighten it or just let it go curly. It was summer after all. I could always grow it out again. Right? Today Amy didn't even ask me. "I thought that since it was kind of damp out anyway, we'd just work with the curls instead of straightening them," she said as my hair fell. Curls! Everyone in my mother's generation used to tell me how I was "so lucky" to have natural curls. R-I-G-H-T. I'm a child of the hippy generation, hair parted in the middle, bangs and stick straight, not a movie-star child of the 40s. Back then I actually got my very thin, straight-haired little sister to iron my hair. But it never lasted long. Humidity tends to change artificially straight hair into natural frizz, just like that. Oh, wow, said Amy, so proud of the results when she stuck a hand mirror into my hand and twirled my chair around so I could see what it looked like from behind. Curly. That's what I saw. On the up side, Dwain said he really, really like what she had done. Okay. Hope springs eternal. Maybe not everyone sees my hair the way I do. I'll keep telling myself that tomorrow and plead inwardly that nobody avoids sitting with me because I look like a dork.

The New Dishwasher: What more can I say? We have a brand new, plain ol' dishwasher. White with a regular dial and a switch that flips from dry with heat to dry with no heat. It does not have a computer inside. It does not have all these little press buttons that says things like: delay wash, rinse only, high temp wash, status(washing, drying, clean) or cancel. Nope. You just turn the dial. Repairman Kenny says that these less expensive dishwashers have a tendency to, 'last longer than them more expensive models." Kenny likes to run a line of patter the entire time he's working on or installing an appliance. I've learned a lot about many different subjects from Kenny. I even found out where my old high school coach now lives, because Kenny just installed a new washer/dryer for him yesterday. AND he was also Kenny's high school track coach back in 1976. I was stunned. Dwain was stunned. All this time I thought Kenny was several years older than me. His skin is kind of a wrinkly, leathery brown. The years have not been kind to Kenny. But Kenny is honest and very good at what he does and he is someone you can feel safe around when your husband is gone. Kenny is just happy to talk randomly about any subject that happens to cross his mind: copperhead snakes, deer hunting, appliances, Ms. Snooty whose brand new state of the art washer/dryer combo broke down and screamed at poor Kenny, actually threatened to sue him if he didn't fix the problem. Kenny just works for the appliance company, mind you. But the story was very entertaining, especially since I know the Ms. Snooty he was referring to.

Tomorrow: The dogs are going to the dog sitter's house. I can't even believe I'm saying that. A dog sitter? Who knew? Now the dogs don't have to say outside in the damp all weekend. You'd think they would be grateful, but noooo! Dwain and I are traveling to the Fayetteville/Rogers/Bentonville area. We will be camping at the Embassy Suites, sleeping of poofy white clouds. Tomorrow and Saturday I do not have to cook meals or wash dishes or do laundry or vacuum floors or clean cat boxes. I do not have to get up at all hours of the night to let pets in and out of the house. All I really have to do this weekend is collect hours for my continuing education requirements so I can keep my status as court reporter with the supreme court legitimate. Let me say this, I never, ever, ever want to have to take that court reporter test again. Whew. And I used to think that college tests were stressful.

So now I'm off to fold laundry and sort through my closet -- humm, what to wear, what to wear?

The central heat is back! Yes! And we have brand new thermostat that can be programed to turn the heat on and off to take the temperature up and down just by plugging in the numbers. You just tell it if you want the temperature to drop a few degrees while you sleep and then awaken to warmth. When I got home last night, I just drank in the comfort of warmth, the sound of warm air whirring through our vents. I adore the sound of rushing air.

Clean vs. Trashy; Drug Addict Parents vs. Evil Stepmother: This was the custody case that took us well into the darkness of night yesterday. And we're not finished with the case either. When my judge called me into his chambers to pick MY brain about what I thought he should do on a temporary basis, I mentally said, "Uh-oh, we're in trouble if he's looking to me for advice."

Here's the deal. Father and Evil Stepmother have petitioned the Court for custody. Mother and Stepfather have been arrested numerous times for felony drug problems. Mother, however, has drug tested clean the past three times. Stepfather has not. Mother's house has three bedrooms and one makeshift master bedroom wherein part of the dining room has been sectioned off. Two bathrooms. Seven people reside there; four children, Mother and Stepfather, and Grandma. Grandma is the only one who works at a real job. Department of Human Services has been summoned to deal with what they call, an environmental concern. Cockroaches. Hundreds and hundreds of them in the house as well as in the car/van. Head lice on the children. Trash piled up outside covering the trampoline and strewn about the yard. A half-filled with now stagnate water inflatable swimming pool. Ms. DHS investigator says the family is making progress inside the house, which appears,she says, cleaner than the last time she surprised them with a visit. Pictures were exhibited and received into evidence. On the plus side, the children who are school age are straight A students and appear to be happy, completely oblivious to Mother and Stepfather's felony drug problems and arrests. Mother helps them with their homework and lets them participate in band and sports. They love their mother and accept the stepfather, who basically ignores them. Gosh, at least he's not abusive, physically or otherwise... yet. Let's hope never. The children in question clearly stated that they want to live with Mother and Drug-Addict Stepfather. They HATE the Evil Stepmother who they are forced by court order to visit.

Father and Evil Stepmother have two natural children plus Evil Stepmother's children from a previous marriage (we are dealing with the children in that case as well -- not good. Not good at all. But that's another story for another day). Father gets his kids for visitation every other weekend and shares holidays. Father is a work-a-holic, even when the kids are in his custody. On the plus side, at least he has a job and takes his job seriously. He pays his child support like clockwork. He is diligent about exercising visitation. Their home is clean. Ultra clean. On the minus side, Evil Stepmother is taking care of everyone, her kids, his kids, their kids. They also have a three bedroom, two bathroom home. Four children live in that home full time, so you can only imagine what a full house they have when Father's children come visit. And Evil Stepmother has no qualms about screaming at the top of her lungs and slapping and spanking, which she does frequently and openly. Doesn't matter if it's her kids, his kids or their kids. And like Cinderella's stepmother, she expects the kids to work around the house. Now, I don't know that chores are such a bad thing for kids. But I get the idea that they (step-kids are the "they" I'm referring to) are expected to do the lion's share of the work when they visit, as step-mom cracks the whip, literally. I've dealt with Evil Stepmother in the past in another case, as I mentioned before. She's got issues, believe me. She's ugly. She's large. She's tall. She's scary. I honestly think her husband is too afraid of her to stand up and put his foot down about how she treats his children. His answer is to stay gone when his children visit, working weekends. Mr. Breadwinner.

After looking at the pictures submitted yesterday, I wanted to come straight home and take a shower. Then I wanted to clean the entire bathroom with bleach. Even though it was dark out, I wanted to sweep and scrub the floors and the walls and sweep the porch and the deck. I wanted to vacuum my car. I wanted to make sure every bit of paper and trash was picked up. I want to use my quiet voice when I speak. I want to be gentle and kind. I got out the few prescription bottles we have and wondered inwardly what people might think about them. Bio-identical hormones. Allergy medicine. That's it. Don't think I'm addicted to anything but food and chocolate, so I guess I'm safe. Dwain's addicted to his laptop and his camera, but I don't think that's against the law.

I can't believe how down I am. Why? Why am I down? It's just not like me to feel this way. I don't like this feeling one little bit. I've got to search for the cause before I can find the cure. Have you ever wanted someone to invent a type of tape or glue, something like that to pull that muscle and skin around your lips up, something to force that smile to stay in place? Well, I'd pay good money for an invention like that. I'd at least look happier than I feel.

The gray, drippy, overcast, rainy, coolish weather isn't helping either. I just plain ol' need a good dose of sunshine. I'd hold my face up to to the sky and breath it in. I've got every light in the house on too, in an attempt to create a false sunshine of sorts. Some website suggested that was a good thing to do to brighten ones mood. I'm not being very "green" this evening.

I miss the members of my family who are scattered all over creation these days; Salt Lake City, Tacoma, Colorado Springs, Galveston. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, conversations held that way help a little, but they don't feel close and loving. The dearly departed are the ones I miss the most. The conversations I have with them in my head feel very one sided. I can't believe I am saying this, but I miss listening to their wisdom -- the stories they wanted to share with me when I was younger -- stories and wisdom that I never had time to completely listen to because I was busy doing whatever. I'd listen now.

My dishwasher is currently not working. *Service Man said it needed a whole new electrical control panel, which, after an additional service call to install, will cost just shy of what a new dishwasher will cost. We just bought this one in 2005. You'd think it would last longer than four/five years. I must have been really hard on this one because it seems to me that our last one lasted at least 10 years. And I'm not sure if the one my parents had ever was replaced, even if it did sound like a 747 Jet when it ran.
*Service man spent an additional hour bending my ear about every service call he'd made over the past several weeks and about computers in new appliances, and his Jeep and his latest hunting trip down south and how his piece of crap Jeep conked out right on Interstate 40 until his buddy fetched him and helped him tow his piece of crap Jeep to a dealer, where he told said dealer what they could do with his vehicle because he was getting something more reliable. Next time Service Man comes to our house, which will probably be the day he installs the new dishwasher, I will not be home. Me and conversations about anything with a motor, large or small, is not something I excel in. And don't get me started how I feel about hunters and tales of hunting trips.

The furnace worked Saturday morning. Now it's not working. And it's cold. And the repairman isn't sure when he can "work us in" due to the onslaught of frantic calls from The Others who evidently left frantic messages over the weekend, where I was polite enough to wait until eight o'clock this morning to make my own frantic call. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe. Since we've been such good customers over the past 20 years.

Later. I'll feel better later.

A cup of hot tea beside me as I sit and stare out the window at the soon-to-come-down hummingbird feeders. Guess they've (they being all species of local hummingbirds) all migrated south. See you next April, little friends. I would go ahead and take down the feeders, but the weather is still, for the moment, on the warmish side. And what if a stray hummingbird wanders through between now and Saturday (when I will, for sure, put them away for the winter)? On Saturday it will be too cold for the despised red wasps to make pigs of themselves on the feeders. Hope they (they being red wasps) freeze to death. Dreadful creatures! Red wasps, giant, ultra-huge red wasps are flying in swarms around the outside of the house, or at least it seems like it. Two of them made their way into the house. I haven't got a real good aim, but I plugged them with some don't-fool-with-me Hot Shot. Best purchase I ever made.


What I need to be doing is vacuuming. I mean, I've been given the gift of a free afternoon to prepare for weekend company. So what am I doing here? I'm procrastinating, that's what. Or maybe I'm just gearing up to get into that cleaning zone. Once I get started, I won't stop until I'm done. My cousins (from Orlando) are coming over on Saturday. First we are hiking to Whitaker Point, a gorgeous place. One of the most photographed places in Arkansas.

This is what the drive to the top of the mountain looks like in the fall, with roads so narrow that someone has to pull over to let another car pass.

This is the destination, Whitaker Point, locally known as Hawksbill Crag. If you are very daring, like we are, you can walk out to the very end of the Hawks Bill and have one of your friends take a picture. It's really not as scary to walk out on as you might think. It's actually very wide and solid.

To the north the sky is really dark. All the signs point to severe thunderstorms. The weather man says that between now and Friday night we have a 100 percent chance of rain, (no duh!) by Saturday the day will be rain free, sunny and a bit chilly-er with a high of 55. Right now it's 77 degrees, so that will be quite a change. Bet on top of the mountain, it will be more like 45 degrees I can't remember if we will be in the Ozark National Forest or in the Buffalo River National Park, but either way we shouldn't encounter hunters. But I think to be on the safe side, Dwain and I should advise everyone to wear bright neon-like colors. I'd hate for someone to mistake us for bears or turkeys.

Back to the migrating hummingbirds. I just saw a bright green one land in our peach tree.