Talking of Michaelangelo, and pain medications

Bit of writer's block tonight; possibly due to the fact that I was felled by another one of those massive headaches last night.

I don't know exactly what a migraine feels like, but these are damned debilitating, at least for a 24-hour period or so. There's no lights flashing, or weird tinglings or anything like that...it's more like my forehead is exploding outwards. And it hurts to move my head or neck at all; oh, lordy, it hurts so much. Regular pain medication doesn't do much for it, so I am forced to break into my ever-diminishing stash of Demerol and Darvocet (left over from foot surgery and childbirth; am NOT planning on having either of those things again, so my stash is not replenishing, damn it). The lovely D's make me drift off to sleep without pain, and when I wake up, it's not gone, but better. The standard ibuprofen plus coffee shot pretty much makes life bearable after that.

(As an aside, has anyone out there ever heard of something called a Goody's Headache Powder? My mother swears by them, and I have to admit, they are the shiznit. I always feel vaguely weird carrying them around in my purse, as they are literally a package of white powder wrapped in wax paper. However, if you like the sound of a cocktail of two ground-up Tylenol, a ground-up aspirin, plus 50 mgs of caffeine, mixed with water, then this is your drug of choice. Yes, the taste of that nasty little shot will linger for a few hours in the back of your throat, but DAMN if it doesn't work, and fast. Anyone comes over to the Mags domicile? I'll hook you up but good.)


Anyway, there was going to be a good bit tonight about my giving up coffee, and there was a strategically planned tie-in to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," what with my getting older and the perimenopause on the brain and how if I give up coffee, I'll have to measure out my life with homework folders and laundry, and isn't that way more pathetic?

And, there was going to be a really good exploration of how some literature makes so much more sense to me now, as a jaded old hag, than it did when I was a dewy-eyed virgin English major (OK, shut up, just an English major) in college.

Yes, friends, I was going to do some better things than this scattered, disjointed piece of crapola blogging, but I am apparently not coherent. Blame it on the Demerol. (Wasn't that a Milli Vanilli song?)

I leave you with some J. Alfred to ponder for the day...

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

(Readers: Please write an essay on the speaker's use of imagery to indicate his own self-consciousness and his hesitancy in choosing between the pedantic and the prosaic. Do not use the Cliffs Notes. A blue book is appreciated.)