New flavor. Do not recommend.

Unless you have an insatiable thirst for store-brand cough syrup poured into a melted Slurpee that’s sat in a hot car for five days. Followed by four hours of sweaty jitters, of course.

Also: My office bingo card is as winning as a trump spelling be.

You know why my day is better than yours?

BECAUSE I HAVE A FRESH BOX OF KLEENEX.

Never mind that it’s off-brand. And that I have a bit of a cold. Those pesky details just ruin my narrative.

The N is for Nice Hair

And Nowledge.

When you’re on a video conference call and the host office’s conference room tables aren’t lined up on the end facing their video camera AND THAT’S ALL YOU CAN LOOK AT

SHIT!

I WAS GOING TO GET SO MUCH DONE THIS WEEKEND.

I was going to finish all the final details on my bedroom and finally be back in my own bed by tomorrow night. I was going to start and finish a little caulk-and-touch-up project in my bathroom while I had all my supplies out. I was going to get rid of the last of the little stuff in my storage unit so all I’d have left would be the big pieces of furniture. I was going to help a friend move some stuff.

But NOOOOO.

As the anesthesia wore off this afternoon I found myself getting nauseous and profoundly exhausted. So I left work early to crash for an alarming FIVE HOURS in not-my-bed and miss our office’s fun summer party tonight. And since I’m forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS—no hauling boxes, no helping friends move, no throat-punching Mitch McConnell, apparently no putting my pants back on after my nap—I’m left with no options but to stuff myself with pain meds and cookies and watch MSNBC. With no pants.

Check it out!

Disney: check.
Norway: check.
Fashion: check.
Historical research: check.
Serious, meaningful discussions of underpants: check.
Fashiony stuff I might need to know for work if we ever sell 1840s Disney Norwegian royalty underpants: I’ll keep this video bookmarked just in case.

Hurry up with your courtship, little flirty birdies!

A big storm’s a-comin’ and you’ll want to be makin’ your own thunder and lightning someplace where you won’t drown.

Hello, little birdie hopping through the bush outside my window!

I’ve been wide awake for no reason since stupid o’clock this morning

so I pulled up some blue tape and Liquid Golded some furniture and shelved some books in my bedroom and now I think I’m going to go for a short run so I can be good and exhausted by the time I get to work. IT’S A FOOLPROOF PLAN!

You’d think the reason that all those stupid birds finally stopped pecking at our windows is that they finally banged all their little brains into catastrophic cerebral failure

But you’d be wrong.

Because the REAL reason that all those stupid birds finally stopped pecking at our windows is that WE TAPED UP PAPER OWLS. THAT WE PRINTED FROM THE INTERNET.

Occipital Nomorealgia!

So today--after this epic, never-ending headache that started May 17 and necessitated weeks of checkups and tests and more checkups and finally a referral and then 10 days of waiting to get on the schedule--I was FINALLY going to be visiting the St. Luke's pain clinic for a nerve block ... literally as I'm writing this. But suddenly on Monday I felt remarkably better. Which may or may not have had a correlation to my first distance run of the summer that morning. And by Tuesday morning I felt so much better that I figured it would be pointless to go to a pain clinic. So I apprehensively called to cancel my long-awaited appointment.

And here I am: not at my long-anticipated pain clinic appointment and feeling relatively great (my ears are still quietly ringing and my eyes have a twinge of pain when I think about them, like right now--so stop making me think about them!) (oh--and did I mention I'm old so there's always a pain somewhere?). I like to think that my cancellation got some other poor in-pain soul into the clinic sooner than he or she was expecting. And the nurse I talked to said the referral is still active for three months, so I can get in without jumping through all the hoops if it flares up again. And then the billing department called me to warn me that my insurance doesn't cover visits to pain clinics so I should start selling organs to cover the epic-pain-inducing costs.

And even though I truly love my job and look forward to coming into work every morning, I can honestly say I've never been more happy to be here, considering the alternative.

So YAY! for me for hopefully never going through the breathtaking pain of occipital neuralgia again. And YAY! for all of you for hopefully never having to read my whiny posts about it.

Now ... ONWARD! I have some shoes to write about!

Brand new Pride couture and assorted mannequin boobies

Racing ahead

Among the many, many helpful suggestions people have offered me about conquering this STU! PID! FUC! KING! headache—I’m actually quite humbled by your mass outpouring of concern and the sheer volume of suggestions and I’m sorry that I haven’t personally thanked you all—is trying a mega-dose of caffeine. I’m currently five and a half months pop-free and I’m not about to break my sobriety streak now and I’ve never been able to choke down coffee so I just chugged a 5 Hour Energy even though I don’t feel tired so I’m totally about to live that episode of Desperate Housewives where Felicity Huffman mainlines her kids’ Adderall and stays up all night organizing the toothpicks and doing her kids’ science projects for them—WHICH IN RETROSPECT WAS A SIGN WE ALL MISSED WAKE UP, PEOPLE!—and I still have to work a half day from home to make up for the negative-PTO deficit my NYC canceled flights caused and I really want to pull the weeds and fix the flappy visqueen and displaced pea gravel in our side hosta bed and find more things to clean with my awesome new happy-Mother’s-Day-to-me vacuum and paint my room and finish the build-out behind the house and fix the deficit before the sun goes down and hoo boy I’m off and running where did I put my running shoes oh there they are I’ll see you when we all get to Narnia look out toothpicks here I come!

I’m off to work pumped full of pain blockers, anti-inflammatories, antihistamines and steroidal inhalants

... and an admonition to check for signs of bleeding kidneys.

My headache pain is only slightly better—and probably masked by all the aforementioned pharmaceuticals—and bending over to put on my socks this morning was one step closer to NOT making me pass out.

Thanks for all your kind words and expressions of concern and support. And to those of you who suggested yoga: I dare you to even THINK about doing downward dog with a Richter-scale sinus headache. But you’re not wrong that I should probably get back into doing yoga. Just not in the foreseeable future where my head might explode and I might die of urethral exsanguination.

EPIC. PURGE.

30+ years of extant pay stubs, boxes of checks from banks that no longer exist, investment statements from companies that long ago dissolved, oversize document packets from multiple refinanced mortgages, receipts from the days when they included complete credit-card numbers, tax documents older that the magic save-for-seven-years rule, rolled-over insurance policies, vested and cashed-in company stock options, long-forgotten parking tickets, repair documents for cars that no doubt now rust in junkyards, and even three neatly folded and carefully notarized wills from before I decided to leave everything I own to the Melania Trump Be Best Foundation For Whatever The Hell Be Best Is Supposed To Mean.

I know lots of it is perfectly safe to be dumped in our recycle bin, but I decided I’d feel safer if all of it were destroyed, so every piece of paper and possibly compromising detail of my life is now locked in a secure container and headed off to be brutally shredded—all for the low, low price of $1 per pound.

I won’t even tell you that it weighed in at a whopping 77 pounds and force you to do the math in your head. But I’m definitely keeping the receipt for the next 30 years.

Huh.

It turns out that when you suddenly no longer have EXACTLY 42 MINUTES AND NOT A SECOND MORE to squeeze in a plausible workout between work and rehearsals or shows, you’ll lollygag and futz around and get to the gym an hour later than you’d planned and you’ll stretch your (expanded, to be fair) workout to almost two hours. BUT! You’ll have a whole new pile of fresh meat—oops: fresh inspiration. sorry. typo.—preventing you from taking a passable stealthfie.

Also! Not not to brag, but I just jumped up to 80 lb dumbbells on the incline press and the 80 lb barbell on skull crushers (which, if you do them right, do not, in fact, crush your skull). I may be a Peter Procrastinator tonight, but I also feel like a big ol’ Mike Monster.

Do you ever feel like you’re being watched as you work?

This little Rhodes Scholar has decided his reflection in my window is a mortal enemy that must be fought to the beak-squeaking-against-glass death. It would be condescendingly adorable if the preternatural squeaking sound weren’t making my fillings ache.

Flashback Friday: What The Hell Is That Theater Called Edition

This was the view from my office in the Chicago Loop. In the 15 years I lived in Chicago, this venerable theater (which was called the Majestic when it was built in 1906) changed names from Shubert to LaSalle Bank to Bank of America to Private Bank, and since I left three years ago it's become the CIBC Theatre. Amid all those changes, it's been home to some amazing shows, many of which I went to see multiple times because it was right across the street from work. Jersey Boys and Book of Mormon sat there forever, 9 to 5 made a brief stop (where Dolly Parton herself walked right by me in the tiny lobby), and now Hamilton has taken up long-term residence. If you go see Hamilton or whatever comes next to its stage, look up to the fifth floor on the big squarish skyskraper across the street and wave. The next credit-card solicitation you receive in the mail might very well wave back at you from its colorful storyboard.

Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to take a decent helicopter selfie in a hooded sweatshirt? DO YOU?

The hood opens around you like a massive poppy in full bloom and you end up with a dinner-plate halo like you’re a minor saint in a Medieval altar triptych.

Anyway, when you stave off a bipolar episode by sleeping all day and then chug a pre-workout shake before an evening trip to the gym, you end up wide awake at 11:45 pm. But I wore red for International Women’s Day and I gave a little hug to (I think) every woman at rehearsal tonight (though we were a bit chaotic so I may have missed somebody but please know that you’re all kick-ass and I love all of you every day) and even though I always feel guilty when I miss work, I count today as good but I just REALLY want to fall asleep now.

Good morning!