The Good, The Bad, And The (No Longer) Ugly

Hey! I can say that this has been an interesting weekend. It involved hitting garage sales and going to the ER. The inexpensive and the exorbitantly expensive all wrapped up in one! Two great tastes that go great together. Kinda like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Except not at all. Mmmmkay, then!

Friday is a black hole for me. It is all smooshed together and fuzzy in my memory. You know why? Because of drugs, people. Good drugs. And just why is it that hospitals get all the good drugs and only share if you come in clutching the left side of your head like your brain is going to ooze out of your eyeball while you try not to hork up your stomach, intestines, and kidneys??? The answer to that question is "because they can." Oh and probably some malarkey about giving health care to people that need it and not letting Riffraff raid their pharmacies just to get their jollies. Whatever. They shared some good stuff with me on Friday. And all I have to say about that is "thank goodness" and "hey that was fun in a 60's Woodstock kinda way, but I don't wanna do that again, 'kay?"

Yes, this is the Ugly part. I woke up Friday with a migraine from hell. The medication didn't work. Know why? Because when my meds hit my stomach, my stomach was all "Hey! Back up, there, cowboy. We don't like strangers 'round these here parts. You best be on your way." And sent the medicine back up. Over and over again. Finally, the pain was so bad that I wanted someone to take one of the pillows I was lying on and put it over my face and put me out of my misery. (I'm fairly certain my children would have fought over the privilege to smother me.) I did what any grown woman in my situation should do. I called my mommy. She told me to call my doctor who then told me to go to the ER. Then I felt like a big ol' sissy and thought maybe I should suck it up, that eventually the pain would go away. I might be a madwoman when it left, but eventually it would leave right? Because hey, I'm many things, but I'm not a sissy. So then, I called my mommy again. (Who's a sissy?) She told me to go. So my husband drove me, in all of my bedheaded, palefaced, clammy-skinned glory.

My blood pressure was so high that medical professionals were looking at the numbers like they must be wrong. Then I got questions about if my blood pressure was normally so high, because the high blood pressure and migraines could be related. I guess my sarcasm fell on deaf ears. Or maybe people just don't expect someone who looks like the undead to be sarcastic, because when I said "hmmm....it's surprising that those numbers are so high, given the fact that I've been fighting horrific pain for 8 hours." The nurse looked at me and said, "Actually that's not surprising at all." Well then.

The teenage young doctor, let's call him Doogie Howser, who came in was super sympathetic. (What does it say about my age when the doctors are resembling whippersnappers? Are they letting middle school kids into med school these days? Yes, I am old. Shut it.) He didn't mock me at all for keeping my sunglasses on in the glaring lights. He chuckled when I told him that people often mistook me for Angelina Jolie. He spoke softly when doing the neurological exam. And most importantly, he ordered goooood drugs for me. When he returned later to check on me, he called me "Hollywood." I might have the weensiest crush on him. I might need to arrange a marriage between him and my eldest daughter. The fact that I could hit him up for the good stuff would just be a nice little fringe benefit, right?

Several hours later, pain free and vomit free and still rockin' the bedhead and shades, we went home. I slept some more. Then I had a little to eat, then I slept again. And after that? I slept. So Friday? Kind of a blank spot on my calendar.

But Saturday! That's where the good comes in because that, my friends, was garage sale day. Several neighborhoods surrounding ours were having sales this weekend. In fact, our neighborhood was having a sale this weekend. There were only about three houses that actually had a sale, but whatever. I moved on. And I didn't come home empty handed. On my first trip, I found a headboard for Mary's bed and a couple of lawn chairs for the yard.

We were in need of lawn chairs because we left our old ones at our old house. The blame totally falls on me. We had packed everything under the sun and were going to be living with friends for a month. When we were all packed up and doing a final walk-through, one of the kids mentioned the white plastic lawn chairs. I was over those lawn chairs, people, and I certainly wasn't going to find room to pack them or haul them to our friends' house and try to find a place to store them there. As far as I was concerned, the new owners could have them. Yea! Happy Housewarming, new owners!

Except. We got here and the only chairs we had were heavy, hard-to-move lawn furniture. It's all very nice, but as it's heavy and inconvenient to move, it sits on the patio. If we wanted to enjoy the shade of the willow or sit on our front lawn, well, that would involve much shin-banging and whispered cursing.

Awhile back, I bought a couple of plastic Adirondack chairs and found Fusion spray paint made for plastic and painted the boring tan chairs red. Nice, but only good for two booties. We have six booties that need a place to rest, so I was on the hunt. I scored two ugly, banged up but sturdy white plastic chairs for $2 right off the bat Saturday morning. I knew that I would paint them and they'd be good as new.

Then, cruising by another sale, I found a pair of headboards. They were asking $10 each or the pair for $15. I couldn't figure any way to use two, so I bought one. I headed to the hardware store and bought some spray paint and then went home to turn the ugly into pretty.

See? Regular white chairs. Blah. Ugly.

See? Dirty pink colored headboard. Ugly.

But my no-fail lovah spray paint made it all good in no time.

Hello beautiful!

What's cookin' gorgeous?

My neighbor came over and chatted with me a bit and as I was spraying and chatting I realized that I had made a mistake. I had passed by two more white chairs and I should have bought the other headboard, because I had an idea for it. I checked my watch and luck was with me, as there were about 15 minutes before the sales would be winding down. I said goodbye to my neighbor, jumped in the van and made a quick circuit.

Boy howdy was I lucky! Both chairs and the other headboard were still there. I snagged them both, headed back to the hardware store and loaded up with more spray paint.

We now have six chairs under the willow, waiting for four small and two much larger derrieres to fill them. And the second headboard is awaiting a date with the spray paint and a drill. It will be made over into a towel rack for the kids' bathroom to replace the plastic over-the-door-much-too-high-for-little-people towel rack that is there now.

So lets sum up: Garage sales--good!
Migraines---so very, very bad!
Drugs from Doogie Howser--really quite good.
White resin chairs--good, but ugly.
Dirty pink headboards--also good, but ugly.
Spray paint--luuuurve!
No longer ugly chairs and headboards--well, not exactly worth having a mig-
raine from hell, but a very nice follow up to the misery.