Ugh...I stayed in bed until 5:35PM today - and not in a good way. When we got up around 9AM, the right side of my nose and sinuses were stuffed up and I had a little bit of a headache above my right eye, which I thought was probably sinus-related and no big deal. I wasn't even up for an hour before my head was throbbing; this was the worst non-migraine headache I have ever had.

I went back to lie down and for a while there I thought I'd throw up, not because I was nauseous but because the pain was just that bad. I have no idea what brought this on; I did have some wine last night but I had about 4 glasses over a 7 1/2 hour period, so not enough to make me ill. Anyway, I've had "too much wine" headaches before, and this wasn't one of them - this was about 10,000 times worse. After taking a pain pill, I slept fitfully most of the day. Each time I woke up, I was still hurting, though finally it began to subside.

I feel cheated. I think if you're sick on a valuable Saturday, you should get a free weekday back in recompense. There were things, both chores and fun, that I wanted to do today and instead I did nothing but suffer. Grrr.

Finally, a bit after half past five, I got up and had a Diet Coke and some crackers. I cautiously started brushing my teeth and getting dressed, wary of a relapse. We went out to dinner and made our weekly grocery run and now I'm on the couch with a puppy, feeling much recovered.

When we got home, I distributed wet food as a treat to the pets. Finnovar got a Sheba ocean seafood cocktail in sauce - I like those because you can actually see tiny little mussels in there. He likes them too, because there is lots of sauce. He is a gravy pig. For the dogs, I opened two small containers of Cesar, one beef tenderloin and one turkey, and distributed 1/3 of each flavor onto plates. They started wolfing that stuff down like I hadn't bothered to feed them in weeks. Esme grabbed a chunk of meat off her plate and set it down onto the floor beside her as she devoured the rest, then grabbed the chunk of meat whole and raced away toward the back of the house with it. Maybe only funny if you had the visual, but it cracked us both up, that tiny little dog heading for the hills with a huge chunk of canned food in her mouth.

I said, "I can think of a lot of places where I don't want to run across that nom," referring to their habit of taking more treats than they want to eat, and hiding them in various places for later.

"Well, I think you're going to find it on a sofa cushion," answered Alan, "Unless she changes her mind."

Esme did change her mind, after returning to the kitchen to find that her brothers had eaten their shares, and there was little chance of stealing other puppies' noms. She raced back to the sofa cushion to protect her prize and decided to go ahead and finish it off.