H&M, turn down the fucking lights!

An afternoon of mooching through my local shopping centre was needed. New Look, BB’s for hot chocolate, and to my current detriment H&M.

H&M are not one of my favourite clothing stores. What they do is nice enough I suppose, and it tends to be reasonably well priced. But it’s all sort of cookie cutter…

“Take 1 bolt of cloth.

Cut in shape of XXXXX

Sew.

Repeat.

DO NOT engage imagination in design process.”

…is how I see most of what they sell. Though I will admit that if you want a t-shirt that you’ll still be able to wear in two years time, and at a good price, they do kind of rock.

Where they do not however rock, and/or roll, is in their current in store lighting scheme. I mean, Dear Goddesses was that shop bright! Someone in their limited wisdom decided that what they really needed was simulated daylight, at an intensity only ever seen in the Sahara Desert, at high-noon, in the Summer, during a supernova. Needless to say, this is a light level of a type never found naturally in Ireland, where year-round, a dull matt grey is the prevailing sky color.

Now I’m sure for those weirdos who wander around indoors wearing sunglasses, because it’s obviously not cool to let other people see your eyes, it was probably the perfect lighting. They might actually have been able to see without squinting, or shading their eyes. However for those of us who are of less fashionable victim stock, it was simply painful. Unfortunately here I literally mean painful. Because guess what it triggered?

That’s right, yet another migraine!

Look H&M I kind of like your stuff. But not enough to risk blindness, or at the very least blinding headaches by shopping in your store. So please for the love of all that’s unholy turn down the bloody lights, or and I mean this, I will walk right across the hall, and do all of my shopping in New Look instead. Aside from anything else some of their bits are actually kind of funky…fully lined red red and white gingham prom dress I’m talking about you.

Okay I’m burning out.

For most of the past month I’ve been struggling with the worst migraine cluster I’ve had since my teens. As I write this I’m sitting here squinting at the screen through a fog of pain caused by my 17th migraine in 24 days. Even so I’ve mostly managed to keep on top of my blog, my web-comic, and my second novel. Well I can’t anymore. I just can’t.

I’m taking a break. I have to give myself a chance to get over this cluster, and stressing every single day over the work I didn’t get done yesterday simply is not helping. So for the next while I won’t be writing, and any drawing I do will be a huge bonus, not a requirement.

So my blog is going on hiatus until the 9th of April.

My web-comic will probably be updated in that time, but probably not weekly.

I have to apologize for this to my regular readers, but the choice is very nearly between taking a short break now, or keeping going and ending up in a situation where I never want to write, draw or otherwise be creative again. And I so wish that last statement was an exaggeration. Anyway folks, be good, have fun, and I’ll catch you all again when I don’t have a hateful lil git somewhere in my skull stabbing my brain with his pickaxe.

Happy Birthday to me!

So the past week I’ve gone from one migraine to another, end result being that my concentration was simply not good enough to get much of anything done. This ended with my having to do a very quickly drawn filler art for my webcomic.

Filler Art – Migraine Ninja

But combined with my birthday being on Monday, and my shared birthday party being today means not really any blog for today either. So…yeah. Have a nice weekend and I’ll be back on Tuesday with Part 2 of the…

Poor Girls Guide to Staying Warm.

Oh and I’ll leave you with my idea of a birthday song. Enjoy.

Ten things I’ve learned this month about… Dogs.

Well you see I had a really awful migraine yesterday, so I got precisely nothing written. And that’s why today you’re all being hit with another list post. Though in truth this is the first in a series of lists I’ve been thinking about writing for a while. So before I end up with another migraine, or one of my dogs decides to murder me, let’s get this monster moving.

 1: Dogs will chew anything that’s left lying around for more than 30 seconds, whether it’s edible or not. And it doesn’t even have to taste good.

 2: Dogs will eat/lick/roll in each others shit with apparent glee while their owners will look  on in horror, before finding somewhere discreet to vomit…true story.

 3: Dogs believe that any humans couch, bed, sleeping bag, or item of clothing is communal property, because…

 4: Dogs believe that your body heat is communal property. Just ask anyone who’s been woken at 7am by a cold dog nose in their bed.

5: While dogs will chew literally anything, including but not limited to coal, firelighters, brush handles, really good chocolate, table legs, chair legs, each others legs, they will only eat certain dog foods, and will randomly decide they don’t like the one they’ve just been given.

 6: Dogs can not be trusted with any human food of any kind, which is in anyway within reach. “Within reach” here being defined as within 1 body length of any surface the dog can stand on. (Where there are two dogs  in a household take the body length of the bigger dog as the base measurement, they’re not above coöperation.)

 7: If it’s bad for them dogs only want it more. Kind of like that girlfriend you once had, the one who smoked, drank, did drugs, and could suck a rugby ball through a drinking straw. You knew she was bad for you, but damn if you didn’t have to have her. This also describes the average dog, and cheese.

 8: Dogs love watching flames the same way I love watching Kari Byron. Though I don’t imagine for even vaguely the same reasons. (Especially when she was rockin’ the kindergoth look, yummy!)

Oh Kari….

 9: Some dogs are posers, and some hide from camera’s. I have one of each.

Poser! But a good guard.

10: Yesterday I discovered that my dogs will look after me when I’m sick. When I could barely lie still without wishing I was dead Winter (the Beagle) wrapped herself around me and kept me warm, while Lulu the furball stood on guard the whole time I was lying down. Amanda’s heart melted….right up until she bit me on the ear. Even so dogs are some of the best people you’ll ever meet.

The poser, and my shy retiring one.

Have a comic – No real post today.

As you may have noticed I have an annoying number of migraines. On those days I can’t really write, seriously, breathing and thinking about how miserable I feel is hard enough. So I had a thought. As you also probably know I’m in the run up to starting a webcomic. But I decided that I needed more practice with pen, pencil, and graphics tablet. In any event, I draw a lot, and I figured why not start drawing little things. You know, to make up for those days when I am unable to bash you all over the head with my own brand of insanity. SO here’s the first one ever. Enjoy.

Me, in about 30 seconds.

Coping with migraine

With the sheer volume of migraines I’ve been suffering from lately, it seemed timely to write a short piece on how to cope with them.  Anyone who’s had a migraine will understand just how unpleasant they can be.  For anyone who has never had one, but who has someone in their life who is a sufferer I think perhaps a short explanation is in order.

Migraine are a curse.  They can alter how you see, for example when I have a full-blown migraine I usually go almost completely blind in one eye.  They can make you incredibly sensitive to light and noise.  In short they can make doing anything normal, completely  impossible for as long as they last.  I think the best way to explain how it is to have one is to describe one of the nastier ones I’ve suffered.

I felt like a red-hot, knitting needle had been shoved through my left eye.  Then someone had attached a vibrating massager to the needle.  Finally, to add more insult to more injury, a metal wedge had been hammered into the base of my skull, right where the spine comes into contact with it.  Every movement, no matter how small, made me want to vomit.  Even the movement from breathing was enough to make my gorge rise.  The slightest change in light intensity made me want to scream, the slightest noise made me want to cry.  Basically it was one of the most miserable days of my entire life.

So how do you go about coping with one of these?

I won’t be talking about medications here, I’m not qualified to.  But there are a lot of other ways to help get yourself through one of these days from hell.

The single best piece of advice I can give is if you don’t have one, buy a hot water bottle.  They can be used as either a cold or hot pack and depending on which way works best for you, they can be a sanity saver.

I personally lie with a very warm, but not quite hot, water bottle in the hollow of my neck, on the side which is in most pain.  It definitely helps, I presume this is due to relaxing muscles which are locked up from the pain.

The next thing I would advise anyone to get is a loose black hair band.  Not for your hair, but to use as a blindfold.   They take virtually no space in a bag or pocket, so can be carried anywhere, but will allow you to hide from bright light for a while.

Ear plugs can be a god-send as well.  Most pharmacies will carry an inexpensive pair. They won’t block all noise, but will help you to escape from the loudest sounds.

Sometimes a migraine will be accompanied by a blocked nose.  Most people would suggest some Tea Tree oil or a decongestant spray.  Personally I would suggest a menthol chewing gum, like Airwaves.  Not only will it free up your sinuses, but I also sometimes find the chewing action can make it a lot easier to cope with the pain.

Weird as it sounds, washing your hair can sometimes help a migraine to end quicker. Use loads of shampoo, again a Tea Tree one is a bonus because of the cooling sensation it causes on the scalp, and massage the hell out of your head.  Having hot water running over your neck can be a big help as well.

If all else fails and your migraine forces you into bed, assuming you aren’t allergic, have a feather pillow to hand.  Feather pillows can be moulded to support your neck and head perfectly, and anything that takes strain off of your neck is only a good thing.  For me a feather pillow combined with a hot water bottle and a darkened room, ends most of my migraines in very short order.

Finally, if like most people your bedroom curtains don’t really do a lot to block out light, you might find it useful to buy a really heavy, dark coloured blanket. Make sure it’s large enough to cover bedroom window and using a few metal hooks to hang it over your curtain rail.  I suggest this because nothing, absolutely nothing, helps nearly as much as a really dark room to lie in.  It also has the bonus of helping to deaden any noise coming from outside.

There are probably hundreds of other simple tricks that other people use to help cope with migraines, which I simply don’t know about.  But these few have been genuine lifesavers for me over the years.  But I will say that if you suffer from frequent or recurring migraines, talk to your doctor about them.  There are medications out there that can help end migraine very quickly, or even sometimes prevent your having them in the first place.  So talk to your doctor and save yourself some suffering.