Not sure if I ever told you.
In the depths of winter, when I lived in Alberta, sometimes a Chinook would blow in and, overnight, the weather would do a drastic turn-around – in Calgary minus -20 to +20 is not unheard of! Where I lived, the change was not quite so dramatic, but pretty good, we would get up to around +10 or even +15.
You could always tell when a Chinook was coming too – over the mountains the clouds would make this funny shape, known as a “Chinook Arch”, which was the pressure exerting itself on the clouds. It was very interesting.
It was also an odd bit of hell for those who get pressure headaches.
What I learned about myself – I get pressure headaches.
I can’t really explain them, I know they are induced by air pressure. I know that those migraine meds that I carry around with me don’t really work. My eyes don’t focus properly and even though it hurts, I feel silly just crawling into bed.
When I moved away from Alberta, from the Chinooks, these headaches became less frequent, in Ontario we don’t get these kinds of pressure systems, with the temperature doing such ridiculous jumps and leaps.
Until yesterday.
The pressure changed as I was walking over to see a colleague I often chat with – I paled and the pain settled right between my eyes. I opened my mouth to speak, but my colleague got there before me: You have a headache don’t you.
me: Yes, it just started right now. Not because of you, but I think there was a change in air pressure.
my colleague: Yep, everything is going to melt, you look awful.
me: I feel kind of awful, so that makes sense.
I carefully wandered away to find some cold water to drink, which, although it doesn’t really help, tastes pretty good in any case.
So, suffice to say, feeling like that, I decided not to go to my hot yoga class.
I know, I know, boo on me.
But, I didn’t really want to do anything else either – not ready for bed, not willing to waste time watching TV shows that I rarely see anyway and not well enough to carry on any kind of coherent conversation.
So I baked cupcakes!
48 of them.
24 Chocolate Blood Orange.
24 Chocolate Coconut.
Then I took them into work today, divided them in half and told people to “Please eat them! I have a headache and can’t stand chocolate right now!”
They did a pretty job too.
I still have the headache.
I didn’t go do my weight machines tonight.
So, I baked cupcakes!
48 cupcakes.
24 Chocolate and Blood Orange (they were on sale, I didn’t have a chance).
24 Ginger.
I’m taking them into work in the morning and telling people “Our colleague is leaving, have some cupcakes!”
Look, the way I figure – if you are going to blow off the gym, for whatever reason, you may as well do something productive that maybe even brings some people some happiness and joy – I can tell you that half of today’s cupcakes made the day of some of my colleagues, they were really happy for the treat.
I also figure that if I can bake cupcakes when I have a headache like this, I’m doing pretty good.
This is what I call “taking a bad headache and making it better”.
