Friday, November 13, 2009

the end (or, spider bite - my heiny!)

And, no, a spider did not bite my heiny. In fact, a spider didn't bite me at all.

Turns out that facial tingling and swelling which I attributed to a bug bite in the last post is actually shingles. Ever gotten it? DON'T. It's a painful nightmare that first had me resembling the love child of Barbara Streisand and Quasimodo and more recently (i.e. this morning) had me looking like I'd gotten in a barfight with several sailors. I have to be cloistered away, and I'm on heavy-duty meds that give me splitting headaches on top of all the other loveliness.

This is all to say that, if you had chickenpox as a kid, the virus never fully went away; it just went dormant. Which means you are a candidate for having that nasty virus wake from its slumber when triggered by - oh, I don't know - stress, or a cold. Which is also to say that I wish I'd gotten the shingles vaccine, as I've been thinking about doing so for a few years.

So, what's the upshot? Well, for one, I'm shutting down the blog, Folks. If this nasty bout has taught me anything it's that I've been stretched way to thin for way too long, and a re-ordering of priorities is sorely in order. I'll be focusing on my kids, my peeps/fam/homeboy/homegirls, my paying gigs and my non-blog writing, all of which could use more of my attention, anyway.

It's been a good run, and I've had lots of fun blogging the ups and downs of rural life, riding, writing, etc. I'm not going to pull the blog off the Net at this point, and I may even pop in now and then to post an update or two. No promises of regular blogging, though.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Trails!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

halloween and stomach flu and spider bites, oh my!

I've been dealing with all of the above lately (some of which were fun (i.e. birthday parties and trick-or-treating) and some of which were not-so-much (i.e. the circulating stomach flu and the recent arachnidian attack on my face while I slept, resulting in swelling and numbness and general sinus-related misery). Oh, yeah, there's been major soap production in the mix as well, with more to come.

Makes me kind of long for the quietude/boredom of mid-winter snow days. Good thing various people recommend stuff like this now and then to keep my smile-o-meter in the black: