Saturday, March 29, 2008

Bubblegum Ice Cream


I cannot remember the brand of ice cream that came out with the bubblegum flavored treat many years ago.  The color was mint green and pink, and the plastic cone shaped container contained a gum ball at the bottom.  The frozen treat was discontinued for a while and during that long dry stretch of the bubblegum ice cream missing from supermarket freezers, yours truly turned to Dipping Dots for a dose of bubblegum goodness.


Coffee crumble and pistachio and mint chocolate chip still rank above bubblegum in the scale of my favorite flavors, but ice cream is ice cream.  Bubblegum ice cream is special.  Bubblegum ice cream brings me back to happier days.  Never mind that the milky treat is full of artificial colors and flavor; bubblegum ice cream is bubblegum ice cream.  It's comforting and as indulgent as, say, cotton candy.


Naturally, a cone made me very happy for today.


♥ Ice cream is love. ♥

Monday, March 24, 2008

Yes, This.

It's so beautiful to wake up on a Monday, without any trace of worry or without a barrage of stressful thoughts to send my sympathetic nervous system into high gear.  No quizzes, no long exams, no assignments, no books to read, no manuals to complete...nothing.  It's so ironic that perhaps the lecturers/professors are now the ones scrambling over tons of paper or losing sleep over the workload (our grades) that they have to compute those and submit it by deadline.

And I won't think of grades even now.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Cortical Spreading Depression

1. Wake up with a killer migraine.

2. Take one shifting exam with head feeling like it could explode anytime.

3. Try everything to ameliorate pain.  Eat a good nutritious meal, drink two liters of water, keep self in ambient temperature, get eight hours of sleep, do deep breathing exercises, take painkillers, stop reading your handouts and books, keep self in horizontal position, and close eyes against the migraine's aura.

4. Cringe as pain continues to pulsate and migraine aura intensifies.  Restrain self from chucking up the food, water and meds-the toilet bowl need not be your best friend.

5. Watch in horror as BP (normally 90/60) shoots up to 130/100.

6. Take mega-dose of Ibuprofen and start praying the rosary.

7. Try to sleep against the pain.  Place sleep mask over eyes to shut out the dancing stars, the blinking lights, and ribbons of colors associated with the pain.  Distract self from thoughts of an impending cerebrovascular accident or a possibility of a brain tumor.

8. Wake up with a sore head.

9. Remember that you weren't able to go over your notes and text for the shifting exam and the final exam in another subject.

10. Sigh and say, "Oh well, I'm just experiencing the complexities of life."




What is wrong with my brain?  Something triggered a cortical spreading depression that led to release of inflammatory substances that irritated my trigeminal nerve roots that translated to the mammoth migraine.  I can only sigh with regret because the migraine occurred while I was taking the exam for my favorite subject, and my head was still sore (and devoid of some necessary bits of information) when I took the exam for my second favorite subject.

Maybe they were right in saying I'm stressing myself too much trying to read the material when I can always read the samplex instead.  (And darn, those two exams were mostly samplex-based.)