A Migraine, Minerva and Me

This morning has been spent pulling the red-hot iron rod of a migraine out of the left side of my head through my eye socket.  The nausea is far less today than yesterday’s, and at least I do not have any work I have to ‘man up’ and get through.  I can just be a vegetable on the sofa under a duvet as the rain falls outside.  I had been wondering when I would get my first migraine in Port Harcourt (ever the optimist).  It has been hot and humid, causing me to be concerned with my ability to stay properly hydrated.  I am in a perpetual battle with dehydration, and sometimes I lose.  When I lose, a toll of severe pain is paid and usually for three consecutive days.  

I am not on any prescription meds for migraines, but I should probably have some in  reserve.  If I can catch a headache before it becomes full blown, I can usually knock it out by taking a high dose of pain killers like ibuprofen.  However, if one begins while I am sleeping, and I wake up with a full-blown migraine, I’m screwed.  Saturday morning I woke up screwed.  I’ve found no pain killer that helps me once the pain has begun.  However, my trusted reliever of the pain once it has begun in Tiger Balm.  The stuff just works for me.  I have found what works best in the generic stuff I bought at a random massage parlour in Ko Samui, Thailand last January.

I am not very sensitive to light or sound, so I entertained myself with little DSTV this morning.  Recently I have watched more of the movie channels than ever before because they have been showing films I watched in my childhood but have not seen in 15 years of more.  I watched Ghostbusters last week (hilarious), saw Superman II a couple of nights ago, and this morning they had on Superman (which is a beautifully shot film).  I admit that I did not finish watching Superman because I have a short attention span and find it difficult to finish watching any film in its entirety, especially while at home.  I got bored with it during the Superman-Lois Lane tandem flight/love scene and checked what was on the next channel.  It was Hudson Hawk.  OMG!  That was an awful Bruce Willis vehicle with one of the most amazing screen villains of the 1990s:  Minerva Mayflower.  When I finally have pets, I want two dogs.  One dog will be named Anastasia Beaverhausen, and the other dog will be Minerva Mayflower.  Male or female, these will be the dogs’ names.

“One hundred million and one, Waldo!”  I used to watch, rewind, watch, rewind and watch the scene that introduced us to Sandra Bernhard’s Minerva.  Sadly, no one has uploaded that clip to YouTube, but there are others of the fabulous Minerva to enjoy.

In another film, Bruce Willis popularised the phrase, “Yippee-ki-yay, Mother F***er!”  Yeah, Ms Bernhard’s exclaimed expletive in this clip did not have the same impact on popular culture at the time.

“Eureka, Mother F***er!”