Wearing my new flat-bill, hip-hop hat is almost the same as wearing a bow in my hair. It is our Bow Tie o’ the Day.
The left side of my face is settling down. The gift of swelling the stinging wasps gave me is almost gone. My face is just about back to my usual old lady puffiness. Some of the sting sites are highly visible to the naked photo eye, but not all of them. Trust me—I know where all the stingers made contact because those sites still itch. And that leads me to Benadryl. I am not fond of Benadryl. It makes me drowsy. It doesn’t make me tired enough to be able to nap, which would be fine with me. It just makes me too drowsy to read, or write, or drive, or follow the plot of whatever show I’m watching on TV. I’m trying to make today a Benadryl-free day. Here’s hoping the itchiness does not overcome me. I need to get some work done.
I am a bit sad to see the swelling on my face go down. I have had such fun with it. In fact, for a couple of days I felt like my dad. You know how “Dad humor” is. We’ve all experienced the same “Dad humor” from our fathers. We’ve watched our fathers beat a joke to death. It happens like this: 1. Dad says a clever, jokey thing. 2. Dad tries to fit the clever, jokey comment into every conversation with every person he runs into that day—or for a few days. 3. Dad tells every person to whom he tells the jokey thing, about everybody else he said it to, and he describes what their reactions were. 4. The clever, jokey comment dies away when “Dad” thinks of a new clever, jokey comment. And the cycle repeats.
So how does this relate to my feeling like Dad because I’ve had a swollen left eye and right ear? The day after I was attacked by the wasps, I had to go to Dick’s Market to do some grocery shopping and pick up some prescriptions. The folks who work at Dick’s know me. The minute I walked in, a cashier nearly ran me down asking what happened to my face. I automatically said, “I got on Suzanne’s nerves.” I passed three more store employees on my way to the pharmacy, and I said similar clever, jokey comments to each one when they asked me what happened. Their reactions were the same: Silence. Laughter. Then I move on. It was intoxicating. I realized that I was feeling Dad-mode. At the pharmacy, the pharmacists and techs all had to see the swelling for themselves. “I guess I finally irritated Suzanne beyond all reason,” I answered when they queried me about what happened. I heard the silence, then the chuckles, then a chorus of, “Yeah, right!” They know Suzanne too.