Sometimes I Scare Myself

Last night, as I was doing quilting stuff, I detected an out of place chin hair. I say it was an out of place chin hair, but really it would have been right at home and in its proper place on the chin of one of the ZZ Top guys. It just didn't belong on my chin. So I stopped doing quilting stuff and got my super magnifying make-up mirror and tweezers and tidied up a bit. (Now in retrospect, maybe I should have been glad it wasn't gray, right?)

Since I already had the tools out, I thought I'd do a quick little survey for stray eyebrow hairs. (Isn't it funny that as we get older there are fewer of those but more of the chin variety? Do they drop with gravity and age like the rest of me?) As my mirrored reflection moved from my chin, up past my nose (nose forrest still contained,check), and upward toward my eyebrows, I stopped, looked closer, dropped the mirror, and screamed!

Well, I didn't scream aloud, really, but I felt like I screamed in my head. Because what I saw in each eye were two--TWO!--broken blood vessels! What?! Had I suffered a small stroke? An aneurysm maybe? What is there about doing quilting stuff and plucking chin hairs that would cause bloodshot eyes?

"Okay," I told myself, "don't panic. Think for a minute." So I did and I still had no explanation. Surely it was something serious and life-threatening though.

Whenever I'm certain I'm dying of some terrible disease, just as soon as I've made the diagnosis, my next reaction is denial. So, true to form, I set aside the mirror and went back to doing quilting stuff, trying my best to forget about my stroke and/or aneurysm. And you know what? About an hour later, my eyes started itching due to allergies, so I closed them and rubbed my eyelids to make the itching stop. Eureka! I suddenly remembered doing the same thing earlier in the evening! So I think there's about an 85 percent chance my bloodshot eyes weren't caused by a stroke or aneurysm, after all!

I'd totally have gone out to celebrate last night, but you know what? My throat is kind of scratchy and my voice is a little hoarse, so I think I probably have throat cancer. Or maybe a bio terrorist infected me with bird flu, because my nose is kind of runny too. So I thought it would be better if I just went back to doing quilting stuff and tried to forget the whole thing.