Crumbtastic

We were out running errands.  One of the grocery stores we frequent has these coloring book pages right now and they switch them out from time to time.  Master Pravus always picks up the new one when he sees it.  This past week he noticed a new picture, I’m not sure which it was but it may have been the one I eventually colored purple.

“Have you finished your other Crumbsters?” Master Pravus asked me while we were in line.  I told him I hadn’t had a chance to color in a while.  It’s true.  I haven’t.  Talk about some mild humiliation.  I already stick out like a sore thumb every time we go out because I wear my kitty ears everywhere, and I’m obviously a bit “different,” but now the nice checkout lady knows that the coloring book pages are for me, and not a kid.  I’ve already been asked a lot about kids because we buy a shitfuckle of baby food since I eat a lot of that still (it isn’t the only food I eat by any means, but we buy too much of it for the checkout people to not notice) and they always ask.  It’s always awkward.

“How old is your little one?”

“…”

“…”

::Cough::

Master Pravus paid for our groceries and we left with a new Crumbster.  No baby food or Pedialyte on this particular trip.

The grocery night this week didn’t go well at all actually, it was a complete disaster aside from getting the newest Crumbster.

The first shop was okay, as I said, but the second shop had no motorized scooters.  I’m still not well enough to shop without a scooter or a wheelchair, but I can’t use the wheelchair when we need big or numerous items because we can only buy what will fit in my lap.  The only option we had was to just leave and go to the next store.  Again, no motorized scooters.  The third shop..  They did have a motorized scooter, but guess what?  It was completely out of juice!  Come on now!  We do our shopping every Monday or Tuesday night (depending on our schedule) and this has never happened to us yet.

At that point we decided to go back to the car, get my wheelchair, and just avoid the heavy items and try to get the small ones that would fit in my lap so that we could make some progress with the shopping.  We were worried that a trip to a fourth store might yield similar results to the previous three.

So we started shopping and picking up some small items.  All of the sudden, I started to have a migraine aura.  I don’t get “normal” or “typical” migraines.  The ones I get are complicated migraines and they come with symptoms that mimic stroke.  You do not want to be in a grocery store when one of these things hit.  Mine are also always caused by low potassium, so I keep extra prescription potassium in my bag.  So in between looking at cheese I suddenly pipe up with:

“We need to leave immediately.”

“Is something wrong with Gob?” Master Pravus asked, suddenly high alert.

“No, I’m seeing auras.”

“Fuck.”

“Mhm.”

We got to the car and I sucked down some potassium right away, and we went right home (with what few groceries we got).  Master Pravus had me take medicine and rest and then he told me that he wanted me to take that night and the next day off because I have obviously been overdoing things lately and it was clear I needed at least a day to recover if I was having the start of a migraine.  We weren’t even actually able to check on my potassium last week because my standing order for potassium blood work expired so I have to wait until this coming week at the earliest to check.  Still, we’ve noticed the symptoms coming on for days now so this wasn’t entirely surprising.

I’m one of those people who has always had a hard time sitting still.  I’m not a workaholic.  I don’t need to be working, but I do need to be doing something.  I like to crochet while I watch TV or maybe make friendship bracelets or lift weights or do some very light stretching if I feel up to it.  I’m just not the best at sitting there unless that’s all I can do.  It’s not that I need to work, it’s that I need to be moving.  I’m not really sure why.  Of course I didn’t argue, and we put my yarn away for the evening, and he set up my Neopets station for me.  I can’t go to bed sooner than midnight so I was going to have to be up for a while regardless of the migraine.

The next day I was under strict orders to rest until Master Pravus got home, and he’d decide whether or not I could resume my usual activities based upon how I looked.  He told me that I could do whatever I liked during the day as long as it wasn’t “work” and to make sure I rested as much as possible.  I decided I wanted to catch up on the only podcast I listen to (I’m about two weeks behind on it) and I don’t really like playing Neopets while I listen to it because if I do I can’t hear the flash games.  Naturally, I thought back to my little humiliation at the store the other day and I decided this would be the perfect time to dig into those Crumbsters that Master Pravus was teasing me about in front of the nice sales lady.

I started in on the squirrel, and then I did the purple guy, and then I did the noodle neck blue dino you see on the left there.  I still felt up to coloring as they were all pretty simple pages (designed for children, really) and so I pulled out coloring books at random and the first one I ran into was my mini Hello Kitty coloring book and I colored a page from that too.  I was making a lot of progress catching up on my podcast and I decided to whip out the Calm the Fuck Down coloring book Jade got me a few weeks ago and I started a page in that but that’s an “adult” coloring book so I didn’t even get that page halfway done because my hands started to get really tired and I was feeling lightheaded so I put it away to finish for another day.

Master Pravus came home and immediately asked me how I was feeling, asked me if I had any extra potassium that day, if I needed to take any extra meds etc.  I told him I was okay, no meds that day, just that I felt kind of tired.  I smiled widely and I brought him into the kitchen and told him I had a surprise for him.  He gave me an eye smile and looked really excited.

“What you got for me, Kitty?”

“I finally got to those Crumbsters for you, Master!”

“HOLY SHIT YOU REALLY DID!”

I beamed.  I knew he would like them, but I didn’t think they would make him that happy.

“You did SO MUCH coloring!  GOOD JOB!”

He was obviously thrilled about it.  Much more thrilled than I thought he would be.

“I ran out of Crumbsters, so I did a Hello Kitty page, and I started a page in the Calm the Fuck Down book, but I ran out of hand energy.”

“Fuck.  Good job!”

I got tummy rubs, and then he went one by one critiquing my work.

“I like this purple monster.”

“…Does this Monster have too many legs to you?”

“I love the colors on this one!”

All night long he would intermittently bring the coloring up because he was so impressed I got so much done.  Well, it’s easy to get so much coloring done when you’re not doing your normal chores.  I really do a lot during the day and it’s pretty much impossible to fit in anything “extra” unless it’s the weekend.  I’m not complaining at all.  As I said, I don’t like sitting still, but this was one day I didn’t even want to get up and do much because I wasn’t feeling well anyway.  I’m glad that my little colorings could make Master Pravus so very happy.

As an unfortunate side note, see how that Hello Kitty page is a rainy page?  Well, we were planning on breaking in the new “mini” pool Master got me to replace the old pink pool tonight.  Unfortunately, a big storm blew in (a few light sprinkles were predicted, but not the major hail and wind that lasted well over an hour that we got) and it destroyed one of our sun shades and even knocked the pole into the blue pool itself!

We’re lucky the blue pool was okay, but the sun shade is dead (long live the sun shade).  We’ll be buying a new one and getting things set up again this weekend, says Master.  Otherwise, I won’t be able to go outside all summer because I can’t go out in the sun.  Kind of prophetic of that Hello Kitty page.  Next time Master Pravus tells me to take it easy and I decide that I should color I’ll just go ahead and color a sunny page in, maybe.