Concussions Suck -- But It Could Be Worse

On Sunday, Grace was rehearsing with her dance ensemble when she got dropped on her head. She called me before she drove home. The choreographer had urged her not to drive. She called me from her car as she sat in the parking lot.
Did you lose consciousness? Do you feel nauseated? I asked the normal parenting questions after your kid hits her head.
Just drive home, I encouraged her.

Here's Grace as Nancy in Oliver -- the last show she was in. 

She called the doctor's office on Monday, but they were closed for Martin Luther King Day.
Grace had a headache, but she continued her normal life, going to rehearsal for her musical on Monday night. As a concession to her head bump, she didn't do the dance numbers at rehearsal.
Tuesday, she got an appointment with the doctor, but had to be at work at 8 a.m. She went to work and got off early. She called me then because the doctor said she had a concussion.
"The only way you're getting away with this is because you're young," the doctor scolded.
She was ordered home with no work, no rehearsal, no screens. "Rest your brain," the doctor told her.
I'm hopeful that Grace's concussion isn't too severe since she hasn't been intolerant of light and sound, like some people with concussions are. She turns the television on then faces away from it so she can hear it even if she isn't allow to watch it.
We tried watching War and Peace, the miniseries, but it got too complicated with me trying to describe to Grace each actor and each scene. We decided we'd hold off and watch it when she recovered.
The hardest thing for her has been resisting her telephone -- the lifeline of the 20 something year old. No texting. No Facebook. No games or clips of cute little owls taking refuge from the rain under a mushroom. She was allowed to knit as long as she didn't make a complicated pattern that required her to think too much.

She's been knitting these mermaid tail blankets. She gave this to our niece Regan for Christmas. 

I didn't think of it right away because I'm not a huge homeopathy kind of person, but by today, day five, I did go to Whole Foods and buy some arnica. I pried Grace out of bed around 1 p.m. and gave her some arnica to let it melt under her tongue. Arnica is supposed to help with bruising and trauma. Grace took some acetaminophen too, which is the pain medicine she's allowed to take. After a meal and a shower, she looked at me in surprise. "My head isn't hurting!" she said. 

That's huge. Maybe it's the arnica, maybe it's just the days of resting her brain, but any day without a headache is a success.
I should have thought of the arnica because just this week, I had more proof that it helped. For Christmas, I had sent my parents a basket of things that I picked up at the farmer's market. Included in the package was an ointment with arnica. My father was having foot and leg pain, and I asked mom if she had tried the ointment on it. When I talked to them last night, they told me his pain was much better and he'd been able to get some sleep. So maybe there is something to this arnica. At least, I plan to keep giving it to Grace and I'll get more ointment for her on Saturday so she can rub it on her neck, which the doctor said was swollen.  
Tomorrow, she's scheduled to return to work, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that  she heals quickly, as a 23-year-old does.

Anti-Aging Secret Revealed

Okay, it's settled. I have to go to France again to find out the secret of youth. Somehow, they apparently know how to look young at a very advanced age.
Is there some fountain of youth? Some beauty cream? Some food that they eat?
I am determined to figure it out.
How do I know this antiaging secret exists?
Here's a picture of Earl with our friend Marguerite when they went out to dinner along the Rue Mouffetard the other night:

Should I tell you how old she is or should I let you guess?
I'll let you guess for now.
What do you think?
Age Revealed: Thanks to everyone who guessed. Marguerite is 85.

Youth and Beauty

Do you have a time when you thought you were at the height of your looks? You know, a time when you look at pictures and realize, "I looked good then. I don't look like that anymore."
I've been having a lot of conversations with people lately about the fact that I would not want to go back to my teen years, too much drama. I wouldn't want to go back to my twenties because I was too black and white like the woman I wrote about in the previous post. Most of my thirties were a blur because I had little children who sapped my memory cells. Right around 39 or 40 though, I think I hit the peak of my looks.
Of course, I'm making assumptions that things are not going to get better from here.
First of all, I loved my hair then. It was long and curly. One of my journalist friends described it as romance heroine hair. I think I had finally just given up on doing anything to it and now that I look back, I love the way it looked.
I've been straightening it for a couple of years now, so it gets cut shorter and shorter because straightening it dries out the ends. The hair dresser cuts off the dead ends and now my hair is barely to my shoulders when straightened. Try to picture how short that is when I let it curl.

Look at this man in the market. He is delighted with me. Okay, maybe he is delighted that I am buying some of his product, but I think that I had no idea how charming I was at the time. Can I go back there now and take advantage of the attention?
A careful reader of this blog might notice that all of these photos were taken in France. Maybe I am just connecting a wonderful memory with the photos and think that I look better then.
I was also in pretty great shape. I think this was the year after I ran the marathon. Earl and I biked around Provence.
I didn't mind bicycling around France in a pair of padded shorts and I had a wrap around skirt that I pulled over the shorts when we stopped for lunch.
Maybe the looks are not better or worse than they are now or than they were before. Maybe it all has to do with how I was feeling at the time. If so, this picture pretty much says it all:

How about you? Would you go back to a previous age? Would you go back to the way you looked a previous age?