Fasting is good for the Soul, but bad for the eyeballs.

In which your humble narrator fasts for a day, has to pee during Kol Nidre and repents all those nasty things he's ever said about Cindy McCain.

Monday was Yom Kippur. As a "pretty good" Jew I fasted from sundown on Sunday until Monday evening. I ate a big meal while the sun still shone on Sunday, preceded by two beers, and followed by three glasses of water. It's best to keep hydrated. Or so they say. The problem is that my bladder thinks otherwise. So despite talking sternly with my digestive system that it wasn't getting any love for 25 hours, I pretty much peed every half hour until I went to bed. And of course, I had to get up in the middle of the hour-and-a-half Kol Nidre Service to go to the potty. Making it even better, my undergrad adviser who I hadn't seen in about a year was there with her husband.  She was great but I used to have to pee during her classes all the time too, which I fear she may remember since she winked at me while I was on the way back to my seat. How embarrassing.

Fasting may be good for the soul but it's pretty bad for my head since every other year it results in a stupendous migraine of near mythical proportions.  We packed up the children and took them to the "Tot Service" at our temple. They were mostly good. Then we went home so that I could not have lunch. Wife didn't fast. She's still lactating which means she doesn't have to fast since it would mean that her milk would dry up and she'd pass out or something. Obviously, the children didn't fast as it's a spiritually enriching joy reserved only for adults. So I'm hanging around mostly succesfully thinking about the things that you're supposed to ponder on the holiest day of the year, like: "I should be a better person," and "I repent," and "I wonder where the Rabbi gets those completely, blindingly, white shoes. Maybe there's a store in Florida or something." But by 4:30 I'm laying on the couch, surfing waves of nausea, trying to pile blankets on my head trying to shut out the accursed light and hoping desperately that Child #1 would stop touching me while intangible ice picks stabbed through my eyeballs into my brain.

This was only a day after I read an article about Cindy McCain's struggle with migraines. Since I've spent a lot of time saying unkind things about Cindy McCain this made me have yet another thing to repent for on Yom Kippur (Thanks a lot, New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs Section!). Lots of snarky people continue to make fun of Cindy's commitment to fund research into migraines. As a usually snarky person, I can relate to this impulse, but I'd still like to invite those people to shut the hell up. That also goes for those of you who claim to suffer from migraines and yet don't really. There's a special place in hell for you too.

I broke down and availed myself of some prescription pharmaceuticals at about 5:30 and then napped until almost sundown. The wife had ordered pizza. Nothing tastes better than the first howlingly non-kosher pepperoni pizza after Yom Kippur.

Sorry, Cindy.