‘Princess and the Pea’ kind of day


When I woke up this morning, my eyeballs felt as if they had dropped inside my skull and rolled around all night. My hips ached from the presumed hill I had been climbing in my sleep with a persistent burning sensation on the bottoms of my feet because I must have left my sneakers home.

I knew the moment I forced my legs over the side of the bed that today was going to be a ‘Princess and the Pea kind of day’.

The Hans Christian Andersen story tells of a 'real' princess who was tested by the Queen before she could marry her son. The story states:

“ The Queen went into the bedroom, took all the bed clothes off and laid a pea on the bedstead: then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea, and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. This was where the princess was to sleep that night.
In the morning they asked her how she slept.

'Oh terribly bad!' said the princess. 'I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night!
Heaven knows what was in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing,
and my whole body is black and blue this morning. It is terrible!' “

For me a ‘Princess and the Pea’ kind of day is one where no matter what I do, every little pea sized thing irritates me. I often feel this way before I come down with a full-blown cold or as in today’s case, the first day of my menstrual cycle. I know in my ‘real’ princess sort of way that my body is saying, “relax, kick back, and allow me to do a little repair here and there. Be a princess for a day.”
Of course life doesn’t always allow for a completely unplanned day of balance and renewal.

On days like this, I try to prioritize my activities to ones not requiring too much brainpower, limit my social interaction so my inner dragon doesn’t scorch too many family and friends and not spend too much time in front of the mirror, because I know I’ll hate everything I put on.

Getting out in the fresh air, drinking lots of water and going to bed early help. But on a full-blown ‘Princess and the Pea’ kind of day, I often go with the homeopathic philosophy. In Homeopathy one strives to treat ‘like with like’. If every little pea sized thing irritates me, I’m going for complete immersion. Tonight I’m cooking me up a big old pot of peas and I’m going to enjoy every last one of them!