Dustbin Blues

The worst thing about having kids?

I can handle dirty diapers, crayons on the walls, broken keepsakes, peanut butter in the VCR, apple juice all over the keyboard...

But the thing I hate most... is germs.

I've been sick more since the beginning of September (when the kids, coincidentally, started school) than I was all of last year! That's a year's worth of illness packed into three months. What do I have to look forward to for the next seven, I wonder?

Right now, it's strep throat. Yay me. *sigh* A hundred and two degree fever, an all-over body ache and a throat that's on fire. Don't ya wanna be me? Just in time for the weekend, too. Perfect.

Yesterday, I was a cleaning maniac. Today, I'm Cameron in Ferris Bueller... "I'm dying...!"

"When Cameron was in Egypt's land... let our Cameron go..."

Michael made me tea (Constant Comment, my favorite) and toast and brought me aspirin. Looks like I'm going to spend the day in bed. Which, really, isn't necessarily a bad thing, when I think about it. Would be nice to catch up on sleep.

"You're not dying, you just can't think of anything better to do!"

Well, he's got a point. What do I have to do? Hm... so much for those Christmas decorations. Oh well, there's always next weekend.

Besides, I'm still recovering from the annual room cleaning fiasco. Four hours of cleaning, sorting, holding up tiny pieces of plastic and asking, "What's this to?... Do you have that toy anymore?... Isn't that the one you buried in the sand at the old house and then forgot where you buried it?"

What did I discover? Here's the top ten:

1. Six marbles to the chinese checkers game. Glued into the underside of Legos. I didn't, however, find the actual Krazy Glue. Yet.

2. Seven socks that I've been looking for forever tied in knots and made into a "rope" hanging from Zoe's dollhouse bedroom window (which faces the wall - no wonder I didn't see it!) Apparently, she did it during "fire safety week" at school.

3. A naked Fairytopia Barbie with two amputated feet (dog victim, I believe, from the markings) but Michael said, "She's still hot."

4. Zoe had the paper punch, two pairs of scissors, the stapler and four rolls of tape. It took me fifteen minutes to vaccum all of the "confetti" she'd made out of her school library book. I wonder how much I'm going to have to pay to replace, "Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends"?

5. Eight dollars and twenty-nine cents in change.

6. Four spoons, a very bent and deformed fork, and lots of peanut butter sandwich cracker wrappers.

7. The dog's leash (I wondered where that was!)

8. A line of McDonald's french fries along the baseboard behind the dresser leading up to a peach pit. It was like the perfect ant-highway!

9. A bottle of nail polish. Red. Thankfully, they couldn't get the top off.

10. Two pairs of tweezers, a slew of bandaids put on various stuffed animals, and last but not least, and empty contact case. I'm pretty sure they DID have contacts in them at one point.

Okay, I have a date with Ferris Bueller, a box of Kleenex, and a down comforter. G'nite!

Migraine Train

I've got a migraine coming on. It's both the change in the weather (it's an unseasonable 86 degrees today. Quite funny, with all the leaves turning and the kids going to their cider mill field trip today!) and "time of the month." I can count on twice a month migraines now, at least. Sometimes more.

Before I started getting migraines, I admit, I was very unsympathetic to people who did. I mean... it's a headache. How bad can it be? You take some aspirin, maybe lay down for an hour. Don't be such a baby!

Ha. Karma wheel turns, see? It seems I'm now paying for my rather callous an uncompassionate view. Migraines don't just hurt. Migraines are evil incarnate running lose in your head. Imagine a giant pulling open your skull and squeezing your brain out of all its juices once every two minutes or so. For two days. Now times that by ten.

Yeah, I know, I'm such a baby.

I felt it coming on this morning. Michael and I were up too late, then Zoe got a bloody nose in the middle of the night (that's been happening out of nowhere lately) which meant more interrupted sleep, and I woke up feeling dizzy, head fuzzy, covered in sweat (we had the windows open then, but thankfully we didn't take the window air conditioner out of our room--it's on full blast now and I'm chilling, literally, in front of it!) and I just knew. Migraine's coming.

I get that Johnny Cash song in my head whenever I know it's on the way. Michael listens to him all the time, so I actually get Johnny Cash ear worms stuck in my head quite regularly. But one of his most famous songs, Folsum Prison Blues, is just so catchy, and fits nicely into my head just before the brain-squeezing giant arrives:

"Migraine a train's a comin

It's coming 'round the bend

I ain't gonna see the sunshine

Til I don't know when...

I'm stuck in Migraine Prison

And time keeps draggin' on..."

The thing about it is, I won't know if the medicine is going to work for a while. Migraines also come with nausea and sensitivity to light, so I'm often on my knees in front of the toilet bowl hoping I don't puke while digging through my purse, looking for my Great God Imitrex Fix. Once I've washed it down, then it's just a matter of waiting. Is that light at the end of the tunnel... or is it a train?

I hate it when it happens on visitation weekends, too. Poor Blake. He gets a drugged out, blind-with-pain mom to visit. How fun!? That's just what I was thinking this morning. I don't need this! Right. Like I ever need it? There's lots I'd rather be doing.

In fact, here are ten things I'd rather be doing instead of having a migraine today. Wish me luck.

1. I'd rather do childbirth again. All four times.



2. I'd rather clean the bathtub. With my tongue.



3. I'd rather have kidney stones. (Yes, I have had them, I do know how much they hurt.)



4. I'd rather have gall stones. (Yes, I've had those, too.)



5. I'd rather watch back to back three-day marathons of Family Matters and Full House.



6. I'd rather be on Fear Factor eating bull's testicles.



7. I'd rather be locked in a room with Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly.



8. I'd rather have sex with Newt Gingrich. (Wait... maybe not... well... it would be over quick, right?)



9. I'd rather have Gilbert Gottfried's voice in my head all day.



10. I'd rather read both K-Fed and Britney's biographies. Twice.

See! I told you they were bad.