I Hate Preschool

You would think that I am sending him to prison. My little sweetE makes sure to let me know how much he hates preschool every day he has to go. While in the same breath he might say how much fun he has.

Tonight he wanted to listen to his new music CD. Ducky didn't know where it was so they listened to an old one. He gets a CD with all the songs from his music class each month. The very same music class that when I left today, he was curled up like a pill bug with his hands over his eyes. As sad as sad can be. Even though I know that two minutes after I leave he is fine and happy and having fun.

I know that he is fine because his teacher tells me. The teacher we know and love. The teacher that can tell the instant he walks through the door if he will need a little TLC that day. The teacher he loves and will readily talk about with great enthusiasm.

But he hates preschool. I would swear he does it to make me feel bad. And he pulls at the heart strings every time. I also know that he doesn't hate preschool (he loves it), he just would prefer that I go to preschool with him. He is a mama's boy, has been since day one. He has my heart wrapped around his little finger.

Where did the weekend Go, Again?

75 papers got graded.
15 lessons got planned.
Ten loads of laundry.
Six meals got made or purchased, but definitely eaten.
Three rooms got vacuumed.
Two freshly made beds.
Two play dates.
Two soccer games.
One migraine headache.
One long overdue date with Ducky.
Plus, dishes, cleaned fish tank, and I don't know what else.

Numerous hugs distributed, fights were mediated and toys stepped on. I avoided four phone calls. Told my brother (yes, that one) no his friend could not borrow the Halloween costumes I have made for the boys.

I miss those three day weekends I had last year.

Who Needs Toothpicks?

Sleep is the be all and end all of my well being. I love it.

Last night I lay there waiting for sleep to come. My eyelids so heavy I couldn't keep them open if I tried. Sleep, however, eluded me. I lay there, the Carpenters "Hurting Each Other" running through my head. Thinking how appropriate that song was. The medicine that is supposed to be helping, is depriving me of sleep. Lack of which is one of my known triggers for a headache. After an hour and a half, I trudged downstairs and took a benadryl. It bought me about two hours of sleep.

And I laid there, same song running through my head. I slowly watched the morning arrive. Mourning my lost sleep.

I also realized that I am prone to the rare, but annoying side effects of drugs. I am at least thankful that my side effects have never been in the life threatening category, okay there was one time. So most people get drowsy when on this drug. I get insomnia. Lucky me. So now I will be taking it in the morning. It can keep me awake when I need to be awake.

The problem lies with the fact that I am horrible at remembering to take medicine in the morning. It is easy at night. It is part of the locking up process. At the kitchen stop, I take my medicine. I have no set routine for the morning. My mornings are not all alike.

So give me ideas. How can I make sure that I remember to take it in the morning? So, a) it can be effective and b) not keep me awake at night.

Where Did the Weekend Go?

It seems like I just finished up work on Friday and here I am looking at Monday morning creeping up on me. I can't really tell where those two days went. I don't really feel like I got anything of consequence done.

I had great plans to conquer Mt. Laundry. I only managed to scratch the surface. I had plans to edit my students papers on plants and animals. I didn't look at a single one. I decided we would have health tomorrow instead. I intended to sort through a pile of papers and miscellaneous stuff. I only lowered the pile by an inch.

It is amazing how two soccer games, a birthday party and a visit from a friend can eat up most of a weekend. In addition, we checked on a geocache that the boys recently hid. Stopped at Home Depot to buy cement. I gave the boys haircuts, so they will look cute on picture day in a week. We picked up dinner from our favorite restaurant. We practiced piano and finished homework. We played games in the yard before the rain came.

So while it feels like I didn't do a lot. I guess I really did.

And most exciting of all, no migraines for four days. And counting.

The Shiny Silver Lining

Oh, what a week it has been.

It started on Saturday. I noticed a rather icky smell coming from under the house. Ducky had been talking for a few weeks about needing to crawl under the house to look for water. So down he went. I went about my business and washed my hands in the kitchen sink. He sees water flowing quite freely into the crawl space.

Shiny Silver Lining: My bionic sense of smell caused by migraines prompted him to go look that day. Hence allowing us to discover the leak sooner rather than later.

Shiny Silver Lining: My need for clean hands made the leak so glaringly obvious that he couldn't miss it, even though he was several feet from the problem area.

So we call the plumber and they can come out on Monday morning. Not an emergency, but it should be taken care of soon. So come Monday, our friendly plumber shows up and takes a look. It is a cracked pipe. The pipes will either be running up the wall on the left or the right of the sink. If on the left, it will be behind cabinets. If on the right, it will be behind the dishwasher. He recommends a company to come clean up the grey water mess that is residing under our house.

Shiny Silver Lining: It runs behind the dishwasher! Much cheaper and easier. I want a kitchen remodel, but not on credit.

We schedule the grey water clean up for Wednesday night and plumbing for Thursday morning.

Shiny Silver Lining: I can't cook dinner without a kitchen sink, so McDonald's drive thru here I come. I have a migraine and don't want to cook anyway.

The plumbers and clean up guys all agree that the leak started about a week ago. So we are really lucky to have found it so soon.

Shiny Silver Lining: That means no maggots or mold or other nastiness under my house! And the clean up was much cheaper that way too.

The plumber came Thursday morning and got right to work. Ducky had pulled out the dishwasher and cut a hole in the drywall to expose the problem area. They found the offending pipe right away and made some startling observations. It appeared that the pipe had been crushed. Most likely stepped on when the house was being built, 13 years ago. Arghhh.

Shiny Silver Lining: Did I mention we found the leak quickly?

I have been known to be a friendly, chatty sort of person. So I am chatting away with the plumbers and mention that I want a tankless hot water heater. And that ours will most likely need to be replaced soon. I share how our neighbors had replaced the pipe/tube in theirs and we just haven't gotten around to it yet. So we strike a deal. They will flush my hot water heater and put in a new pipe/tube thing and they'll call it even with the money I am saving from Ducky doing prep work the night before.

Shiny Silver Lining: They discover that the pipe/tube thing that is supposed to be about 5 feet long is only one inch. It is a miracle I was getting any hot water at all.

Shiny Silver Lining: Now we can turn down our hot water heater and lower our gas bill.

So our house is all fixed now. And it cost us much less than it could have.

I had two migraines this week.

Shiny Silver Lining: I saw the headache specialist this week. So I might be on the road to a pain free existence. I have enjoyed two headache free days, and I am thankful.

I got to experience the great smooshing as I dubbed my first mammogram.

Shiny Silver Lining: Results are normal.

So all in all, there has been a bunch of not so great stuff this week. But everything has turned out okay.

The Specialist

I know you all have been on pins and needles in anxious anticipation of how my appointment with the headache specialist went. At least those of you who still read my blog, now that it feels as though it has become a whiner blog. But when you are in pain more days than not, it is hard to keep a sunny outlook on life.

Of course, I had a headache the day I saw him and could not think straight to save my own life. But I muddled through. Like many of the specialists that I have met, he was all business and focused on the task at hand. Although he did seem to like when I mentioned that I hoped he would become my new best friend. We tracked my long and sordid headache history. I was diagnosed when I was eight. We tracked my drug history. We covered the anatomy of my headache. He didn't know what I meant by ache. I thought ache was a valid description of a dull constant pain. Of course in my diminished mental capacity I could not think of a way to say that.

After checking my reflexes, my eye movement and a bunch of other stuff, he announced that I wasn't going to die. Also known as, you do not have a brain tumor or aneurism. Neurologically, I am fine. Except for the hair trigger in my brain that causes me grief and headache on an all too frequent basis.

So where do I go from here. He upped how often I can take my "immediate relief" drug to two times a week. He added a "rescue relief" injection should "immediate relief" fail me. We added a preventative drug to help reduce how often I need to seek immediate relief. And I will go see him again in two months, with my headache log in hand.

In the mean time, I should expect my pulse to go down to a range that most people experience normally. It might even spend quality time in the two digit range. My sleep should improve with the side effects of this new drug. Last night is a testament to that. I slept soundly all night long without my usual early am wakeful mental sideshow. And with any luck, fewer headaches.

I am so ready to have a few days headache free. Today, I had a migraine. But I got to treat it!

Just Another Day

Migraine started yesterday. Can't treat it. Advil makes it worse. Counting the minutes until tomorrow at 9:30 when I meet my new friends in Neurology.

Greeted by sweetP at 5:30 as he got in bed with me. He has a sore throat. He is staying home from school, at least for the morning.

SweetE woke up nice and early and forced me to move. All I wanted to do was stay in bed.

Waiting for the plumber to get here. Ducky discovered the kitchen sink is leaking under the house. That means I have to empty the hall closet to access the crawl space.

Lost a cell phone somewhere in the house. It is turned off, so no tracking it down by calling it.

Can someone please tell me why I was in such a rush to grow up?

Too Tired, But I Just Can't Sleep

My sleep issues have taken a new turn. I wake at 3 in the morning and my brain kicks into high gear even while it and rest of me are screaming for sleep. My eyelids act as if they are weighted down and it is all I can do to not stagger when I walk.

And most annoying is the things that pop into my head. The other night it was a Weird Al song about Pentiums. That I was subjected to days before. And then my brain just heads into overdrive and makes me stress that I can't fall back asleep.

All of this makes me cranky and causes headaches. And I get enough freakin' headaches.

To top it all off I did something to my back tonight and now it hurts. All I did before it started hurting was sit in a chair and work on sweetP's Halloween costume.

Would it be wrong of me to want to spend a few days unconscious and let my body reset itself? If I was a computer I would have rebooted long ago.

It has been a busy week and I will tell all about it tomorrow. Now I need to go attempt some sleep.

The World is Looking Up

To show how truly borderline dehydrated I always am, I drank 50+ ounces of water after my massage on Saturday. See how good I was being. And I still got the massage headache. At 4:30 in the morning. But two Advil and a melatonin later, I was back asleep and bye-bye headache.

SweetP is still loving school. However, he got a compliment for calming down, but he can't remember why he needed to. There is an email off to the teacher already. Enquiring minds want to know.

SweetE loves preschool, except the part where I leave. He is still heaping on the mom guilt. Today he clung to my leg and tried to follow me out the door. He had a new teacher for his music class and I had to just tell her to pick him up and that he would be fine in less than 5 minutes. To add insult to injury (his not mine) he had a well kiddo check at the doctor today and got two shots. Definitely didn't help with the "Please stay Mommy" feelings he was having. He is healthy and was a squirrelly little bugger the whole time, until the shots.

We watched home movies of the boys from 2-3 years ago and gosh they were cute. Still are, but they are so much bigger now. It almost makes us want another one. Almost. Especially since I am the headache queen.

In just a few short school days, my students have already learned to ask if I have a headache each day. I am hoping to make it just one more week, at least.

Some of the stress at work is lessening. I get to teach science! Yay!!! I am starting to settle into a routine. The plan for the year is to fly under the radar, except briefly popping up with moments of brilliance. Note to self, keep mouth shut in staff meetings.

So all in all, even though the heavy drinking isn't working out and I haven't looked for a therapist, I might survive this year.

Banner Day

Today was a banner day. I woke up with the migraine gone! SweetP had his first soccer game of the season. SweetE got to run errands with Ducky instead of spending 3 hours at the soccer field. They showed up for the actual game. No one got too sunburned even though I forgot the sunscreen.

My sister is visiting, so we went to the spa. The boys went to the arcade and didn't miss us a bit. I have at least some of the kinks worked out and I drank a lot of water. So no massage headache tomorrow, I hope. I have another massage scheduled for Thursday, so with any luck the relaxation will hold off the migraines until I can see the specialist in a week and a half.

Unfortunately, my sis and Ducky are watching Lord of the Rings. I loathe those movies so I am blogging, so all is not lost.

Tomorrow, we might go for a hike in the afternoon.

So Far, So Good

SweetP has gotten back in the swing of things and has only had good days! SweetE had his first day of preschool, but Ducky was there with him the whole time. So we will see how today goes. He was really excited to see his little friend. So I am hopeful for a happy year for him.

My students seem great, there is only one that seems to have a future in driving me nuts. Everything else about my year is still driving me crazy, causing me stress.

And my week and a half without a migraine. Nope, got one yesterday. I made it three days. I see the specialist in a week and a half. So I am muddling through today. And hoping for no more for a week. Then I can treat one.

We've got a busy weekend ahead. So keep your fingers crossed that this headache goes away.

No matter how much I plan to start that drinking problem, it just doesn't seem to be happening. I won't mix alcohol with prescriptions. Especially Ambien, don't want to pull a celebrity moment. Or I need to go somewhere and I won't drive if I have been drinking. Haven't managed a single drink all week. Not that there hasn't been cause to need one.

First Day for sweetP

Today was sweetP's first day back. As always it turned into a mad scramble to get out the door.

It started with the wake up. Have I mentioned that he is not a morning person? But with the new staying up later thing, he has to get up without complaint or no staying up that night. So he rolled his cute self out of bed while I picked out some clothes. Then the trouble began, I picked a blue and white striped polo. Apparently that shirt is so "not cool, it is boring." So after a bit of discussion, he went off to find a cool shirt. Not to self, make sure to wear a cool shirt if you are wanting to make new friends. So he picked his shark t-shirt. Meanwhile, he was telling me the importance of looking cool and that he doesn't want to be seen as boring. Besides the polo is a church shirt. Mind you, we don't go to church. His grandma bought him that shirt for his birthday and he has yet to wear it. She goes to church. Is there a correlation, who knows. He also didn't like his white socks and went and found his one pair of black socks.

Once we got the shirt straightened out it was time for breakfast. I usually make pancakes for the first day of school. Since they have to eat earlier than we do all summer long, it should be something that they really like. For the first time ever, he didn't want me to precut his pancake. What the heck!? Mommy rejection all over the place. What does he think he is supposed to be growing up or something? What if I am not ready? I know rejection is a good thing, it means I am doing my job, but couldn't he space them out.

So we fly out the door and I completely forgot to take first day of school pictures or bring the camera. But we got him to school, returned his reading bingo, put money in his account and got him settled. He had a good day. He likes his teachers. With any luck of my worry will have been in vain. Now I can redirect all my worry where it belongs, on the chaos that is my school year.

Gotta go to bed, can't have a migraine for a week and half at least. If I do, I will have to just live with it. My students will be there tomorrow. Let's hope my first day goes as well as his did.

Migraine Monday

So all the worry and stress has done me in. So I am working at getting rid of the migraine I woke up with. The boys are being reasonably cooperative and Ducky is off playing golf (he offered to stay home, but I said no). Tomorrow the marathon starts, and then go, go, go until June.