My thoughts for the day

I am a 57 year old white married female with two kids, a girl, 16, and a boy, 18, 2 dogs and a husband. We all have either ADHD or ADD.

Today is day 2 of my throbbing migraine. I actually haven’t had one in maybe 10 years. I’ve been trying to become more organized and efficient. I am trying to put all appointments, kids hockey practices, games and events into my iPhone. Before this, I was using an old fashioned coil bound paper daily calendar along with a massive 2×3 foot undated paper calendar pad which hangs in my kitchen fridge with 5 magnetic clips. It can’t be 4 clips because the 20 or so pieces of paper would drag the clips down.

But I digress.

I looked at my digital calendar on my iPhone and see that there are only 2 days in November where there are no appointments, due dates or special events.

My migraine is affecting my vision. It is throbbing at my right temple. Where sometimes I see flashes of light or bars of light, I now see only grey or blurred shapes out of the outer half of my right eye.

I have been using heat, stretches and massage in my neck to try to help with the pain I have there. I can’t take any more basic drugstore pain pills. I took part of a strawberry cannabis chew around noon. After I had dropped off my daughter at school and gotten groceries.

I started to feel the effects of the cannabis after about an hour or so. My head was still throbbing, but it wasn’t quite so intolerable. I had wonderful conversations with myself and my imagination ran wild. Then my phone vibrated. Then it vibrated another time. Then a third time. It was my daughter. It was 3:05 and she was asking me to make her Kraft dinner.

I got off the bed and dragged myself to the kitchen. Both sides of the sink are full of dirty dishes. As is the counter. Mind you the counter is only about 4 feet long because there is a ridiculously tiny kitchen in this house where 5 of us live. I hadn’t mentioned that we also look after my 35 year old special needs nephew. Have been for the past 11 years.

His mother, my older sister, is a recovering drug addict. So he used to live about an 18 hour drive away from me. With his paternal grandmother for the last month. One day I get a phone call from my nephew. He said “I’m here”. I said “where?” He said “at the train station”. I said “what train station?” Well it happened to be the train station downtown from me. Hi grandmother had bought him a one way ticket to my city.

We picked him up and moved him into our house. Poor boy. He hadn’t seen a dentist in years. When I took him to his first appointment, the dentist told us that he had 9 cavities. I took him to the doctor because he had a plantar wart on the bottom of his foot that was an inch and a half in diameter. We had him assessed and we were told that he operates at an 8 year old’s level and that he would never be able to live independently.

So back to my migraine, I went to the kitchen to make my daughter some KD. But there were dirty dishes everywhere. So I filled the dishwasher as I made the KD, so that I could set a strainer in the sink.

I began to think. I am probably like so many of you mothers. Schedule up the ying yang, no time to look after yourselves, never really able to rest or relax. Even when you are sick or in pain, you are there for your families. You put your children, your elderly mother, your scattered husband, everything, ahead of your own needs.

This is sad but it needs to be said. Right now I have a dream. The dream is that I still have a migraine but it’s a Friday morning. My son is visiting his friends in the city. The dogs and I have gone for a wonderful hike. I feel good. The dogs are exhausted. My daughter is in school and then going to a friend’s place right after that and staying the night. My husband is in the city visiting his parents. My upstairs tenants have gone away for a long weekend and they have taken their noisy dog and crazy cat along. And most importantly – I am left with no car.

All that I am able to do is relax, rest, take some strawberry or maybe mixed berry cannabis chews. Then I can put my little ear phones in. I am not even sure if that is even the right thing to call them nowadays.

Oh tenant above me. Please stop walking across the room with boots on. The thudding sounds like it’s going to come through the ceiling.

So then I put on some dance tunes and tidy the kitchen. But then no more work. I can’t get anywhere to help anyone or chauffeur kids around. I have a horrible migraine so it’s sort of ok for me to sound like I’m out of it.

But now I really have to rest. Until my next inspiration.