I am BORED (a Tale of Post-Migraine Lethargy)

This weekend, I had one of those completely brutal Hurricane Katrina sort of migraines that snuck up on me unexpectedly and beat me all to crap.

I get chronic migraines, but, happily for me, most of these are quite mild by migraine standards and only marginally make me want to kill everyone around me. I have learned to make minor adjustments and work right on through these, since otherwise I'd have to quit my job and turn my kids over to Social Services. Once in a while, though, I get one that stops all the action and sends me to bed in a whimpering, quivering gelatinous heap wishing I was dead. It's not necessarily the head pain that does this, although the pain can be quite bad. A lot of times it's the associated dizziness, general weakness and the random sensations of local pain throughout areas that actually shouldn't hurt that put the nail in my coffin.

Anyway, I remained marginally functional on and off all weekend, with episodes of severe symptoms. Sunday night, though, I knew my goose was cooked. I called in sick for Monday and ended up sleeping til 2 pm, with one minor period of consciousness for "lunch". Today, the worst of it is gone, but I still feel as if cotton had replaced all my gray matter and sharp noises are physically attacking me with needles. I went to work, but felt "half-on" all day, like I was phoning it in. I came home, ate, watched a re-run of Grey's Anatomy and tried to rest, then I ran off to get Mikalh.

Now, he is home, happily chatting through the fence at our neighbors, who have, incidentally, now built a tree fort which looks into our back yard. (So much for my nude sun-bathing.) I have nothing I HAVE to do til later because I have returned all the email there is to return, and I have checked Facebook and discovered that all my friends are leading extremely boring, meaningless lives. I won't make dinner until Mike and Mikalh are off at soccer practice, lest it get cold. So that leaves the possibility that I could file my papers (the picture to the left should give you a  rough idea of how much I enjoy this particular chore), dust the baseboards, bake muffins or pull my hair out strand by strand until I am bald. Since my migraine has essentially sapped me of the will to life, and all of my essential life essence, I am left with zero interest in doing anything productive, about ten percent of my usual mental acuity and one hundred percent of my usual need to be entertained.

It is a little known fact that the worst part of suffering from a condition such as migraines and Fibromyalgia (or, in my case, uncategorizable Fibromyalgia-like symptoms which respond to treatment for Fibromyalgia but aren't Fibromyalgia because if you poke my tender points, I don't scream) is the BOREDOM.

If you are a marginally intelligent person with a very short attention span and next to no tolerance for nothing happening, these kinds of illnesses are very frustrating. I want to do something productive, and I don't have any energy. I want to do something creative, and I have no concentration. Which leaves me with the following options:

1. Check eBay for outfits I can't afford to buy. In order for this to be fun, I have to shop just like I can actually buy this outfit and then, at the last minute, click the window closed and run back to safety.  Like playing "This wave can't catch me" only much less fulfilling. My latest interest here is boots.

2. Find something that I don't need to do and talk myself into believing that I DO need to do it. This works with baking muffins, making lists and email correspondence. I could easily prepare raviolis and put them up for lunches, but this doesn't sound like much fun.

3. Use Pinterest to add a bunch of random crap to a pin board that no one looks at but me. I like to find really gritty, offensive things that I find funny and then debate whether to publicly associate myself with this, in case my husband ever has to get a Q-Clearance or any parents at the school I work at are stalking me on the internet.

4. Tidy up. When I am feeling like this, the prospect of actually organizing anything is far too ambitious, so I mainly find myself wiping the same spot on my kitchen counters repeatedly. If I use an already dirty rag, it yields the greatest entertainment, since the item I am using to wipe keeps leaving a streak, that I then have to wipe. And so on.

5. Watch my ducks.  This has the advantage of making use of an existing resource, and I can say, in all seriousness, that watching ducks will make any problem you may have seem quite small by comparison to the obvious quandary presented by their abject idiocy. Unfortunately, the most interesting thing to do here is to toss my smallest female in the pond, and then stand back and watch as the oldest, grouchiest and lowest ranked male duck immediately jumps on her and attempts to rape her, and the big "boss" male duck then jumps on the low rank duck to assert his ownership of this female, resulting in a ridiculous pile of three wriggling, unhappy white ducks, stacked from smallest to largest. This does little to recommend me as a decent person, and that is why I am not doing it. At least right now.

Anyway, today I have discovered that I can blog about being bored, and that this can be mildly entertaining in its own right. I have managed, in fact, to use up all the time I have before I have to tell Mikalh that he must get into his soccer clothes. That project will then occupy twenty-five solid minutes, as I direct him to go and get them, ask why he is downstairs without them (and is holding two Star wars characters), point out that he needs to put his shin guards and socks on before the cleats go on, ask him where the heck his jersey is, and finally march upstairs myself and retrieve it. Then it will be time to prepare dinner.

Problem solved.

Enjoy this inappropriate song by King Missile. Consider it hold music.