There is nothing quite like stay at home parenting to make a person feel an overall sense of deja vu. My routine, for the most part, is pretty much the same, day in and day out. The list of my core duties goes on and on, but I won’t bore you with the details of it (it’s not necessary for this post).
I will say that of the number of mundane things I do each day I feel the strongest sense of deja vu while sweeping the floor. I have to sweep the floor every morning, because we have more pets than sense, and therefore a pet fur carpet if left unswept more than a day. (Go two days and we begin to get tumblefur.)

Lately I have been feeling an increased sense of having done this all before. This feeling is stronger than “Oh yeah, I did this yesterday!”. It’s a deeper sense of bone weary repetition. The mundane daily chores of life leave me feeling a distinct lack of …well distinctness in my day. It’s as if the days in my life are all merging into one, and I am living that one day over and over again. Like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day.

I am sure this feeling is not mine alone, and is shared by other stay at home parents as well as people working outside the home. After all, there is nothing like a mundane 9-5 office job to make one’s days pass in a blur. However, I think the isolation of stay at home parenting increases the sense of futility that comes with these repeating chores. I mean, except for tumblefur, why bother sweeping the floor when I will only have to do it again the following day? Why wash the clothes when they will only get dirty again? All the work I do all day has no lasting accomplishment. I can’t point to it say “Look! I spent x hours building this amazing thing that will stand for all eternity!” I can say “Look! I scrubbed the floors last week with a new cleanser, and now they are… crud, now they are covered in pet hair and juice spots again.”

It’s a strange feeling, this sense of not doing anything lasting. Intellectually I recognize that raising my children and caring for them is lasting in a way nothing else really is, but that doesn’t mean I am able to step back and admire my handiwork at the end of a long day. Usually, I am only able to collapse on the sofa and mumble “the kids kicked my ass today… would you please get me a beer?” to my husband at the end of a long day.

There is no milestone for stay at home parents, nothing that makes us recognize that all our hard work has paid off this month, or this week, or this year. We get to share in our kids accomplishments, and our those of our partner’s, but let’s face it, there aren’t a lot of childhood dreams that center on being house bitch, so no one is out there creating any House Bitch of the Year recognition plaques.

My head is stuck in a vice again.

The throbbing pain coupled with photophobia (light induced pain) makes it hard to write anything interesting. I am trying to fight off despair. I am so tired of dealing with migraines. I know I don’t have a life threatening illness, and I am ever thankful for the mostly healthy life I have had, but I am still longing for a headache free life.

I mean seriously, who has time to sit still in a quiet dark room for days on end? If I had time to do that, I would be a member of the landed gentry, stuck in a whale boned corset, and forced to gorge on meals before leaving for parties in order to maintain the image that women eat like birds. (An asinine comparison, since birds eat more than their weight each day, and therefore a woman eating like a bird would be consuming over a hundred pounds of food daily. I digress.)

I have suffered from these nasty, soul sucking, headaches since I was twelve. In fact, this year marks the 20th anniversary of my introduction to migraine hell! Bully for me! Two decades of intense headaches coming and going, sometimes a few a year, other times a few a month.
I have gone to work and class in sunglasses, lived with a permanent prescription for percoset and muscle relaxants, and worn earplugs when watching my kids play. I have tried yoga, massage, chiropractic treatments, diet and vitamin changes, heat therapy, cold therapy, herbal therapy, swimming, walking, sleeping, drinking, lying in a dark room, working through the pain, sex, and more. I have had dozens of C.T.’s and MRI’s, not to mention the plethora of EMG’s and nerve conduction survey’s I have been treated to. I can’t even explain the other myriads of medical brain and nerve scanning technologies I have been treated with over the years.

I have been told they were caused by stress, hormones, insufficient bra support, birth control medication, allergies, the manner in which I carry my children/backpack/purse, diet. You name it, I have been given a reason. I have even been told to get breast reduction surgery on the off chance it will improve my headaches. (Cause yeah, medical science is down to a science, there ain’t no guess work in them there diagnoses.)

What I haven’t been given, is a solution. Each time I try a remedy, I get hopeful. I think maybe this time I am done. Each time I have a month, or two, sometimes even several months, without headaches. Each time they return. The only time I have been successful in getting rid of them is when I am pregnant. As much as I enjoy the lack of migraine’s while enciente, I am certainly not going to be pregnant forever. (That would be another nightmare entirely.)

I refuse to let these headache’s ruin my life, so over the years I have adapted to living with a certain amount of discomfort. I buy ridiculously huge dark sunglasses to wear in and out of the house, I take medication to dull the ache, and I live my life.

I know my family can still tell when I am having one. Monkey will come to me and pat my head and say “I am sorry you hurt mama.” Lee will make me tea and rub my shoulders. I wish I could live my life with as much zest as normal, but at least I am up and about.

And today, I am blogging. Which has become one of my vices. I am pretty sure I could be at death’s door in the ER and still would ask for a laptop and wireless connection so I could connect with the blog-o-sphere. It’s better for you than most vices, I won’t get lung cancer or destroy my liver by blogging, though carpal tunnel is certainly a risk. At least I can socialize with someone, without having to explain that smiling makes my head hurt.
Thanks for being there to socialize with.