Yesterday over at Hannah's, just after lunch, I was felled by a mighty migraine. I haven't been carrying my Imitrex because I haven't needed it in so long — I don't get migraines during pregnancy or most of lactational amenorrhea — and I had thought I probably wouldn't start taking it till the baby was nursing less. I've had two migraines since giving birth, and they hadn't been so bad, so I thought maybe I could handle the occasional migraine without drugs.
This one was a good-old-fashioned pre-Imitrex whopper, though. I had just enough time to quickly lay out the world history and Latin lessons I'd planned — then I wobbled over to the couch and curled up on it, whimpering. Occasionally I would stagger to the nearest bathroom and retch for a while. But it took me out for a good, oh, three or four hours.
Hannah dropped my baby in the sling and taught the other eight kids through the rest of the afternoon without any more help from me. (Really, I hadn't any choice. I couldn't possibly have driven home. I just had to stay on the couch.) Fortunately, we have the system working smoothly enough that either one of us could teach any of the subjects without very much extra preparation. She skipped a couple of subjects — there is room in our schedule for a few missed days in each, expressly for days such as this — but everything essential got done.
I emerged from a headachy fog after it was all over and sent the two oldest boys to the grocery store to buy me a couple of real Cokes. Then I surveyed Hannah's house, considered that her husband wasn't going to be home for dinner, and neither was mine — and offered to buy pizza for everyone. The two moms, eight kids special: one extra-large pepperoni, one extra-large cheese, and one medium pepperoni-jalapeño-greenolive-blackolive.
As long as we're willing to trade pizza for guilt, we will be able to keep this thing going.
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