Things That Are Supposed to Relax Me Actually Do The Opposite

Okay, a month now of consistent migraine, cluster headache, occipital neuralgia or whatever it is.  New Doc, new drugs, new possibilities, day by day I'm muddling through.

I'm trying to read each day, but it makes the headache worse more times than not, so it's a crapshoot.

I was able to sew up my daughter's school Halloween costume (Hobo)--as opposed to the one she is trick or treating in (skeleton), which was fun.  And we made two cakes together for her class Cake Walk at the school Fall Zamborree.  Loads of fun in the kitchen with frosting---thanks to Top Chef:  Just Desserts we even carved and other fancy stuff.  The pumpkin looked like a nice carved pumpkin.  The skull?  Not so much.  It was probably the last cake forced upon some wary winner.  Oh well, we are pretty sure it tasted good.

But these are very small moments in between a lot of sleep and a lot of cursing silently in a darkened room.  Not the way I want to live my life even for a short period of time.

There are two things I've been told time and time again by literally everyone that will help keep my brain free of pain:  exercise and things that relax you.  I now believe that "litterally everyone" hates me.

I walk because running is out...anythiing that bounces my head up and down or back and forth is out, which is problematic on a whole other level, becuase THAT relaxes me.  Irony much?

So, on the manufactured relaxation front I'm trying two things.  One, Yoga.  Not the bendy yoga for reasons mentioned above, but a deep relazation yoga and one called Kandalini (sp?).  Secondly, I'm attempting to take up knitting.

Knitting.  Or as I call it these days, 'Fucking Knitting".  Edvard Munch once said, "No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.".  If he was painting me, he could paint a woman knitting and suffering!  A two-fer for old Edvard...what a bargain for him except I think he already painted it...you know, The Scream.

I did the right thing...I bought what the internet said to buy in terms of needles and yarn and then I picked up Knitting for Dummies because someone said it had the best pictures.  It might.  In fact it probably does.  But the fact is that I didn't shoot low enough...I should have bought Knitting for the Absolute Idiot and maybe then I would, after a full week, be able to do more than cast on a few stiches before it goes completely to hell, along with my language.  This is neither satisfying nor relaxing and I end up back, cursing silently and possibly more inventively, in a darkened room.

In fact, this whole knitting debacle is so pathetic my husband is out right now at Wal-Mart attempting to get me a different set of needles and a different type of yarn...I love him for it, (and lord knows, this proves he loves me) but I'm not holding out much hope.  He also found and showed me the best apps on the iPhone for knitting, probably in the hopes that I'd stop muttering on the couch like a crazy woman.  I even went so far as taking my 8-year olds advice and called my Mother because as my daughter put it, "She can knit and talk to people, including Grandpa who is deaf, so she must be good."  I called, she was out, but my Dad got a great laugh out of it.

I will continue to work at knitting.  Probably, knowing myself,  for the sheer need to conquer it although I do hope to find some sense of accomplishment and moments of relaxation.

I'm not ready to talk about Yoga yet.  I'm trying to give it time.  All I have to say is that Deep Relaxation Yoga is painfully like what I do the rest of the time:  lie down in a darkened room cursing silently.