You know, I'm going to opt out of almost all holidays. I really should. 'Cause they never really turn out the way they are supposed to.

First off, my parents were supposed to come down on Sunday, we were all going to go to Mass (the kids are old enough to be up for this), come home, have lunch, play, call it a day. Go to bed early.

Instead, here's how it really went:

• parents show up two hours early, and inform us that they went to a sunrise mass (at least for me, 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday counts as sunrise). The house, while in commendable shape for us, was hardly inspection worthy.
• lunch went off with nary a hitch. Even the hollandaise sauce turned out OK.
• played outside, walked down the block to the pond, watched the ducks and geese. Ms. Independent demanded that she walk most of the way. Its about a half mile round trip-quite a way for such short little legs!
• while parents are outside with Son and BabyA, Husband informs me that he doesn't think that I do enough at home. That he pretty much does ALL the cleaning and that I basically don't do anything to contribute to that. What I had thought was a fairly equitable division in labor (I do six to eight loads of laundry a week, fold it, put it away, feed children, dress children, take children to school, pick up children, bathe children and put BabyA to bed) is far from it. Never mind that I have been feeling completely overwhelmed and inadequate before. All I could do was cry.
• parents leave around 4:00 for their three hour drive home. No major battles between my mom and Husband. Huzzah!
• we leave on a little roadtrip to check out a playsystem that we are looking at getting for the kids, and Husband needed to stop by work to get some reports to get his Monday report mail out. I start not to feel so great-I just figured that I was tired (even though, if you ask Husband, I really shouldn't because, you know, I sleep in later than him every day, never mind that he is in bed a good hour or more before I am). On the way home, I was scrolling through his iPod to pick out a movie for the kids, and I felt my stomach do that maneuver that makes you know that reverse is the gear that its going to be engaging in. He asked me if I could make it home-heaven forbid something bad happen to his beloved caddie-or if we needed to stop. I told him to just take me home.
• Instead of taking me home, he takes me to the emergency room. I now have a full blown migraine, with all of the lovely light and smell sensitivity. I sent Husband and the munchkins home, and curled up into a ball back in the family conference room in the ER deciding whether to throw up. Ultimately deciding to stop fighting. Some Zofran later, I was feeling better, but then my head started to throb.
• Finally get back to a room after an hour, and then waited another hour in a blessedly dark exam room, with the Zofran finally kicking in. Doc finally comes in, we start the eval, and he gets called away...for 45 more minutes. My nurse finally sent up a flare and got him back, and got my meds ordered.
• An IV of all things painkiller and anti-nausea, and withing 10 minutes I'm out cold, only to be awakened by Husband and my now bathed and pajama'd kids. I finally get released, but have to wait almost 45 minutes to finally get out of there with my prescriptions and go home.
• Kids got to bed almost two hours late.
• Parents get to bed at almost the same time-drugs like Ambien and Benadryl are fantastic.

Since this is the second time in the past year that I've been through this, the doc (who I found out was the head of the ER department) said that I really do need the meds to have on hand to try to head these off when I feel them coming, since Ibuprofen isn't working right now. So far no injectibles, but we'll see how it plays out. He also suggested a visit to a neurologist to make sure that there is nothing other than crappy genetics behind these. I'm what I believe is the fourth generation of migraine sufferers, so I'm pretty sure that yet-to-be-discovered genetic link is my main problem. It can't hurt, so I'll be making an appointment.

In closing, holidays seem to be a recipe for an ER visit. So far, we've hit Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and now Easter. I fear for the fourth of July. Oh, and if I ever even SEEM to be happy about my lack of medical disasters, smack me. Please.