Happy Easter, everyone! In true Colorado fashion, I woke up to find snow on the ground this morning.  We never seem to have snow on Christmas or New Years, but it is pretty much a given on Easter and Halloween.  By noon the snow was melted, but at least it was there this morning.
I was scheduled to work today from 9-6. I'm not sure why; who the hell is going to feel like working out on Easter? Even people who don't observe the religious side of the holiday are going to use it as an excuse to gorge themselves and hang out with friends and family.  As usual on Sundays, I worked the front desk.  By ten o'clock, we only had about fifteen kids. It was so predictably slow.  My boss started sending people home around noon, and I was the first to go.
After I stopped by my house to change out of my uniform and put the dog outside, I went to my grandma's house for lunch with all the extended family. It was great to see them on a happy occasion for once (earlier this month -- on my birthday, no less -- we gathered for my great aunt's funeral). While the energy was a little different without my Aunt Sharon's physical presence (I'm sure some part of her was still there), we still had a great time just being family. 
It is weird to see all my second cousins' kids growing up.  The house was full of toddlers today, and three more babies are due in the next couple of months... one of them being my first nephew!  Needless to say, the epic Easter egg hunt was a success, as usual.  Since most of us older children were unable to attend, the eggs were all filled with candy and pennies.  Two years ago the eggs were pretty much all stuffed with money.
I drove away from Grandma's thinking how lucky I am to have such a huge and loving family.  My family is so large that I literally don't know everyone's names, nor do they all know mine.  Despite this, at each family gathering the air is so filled with loving energy that it practically crackles and hums.  You may not feel well when you get there, but somehow you always manage to have a blast.
After Easter lunch, I went home to get some homework done. I have another annotated bibliography due tomorrow evening, so I needed to knock that out tonight.  However, within about fifteen minutes of crossing the threshold, I developed a massive migraine that put me out of commission for the next five or six hours.  My head still hurts a little, but I'm trying to gear myself to at least work on some of my bibliography. I'll have four hours tomorrow to finish it up, but I'd like to have a pretty large chunk completed tonight.
These migraines are driving me bonkers.  Right now, I'm averaging about two a week... not good when you have as much homework as I do.  The really difficult thing is how quickly they show up. I literally went from feeling great to hiding under my covers to block the light in a quarter of an hour.  That doesn't give me much time to head it off.  Once one hits, all I can do is take some medicine and try to sleep it off; I'm so sound and light sensitive that my roommate can't even do anything at this end of the house without making me absolutely miserable.  I wish I could figure out what causes these migraines and how I could prevent them.  I never had them before, so I think a big part of it is that I have too much on my plate right now.  Hopefully my smaller work load after this semester will be enough to keep me from getting any more migraines.
Do you get migraines often?  How long to they take to develop, and what do you do to prevent/treat them? Leave a comment in the box below.