Migraine Scavenger Hunt

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I was taking my teacher certification exams, it was snowing, and I spent the weekend crafting because I wasn't feeling well.  That weekend was the gift that keeps on giving.

I won't find out for another two weeks how I did on my certification exams, and while I have no doubt that I could pass them, I am a little concerned about how my Tourette's affected my ability to perform well on the test.  They sent us to the testing rooms at 8:00 in the morning, but didn't give us the tests to begin until around 8:30; that was 30 minutes in a chair in a dead-silent room, trying to not make too big a scene.  I bounced around in my chair, shook my hair barrette out and surreptitiously tried to put it away, and cleared my throat ad infinitum.  By the time I finally got my test and was able to begin, I had already  used up all of my "sitting still" time.  I really tried to focus on the test, but by the end of the 120-questions (all of which had a paragraph or so of writing to go with them to provide the scenario for the question) I was finding that I was re-reading the questions 3 or 4 times each, trying to make my brain pay attention.  I think I was done in 45-minutes and I booked it out of there.

Part of taking the test is ensuring that you have a valid photo-ID and that it is out and present at all times.  Because I am pretty prone to misplace things, I always make sure that my license goes right back in my wallet where it came from.  Every time.  This time though, I didn't feel well; I had a migraine, both of my arms were tingly and in pain from pinched nerves, and I couldn't get out of the quiet room fast enough.  So I grabbed my ID and stuck it in my coat pocket and left.  When I got home, I took a nap, worked on some afghans, and didn't go anywhere for the rest of the weekend.

I didn't go anywhere last weekend.

Which brings me to this weekend.  In which, while cleaning out my wallet, I realized my license wasn't there.  If I were a person whose brain didn't take vacations once in a while, it might be easy to find.  I know it wasn't stolen; namely because my wallet is attached to my keys and it hasn't been out of my sight in weeks, nor have I been anywhere that would have given it the opportunity to be taken.  So I'm left, trying to retrace the steps of migraine-Katherine; a totally different entity than Katherine.  Migraine-brain does weird things to me; even when I have no pain symptoms or light sensitivity (or any of the other lovely things my migraines cause) I can tell when I have a migraine because I have what I have dubbed "migraine-brain".  My thoughts become jumbled up, I experience aphasia, and I do things that don't make sense, except to migraine-Katherine.  Want proof?  See the previous post in which I thought it was a good idea to take my all of my regular medications and go to sleep after experiencing a concussion.  Concussion-brain and migraine-brain are not so different.

I have looked in all the logical places; and the illogical ones.  I have spent the day crawling around on the floor with a flashlight and moving furniture on the hunch that my cat found it and batted it around until it lodged under something.  And now I'm icing my bad arm because it couldn't handle the pressure from leaning on it all morning.  Truthfully, that day I was so checked out that, as my mother helpfully suggested, I could have put it into the freezer and thought that was a logical place for safe-keeping.

To complicate matters, I live in Washington but have a California's driver's license because that is where my parents live and I am still a dependent at school.  And of course California requires that you go in person to replace a lost license.  So I'm going to keep looking this weekend, hoping and praying that my license decides to show up.  Otherwise I'm going to be calling the California DMV this week hoping I get somebody sympathetic on the phone who can find a way to keep me driving legally until I return to California in a month.

Any good kismet you can send this way would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE
Somebody must have been sending some seriously good kismet this way.  :)  I did not find my license, but I had what has to have been the most pleasant conversation with a DMV employee ever; they are going to mail a temporary license to my apartment and when I go back to California I have to go get my license replaced.  Yay!  And I found out tonight I passed my teacher certification exams which means I am officially done with exams and ready for certification in May!

All in all a good day.