Saturday

Well Thursday wasn't too bad. I was on campus, did what needed doing, and got my tooth filled. Turns out I have another filling due next week - gah. But hey, fillings and not root canals, so there's a bright side.

On the down side, I've been feeling like shit lately. I mean physically. I don't post too much about that stuff here anymore but weeks like this one make it impossible to write about me without this coming into it. I am in pain and feel sick every frikkin time I eat. Aside from losing weight again (yeah, this is why I dread buying expensive clothing...the yo-yoing weight issue), I'm feeling drained and angry. The anger come from exasperation, a lack of validation, and too many limitations. This anger is potent and it's in the form of a blank check, just waiting for some fool to stumble across it and write his or her name in the "Pay to the order of" line. Currently, I'm fighting to keep my primary care's office out of that line because I don't need to be any more surly with them if I want to maintain functionality of my relationships there. But it's not easy. I had an ultrasound on Thursday and was told by the tech they'd have results that day. No calls. No calls on Friday either. I had planned to give them most of Friday and then call around 4:00 but I forgot about it until about 20 minutes after I ate dinner Friday night.

Ok, enough of that. Thursday was good. I was energetic despite eating so little (no food for two hours after the filling and only being able to chew on one side of my mouth kept my food intake, and thus pain and nausea, down). One of the prof's whose house we were at offered for A___ and me to get married there. They have a nice place and it was a nice offer. But knowing him, I told him he should make sure that weekend works with his wife. Come to find out that no, it does not. So we're back to the justice of the peace at someplace pretty and then out for dinner/lunch somewhere plan. This isn't too bad, not just because it was what we had originally figured we'd do but because having it at the faculty home was starting to put it into the more formal category. I wanted to avoid that for some good reasons that will nonetheless sound jaundiced and jaded to some. Then again, most of that kind of person doesn't read my blog so fuck it. The reasons have to do with the fact that once you open that door, it's like you invite in all the expectations about "real weddings". E.g., my brother's reaction after I told him we might have this at the faculty house, which he's been to and knows is pretty and a slightly more formal venue.
"Do you have a theme?"
"Ah, a theme? Well we were thinking everyone could wear hats."
"..."
"You know, like I was going to get one of those ridiculous sun hats they sell at the drug stores in the summertime and A____ can wear this plastic party hat bowler thing because it will go with his tuxedo t-shirt."
"Oh no no no. He needs to wear a suit. We'll go shopping."
"We don't have money for that. Plus, A____'s wearing the tux T, we already bought it. He wanted to get one for you but I said you wouldn't wear it.
"I'm wearing my Calvin Klein suit."
"Go right ahead."
"What about cake? Are you doing cake?"
"I was thinking of asking our sister to make one."
"No. No no no. I'll go to my bakery (my brother has a bakery?). We'll get something, I won't say wedding but lots of flowers and a cake topper. You're having a cake topper."
"If you must put something on top, can it be a unicorn?"
"..."
"A___ would love a unicorn."
"A unicorn?"
"Yeah...oh and rainbows. Put a unicorn leaping over a rainbow on it."

birthdays

It's the fourth of July. For me this means two things. There's the whole holiday, fireworks, barbecue, etc thing but more importantly, it means my sister's birthday.

Yes, my sister is a yankee doodle child, but only by an accident of biology. If you imagine the kind of person who would love the idea of being born on July fourth, someone who would wear red, white, and blue, who would want a cake dripping with patriotic frosting buntings, who would jump around doing a sparkler dance in the evening while singing patriotic tunes and wearing a straw hat decked with stars and stripes, then you are imagining someone who is largely the opposite of my sister.

Aside from AM's not terribly patriotastic disposition, there was also the fact that our dad was firmly against allowing us to attend any parades or fireworks. Thus, for me the fourth of July has a weaker association with the national holiday than it does with AM's birthday and AM's birthday tastes. So here's what I think of as we near July fourth.

AM liked chinese restaurants, especially the kinds with ornately carved dragons and red fringed laterns. I say "liked" but I think actually this still applies. (My use of past tense is simply because I am speaking of the conditions of our childhood, the ones which shaped my associations with this date.) And indeed, this year I was thinking we could order chinese food. Or maybe I should make some kind of sweet and sour dish with rice. Or a sesame noodle thing. Chinese food and such dishes have featured prominently in my plans for her birthday since becoming an adult. When we were kids, AM's birthday celebrations often included going to a pond or lake with a group of kids. We should find somewhere to swim, I find myself thinking when considering how to celebrate her birthday. Other memorable AM birthdays included the sundae party and a tie-dye party (clearly this was in the late 70s or very early 80s). These condition my up to now unexamined belief that I must get ice cream and perhaps plan some crafts on her birthday.

My brother was born late in November. His birthday usually falls within a week of Thanksgiving, sometimes on the actual day. Needless to say, T____ has had many a turkey birthday cake. Other than a turkey shaped cake, T's birthday wasn't necessarily associated with any food in particular, probably because there is so much cooking going on around it that we just didn't establish a set meal or type of meal for the birthday proper. When his birthday comes around, I (usually) suppress the perverse desire to order him a turkey cake since as an adult, T has forbidden turkey birthday cakes, opting instead for a standard birthday cake decorated with frosting flowers in "autumn colors".

My own birthday is near a set of Jewish holidays. My family's not Jewish, which is good for my birthday I think because of the two holidays my birthday falls near or on, one involves a fast and the other involves gefilte fish.

So it's my sister's birthday and my sibs are both coming down tomorrow so we can celebrate. I'm off to go plan meals and order unpatriotic cake and whatnot. Assuming one can order any cake, let alone an unpatriotic one, on the fourth of July.

chip

I'm listening to my fella chip the ice off our cars. I just sat back down after a big fat cleaning fit. The place looks good, except for the kitchen which will soon be the site of pie making and food prep so I figured why bother with the heavy cleaning in advance? I've graded all but four papers from my students, alternately horrified and delighted by their writing. And now it's time to relax for a bit, clean myself up, eat, and then go pick up the siblings from the train station an hour up the interstate.

I know it's late November, but still it was something of a shock to wake up to find white stuff dusting the ground, the bushes, and the mostly bare tree branches. Oh and the cars. I looked at the weather... "Ice Pellets" is on the menu for today. That and black ice, freezing drizzle, and fog. Yeah, I guess it's winter.

I fell asleep in pain and woke up in pain, so this was a lot of work to get done on top of that and despite the fact that I pulled some muscle or something in my shoulder vacuuming, I feel like I got a hell of a lot accomplished. I'm still not used to the fact that my body and my mind are not exactly on the best of terms. When I can manage to get a lot of shit done in one day, it makes me happy. I'm looking forward to resting this evening, watching movies, and eating. We still have the drive up in not great weather but we'll take it slow.

Pumpkin soup

I just made pumpkin soup and holy crap it's yummy. And pretty damned easy too. It's an adaptation of the recipes I found by googling "pumpkin soup recipe".
One small to medium onion
1/2 stick of celery
One peeled carrot
One potato
1/2 inch of peeled fresh ginger root*
2 cans of chicken broth (low sodium is better b/c the non-low Na has like a whole salt lick in it)
1 can pureed pumpkin (the pie stuff is fine providing it's not seasoned already)
1 crushed clove of garlic
A dash of ground cayenne pepper
Black pepper
A dash of nutmeg
1 bay leaf
Parsley
A very tiny amount of ground cinnamon
4 Tbsp butter
~ 1 cup of light cream

Melt butter in a large saucepan/pot. Add diced veggies, garlic, and seasoning and sautee until slightly tender. Pour in about 3 cups of chicken broth. Bring to a boil then turn down to simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and puree in a blender or food processor (we used an immersion blender right in the pot, worked just fine but wear an oven mitt because that broth gets hot). Stir in pumpkin, cover, bring to a boil then let it simmer for about 10 minutes on a very low heat, stirring occasionally (again, the oven mitt is necessary). Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Add cream and heat through on low heat.

I added a splash of cider too since (a) I had it and (b) my fella salted it up a lot and I figured the sweetness of the cider would help cut that somewhat.

* You can probably use dried ground ginger instead, although I'm not sure what the fresh to dried equivalent would be.

long week

It's saturday after a long week, before a long week. Extra long in fact since next week is thanksgiving. I need groceries, for the short and long term, but I don't even want to drive past the supermarket. Once when I was younger, married and living in Michigan, I went grocery shopping the weekend before thanksgiving. Standing in a line which moved slightly faster than grass grows, I vowed never ever to make that exact same mistake again. I didn't. Instead, I ended up going grocery shopping the wednesday before thanksgiving some years back.

This year, I am going mid-morning monday. I am hopeful that the swarms of holiday food shoppers who adopt the manners of petulant sharks will all still be at work.

However, it's saturday after a long week and I am already nearly out of coffee.

(Un)easy bake

Oh this brings back memories....

Easy Bake toy ovens recalled for second time this year
WASHINGTON --The Easy Bake oven, an iconic toy with a four-decade history, has been recalled for the second time in less than a year, government safety advocates announced on Thursday.

In February Easy Bake's parent company, Hasbro Inc., recalled 985,000 of the toys because children were getting their hands and fingers trapped in the front opening, and some were burned.

I had some such toy as a child. I think it was a Betty Crocker Easy-Bake Oven.

My nineteen seventy something model cooked the...er... food with light bulbs as opposed to the plutonium which is apparently used as a heating source in the modern versions of the oven. (Actually, it's an "electric heating element" - ultimately a lightbulb could be called an electric heating element too but this is a matter of deeper semantics than is justified here I think)

As they do now, my oven came with cake mix packets. I recall they tasted a bit fucked up, as if sweet plastic were a key ingredient. But we mixed them all up anyhow (I believe they were all of the "just add water!" variety).

Then we ran out of mixes. So my sister and I experimented with our own mixes. No clue where the 'rents were for this fiasco. Absorbed in some martini fueled drama no doubt (these were the gin years).

It must have been winter since although I think we started when there was still light coming in from the kitchen windows, I have this sense it got dark fast and early. Most of my memory of the easy bake disaster took place in an increasingly dark kitchen. By the time we put the cakes in the oven, the only light in the room, in fact the only light on that floor of our house, was what seeped out of the little "smoked glass"-like plastic windowed casing enclosing the super hot 60 watt bulbs - which were slowly cooking our itty bitty cakes.

I recall the cakes smelled pretty good until the batter rose high enough in the pans to engulf the bulbs. Then it smelled less good.

My recollection is that we did not repeat this experiment. I don't know if we were simply unable to clean all off the cake which had been well past overcooked on to the insides of my easy-bake. My sister has the better memory for this sort of thing.

AM, what happened to the oven?

Spider coffee

It is unreasonable to call 1:53 PM "morning" however this is when my first coffee of the day finished brewing. There was a dead spider on top of the carafe this morning. A dead spider on your coffee is somewhat disturbing but not enough to over-ride my desperate need for coffee. I picked it off with a paper towel, chucked the little legs-up corpse in the trash, and proceeded to mix sugar and cream into my dead spider coffee, which I am now drinking.

no pet food recipes

What's good for people isn't always good for pets. And, as is consistent with my deep faith in the fallibility of our species, I am quite certain some recipes out there are in fact toxic.

For example, someone just posted in my comments section with a link to a blog with dog food recipes on it. I looked the blog over and noticed several of the recipes included garlic powder (I also noticed it was a strangely impersonal blog with no info about where the recipes came from and with ads all along the side...not the sort of environment which induces a sense of trust).

The problem is, garlic and onions contain a substance which is toxic to animals. The raw forms have been associated with hemolytic anemia, and the powdered forms show evidence of the same effects.

The ASPCA operates an animal poison control center which has an "ask the animal poison control center" page with an archive of questions about food. If you are planning to feed you pet home made pet food or human food, do some research first. Check this list out, if you don't see something you want to feed your pet on there ask about it here or talk to your vet before you introduce it into your pet's diet. The whole point of switching to home made food would be to AVOID poisoning your pet.

cups of cake (III)

The much debated liners arrived Friday. It seems Max has new snack cups.

Here he is enjoying exactly the same dry food he has in his bowl.










It's so much more special in a cupcake liner.

cups of cake (II)

Just a little before 10:30 last night, my cell phone rang. "Hello?" I said, sheepishly having seen the caller ID. My brother T____ wasted no time with a greeting "Are you near a computer?" he asked.
I was digging through the linen shelves. "Um, no, I mean yeah I am. But I'm getting a measuring tape right now."

See, I had forgotten to measure the muffin tins again. These aren't any old muffin tins. They are the jumbo muffin tins we bought so we could make big cupcakes. We did make big cupcakes and they were great but T___ decided they needed liners. The regular liners turned out to be too small and so nearly a month ago, T____ began his quest for the right sized muffin tin/cupcake baking liner. I have supported this quest but I have been putting off the measuring. Just not something I had time to do when I thought to do it and something I'd forget all about when I had the time.

A few weeks ago, he emailed me this link - an online outlet with all kinds of cupcake liners. I've felt a mild but growing guilt every time I've thought about having not measured the tins.

T____ continued on for a moment before he processes what I said. "You need to be, I just sent you something so check you email...wait, what about a tape measure?"
"The email" I reminded him "You sent it like two days ago saying 'It puts the measuring tape in the muffin tin...it does this whenever it is told!'? Well, I'm getting the tape now."
T laughed. "Oh god, it's about time! Ok well you have to go to your email and watch this."


I watched it.

He came back on. "That just doesn't stop being funny. This may be one of those things I need to watch many times in a row."

Throughout the conversation that followed, T____ played me the "ASs-TRO-PHYz-I-CIST" clip at least three more times over the phone. "wait wait, hang on....ASs-TRO-PHYz-I-CIST! bwahahahahah".

The conversation that followed was how to measure the muffin tin. See, this page my brother sent has many more liner sizes than I realized there were cupcake/muffin sizes.
A strong contender was "The circus freak" or "Circus cupcake" - it was tall...at least from the picture. It measures 2 1/4" x 1 3/8". One would think then that given the tallness of the cupcake, the 2 1/4 refers to the height.
"No, L___, what? How many? No. That's not it...is it? Wait. No, it can't be" my brother alternately mumbled and decreed into the phone. No one was interrupting him but himself.
"T____ seriously, look at it. Oh except I just realized all of the ones that start with 2 1/4" are the same picture, regardless of the size of the second measurement. Shit....well still, I think the first number must be depth."
"Maybe it's diameter" my brother offered helpfully.
"We're measuring diameter. That's what I've been calling 'width'."
I called A_____ in to confer. After poking around a bit trying to see if he could help deduce the correct correlates for the measurements posted on the baking liner site, he contributed a URL for something called "Optimum muffin-tin sizes and corrected potential energy curves in the MSXα method. Application to the a₁ and t₂ curves for TiF₄."

"as-tro-phys-i-cist" A____ whispered to me when I opened it in one window so as not to interrupt T____ who was still on the phone debating whether the first number consistently refered to the same muffin tin measurement across the many cupcake liner sizes listed on the site.

For the next half hour, T___ and I were stuck chasing down leads only to find more variables and few definitive answers. It reminded me of him and me shopping. We are hell on wheels in retail stores, which is odd since we both worked retail as younger people. Set up loose in a store and we will wreck something - completely unintentionally.

The cupcake discussion swirled on "Did you say ours was 1 7/8" deep by 15/16" wide?"
"The tape measure isn't marked into 16ths. Who the hell would go down to 16ths if there was no mark?"
"I think they are making this shit up."
"That's either like one inch or nearly two, if they got confused about 8/8 being one and double that being two."
"Hey you know what? Maybe it's fucking circumference and radius."
"Astrophysicist"
"Don't you love how they suddenly switch from non-common denominator fractions up top to decimals in the bottom set of liners?"

In the end my brother ordered a small set of these ones, which I suspect may be rather small. I told him if they aren't the right size, I'll use them to give the cat treats (the cat is on a restricted diet so "treats" are his regular food presented in novel ways...he truly does respond to this). This was an agreeable option for everyone.

All in all, it was one of the most enjoyable conversations I've had with my brother in a while.

My office smells like gingerbread, burnt things, and poop

"Do you smell something?" my office mate M asked me Tuesday when I was preparing for class.
"Nope, but I just came in and it's cold out. Give my nose a minute to thaw," I responded. I'm usually pretty sensitive to smell. I waited and worked.
About a half hour later, I left on an errand. When I got back to the office, I smelled it. Not strong but bad.
"Remember yesterday how I told you it smelled like poop over in the hallway?" M asked. I said I did. "I think someone tracked it in here" he explained. He then took me on a tour of the stains of the carpet.
I was doubtful that any of them were the source of a new smell as they all seemed somewhat familiar to me. Although who would know a new stain on that carpet?

"They're brown..." M said ominously, gesturing to a set of stains. We discussed the possibility that someone had walked into the room, was able to stand so close as to leave this stain by the door, then went over and stood by my desk, near the garbage can, and then settled with their feet stuck way under M's desk. We acted out various walking in and tracking poop scenarios, none of which seemed likely.

I left for class promising to bring in something to help with the smell. I had just the thing. My good friend cjblue had just visited me this weekend. She got her annual birthday mix CD (Funtastik mix - "with bagpipe action") and I got some very excellent gingerbread scented cleaning supplies. Only a friend who knows me as well as she does would understand that very cool scented cleaning supplies are not at all an odd present for me.

This morning I had to be on campus much later than I should ever be. I had to be in for a 9 AM meeting, which is about 2 hours earlier than I ever get onto campus even when I'm up early and moving fast. The morning is extremely unkind to my body*. Despite feeling like hell thawed out, I managed to get out and going with everything I needed, including my gingerbread scented heavy duty cleaning liquid tucked into my bag. I got in after the meeting and promptly dabbed cleaner onto the carpet (yep, I keep cleaning rags in my office).

"Oh that smells NICE!" M said as we cleaned. We made sure to hit all the stains he worried were the source of the stink. We turned off the fluorescent overhead lights and switched on the incandescent lamps. It felt cozy and nice in there until about 2:40.

At 2:30, my stomach had relented in its super bad cramping enough for me to consider putting food in it. I chose popcorn because it seemed to be the least offensive and immediate option. I remember as I put it in the microwave, I checked to see how long to put it in. I had a small conversation with M and the somewhat intimidated undergrad RA about it. "I have this habit of burning popcorn. The first time I met my mother's biological sister I burned it. It was embarassing, I was like 12 and the only one home when she got there...." I blathered on and in the popcorn went, set on "Popcorn" level. One minute into the cooking, I said "Shit, do you smell that?" My phone rang. It was A asking how I was feeling. "Um, better but I'm burning down my lab right now...can I call you back sweetie?"

I looked at the popcorn. The bag was just starting to puff up, not overcooked. "No really, it smells like wood burning." I decided it had to be the popcorn and stopped it. The bag was black in places and smoldering when I opened the oven. I immediately closed it, not wanting to set off the fire alarm. We emptied the trash can, poured whatever water we could find into it, and threw in the still smoldering and increasingly burnt looking bag. I stomped on it to sink it into the water. Finally it went out. But it still smelled like burning.

After M and I took the bag with burnt popcorn bag water in it out of the can and threw it away outside the building (dripping foul smelling burnt popcorn bag water all the way), we returned to the lab. I put the trash bag I had thrown onto the floor back into the can. While leaning down to do this, I was hit with the stink.
"Woah, it smells horrible!" I said.
"Yeah...you know, I smell the poop again!" M said.

We realized the trash can had been the source of the "poop smell" M had noticed. The trash can I had stepped in to put out the burning bag of popcorn. We emptied it of trash and poured in some gingerbread cleaner. And we waited.

At 4:30, when the fluorescent lights were back on, I was on my way out, and the undergrad was flirting with her boss - my recently engaged (and not to her) friend, we were still waiting.

I will reread this blog entry the next time I'm feeling even a little bit guilty about my preference for working at home.


*You can assume this is whiney overly sensitive bullshit, and if you do, keep it to yourself because I don't want to hear it. It's an unpleasant fact of my life and not some indulgent whim.

People suck

Kinda feeling today like people suck. I'll get over it. Tonight I'll go to bed and fall asleep next to my favorite person in the world. Tomorrow I'll go to the pet store and play with the kittens for adoption. I'll buy giant cupcake tins so my brother can continue his cupcake kick this Friday when he comes down. I'll try to find a comedy I haven't seen that wasn't written for 4th grade boys. I'll talk to people I like. I'll try to remind myself that some people were apparently toilet trained at gunpoint or forced to sing "good ship lollipop" for perverse uncles at family get togethers and that some of these people's shit which they casually slosh onto others is not entirely 100% their fault (not the sloshing but the shit itself).

But for now, today, people suck.

cups of cake (I)

My brother's new year's resolution was to make cupcakes. He was down this past weekend, got himself to an NA meeting, and when he came back we frosted the chocolate cupcakes we had made earlier. All in all, a very good visit.

Still haven't done the carrot soup but I have the chicken stock done and I'm hoping to get cracking on it tomorrow. I'll post results and the recipe if it's decent.

another new year

Last year my resolution was to learn three new recipes.
Here are some of the recipes I'm counting towards that total.
One - sesame noodles (with a peanut noodle variant)*
Two - sweet and sour sauteed carrots and red peppers
Three - Greek chicken
Four - Broccoli and cheddar risotto
Five - New version of chicken parmesan

*This one was from 2005 I think but I am counting it anyhow since I kept working on it into 2006.

It's past the end of the year, but I am going grocery shopping today and I'm planning to pick up stuff to try carrot ginger soup. I've been losing weight again and I need to find some nutritious food that might be easier on my stomach than tomato or other spicey/acidic creations. I'm very excited about trying the soup since I had some in Ann Arbor when I last visited and it was quite good.

This may have been the first time I can happily report I have kept my resolution. Most years I resolve to undertake some big life and perspective changing attitude or growth. I remember resolving to learn to rely on other people better. I got sick of having my resolutions turn into trials. Although I do realize that the resolution itself wasn't causal (more likely it went in the other direction), I got sick of the sense of uncomfortable ironic self fulfilling prophecy that such resolutions raised. So I resolved to make only silly resolutions.

This year, I resolve to post fliers with something like what Rob Brezsny would call "sacred advertisements". Back in 1999 a friend and I conspired to commit similar acts. We researched quotes on women, academia, and women in academia. We collected them, printed them up on colorful paper, then snipped each out so we had a handful of individual brightly colored quotes. Over the next few months, we occasionally taped a set of them around our building on campus.

This year's resolution is to commit similar acts but involves expanding the repertoire a bit.

I want candy, or hypoglycemic blogging

Out of nowhere, I just got hit with a powerful craving for candy corn. I'm not a huge fan of candy corn, so this is odd. Seems like one or two would take care of my candy corn needs for about a decade. Unfortunately though they are only sold in 20 gazillion gallon bags and vats.

Right before the candy corn, I recall I had been thinking about potato chips but didn't feel like getting unscary enough to head up to the store. It wasn't just any potato chips. It was specifically the kind with the fake flavored shit like canker sore killing dill-ranch-pepperchip and super finger coating cheddarcheddarandcheddar(etc, it's like spam). Holy shit, someone has actually written a review of ruffles. It's so Ted Nancy!

• Ruffles are the top of the line in my book when it comes to potato chips. They are the thickest, crispest, least greasy potato chips out there. They are perfect for dips because unlike a lot of the thinner potato chip brands, they won't break off in the dip and leave crumbs in it. And typically with Ruffles, you don't end up with a lot of crunched up crumbs in the bottom of the bag like with thinner chips as well. Best of all, Ruffles is a very tasty potato chip with about the right amount of salt. Ruffles, to me, is a top of the line potato chip.

I settled on cold left over chicken penne. This is good as it is better for me and hopefully will take care of these strangely specific and sort of gross junk food stirrings (stirings?). It's not that I don't ever eat shit, not that I haven't enjoyed some of these items at different times in the past. It's just that in general, I don't usually crave shit that is quite that shitty. That kind of food is more of an in the moment sort of thing. You know?

Not preggers (I always want to add a "woo hoo" after that).
Maybe it's the grading that's doing it.
(cinnamon brown sugar poptart, with frosting)
I wish I had a glucose monitor. I'll bet my blood sugar's in the fucking basement. Guess I'll add a faster sugar to the chicken and pasta snack.

Me versus a bag of chips

Hey, fun. This poster is part of the American Cancer Society's Eat Right campaign. If you go here, you can make a customized poster for yourself (I chose my comic book porn name/alter-ego, Muffin Force, as drawn by my sister) versus whatever diet/nutritional challenger you choose. For example, mine is bag o'chips. Some advice to avoid frustration - don't use the back button on your browser while creating your poster or your work will be flushed. Also, when you finish your poster, select the print option, then "print to file" and save it as a jpeg. I didn't the first time and because the link generated when I chose the e-mail option didn't work, the poster was flushed (again).

The poster game is a gimmick intended to get you into the contentful part of the site (the "interactive tools" part). Unfortunately, the eat right campaign is partly funded by Weight Watchers - although they are not the worst of the diet peddlers out there. As a point of comparison, Jenny Craig is horrible (I feel their ads irresponsibly prey on and promote unhealthy body image ideals as well as anti-female sentiment in general).

Back to the American Cancer Society.
The "tools" are a little hokey, full of flash movies that are clearly intended for people who, well, people who aren't really like me apparently. This is probably a sign the tools will have the intended broad appeal in the larger target audience though - people like my ex mother in law and my friend Tory from Michigan.

The messages seem quite reasonable and hokey or not, I'm glad the ACS put this together. The overall point is to eat healthy, not simply to lose weight by any means possible ("Weight Watchers asks Have you tried crack?"). On the healthy eating pages, while there is a constant subtext and assumption that people accessing this information are overweight, it is not something they hit you over the head with like some sites I've seen do.

The simple fact is you can be over or underweight and still be malnourished to the point where you are doing serious damage to your health short or long term. Contrary to the commercial ideals we receive, skinny doesn't always equal healthy. Unfortunately, our bodies will work on total shit for fuel (e.g. a diet consisting primarily of items from the hostess, frito-lay, and sarah-lee food groups) allowing you to starve your body of needed nutrients while filling your belly (and perhaps your arteries with fat....MMMmmmmm). Human bodies are really very good at going on as if the shit we are consuming is what we need. But eventually, if you keep running on crap, you're gonna pay for it.

So me and Bag O'Chips are gonna go a few rounds. Since today is a grocery store day for me, I think I'll pick up some nuts and popcorn (the kind w/o the goop). Bag O'Chips, you're going DOWN!!!!

Soup and other goodness

I made the stock for the soup earlier this week and A___ finished the soup today, just in time for the damp, chilly end of January. I used to make the broth with a whole chicken but realized that this results in far more meat and hassle than I need (cjblue will attest to having called me once while I was "boning a chicken"). I recently switched to using chicken breast, 2 split breasts, bone in. This makes enough stock for a large pot of soup, and a little extra meat that can be used for chicken salad. Making soup is great because you get to clean out your old veggies and create something that is exceptionally yummy and good for you with enough left over to freeze. This is all very exciting for a low income grad student with some nutrition problems.

Some of the other grads and I have been joking for a while now about how we should make a grad cookbook. "How to Cook and Eat Healthy on an Apprentice Model Budget" or something like that. Chapters would include things like "Avoiding scurvy", "101 things to do with peanut butter", and "Pasta is a TA's best friend" We could sell it (at a large mark up) and put the proceeds into a graduate conference travel fund, a fund which has consistently been cut by my university over the past few years.

While the soup simmers, I am reading two papers on auditory cues for induced self motion and writing up an outline for an experiment I am about to record stimuli for over the weekend. Yes, I am kind of blowing off my dissertation research, although that is somewhat justified by soundbooth noise related delays. And I am most certainly and unjustifiably neglecting the evil manuscript from hell I've been working on for (gulp) way too long and should just finish no matter how much thinking about the horribly designed experiments makes me want to puke. But who can do that when there's a brand spankin' new research project with an extremely efficient faculty member whose enthusiasm for it is infectious. And there is kick ass soup and a movie with my loving neighbor A___ to look forward to when I'm done reading and writing tonight. Who could ask for anything more? Ok, maybe a loaf of fresh baked bread from Kate.

Christmas nuts

I just got an e-mail from my sister. At the very end was something that made me laugh out loud.
She wrote:
P.S. Are you O.K. with nuts? Like walnuts not Christians although this question does pertain to Christmas.

Headaches

I started writing this yesterday, and today I woke up with a migraine. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this. Stress + heat/sunshine + PMS + not enough sleep = migraine. Was this what the vertigo was about? I've never had one come on two days in advance before. Should I feel special? Hm.

Headaches are nothing new for me. I had the first migraine when I was in my early twenties. I was at work and there was no pain, just a complete and sudden loss of my peripheral vision. I worked as a clerk on an inpatient surgical unit at the time and I mentioned it to the nurses. They shuffled me off to a conference room where they played nurse on me. My boss (whom I had a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with) came in, shooed them all away, and tended to me herself. Everything else was normal but not suprisingly, my blood pressure was "a little high". I suspected that might have had more to do with who was taking my bp than anything else. I was migraine free for a few years, then when I was about 27 I had another after working in the garden at my house in MI. Since then, I get about two or three migraines a year.

Between the migraines and the crashing headaches of my neuro-Lyme infection, I suppose I'm pretty experienced in the headache area. I thought I'd share some of what these experiences have taught me. Primarily, I learned to just try like hell to avoid the triggers for my migraines. Unfortunately, life doesn't always allow for that.

Most of what I learned about dealing with my headaches I learned by listening to other people and then using trial and error. I do have a new drug which I got from a sympathetic doctor a year ago. I didn't take it for the last one, but I did take it today. It helped some. None of the drugs I've taken ever help all the way. Hence the home remedies*.

So here's a list of what I do for my wretched migraines/headaches.

Massage:
Usually, if I have a migraine I don't want to be touched. But sometimes if it's relatively mild, I can stand a massage, of the right sort. Some folks have suggested temple massage, but I find the area is too sensitive when I'm head achey. I prefer light to moderate pressure on the forehead in two places (1) right above and between the eyebrows and (2) just at the inner ends of the eyebrows (light pressure here only, it's very sensitive). This is good because you can do it yourself**.

Migraine Tea***:
2 - 3 bags of black tea (depends on your tastes and how much caffeine you want)
1 - 2 slices of lemon
1/4 of peeled fresh ginger root (chopped or sliced)
that's a couple of inches worth of ginger root
1 Tsp crushed rosemary
1 Tsp dried lavendar flowers
1 Tsp dried chamomille flowers

Poor 4 cups boiling water over the ingredients into a tempered glass pitcher. Stir and cover. Leave at room temperature for a few hours. You can remove the tea bags and strain the tea into a different container, or you can just leave the ingredients in. If you think you'll want to drink this over more than just a couple of days, I recommend straining. Store the tea in the refrigerator. I mix the tea with juice for sweetener or drink it unsweetened and dilluted with water. If I know I'm in a migraine mode but don't have one yet, I make this and drink a few cups a day until I feel clear of the triggers (I'll be drinking this all weekend most likely).

Lavender Wash:
It's just the old "wet cloth" idea really, but with lavender essential oil added. Wet cloth on the forehead and wet cloth on the back of the neck. I usually end up rubbing it all over my face, head, and neck. This one is especially good if you have someone standing around in what would be an otherwise frustratingly useless (for both of you) manner asking "can I do anything?"

Hot and Cold:
My shrink suggested this one. If you can stand it, a warm bath with a cold compress on the back of your neck. If you can't or don't want to risk getting in and out of a tub, then try to get your hands and feet warm while applying the cold compress on the neck.

Notes:
*Read my disclaimer at the end of the post in this link.
** Whenever I enlist the aid of a well intentioned amature masseur, if he decides to "get fancy" and make little circles or something rather than just apply gentle unwaivering pressure, it utterly destroys the theraputic effect. It also tends to piss me off. If you're considering asking your partner to help you with a nice head massage for your migraines, test it out ahead of time when you DON'T have a headache. I've personally found I'm much less likely to get testy if I'm not in pain (go figure!). Anger and upset are detriments to teaching and learning. Snapping at someone you love whose only offenses are being over-eager or under-dextrous, even if you are blinded by pain, will make you feel bad too. (And if it doesn't, you are not someone I'd ever care to know.)
***I read in some herbal remedy book that feverfew tea is good for migraines. Perhaps if you have zero tastebuds and aren't already nauseous, you could choke down a half a cup or so before spraying it across the room. To make matters worse, it's something that is supposed to be taken every single day, migraine or not. I suppose in pill form it might be ingestible, but feverfew tea tastes ungodly bitter. I suspect that if I took the pill, I'd have nasty bitter feverfew burps all day. Yuck. I'll stick with the ginger.