Discolor Online

There was a time when I happily blogged about things and shared rants, recipes and random trivia with people through the internet. After taking a long break and trying to get back to it, I'm not having much luck.

There was a time when I would have written up a passionate rant trying to convince people to join me in this or that fight against injustice. Today I'm keeping that kind of thing more to myself, I guess. However, Colin McComb's recent link to a Bill Moyers interview with Wendall Potter (a former health insurance exec at Cigna) did manage to get the ol' blood pumping again enough to at least post a link here as well. Americans, read this and demand change! Non-Americans, read this and fight tooth and nail to keep it from happening where you live. Don't just excerpt, go slog through the full transcript.

WENDELL POTTER: The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism. So they have used scare tactics for years and years and years, to keep that from happening. If there were a broader program like our Medicare program, it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies. So that is their biggest concern.

Labels: health, politics

I've been getting back in the swing of cooking around here again but not back in the swing of blogging about it. During my recent silent period I did a bunch of work in the back yard of the house, including finally putting in those raised beds that I've been talking about installing in the side yard for years now. I've got tomatoes, peppers, winter squash, basil (sweet and Thai), and several other herbs, doing really well. The strawberries are unhappy, the onions were looking pretty sad even before I got them in the ground. Jury is still out on the beans and peas. I'm still hoping to see some sunflowers and wildflowers from the seeds I spread.

The other night I cooked up a couple of halibut cheeks wrapped in prosciutto (inspired by Cook Local's Prosciutto wrapped halibut with asparagus sauce and then grilled, along with scallops with basil (from the garden!) also wrapped in prosciutto that came out pretty well. I've been keeping a steady stream of asparagus in the house from the farmer's market and just loving it. The farmer's market has been a great source of inspiration lately, full of strawberries, rhubarb, great bunches of mint, spring onions, amazing tomatoes, Columbia City Bakery's baked goods, and lovely rarities like kohlrabi and sunchokes. I also baked Blondie and Brownie's fabulous raspberry-rhubarb pie though I used about half as much of the chai-oatmeal crumble topping as called for and might cut it back even further in the future, I've been on the Cooking Light minimalist-style of pie baking for too long, I guess.

Speaking of Cooking Light, it remains my go to for excellent, good-for-you recipes but I have been branching out a bit. After many years of almost but not quite getting a grill, I finally have one and the weather's been cooperating so I've been going through Steven Raichlen's books for recipes and techniques, or doing a little more experimenting via new-to-me food blogs. I also have a bit of a food crush going on for Eating Well magazine right now. Picked it up on a whim and was pleased to note their nutrition and health advisory board includes people like Marion Nestle (author of Food Politics and Safe Food) and Brian Wansink (currently the Executive Director at the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and author of Mindless Eating). The rest of their advisory board members are similarly prominent nutrition scientists, professors, and researchers but Nestle and Wansink jumped out at me in particular because I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food which quotes both Nestle and Wansink; I read Wansink's book last year myself.

Anyway, I'm interested in the sorts of things that are appearing in Eating Well at the moment and it's a fresh take on food and nutrition that I really appreciate. My current favorite recipe is their Huevos Rancheros Verdes, which I've been making for a couple of weeks now. Dead easy and everyone in the family likes it! I'll post it below. Give it a try, if you like it you might like the rest of Eating Well Magazine, too.

Heuvos Rancheros Verdes
Eating Well Magazine May/June 2009

1 1/2 cups very thinly sliced romaine lettuce
1 scallion, sliced
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
3 teaspoons canola oil
2 teaspoons lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup salsa verde
8 6-inch corn tortillas
3/4 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine lettuce, scallion, cilantro, 1 tsp. oil, lime juice, 1/8 tsp. salt and 1/8 tsp. pepper in a bowl. Set aside. Combine beans and salsa in another bowl.

Coat both sides of each tortilla with cooking spray. Place tortillas on a large backing sheet in four sets of overlapping pairs. Each pair should overlap by about 3 inches. Spoon about 1/3 cup of the bean mixture over each pair of tortillas and sprinkle with 3 tbsp. cheese each. Bake until the beans are hot and the cheese is melted, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil in large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Crack each egg into a small bowl and slip them one at a time into the pan, taking care not to break the yolks. Season the eggs with remaining 1/8 tsp. salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook undisturbed 5 to 7 minutes for soft-set yolks. For hard-set yolks, cover the pan after 5 minutes and continue cooking until yolks are cooked through, 4 to 6 minutes more.

To assemble, place an egg on top of each pair of tortillas and top with a generous 1/4 cup of the lettuce mixture.

Labels: cooking, food, health, nutrition, recipes

The issue of Genetically Modified Organisms first came to my attention when I started seeing headlines about lawsuits over patents on corn. While I am generally a fan of technology and I don't shun things like immunizations, the idea of patented food raised real red flags for me, especially as more cases surfaced of the patent-holding corporations going to court against farmers whose crops were found to contain patented corn DNA without a license (whether the farmers were purposely trying to get around licensing their crops or whether the GMO crops had been inadvertently gotten mixed with the non-GMO crops was under fierce debate).

I've just joined the No GMO Challenge with the intent of actively avoiding GMOs for the next thirty days. I've been vaguely aware of the issue since those cases I noticed back in the 90s and chose non-GMO options at the store when presented with a clear alternative but I haven't made a conscious effort to avoid them. Now that I'm specifically on the lookout, it should be informative to see where they might have been slipping in under my radar. I've done this kind of experiment before, first with regard to hyrogenated oil and trans fats (thanks to Bruce Cordell bringing it to my attention) and then again with regard to high fructose corn syrup, which is in darn near everything, including your bread!

I keep thinking of that Patton Oswalt bit: "Hi, we're Science! We're all about 'coulda' not 'shoulda'."

Labels: GMOs, health, nutrition, science

I think I'm out from under the worst of the sinus infection and getting my workload back under control. Just in time, of course, to jump back into the thick of things as Green Ronin is exhibiting at two shows over the same weekend! Steve and Hal are taking off for Origins in the east and Chris and I are handling the American Library Association show in the west. Plus I have to get Kate to her dad's in Canada and make sure she has everything she needs to practice and be ready for Rock Band Camp in July.

Today was making sure everything is settled for travel and the shows, plus we squeezed in dinner with Daniel Perez and his wife who are in Seattle for a little vacation. Then it was rushing back across town to try and make our yoga class. We tore into the parking lot just as our yoga instructor was giving up and getting into her car to go home! She was so nice and went back in and opened the studio for us. We were the only students who showed up tonight for the new Tues-Thurs night class. I was really itching to get back to the studio after taking a couple classes off to let my sinuses recover and would have been really disappointed to miss, so I'm really, really glad she was still there when we arrived.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a chance to write about something remotely interesting to anyone. Tonight, to bed!

Labels: health, life, yoga

Keep meaning to blog, keep failing.

I was going to blog about my negative feelings on "mystique marketing". Failed.
I was going to blog about Kate's encroaching teen-ness and middle school cliques. Failed.
I was going to blog about the recipes I've been trying or meaning to try. Also failed.
I was going to blog about my preparations for the Pramas birthday party last weekend. Nope.
I was going to blog about how the Pramas party went. Nothing.
I was going to blog about friends, family, and my upcoming 20th high school reunion. Couldn't quite manage it.

For at least the last two weeks, headaches, crushing fatigue, and what I thought was probably just a lingering summer cold have been keeping me down.

Today I finally crawled into the doctor, as even the most potent OTC drugs have stopped providing any but the most fleeting and temporary relief. This morning I was told that I actually have a nasty sinus infection, possibly acute bacterial sinusitis. I'd been wondering if my mild childhood allergy to dust and my light seasonal allergies hadn't actually been getting a bit worse as I've gotten older. If my sinus problems continue to linger, getting re-tested on the allergy front is probably in order. Meanwhile, treatments have been prescribed and drugs purchased. I hope to feel better (and more like blogging) soon.

Labels: health

Doctors appointment at the crack of dawn tomorrow but today was all about the fennel broth.

Met with the nutritionist today. It's energizing to be told I'm doing the right things. She seems to find me amusing, she laughs a lot. "Oh Nicole!" she gasps, and writes things down. She asks about my recent cooking forays and I try to give her an idea of the sorts of things I've been successful with. I tell her about Super Natural Cooking, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and A New Way to Cook. I tell her about soba noodles, tofu and vegetables... about homemade fennel broth, curry noodles, braised cabbage and smoked ham. "I've written a cookbook but nothing like this," she says, jotting, jotting. We laugh and joke for half the appointment. This talk invigorates me. I'm doing the right things, approved by a professional. She is looking forward to my restaurant recommendations from Vegas after GTS.

This afternoon Christine needed a ride home after an appointment at the PolyClinic. I caught a distinct vibe that she might also need some fennel broth so I whipped some up and brought it with me, then ran off to get Pramas and groceries and returned with provisions enough to make Coriander-Crusted Scallops in Fennel Broth. I improvised a bit with the recipe (the original calls for saffron noodles but I substituted a bed of sauteed spinach and roasted root vegetables) and bought but forgot to add the creme fraiche and chopped herbs but it was delicious anyway and we ate like royalty.

The recipe, as it appears in A New Way to Cook:

Coriander-Crusted Scallops in Fennel Broth

4 ounces saffron noodles (or tagliatelle or linguine)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups fennel broth
1/3 cup coriander seeds
1 1/4 lb. sea scallops, rinsed and patted dry
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp creme fraiche
1/4 cup coarsely chopped mixed fresh herbs

If using noodles, boil in salted water until al dente, drain and run under cool water. Toss lightly with 1/2 tsp. oil to keep them from sticking together (this is where I wilted some spinach and roasted cubed parsnips, fresh fennel, carrots, sweet potatoes and a couple of mushrooms for good measure).

In a small saucepan bring the fennel broth to a boil and reduce to about a cup and a half to concentrate the flavor. Cover and keep warm over low heat.

In a small skillet, toast the coriander seeds over low heat until fragrant. Grind into a medium-fine powder with a grinder, blender, or mortar and pestle.

Sprinkle the scallops lightly on all sides with mixture of salt, cayenne, and sugar. Thoroughly coat the scallops in the coriander. Shake off excess.

Heat a large, nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Add 2 tsp of the oil to coat pan and heat for 30 seconds. Add scallops in a single layer without crowding in the pan (cook in two batches if necessary). Cook for about 2 minutes per side.

Stir the creme fraiche into the broth.

At this point I layered the veggies into shallow bowls, arranged the scallops on top, and topped the whole thing with the hot broth. I should have garnished with herbs, but I forgot both the herbs and the creme. It was just dandy anyway.

Labels: cooking, food, health, recipes

Today was like driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Or rather, I was headed in the right direction but inexplicably everyone around me was going the wrong way. The world outside my house is in retrograde!

I tried to go to the post office this afternoon. For some reason it was a complete zoo. Bumper to bumper cars in both directions trying to turn into the parking lot, people going the wrong way into parking spots, utter craziness. Upon seeing the state of the parking lot and the line snaking through the building and past the door, I gave up and decided to try again tomorrow and it still took me ten minutes to exit the lot and get back out onto the street (and that's after deciding to turn in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go because it would be faster). Replay of a similar scenario at UPS, the bank, and the grocery store!

My favorite Bizarro-World moment of the day, though, had to be the one where I was trying to figure out if a medical supply company was covered by our insurance. I went to the insurance website. No love. Having had this same problem finding my primary care physician (who is a "Preferred Provider" and is in their system) I called customer service who gave me a couple "tricks" for finding info on the website (most of which I was doing already) and they couldn't find anything either. Bummed, because this place would be very convenient, I did see that Swedish Medical Center as a whole was listed, along with a DBA name for a medical equipment provider, though not the one I was looking for. Deciding this was an okay second choice, I called the number... and heard "Hello, [Company Name You Were Looking For All Along]" which was a pleasant, if somewhat baffling surprise. I let the woman know they aren't actually listed by that name or the DBA name, but as "Swedish Medical Center" which had caused some confusion. She laughed, "Oh, I know, we should be listed as..." and rattled off a third name. I suspect this will not be the end of the road for this case of insurance confusion and Bizarro-land but for now I'm willing to go with it.

And, where I thought I might make it through the week with no doctor's appointments, it looks like I was wrong. Appointments on Wednesday and Friday this week after all. Then Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday next week. Third week of March looks clear for the moment, though... at least for now. Hopefully the world outside of my house will be through retrograde by then!

Labels: health, life

Pramas goes in for his CPAP titration tonight. We attended an acclimation appointment earlier this week and he did great. With apologies to Codrus and others who haven't been able to comfortably use their CPAP machines, Chris seemed to ease into it pretty well to my untrained eye. He looked completely relaxed, kind of meditative and serene. I'm very hopeful that tonight's study will go as well.

I'm still waking up in the middle of the night. Pretty much like clockwork, if I'm going to have a bad night and wake up it's going to happen around the 4 hour mark. Last night I was extremely tired as I'd stayed out way too late with Ray again and didn't get to bed until after 3:00am. I was ready for bed and fell asleep when I hit the pillow. I'd been really hoping that my additional fatigue would help me stay asleep through the night (and despite my fatigue I even remembered to take my medications!) but no. Four hours passed and I was awake. Again.

Normally Chris's snoring doesn't bother me. I like to say it's one of the ways we knew we were meant for each other (one of the many ways). It occurred to me that once he gets his prescription for pressure and we pick up his CPAP machine, those days of being soothed to sleep by his snoring will be over. Sometimes when he gets into his worst positions, though, his snoring takes on a different tone and his apnea episodes are dramatically more pronounced. He was in one of those positions last night and I must admit that I won't miss those at all. After laying there listening to him for a while I had a flash of inspiration. I crept out of bed and sneaked back with our digital recorder. I thought he might be interested/amused/horrified to hear himself, especially as we're on the verge of getting him the treatment that I expect will change his life for the better (if only to reduce his chance of heart attack and stroke, but I also hope that he will have all the positive benefits of restful sleep and proper oxygenation).

Not sure what he imagined his snoring sounded like but I'm positive that it wasn't what I played for him this morning. Better sleep for him is surely on the horizon.

Labels: CPAP, health

Malaise –noun
1. a condition of general bodily weakness or discomfort, often marking the onset of a disease.
2. a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness, lethargy, or discomfort.

I really don't know what the heck is up with me. I'm not sick enough to be sick but man, I am not "well" either. I'm not coughing, not feverish (though I guess I wouldn't swear to that), a little sore and achy with a headache that comes roaring back when I get too active, low appetite, and fatigue. Sleeping about 6 hours a night and yet feel crushing fatigue. Pramas stayed home with it yesterday and Kate came home from school and told me she fell asleep in class near the end of the day today because she wasn't feeling well (and she goes to a sweet and gentle hippie school where she didn't get in trouble for it). This has got to STOP.

Beacon Hill had some solid frost this morning but no snow and Kate's school was not disrupted at all. Pramas was trying to get out of the house a little early but didn't get out early enough to make the earlier bus. He called from the bus stop to let me know he'd forgotten his keys. I had to go out to the post office anyway (with something like six bins of mail orders going out) so I suggested that he come back, get his keys, and catch a ride with me. It's a bit out of my way to go all the way to Queen Anne but it turns his hour-long commute into something closer to 15 minutes. Usually.

Turns out Queen Anne had more than just the hard frost that hit Beacon Hill. They had actual snow and ice all over. We got off the highway and onto the arterial street leading to Queen Anne proper and sat, and sat, and sat. Inched forward a bit and sat some more. Finally things were moving and we came around the corner to see the cross street at the crazy 6-way stop was closed in two directions and there was a three (or more) car pile-up involving vehicles that had slid down sideways and into parked cars. Ouch. Then we got ourselves stuck behind first a garbage truck and then a pick-up that couldn't make it across an icy bridge. There wasn't even a slope there, just ice on the bridge and no traction. Finally made it to Flying Lab and dropped Chris off but I decided I was going to let the sun do its work on the ice before trying the return trip off the hill. Spent about an hour curled up in a cozy chair by the fireplace at the Queen Anne Tully's and by the time I left the hill everything was clear. No more ice or traffic, hooray.

Wat I thought was going to be about an hour of running errands ended up taking all morning and when I finished up I was feeling the creeping malaise on me again. It was a good day for being out on errands (cold, clear, sunny) but once was enough for me. Maybe I'll give it another shot tomorrow.

Labels: health, ice

I'm beginning to think that riding the bus is aggravating my TMJ, which is then triggering headaches. Again last night, after a fine and relaxing evening, I rode the bus home and after my bus ride started to feel a headache creeping up on me. By the time I went to bed, I definitely had a headache but hoped that I could sleep it off. (No such luck: was awake tossing and turning in pain between 3:00am and 4:00am.) When it came time to get up for the day I was in full headache mode, moving in slow motion to avoid jostling myself, hyper-aware of noise and light and just generally miserable. I could definitely feel the tension in my neck and jaw this time, now that I was trying to be aware. Finally around 2:00 everything had subsided, but that was over 12 hours of lifestyle disrupting headache pain, and that's just no good.

I'm looking at replacing my pillows to see if I can get some relief that way. I'm also going to start tracking my headache-to-bus ratio to see if that's just my imagination or what. My current theory is that the bouncing and jostling of the bus (especially the drivers that start and stop so abruptly and really jerk the passengers around) might be enough to push me over the edge at those times when I'm already on the verge: not sleeping soundly, clenching my teeth in my sleep, spending a lot of time sitting in front of the computer (or even driving), etc.

Labels: headache, health

I've been off and on useless today. Headaches, though not full-on nausea-inducing migraine headaches, thankfully. I fear I may be clenching my teeth in my sleep again and that I'm having TMJ related headaches. Probably time for me to go in and get checked out medically again either way. Bleh, I hate that. Why must my feeble body betray me?

Labels: headache, health

Food is a loaded subject for me. It's obvious to anyone who wanders by my blog any given week that I spend a lot of my life considering food. I participate on message boards about food, I read food- and recipe-related websites, cooking blogs, and traditional books and magazines. I considered more than once making the move to a career in food. I like to buy it, cook it, photograph it and eat it. Many of my fondest memories involve meals I've shared with friends and family.

One of my most humiliating experiences was the Christmas kids from my school arrived at our door with a care package of food. It was one of the first things I wrote about when I started my blog.

Last week, while I was in Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade show (spending an outrageous amount of money for even a simple cup of coffee and at least once a day enjoying a some pretty high-class fare) the governor of Oregon was observing Oregon Hunger Awareness Week. The governor issued a challenge: live off of the average food stamp budget of $21 per person per week. $21 dollars a week. $3 a DAY. I blew two DAYS budget on a single over-priced latte at a Bally's coffee stand!

Coincidentally, while I was in Las Vegas I was also about a month into a program of keeping track of what I eat, not just in a hedonistic orgy of enjoyment but with an eye toward nutrition and good health. Every day I've been trying to keep my calorie intake below 2000, to eat foods in a healthy ratio: 30-66 grams of fat, 150-275 grams of carbohydrates (with an emphasis on whole grains and complex carbs), 35-150 grams of protein, and 25-35 grams of fiber. After a month of trying to hit these goals, I've made my fiber goal exactly twice. It's not easy. This is not my typical relationship to food but I've been trying to treat food in a more responsible, more mature manner. Food and I have had a pretty passionate fling all these years and I'm feeling ready to settle down.

While I was jotting down the nutritional analysis of my $6 Las Vegas latte, the governor of Oregon was shopping for his week on a food stamp budget. The reaction to his effort was predictably mixed. Some people ridiculed him for his "publicity stunt" while others chided him for not making "more nutritious choices" for buying ramen instead of whole grains in bulk. I, when I returned home and read the stories, sat down and wrote him a heart-felt letter of thanks.

You see, for a short time in the early 80s, my family qualified for food stamps. I've eaten government cheese. I've stood before a wall of bread and had to count out how many slices of bread we needed to get through a week of sandwiches for the family, and had to eat the two for $.79 loaves of processed "enriched" bread because my family couldn't afford the $3.29 per loaf whole wheat stuff (even that being made with high-fructose corn syrup). Even when my mom worked her way to a better job and we became secure enough that we didn't need food stamps anymore, I still lived in a world where vegetables came from cans (so they wouldn't spoil between pay days), where milk was only for putting on vitamin-fortified cereal (so it would last), where juice came from concentrate and most of the time we just drank Kool-aid (made with 2/3 the recommended amount of sugar). Where a snack was margarine (packed with hydrogenated oil) on generic saltines or a piece of cinnamon toast. That's the kind of food you get when you have $3 a DAY (try that, Rachel Ray!).

My reading for the Las Vegas trip was Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking which focuses on all sorts of glorious "alternative" food options for people concerned with nutrition, sustainability, and eating locally, seasonally, and responsibly. (It's a gorgeous book and I can't wait to try the recipes!) Heidi writes passionately about choosing whole foods, about using uncommon ingredients like amaranth, teff, quinoa. She warns us to view some foods with suspicion. (Peanuts, for example, are apparently a common crop to rotate into cotton fields... since cotton is not a food, the land can be sprayed with different pesticides than would be acceptable for use on food when the cotton is growing there. Those chemicals most certainly don't just disappear from the soil when the peanut crops are rotated in, even if they're not sprayed directly during the peanut's growing cycle.) This reading, combined with my own personal food-awareness project and Oregon's Hunger Awareness week are all bubbling around in my brain at the moment.

All of these thoughts collided with the news that the Chinese have been routinely adding Melamine to pet food (suspected in dozens of pet recent pet deaths) and that it has likely made it into the human food chain as well. HorsesAss.org has a lengthy rant about that.

I have an incredibly complex relationship with food and it's not getting any easier.

Labels: food, health, politics

My sore throat is starting to abate. This pleases me greatly, I hope to be much more productive in the couple of weeks we have leading up to Origins.

It comes as no surprise to most that Wil Wheaton is my kind of geek. He's got an extremely cute blog entry, live from the Star Trek cruise he and his wife are on at the moment. Aside from being a famous television personality (that little thing, p'shaw) he's very much like any of the other wonderful, talented, sensitive, socially-conscious, smart-assed geeks I've surrounded myself with, and reading his blog is a delight. He's both entertaining and familiar, and reading his heartfelt stories about his interactions with his step-sons, or his all-out smitten-ness with his wife never fails to bring a smile to my face. Plus his favorite food is Guinness. A man after my own heart!

Labels: geeks, health

Of all the remedies I've tried for my sore throat today, vanilla yogurt is the big winner. Yummy and soothing.

Labels: health

Peter suggested that I might have what he came down with a while ago, essentially canker sores in the throat. Having done a little web search, I think he's onto something. My symptoms line up correctly. Since I'm able to get along alright now with generous applications of my 222s and alternately hot drinks or Popsicles, I'm thinking I'm going to wait it out for a few days and see if it goes away on its own.

Being self-employed sucks for insurance, so if I can avoid going to the doctor (especially only to be told that there's nothing they can do, or that the problem needs to run its course) all the better for me. Since I'm no longer in the sort of pain that had me cowering in my bed on Saturday night, I'll probably be able to tough it out.

Still sucks, but not in that mind-blowing agony kind of way.

Labels: health

What started out as a nagging tickle in the back of my throat yesterday has turned into a full blown, terribly painful sore throat. I'm having trouble swallowing anything, even my own saliva. I'm unable to sleep as I keep waking up choking and with a throat that feels swollen and on fire. Drinking hurts, not drinking hurts, talking hurts, even breathing hurts. No other obvious symptoms of illness, no fever, no cough, no congestion, not even a headache, though I do have some hellaciously swollen glands in my neck to go along with the soreness.

I've dug out and tried every throat medication in the house: Tylenol sore throat syrup (all gone now, and what little there was only helped briefly), an ancient bottle of Chloroseptic spray (which tastes god-awful and helps the pain for about 10 seconds), lozenges (which make my tongue feel coated but seem not to reach the back of my throat). No good.

I never realized how often I swallowed until it started to hurt every time!

Tomorrow is Sunday (technically today, but I haven't had a night's sleep and it's dark out, so I'm continuing to call it tomorrow) and aside from a trip to the emergency room I'm not optimistic that I will find any pain relief. I hope this either subsides or I can get to the doctor first thing Monday. I fear I have strep throat, which needs antibiotic treatment to go away. The idea that I'll have to struggle along until office hours so I can get some antibiotics has me whimpering already.

Labels: health

I've been prone to incapacitating headaches since my early teens. I often went in for headache screenings with my general practitioner back before MRIs and migraine specialists were available, and I never received much in the way of a diagnosis. I was told that I probably didn't have migraines, because I didn't see auras or throw up. My doctor didn't appreciate my generally high pain tolerance.

After a few years of blessed relief from most headaches, the really bad ones seem to be back with a vengeance. During a weekend-long meeting we hosted here at the house I spent most of the time in bed, in a dark room, in pain. It hit suddenly, without warning, behind my right eye and though the pain decreased a few times over the weekend (enough for me to get up and participate in life a little) it took three or four days to fully go away.

Last night I was suddenly hit by another of these incapacitating headaches. It is the worst headache in recent memory. I might have had one to rival it in my teens or early twenties, but this was one that truly incapacitated me. I feared that I was going to vomit several times, and lay in bed just whimpering from the pain until I finally fell asleep. Awful.

If I had better health insurance, I'd go in to have it checked. Our insurance is more of the "Oh my god, I broke something!" variety and since the sum diagnosis of my headaches in the past has been "Yep, you sure do have headaches." I'm reluctant to spend the time or the money to hear once again there's little to be done. Of course, I occasionally twinge with worry that it's a tumor [cue Arnold "It's not a toomah!" ] and by not going to the doctor to be checked out I'm risking my life, but I've been waved off so many times it's hard to overcome my conditioning.

I hope that whatever is currently going on with my body will ebb again and I'll go back to the relatively headache-free state I've enjoyed for the last couple of years.

Labels: headache, health

My new issue of Cooking Light arrived today. Typically, when a new issue arrives, I look through it greedily, in case there is anything that I can make without running to the store, this very day. Today, sadly, the pantry was "bare" for the snappy recipes I'd have liked to make. Tomorrow, however, is another day!

I've developed a system for going through the magazine and noting which recipes I'd like to try this month. Usually I make note of a dozen more than I end up making, but that's entirely because the magazine is so deliciously attractive.

My system is to write down the name of the intriguing recipe on the right hand side of a legal pad, along with the magazine issue and page number, e.g. Scalloped Potatoes with Shallots, Mushrooms, Roasted Garlic and Thyme. On the left hand side I make note of the ingredients needed for that recipe, e.g. 4 heads garlic, shallots, mushrooms, balsamic vinegar, milk, flour, thyme, Yukon Gold potatoes, Pecorino Romano cheese.

This list then doubles as my shopping list (or pantry double-check list). I've found that I'm distractable and forgetful enough that it really helps to have the shopping list broken out by recipe. I can't count the number of times before I broke my list out by recipe that I came home with all the ingredients but one (usually something crucial, like buying all the marinade ingredients but not getting the bay scallops) because I forgot which ingredients were for which recipes. This usually results in having stray cans of artichoke hearts or jars of pimento hanging around the pantry, looking for a home. After two years of this behavior, I had quite the mish-mash in my pantry!

I look forward to game night every week, if only to have the chance to try out another one of my Cooking Light recipes.

This weekend I'm hoping the weather holds enough for me to go out and do a little yard work. I'd like to get my garden prepped and transplant some of the herbs to the empty flower box. I'm definitely ready for spring.

My friend Ashley was recently diagnosed as having Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. She and I could be twins, our "symptoms" are so the same! She's been evaluated, has done lots of reading on it, has taken a spate of online tests. We score similarly on the online tests and I recognize myself in some of the light reading I've done (though nothing as in-depth as Ashley has done). I suppose I should talk to my doctor about getting an evaluation myself, just to be sure. I would be pleased if I could effectively treat some of my symptoms, especially my distractibility and forgetfulness. Losing my keys or forgetting my lunch in the microwave happens so often, it's a running joke here at the house. Even Kate gives me a hard time about it!

Labels: food, health, recipes

Kate stayed home today because she woke up with a fever. When I called the school, I did so with hopes that she'd be going to school tomorrow, but they've got a "24-hour rule" that kids can't return to school until they've passed 24-hours with no fever. She was still feverish when I put her to bed, so she won't be going to school tomorrow either, even if she wakes up "better." The woman who answered the phone when I called Kate in sick dashed my hopes further when she told me that "it's going around" and they've had kids out of school with fever for six days or more.

Because we work at home, it's very difficult to have Kate home for days on end. She's an energetic kid, even when she's home sick and she needs attention. I'd drop everything for her in a minute if she was seriously ill, but it's harder when she's just bored and restless and when the big trade show of the year is looming in less than a week.

I'm especially disappointed that she's missing school this week, because she's going to miss school all next week as well. The aforementioned trade show is during the week, in Las Vegas, and it's neither possible to miss it nor practical to bring her along. I'd already arranged to bring her to my mother's in Oregon for the duration of the show. Looks like I'm going to have to have her doing some home study so she won't fall behind her class.

We played a game of Mag*Blast tonight. Kate has developed into a good little game player already. I wish I had the stamina to play more often. She still needs a little help understanding some of the non-attack cards in the game, but she delights in making the sound effects (and is sporting enough to laugh with us when she was caught not making the required sound effect, much more mature than I was at her age) and successfully added up the total point value of her cards into the 20s. Her teacher has commented on her good math skills, and the results from her COGAT testing were in the high 90s. Now I'm left to wonder if it's the gamer environment that's helped shape her, or if she was just born with good math genes. (Which must have come from her dad, since I'm not known for my math prowess!)

Labels: game industry, gaming, health, Kate

Sure enough, all that travel on buses, trains, planes, and subways (not to mention hauling around in the pouring rain) left me feeling completely ill. Killer sore throat, pounding headache, the works. Slept for 10 hours last night, and don't feel any better.

Of course I have tons of work to do. This is one of those times when I really wish Chris could drive, because it's up to me to drive even when I feel sick. Kate has drum chorus tonight after school, so I have to go pick her up from that, I have to go to the post office to make sure some folks with missing orders get their replacements before they go nutty, I have to go to the store for food (since I made sure we were out of everything before taking off for our trip). At least I'm just feeling bad and not feeling like I'm dying, like when I had pneumonia.

I guess my fevered ranting about how awful the American government is behaving is going to have to wait until I can get up a full head of steam. Just heard that some Canadian friends of ours are so angry and worried about how the US has turned they're considering selling their house here and going back to Canada after something like 10 years of living and working here. I don't blame them, not one bit. I feel like packing up and doing the same! The years I lived in Canada were wonderful, Kate would be closer to her dad, and we could run our business from anywhere.

Back to bed before I depress myself.

Labels: health