I'm Melting part 2 - Further thoughts on weight loss and GLP-1s

In the previous post (here) I told you I started on a GLP-1 medication a couple of months ago, maybe partly for weight loss, but that wasn’t the main reason-- the main reason was for relief from the frequent migraines that have plagued me since I had COVID back in 2020. 

As I told you, two months later, I’m not sure yet if my migraines are any better, but the weight loss has been way more than I expected. Before I started, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to lose ten pounds, thinking it would take 3-4 months. In two months, I lost 19 pounds, about 11% of my body weight. 

I don’t care if people know I’m doing this, but it doesn’t exactly come up in conversation and people are way too polite to ask. Last week I went for a hike with a couple of friends and I was planning on telling them about it, but then we started talking about kids and grandkids and summer plans and I totally forgot. Maybe I will send them the link to these posts  

So here is more about what I'm experiencing, in case you're wondering. 

- I started with the standard starting dose for the medication I'm on, 2.5 mg. Since I responded so quickly, I'm still at 2.5 mg. Many people go up to 5mg or more (I just checked, and the maximum dose is 15mg). 

- It's not cheap, and since I don't have diabetes or any of the diagnoses that insurance covers, we're paying for it out of pocket. The standard prescription is for an auto-injector, which is pre-filled with the correct amount and makes it simple to give yourself the injection, but it's also more expensive. If you or someone in your household is comfortable giving injections, you can get the vials without the auto-injector, which is cheaper. And since my spouse can give injections in his sleep, that's what I get. It's $300/month, plus the first month I had to buy a box of syringes and some alcohol prep pads. I can't remember exactly how much those cost but it wasn't a lot--maybe $30, and there's enough to last a couple of years. I'm grateful we can afford to do this. But if it works for the migraines, $300/month is not much compared to how much I spend (in both money and energy) on migraines and migraine meds.

- Side effects. the way that GLP-1s are supposed to work is by turning off whatever switch makes you feel hungry, so you feel full more quickly and the feeling of fullness lasts longer--thus you eat less. The first two weeks, I had terrible nausea, although I never threw up. It was bad enough that I thought, well that's why people lose weight, because they can't stand the thought of food. But that mostly subsided by the third week and has now gone away. 

Also the constipation was terrible the first few weeks-- it's better now, but I don't know if that's because it has really improved or because now I take dulcolax and colace on alternating nights. I do also occasionally feel seemingly random abdominal pains, but they are pretty minor and don't last more than a second or two. Fatigue, headaches, and dizziness are listed on the label as side effects, and I have occasionally had those, but it's difficult to tell how much is due to the med and how much is just me being 64 and in recovery from weddings- ha. So far it has not been debilitating. 

- one of the things that interested me the most was the claim that GLP-1s reduce "food noise"-- the constant thoughts of food that sometimes run through our heads, often at a level that we don't even notice. I have mixed feelings about this one. In the past, I’ve certainly had intrusive thoughts of food-- if I know there are cookies in the cabinet, I keep thinking about them and thinking about them until I go and get them. But for me, "food noise" was always tied to being hungry, so I'm not sure if it's actually the food noise that's gone away, or if it's that I don't have as much food noise because I'm not hungry as often. 

- I definitely don't get hungry again as quickly after I eat. Before, I would eat a full meal, and within 30-60 minutes, my stomach would start to empty out, and I would feel hungry again (even if I had eaten a big meal and there was no possible way I needed additional nutrition). And as soon as I started feeling hungry again, the food noise would start up. I didn't always act on it, but I did notice it. Now that I don't get hungry as often or as quickly, I don't think that much about food. Is it an actual reduction in food noise, or is it that I'm not hungry as much? I don't know. I still do get hungry, and I still think about food, but not as often or as much. 

 - OK, so here are just some things I've been thinking about, probably just my usual thinking on overdrive, but you know, that's why I keep a blog— so I can write about what I'm thinking about. 

So when the first dozen pounds dropped away, I had this very distinct feeling of recognition. Oh, yeah, this is what my body is supposed to feel like, what it used to feel like a dozen years ago. It wasn't even so much the weight dropping away (again, this is just my impression, I have no way to do a double-blind study), as it was something different about the way my body felt. I can believe that there was some switch, maybe something to do with inflammation, that had been stuck in the on position that suddenly seemed like it had been turned off. 

Maybe it's just age. Maybe in the space of a few weeks, I got back to a feeling of how I felt ten years ago. Maybe it was just because of the weight loss. I don't know. But it didn't feel like it was because of the weight loss- I've lost weight before and I didn't have this feeling. I'm just telling you, it felt like something that had gone wrong in my body was fixed. 

- And here's the other thing. As I told you in that previous post, the standard saw about weight loss is that it only happens if you eat fewer calories than you burn. Which makes it always, eternally, your own fault if you're not at your ideal weight. This is entirely within your control! If you eat fewer calories and burn more calories, you will automatically lose weight! Which, all right, yeah, it sounds very good and scientific and makes weight loss into a math class-- calculate the calories, burn some extra, and voilá, you look like a model. 

But thousands of us, maybe hundreds of thousands of us, male and female, know that's not always how it works. You can cut calories and cut calories and not lose weight. Some people can eat and eat and not gain weight. There are all kinds of complications to that simple formula, the IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT formula. But when the opposite happens, the "super-responder" thing that happened to me with zepbound-- it's obvious that the mathematical formula isn't all that's happening. This isn't anything I did. It’s like the weight just came off with a whoosh. Like I said in that last post, I did calorie restriction in Weight Watchers for ten or eleven months, and I didn't lose this much weight. 

There is no way I could lose twenty pounds in two months just because I wasn't eating as much. Something else is going on. It's like my body was holding on to extra weight for some reason, and the GLP-1 turned off whatever it was that was causing me to hold onto it. It makes me think that our entire weight loss industry is based on a bunch of partial truths. Maybe the question isn't how can I get the correct amount of calories in and out so that I can reach some random "ideal" weight? Maybe the question we should be asking is why do our bodies hold on to excess weight?  

I'm not an expert, I'm just an overthinker. There are so many crazy ways that our culture's obsession with thin-ness can take over our psyches. There's the problem of women wanting to avoid unwanted attention if they look thin (sadly "thin" too often equates to "sexy and attractive," like having a HIT ON ME sign taped to your back.). There's the problem of pecking order, because often in a group of women, the thin women are the queen bees and the overweight ones are at the bottom. I don’t want to lose weight! I am in solidarity with my plus-size sisters! 

There's the way that obsessing about weight can keep you feeling like a failure, so you obsess about that instead of other things.  I even had the thought, somewhere around week 4 or 5: it's not food noise that is reduced, it's self-loathing. The feeling of self-disgust, of failure, that comes when you can't do something that should be so simple (controlling calories in/out)--something that is simple for some people. 

So, yeah, there you have it, my experience with a GLP-1, nine weeks in. I have to take a week off from the injections this week because-- TMI alert!! -- I have a colonoscopy coming up. This is what happens when you read a boomer blog, people.

I've only done the most basic editing job on this thing because we are sort of on vacation this week (as much as you can be on vacation when you're retired), so I'm just sending it off. Have a great weekend. And don't overthink it. 

I'm melting! Melting!

I thought about writing a setup post before writing this one, something that would explain why I'm doing this before actually admitting I'm doing it, because I feel ambivalent and a bit guilty about it. But the setup post was starting to get a little too coy, so I'll just say this right up front: I started on a GLP-1 (Zepbound) a little over two months ago. There. I said it. 

I was going to explain that I firmly believe that women can be healthy and active at whatever size they want to be. I absolutely still believe that there is way too much pressure on women to be thin. I am still in favor of you managing your health however you want to do it, whatever that means for you, at whatever weight you think works for you. All of that.

But. I kept reading about off-label uses of GLP-1s (meaning, improvements that people report that have nothing to do with the official, sanctioned uses of the meds, which are mainly for managing diabetes). And two of those off-label uses are for people who have experienced long covid, and people with chronic migraines. 

If you've been following along, you know that I had covid early on and ever since, the frequency of my migraines has gone way up. It seems to be my version of long covid. I went from having maybe 6-10 migraines a month--not great, but manageable with triptans-- to 24 or more days per month. I just always had a migraine for awhile there. It has been better recently, but still I'm averaging 10-14 a month, which is too many.

After reading several articles in a row about the surprising off-label uses, I decided to talk to my primary care provider about it. I had halfway-expected that she would look at me with surprise and say, what? oh no, you don't need a GLP-1! But she thought it was a great idea, ha.

I had no idea how they would work for me, but I figured I could give them a couple of months, and in that amount of time, I couldn't lose that much weight. I'm not going to claim that the possibility of losing some weight had nothing to do with it, but I would never have done it only for weight loss. Or at least not with the data the way it is now, because really, scientists don't entirely understand how GLP-1s work at this point. And although people have been taking them for "on-label" use for years, there's not much data out there about what the long-term effects are for people who don't have diabetes. 

But it turns out that I am probably a super-responder. Apparently there are people who don't respond to GLP-1s at all (non-responders), and there are people who response is heightened (super-responders). According to google, a super-responder is someone who loses 15-20% of their body weight within a year. In two months, I lost more than 10% of my body weight. It has been insane. 

Figuring this out has been complicated by the fact that I have refused to weigh myself since 2017, a few months after I quit Weight Watchers. I decided I had become unhealthily obsessed with the number on the scale while I was doing WW, and really, I can tell if I'm gaining weight by how my clothes fit. So I stopped weighing myself. I even refused to step on the scale at the doctor's office except for once a year at my annual exam. 

Which means I don't know exactly how much I weighed when I started-- like I said, I wasn't doing it for the weight loss. In November at my annual exam, I was 175, so that's what I'm using as my starting weight. When I weighed myself last week, I was 156. That's the least I've weighed since I went through menopause 15 years ago, and several pounds less than my WW low. In two months. 

I guess if my goal had been weight loss, I would be thrilled. As it is, I just feel confused. what IS this? what is it doing to my body? how can you possibly lose this much weight this quickly? It sure isn't from calorie restriction and exercise. I did that with WW, and I didn't lose this much weight in a YEAR. It's like somebody just swapped out my body while I was asleep one night.

I have many more thoughts about this, but this post is already long enough. There will be a part two, maybe by the end of the week. As for the long covid and the migraines, it's too soon to tell. I think I'm having fewer, and that I get over them quicker, but for me, weddings are migraines, and I was never going to get through helping to put on two weddings without having some bad days. I don't think I'll really be able to tell for another month or two. 

Stay tuned. 

Update: Part Two of this post is here 

Related New York Times gift link: The Great Ozempic Experiment 

Miracles and Other Reasonable Things by Sarah Bessey

If you've ever journaled or written blog posts or maybe any kind of writing, you've probably had the experience of writing something that was profoundly true, but you didn't know it until you wrote it. It's one of my favorite things about writing. 

A couple of months ago, I read Sarah Bessey's 2019 book Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God. She is a compelling writer with a uniquely strong voice. Our experiences don't always match up--we are in some ways very different people, in other ways quite similar-- but there were some sections of the book that were deeply meaningful to me. 

I may end up re-reading the book again soon, but what I have continued to think about, what more or less blew my mind, were the words that came out when I wrote my review. So here is that review, slightly expanded since I have more space here than I generally like to use on Goodreads.

I was raised evangelical, left it behind in my twenties. The process of extricating myself was far more protracted than I expected (it’s probably still happening more than I want to admit), and also sometimes deeply painful. I have ended up in a progressive Christian denomination (PC-USA) because our local congregation is the best fit I’ve found in the area where we live, but honestly my personal theology is much less "Christian" than the church I attend. Not to mention still a bit, uh, fluid. I am eternally grateful that the people of our church accept me, because I have discovered to my surprise that belonging to a community of faith is one of the few non-negotiables of my life.

So I approach a book like this with a bit of trepidation and a bit of hope. I’ve read so many books by Christian authors that made me feel excluded by my unorthodox theology, but I’m always hopeful I’ll find a kindred spirit. This is the first book I’ve read by this author, and I’m grateful to find that she might be one of those kindred spirits. She is more orthodox than me in her theology, but less orthodox in the expression of it, if that makes any sense. My personal theology barely qualifies as Christian (which I've written about extensively before, and may be writing more about soon), but anyone observing me from afar would probably think that I am a by-the-book Presbyterian, because I just don't have the personality for flamboyant flouting of conventional church life. I am comfortable living inside the lines, even if other things are going on in my head. 

Anyway. If Sarah Bessey and I were to sit down over a cup of coffee, I’m pretty sure we would have no trouble connecting, even though we might disagree about many things if we got into the weeds of Christian theology. Which is not true of some of the other authors her age I’ve read. 

This book took me back to some of the early stages of my departure from evangelicalism, and made me aware of some steps I’d missed. My original impulse in my 20s was to run from a system that seemed to my young and arrogant self to be wildly hypocritical, and offered me only traditional roles I would never have been able to fit. Over the years I’ve come to value things about my original faith that I can bring forward into my current reality, and Bessey made me aware of quite a few more. Also, her struggles with fibromyalgia had some surprising (to me) parallels with my history of migraines. 

I admit I occasionally rolled my eyes toward the end, but in the most loving way. :) This is a good book. It probably has limited interest outside of people of faith, but if you are a person of faith, I recommend it highly.

the dog ate my homework

I don't really have anything to say, I just thought I should report in and tell you that I won't be posting for the next two or three weeks. Our son's wedding and two other weddings are coming up during the month of June, so I have a good excuse. 

You know, this blog has never had much traffic, which is not really surprising since it's just me, ruminating, long past the point when anyone would consider a personal blog relevant to anything. But my pageviews keep going up and up and up. Like, stratospherically up. In the last 30 days, I've had over 65,000 visits. I am not making that up, and that is crazy. Even back when I had the RSS feed up it was rare for me to get a thousand views in a month. No freaking way do I believe that I averaged more than two thousand individual visits a day from real people who are reading this nonsense. 

It makes me wonder if the LLM AI people are that desperate for content. Would that run the numbers up? We'll scrape anything that won't sue us for copyright violation. I mean, technically, I do own the copyright to everything I write here, but I have no idea how to do anything about it if someone steals it, and they must assume bloggers like me wouldn't. And if they're training AI on blogs--there aren't nearly as many as there used to be, but there are probably still many thousands-- we are in way bigger trouble than we knew, right? 

In other news, our 42nd anniversary is this week. Go, us. That is a long time. 

late night thoughts about wine, the self, and culture

1. Years ago our local community college offered a six week wine-tasting course that promised to teach people how to appreciate good wine. (This was back in the days before my frequent migraines, so drinking wine wasn't the problem that it is now.) We were super excited about it and signed up immediately. But as the course approached, we started having second thoughts, and we ended up canceling our registration (the continuing ed office was thrilled since apparently there was a long waiting list). The reason we canceled was because we figured if we learned to appreciate good wine, we wouldn't want the $12 bottle anymore, we'd want the good stuff. And if we got really enthusiastic about it, we'd turn into snobs and end up spending thousands. 

Of course there are plenty of good reasons to want to be a wine connoisseur.  Maybe you were raised in a family that has a long history of appreciating good wine, or maybe you are a chef, and understanding how wine and different foods interact is important to the work that you do. Maybe you just really love wine. But for us, it made a whole lot more sense to leave well enough alone. 

2. About a month ago, I listened to a couple of very smart men on a podcast talking about Buddhist meditation practices. They both have engaging personalities, and the conversation was fascinating. But there were two things about the conversation that I've been thinking about ever since. One of them I'm saving for another time, but for the purposes of this post, the part of the conversation that interested me was listening to them try to come to terms with the Buddhist concept of  "no self." 

Traditional Buddhists believe that the self, as a separate, well-defined entity, doesn't exist. To a Buddhist, the question of "who am I?" is not answerable. The podcasters really got into the weeds about what it means that none of us has a self. They had some good points about why this is a useful belief-- for example, if some aspect of your beliefs about yourself is irrevocably changed (maybe you are a professional musician, and a car accident renders you unable to play your instrument), the harder you cling to the way you define yourself, the more traumatic the experience will be. 

But for the average human, does it really matter? OK, so we should hold ourselves loosely and with a bit of humility. But how important is it to devote yourself to upholding this particular teaching? Is it really that important to buy into the idea that there is no such thing as a self? I mean, if you knit me a scarf for my birthday, I didn't knit the scarf, you did. If you're reading this post, you're reading it, and I wrote it. If you're sitting at a table eating dinner with eight people, you are each an individual person with your own history, experiences, tastes, and opinions-- and you all know this and understand it, and the conversation would be super boring if that weren't true.  

For all practical purposes, for normal everyday life, having a deep, well-considered understanding and belief in the concept of "no self" is an academic interest. If you find the Buddha's teachings fascinating and illuminating and you want to devote yourself to the study of his ideas, then yes, by all means, go there. Or if you have some other reason to dive deep into the idea, then do it. But most of us are going to get through life just fine without even knowing that that particular teaching exists. And feeling all superior about yourself because you know you don't have a self when some other ignorant slob is still laboring under the delusion of selfhood-- well, that just makes you a snob.

3. So where the heck am I going with this. This stuff is so complicated to talk about, and so emotionally loaded. But I've heard some people who are progressives, liberals, far left thinkers, who have thought themselves way out on a limb about identity, race, gender, orientation, whatever. If you're interested in deconstructing culture, it's fascinating. It's practically addictive. And then they surround themselves with people who agree, and pretty soon they have no idea how far away they are from how most people understand their lives. 

(If the idea of cultural criticism is new to you, the usual example is that we're all like fish swimming around in an aquarium without knowing that we're in water-- cultural criticism/theory is the process of becoming aware of the water. It's about questioning your assumptions and ideas, becoming aware of things that you've always thought were set in stone, but really are just products of tradition and habit. In moderation, it can be super useful. But if you keep going and going, it becomes more and more obscure, and leaves you with an ever-smaller circle of people you can hang out with, because other people don't get it. It can even make it impossible for you to function in the, uh, aquarium.)(Did that help?)

Is that level of detailed analysis genuinely helpful in our current public conversations? Is it creating constructive change in the culture? or is it just tearing it down for the joy of intellectual superiority? I mean for an academic whose life work is understanding social structures and how they work, yes, of course it's important knowledge. But for most of us, it just makes us into snobs, disdainful of people who haven't been initiated into the unending, ever-deepening minutiae of cultural criticism. It creates a gulf of understanding, instead of helping us understand each other.  

I've been that person. I can argue with this myself. But at some point we've got to start reaching across the aisle instead of making the aisle wider and wider. Surely we know that if we're going to live in a diverse society and support each other in our diversity, some of the other people are going to be conservatives? There are going to be people who have every right to their opinion and their beliefs and their religion who believe things that are exactly the opposite of what we do. That's just basic to the whole idea of democracy. And if we're not willing to be supportive of that, we're part of the problem.  

I would never have posted this before I turned off the RSS feed, but you know, this is the new me. 

Same as the old me. (Insert brilliantly clever remark about my self here.)  

Related: The Vanilla Ice Cream Problem 
and this one from 2010(!!) back when I was in grad school: ooooh shiny! 

in which I whine. and regret my lack of social skills.

Here is something I have been thinking about, because  my volunteer stuff always slows down in the summer, I have maybe a little too much time to think. I seem to have become a disaster as a friend. Actually, that's probably over-stating the case, because "disaster" makes me sound important, and I'm pretty sure no one misses me (I warned you: whining). 

So anyway. A couple of years ago, I noticed with one of my groups of friends, no one instigated getting together unless it was me. Which of course makes you wonder, if I stopped trying to get us together, would anyone notice?  

It was right in the thick of when my migraines were the very worst, so I just quit doing it. I'm not sure it was a conscious decision-- it wasn't like I was going for revenge, or even then they'll be sorry, I just didn't have the energy, so I didn't. So I didn't see any of them for quite awhile. 

Then an event came up that was very important to one of the women. The event announcement was a group email, not specifically addressed to me, but I replied and said I would attend. And I did plan on attending, but I hadn't written it into my calendar and there was a lot going on during that two week period, and with one thing and another, I forgot about it. 

Which is totally on me, of course. I forgot about it so thoroughly that I didn't even realize I'd missed it until a week later when I was making my plans for Saturday, which included going to this event, and then looked at the email and realized it had happened the week before. I felt awful about missing it, but we were leaving on a trip that Sunday, and I didn't do anything about it until two weeks later when we got back. I know. It was badly done on my part. I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me, I'm just trying to figure out how to navigate my non-existent social life.

So anyway. When I sat down to figure out how best to grovel, I realized, wait a minute. No one called me or texted me and said, where are you? or even after the fact, what happened? we missed you! No one contacted me at all after the original email. 

Maybe nobody cared that I had missed it. Maybe I was feeling awful for no reason. This was a group of women that I felt very close to a dozen years ago, but it had been a long time since we had met regularly. Maybe the time for us to be friends had passed. 

So now I haven't seen those women for at least a year, other than running into one of them at a large social event last winter--we chatted as if nothing had happened. And I guess it's fine. But similar things seem to be happening with all my friends. I have plenty of acquaintances, plenty of people who seem happy to see me if I run into them at church or the grocery store. We still get invited to things as a couple (everyone loves my spouse). But if I had something difficult happen to me, I think the only people I would call would be one or both of my sisters. 

Is this OK? Is it OK to not really have friends? I do miss it. I miss when we had kids at home and getting together happened naturally at sports practices or band concerts or school events. I miss when we lived in a neighborhood with a bunch of kids and they were all in and out of our houses all the time. But we don't have kids living at home anymore. Almost no one our age does. And as I've told you before, when I do get together with women friends, I can't figure out what we're supposed to talk about. 

I thought maybe typing this out would help me figure out what I want to do about it, but it hasn't. Or at least not yet. 

That's all I've got this week. 

p.s. I don’t think I have any local readers at the moment, but if I do, please don’t feel like you need to rescue me. I’m fine, just figuring things out. Thanks. 

p.p.s. If the dates seem off on this, you’re right they are— I’m backdating it. I will explain someday. 

long overdue breast reduction surgery update

Fairly niche topic, I know, but I'm writing it out specifically for someone who has googled "breast reduction surgery" and wants to know details. I have a couple of ideas for new posts, but none of them are ready to go, so I was looking through my drafts folder and found this, which has been sitting there for years now. I have no idea why I didn't publish it at the time.

Four years ago, I had breast reduction surgery. I would 100% do it again. The last time I mentioned this, it had only been about six weeks and I was still in recovery mode. I had twinges of pain for months afterward, especially around the scars, but now I've been pain-free for a long time. My clothes fit better, exercise is more comfortable, and I am way happier with my appearance. If you're on the fence about getting it done, I highly recommend it. 

For the sake of total honesty, though, here are the downsides. The immediate recovery was more painful than I expected. It was six weeks before I felt like I could move comfortably, and probably six months before I was pain-free. Also I worried for along time (probably unnecessarily) that I would reopen the incisions. 

Then, appearance-wise. Honestly, I don't really care about the appearance of the scars, or even the appearance of my breasts, because I'm old and the only person besides me who ever sees them seems happy enough with how they look. But if I was 35 and had an active dating life, I might not be all that happy. The scars are mostly invisible at this late date, but there are minor lumpy spots along them, and the ends of the scars are still a bit puffy. Also, my breasts are a bit uneven--oddly, before the surgery, my left breast was larger; now the right one is a little larger. It's not enough to be noticeable when I have clothes on. And like I said, I don't really care, and I certainly don't care enough to wish I hadn't had it done. And I confess there have been a few moments when I've missed the larger size during sex, but only rarely, and again--not nearly enough for me to wish I hadn't done it.

Also, I got a call-back for my mammogram for the first time ever when I had the first one done post-surgery. The problem turned out to be scar tissue masquerading as pre-cancerous cells. That wasn't fun-- the whole thing took a couple of weeks and of course it is pretty stressful to not know if the spot on your scan is cancer.   

My neck and shoulders are better, but it took a surprisingly long time. At the six month mark, I thought that it hadn't made any difference at all. But I guess it just takes your body a long time to realize that something is different, because now I can definitely tell a difference. I have better range of motion in my shoulders, and I can carry my grandkids around for far longer with fewer after-effects than I would have been able to before. Unfortunately, the surgery has not had much effect on my migraines, which I was really hoping for.

So overall, definite improvement. I've only very rarely had surgery (c-section, endometrioma(?) removed), so going in for the surgery was scary. Sometimes I still can't believe I was brave enough to do it, because bravery isn't something I'm known for. But I'm glad I did it. Happy to answer questions if you want, my email address is in my profile.

Ha. Now that I'm about to publish this, I remember why I didn't publish it the first time. I'm a pretty private person, and this feels like way too much personal information. But I guess it makes sense as a public service. We're heading east to spend a week with my spouse's family, so I almost for sure won't post next week. Hope you have a good one. 

some thoughts on packing, flying, and travel in general

It feels like I've been away forever, but I'm surprised to see that my last post was actually just a month ago. So I'm not as far behind as I thought. I've been gone quite a bit (either to visit my mom, or on our annual trip to someplace Southern to get out of winter), and when I've been home, I've been sick--nothing too serious, just two nasty viruses, or maybe one virus that lasted several weeks with different types of symptoms. Who knows. 

Also, the day after our southern trip, I had my annual check-in with my neurologist, and he changed the dosage of my Qulipta, which did not go well. After three weeks of feeling awful, I went back to my previous dose. I think I'm almost done adjusting back to the original dose. I didn't check with him about this, partly because it takes months to get in to see him, and partly because I was afraid he'd say I needed to stick with it awhile longer and I was miserable.  

Anyway. Enough of me whining. Travel tips are not the world's most interesting topic but I just need to get back in the habit of posting, so here you go. Some thoughts on packing.

I've always been an over-packer. I can think of few things that would make me happier than being the one -- if I were stranded on a desert island with a couple dozen other people after our plane crashed in the ocean-- who had all the stuff everyone else needed. Advil? got it. Extra socks? yep. portable solar charger? of coruse. Band-aids? cold meds? ankle brace? check, check, check. Extra snacks, extra book, binoculars. I could go on. So obviously I have to check a bag. (Yes, I do realize that I probably wouldn't have my checked bag on the deserted island but don't ruin my dream. Reality is not involved.)

My checked bag pretty much has the normal stuff. What I can spend hours thinking about is what goes in my carry-on. For the first sixty years of my life, what I carried on the plane was a backpack. Not a hiking pack, just a regular backpack, like the one I carried in college. I bought a new one every six or eight years, but they were mostly the same brand and the same type. 

Then about a year ago, a friend of mine showed me her carry-on, which is like a mini roll-aboard bag, and I decided to try it. I will not be going back. I didn't realize how much strain the backpack put on my neck and shoulders (see previous statement about over-packing) until I stopped carrying one. This bag is considerably smaller than the maximum dimensions for a carry-on--which endears you to everyone around you who is trying to cram their super-large bag into the overhead compartment--but it still holds a ton of stuff. It always fits in the overhead compartment. Also I can lift it by myself. Supposedly it will also fit under the seat in front of you, but I've never had to test that out. 

For the past couple of years, since my mom's health has declined, I've been flying significantly more often. I've also been stuck overnight (usually in Denver) once or twice a year due to mechanical problems or crazy weather or whatever. Often when you're stuck overnight at some random airport, you can't get your checked bag, so you have to get by on what's in your carry-on. 

Which means I've spent a lot of time thinking about what gets in that bag. I've refined the toiletries in my carry-on-- which still have to fit into a quart-size ziplock bag, dammit (although I've heard that may change in year or two) to pretty much exactly what I need for one night in an airport hotel-- contact solution, body wash, moisturizer, toothpaste/brush, etc. Also deodorant, but did you know that solid deodorant is not considered a liquid? so it doesn't have to go in the damn quart-size bag. I just found that out a couple of years ago.

Then also this stuff goes in:

- the obvious: ID/passport, drivers license (if I'm getting a rental car). (I suppose now is a good time to put in a plug for a passport card, which you can get when you renew your passport by checking a box and including an extra $25(?). A passport card is a "real" ID, so I've been able to avoid getting a state issued real id. It works for domestic air travel and traveling by car to Canada/Mexico, but not for overseas travel or flying to Canada/Mexico.) (You should verify all of that, I don't claim to be an expert.)
- charger and charging cords (of course). E-reader and/or iPad and/or laptop, depending on destination. Small power bank (for domestic travel, larger for overseas). 
- glasses, mouth guard, spare contacts, large-tooth comb, foam ear plugs
- kind bars, gum, half a dozen tea bags, empty water bottle (these because they fit in the side pocket), and something chocolate
- a zippered packing cube with an extra pair of underwear, socks, sports bra, and a t-shirt that could be either something to sleep in or wear. I also almost always cram a swimsuit in there, because it doesn't take up much room and if you need one, they're expensive to buy and/or hard to find. Also, a pair of flip-flops, which function as shower shoes, sandals, and slippers.
- a paperback book (in case the battery dies on my e-reader)
- meds and supplements, cough drops (Ricola cherry), dramamine (never travel without it), masks (you never know when the person next to you is going to be sniffling and coughing). For me, the key to wearing a mask is to use a fresh one for each flight (I don't wear them in the airport, only on the plane). Might be wasteful, but not that wasteful.
- and you know: the usual detritus-- pen, a few blank index cards, kleenex, earbuds, etc.

I know this will mark me as a boomer, but I almost always print out at least my itinerary, and usually our boarding passes, too. Make fun of me as you will. But I will never forget the sick feeling of being stuck in an airport in Hong Kong, phone battery almost dead, and no phone service (I had arranged for coverage in Cambodia, our destination, but not Hong Kong). After coming really close to a total meltdown, I remembered that I had pulled up the confirmation on my phone before we left, and by some miracle, it was still in memory. It was enough to get us through security, unlike some of our travel companions, who missed our next flight because they couldn't prove they had seats (they did get it worked out eventually, but it took longer than our layover).

Oh! and here is something new I tried the last time I went down to see mom. Since I am a tea drinker and you would be surprised how often there is no tea available, I always travel with tea bags. But I am also not a dairy milk person-- at home I usually use oatmilk in my tea. Which is even less widely available than tea. So the last time I flew, I took an unopened shelf-stable package of oatmilk, wrapped it in a couple layers of bags, and put it in my checked bag. It was great-- went through security with no problem, and the next morning I could make my tea just the way my picky self likes it. *bliss*

I'm sure as soon as this goes up, I will think of things I forgot. But that's it for me for now. We're traveling tomorrow to Bozeman to help Younger Child (who is now 28!!!) move out of his apartment because he is graduating from the current stage of his professional training and moving on to the next stage, in another state. He is super excited, and we are, too, even though we will miss having him (relatively) close by. I'm sure I will cry, but I really am happy for him.

Have a good weekend.  

 

Reading 2025

I usually do an end-of-the-year reading roundup, and last year I didn't because I wasn't posting. So I thought I might do it belatedly, but then I looked over the list of books I read last year and realized there really weren't that many great books. 

I could whine about The Decline of Readable Literary Fiction, but honestly I think it's more of a me-problem than a problem with contemporary authors. I am so discouraged and downhearted about the world these days that I don't think I give anything a fair chance. I should  probably work on that. 

One major change in my so-called reading life has been that twenty-five or thirty years ago, I don't think I read any non-fiction at all. Maybe the occasional self-help book (I remember The Artist's Way and Eat Pray Love(meh)), but nothing else. 

That has gradually been changing, until this year most of my 5-star reads are nonfiction (I still read mostly fiction, but the books I really enjoyed this year were mostly non-fiction). 

I don't know that I have a good explanation for why or how that happened. Maybe part of it is the rise in narrative non-fiction-- books that are about science or history but are told like a story. Part of it is that I find it harder and harder to find fiction that I want to read. My reading tastes haven't kept up with the times. 

So instead of listing the books I gave five stars (which is how I usually do it), I will just tell you the ones that stood out to me when I scanned down the list. Some of them I didn't even "like," but these are the ones I'm still thinking about.

Fiction:

Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su

Dayswork by Jennifer Habel and Chris Bachelder

Playground by Richard Powers

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

All Fours by Miranda July

Non-Fiction

Challenger by Adam Higginbotham

Shakespeare: the Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

The Emperor of All Maladies (I know, it's old)

Source Code by Bill Gates

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

The book I've had the most luck recommending to people is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. People love that book. I liked it, didn't love it, but I re-read it with my spouse a couple of weeks ago and it really is a good story. I probably enjoyed it more the second time through. 

So that's it. I will go back to posting occasional reviews of books I read soon, because I've read some books in 2026 that I've been thinking about lots. Let me know if you have recommendations for me.

Related posts:

My So-Called Reading Life part 1

My So-Called Reading life part 2

2022 Reading Wrap-up (the second half of that one is about writing reviews on Goodreads)

7T: (why, oh, why are we so in denial) when we know we're not happy heeee-yer?

1. We're driving from Montana to Southern California. The plan is to visit family on the way down, spend a long weekend at the Indian Wells tennis tournament, then drive back. Not a super ambitious trip, but it should be relaxing. It's nice to not be in a hurry to get somewhere.

2. I had never heard of snowbirds before we moved here. Snowbirds are people who live someplace with a long winter, so they spend six weeks (or more) someplace warm to get out of the snow. (We didn't get snow this year but that's another story.) It's mostly retirees, but I suppose you can be a snowbird at any age. My spouse is finally fully retired, and we were hoping to do a six week snowbird stretch this winter. But a number of family obligations interfered, so we did a week with my mom in mid-February, and this two week trip, and that's it for this year. Maybe next year we will be able to be full-fledged snowbirds. 

3. Another migraine tip: I realized last year that I don't have any trouble with caffeine when I drink it first thing in the morning, and maybe again in mid-afternoon. But if I spread it out— if, for example, I fill an insulated mug with my morning tea and sip on it over the course of a couple of hours, it gives me a headache. Weird, right? It's happened often enough now that it's become something I pay attention to. So now I drink my morning tea over about 20 minutes, and if I want to have something to sip on for several hours, I do decaf or herbal. That seems to work. 

4. OK. Here is something I've been thinking about. You hear a lot about how we're trying to dismantle authoritarian power systems and get rid of the patriarchy, etc. But also we are absolutely obsessed with the person in the White House. Isn't that patriarchal thinking? It is occurring to me that maybe one of the most subversive things that each of us individually can do to suck the air out of patriarchal power systems is to not pay so much attention to them. Obsessing about the people who are in power just gives them more air time, more attention, more energy. Paying attention to what we can do and be and change right in front of us distributes power away from the people at the top. Plus, it's something that I can actually do. Obsessing about the news very quickly becomes wasted time. 

(That's not to minimize the importance of protest when protest is needed, of course.)

5. And while we're on the subject of power structures, here is a weird thing that I've come to realize about the religion I grew up in, and have subsequently come to see it in all kinds of other situations. The individual evangelicals I knew in my personal life had the best of intentions (most of the time, at least). They genuinely believe that the bible is the word of God, completely true in every word, interpreted in the way that their group interprets it. They're genuine. But the people in power, the people who are worried about maintaining their power and getting people to give money and show up for events and keep their group/church/ministry running— those people are not always so authentic. Those people are sometimes using their congregants/members' genuine, heartfelt beliefs to manipulate their behavior. I could give a million examples, but maybe I will just leave it at that. 

Just be wary, a tiny bit skeptical, when you are presented with something that comes with a request for cash, or likes on Instagram, or clicks through to a website, or subscribe here to my newsletter that will keep you riled up and angry all the time. They may be preying on your good intentions to further an agenda that isn't what you intend, or even just to make themselves rich, or maintain power. Be smart. Just because someone knows how to engage your genuine heartfelt beliefs doesn't mean that they intend good things. 

6. Also could we grow out of the junior high phase where we are all trying to be like the cool kids. Good grief. 

7. We have a list of things that are a little ridiculous to pay for but we have decided are worth the subscription fee. Our list includes Sirius XM. My spouse listens to it in his truck all the time, I mainly listen when we are on road trips (like now). His favorite station is #6, pop rocks, and at least once a day they play that damn OutKast song which then gets stuck in my head. Hence the post title. It wasn’t until after I googled the exact lyric that I realized it’s kind of apropos. 

Have a great day. 

oh the melodrama, and also my new favorite travel hack

I am one of those people who can agonize endlessly over dumb things I did months or years or even decades ago. I wish I were exaggerating. Social gaffes, awkward interactions, people I inadvertently hurt, situations I walked into that I should have been prepared for but decidedly was not. I can practically writhe with embarrassment and even shame over things that happened long ago and that really don't matter. It isn't unusual for me to wake up in the middle of the night having what I guess is probably a mild panic attack about something a normal person would have immediately forgotten. 

But I have yet to come up with a way to stop doing it. Advice welcome. I do know that if you are an anxious person, it makes you an easily manipulated person. Either consciously or unconsciously, someone else can sense my lack of confidence and use it to gently or overtly push me into doing what they want. More about this another time, because that is not even close to what I sat down to type about. 

So you probably think I'm about to tell you about some horribly embarrassing incident, but no, this one wouldn't even make my top twenty list. My mom and I went on an Alaska cruise about ten years ago. Any time I travel, I have one of those 7-day pill containers that I use to organize my meds-- not by day, but by type. So the Sunday box will have my migraine meds, Monday will have cold meds, Tuesday will have B-2, or whatever. In other words, it is full. 

The cruise departed from Seattle, so I met my mom there. She has a lot of trouble with her knees and ankles, so when she realized she was missing (some item, I can't remember what it was), I volunteered to run down the street to a Walgreen's while she waited at the check-in area. My 7-day pill container, all loaded up for the week, was in my purse. 

The Walgreen's was super busy, so I stood in line for awhile and then pulled out my wallet so I would be ready to pay, caught the edge of the pill container and the whole thing dashed to the floor. There were pills everywhere. 

By some miracle, the lid of the prescription migraine meds section did not open, so all the ones on the floor were replaceable, but still-- I couldn't leave them there. So there I was, down on my knees in front of twenty people, scooping up more than a hundred pills. I finally got them, paid for my mom's stuff, and then dumped all those pills in the trash on my way out. The only thing that saved me from expiring of embarrassment on the spot was that (as far as I know) no one I know witnessed it. (for god's sake, if you were there, do not tell me). 

So you can imagine how impressed I was when my sister told me her latest favorite travel hack. She had one of those pill containers come open in her suitcase, resulting in unnamed pills everywhere-- it hadn't even occurred to her that this could also happen PUBLICLY IN FRONT OF A MILLION PEOPLE (like the title says, melodrama!). So she took one of those eyeglass sleeves that you get every time you buy a pair of readers and put the pill container in the glasses case. It is brilliant.

My sister is my hero (not for the first time)(both sisters rescue me regularly).

p.s. there was actually a small moment of warmth during The Incident At The Walgreens. A young boy, probably about six or seven, was standing behind me in line, and he immediately bent down to help me pick up the pills. His mom stopped him, of course— I wouldn't have let my kids pick up unidentified meds either— but still it was a spontaneous moment of thoughtfulness that I remember almost as often as I do my embarrassment. Sweet kid. 

So there you go. I'll even attach a photo. I'm emailing this (the 21st century equivalent of phoning it in?)(smirk) so we'll see how the photo turns out. 

Have a great weekend. We are heading south to attend my mom's 90th birthday party! Go, mom! 

the care and feeding of an introvert

Just in case you are not an introvert and you're wondering. 

I think there are (at least) two kinds of introverts. There are the kind of introverts who avoid groups as much as they can, but really enjoy intense one-on-one conversations. If you're dealing with that kind of introvert, don't invite them out for a drink with a group of work friends, invite them out for lunch with just the two of you, and be prepared to go deep into whatever subject(s) your introvert wants to discuss. 

That is not the kind of introvert I am. I am the kind of introvert who mostly would rather stay home, but if I'm going to make myself go out, I want to go with a group. I will not necessarily participate, but I will observe, notice, laugh along. I love sitting with a group of my friends, listening and enjoying their company. Not that I would sit there like a lump— I ask questions, comment, sympathize— but I’d rather not have the attention on me, all heads turned in my direction.

Never underestimate an introvert's deep-seated anxiety about how they will come up with things to talk about. A car ride with one other person? what the heck will we talk about? a coffee date with a friend I just saw last week? what will we talk about? (I just saw you!) My need to see my friends again is about three weeks longer than theirs is, I think. I can't imagine talking to someone on the phone every day. What would we talk about? 

This is one of the deepest anxieties of my life. It even happens with therapists. You can't shut me up for the first session or two while I'm explaining what's going on, but then I just sort of ... peter out. We just talked about that last week, how in the world will I be able to talk about it again for an hour? AN HOUR? I guess I just don't process things verbally.  

If you want an introvert to come to a party that they are resisting, give them a job to do. Keep the ice bucket filled and pick up empty cups (if they're the type of person that wouldn't mind doing that)(I am exactly that type of person). Run the spotify playlist. Give them a clipboard with survey questions on it. Take tickets at the door. Whatever. Just don't expect them to be excited about having to come up with things to talk about for three hours. 

I thought I was going to have a lot to say on this topic but that's kind of it, I guess. 

Ok, well, here's an anecdote. Years ago, like maybe 25 years ago, long before we had the terminology of being on the spectrum, a friend of mine whose son is autistic told me, "you should tell people you're autistic, even though you're not, not really. Because then they wouldn't expect you to be.... " she paused, and I realized later she was worried about hurting my feelings, "... normal." My feelings were not hurt. I don't think I've ever felt so seen. I do think if I were a child now that I would be on the spectrum, but now everyone thinks that, so who knows. Maybe we're all just awkward and anti-social. 

so yeah. Just leave me the fuck alone. ha. My spouse keeps threatening to get me a t-shirt that says sorry I'm late I didn't want to come. 

Ruminations on Retirement

I should point out first of all that to call me "retired" is a bit of a misnomer because even though it's been almost ten years since I had a real job, I never really had a career. But with that caveat, I'm still going to talk about retirement, because some of it applies to everyone. 

My spouse finally fully retired at the end of 2025 after several years of cutting back, and as anyone who's been through this knows, you're not really retired until both of you are retired. While he was working, I still had a job, and it was called "keeping everything going while my spouse works." There is still all of that to do, but now there are two of us to do it, and fortunately my spouse is not the type to refuse to help out. He's playing a lot of tennis, but he's also doing more of the grocery shopping, mopping the floors, etc. (That's not to say the transition has always been easy in terms of our relationship, but we'll save that discussion for another time.)

What I wanted to say is something I've been thinking about quite a lot. Because when you finally reach this point in life, where you no longer have a paid (or unpaid) part in keeping society going, but you need to feel like you have something to contribute, and also boredom is lethal. You have to figure out what you're going to do. 

There are probably some people who move to a golf community and do nothing but play golf and eat out for the rest of their lives, but that was never going to be me-- although I fully support your right to do that if it sounds good to you. 

Is finally having enough time to read all I want enough to keep me going? (my golf equivalent)(ha). I'm still involved in a number of volunteer activities-- I still work at the food bank on Monday mornings, I'm in a couple of senior music groups (I play flute in one and percussion in the other), and I am an A/V tech at our church. I could increase any of those activities, or add some new ones, and stay plenty busy. They're all things I enjoy. 

So is that enough? And I guess there's no way to know except to just keep going and see how it feels. That's a life-long hangup of mine, I want to know ahead of time whether or not something is going to work out and/or be successful, and of course you can't know that until you actually try. dammit. But do I "need" to keep writing a blog? Do I need to work on writing a memoir, as it seems everyone is doing these days? Should I keep writing book reviews on Goodreads? Those are all things I do because I enjoy them (well, not the memoir, I haven't done that)(yet?), but they're a fair amount of work, and no one would care if I quit. I don't mean this as a complaint, but simply as a statement of fact: no one said anything-- good or bad-- when I quit posting here. There's no reason to start up again other than the fact that I like to do it, and it fills a certain lifelong compulsion I have about putting words to things I think/feel as a way of understanding myself and my experience. 

But is it necessary? There was a time maybe twenty years ago when writing teachers responded to comments like this by saying that EVERYONE SHOULD WRITE! WE SHOULD ALL BE WRITERS! But of course that's not right, either. There are millions of people who have zero desire to write, or on the other hand, millions of people who believed them and self-published on Amazon and now we're all afraid to download anything self-published because two-thirds of them are unbearable to read. (yes, of course there are exceptions).

So that was a lot of rambling to say that I'm feeling my way through this transition, as are many other people. If I'm going to keep blogging, maybe I should change up how I do it. More pictures. Shorter posts. Less editing. We'll see. 

Maybe I will start a new thing, go a little crazy and just send posts off without agonizing. A WHOLE NEW WORLD. 

But not this one, which I've edited half a dozen times now, and which is serving as a warning sign about the carefree posting, because it makes a whole lot more sense now than it did three days ago. 

Hmmm. I wonder how pictures work when you're emailing posts. LEARNING CURVE AHEAD. And I did figure out how to schedule a post! 

Have a good Monday. 

new migraine strategies, and also various odds and ends to catch up, and why this is publishing at 2:12am

I know I have a couple of followers who also have headaches so here is something new to try, or at least new to me: taking riboflavin, otherwise known as vitamin B-2. I got mine at GNC for the highly technical reason that when a friend who is a medical professional recommended B-2 in a text, I was walking through a mall with a GNC. I started with 200 mg a day, and after about a week, I just stopped being so headache-y (bonus: neon yellow pee). 

Not that I never have headaches anymore, but they are less severe, and also don't turn into multi-day misery as often. I've been taking magnesium and CoQ-10 for a long time, but neither of them made the difference that riboflavin has made. There is research about this, check this out for starters. 

You do have to get Riboflavin (B-2) by itself-- even a multi-vitamin that is specifically "B vitamins" only has a tiny fraction of the recommended dose. Also, I still get mine at GNC even though we don't have a GNC in our town. I tried some from our local health food store and it didn't seem to work as well. And another also, after about three months I cut back to 100 mg a day. It seems to me that if you're deficient in a vitamin or mineral, of course you're going to feel better if you take mega-doses of a supplement and get your body caught up. But after awhile, wouldn't it just be too much? This is where my local medical professionals are rolling their eyes and grumbling under their breath about therapeutic doses, and saying out loud: the studies say to keep taking it. And I do my own thing anyway. 

Also in the migraines department: on the advice of my neurologist, I stopped the Ajovy injections and started on Qulipta. Like the B-2, it's not 100% effective, but overall I seem to be having fewer headaches, and when I do have them, they are less severe. More telling, if I forget to take it, I have a pretty bad migraine in 24 hours. So for now I'm sticking with it. The most common side effects are nausea, constipation, and drowsiness. I haven't had nausea, but I have had drowsiness, so I take it before I go to bed. I've also had constipation, but even though I'm Ancient of Days I can't quite bring myself to discuss constipation in my blog. Maybe someday. 

-------------- 

Grandchild #2 arrived the first week in August and I have to say I highly recommend being a grandparent. It is amazing. We have especially adorable, intelligent grandchildren, and I'm not biased at all. They live about four hours away and we try to see them at least once a month. We do not spoil them. No, of course not.

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I've said about a dozen times before that the reason I blog is for me, not for you, dear reader--although I'm so grateful that you're here. I've recently discovered that is more literally true than I realized. Without doing this, producing words that come out of nowhere but my own head, I feel weirdly stagnant. It took awhile to figure out what that feeling was. Other than a handful of posts about migraines and whatnot, I barely posted last year. I didn't miss it at all at first. But the longer I've gone without writing, the more I've missed it. 

I have to deal with this weird thing in my head that starts tying my self-worth as a person on this planet to the number of people who are reading my posts. (Yeah, I know, could I be any more self-absorbed. Apparently not.) I've tried various different ways of dealing with this in the past, and the one that worked the best was emailing my posts. There's no way to type a post at the blogger website without seeing the stats about how many people are looking at this thing, but emailing them avoids that. I can just send them off into the ether and pretend that either (ether)(smirk) no one or everyone is reading them. The only downside is for years now, I've scheduled my posts to publish at 2:12am and I am oddly attached to that timestamp. But doing it by email would mean I have to figure out how to schedule an email, and I don't think I care quite that much. 

So that's the plan. I don't think I have enough readers after this long silence to worry about posting on a schedule, so just check in every once in awhile. I've missed this. 

*tap* *tap* is this thing on?

Well, first of all, HI. 

I guess I'm going to start doing this again. I'm pretty sure the RSS feed is still turned off, if you want it back on, please let me know in the comments or email me. Apologies for this not-interesting post, and possibly a couple more-- I'm experimenting with emailing my posts. I've done it before, but it was years ago and I don't remember how it works. So there will be a few test posts while I figure things out. 

Hope 2026 is treating you well so far (is 2026 treating anybody well?) and I will be back with more interesting (I hope) stuff soon.

The Vanilla Ice Cream Problem

 You know what is hard to define? Vanilla ice cream. 

I mean, first of all, there's vanilla. What does that exactly mean? The organic compound vanillin? The seeds of the vanilla bean, which you can scrape off the plant and use to flavor various foods and flavor bases? a chemical compound created in a lab that resembles the flavor of the vanilla bean closely enough that most people can't tell the difference? 

And then take ice. Are there actual ice crystals in vanilla ice cream? How are they created? If ice is frozen water, does a frozen dairy liquid even qualify? does the word "ice" even have any meaning in this context? 

And cream. Is there any cream in the vanilla ice cream in your freezer? I mean, come on. Have you even read the label? how uninformed are you? Are there any dairy products at all in your ice cream? If you walk into a Dairy Queen and order a cone, did you know that you are technically not ordering ice cream but a soft serve product*?  

If you ask for ice cream in Siem Reap, even if you say the words in Khmer, will it mean anything to them? will they hand you something that resembles what you want?

And yet.... and yet.... if you walk into any ice cream parlor in the US, if you ask in any grocery store, if you order at any restaurant, and say you want vanilla ice cream, they will know what you are talking about.  We may have had an interesting pseudo-academic conversation here today, we may have dissected the idea of vanilla ice cream and "proved" that it does not exist except as a cultural construct in the United States, and yet every single one of us reading here** knows what I mean if I say I want vanilla ice cream.

Dial it back, people. Dial it back. 

* to be fair, I only know this because I googled while doing three minutes of research for this post. 

** I mean, probably. I've never seen any evidence that I have any international readers. 

so, yeah, about those otc painkillers (a Migraines on Monday post that is not being posted on Monday)

Remember last year I told you I was no longer taking over-the-counter pain meds for headaches? Yeah, about that. Apparently I decided to punt on that today. I've had an entire week of migraines (which doesn't happen very often) so I am frustrated and pissed and also beyond grumpy (pls send Ts&Ps to my spouse). This morning I woke up with no headache (for the win) but a really bad, stabbing pain in my left shoulder (trapezius, I think) and neck. 

I've told you before that neck/shoulder pain is often a migraine pre-cursor for me, but after six days in a row of taking migraine meds, I really didn't want to take them again. Not only because I just didn't want to, but because I don't want to run out before my next refill date. So I tried stretching, I tried icing it, I tried meditating, to no avail. So about an hour ago I thought fuckit and took three advil, an extra-strength tylenol, and an aspirin. I feel better. Maybe not 100%, but better. (Also a Diet Dr. Pepper. I mean. It was an emergency.)

In other news, I've been on a cooking binge. Starting a couple of weeks ago, suddenly nothing in the fridge sounded good for breakfast or lunch. I still have not solved this problem, especially not for breakfast, but I've been making big pots of various things for lunch. I don't usually cook for lunch, but if I make a big pot of something and it lasts for several days, I can live with that. 

One of the things I tried was the famous Marry Me Chicken recipe (there are a million versions out there, that link is to the one that popped up first in a google search). But I did it in a crockpot using chicken thighs. It was OK. I thought the flavors would transfer, but it was very bland. I kept adding tomato paste and salt and lemon juice and even a half a teaspoon of brown sugar but could not perk it up. Did not stop us from eating it, but can't really recommend.  

As we've discussed ad nauseam, I'm not all that interested in cooking, so now I'm trying various different kinds of veggie soup-- the kind where you sauté onions and celery, then dump in a bunch of veggies and enough broth to cover, then cook the snot out of it. Kidding. Simmer for a couple of hours on the back of the stove. These have been good, but so far nothing that I'm excited enough to share.

It has occurred to me that I might be becoming vegetarian in my old age. I'd never be 100% vegan, and probably not even 100% vegetarian (vegan is no animal products at all, vegetarian is no meat/poultry/pork/fish but you still eat animal products like eggs, cheese, yogurt, and honey). I think I'm too old to be 100% anything, actually. But more and more often meat just doesn't sound good. That might be part of why the Marry Me Chicken recipe didn't work for me. 

And finally-- my Wordle streak was up to 178 days or something like that (173?) until I missed curse/nurse/purse last weekend, dammit. I'm considering skipping every Sunday so that I don't feel pressured to do it every day, as I sometimes did before that. Right. Like that's going to happen.

I am possibly overthinking this. ha.

Anyway. I don't know why I thought you'd want to know all this but here you go.

Whaaaaaat?? An S?!?!

I’ve moved on from Twitter, now known as X, because there’s no way I’m supporting, uh, that man. But oh my do I miss it today because there is an S ON SPELLING BEE. I mean!!!! Like NYT games nerds everywhere, I am gobsmacked. If the #nytspellingbee hashtag still exists I’m sure it exploded. I was still bleary this morning when I opened the bee, and I actually typed in a word starting with S before my jaw dropped— THERE’S AN S. I even checked to see if someone else edited it today, but it still says Sam. (*waves* Hi, Sam!)

I guess we are easily shocked, us word nerds. I have no idea if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to include S, but it is different! I’m taking deep, cleansing breaths. Whoa. 

(For the non word gamers, the editor of the Spelling Bee, Sam Ezersky, has previously said there would never be an S while he is editor because it explodes the number of words available with all the plurals. But according to Google, today is the 2,500th edition, so I guess he decided to shake things up a little.)

Migraines on Monday: Lingo continuous glucose monitor

As soon as I heard last year that you could order a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) online without a prescription, I knew I wanted to try it. There are currently two on the market, the Stelo, made by Dexcom (which I haven't tried), and the Lingo, made by Abbott Labs.  A Lingo lasts for two weeks, and with my intitial order, I got two of them. I paid $89, a slight discount over ordering one for $49, and shipping was free. So I was able to monitor my glucose levels for a month. I was mainly doing this out of curiosity-- what would spike my blood sugar? what would make it fall?

But I also wondered if there was something about my blood sugar levels that was triggering or contributing to migraines. After all, I am often low-grade hungry when I have a migraine. When I'm in that state, it doesn't seem to matter how much I eat, I'm just hungry. When I mentioned this to a neurologist years ago, he said, oh, your blood sugar drops, but he didn't offer any further commentary, and I've always wondered if there might be a connection.

So after a month of wearing a Lingo CGM, here is what I learned. Keep in mind that I am not a medical professional, so this is just a layperson reporting what she observed. Take with a grain of salt. Maybe a dump truck full of salt.

- First of all, there was no obvious correlation with migraines. Maybe my blood sugar level is slightly more erratic during a migraine-- a bit more ups and downs-- but even that wasn't obvious. There was no big dip or rise in blood sugar level before or during a migraine. 

- Logistics: It doesn't hurt to put it on. You apply it to the back of your upper arm, and it doesn't even "pinch" as much as getting a shot does. It has an applicator with a small needle, but the needle doesn't stay in your arm, it just inserts the filament that reads your blood sugar. There are several YouTube videos of people applying them if you want to see how it works. 

With the first unit, I placed it about midway between my elbow and my shoulder, slightly toward the "outside" of my arm (if there were a clock face with 12 being straight in front of me, it was at about 2 o'clock), a location I could easily reach. Since it's sweater weather here, I didn't have to worry about it being visible under short sleeves, but you can see the outline of it if you're wearing something thin, like a cotton turtleneck. I put the second one a little higher and a little further back, which didn't seem to make any difference.

I was worried that it would catch on something or fall off, so I spent the first couple of days being extra careful--I even covered it the first time I took a shower-- but the adhesive must be really strong, because it never budged. After 3 or 4 days I quit worrying about it. It must have some kind of miracle adhesive, because even though it stayed on with no problem, it wasn't difficult to take off-- similar to pulling off a bandaid.

You download the Lingo app, and then you can connect the unit to your phone via bluetooth, which worked exactly as the instructions said it would work. Once it's connected, you get a countdown timer for an hour--which apparently is the time it takes to set itself up-- and then you can track your blood sugar in real-time until it quits working two weeks later. 

So what did I learn? 

- For some reason, I thought if I had something sugary, my blood sugar would spike immediately. But that didn't happen, and I tested that out several times over the four weeks (you know, in the name of medical research). Usually it would take 15-20 minutes for there to be a resulting upward trend. 

Lingo App 

- I've read that caffeine impacts your blood sugar, and that's one of the main reasons you're supposed to get off caffeine. But every day I had my morning cup of black tea with a splash of oatmilk, and it never seemed to make any difference at all. In the screenshot, I had my tea around 7:30 and breakfast around 10--my levels are pretty steady until 10:30-ish. It would be interesting to know if coffee is different, but for tea and my metabolism, there was very little change. (In case you can’t read it, the times across the bottom of the graph are 6am, 9am, and 12pm/noon.) 

- Apparently, I have a pretty healthy pancreas. In a healthy person with a normally functioning pancreas, if you eat something that causes your blood sugar to rise, your pancreas releases insulin and brings it back down. My blood sugar would rise about twenty minutes after I ate, and depending on what I had eaten, it would continue to slowly rise for about 20-30 minutes, and then it would gradually come back down. It never stayed at its high point for more than a few minutes (except once, but I confess I didn't take the greatest notes and I don't remember what I ate at that meal. But still, once out of a month isn't all that concerning to me, and even then, it only stayed high for maybe twenty minutes). 

- The Lingo program told me at the end of the month that a healthy average blood sugar level for the month would be below 117 (I have no idea if that's what it tells everyone, or if it was specific to me and my situation), and mine was 110. Overall, my takeaway from this experiment is that I am pretty healthy, at least in terms of my blood sugar levels.

Which brings up the question: why do I beat myself up with guilt about how unhealthy I am? Why do any of us? I read an article in CNN this week about things to do to keep your brain healthy, and one of the things they listed was to moderate your blood sugar levels. The expert they quoted in this article said, we like to see our patients keep their average blood sugar under 105, and before I caught myself, I bit right in. Oh no, my immediate, not-quite-conscious guilt-prone self said, I am bad! I should try and get mine lower! But you know what? No. I reject that. I bet he is making a lot of money playing on people's guilt and getting them into his program so they can optimize their health. But I think I'm pretty OK with being average. 110 works for me.

In conclusion: I'm glad I did it, and I may do it again after some time to reflect. If you can afford it ($89 for the one-month supply of two monitors), it is fascinating. But I didn't notice any effect on migraines.

amazon boycott update

After the post below was written and scheduled, I found out that Bezos is no longer the majority share owner of Amazon, which is my own ignorance. I should have been more informed before I sat down to write either the previous post or this one. According to the Motley Fool website, in an article published last March, Bezos is the largest single shareholder of Amazon stock, but he only owns about 9%. More than sixty percent of shares are held by institutional investors. I didn't know that Bezos sold off billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock last year. So far that doesn't change anything about what I said below, but it might affect what I decide to do at some point in the future. Now you know. Or at least, now I know. 

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Just when I was thinking maybe I should slack off and not be so strict about my Amazon boycott, Bezos announced that he was restricting the opinions page in The Washington Post (which he owns) only to columns about "personal liberties" and "free markets." Per Bezos, they will not be publishing opposing viewpoints. 

That sounds so innocuous. Who is opposed to personal liberty or free markets? But it's the refusal to publish opposing viewpoints that is just downright scary. He probably has a PR staff that spent days trying to figure out how to say "we're shutting down free speech on our opinions page" without actually saying that, and making it sound like he's striking a blow for freedom. These billionaires say that they want free speech, but really they just want it for themselves-- the freedom to say what they want without anyone fact checking to see if it's actually true, or if there are reasonable opposing points of view. The Bezos PR machine claims it's a non-partisan move, but only conservatives are applauding.

So anyway. I'm still boycotting Amazon. It won't be 100%, because we have a family kindle account, and I'm not forcing my kids to boycott if they don't want to-- they're 34 and 27, they're not children. But neither of them is a frequent buyer, either. (Between the two of them, they've bought three books in the past year.) 

I'm allowing myself to use credits/points I've already paid for--like on Audible, where I have credits I paid for last August-- but so far I've been pretty strict about not handing him any new money. I'm sure he's quaking in his boots, but there's only this one way I can stand up for what I believe, and I'm going to use it. 

I'm just so disgusted by these tech billionaires and the blatant self-aggrandizing they try to disguise behind a lot of blathering about free speech and unrestricted markets. I'm not enough of an expert to argue with them here, but it doesn't take a lot of knowledge to distrust businessmen who are getting rich off "unrestricted free markets" that aren't all that free and unrestricted for anybody who isn't a billionaire. 

I told you in my last post that I had bought an e-reader that I didn't like from another company. It is a Nook made by Barnes&Noble, and it is sadly slow, with a clunky user interface. But I discovered that I can download the Nook app to our iPad and that works great. I've already bought several books from Barnes&Noble that I would normally have purchased from Amazon. I'm actually happy to support Barnes&Noble, who have returned to the winning strategy of loving books and the people who read them under their new CEO (James Daunt, who took over in 2019). 

I'll let you know if anything changes. (uh, besides what I already said in the paragraph at the top. ha.)