I love salad

My awesome salad of awesomeness

This was my dinner tonight: Mixed greens, hard boiled egg, cheddar cheese, croutons, almonds, pecans, carrots, and raisins. Every once in a while I go through a phase where I am obsessed with salads and eat them at all possible times. This has nothing to do with wanting to be healthy or needing veggies. This past summer it had to do with an abundance of berries (super yummy in salads) and other times it often has to do with finding the perfect dressing. This weekend is once of those times.

Salad Girl Pomegranate Pear Dressing

Yesterday I went to a Green Christmas Gifts Expo with some friends and they had food samples, including Salad Girl salad dressing. While I had tasted it before, I had forgotten about it. I also hadn't bought it originally because it's a little on the pricey side. But it's winter and I was feeling like it was time for a new salad dressing, so I splurged and bought pomegranate pear dressing and mixed greens. And Oh My Goodness. This is the type of salad dressing that you would have an affair with, if you could have affairs with salad dressing (which, thankfully, you cannot). Ben almost had to get out his camera last night cause I had to lick the bowl I tossed my salad in to get all the dressing I could out. That's the type of commitment I have to this dressing. It is silky and tangy and mixes perfectly with all the other ingredients that were hanging out in my fridge and cupboards waiting to be tossed in a salad. Sadly it's only available in Minnesota, as it's a small local company (with a circa 1999 website), but if you're in the area, check it out. It's well worth it.

Opinion: Christmas

My family's living room, Christmas 2004

Today I'm not feeling long winded, so I will share with you two opinions regarding Christmas.

1) Christmas should not be thought about until either December or the first Sunday in Advent, whichever comes first. In extreme situations you can think about Christmas immediately following Thanksgiving. (Note: this does not apply to gift giving. You can always be thinking of Christmas gifts. This applies primarily to decorations and music.) I refuse to buy Christmas decorations in early November. I would refuse to look at Christmas decorations in November if that were possible, but I think I wouldn't be able to enter stores, so I'm not quite that strict.

2) I'm sorry mom, but a fig tree is not a Christmas tree. It makes a valiant attempt and is definitely more convenient, unique, and more ecologically sound, but it's just not quite the same. (This could be cross filed under: Why my family is weird...) Our fig tree also doesn't hold nearly enough ornaments. I also hadn't realized until I went through my photos that we'd been decorating the fig tree for so long. I guess going to the closest parking lot and buying a tree just didn't have the same appeal as going skiing and snowmobiling to cut down our own tree from the woods, either. So while I respect your decision and your past fig tree decorating skills mom, I think this year we'll have a traditional tree :)

Mat Su Valley

Yesterday the New York Times did a small travel feature on the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska. (The Mat-Su Valley or just, the Valley, for short.) It made me think of home and also made me realize that while I've talked about Alaska in the context of my adventures and of Sarah Palin, I've never talked about growing up and the natural beauty and history that surrounded me. (Or what a GREAT travel spot Palmer Alaska is!)

Pioneer Peak

Pioneer Peak is the iconic view in the Valley. It's on the edge of the hay flats. These fields, filled with dead trees, are a constant reminder of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. The quake, a 9.2 on the richter scale, caused these fields to drop over 10 feet (if I remember correctly) and killed all the trees. So fields turned into bogs. (If you're interested in natural disasters and don't know about this quake, you should check this out. Lots of people don't know about it, but it's absolutely fascinating.)

With two of my favorite Alaskans, Daniel and Jeanette, in the Church of a Thousand Trees

In Alaska, we went to the Presbyterian church in Palmer. The church itself was founded in 1937 by the colonists of Palmer (who at the time were still living in tents...in Alaska...in the WINTER). The church is made of logs and while other similar churches in the community have since been replaced, this congregation has decided to keep the original sanctuary. It's a very nice sanctuary and I've sung approximately 120 Sunday services from the choir loft. I also used to play tag throughout the church.

Our first Alaskan house

When we first moved to Alaska we lived across the street from my dad's office in a small neighborhood of other people who also worked with dad. Our house faced Pioneer Peak (here hidden by the house and clouds). On the other side of the house is a HUGE garden and play set. Our first summer we were out playing on the play set with other families while our parents worked in the garden. Eventually one parent looked at a watch. OOPS! It was 11pm. (I was 4, my brother was 1...we probably went to bed around 7 at that time.) That's what happens when the sun sets at midnight or later.

Our real Alaskan house

It took a while, but my parents finally found the house they were looking for. Picture windows that looked over the mountains, a trout stream in the back yard, lots of sunlight, etc. There was also this excellent sledding hill (doesn't look intimidating from this angle) that was much less cool once these people moved in at the bottom and built their stupid suburban fence.

Finger Lake Campground

This campground is less than one mile from the house. The lake is a 10 minute walk from the house. We used to come here and skate after school in the winters. In the summer, we'd canoe out to the island in the left hand corner and jump into the lake from the rope swing. OK, Anthony would jump in. I'd wuss out and not jump in. I think we may have also had bonfires out their and roasted hot dogs.

Little Su

Alaska has lots of glaciers. Glaciers melt. This means that there is lots of melting glacier water that needs to go somewhere. Usually this means glacial rivers and streams. The Little Su or Little Susitna River is a glacial river that comes from some glacier up by Hatcher's pass. It's small, but characteristically, it's silty and incredibly cold. On a REALLY hot day when we were young, my best friend and I used to get her mom to drive us up to this look out to go "wading." As much as you can wade around boulders when the water is 40 degrees. When Ben and I went it wasn't nearly warm enough to stick our toes in, so we settled for dipping our hand in to check the temperature.

Hatcher's Pass

If you read the New York Times article, you read about the Independence Mine State Historic Park. (I used to have a t-shirt from there...I was that cool!) Independence Mine is located within the larger Hatcher's Pass area. Hatcher's Pass encompasses the blob of mountains to the North of Palmer. There's one road to get up there and, come early to mid-July, when the snow melts, you can drive all the way to Willow.

Old Glenn Highway

There is something somewhat magical about living in a place where this road used to be a "major highway." Driving was a big part of our lives in Alaska. Emailing Simon yesterday, this is how I described it: We didn't live in a town, we lived between towns. We ran errands in Wasilla. We went to church in Palmer. Dad worked in Palmer. I went to school between the two towns. In that way, I also don't feel that I really associated that closely with either town. When Wasilla came on the national stage, that's how I labeled myself because it was an easy box to fit in. It gave people an image. My parents did the opposite. They spent last year being from Palmer so that they weren't associated with the same images. Either way, we spent huge amounts of time in the car. Piano lessons, band, sports, concerts, errands, library, work, bookstore, meetings, coffeeshops...all these required 5 to 60 minutes in the car, depending on whether they were at school or as far away as Anchorage. But time in the car isn't so bad when you have views like this. (It wasn't nearly as nice on winter days with 40 mph winds and blowing snow...)

The Butte

This was one of the only hikes, as a child, that my mom could get us to willingly go on. Even then, I think we only successfully made it up once or twice. (The hike is 1.5 hours, max...) At the base is the Reindeer Farm. We never went there.

Moose food

Moose are a part of daily life in the Mat-Su Valley. Primarily this is in the winter, but this picture is a reminder that even in summer the moose are always around, looking for snacks. Here, we'd gone to visit a friend and she'd had moose in her yard that morning (June 30). The green stalks in the forefront had been covered with leaves the day before. Probably the equivalent of a couple of M&Ms to a full grown moose, but a treat, none the less.

If you are visiting Alaska, I'd encourage you to take some time and explore the Mat-Su Valley. There is much more that I haven't talked about here that is just as gorgeous, or more so, and can fit any style of travel, from backpacking to resort. It was a great place to grow up and I'm sad to not be able to call it home anymore. If you visit, say hi from me, I miss it.

Where are you from?

Today someone asked me the simple question, "Where are you from?" Every time someone asks me that question I get confused and I don't know how to answer. So the questioner went deeper, "Where were you born?" "Wisconsin." "Well, where did you grow up." "Um, define grow up..."

Baby Katie with parents (in Wisconsin?)

No, I'm not a military kid, I'm a professor's kid. We moved as my dad changed jobs. The confusing question for me is where did I grow up. I spent ages 4-14 in Alaska, but 14-21 in Kentucky. So where did I grow up?

My family with our dog, Traveler, in Alaska

Alaska in many ways feels like home. My formative years were there. I got my first driver's permit there and it's just cooler (literally and figuratively) to be from Alaska than from Kentucky. It took me two years in Kentucky to stop saying I was from Alaska, but I still felt torn. Now, it generally depends on the occasion whether I say I have ties to Alaska, but I rarely say I'm "from" there.

Family picture in Kentucky

Spending only seven years in Kentucky, however, doesn't make me feel justified in saying I'm from there either. I usually go with the line "my parents are in Kentucky," when asked why I'm heading there. Being from there leads to a conversation about why I don't have a drawl or about basketball (about which I know almost nothing...)

At the St. Paul Winter Carnival in 2007. It was about -30F.

Now, thankfully, I can use the line, I'm from Minnesota. It's a line which is, at least temporarily true. (This also leads to the realization that I have spent 17 years of my life at or above 43 degrees North latitude, so from now on that's the line I'm using :) )

I've never felt like I've been without a homebase, because my parents have always worked hard to make where ever we lived be home. It's only when I get asked "where are you from?" that I get flummoxed. I've been yearning for Alaska today because my hometown 'hood, as it were, made the NYTimes travel section. I'll write about that tomorrow, but it brought up some intense homesickness and longing for home. While I know that Alaska isn't my home anymore, seeing the pictures and hearing the stories made me remember a time when it was. And that makes me smile.

Unpopular music vs. Teeny boppers

I have almost never listened to any music that would be considered remotely popular for my age bracket. I grew up with Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach, and Byrd. Canadian Brass were pretty crazy for my classical world, but still acceptable. Dad introduced me to his music, but that was still more folk or rock than pop... Stan Rogers, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel. On my own I discovered the world of the musical, starting with basics like Godspell, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the 90s Disney musicals.

In eighth grade I briefly decided to attempt to be "cool" for a while and listened to the radio for a year. I listened to top 40 for a year and got very bored, so when I moved to Kentucky, it was back to my music. In high school, I'll admit I liked Backstreet Boys and N'Sync, but that was the extent of my interest in popular music. (Yes, I was a cliche, but that is gone now, thankfully. Unless you count this rendition of Get Down, sung by the Vienna Boys Choir. I listened to it for the first time in the ER waiting for migraine meds. I couldn't stop laughing. It helped make the pain go away. Nothing like Austrian choir boys with British enunciation telling you to "get down, get down and move it all around," to make you laugh hysterically. Then they rap. The album was a steal at Cheapo for the number of hours of laugher it has provided.)

In college I branched out slightly further (thanks to Rachel and Shoshana) and became a fan of Seven Nations, a celtic rock band. We drove up to four hours to see them and learned the hard way about the fact that Kentucky was in multiple time zones. We also got stuck on the Bluegrass Parkway at 3am on Easter morning. That was fun. We definitely didn't dance to music on our laptops in the middle of the highway. The picture makes them look hippie, but they have fiddle, bass, guitar, bagpipes, and drumset. This is the only pies without the drumset.

Over the past few years I've been incorporating more of a mix of music into my ipod mix. Most recently, I've incorporated the new Pink Martini album (surely it has nothing to do with the smooth vocals of NPR justice correspondant Ari Shapiro) and They Might Be Giants (not their new science album, but an older less geeky one. Still my ipod primarily plays non-hip stuff...classical, folk, LOTS of NPR, and some audiobooks (currently Stiff by Mary Roach).

All this means that when I do start listening to things that don't fall into these categories, say, Mika... I feel like a teeny-bopper. I feel like I'm sitting on the bus bopping my head like I'm 12. And I'm secretly afraid that I'm going to be busted for it. Yeah, I know this is bizarre. (Albeit deserved for some of my music, but not this stuff...) I don't know exactly what it is: his vocal range (3.5 octaves, meaning that he often sings in my range), the fact that his average fan is probably younger than me, the driving beat, the European-ness of it all? Anyways, that's what's been going through my head tonight. I've finally bought more than the one single track off of iTunes. I wanted to buy a physical cd, but then I decided that was stupid (and would take too long).

The King's Singers sang their gig with Mika tonight, so I'm hoping that now that they'll stop talking about preparations on their blog, I'll be able to ween myself off the music... worst case scenario, I'll have some new boppy music, good for workouts and when I need to wake myself up. The other good thing is that it has been really productive music for me to work to, so that's something. I just can't help feeling like I'm pretending to be 13 when I listen to the music.

Thanksgiving People!

I'm heading to my parents for Thanksgiving next week. It'll be my first one in Kentucky since 2004 and Ben's coming too. My brother won't be there, but that's ok, since he'll be here for Christmas and Thanksgiving's more of a low key holiday with us anyways. I don't think all four of us have been together for Thanksgiving since he started going to school in Canada in 2003.

Anyways, I've been going through pictures, since Snapfish will give you 100 free prints if you order by midnight tonight and spend $5. I'm getting psyched about the people I'll see next week, so here they are in picture form!

Mom and Dad. Awww. Aren't they cute? Other than the fact that dad has flowers coming out of his ears?

Liz! She sings Dixe Chicks songs into mechanical pencils in the Marseille airport. I would never do anything like that. There are definitely no pictures. She's got an adorable little baby who I'll get to meet next week as well.

Rachel may appear to be Italian based on her use of gesture and her general enthusiasm, but she is, in fact, not. She does speak near fluent Romanian, or did at one time. If you were wondering, Romanian is kindof like Italian, but with "shh" sounds added in. She is always reminding me that I should call her more. I should.

Hopefully I'll get to see Mary (left) and Jessi (right). They are also goofballs, but in a good way. The five of us (Liz, Rachel, Mary, Jessi, and I) used to have annual Pearsons reunion Christmas sleepovers, but I ruined the tradition last year by my flight being cancelled. I cried. A lot :( These gals would be excellent company on a desert island. I would laugh so hard I'd cry and then I'd get dehydrated. So maybe they wouldn't be good company. I don't know. I wouldn't be board. That's for sure.

The recurring theme here seems to be humor. Sarah P. is great! I don't get to see her often, cause she's been living all over being a fantastic theater person, but in this picture she and my mom have just saved my mom's purse from being abandoned in a restaurant in Providence by my mom. Sarah was excited about the rescue. She was one of my first college friends and, along with Rachel helped me maintain sanity throughout my first semester of college. She's driving through my town and so I get to see her!!! And my dad will feed her and her boyfriend, so it will be like old times.

Margaret Thatcher isn't really that exciting, but she does live with my parents in Kentucky, contrary to the more popular belief that she lives in London, England. She likes curling up in sunny spots and on top of backpacks. She is quite cuddly, despite what the press may say.

So those are visuals of some of the people I'll see. I'll likely see many more than that, but I either don't have pictures, don't have good pictures, or don't want to get people's hopes up. If you'll be around and want to see me, give me a call, email me, or leave a comment!

King's Singers

If you know me, chances are that sooner or later you'll hear about the King's Singers. They're a British (check) primarily classical (check) men's (check) a capella (check) sextet. In other words they're one of the most ideal forms of music ever! I discovered them in 1998 after my family learned about the world of a capella music through the E.D.L.O.S. I didn't meet them until a year later. Now I've seen them in 22 concerts in four countries. I've gotten to concerts by train, car, foot, and bicycle. I've sold cds, gone to dinner with them, and stayed overnight with another fan because the youth hostel was locked. They know my family by name, tease me when appropriate (when is it not appropriate?), and have insisted that I be brought my dessert by a negligent waiter. And yes, they haven't been to Minneapolis since I've been here, but they insist they aren't avoiding me.

In Danville in 2001 with Paul Phoenix. He'd just made a crack about my height. He never ceases to crack me up, but is also capable of being quite serious. He also has a stunningly gorgeous voice. (Not a big surprise, but should be mentioned...)

In Danville in 2001 with Stephen Connolly. I think that Steve is the official prankster of the group and he's now in charge of the YouTube channel and the podcast as well. He's a fisherman, so Dad tied him some flies and this is the picture of Steve "with his flies open" HAR HAR HAR. Two years later we saw them again in Danville and he said he remembered nothing about the venue, then he walked into the lobby and remembered the flies. After the concert he told me I should contact him to see about getting tickets for concerts in Germany over my Easter holidays (I was at the University of York the coming semester), which led to some of the craziest travel adventures I've ever had!

In March 2002, my friend Stefanie and I drove up to New Albany, IN with my dad to see the group again. Dad made the most fantastic dinner ever (which he usually does, only now he gives some of the food to the guys too). We managed to get a group picture, but with a side of funny. I am doubled over laughing in the middle picture because Gabriel is about to fall over. Stefanie cracks me up, cause she's just standing there beaming in all three pictures, not moving. Obviously, the three of us on the right were having issues.

As previously mentioned, in spring 2004, I was in Europe and I had a month "off" to study for exams/travel around Europe. I did a bit of both. The King's Singer were touring around Germany and Austria for the first week of my vacation, so that's where I started. I logged a total of 1750 km (according to Google Maps). My first day was a bit of a disaster, since my Eurorail pass wasn't validated and the people in the station didn't know what to do with it. I ended up arriving in Waldsassen Germany (pop. 7500) about 5 minutes before the show at Waldsassen Abbey. The next day I walked for an hour before someone gave me a lift to Shirnding. A completely UNSOLICITED lift I will add for the sake of my mother. That they had decided to offer before they could have possibly known my gender... I will say though, that despite bahn.de lying to me about the bus service to Waldsassen, I did sleep in one of the most comfortable beds in my life there. The next day my camera died, but I went to Klagenfurt, Austria, then back to Germany to Munich, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, and Brackenheim.

I hadn't planned to go to Karlsruhe or Brackenheim and had no accommodations lined up. (Steve had talked me into it in Darmstadt...) Karlsruhe is a large university town, so I was fine, but Brackenheim is a village. At one point I planned to sleep in the cemetery. I was sitting in the parking lot of the church when the guys arrived. They invited me to sit in on their rehearsal and Robin Tyson handed me his camera and asked if I could take some pictures. Christopher Gabbitas had just joined the group (less than a month earlier) and they had no pictures of the group with Chris in them. So I took these pictures, which Robin graciously emailed to me a few weeks later as well.

This was my favorite and appeared on the group's homepage for quite some time. I can't find it there now, sadly. Dad used to tease me that I should have asked for credit...but I think I've gotten enough else though.

If you were wondering, this post's been in my head because the guys are doing a concert on Wednesday with Mika, who I'd never heard of before. (Mika is apparently a pop singer. Here he talks to Liane Hansen.) In one of his blogs, though, Paul mentioned some of the lyrics of a Mika song they were learning. I am now officially addicted to the song Rain. Thanks Paul :)

Why my family is weird: Part 2

I know that you've all been eagerly awaiting the second chapter of this feature to learn more about why my family is weird (in the most positive way possible, I keep reminding my mom...) This part will focus on food.

I got thinking about this picture last night, at a potsticker party hosted by Erin and Reid. While folding potstickers/wontons and discussing the potstickers pooping out fillings and potstickers being generally goopy, I remembered making wontons as a child. My strongest memory was making wontons on Christmas day in 1994. That year Christmas fell on a Sunday and so instead of a Christmas turkey dinner, we headed to church and came back to snacks and food we didn't get the rest of the year. The next day we had our traditional Christmas dinner. Christmas day we got wontons, chips, onion soup dip, and other goodies that didn't resonate as strongly. That year my cousin had been studying in China and her dad, while visiting her, had also picked up a "Mao suit" for my mom, which mom wore while frying the wontons with chopsticks.

There was a brief period of time in which I could wear the same clothes as my mom...so I dressed up in the Mao suit for Girl Scout Thinking Day. I also made a poster on China and Chinese currency and made fortune cookies from scratch, I think. This was probably early 1995.

In middle school, my "go to" after school snack in the fall was a chopped up zucchini sauteed until golden brown with italian breadcrumbs and cheddar cheese sprinkled on top. I both invented and cooked this snack. It was based on one of my favorite treats, deep fried breaded zucchini slices. Luckily my version was much faster and involved less flying oil.

In elementary school I was the envy of my classmates because I made my own classmates and picked what went in my lunchbox. (In first grade it was a fashionable Minnie Mouse lunchbox, if you were wondering...) For a while I brought cold hot dogs every day. My other gold standard was cream cheese and jam. I was really anti-PB&J. This made me a rebel in the eyes of the other kids. I'll also note that this did not last long...

My parents tried to raise us to be aware of other people outside our social setting and this involved a number of things. As Alaskans, we got a check from the government (Permanent Fund Dividend) for $800-$1800 a year. Most of the check went to fund visits to our relatives and deposits to our college funds. But first we got to pick where 10% (our tithe) would go. Anthony and I almost always donated our money to Heifer Project International, an organization that aims to end poverty and hunger by distributing animals around the world and having the recipient families distribute the next generation of chickens or cows to other families in the community. So, based on this, it wasn't surprising that my parents were frustrated by the food consumption and waste in our house. So every once in a while they'd institute a "rice week." This was a week where we'd have rice 3 meals a day, for seven days. The rules were fairly simple. For breakfast and lunch you could add butter or milk and sugar. For dinner there'd be a simple vegetable stirfry, sometimes with a small amount of meat. The idea was to remind us that we were fairly well off and that if I had to eat a PB&J sandwich for lunch some day that would not be the end of the world. Neither was oatmeal the end of the world. Or not having a drumstick/thigh per person for dinner. Or a different starch for every meal. I didn't like the rice breakfast cereal plan, so for rice week, I had rice with butter for two meals a day. It was interesting...in that it wasn't. (Oh, and we're not talking wild rice or brown rice here. Just plain medium grain white rice.) We never had rice week during the school year. In part because cold rice isn't appealing for school lunch and in part because there might have had to be some explaining to our teachers.

Today I was discussing this with my parents and my mom was remembering rice week differently. She remembered it as coming after a time of indulgence, such as Thanksgiving. Dad suggested we do rice week starting on November 27. (I'm home from Nov 24-Nov 30) I think I politely declined...while I think it's a great idea and might try to do it again sometime, while I'm at home with full access to my dad's cooking is NOT the time to start!

There may or may not be a Part 3 of this series, depending whether or not I can think of more things to add to the list. If you have ideas to add (remember, this is the positive side of weird!) please comment on this post or email me. Or you can share why your family is weird. Really, I just like comments :) But not the spam sort, so if you're trying to sell me a rolex watch or help me make $5000 dollars a week FROM HOME, you don't need to comment. But all other commenters are good.

Migraines: Medication

Exciting! Another post about migraines. Last week I wrote about how I dealt with migraine prevention and this week, I'm writing a quick post about what I do in terms of medication. Ideally, the prevention would work so well, that I wouldn't need any medication, but that's not the case, so I have two types of medication that I take. I take both preventative medication and medication to stop headaches in their tracks. The idea is that by taking the preventative medication, I can eliminate most headaches and migraines from occurring, or minimize them substantially. But in all likelihood, they will still occur, at which point I will need the second type of medication to deal with the pain.

My preventative medication has gotten increasingly complex over the past two years since I started taking it. I take 11 pills a day. Yes that's extreme. I use pill boxes (am and pm) and I feel like an old lady at times. But I think that my headaches are fewer in number and lower in severity. (Note that I am saying headaches here in part because I deal with migraines as well as more mild headaches and I started much of the medication to deal with BOTH of those.) So...on a daily basis I take:

• 1 multivitamin (for general health, not tied to headaches)
• 2 500mg magnesium gluconate supplements
• 4 100mg riboflavin (b2) supplements
• 4 25mg topiramate pills

The topiramate is new, before that I had been taking 1 25mg amitriptyline pill a day instead. The topiramate is FDA approved to treat migraines though, which the amitriptyline isn't. (Topiramate is an anticonvulsant, designed for epilepsy patients. Amitriptyline is an antidepressant that is so old it's never used for that purpose any more.)The other benefit is that the amitriptyline made me incredibly tired, which the topiramate doesn't. But the topiramate has another weird side effect which I'll discuss with the doctor in a few weeks when I go to see him which is that I experience frequent "pins and needles" and numbness in my feet and toes. While normally you can "wake your feet up" by whacking them on things or by walking, but my feet can fall asleep WHILE I'm walking.

When I do get migraines there are two ways I can get them, consciously or unconsciously. That doesn't refer to whether or not I'm passed out, but whether or not I'm aware that I'm getting a migraine. So I might wake up with a migraine or gradually have increasing headache pain that I don't think will be a migraine until BOOM it's a migraine. Those are the unconscious sort. The conscious sort are the type where I can feel my jaw clenching and know that a migraine is building.

So if I have a conscious migraine, treatment is usually easy. At the first signs of migraine, I take sumatriptan (imitrex) and usually ondansetron (zofran). I'll often nap at this point before the pain to make sure I sleep through any actual pain. If I can catch it before the pain starts, I'm usually fine.

The unconscious migraines suck. That's the best way to put it. They sneak up on me and by the time they're there the sumatriptan won't do any good. (Why? It has something to do with how the brain functions during a migraine. I learned about it on Fresh Air.) So I usually will take the ondansetron and ibuprofin and hope for the best. I'll try to rest, but if the pain's bad, I won't be able to sleep. If it's bedtime I might take benedryl instead of the other medicine. It can calm my stomach, help with the pain, and knock me out. The odds are 25:1 that if I end up in urgent care or the ER it was because of an unconscious migraine.

Occasionally, but rarely these days, I'll end up with pain bad enough that I go to urgent care, or on a Saturday or Sunday night, the ER. There they give me shots or an IV. It depends on the clinic and doctor what they give, but the idea is two fold: to abruptly abort the pain and to eliminate all nausea. (My nausea is mild compared to some migraineurs, but it's bad enough that I can't eat while I have a migraine. In part this is due to the fact that during my early migraines I would throw up, something that hasn't happened in years now. The memory has managed to stick with me though.)

I applaud you for sticking with this post if you've made it this far and I assume, if you have, that you have a personal relationship with migraines or someone who has migraines. I'd be interested to hear what works for other people for both preventative treatment and pain management. Back to the fun stuff tomorrow!

Madeleine L'Engle Nonfiction

If you missed yesterday's post on Madeleine LEngle's fiction, you might want to go check that out first.

As much as I love L'Engle's fiction, I also adore her non-fiction. Most people would turn to her Crosswicks Journals first as opposed to her work on religion or her poetry. "A Circle Of Quiet," "The Summer of the Great-Grandmother," and "The Irrational Season" are great books about writing, faith, life, and family, but there's something special about "Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage." Part of it for me is the connection to Bach and the not-so-subtle ties between Bach's music and the marriage of Madeleine L'Engle and Hugh Franklin. Like "The Story of the von Trapp Family Singers," "Two Part Invention" takes you from before Madeleine and Hugh meet until "death do them part." The story isn't all bright and shiny, but it isn't doom and gloom either. And L'Engle weaves in humor when appropriate.

Some examples: "When Hugh and I get angry at each other we tend to be explosive, both of us being volatile. But we never nibble and chip. And our anger never lasts beyond bedtime. When it happens, and I suspect there's no marriage where it doesn't, it's a good, clean anger, clearing the air. The explosions are not physical, but they are volatility vocal. And I am reminded of one woman who, when asked if she had ever contemplated divorcing her husbad, replied, Divorce, never! Murder, yes!"

"One summer early our living at Crosswicks, a stage-designer friend came with his wife for the weekend. one morning he broke an ashtray andtried to flush it down the toilet. The result was total blockage. Hugh and I watched in awe as neighboring friends showed us how to drain the toilet, unscrew it from the floor, lift it, retrieve the china pieces of the broken ashtray, and put the toilet back together again. For a while we had a sign warning, PLEASE DO NOT PUT ASHTRAYS DOWN THE TOILET, but it was not a frequently made mistake."

"Two-Part" also gives insight into the autobiographical portion of a number of L'Engles books, including parts of "A Severed Wasp." I assume that the book isn't telling the whole story, but even for a partial story, it is incredibly illuminating and something to aspire to.

A few weeks ago, at my church library, I found a book of poetry by L'Engle, "The Weather of the Heart." It is both hilarious and heartfelt. A mix of love poems, religious poems, and science poems, as well as poems that mix some or all those elements. There's not much else to say other than to share some poems with you.

Love Letter

I hate you, God.

Love, Madeleine.

I write my message on water

and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs

and let it flow under your door.

When I am angry with you

I know that you are there

even if you do not answer my knock

even when your butler opens the door an inch

and flaps his thousand wings in annoyance

at such untoward interruption

and says that the master is not at home.

I love you, Madeleine.

Hate, God.

(This is how I treat my friends, he said to one great saint.

No wonder you have so few of them, Lord, she replied.)

I cannot turn the other cheek

It takes all the strength I have

To keep my fist from hitting back

the soldiers shot the baby

the little boys trample the old woman

the gutters are filled with groans

while pleasure seekers knock each other down

in order to get their tickets stamped first.

I'm turning in my ticket

and my letter of introduction.

You're supposed to do the knocking. Why do you burst my heart?

How can I write you

to tell you that I'm angry

when I've been given the wrong address

and I don't even know your real name?

I take hammer and nails

and tack my message on two crossed pieces of wood:

Dear God

is it too much to ask you

to bother to be?

Just show your hindquarters

and let me hear you roar.

Love,

Madeleine

To a Long Loved Love: 1

We, who have seen the new moon grow old together,

Who have seen winter rime the fields and stones

As thought it would claim earth and water forever,

We who have known the touch of flesh and the shape of bones

Know the old moon stretching its shadows across a whitened field

More beautiful than spring with all its spate of blooms;

What passion knowledge of tried flesh still yields,

What joy and comfort these familiar rooms.

So that's some poetry. I don't like it nearly as much as the non-fiction. But in interest of exposing you to everything I thought I should show it. Plus I don't like most poetry, so I was surprised to even comprehend any of this.