The One with the Migraines

I’ve been watching “Friends” on Netflix when I work out these days (we have a rowing machine in our basement). It’s the perfect show for this activity. I’ve seen every episode multiple times so it doesn’t bother me that much if I can’t hear every word over the sound of the rowing and 22 minutes is an excellent length for exercise. It’s funny and entertaining so the time flies by. And they do feel like my “friends,” which is sort of sad, but since most of the country probably agrees, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I’m in the really good stretch right now, when Rachel and Ross have broken up and Chandler is dating Kathy. The show got pretty bad by the end, which doesn’t mean I won’t watch every single episode until the finale. Because I will. Anyway – my point in all this is that it prompted me to use the conceit of “the one with” because that’s how they title all the episodes.

This entry is pretty long and apologies for that. But I wanted to get the whole story out there because during my migraine saga, reading other people's experiences has been incredibly valuable. So I put this out there in the hopes that some other poor migraineur may someday stumble on and find something of value. Or at least feel like he or she isn't all alone in the crazy pain of living with migraines.

Some important disclaimers at the outset:

1. I am not, nor have I ever been, a medical professional of any sort. I did play Nurse Flinn in a production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but I wouldn’t trust her medical advice any more than mine.
2. This is only MY experience. I do not presume to speak for anyone else’s migraine experience.
3. Anecdote is not data. Let me repeat that, ANECDOTE IS NOT DATA. I am not proof of anything.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s get going.

I have had migraines at least since high school. I didn’t know they were migraines back then – I used to just refer to them as “those headaches that make your stomach hurt.” Fortunately, they were rare enough occurrences that I didn’t need to find out more about them than that. Seriously, I think I got them maybe every 10 years or so. Infrequently enough that I can remember most of the early ones. As I got older, they started happening a little more often, but I was also working office jobs by then, so spending a lot of time under fluorescent lights staring at computer screens. Easy triggers. Still, it was never anything that drinking a coke or maybe taking some Excedrin couldn’t cure. Even the really awful one I got back in 2003 that started as I was driving home from a rehearsal. The lights on the highway were total agony and by the time I reached my apartment, I had to climb up the stairs on my hands and knees because I couldn’t stand. I crawled into the bathroom and threw up, then took some Excedrin and went to sleep. I still felt pretty lousy the next day, but went to my internship with a pharmaceutical company anyway, having taken two Excedrin before leaving the house and drinking at least two Cokes during the day. To say I had the shakes would be an understatement! But it was tech week, so off to rehearsal I went and everything was fine by the next day.

Such simpler times.

My daughter was born in 2006 and that’s when things started to get a little trickier. The migraines started to become a pretty standard part of my monthly cycle – usually hitting about a week before my period was due. Still generally nothing that the drugs or the caffeine couldn’t take care of, even the one when she was about three that was much like the 2003 one. She watched a lot of Dora that day and I remember crawling to the kitchen to cook her a frozen pizza. My husband was traveling. Real parenting win for both of us!

Still – severe ones very rare.

I’d say they really started ramping up about five years ago. I was quite sure it was tied to my hormones and the fun of perimenopause. But they were no longer just once a month. They were still somewhat tied to my cycle but there were also a lot more rogue headaches happening. And I couldn’t find a consistent trigger. They would happen when I got my period, when I was ovulating, when someone sneezed in the next town over. When I ate chocolate, when I didn’t eat chocolate. When the weather was good, when the weather was bad. When I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, when I’d gotten plenty of sleep. I kept food journals galore. I was introduced to Imitrex around this time and also started seeing a neurologist. She was not a believer in food triggers or in the value of the food journal (the entire internet would beg to differ, it seems), so I stopped doing that. She was, however, a big proponent of preventive meds, so we started that.

(anecdote is not data)

First up was plain old magnesium, which I had tried before, but to no success. We added vitamin B2 as well as butterbur and feverfew. It didn’t work and those last two were hell on my stomach. Next up was the blood pressure meds, propranolol (brand name Inderal). That didn’t work either and I already have pretty low blood pressure. There was only so high she could go on the dosage before, as she said, I wouldn’t be able to stand up. Then came the Topamax. That’s a drug for seizures, but also approved for migraines. Some of the listed side effects for Topamax are confusion, or trouble talking, concentrating, or remembering. I’ll say! I was so spacey on this drug. I couldn't remember the words for anything and one day I drove right past our own neighborhood. My daughter gently informed me what I had done and I immediately started weaning myself off the drug. It wasn’t preventing the headaches anyway.

(anecdote is not data)

(this is MY personal experience – Topamax works great for lots of people. I even know some of them. I am glad it works for them)

After Topamax came Namenda. This is a drug meant to treat Alzheimer’s. I don’t remember much about it except that, like all the others, it didn’t work. I think it was at that point that the neurologist said she had nothing else for me (it was three month trials on each attempt, so we'd been doing this for a while!) other than anti-depressants. I had heard about Botox, but we didn’t go there. So I was on my own to figure things out. Which meant back to trying to figure out food triggers.

Oh, the food triggers.

I read a book called “Heal Your Headache – the 1-2-3 Approach for Taking Charge of Your Pain” by David Bucholz where he outlines something called the Migraine Diet. I tried to follow it. I cut out the bananas and the avocados. I obsessed about tyramine and nitrates and MSG. I carried around lists of food and drove my family nuts. It didn’t work.

(this is MY personal experience – judging from the internet, this plan works for lots of people and I am happy for them)

I tried FODMAPS. I tried gluten free. I tried dairy free. I gave up sugar for a month. Various foods became suspect at different times: eggs, turkey, chocolate, apples, pears, strawberries, seafood, nightshades. And none of it worked and it mostly just drove me insane to the point where I would just say “fuck it” and have a chocolate chip cookie.

Or twenty.

I attempted to go completely vegan for a month in January 2016. I only lasted nine days, sad to say. I can’t eat nuts, so that left beans as my only source of protein…and let’s face it, sometimes you just don’t want to eat any more beans! Plus I felt absolutely miserable the entire time. Headaches, no energy, unhappy. My journal entries from those nine days are just day after day of misery. Day 10 we went to Red Robin and I had a turkey burger that was like heaven.

(this is MY personal experience – I have lots of vegan friends. They are very happy eating this way and I am happy for them)

Somewhere during that time, I also read a book called “Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes. I heard about it from Gretchen Rubin on her Happiness podcast. He basically advocates a low carb, high protein diet (pretty Paleo) that Gretchen follows. I wasn’t ready to fully embrace a carb-less lifestyle, so I tried cutting down on refined carbs and white bread/rice/pasta, focusing on whole wheat versions instead. Nothing.

By February I was suspicious of everything that went in my mouth – again. So instead I turned my focus on my hormones. I tried to resign myself to the fact that none of this was in my control. As I wrote in my journal:

No matter what I eat or don’t eat, no matter how hard I agonize, no matter how much time I spend documenting every twinge of a headache and every morsel that goes into my mouth – I am going to get headaches. I am going to get them right before my period. I am going to get them around when I ovulate. I am going to get them randomly at other times of the month depending on what my hormones are doing. And I can’t control any of that. So I should stop trying.
This is not an easy decision to come to. Or one that I am certain I can abide by. What about the fact that I drank some red wine on Saturday night and then had horrible night sweats and a migraine on Sunday? Surely they must be connected. Sure – it seems reasonable. Until I remember all the other times I have had night sweats and migraines that I DIDN’T have wine. Or eggs. Or potatoes. Or chocolate. Or avocado. Or whatever my demon of choice is that day. Because none of that is the answer. The answer is that I am 46 years old and in perimenopause. That’s it. I am sure there are some simple steps I can take to try to control some of the basic symptoms, but they aren’t going to go away just because I eat more veggies or start drinking soy milk (which WILL bring on the acne, so no thank you). They are part of what my body is doing right now and it sucks (intelligent design, my ass, as I have said many times).

I talked to my gynecologist and she recommended Estroven. Or an antidepressant. I chose the former, but it did – say it with me! – nothing. So I tried a different medical practice, one with more focus on older women and less on babies. I met with a nurse practitioner and she spent a long time with me talking about perimenopause and various options for treatment. I liked her because she validated my experiences and actually listened to me, unlike my gyno. Her solution to the problem was a nuvaring and estrogen patches to use on the off week.

Nightmare. 

Mood swings, intense night sweats, migraines, spotting. I gave it three cycles and then stopped (just curious here - does anyone know WHY three months is the standard time for everything? Is there soe data that backs this up or did the medical community just collectively agree it sounded good?). During that time, according to my journal anyway, I subsisted on massive doses of Advil and lots of Coke and/or Pepsi (for the record, I prefer Coke. Pepsi sucks). All that estrogen was bad, bad, bad. And even in the midst of that, I continued to obsess about what I had eaten and what the trigger might be. The nurse practitioner, like the neurologist, had nothing else for me at that point and suggested I start going the more alternative route. She recommended a more “holistic” practice, one of those functional medicine places. 

So I made an appointment there. I also started seeing a chiropractor. This was all very hard for me to do, to put aside my skepticism and suspend my disbelief, but at that point I was willing to do just about anything. I even started reading about ayurveda. Apparently, I am mainly pitta (heat) or maybe pitta vata. Because, you know, pseudoscience. I also eventually ended up doing acupuncture and cupping. Cupping, for crying out loud! And I went through a phase of being afraid of histamines in food.

Sigh…

The functional medicine place was an adventure in things like testosterone cream, digestive enzymes, adrenal fatigue, and some food sensitivity tests that I am STILL fighting with my insurance company over. They were lovely people in the office, but...not my style and it didn’t work anyway. 

(this is MY personal experience. Functional medicine has been wonderful for some people. Good on them.)

This all ended around fall of 2016 and I stopped writing in my journal until now, which is unfortunate. I do know the next step I took was to call the neurologist in January of 2017 and ask for the antidepressants. It was the only thing out there that I hadn’t tried that she was still recommending. 

Ah, Effexor.

Getting adjusted to the drug was rough, as I recall. It made me very nauseous at the outset. I remember meditating one morning (as I was working through my January challenge of getting up early to meditate every morning, eventually working up to an hour each day – it was great) and suddenly having this massive wave of nausea. I was proud of myself for being able to focus on the sensation and breathe my way through it. But it doesn’t mean it was fun. 

However, as the weeks went on, there was no change in the migraines. I got used to being on medication, but I started to feel like I was watching everything in my life from something of a remove. Like I wasn’t fully engaged in life. Plus I would have these flares of temper that were yucky. And still the headaches. And night sweats.

(this is MY personal experience. Lots of people have great experiences - life changing experiences on anti-depressants - and that is wonderful. They are a great tool. Just not for me)

Then we went to Hawaii for spring break. Hawaii was awesome. We stayed on the Big Island and I would go back in a heartbeat. Live there if I could. The resort we were at was very expensive, so we couldn’t eat at the restaurants there all the time and therefore bought some breakfast food to have in our room. One morning, I was about halfway through my usual oatmeal and suddenly I just didn’t want it. My taste for it was gone. Just gone. It was weird. And it got me thinking about the other times on the trip that I hadn’t felt great or had even gotten a migraine and they were all mornings when I had had oatmeal.

So when we got back, I gave up all grains. Not just gluten, not just oatmeal. All of them. The rice, the corn, the quinoa (which is actually a seed, so I’d figured out a long time ago I couldn’t eat it). And when I went back through my journal, I saw various times of suspecting all of those things and complaining of things like how popcorn made me feel so bloated. I told myself it would be 30 days. And it was. And for 30 days, I had no headaches. None. It was amazing.

(anecdote is not data)

On day 31, we went to a museum and had lunch at the restaurant on site. My salad came with a biscuit. I ate the biscuit, curious to see what would happen. Within about 15 minutes, my tongue felt a bit fuzzy and the back of my throat felt scratchy. Within an hour, I could feel that heaviness at the base of my skull that usually heralds a migraine for me. I also got the yawns, which is another of my prodrome symptoms. I avoided grains for the rest of the day and the headache never materialized. The next morning, I decided to continue the experiment and had my old friend oatmeal for breakfast. And by afternoon, I had a full on throbbing migraine. It was crazy.

I had been wondering during that delightful 30 days whether it was truly the grains being out of my life or if the Effexor had suddenly finally kicked it. That seemed like too big of a coincidence and my little grain test proved me right. So I emailed my neurologist and asked her how to get off it. She said to take it every other day for 10 days (so five more doses) and then stop. Which I did. And it was 10 days of pure hell.

(anecdote is not data)

If you google Effexor withdrawal (and I highly recommend that you do), you can read scads of horror stories about people trying to come off this drug. Stories I wish I’d read before ever going on it. Compared to these people, my withdrawal was mild as I hadn’t been on it that long and my dose was fairly low (75mg). Some people had been on it for years at doses up to 300 mg per day. Yikes! Still, even my little experience was not something I would like to repeat every. I was dizzy, crazy dizzy, so dizzy I started taking Dramamine. I would have incredibly scary dreams that would go on ALL NIGHT. 8 hours or so of terrifying dreams. When I would finally wake up, I would be drenched in sweat. Just dripping. It was disgusting. I would go through this every other day as the symptoms would abate on the days I took my dose. People online recommended high doses of fish oil and vitamin B, so I did that. I don’t know if it helped or not. The worst came at the end when I finished the 10 days and had to go two days in a row with no meds. I could barely stand up. We went to an event at our daughter’s school and when it was over, I had to lie down and just sleep for another couple of hours. I debated taking another Effexor, but realized that would only delay the inevitable. At some point, I would have to just white knuckle my way through this, so I did.

Since then, I have felt much better. About a month after the first grain experiment, I had another one, this time inadvertently. We had gone to a basketball game downtown and if you think living grain free in regular life is challenging, try going to a professional sporting event and finding something to eat! You can’t bring in your own food and pretty much everything is fried or on a bun. I opted for a grilled chicken sandwich and I just took the chicken, lettuce, and tomato off the bun. This involved a little bit of scraping mushy bread bits off the chicken, but it wasn’t too bad and the chicken was actually pretty tasty. It also came with fries, which I figured would be fine. Yeah, no. Many fries are actually coated in some kind of gluten/breading to give them extra texture and flavor and this delicious batch was one of them (way to let people know that, Banker’s Life Fieldhouse!). It was the exact same sequence as that biscuit – the fuzzy tongue, slightly scratchy throat, yawns, heaviness in the back of the head. Again, it didn’t develop into anything, but I also didn’t have any other grains after that mistake. So I take it as additional confirmation that grains are not my friend.

And that is where things stand now. 

Almost.

During that second month, I also started cutting back on my dairy consumption and noticed that my sugar intake had gone way down (take out the grains, it's a lot harder to eat a lot of sugar. Unless it's ice cream. I love ice cream). So I have decided to go ahead and do a Whole30 and cut out lots of other things and see how I feel. I started the program on Monday and am now on Day Five. I will blog about it all at some future date, but I think this is good for now.

The Stephen King Project

I read my first Stephen King book at far too young an age. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I couldn't have been much more than 10 or 11. Definitely young enough that his stuff scared the pants off me. After reading 'Salem's Lot, I didn't want to go outside after dark for weeks. Weeks!

I remained an avid fan (or constant reader, as he likes to call us) for a long time, but did finally drift away. I don't know when, but I think it was around The Tommyknockers? Which doesn't mean I read everything that he wrote up to that point, but most of the early stuff I have covered. I still stopped in from time to time after that, but I wasn't passionate about him. I was, however, very happy in about 2002/2003 when Katie told me I absolutely had to read The Dark Tower series, which I had avoided for whatever reason.

And it is The Dark Tower that brings me back around to the Project. The movie is coming out soon - very soon! - and I am very excited!! Idris Elba - so much yes. So I decided I should reread the series before the movie comes out. I've made it through three of them and what I realized while doing so was how much I still love Stephen King. I love his writing style and I love his world that he has created. I love the obvious references to other books and when random things pop up and I figure them out. I know it's silly, but I was pretty young when I read both Carrie and Night Shift and I thought it was awesome that Carrie's mom worked at the same laundromat where The Mangler was. So don't get me started on the kids from IT in 11/22/63. So great!

But I digress. The Project.

The Stephen King Project consists of me rereading OR reading the entire Stephen King canon (bibliography? What is the right word here?), mostly in chronological order. I say mostly because I've already read the first three Dark Tower books out of said order. Plus when it's time to read The Stand, I'm going with the expanded version even though it didn't come out until later because I actually just reread the original last year. I also may have to bump up the rest of the Dark Tower series depending on how I'm doing by August.

I had originally thought to have a summer of only Stephen King, but after I finished Carrie, I felt having a little space between each book might serve me better, so I am trying to read something else in between each book. I don't intend to write about every book either, because there is already so much out there. Unless I have something really great to add, it just doesn't seem necessary. As I said, though, I finished Carrie and it's still great. It's also still the best movie adaptation of his books (yes, I like The Shining, but it's not as good as Carrie and also it has Shelley Duvall and what the fuck? Also in the WTF category are all the women in the made for TV version of The Stand. Seriously.).

I am now in the midst of 'Salem's Lot. Foolishly, I thought that because I am now a grownup and because I have read the book several times, it would be okay to start it on a day when my husband was out of town and I was completely alone in the house as our daughter is at sleep away camp. I was wrong. When it was time to go to bed last night, I could barely function. I made the dog sleep in our room (she usually sleeps downstairs). I kept music playing when I was trying to go to sleep. I refused - REFUSED - to look at the window for fear of someone scratching to get in. Every little noise that the cats made all night woke me up. Really, I should have put the damn thing in the freezer and called it a night.

Which clearly proves that the book is still amazing and the man is a genius. And that I need to finish it before my husband travels again because nothing else of Stephen King's scares me as much as 'Salem's Lot.

At least I don't think it does.

Maybe I should just free up a permanent space in the freezer.

For Chester

Yesterday, we put our cat to sleep. His name was Chester and he was almost 17 years old. I am beyond heartbroken as he had been my baby for over 16 years.

I found him in a tree 16 years ago this past August. I was going to go for a walk with my then boyfriend, Keith, and I wanted to go to the cemetery where my friend, Dale, was buried. This was in Chatham, NJ. As we walked up Fairmount Ave, we heard a cat meowing. Above us. We looked up and there was a sad little kitten out on a branch, mewing piteously for help. We weren’t really sure what to do, but decided we had better do something. So Keith decided to climb up out onto the branch and drop the kitten down to me. I don’t know what I was thinking of, agreeing to try to catch a live animal out of the air, but I did. I basically caught him by the neck (nice), but instead of being further traumatized by this injustice, the kitten curled up against my left shoulder and started purring. He was wet and skinny and clearly had been out in the elements for a few days (it had been raining for a while and I think this was the first nice day in several). We went to the front door of the house closest to the tree and rang the doorbell. No one answered. It was a Sunday morning, so they could have been away for the weekend or at church or who knows what. We didn’t want to just leave the kitten, not knowing if he belonged there anyway, so we walked back down the hill to the police station.

The officer on duty was a very tall, black man – we’re talking about 6’3″ and muscular. We explained what had happened, assuming he would take the kitten and do what needed to be done. He looked at us and said, “is the kitty fierce?” I looked back at him – large, powerful him – and at the kitten purring in my arms and said, “I’m pretty sure you could take him.” He looked up the phone number of the house where we said the tree was and called. He left a message explaining the situation and that they could call if this was their cat. Then he told us he would just be sending the cat to a shelter, but being Sunday, the shelters weren’t open, so we might as well take the cat home today and take him to the shelter ourselves. In hindsight, none of this makes any sense to me, but it was 16 years ago and the world is a different place now. So we took him home.

As I said, he was wet, skinny, bedraggled – and crawling with fleas. We actually had three other cats in the apartment at that time (one was mine, two were Keith's), so we shut the kitten in the second bedroom and gave him some food and litter. We quickly noticed that something wasn’t quite right with him. Every few steps he tried to take, he would fall over. Like his hips weren’t working right or something. But he was cheerful enough and very cute.

The next day I dropped him at the local shelter and told them the story, in case anyone called in looking for him. They told me I could call in a few days to check up on him. When I did call, they explained that no one had come to claim him and that clearly something was wrong with him because of the falling down. The shelter had a policy that they couldn’t adopt out unhealthy animals and told me that either I had to come back and take him or they would have to put him down. I couldn’t live with that guilt, but I also didn’t really want to take on another animal at that point. So I contacted another friend, Amy, who was an avid animal lover and asked her to come to the shelter with me, hoping she would want to adopt him instead. For reasons I can’t remember now, a third friend, Christine, accompanied us – I think she and her husband were considering adopting a dog, so she thought it was a good chance to check out the animals at the shelter.

Because the kitten was not eligible for adoption, he was being kept in a back area, away from the public. One of the shelter workers took Amy and me back to see him. As soon as she opened his cage, he stretched up his front paws to my shoulder and climbed onto me like he was giving me a hug. And that was a done deal. There was no way I could let him die or even let anyone else adopt him. He had marked me as his and that was that. Amy, in the meantime, saw another kitten in a cage and asked why he wasn’t out front. They explained that he was a biter and thus they couldn’t adopt him out either and would instead have to euthanize him. Amy went to pieces. She started crying and telling them they couldn’t kill him, that she would take him. I can’t remember all the details, but somehow they all reached an agreement that Amy wouldn’t hold the shelter responsible for any biting or bad behavior on the kitten’s part. And she took him home and named him Oreo. As far as I know, he stayed a pretty nasty cat for his whole life. But she loved him (update from Amy: "Oreo recently passed as well. He had cancer and fought until the end. He was a sweet cat and only bit as a kitten because he came from a house with 3 year old triplets and was taken from his mother too early. He would get over excited. Once he had stability and grew up, he was such a good boy. I miss him a lot. I guess they are back together now.").

In the meantime, Christine was out front waiting for us. There was a small black lab mix dog hanging out with the employee at the front desk. Turned out this dog had been at the shelter for a long time because no one wanted her. Christine fell instantly in love with this sweet girl and called her then husband, Chris. I don’t remember if they took her that same night or came back, but they adopted her and named her Janey. She was a super sweet dog, as shelter dogs almost always are because they know they’ve been given a second chance. Sadly, she didn’t live very long – I can’t remember how many years, but I don’t think it was more than four. But they were happy years for her and Christine and Chris adored her.

I brought my kitty home and set about introducing him to the other cats. I don’t recall any big problems with the addition of a new cat. I had decided to name him Fairmount, after the street, with the nickname, Monty. But after several days of using this, I realized it wasn’t fitting him right. I sat on my bed playing with him and asked him what his name was. Suddenly a name jumped into my head and I said it out loud. Chester. He meowed at me immediately and that became his name. It was the perfect name for him.

I took him to the vet, a great love of a man who looked like Grizzly Adams. He said the falling down problem was actually a neurological condition, NOT a hip condition, that was called wobbly gait. He said he could send us to a neurologist and I could spend lots of money trying to solve this. Or we could wait and see and since Chester seemed to be getting stronger and healthier, that is what we did. He grew into a cat that ran and jumped and played just fine. He stopped falling down (I’ll confess, I kind of missed it when it stopped) and showed no evidence he’d ever had a problem. Other than his slightly crossed eyes and his almost breathtaking level of stupidity. Seriously – one of the dumbest animals I have ever met. But hands down the sweetest. He loved to be carried on my hip like a baby, purring the whole time. He constantly gave hugs, standing up on his hind legs and stretching his front legs to my shoulder. When Mac, who became my husband, came into our lives, Chester took to him immediately, although he did insist on sleeping between us in our bed, pushing his gigantic paws into Mac's face. He also let Mac know whenever it was time for a haircut by grooming his head. Being the baby, Chester didn’t like it so much when I got pregnant and brought an actual human baby into the house, thus displacing him, but now once she got older and loved to pet him, he loved her back.

The last year or so was not kind to Chester. He was old. Skinny – too skinny. He had a thyroid condition that required daily medication, but we eventually took him off because it reduced his small appetite even further. He threw up more than he should and a couple of times vomited blood. He slept a lot. His fur got pretty ratty and he eventually couldn't walk very well – it’s like time was running backwards. One of his last nights, he tried to sit and his hind legs kept sliding out from under him. But he was still incredibly sweet and happy. The vet couldn't figure out exactly what might be causing the blood and vomit and we weren't willing to do anything too invasive at his age. We kept him as comfortable and pampered as we could, hoping that he wasn't suffering.

After the weird leg sliding night, I made another appointment with the vet for yesterday, just to see where things stood, if there was anything else we could do. Sunday night, we explained to our daughter that we were taking him in and that it didn't look good. As a family, we sat together on the couch, petting and brushing Chester. He purred and seemed happy. 

Yesterday, when I woke up, Chester wasn't in his usual spot, but instead was sleeping in a closet. He crawled out and just lay down next to his water bowl, not drinking, merely staring at it. After about 10 minutes, he crawled back into the closet. I had to go out and did so not certain he would still be alive when I returned. He was, but it seemed just barely. I took him in and she said he was very dehydrated, had lost a massive amount of weight. She gave me a couple of things we could try, but none had any guarantee - I think she was just throwing me a lifeline in case I wasn't ready to let him go. I wasn't, but I knew it was time.

She gave him the sedative and he lay down immediately and the light just went out of his eyes. He tried to throw up a little, so the vet moved him to another towel. He lay so still after that. She gave the second shot and listened while his heart slowed, then stopped. I stayed with him a while after that, petting his head, feeling my heart crack into a million pieces. I hope he knew I was with him until the end, that he was still my baby, that he saved me just as much as I saved him.

Even with two other cats and a dog in the house, it seems too quiet. He's not lying in his bed next to me as I work on the computer. He's not whining at me for food that he will only eat three bites of and then walk away. 

I know he was just a cat. I know life goes on. I know it will get better. But not today. 

I also know there will never be another like him. For as much as he was probably an embarrassment to every other cat who has ever lived, he was amazing.

Stitch Fix #4

To start - I made a mistake in the last post and referred to the stylist as Katie. Her name is, in fact, Kristen, and she did a great job AGAIN. I emailed customer service after the last Fix to request her again and fortunately, they are smarter than I am and did not give me a stylist named Katie. They gave me Kristen. So, yay!

(Skip this paragraph if you've already read previous SF posts) If you are not familiar with Stitch Fix, here’s the deal: Stitch Fix is an online personal styling service. You can subscribe for regular Fixes or just schedule them as you like. You fill out an extensive online profile of your tastes, sizes, and budget preferences and for a $20 fee, one of their stylist puts together a box of 5 clothing and accessory items to ship right to your door! You have 3 days to try things on, solicit opinions, balance your budget, whatever — you send back anything that doesn’t work for you in a prepaid envelope, and keep whatever you love! Your $20 styling fee is applied to anything you decide to keep, and if you buy the whole box of items you get 25% off the entire box! Prices vary but they say the average cost per item is $55 – 65. If you haven’t ever tried it and are interested, please consider using my referral link. If you use my link to schedule a Fix, I get a $25 credit towards my next purchase! (Note that I do not receive any compensation for reviewing this service; I just enjoy doing it).

For October, I made a couple of specific requests and Kristen did very well, even if what I thought I wanted didn't end up to be what I actually wanted!

First up, I asked for some olive pants. I have lots and lots of jeans...and nothing else besides the pants from the last Fix. So she gave me the LIVERPOOL Anita Skinny Pant in olive and they were almost great. As you can see, they are super skinnies, almost more like leggings than pants. Very comfy, perfect length, and great color. However, after I wore them around for a couple of hours just to test them out (learned that lesson after the jeans fiasco), they definitely became TOO stretchy and very big in the waist. So on checking out, I requested a smaller size. Once again, customer service there is great. Very quick turnaround on the exchange and now I am happily wearing my olive pants as I write this. The pants are also the same in all the upcoming photos so you can continue to admire them. Obvious verdict: kept!

Next up, we have the DANIEL RAINN Wilcox Tie Neck Blouse. Kristen clearly got the boho message! I love this shirt...I am also wearing it as I write. Well, almost. The one in the pictures, unfortunately, was missing one of the tassels. And it's just low cut enough that it needs to be tied. But again, a quick note during the check out process and two days later I had a replacement with both tassels. Great color, great fit, great pattern. Verdict: kept!

Moving right along, we have the RD STYLE Calandra Side Button Hooded Poncho. It is tragic that the pictures of this didn't turn out that well (you may have noticed that the background changed slightly on the next photos. We did this the day after a sleepover and my resident photographer was VERY overtired. And cranky. And apparently taking pictures downstairs was just TOO MUCH, so we moved operations upstairs). This sweater is the best. I am seriously annoyed that the weather turned warm again because I want to wear it all the time. It has a hood. It has built in sleeves. It has fun big buttons on the side. I wish there were photos of the buttons. But again, cranky photographer. So this is what you get. Either way, verdict: kept!

It's all seeming pretty good, isn't it? You're all thinking this could be a 5/5, aren't you? I was too. Then this sweater happened. This is the EVOLUTION BY CYRUS Flora Zipper Detail Pullover Sweater. I wanted to like it. It seemed like I should like it. It had a fun pattern, a good length, a little bit of funky design with the side zippers. But it all added up to...no. The color did nothing for me, the neckline was too high (not a fan of the crewneck in general), in spite of the funky design it felt very boring. Verdict: returned.

 Last (and least), we have the other item I sort of requested, the EVOLUTION BY CYRUS Leesa Hooded Cardigan. I had actually requested a regular Evolution cardigan, but I am never one to turn down a hoodie! Love em. This sweater was sooo soft, it was a joy to wear it. But not to look at it. Something about the length just didn't work. I wanted it to be about three inches longer and everyone who looked at it agreed. You can see from the pictures when I put my hands in the pockets (it had pockets!) and pull it down, the length that would have been perfect. But it wasn't. Plus the color just wasn't that interesting and since I was already returning one, it made sense to return two. If I was keeping the others, I'd have kept it to get the discount. But alas, verdict: returned.

So there it is for October. The good news about NOT getting a 5/5 is that now I can do a November Fix (I was going to skip a month if I bought five items). Then I will probably skip December no matter what because it's the holidays and time to buy for others, not myself. I am also really pleased with Kristen as my stylist and hope that the relationship can continue. Happy Halloween!

Me and a Deer

I have not been professionally published very many times in my life and probably my favorite was when I had a letter to the editor printed in MS magazine in 1994. As you can see, it was in response to a review of the movie "The Lion King." I was amazed they published it at all - it must have been a slow month for letters - but probably the biggest thrill was when I got the call from the magazine asking permission to print it. It was just cool. I also had a letter that I wrote to an author when I was a teenager printed in her follow-up book, but since she changed the names, it's not quite the same and thus I can't really prove it's me other than I still have her original letter back to me and it's pretty close to what she said in the book. And I'm not reproducing it here because it's so completely awful in its teenage angst. Trust me. Besides, that Lion King letter is embarrassing enough.

Anyway - where I started to go with this is that my publishing experiences outside of letters have been less than rewarding as they involved the editor of the local paper not really getting where I was going with an article and instead of working with me on it, just changing it to suit what he THOUGHT I was trying to say. Very frustrating, especially since these were not articles reporting on events, but instead just me telling the story of my experience. One was about going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in 1995 and included talking about being less than ten feet from Richard O'Brien at a bar, which to anyone who has seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show (preferably multiple times and NOT on video because that's just...wrong) should be nothing less than amazing. Apparently he hadn't seen it or just didn't care. Frustrating. The second one I'll get to shortly, but I just want to first point out that you'd think I would've kept copies of these issues of the paper even if I wasn't happy with how the articles ultimately came out. I didn't. Which is weird since I have school notebooks dating all the way back to 5th grade. Because you never know when those might come in handy!

The reason I bring any of this up is that I have had occasion to tell the story detailed in the second article a couple of times recently and it is still funny, so I figured I'd put it down here where I can't lose it since we all know the internet is forever (and if you want proof, click here). I do wish I had that original article to work off of, even though it got edited in a way I didn't like. The original title I gave it was "Me and a Deer." I was riffing off the Tori Amos song, "Me and a Gun," but, much like Rocky Horror, the editor didn't get it, so took out the quote that I used ("You can laugh, It's kind of funny, things you think at times like these") AND changed the title to something awful like "The Night My Deer Radar Failed." In hindsight, it may not have been as clever as I thought at the time since it IS a song about rape and all I did was crash into a deer. But this was pre-internet so no one was rushing out to look up the whole song and I truly only quoted that one small part. And no, I haven't given anything away by telling you I crashed into a deer, I promise.

So, yeah, summer of 1996 back in New Jersey. I was rehearsing a production of "Taming of the Shrew" (awful) in a town probably 30-45 minutes from where I was living at the time, which meant I was driving a lot. But then again, in NJ everyone drives a lot. As a frequent driver in the more wooded, suburban areas of the state, I prided myself on my "deer radar" - knowing where there's one there's more, times you should really slow down, areas where you're likely to see them, that kind of stuff. Rehearsal ended fairly early as I recall - it was still light out being summer and all, but not even getting into twilight time yet. I left the high school where the rehearsal was and started making my way back toward the highway. As I slowed down to make a left turn, I saw a quick flash of brown to my left and suddenly my whole windshield exploded in my face. I screamed, threw my hands in front of my face, and jammed on the brakes. I think this was probably where the Tori Amos quote came in because even though all this happened in the span of probably less than five seconds, it seemed to also take forever and all kinds of crazy shit went through my head, none of which I remember now but I'm pretty sure the actual Tori Amos song was part of it.

I don't know exactly what happened next or how I ended up out of my car sitting on the side of the road, covered in blood and surrounded by people, a couple of whom were also previously at rehearsal. I think I might have told someone to go back to the school and tell them, it's possible. The deer was also nearby on the side of the road and one of the other actors told me very firmly not to look. The police came and ended up shooting the deer, which was fairly awful. The ambulance also came and took me to the hospital. The director of the show followed in her car so that I would have someone with me. Once at the hospital, the staff ascertained that I didn't have any actual serious injuries, just lots of small cuts on my head from the windshield glass. They advised me to flip my head over when I got home in the shower so that said glass wouldn't go down my back and cut me more. Wait, what? They weren't going to clean me up there? They were just going to send me home looking like Sissy Spacek at the end of "Carrie"? (remember that, btw, it's important) Yes. Yes, they were. But first they insisted that I call my apartment and make sure someone was home. Why? I don't know. Clearly their concern for my well being didn't extend to preventing me from potentially lacerating my back in my own shower by helping me get cleaned up.

So, I called my roommate, Anna, and told her what had happened, reassured her I was fine, and explained that I had to make sure she was home. Here is how the rest of the conversation went:

ANNA: I'm home...but you might want to go to your parents' house instead.

ME: Why?

ANNA: We don't have any power.

ME: What?

ANNA: We don't have any power. The house is completely dark.

ME: I don't care. I just want to come home.

ANNA: Ummm...okay.

I took my bloody self out of the hospital and the director drove me home. By the time we got there, my muscles had really stiffened up and I was moving very slowly both from the pain and from a desire to not dislodge the approximately gajillion shards of glass embedded in my hair. Our apartment was the third floor of an old Victorian house and I gingerly crept up the dark steps, trying not to touch anything as I was covered in blood. I opened the door and looked down the long hallway. Because of the power outage, Anna had lit candles. A lot of candles. Candles on every surface. More candles than I knew we owned. And conveniently, the whole thing was captured on film:

Fortunately, Anna was NOT waiting behind a door with a knife and thus I did not have to bust out my telekinetic powers and do THIS:

I also did not burn the house down. Which I think was nice of me. I DID take my upside down shower and probably ate some dinner. And so life went on.

It's funny as I try to think back on that original newspaper article how little of it I can remember. I don't know if I even brought up the whole Carrie and the candles thing. But I know if I did, it wasn't as fun as doing it this way. Which is why I now self publish. You're welcome.

Stitch Fix #3 - Back on Track

I am happy to report that September's Stitch Fix was a vast improvement over August. Still not a 5/5, but I think they took the feedback from last time and tried to work with it. A new stylist again - Katie. She seemed to mostly get it. Before we dive in, of course, we need the explanation:

If you are not familiar with Stitch Fix, here’s the deal: Stitch Fix is an online personal styling service. You can subscribe for regular Fixes or just schedule them as you like. You fill out an extensive online profile of your tastes, sizes, and budget preferences and for a $20 fee, one of their stylist puts together a box of 5 clothing and accessory items to ship right to your door! You have 3 days to try things on, solicit opinions, balance your budget, whatever — you send back anything that doesn’t work for you in a prepaid envelope, and keep whatever you love! Your $20 styling fee is applied to anything you decide to keep, and if you buy the whole box of items you get 25% off the entire box! Prices vary but they say the average cost per item is $55 – 65. If you haven’t ever tried it and are interested, please consider using my referral link. If you use my link to schedule a Fix, I get a $25 credit towards my next purchase! (Note that I do not receive any compensation for reviewing this service; I just enjoy doing it).

On to the clothes!

We'll begin with two at once: DV8 Cheyne Western Booties and Le Lis Eldon Dress. I love the dress. The pictures don't quite do it justice (again, a reminder that my nine year old daughter is my photographer...we're still working on how to hold the phone straight up and down when taking pictures) and I should have posed with my hands on my hips so you could really see how cute it is, but I promise you, it is. It has elastic at the waist so it pulls in nicely and the sleeves are super fun bells. I was a little concerned at first that it would be too short for my taste, but the length works. Verdict: kept!

Then there are the booties. I haven't yet jumped on the bootie bandwagon as I still have mixed feelings about them. I've seen some that are cute and people wearing them who can really pull them off. I've also seen the opposite. Still, I was cautiously optimistic when I saw I was getting a pair. However, the pictures I was able to find beforehand of these booties all had them in black. I think I would have been more excited about them in black. This color...it's not brown, exactly. It has more of a cinnamon thing going on, which to me makes it harder to match with stuff. I didn't take any good up close pictures of these, but they have a pointier toe than I like plus a little stitched spiral thing going on on the tops - the "western" look. It just added to kinda meh. If I want cowboy boots, then I'll just get real cowboy boots. The other thing I thought was weird was the style card for the dress had it paired with black booties. So why not just send black ones? I'm still open to booties, I think. These just aren't it. Verdict: returned.

But here's one more shot of the dress with high black boots because...yes.

Next, we have another two together: the Brixon Ivy Elmar Embroidered Cutout Blouse and Kut from the Kloth Elyse Printed Slim Straight Leg Pants. We'll start with the blouse.

I wasn't sure what to think of this when I peeked ahead to see what was coming. Some people that had received it loved it, others not so much. I was a little concerned that the sleeves might be more grandma chic like we had before. But once I put it on, I really liked it. The cut is flattering, the sleeves are fun, and the color is great. I have a lot of dark blue, black, and brown in my closet, so the purple is a welcome change. 

The husband and daughter liked it right away. My trusted fashion advisor, Katie, was not sure at first, but over the course of about five minutes, changed her mind:

"The purple shirt color is Awesome but the sleeves feel like...a lot."

[...] 

"On a second look at the purple shirt, I like it more. It is very flattering on you."

[...] 

"And the more I look at the purple the more I like it. :)"

Verdict: kept!

Then we come to the pants. The stylist suggested I pair both shirts with the pants, plus cuff the pants and wear them with booties (again - the pants are black and gray with some purple/maroon running through the plaid. If you wanted me to wear them with booties, why didn't you send black booties? I don't understand). The pants are very comfy and stretchy and overall flattering. I will confess, it took me a couple of days to make up my mind on these. I don't really know why. Katie loved them, but the husband was on the fence. The day after I got them, I showed the pictures to several friends and all deemed the pants keepers. So I tried them on a couple of more times and decided they would be a great addition to my wardrobe where the only pants I really own for fall/winter are jeans.

Verdict: kept!

This is my attempt to cuff the pants (on one side) and wear them with the booties. I don't know if I just wasn't doing it right or if the color was throwing me, but whatever the problem was, there was a problem and it all looked weird.

But they definitely are not a problem with high black boots. They also look pretty cute with Danskos. So it's all good and I can't wait to wear them with my big black sweater. And my big gray sweater. And my big, drapey maroon cardigan. So many things to pair them with!

Last in the box was the Fate Goodwin Cowl Neck Sweater (paired again with the pants because that's the what card said to do). I wanted to like this sweater. I really, really did. And there were many things I DID like about it. The picture doesn't really show it well, but this sweater has a front pocket. I love me someplace to put my hands! I like the cowl neck, I like the length, I like that the color is a good neutral that doesn't wash me out. And look how cute the sleeves are!

But.

Sadly, yes, but.

It's cut weird on the sides. It scoops way up on either side and the sleeves are the kind that don't attach under the armpits but somewhere mid-torso and this happens:

Now, I realize I could wear a tank or something under it. And I also realize I generally don't lift my arms way over my head in the course of a normal day. But I don't want to HAVE to wear something under it (it's a pretty lightweight sweater, meant for those slightly warmer cool days) and when I do lift my arms at all, I don't want to have to be thinking about it.  Plus, as Katie said, "if it were me and I knew I was returning one thing, I'd start looking at the other pieces with an eye to definitely returning at least one (fiscally, if you are not keeping five, it usually doesn't make sense to keep four)." So...verdict: returned.

I'm a little bummed that the booties and the sweater didn't work out since with just a little tweaking they would have been great, but still and all, I'm satisfied with this Fix.

Now my photographer and I just need to agree on whether or not my head should be in these pictures!

Memory of Cats

Today I am bringing you a memory about cats. Which is different than a memory of CATS...or Memory from CATS. I could write a lot about all three of these things, actually, and now that I think about it, that is a great idea for a series within this blog. Note to self: write blog posts about CATS.

Anyway...today's blog post comes courtesy of my college roommate, Lisa, who sent me a FB message that I enjoyed to no end. Another shout out to FB for helping keep people in my life who otherwise would be maybe a Christmas card kind of relationship (I can't remember if Lisa and I even send each other Christmas cards, but that doesn't matter). Lisa was actually my THIRD college roommate. We lived in the same dorm starting our freshman year, the fantastic Judson Hall at New York University. It actually used to be a monastery, complete with a bell tower.

My first roommate was Karen and we lived together all of freshman year and the first half of sophomore year. Sophomore year, we got to move into the bell tower proper - second floor from the top, which is the third set of windows from the top in the above picture. Our friends, Jamie and Aaron, lived above us and they took great pleasure in climbing down the fire escape into our room. The elevator in the dorm only went up to a certain level (7th floor, I think) and then we had to climb up the spiral stairs in the tower to our rooms. I should mention here that the bathrooms were on the 7th floor as well, so if you had to pee, you had to navigate your way down two flights of curved stairs. I don't recommend this in the middle of the night.

Karen and I were very different - she was pretty punk and listened to bands I had never heard of (nor had most people, I must add). I was still pretty preppy, NJ suburbs at that point, but somehow we got along. Unfortunately, during our sophomore year, Karen decided college wasn't really working for her. She stopped going to classes and started spending most of her time hanging out with various musicians in Washington Square Park and sometimes even bringing them back to our room. Now, I enjoyed listening to Ellis play his guitar and sing other people's songs as much as anyone, but that didn't mean I wanted to wake up at 3AM and find him standing over my bed! (as an aside, a few good blogs mention Ellis: here, here,  and here. And here is an article about what Ellis is doing almost now-ish. You can also find him on Wikipedia (although saying he was born in 1974 seems...not right) and YouTube. For those who want to know more about Ellis!) Another time she brought a "friend" by who decided it would be really fun to spray my hairspray and flick his lighter on at the same time. I'm amazed that he didn't even set off the smoke detector with that stunt...or maybe we just didn't have smoke detectors. Who can say? She also started corresponding with various prison inmates. When she wasn't doing any of these things, she was in her bed, usually in the  middle of the day.  In short, she kind of lost it so it was no surprise to anyone when she dropped out midyear. I'd kind of had it with the dorm thing at this point myself, so I moved into a little studio apartment near campus with my friend, Cindy. Little being the operative word here. That place was TINY, as NYC apartments are. Basically a room separated into two parts by a partial wall with a loft bed. I had the loft bed and Cindy had a futon on the other side. Her boyfriend spent the night a lot. It was awkward. But that's college, right?

Junior year, Lisa (who had also moved out of the dorm midyear) and I decided to find a place together, which we did way over on the west side. It was a duplex down, which is a fancy way of saying one bedroom basement apartment that we paid way too much to live in. But it was fun. One of the first things we did after getting settled was adopt a kitten. I don't know why we did this, but it involved a field trip to the animal shelter on the far, FAR north side of Manhattan (really it might not even have been Manhattan at that point, I can't remember. I just know it was far and took a long time on the subway) to pick out said kitten. He was a tiny black and white tuxedo kitten that we named Harlow, after the actress, Jean Harlow. I had, and still do have, a serious thing for old movies and movie stars. I'm pretty sure this was the poster we had of Miss Jean.

Harlow as cute, as all kittens are, but he grew into a behemoth of a cat. Lisa kept him after we graduated, so I don't know off the top of my head how big he eventually got, but I want to say it was in the neighborhood of twenty pounds. He was huge. But here he is when he was small:

That top picture also shows you something of how cool our apartment was. The bedroom was on the upper level, then you came downstairs to the kitchen and living room. The window on the stairs looked into the kitchen which had, I have to say, awesome flooring.

Anyway, back to the present day when I had the following message exchange with Lisa:

LISA: My kids found that kitty book you wrote notes about Harlow, and then we made Greek pizza, and now I'm playing fleetwood mac...Haha, thought I should say hi and see how you're doing since clearly you're working on my mind at some subconscious level!

ME: Well awesome! However...kitty book??? I have no memory of this at all.

So Lisa sent the following pictures (click to enlarge so you really get the full effect):

LISA: Does that jog your memory at all?

 ME: Terrifyingly, no!!! It's clearly my writing and definitely seems like something I would do and yet..

I've looked at these pictures many times since Lisa sent them and I still have no memory of this book. But I LOVE that she still has it and now I do too.

At the end of the year, we got another kitten - a complete troublemaker of a calico that we named Gable, to stay with the gender flipped, last name of movie star thing that we decided we were doing. Here is Miss Gable (actually pictured in our Hoboken apartment), as well as the poster we had of her namesake:

    

Last, but not least...in case I never get around to actually posting about CATS, here is the beyond words fabulous Laurie Beechman as Grizabella. Enjoy!