Headaches are really, really lame.

When I don't get enough sleep, I get a migraine headache. When I get too much sleep, I get a migraine. When I drink too much coffee, I get a migraine. When I drink not enough coffee, I get a migraine. When I exercise, I get a migraine. When I don't exercise for a while, I get a migraine. ARE YOU NOTICING A PATTERN? IS THE PATTERN THAT THIS SUCKS????

yes, yes it is.

And for the most part, the medical establishment has NO IDEA what to do. Check out Paula Kamen's book "All in My Head" (espesh you Reagan, if you are reading, she addressed the sexist implications of the medical community's inability to address headaches).

complaining is satisfying

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly today. The text is as follows:

"Please, for the love of God, fire Caitlin Flanagan. She's deliberately provocative of feminists and engages in Bill O'Reilly-style inflammatory discourse with disturbing aplomb. Such intellectual underhandedness has no place in The Atlantic's hallowed pages. Please, PLEASE never publish anything by her ever again."

I feel SOOO much better now!!!!

On Being an Adult

Yesterday evening I made polenta, a béchamel sauce, and filed a FOIA request with the State Department of the U.S. federal government. I feel really, really grown up.

Of course, then I proceed to play video games for an hour as a study break. So... the jury's out, i guess!

Nazi Zombies!

I am way more entertained by this than I should be. Shooting electrons is more fun than law school!!!

On Children and Mental Health

In my Children and the Law class last semester, we talked about the Nebraska Safe Haven law that allows parents to drop children off at approved places, like hospitals and police stations, if they were unable to care for them. Safe Haven laws are designed to prevent parents from leaving unwanted newborns in dumpsters. The Nebraska legislature, however, neglected to place an age limit on the law (most specify that only children up to a year old are covered by the law). This lead to a shocking number of older children and adolescents being abandoned in the state, some being driven in from other states as far as 1,000 miles away.

Judith Warner, who writes the Domestic Disturbances blog for the NY Times, has a fantastic follow-up to this story here.

She focuses on the mental health issues implicated by the safe haven law, which is an issue that I feel very strongly about as well. After working in a Juvenile Public Defender's office for a summer, I was shocked by the number of children we saw with serious mental illnesses. These were not the stereotypical over-pampered ADD kids that the media or public perception discusses -- or in the words of Warner -- they were not "spirited Tom Sawyers who don't fit our society's cookie-cutter norms." They were kids who raged uncontrollably for hours, kids who used drugs to quell the voices they heard, kids who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or "just plain old" clinical depression or social anxiety.

This experience made me feel even more strongly that the criminal justice system picks up not only those who are criminal (which is a label I find useless anyway), but those who are sick as well. Particularly in poor areas where mental health services are nonexistent, people who have un-cared-for mental health needs show up in jail.

What I Did On My Spring Break

I visited my parents in upstate New York with my sister over my spring break. It was still very cold and snowy, so we did inside things.

We made pretzels.

We also made candied orange peel. It didn't quite come out as I had hoped--the thicker pieces were still very bitter. But it was a ton of fun!

We drove past a gas station called Whitey's. Are they kidding me? Seriously? Whitey's? I had to take a picture.

My mom made dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) from scratch. They were FANTASTIC. They didn't have any meat, and they were almost slightly sweet--the recipe called for raisins.

Alison's Economic Rantery: Jon Stewart Edition

MUST WATCH!!!!

Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer on The Daily Show