My days are skewing later and later. Work is busy and about to get far busier. I'm working late, getting home later, which means even if I don't sit and rest and relax with my husband and the cats when I get home, we are still eating dinner at 9 or 10 p.m. Our normal schedule is 8, and I can live with that, but 9 just feels too late, and 10, pointless. By the time we finish eating and clean up and perhaps watch some television or listen to music or talk, check in to see what the internerd is doing (or more often for me these days, log in remotely to my work email to sift through the traffic, see if any new emergencies have arisen, see if I can at all predict just what sort of mess I'm going to walk into the next morning), it's late. Too late. Too few hours of fitful sleep between my head hitting the pillow and the drone of the alarm leading me into yet another whirlwind of tasks and demands and "can you hang around a bit longer?" Working through lunches, glued to my seat redirecting phone calls, emails, fingers flying across keys, except for the times I'm sprinting to the scanner, the printer, the fax machine.

I go into the cold damp evenings with fingers frozen and clawlike, cramped from the typing, shoulders hunched and knotted. It's a long commute home, and I find myself closing my eyes to block out everything around me, turning my music up so that it fills up my head, squeezing out the noise and conversation, distracting me from the aches, the pain rising. I squeeze my eyes shut to hold back the tears that have been coming more and more frequently. I'm exhausted, frustrated. I'm beginning to feel like I'm done here, worn down by my job, by this city, but I feel trapped, and I don't know what the answer is.

So if you turn to page 291 of the February issue of Shojo Beat magazine (on newsstands now), you'll find my latest cooking column, along with photos by the lovely and talented Lauren Martin-Roy.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Electrical stimulation of the brain provides significant pain relief that can last for several weeks in patients with fibromyalgia -- a debilitating pain syndrome that affects 2 to 4 percent of the population.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), as it is called, is simple to perform and has only rare and minimal adverse effects, results of the study, conducted at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, show.

The full article on Reuters Health is here. Interesting, though I'm not sure how I feel about someone zapping my brain with electrical current. But the idea of drug-free relief is mighty appealing.

"The limits you honor by focusing your energy on what you can do rather than what you cannot do will not interfere with your ambitions unless you allow them to interfere. You can thrive within your limits, actively shape your circumstances, and avoid anguish by simply recognizing that certain aspects of life nourish you while others drain you, and doing your best to perceive the fine line between applying yourself diligently and overworking yourself."

from The Daily OM, January 10, 2007

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!