I stayed home today for the first time since starting grad school because I felt intense nausea all last night and this morning. Were I not on birth control pills I would be certain that I'm pregnant; when I talked to my mom last night and told her I've been feeling down and immobile for the last few days she asked me if I'm pregnant. So, although I've never been pregnant, I imagine that what I experienced this morning was a mild version of morning sickness. I'm better now, thanks to time, lots of fiber-rich foods like carrots and apples, and the close proximity of the toilet.

I've been sort of working on my quantum mechanics problem set since I woke up, but I've also turned to the internet for solace. First I asked the internet why I'm nauseous. I learned that some people do experience nausea as a side effect of birth control pills. In fact I knew that already, but I'm skeptical that the pills alone are responsible for this because I've been taking them for more than three years without problems.

Then I asked the internet if its okay for me to gorge myself on food today. You see, in this current nauseous state, eating makes me feel better. I think that the food gives the nausea-causing things in my stomach something to distract themselves with. But I'm scared of gaining massive amounts of weight. Or even small amounts of weight. Because I feel like I'm on the border between where I'm happy with my body and if I cross that border I will enter the unhappy with my body regime. It doesn't ruin my life, or even really keep me from doing things that I'd like to do, but it does make a pretty significant difference to me when I feel good both about how I look, and when I just physically feel good and comfortable.

The reason why I turned to the internet for solace is because I discovered food blogs this summer. This summer had lots of culinary discoveries for me. And the relationship between food and weight is an obvious one, yet learning to appreciate food made me reexamine how I connect my eating and my weight. I haven't come to any new conclusions--and I still eat lots of chocolate, although I do it unapologetically--but it's an interesting dillema where people write about tasty food and still have to face the reality that they don't want to fall into an abyss of obesity, or even mild chubbiness.

And it turns out that many of these food blogs that I like so much, and would link to if I didn't feel like figuring out hyperlinks in blogger was way way way crossing the line into stealing precious time from quantum mechanics. Yes, they think about not turning into complete and total fatties. That's all I really want to say about it, because going into more details is embarassing, since all my friends are thin and beautiful.

I learned that my nausea was probably caused by some meat that I ate for lunch yesterday. It is in the lab right now, and I now feel compelled to throw it out tomorrow. I feel bad, because I put a lot of effort into preparing it, but it's better to throw it out than to get sick again.

I miss my lab. I want some warmth, and fuzziness. And until Robert comes home this evening suppose I will seek it out in steamed cauliflower and angular momentum representation matrices. And maybe some chocolate chips.