Literally any, and every, woman.
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Cadencia Photography / cadenciaphotography.com / @seashell87 / Instagram: @seashelle87
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Real talk: These cookies are what dreams are made of.
Lauren Zaser / Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
BUT. I also know that what ~I~ think makes the best chocolate chip cookie isn't necessarily true for everyone else. So, to figure out where most people stood on the Cookie Debate, I baked 10 different batches of cookie classics — from the New York Times' top pick to the nostalgic Nestlé Toll House version — and held a blind taste test for 40 of my co-workers.
Here's what I learned: Of those 40 people, many agreed with what I like in an ideal cookie: crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. But there were others who preferred other kinds of cookies.
Those included a bakery-style cookie that is soft throughout; a crispy cookie that doesn't have any chew; and a cakey cookie that has a domed shape and a cake-like crumb.
With all that in mind, I took away some key lessons from the cookie taste test about cookie-making and set about creating my own four ideal cookie recipes.
Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed
Not sure which one you'd like best? Take this chocolate chip cookie quiz to help you pick your favorite.
Lauren Zaser / Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
Because it’s so much more than how long it takes you to run a mile.
We got responses from readers who represent a bunch of different backgrounds, experiences, and realities, but of course each and every one won't ring true for — or be accessible to — every single person. If you have different experiences, we definitely want to hear yours! Please share your own in the comments.
"To me fitness is about taking on challenges and learning what you're really capable of."
"Then creating new goals and smashing those as well."
instagram.com / Via Instagram: @will_strathmann
"...And not dying in the process."
instagram.com / Via Instagram: @extremeconditioning
Your favourite way to accessorise an outfit? Dog hair.
Although it's horrifying when you can't extract it on the first try.
Sony Pictures
Did my invitation get lost in the mail, Gwyneth?
Cindy Ord / Neilson Barnard / Getty Images
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images
That's Gwyneth and Chris Martin's daughter, Apple, holding Blue Ivy Carter's hand.
Blue Ivy = Hair goals.
People reveal the books, shows, blogs, and more that helped them learn to love themselves.
At the peak of her powers — back in the mid-’70s, when she was essentially practicing therapy on stars while millions watched — Rona Barrett drove around Hollywood in a Rolls-Royce with a license plate that read MS RONA, the nickname she’d picked up when she first started delivering Hollywood tidbits at the end of the ABC evening news. She wore miniature heels for her size 5 feet and massive minks on her 5-foot frame, crowned with a layered bob (“like an artichoke”) dyed platinum silver.
Her 1974 memoir, Miss Rona, had sold over half a million copies, in part due to its irresistible lede: “Just an inch, Miss Rona, just let me put it in an inch!” Barrett attributed the come-on to a “major masculine Hollywood star,” and rumors swirled as to his identity. It couldn’t be Frank Sinatra, who'd taken to calling Barrett horrible names at every concert — or Love Story star Ryan O’Neal, who’d sent Barrett a live tarantula. Some guessed it was her neighbor, Kirk Douglas, whose Hollywood estate backed up onto hers. But Barrett would never confirm. Sparking that sort of speculation was what Barrett did best: Every broadcast was an invitation to join her in the campiest, dirtiest game in town.
Over the course of her 40 years in the gossip industry, Barrett became known as a ball-buster, an indefatigable reporter, and a legitimate pioneer. Her name has faded from national consciousness, yet her innovations remain: She was Barbara Walters and Nikki Finke and TMZ all rolled into one, and she did it first. Reporting industry information — power shake-ups at the studios and box office figures — for a national audience? That was Miss Rona. Hosting hourlong interviews with Hollywood stars? Rona. Getting those stars to talk frankly about sex on national television? All Rona.
Columnist Rona Barrett poses for a portrait in 1980.
Harry Langdon / Getty Images
Barrett had three magazines emblazoned with her name. She was on Good Morning America every morning. Her voice could be heard on syndicated gossip segments on radio stations across the country. She had three books, a staff of dozens, 11 phones in her house, and a web of informants that spread down Sunset Boulevard and into Europe. “Of the thousands who had covered Hollywood over the decades,” industry observer David McClintick wrote, “none had garnered the fame that had come to Rona Barrett by the late ’70s.”
Not the old biddy gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons who moralized over classic Hollywood, not the sharp-tongued Walter Winchell. Barrett wasn’t just a gossip. She was, as one columnist put it, “the Czarina of Hollywood.” But unlike Hopper, Parsons, and Winchell, all of whom have been memorialized in extensive biographies and onscreen, Barrett has faded from popular memory. “I know the name,” Elaine Lui, who’s established a mini gossip empire of her own, told me. “And what she did with TV gossip. But that’s about it — that she was my trailblazer.”
These days, Barrett doesn’t talk about celebrities unless you get her talking about the past, where they pop up in the most unexpected places: young Warren Beatty, in the middle of the night, at the tiny New York apartment Barrett shared with four girls; Elizabeth Taylor, at the vanity in the ladies' room of a Hollywood nightclub, bemoaning the size of her breasts, the width of her shoulders. Get her going, and Barrett will offer quick takes on every celebrity from her heyday. Trump: “He didn’t know how to smile, and kept Ivana in the doorway.” Cosby: “We all knew; he was always on the make.” Travolta: “That one’s an odd duck.” Natalie Wood: “I think everyone instinctively feels that something more happened than her just slipping off the deck of the boat and drowning. It's hard for me to say the story that I was told [about her death] — by someone who was around every single day during that time. But I believe that person knows what happened.”
BuzzFeed News
Who was your favorite interview, who was the most handsome, who was gay — Barrett gets those sorts of questions all the time, but they bore her, or at least betray the thoughts of someone who hasn’t really thought about Hollywood. What interests Barrett — what gets her pounding the table — is what a self-described “crippled, plain, fat kid” had to go through to legitimize herself and the subjects she covered. Today, that struggle feels especially poignant, in part because Barrett’s significant contributions, like her name, have been almost entirely elided, but also because female journalists still fight to be taken seriously, or treated with the same esteem — and pay — as their male counterparts.
But it was Barrett who took herself out of the game. Liz Smith is still writing gossip at 93, and Barbara Walters only recently retired from The View. Barrett — who doesn’t believe in aging, just “phasing” — essentially disappeared. She moved to the Santa Ynez Valley, 30 minutes outside of Santa Barbara, and phased forward: running a lavender farm, building a retirement home for low-income seniors, and looking, at age 79, fucking fabulous.
Barrett’s memory is precise; her corrections to the historical gossip record, including her own achievements and innovations, are exacting. But she has neither a score to settle nor an ax to grind: She agreed to talk only because she knew it would publicize her quest to provide housing for low-income seniors. She’s deeply amused at the idea of people under 40 knowing her name. She told me, without hesitation, "This is the best phase I’ve ever been in.”
When I first meet her on a foggy spring morning, she’s in a two-piece getup that looks like a cross between silk Chinese pajamas and a pantsuit. A heaped coil of a ring sits on her right hand; a massive opal on the left. She’s wearing reading glasses — bright pink frames, huge in the manner of the 1970s and the Olsen twins in the 2000s — to look at the computer, affixed with a Post-it with her Skype name and password. Her jet-black eyeliner is perfect; her hair — thick, white, still lustrous — is set in an immaculate chin-length bob.
Barrett’s handshake feels like a welcome and a warning, which must have been what it was like to be around her at the height of her powers: Part of you wanted to tell her everything; the other part knew better. “So,” she said, staring me in the eye. “Let’s begin.”
Rona Barrett at her home in Solvang, California, on May 3, 2016.
Emily Berl for BuzzFeed News
“The main thing in my life is that I was born with a disability,” Barrett said in the metered, deliberate voice of someone who’s conceived of her life in memoir form. That disability, an undetermined form of muscular atrophy, put her in and out of hospitals for the bulk of her childhood as Rona Burstein, the oldest daughter of middle-class Jewish parents in Queens.
“That made me feel different,” she said. “And therefore, my curiosity factor was always up: 'Why did you say that?' I’d say. 'What did you mean by that?' And by high school, everyone came to me. They’d say things like, ‘Oh, I love this girl so much, Rona, she let me feel her titties!’ Then another guy would come by and say something similar. And afterwards, I realized: I never want my name to be in any man’s mouth like that.”
Barrett decided, then, to keep herself apart: “I became the confessor,” she explained. “I was the priest.” She was also fiercely ambitious. At 13, Barrett took the train to Manhattan and simply showed up in the office of the record company that represented Eddie Fisher — then just a young, handsome singer who Barrett had seen perform up in the Catskills — and offered to start a fan club.
At that time, fan clubs were loose, unorganized associations. Barrett wanted to turn them into something more like political organizations, with the attendant might, and lobbying potential, to actually get a singer’s records played. She saw, in a way not even Fisher’s managers could, the cultural and financial power of her generation — and how to wield it.
"I became the confessor — I was the priest."
Barrett also understood the power of a name. When she introduced herself at the agency, she switched her birth surname to the less Jewish-sounding Barrett. Any notion of fan worship was also quickly disabused: Even as Fisher’s stardom expanded, in many ways thanks to Barrett’s work with the fan club, he hated Jewish girls. “Jewish girls are nudges,” Barrett overheard him say. “I wouldn’t date a Jewish broad if my life depended on it.”
Through the years, Fisher’s internalized anti-Semitism stayed with her. She was reminded of it every time someone told her how “smart” she was to have changed her name, and in the overarching unease when she started pitching the television networks. “I couldn’t put my finger on it until one day, a second-in-command took me aside," she recalled. "‘You’ll never see yourself on national TV as long as there’s a single trace of Brooklyn in your voice.’ A trace of Jew, he meant.”
Barrett graduated from high school early and enrolled at NYU, but dropped out just a few credits shy of a degree. She was a fixture at Downey’s, a Midtown restaurant where all the up-and-coming talent hung out: Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Tennessee Williams, Joanne Woodward, Elia Kazan. She found work as a “girl Friday” at the largest pulp publishing houses, named for their cheaply produced magazines and genre novels. At the time, the majority of fan magazines were stuck in the past — classic Hollywood was dying; the types of stars, and mores that accompanied them, were slowly going out of fashion. Only the middle-aged ladies wanted to know what was going on with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford: The new audience wanted Dean and Brando and Natalie Wood and Elvis.
That was a swath of stardom Barrett, who’d positioned herself in the thick of the community, knew she could own. “You could see that there was going to be a sea change, and I wanted to be part of it,” Barrett told me. In late 1958, Evelyn Payne, the new, hip editor of Photoplay, bought Barrett’s idea for a column on “Young Hollywood” and sent her to Los Angeles, where she moved in with a then-unknown Michael Landon and his wife. New York friends introduced her to L.A. friends; press agent friends started spreading the rumor that she was the heir to Winchell and Parsons. The more people said it, the truer it became.
Barrett had her nose “fixed” without compunction, but still felt she needed to slim down to fit in with all the Mia Farrow types waifing around Hollywood. So she made an appointment with a woman named Louise Lang. “She’d modeled Marlene Dietrich’s face from round to gaunt,” Barrett wrote in 1974. “She’d made Kim Novak from a Polish cow into an American princess.” And she did it, supposedly, through deep tissue massage — and the help of one of those old, vibrating bands of fabric you can still find in the corners of YMCAs.
After 10 appointments, Barrett says, her entire body was resculpted. She knew it was effective when, weeks later, a male star decided to casually take off his shorts during an interview — a come-on which Barrett gently rebuked, as she did with all advances from the stars. “Because they never got ‘into me,’” she explained, “I was able to get in them all the more.”
In this way, Barrett insinuated herself into the group of young, up-and-coming stars who were crossing over from movies to television to music and back again: Frankie Avalon, Nancy Sinatra, Fabian Forge, Tommy Sands, Jimmy Darren. Most of her information, Barrett recalled, came from things she overheard at parties. “I always weighed my words carefully,” she explained. “I never broke a confidence, never wrote to hurt anybody, believe it or not.”
Hollywood TV gossip reporter Rona Barrett,
right, attending a baby shower, 1969.
Charles Bonnay / Getty Images
But she had little tolerance for celebrity bullshit. At press junkets where every star was giving canned answers, Barrett says she’d walk up to people and say, “Do you make a hundred thousand dollars a year yet?” or “How good a fuck are you?” or “What did you really think of your half-assed co-star in your last picture?” The stars might not have answered those particular questions, but it veered them off the well-worn publicity track toward something like a real answer to the questions that followed.
In 1960, Photoplay rival Motion Picture offered Barrett more money for her column, but with one stipulation: that she “take out after someone” every month. After years of simpering, moralizing banality, the fan magazines were suffering a crisis of consciousness: In the mid-’50s, scandal magazines, Confidential foremost amongst them, had exploited the newfound freedom of the Hollywood stars who, released from the protection of their studio contracts, had no apparatus to protect them when they misbehaved. Once readers had tasted real dirt, the fan magazines were forced to pivot to meet their demands. Barrett didn’t want to dish scandal like Confidential — which, even today, Barrett describes as a “terrible magazine.” Instead, she would highlight some hypocrisy, some wrong.
And she knew exactly who her first target would be: Frankie Avalon. “There was something about Avalon I had always found disturbing,” Barrett later wrote of the teen idol, who was a sort of Zac Efron meets Justin Bieber for the late ’50s and ’60s. “I was never sure if he had a sincere bone in his body. He was like a prostitute at heart. His parents had grown up believing that Jews had purple horns.”
She’d walk up to people and say, “Do you make a hundred thousand dollars a year yet?” or, “How good a fuck are you?”
But Avalon had been part of the “group,” and the group helped each other out — which is what Barrett did when Avalon impregnated a groupie who’d camped outside of his house in her car. To protect Avalon, Barrett helped pay off the groupie and kept the rumors at bay, but when the groupie’s demands went public, Avalon turned his back on Barrett. When the time came, Barrett had no qualms about giving the dirt on Avalon — not in the pages of Motion Picture, nor in her own memoir.
That was the beginning of Barrett’s gradual distancing from her Hollywood friends. She still moved in the same circles and was invited to the same parties; stars still used her as their confessor. But the understanding that she could tell all hovered around every pseudo friendship. Especially when, in 1959, she traded her monthly magazine work for a daily newspaper column, soon available in 125 papers across the nation.
It was during this time that Barrett, who had never been a prude, found herself knocking up against the old-fashioned morals of the publishing industry. She wanted to write about the prevalence of marijuana at Hollywood parties, or the female stars who were telling her they were thinking of having babies out of wedlock, but her editors would always mark it out — “Really, Rona, is this necessary?”
So Barrett refined the high gossip art of encoding: who was gay, who was high, who was sleeping with whom. “You could write in a way that was clever and smart, and people knew what you were saying," she told me. "Especially the world of gay people, the LGBTs. I think they fell in love with me because I was so honest, in a way, about it, and not making fun of it, but being more like, ‘Come on, you guys, you’ve got to be kidding me.’”
Barrett was comfortable printing an innuendo about Cary Grant — that he was “really more of a mother than a father to his daughter Jennifer” — but drew the line at outing people. Like Rock Hudson. “I went to his house one night for a cocktail party. And he knew that I knew that he was gay,” Barrett told me. “But he was always so polite — that’s how they were brought up in the studio system: They had to go to etiquette school, and then the PR people made up all of that stuff,” she says, gesturing to an old fan magazine with Hudson and “ROCK, ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY DEBBIE?” on the cover. “But the point was, if he wanted to come out and say it, it was up to him to say.”
Tom Snyder and Rona Barrett during an interview on The Tomorrow Show.
NBC / Getty Images
They don’t call it “America the Beautiful” for nothin’.
Failing to plan is planning to order a whole lot of unnecessary takeout.
Portion out a serving of oats, some fruit, and some ~flavor~ (nuts, chocolate, or shredded coconut would be great) in individual mason jars at the start of the week. Every morning, just dump the contents of the jar into a pot and add liquid and some heat. Learn more here.
the-girl-who-ate-everything.com
Jordan Davidson / Via instagram.com
(I spent the first three years blaming my migraines on stress, doing nothing about them because I thought they were my fault.) Currently, without treatment, I have at least 15 migraine days a month, and wake up every day with some sort of headache. So I’m sort of like Goldilocks — there’s a lot I’m willing to try just to make myself comfortable. Goldilocks, however, didn’t have to stick a bunch of needles in her head to figure out how to feel “just right.”
Migraines are complicated. While the pain typically presents the same way — an intense throbbing pain on one side of your head — other symptoms like nausea, fatigue, and sensitivity to light and sound can vary from person to person. Because so many people think about migraines as basically just bad headaches (take some Excedrin and be done with it!) it can take years to find a treatment plan that actually works, if you ever do.
My own migraines are chronic (rather than episodic) which means I have 15 or more migraine days a month, and that’s a big part of why they’re so debilitating. Most of them are also “with aura.” Auras can present as many kinds of visual, mental, and physical symptoms in the time before a migraine starts; in my case, I often have trouble speaking or finding the word I’m looking for, my sense of smell is heightened to the point that every smell is nauseating, and my vision blurs.
Sally Tamarkin / buzzfeed.com
Over the past four years, I’ve tried over-the-counter pain relievers; tricyclic antidepressants; a combination of butalbital (a barbiturate), acetaminophen, and caffeine; a variety of supplements including CoQ10, butterbur, feverfew, and magnesium; several different kinds of nausea meds; and triptans — in both pill and injectable form — which are a commonly prescribed rescue medication that helps with the pain.
Sometimes the butalbital combination would work, but it often left me with a medication headache. Triptans helped the most, but they made me feel groggy, and my insurance would cover only a few pills or injections a month.
I started to keep a journal of my migraine triggers, only to discover that everything seemed to trigger my migraines. My life became a juggling act of trying to avoid triggers like beer, wine, skipping meals, being dehydrated, being too hydrated, flying, thunderstorms, rainy weather in general, my period, birth control, stress, going to the movies, concerts, bright lights, loud noises, exercise, cigarette smoke, not sleeping, sleeping too much, being sick, drinking coffee, and not drinking coffee. I changed my diet, told my boyfriend it was me or the cigarettes (he picked me, thankfully), and tried my best to limit my exposure to the rest.
By the time my doctor suggested trying Botox, which was approved for treating chronic migraines by the FDA in 2010, I was burnt out. My days were limited to working and sleeping. Desperate for relief, I made an appointment with Allyson Shrikhande, MD, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at New York Bone and Joint Specialists in New York City.
She decided I was a good candidate for treatment — I have at least 15 migraines days a month, and I’ve tried several different treatments with only minimal success. Since I fit the criteria, my insurance approved the treatment and I scheduled an appointment to get my shots.
Nikilitov / Getty Images
While the FDA approval of onabotulinumtoxinA (Botox) for migraines is somewhat new, the idea isn’t. To learn more about how Botox affects migraines, I spoke to Sheena Aurora, MD, a headache specialist at Stanford Health Care, who worked on the clinical trials that led to Botox’s FDA approval and to the guidelines that are used for today’s Botox treatments. I also talked to my doctor, Dr. Shrikhande (while she was injecting my face).
The discovery that Botox could be used to treat chronic migraines was pretty much a happy accident. A cosmetic surgeon who used Botox for his patients’ forehead wrinkles was the first to make the connection, says Dr. Aurora, when several of those patients noticed that their headaches improved after treatment.
Studies on the treatment followed, totaling 25 years of research. Today, Botox is approved only for people with chronic migraines, like me; Aurora says that in her research, Botox didn’t produce any better results than a placebo did for patients with non-chronic migraines.
“Basically it’s used for muscle spasms, so it can be used anywhere a muscle is spasming,” Shrikhande told me. (Botox is also FDA-approved to treat problems like overactive bladder, severe underarm sweating, and crossed eyes.) She added that “People think [Botox] just relaxes the muscles, but it also inhibits important brain chemicals that cause pain. So anything that inhibits those is going to help with your pain everywhere.”
Botox must be given in cycles; it’s not a one-and-done kind of treatment. According to Aurora, approximately 75% of patients respond to the first treatment. Some people don’t respond until the third treatment, but typically the response improves over time, she added. From injection, Botox takes about 10 to 14 days to work, and lasts about three months.
After those three months it’s time for another injection. Some patients need Botox for only a little while, says Aurora, but patients were studied for only 15 months, so how long one person will need to continue Botox will vary.
It’s also worth noting that Botox is expensive! My insurance covered the full price of my treatment, but without coverage, one treatment typically costs around $1,500.
...and after.
So far, I’ve had three series of injections. The first was in July, the second was the beginning of December, and the third was during the first week of April. (The photos are all from my second round of injections.)
Botox for migraines consists of 31 injections (!) across seven different sites. The first injections were in the center of my forehead. And because the forehead injection sites are similar to the ones used in cosmetic treatments, I get the added benefit of minimized wrinkles.
However, according to Aurora’s research, forehead injections alone aren’t enough to get rid of migraines. So, sorry to the celebrities, Real Housewives, and anyone else who gets Botox cosmetically. You’re going to need more of it if you want to bust those migraines.
Jordan Davidson
I have a fairly high pain tolerance (see above regarding years of ignoring migraines) and I sniffled through the whole thing. I really wasn’t prepared for how painful it was going to be.
Moving on: The next injections go into your temples, four on each side. Shrikhande does these injections and the ones in my forehead while I am lying down, so that the Botox stays in the area of the injection site. Sitting up increases the chance of the Botox spreading downward, which can lead to facial drooping. I don’t want caveman eyebrows, so I’m happy to oblige.
Next come the scalp and the back of skull area; there isn’t that much skin to pinch, which makes it really painful. Then the injections move down the back of my next and shoulders, evenly spaced on left and right. And finally, I’m done. Migraines be gone…10 days to two weeks later, that is, when the Botox actually kicks in.
After my first set of injections, I felt great. I could go out without having to stock my purse like a pharmacy. I could go out, in general. I went from being the flaky friend to being the less flaky friend. I took an extended trip to Paris and London and had only one migraine.
I wasn’t sure how well the Botox would work or how long it would last, so I didn’t schedule my second set of injections for three months later, which I should have. This was a big mistake, because while waiting for my Botox to be refilled — which took almost a month between insurance approval, getting it filled by a specialty pharmacy, and then mailed to my doctor — I had back-to-back migraines.
Those almost pain-free months had spoiled me. I had forgotten what my migraines were like, and when my first injections wore off, the headaches felt 100 times worse. It was devastating. By the time my appointment rolled around, I was at the point of having to drag myself out of bed to my doctor’s office.
Sally Tamarkin / Via buzzfeed.com
My second set of injections were Dec. 2, so ideally relief should have come around the middle of the month. That didn’t happen. December was pretty lousy compared to how I felt following my first set of injections. According to Aurora, Botox prevents up to nine headache days a month. So if I have 15 headache days, ideally Botox would reduce that to around six. But I had about nine headache days in December. Given the two-week lag time, the Botox was probably doing its job. It just wasn’t working as wonderfully as it did the first time — a placebo effect, perhaps?
For Christmas, almost a month after the injections, Santa brought me my period and a three-day menstrual migraine. I got frustrated and I might have (definitely) cried. I had done my research, I had spoken to several doctors, and I knew this wasn’t a cure, but there was no reasoning with myself. I was disappointed.
Not only did I feel lousy, but I was unprepared to deal with the pain I was in. Without treatment, my migraines all feature the same dull throbbing pain on the right side of my head. With Botox, the pain is different, less dull and on the left side of my head. Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but this switch made for a tough adjustment. I spent three days moping around like a hungover zombie, and then it passed.
Because the Botox paralyzes the muscles in the center of my forehead, my facial expressions stood out more. My eyebrows went from pretty flat to fairly arched. I wasn’t the only one who noticed a change; a colleague of mine asked what was going on with my “Spock brows.” My guess is the Botox traveled a bit, paralyzing more of my forehead and pushing down the front of my eyebrows. It didn’t last long, though, and by mid-January my supreme arches faded away. (I miss them.)
Brows before...
Jordan Davidson
As December came to a close, I was less than confident that January would be any better. I refilled all of my migraine medications and waited. And while I waited, I started going back to the gym, cooking, writing more, and spending time with those I had neglected.
But I had only four migraines in January, and all except one were pretty minor. In February, again, I only had several migraines — and one was triggered by a six-hour flight. For most of the time between January and my third series of injection in April, I’ve been able to wake up without a headache, nausea, or feeling like each strand of hair on my head is on fire. As the Botox wore off, later in March, I was back to about four migraines a week. That’s when I knew it was time for round three.
Botox is not perfect, but it’s as close as I’ve gotten since my migraines began seven years ago. Plus, with my insurance, it’s cheaper than taking pills or injections every time I get a headache. I can confidently say Botox has given me significant relief from my migraines, and I plan on continuing treatment. Still, I can’t help but wish for something even better.
Jordan Davidson
Let seasonal fruits and veggies be the stars of the show.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
With extra dip for spooning over the top. Here's the recipe.
Toast isn't just for breakfast, guys. Here's the recipe.
Don't worry, it uses store-bought pie crust. Here's the recipe.
Simple ways to feel more on top of things.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
You can use dollar store clip boards, and Mod Podge scrapbook paper onto them — here's how.
If you hang them on hooks, you can grab one and take everything on it with you (for example, you could have one where you put all of your bills, then at the end of the week, grab the bills clip board to go pay them).
Photo by Justin Bernhaut . Courtesy of Martha Stewart Living. Copyright © 2008.
While this tutorial is technically for an RV bed, it would work just as well for a boxspring with a little extra cord.
If you don't want the shoes to be visible, add a bedskirt!
And if you're feeling extra motivated, pack a week's worth of lunches on Sunday evening. From here.
Rachel Trevor has been indicted after allegedly swiping the bottles from the planes she worked on.
Shelby County District Attorney / Via scdag.com
Trevor was an employee of Endeavor Air, a regional affiliate of Delta Airlines headquartered in Minnesota, ABC News reported. Trevor operated out of Memphis.
Authorities said that Trevor allegedly would wait until a flight was over, and then sneak the 50-milliliter bottles into her bag. She swiped bottles of rum, gin, and whiskey, among others, they said.
Trevor then allegedly took the bottles home, where she listed them on Craigslist for $1 each. The bottles cost $8 each onboard the plane, investigators said.
"Endeavor Air expects nothing short of the highest standard of integrity from our employees and takes seriously any activity that falls short of that expectation," the spokesperson said.
Trevor is facing charges of theft of property over $10,000, unlawful sale of alcohol, and unauthorized transportation of alcohol and unauthorized storage of liquor for sale.
Alice Monkongllite / BuzzFeed
About a decade ago, when I was 25, I probably should have died from cancer. In the spring of 2004, doctors removed a tumor the size of a Nerf football from my abdomen and, with it, my ovaries. About six months later, after chemotherapy, I had another surgery, this time to remove my uterus and fallopian tubes. I lost my hair and my ability to have children. I gained a sense of the absurd and learned the value of patience. Blame it on chemo, or on my steady state of denial, but my memories of that time come to me in flashes. Here are the moments I remember best:
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
Quick cancer 101: Doctors diagnose cancer in stages 0 to IV. Stage 0 is kind of like pre-cancer. Cells are present, but haven’t spread. Stage IV is basically, well, you know, it’s usually not good. After surgery to remove my tumor, my doctor diagnosed me with Stage III ovarian cancer, which comes with about a 50-50 chance of surviving for the next five years.
One of the most surreal parts of my diagnosis was learning that I had a rare type of tumor called an immature teratoma. Strangely enough, tumors like the one I had contain bits of hair, fingernails, bones, and teeth.
I used to wonder why ovarian cancer couldn’t generate marketing and ad buzz like breast cancer. I mean, some might argue that the official ovarian cancer color (teal!) is superior to breast cancer pink. But then it dawned on me: Breast cancer is big business because there are a ton of survivors. Ovarian cancer can’t drum up that level of support because, I hate to say it, but a lot of people die.
As it turned out, I didn’t have stage III. I had stage I. The pathology lab confirmed it. When my doctor called with the news, I was in the midst of an anxiety-fueled cleaning binge. I said thanks and goodbye, leaned the broom against the windowsill, and stood there, basking in the afternoon light.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
At the time of my diagnosis, I was living in Birmingham, Alabama, and the clinic where I received treatment was in an old stone building in the historic Southside neighborhood. The room where I would sit for hours, watching liquid poison enter my veins, was kind of like a living room, with the addition of nurses and IV bags.
The windows were open, the television blared morning talk shows, and each patient had her choice of seven or eight giant leather recliners. I had a regular seat in the back corner. The clinic shared a parking lot with a health center where they performed abortions.
Each morning, like clockwork, a cluster of protesters would gather to yell insults at the women as they arrived. “Baby killer!” and “Please don’t murder me, Mommy,” seemed like cruel background noise for a bunch of women being treated for gynecological cancers.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
Combine the feeling you have after a draining week at work with the exhaustion of having just run a marathon. Throw in the inertia of depression, douse it all with a bad case of the flu, and we’re getting close to the kind of incredible fatigue I felt throughout chemo.
Mornings were bad because, on top of everything else, I also hadn’t eaten in eight hours. One morning in May, I was alone in the apartment and was determined to take a shower and settle in on the couch. I got out of bed, made it to the bathroom and undressed. Only then did I realize that I had literally drained all of my reserve energy. I sat down on the floor, naked, to assess my options.
Taking a shower was out, because I couldn’t stand up. Wallowing on the floor until my girlfriend came home, eight hours later? Out. The solution that I came up with was that I really needed to eat a peanut butter sandwich. But for that, I had to make it to the kitchen.
Standing up, as I mentioned, wasn’t an option. Putting on my clothes seemed pointless. So I crawled, naked, out of the bathroom, through the living room, into the kitchen. Luckily, it was a small apartment. From the floor, I managed to find the bread, peanut butter, and knife, and assemble a sandwich, which I ate while sitting with my bare butt on the kitchen floor. It tasted great.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
About two weeks into chemo, my hair started falling out. Eyebrow hair, too, and leg hair, underarm hair, eyelashes, pubic hair. All of it. One Saturday morning, I took a shower and more hair than normal circled the drain. My doctor had warned me, so it wasn’t a great shock.
Later that day, my girlfriend and I drove to a drugstore and bought an electric razor, and I called a good friend to tell her we were having a head-shaving party. Back at home, the three of us moved the dining room table out of the way and put a chair in the middle of the room. I sat down and they covered my body like a shroud with a black barber cape.
My friend did the honors, neatly shaving my head from side to side. I was actually kind of thrilled at the prospect of being bald. I was picturing Sinead O’Connor, Sigourney Weaver, Demi Moore. After the cut, I went into the bathroom to take a look. My big brown eyes peered back at me, sad and watery. My skin had yellowed. I didn’t look badass. I looked sick.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
If you drive northeast out of Birmingham on I-59, take exit 134, and hang a right off of Gadsden Highway, you’ll find yourself at Yellow Rose, an establishment that was, in 2004, one of the Southeast’s premier country line-dancing destinations. And what better place to celebrate the birthday of my Dolly Parton-loving, cornbread-eating, y’all-saying best friend than at Yellow (“Yella”) Rose?
Yes, I was in the middle of chemo. But hey, your best friend only turns 26 once. So there I was, bald-headed and sickly, taking in the country folk debauchery around me. The truth is, I don’t think anyone noticed. They were too busy two-stepping in matching sequined outfits and being thrown from the mechanical bull to care.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
When I was sick, I got a lot of mail. Like, actual cards with my name and address on the front. Nearly every day for a year, I received notes from some of my dearest friends and from people I had never met.
I’m normally an active recycler, but I couldn’t bear to part with these cards. As they stacked up by the dozens, I had a visual reminder of all the people out there who cared about me, who wished me well, who prayed for my recovery. Other than my scars, these cards, bound with rubber bands and stored in a cardboard box, are the only artifacts of that time that I’ve kept.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
The belly button is actually a whorl of scar tissue that isn’t easy to cut through. That’s why my seven-inch surgery scar starts at the top of my belly button, wraps around counterclockwise, and descends south. About two-thirds of the way down, it overlaps another, smaller scar from my first surgery, creating a weird little numb, flattened area.
Although those lines are the most visible, my personal favorites are the smaller, fainter ones that mark points on my stomach like directionals on a compass. These three X-shaped little babies indicate the spots where doctors inserted tiny cameras into my abdomen to take a look around. One looks like a faint airplane, flying west.
In the military, some soldiers commemorate what’s called an “alive day,” the anniversary of the day when they escaped death on the battlefield. Some throw a big party, others sit in their cars and cry.
I didn’t risk my life for my country, and I didn’t really “fight” anything. But I do know that every year on April 20, the anniversary of the day that I could have died, I pause to appreciate the people who held me up when I was sick, and the light that comes through my window each morning.
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
Black tie + no shoes = #lifegoals.
OK, so there are way too many accomplished people in this photo.
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
Clemens Bilan / Getty Images
Andreas Rentz / Getty Images
Andreas Rentz / Getty Images
*mouse ears perk up* Did someone say “Disneyland”?
@loyalistlord / Via instagram.com
Although maps are a good keepsake.
@elsuperraton / Via instagram.com
It's not possible to have just one.
@mickeysalbum / Via instagram.com
@karamiadarling / Via instagram.com
They’re cute, they’re fluffy, and they (might) have all the hot goss.
“Everyone is flawed; some of us just have more visible scarring to show for it.”
Jon Premosch / BuzzFeed
Jon Premosch / BuzzFeed
It’s a doggy dog world.
Read it in his voice.
@maggiestanko / Via Twitter: @maggiestanko
@blake_gabler / Via Twitter: @blake_gabler
guek / Via imgur.com
@jcrombleholme / Via Twitter: @jcrombleholme
“Emotions are gross how do I uninstall them?”
