Along with a cold for me, comes insomnia. I could turn to my tea-drinking as a source of my body not shutting down, but I drink caffeine-free peppermint tea. I’m in the eye of the storm of this cold, where my throat remains on fire, where my nose requires a soft tissue, where my body demands layers. I’ve watched season 3 of Broadchurch (highly recommended, Olivia Colman and David Tennant ever a dream), I’ve re-organized my holiday mailing list, I’ve taken numerous hot showers. I putter around my apartment, although thankfully, not muttering. I watch the news, riveted to the fire in Los Anegeles, the frightened animals, the views of the blackened skies, trading texts with my friends, “Are you okay?” I enjoy matzoh ball in chicken broth soup. I do all of this during the part of my circadian rhythm that is accustomed to all of this doing, to being awake. However, I want to be sleeping during my graveyard shift. And yet, and yet, and yet. The cold defies what I truly need. And so what I have had is an hour sleep, that came as the sun rose. Woken by the natural body tug to make The Teenager her school lunch and feed the dog. Oh, how I look forward to feeling healthy again. For that means I will finally have a solid nights worth of sleep.

Cecile Richards: “I think it’s important that we do share our stories and that we don’t let this repeat for our daughters and for another generation.”

Roxane Gay: “When I was going on the academic job market, worrying about the campus interview, my friend Matt Seigel told me to just be myself because otherwise, if I got hired as the person I was pretending to be, I would have to keep up that pretense for the rest of my career. He was absolutely right about being myself, for better and worse.”

Rashida Jones: “I’m goofy. I like to sort of poke fun at myself. I’m somewhere between hyperfeminine and interested in products, and then also bookish and not that. I can be both those semi-contradictory things.”

The link between birth control and breast cancer is real, not that you doubted that for a moment.

Are we not nice anymore?

Sex toys, Star Wars edition. Yes. Star Wars Sex Toys.

And now have a laugh with Ali Wong.