Getting Ready for Bed

I like to listen to comedy CDs and play computer games the last thing at night. It sends me to bed relaxed and happy. So, this last Sunday, Julie turned me on to NPR's Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me! Julie downloads it to her ipod and listens to it while walking the dog. Let me tell you, it is just as good to listen to while playing Mah Jong or Ishido. Click the link, go to "This week's show" and click "Play it" and you've got 45 minutes of material that makes me laugh out loud while the tears run down my face and, every little once in a while, I spit ice water* out of my nose.

Then I open The Map of the US and solve that as my first game of the night. They have solved the problem of Alaska and Hawaii by leaving them out; as an Alaskan, I'd just as soon they leave us out as put us down in the Gulf of California about the size of Ohio.** It takes some practice to get the map right, because it isn't just getting the correct names on the states. It is also knowing where to put them*** and learning that some state's names are so big that when you go to pick up the name of one state, you can get the other. Heading for Utah with Pennsylvania's name isn't going to work. When you have used half the time, the timer line turns red. My goal is to get them all placed while the line is still blue.

Anyway, it isn't anything wild, it is just how I like to get ready for bed.

* I also like to drink ice water last thing at night. I have no idea why, it just tastes good.
** It's no wonder tourists ask us if we take American money!
*** Labeling California at about San Diego works, labeling it further north causes a buzz and an X. Which means you're wrong, even if you are correct.

Using The Scientific MethodIn Daily Life

Once upon a time, I slept like a baby. Would wake up to go to the bathroom, and fall back asleep so fast that I never remembered my head hitting the pillow. And then, well then -- I didn't. One thing and another: apnea, stuffed sinuses that made it impossible to sleep and wear my CPAP machine, restless legs, the odd cramp or two or seventy, and insomnia. One by one, I dealt with each of these things. Sinus surgery, using sleeping pills for a short time to train myself to sleep again, taking the medicine they give to children who wet the bed so I don't have to get up as often, taking coral calcium and 1/4 of a percocet at bedtime for my legs, -- one by one, I picked these problems off. (Even tried doing either coral calcium or percocet and discovered the calcium wasn't what was doing it.) And yet, and yet.

Every week there would be nights when I had trouble getting to sleep. Not insomnia. Eventually I would sleep, and soundly, but just not early enough and therefore not long enough. So, having been raised on the idea that experiment and observation were the solutions to everything, and since I couldn't figure out what to experiment with now, I started keeping a new chart. (The first had followed my various attempts at symptom control.) Discovered I had trouble getting to sleep on time on Saturday, Sunday, and some Tuesday nights.

What could cause that pattern? At first I thought it might be because I have half a 20 ounce Pepsi on Saturday and half on Sunday, in the afternoon, but that didn't explain it because I don't on Tuesday. So, puzzled, I continued with my little chart, figuring eventually I'd see the pattern. And then, last week, on Tuesday it happened again and the light went on. I checked my calendar, and what do you know. On some Tuesdays (supposedly alternating, but sometimes they get canceled) we have a staff meeting at 10:30. Every other work day, I have a large mug of coffee first thing in the morning and drink ice water the rest of the day. On staff-meeting Tuesday, I have a mug when I get in, and another at the meeting. Just enough to wire me.

So, this weekend I drank 7-Up instead of Pepsi, and what do you know. Problem solved. And for staff meetings, I can wait for my morning coffee or I can drink water at the staff meeting or I can have a small cup at 9 and another at 10:30. Maybe I'll be really scientific and try all three and compare the results.

This also allowed me to make an observation on another matter that had peeked my curiosity. If you notice the picture of the plastic bottle of Pepsi, you can see it has a blue cap. Pippin loves these. Almost as soon as I've got the bottle open, he steals the cap and chases it all over the house. The other night he dragged out about eight of them from where ever it is he stashes them. However, when I offer him the caps from V-8 Juice bottles, he ignores them. Is this a matter of color (one is blue, the other orange) or size (the V-8 cap is larger) or something to do with the bottles? Well, the 7-Up bottle didn't have a blue lid, and he snatched that as soon as he could. So, it isn't color. It could still be size or the size and shape of the bottle. I will have to figure out how to test that.

And people wonder when they are going to use the things they learn in school!

In A Nutshell follows.

Creature of Habit

When we first moved to Alaska, we lived on a homestead outside of Fairbanks. Although it had electricity it had no other modern conveniences. So, we had an old black and white portable TV, but there was an outhouse and heat came from a potbelly stove. Getting up to a freezing room in the winter and building up the fire was a way of greeting the day that I had not been familiar with before. I began to build other habits around it. I would pick up old newspapers and grocery bags, open the door of the stove, and throw the trash in to burn. Washing dishes, in winter, started with standing on the log bridge, blowing a hole in the ice with a 30-06, dropping a bucket into the creek, lugging the water into the house, and heating it on top of the stove.

Transportation also had its little adjustments to living in the frozen north. Of course, there wasn't a usable garage, so the car sat out in the weather, even the day it dropped to -58. Notice the electric plug peaking out of the front of this car. That leads to one or more of a number of heaters (engine block, radiator, battery) and you plug it into an outlet when the temperature drops below freezing. Our homestead had an extension cord that ran out the front door. Lucky people had a place to plug in at work; most people didn't. So, you went out and turned your car on every couple of hours, left it running for 15 minutes to a half hour, and then went back out and turned it off.* The other thing that we did to keep those motors running was to add a can of Heat to the gastank every time we filled up. Heat is a gasoline additive that keeps water vapors from freezing in the gas lines.

I seem to make habits, good or bad, and become a slave to them. So, when we moved into town, the first few days, I opened the oven of my electric stove and tossed used paper in. And, although I knew that I now had running water, several times I turned on the faucet, ran a big pot of water, and put it on top of the stove to heat up.

And then there was the summer I went to California to visit. I had borrowed my sister's car, and was filling the gas tank before I returned it. I pulled into the gas station, and although it was over 100 degrees outside, it was dark. To me, dark meant winter. So, when the attendant asked me what I needed, I told him to "fill the tank, throw in a can of Heat, and will you check and tell me why I didn't see any plugs when I took this car out?"

*No one stole it, although there it sat with the engine running. That was partly because Fairbanks was a small town in the 60s and 70s, and partly because there were simply no places to take a stolen car. Only one highway went through the town, everyone recognized almost every car in town, and there were no chop shops.

If Fat Women Die Young . . . .

On my on-line support group, we are discussing women who don't go to the doctor because it doesn't matter why they are there, they get the weight lecture. Woman after woman has posted about times she didn't get medical help because of this or women she has known who avoided doctors for this reason.

My own experience has been that doctors will lecture me about my weight if I come in for a sty. I remember once, going in to see my doctor about a sore throat, and the nurse automatically walking me to the scale.* I have been weighed because I had flu, insomnia, indigestion, a sinus condition, headaches that turned out to be a need for reading glasses, and a variety of other conditions. I have been told that I need to lose weight by doctors who then advised a number of what I now realize were totally screwball ideas (take Malox before each meal, consume only calorie free herb tea until you are at your target weight, eat only protein, eat no protein, take these pills, take those pills, eat only fresh fruit, stay under 800 calories a day), all of which took weight off before they rebounded and put it all plus some back on again. Eventually, I said to hell with it, and stopped dieting and stopped discussing it with doctors and have become very good at giving a new medical practitioner the raised eyebrow and "my weight isn't up for discussion until you can prove to me that you have a method of taking it off that reliably, 100% of the time, does not lead to rebound. A method, in other words, where you don't have to decide that the reason everyone who tries it ends up fatter is because they are weak willed, because no one who tries it regains any of the lost weight."

But, I know from experience, that unless you are as outspoken as I am, if your BMI is higher than the AMA has decreed, you will get the lecture. And you don't have to be my size to get it -- you can be a size 12. Hell, I've heard of women who were size 8 being told they should be size 4 and getting the lecture.

When you know that this unpleasant reminder that you are a failure of a weak willed slob of a woman is going to greet you, why would you ever seek out medical care when you aren't almost dying? And how many women suffer needlessly because they aren't getting the medical care that they need? How many of them are dying early because they didn't catch the cancer when it was manageable or they just got sicker and sicker until it was too late?

*This was early in my life as a non-dieter, and I had explained at my previous visit that I wasn't interested in what the scale said, I didn't own one any longer, I could see in the mirror and by the size (not the number, the amount of fabric involved) of my clothing that I was not a slender woman. This time, instead of standing on the scale and closing my eyes, I asked, "and how does my weight effect my sore throat?" I have to say, I have a wonderful doctor and she has a wonderful assistant, because I am only taken to the scale once a year, for my annual physical, and I am never told what the number is, if it has gone up or down, or scolded because of it.

The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club

For well over a decade now I have been having breakfast every Saturday morning with a group of friends I call The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club. Originally there were two of them, Harold and Pete, who I think ate breakfast together every morning. In those days I worked with at-risk parents who either had their children in foster care or were in danger of the state stepping in. I worked one-on-one helping them to improve their parenting skills, and on Saturdays I gave a parenting class. Since I was the only one in my agency working on Saturdays, I would get into the office at 7:00, put in an hour on files from the previous day's home visits, and then treat myself to breakfast at BaCar's (pronounced Baker's) when they opened at 8. I would usually get there a few minutes before they opened, and Harold and Pete would also be waiting. We would nod. We would smile. One morning we chatted until the doors opened. Soon, we were exchanging comments between tables. Before long, they invited me to join them and I never left. After a few years, Pete came in one morning with a woman (Jann) and then we invited a woman who had always been at another table when we were there (Christina) who happened to be Jann's boss, and a couple of months later Jann's mother (Barbara) moved to Juneau. Then Pete and Jann got married and eventually they stopped coming (Jann likes to sleep in on Saturdays), but Christina and Harold and Barbara and I continue to meet every Saturday morning.

For a good number of years, I walked there and back -- BaCar's wasn't far from my apartment or my office and although in those days I rented a car for home visits two days a week, I turned it in Friday afternoon. Then I injured my foot and Harold started picking me up and dropping me off at my office. Somewhere in there, I changed jobs and was no longer renting a car and so couldn't pick up groceries when I had it and at just that time, I was on a walker with sciatica for seven months and Harold started taking me to A & P after breakfast and the Care-A-Van would pick me up after my shopping. Then Harold's step-dad began to go downhill and Harold moved in with him and wasn't sure that he could come every week and so Christina started picking me up. Now Christina picks me up on Saturdays and drops me at A & P (which is downtown and near the restaurant and my apartment) after, except for about once every two months when Harold takes me to Fred Meyer (which is out in the Valley and close to where Harold now lives) and I do a huge shopping for non-perishables (48 cans of cat food, 12 bottles of Hot and Spicy V-8 among many other things) (A & P is horribly expensive and I buy an absolute minimum there) and Harold takes me home and carries this great weight of stuff up my stairs for me and empties this huge bag of cat litter into a container that Pippin can't get into and spread about and whatever else I need. And on the way home, we stop at the dry cleaner and I exchange dirty clothes for clean ones. And today we stopped at Christina's to see how the work she is doing on her new deck and garden is coming along and at the cherry stand.

And so, when I read something like this, I truly appreciate these staunch and loving friends. I am amazed at how lucky I am. Not only because of Harold and Christina. I really have a good number of friends who are prevented from helping me only by my not asking them. I still have Kate after all these years, who took care of me in California last summer for a week after I had surgery even though it meant packing my wound and she is squeamish. And Robert, a dear friend from my second high school, and his wife Fran who drove for six hours to visit me while I was recovering at my mother's. And Jane, another dear friend from my second high school, who drove to Sacramento in the horrible heat to see me.

And one day I will tell you about my family and the blessing that they are, but they deserve a post of their own, just as The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club does.

It Boils, My Blood Just Boils

I did warn you. I did say that I'm opinionated. Even then, I managed to be calm for the first two days of my blog. I suppose I could have managed longer, if only I didn't read. So, here are three things I have read in the last hour (Lordy, Lordy, all at once! All at once!) that have brought out the real me.

The first is here . So, now we have a vaccine for cervical cancer, and the religious right doesn't approve of it because the cause of cervical cancer is an STD. And I quote:

"I would be opposed to making it mandatory. They need to give people the choice to do it or not, not force it on us,"

****

Prestwich said. "I don't live my life in such a way that I am concerned about STDs. And I don't worry about it for my daughters."

How can anyone believe that her daughters are immune to STDs? Never heard of rape? Never heard of straying husbands? This -- oh, Gawd, there is no word for what this woman is -- this Maxine Prestwich person would rather take the chance that her daughters could die of cervical cancer than have them immunized for an STD. Because, we know, that if they are immunized, they might just not be afraid of sex and they might just have some. Apparently, anything to protect the virginity of young girls and women. It's ok to lie to them about condoms, to not give them information about birth control and sexuality, to risk their exposure to cervical cancer!

And the second is here, where we discover that the same religious right are angry at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for making charitable contributions to Planned Parenthood. And, again, I quote:

Warren Buffett's new philanthropic alliance with fellow billionaire Bill Gates won widespread praise this week, but anti-abortion activists did not join in, instead assailing the two donors for their longtime support of Planned Parenthood and international birth-control programs.

***

"The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world," said the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, a Roman Catholic priest who is president of Human Life International.

***

Referring to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi death camp doctor, Euteneuer said Buffett "will be known as the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy unless he repents."

Yes, God forbid that women in third world countries be given reproductive freedom! Just because being able to control the number and spacing of pregnancies is the single most important thing in empowering women, it must be opposed. Pro-life they call themselves. More like enforced birth if you ask me. What next? Take away the vote? Return to chastity belts? In my never humble opinion, on this one, if you don't got a uterus, you don't got anything to say!

And finally, on a related (in that it's about a woman's health) but separate (in that it isn't to do with sex) note. A story about a woman with a 32 pound cyst being given diet pills. Because, we all know that fat is the issue and the only issue! This reminds me of when my friend Robert (like me 64 years old and therefore, no longer adolescent thin like when we were in high school, but who, unlike me, has never been overweight a day in his life) went to the doctor because he had dropped 30 pounds without changing his eating or exercise habits and he was worried. When he got on the scale, the nurse congratulated him for the loss! So did the doctor. Here is a man without a weight problem who suddenly and without discernable cause drops 30 pounds and they congratulate him! Finally, he insisted so vehemently that they test him to find out what was wrong, and what do you know! Diabetes! We are so fatphobic in this country that a very serious condition would have been missed if the patient hadn't had better sense than the doctor. Are we nuts?