Examined Lives

Getting into the holiday spirit ...

... has been challenging these days. I don't know about you, but life feels over-full, and not always in a good way, on our end. 

The good: A Thanksgiving made very happy by visits from family. We were packed like sardines in our apartment, but feeling lucky to reconnect. Also, happy, sassy kids still blissfully unaware of the world's woes. And jobs. We are grateful, indeed.

The bad: CityDad has had a pay cut this year, and freelance jobs that supplemented our steady incomes are sparser. A few friends are facing health challenges; one's negotiating a divorce. And with the teetering economy still malingering like a bad guest who knows no better, it's gotten so overwhelming for so many.   Maybe that's why movies like Up in the Air, which, among many other plots, chronicles the travails of the laid-off and disenfranchised, are hitting home among critics and viewers. (I saw it; it's phenomenal.)

 

But those are actors, and there's nothing like hearing how it is from those in the trenches right now. The New York Times has collected videos from ten Americans who've been laid off and they are stunningly affecting. Just watch. The cost that this recession has exacted is palpable. Never mind figuring out how to pay for presents this year; one father speaks of watching his kids playing sports and, instead of just enjoying himself, praying they don't get injured because there's not much more they can do without insurance but put a band-aid or duct tape on it.

So what to do now? Not really sure. We're 10 days away from Christmas, and maybe the only thing to do is to put one foot in front of another and, in the words of a singing teacher I met years ago, "show up." Who knows? There may be a party, not another trying encounter, just around the corner. We all could use a party.

—CityMom

 

Finally, (almost) meat-free

Finally, almost a year to the day when I posted about my angst over still being a meat-eater, I am finally, almost, meat-free. I say almost because I'm still eating fish, and because, over the past month, I have slipped, to the tune of two meatballs and a chicken leg.

How did this come about?  Was it the noxious factory farming?  The animal cruelty?  The risk of e-coli in my hamburger?  Nooooooooooooooo...it was pure selfishness.  I've read quite a bit lately about the negative health effects of consuming meat, particularly concerning how it relates to the risk of developing dementia. As I may have mentioned, my mom is suffering from early-onset dementia; whatever the gene that causes that is, if I have it, I would far prefer that it lay dormant. Eating fish, on the other hand, reduces your dementia risk; hence my refusal to give up eating those poor beasts.

But that's not all. Once I got started, I found a surprising amount of evidence that the huge amounts of meat modern humans eat may be doing us in. T. Colin Campbell's The China Study lays out how consuming animal products, particularly the casein in milk, stimulates the grown of cancer cells in lab studies. Dean Ornish, M.D., talks about how a very low-fat plant-based diet, combined with exercise and stress control, can reverse coronary artery blockages and diabetes. The Dude constantly struggles with borderline high-cholesterol and blood pressure, despite running six miles daily, and needs some heavy dietary support on the home front to stay healthy.

So, goodbye, blood and guts and veins and marrow. As you may tell, I've gotten this far through a goodly bit of psych-out. It was opening a package of rotten chicken meat that jump-started this latest effort, and thinking about that moment still works.  As does remembering what my friend S. says: "I wouldn't bite into my cat. Why would I eat another animal?"

I haven't even begun to address how I feel about eating animals morally, because I've simply never gotten that far, number one, and because boy, that's a slippery slope. I've stopped buying leather, but according to an editorial in The New York Times today, there are animal parts in all kinds of stuff, from wine to the little pads on my lady-razors.  Egads!  I still feel, somehow, that I need an out every now and then. I can't imagine not eating what a hostess serves as a dinner party, for example, or turning down my sister-in-law's plump pork dumplings. Hypocrisy? Perhaps. Similarly, I'm not demanding that my kids stop eating meat, though I'm gently weaning them away from meat in their lunches.  After all, they may have the dementia gene(s), too.

Right now, I'm still fairly clueless about what and how to eat this way, hence the ridiculous amount of   packaged food I'm eating; I simply could not survive without the Indian food packets from Trader Joe's, and canned chickpeas. I also know my way around a stir-fry; kale, above, is fabulous with peanut oil and a generous amount of garlic cloves.

The few slips I have had have been out of desperate hunger at the end of a long day. I know packaged goods aren't healthy or green, but until I get a few good lentil recipes under my belt, they will have to do.

-BurbMom

My own bizarre health care tale

There are plenty of scary health scare stories circulating out there vis-a-vis our proposed health care reform. This one went blind without coverage; this one will go blind if we change our current system. And so forth.

I've already added my own two cents here -- $751.23, actually, the amount we pay each month for a family of four, as both The Dude and I freelance. That covers hospitalization and related tests and a stipend for sick and well-care visits. Everything else, we pay for should we need them, including drugs; rehabilitation; home nursing if needed; mental health care. On top of the monthly premium, which is about 1/3 of what we pay for our mortgage and taxes each month, and is more than we spend on food and transportation. 

Oh, and it's roughly twice what we put away monthly for the kids' college fund.

So, I get sick.I think it's a cough and I'll get over it, but it doesn't go away. It ebbs and flows; some days better, some days worse. I have other stuff to attend to, like kids with their own coughs, and deadlines. Finally, I'm Sick. You know. When you just can't function anymore.

I go to the doctor, who diagnoses a bad bronchitis. We discuss the small possibility of pneumonia, and she says, given my health care policy, that we should perhaps hold off on getting a chest x-ray for now, because that would be forever on my health care record. The takeaway message:  It could imperil my current and future insurance coverage.  Apparently, if you actually get sick, the insurance company doesn't have to pay. Come again?

She also gives me drugs (suitable for both bronchitis and pneumonia) for free. Expensive drugs, drugs that would have cost me some $200 in co-pays on my former employer's plan. I imagine they might have cost some $400 out of pocket. I'm happy, because I really need that money to buy a new computer, because I need it to earn my living and contribute to the hopeful renewal of our glorious nation's economy.

But wait! Who's paying for those free drugs? Do pharmas really have that much profit, to give so many samples for free? Because this isn't the first time I've gotten freebies, and I know some of my other freelancer friends have as well. Or are they taking the costs of these samples out somewhere else, like raising prices for people who can afford them even less than I?

As for the chest x-ray -- I think we're test-happy in this country, and it's one reason for the ballooning health care costs. When my neighbor is told to get an MRI for a stomache, you know something's wrong. But three days from now, if my chest still hurts, what next? Do I wait it out a little more, or risk potential bankruptcy from having no insurance?

~BurbMom

Now will you believe us about BPA?

CityMom and I have a lot in common, as you can tell, but one of our favorite topics over the years has been a shared vehement hatred for bisphenol A, a chemical used to make plastic resin. We have written about it and interviewed researchers, and knew that BPA, which is used to line metal food cans and to make baby bottles, refillable water containers and cheap plastic tableware, makes hormones go wonky, causing all sorts or developmental and fertility problems and cancers in scores of animal studies.  (I fully suspect it will turn out to have been an environmental trigger for autism.)

For a long while, my friends thought I was a bit bonkers over the issue. I took every opportunity to preach about it, first of all, and second of all, it was just too incredible to believe. The lifestyle changes to avoid BPA are daunting. You don't eat canned food?  None?  Not even beans? You want me to buy - glass! - baby bottles? 

This, in part, because the FDA has been stalling on this for years thanks to steadfast lobbying and a blandishment crusade by the chemical companies.  But I think, finally, that BPA's time has come. The Endocrine Society, a consortium of doctors, had its annual meeting this week, and presented numberous shocking new studies. First of all, humans are regularly exposed to more BPA than the FDA now considers safe (and the FDA has given the chemical a lot of leeway). It has been linked to abnormal heart rhythms.

Oh, and exposure during pregnancy causes a fertility defect in offspring, a permanent change in their DNA that affects how the body responds to estrogen. Anybody out there who has shelled out loads of cash on fertility treatments, or still is, should be as outraged as I am.

The Society also released a statement, its first ever, saying that the "precautionary principle" should apply to the use of BPA. This means that, while the jury may still be out on whether BPA is truly bad, or how much is bad, there's enough info out there to act, and act now.  

Canada has banned BPA.  Minnesota has, and Chicago. The time has come for BPA's nationwide death knoll. And my official release from the loony bin.

~BurbMom

Following a night of drunken yoga...

So, I'm sitting around with a few friends unwinding on a Friday night. One of my buddies happens to be a yoga teacher, and I confessed I had started practicing again, and what a horror show it had been. 

I also mentioned that one of the reasons I had stopped practicing was that everyone else in my class had advanced to handstands. I, on the other hand...I just could never do it.  As soon as I got ready to kick up into the handstand, my legs turned into watery noodles; I had visions of my arms splaying, my head crashed to the ground, vertebrae shattered.

"Let me see your handstand," yoga friend said.

"What? I just told you -- it scares the crap out of me."

"You can do it," she said (rather severely, I thought).  "C'mon.  Let me see it."

Wondering at my own idiocy and bravado -- and fueled by a couple of glasses of wine -- I brought my mat close to the wall.

I did realize at that point that trying this pose, at my nonexistent level of fitness and kangaroo-like belly pouch, would be foolish; plus, my freelancer health insurance is rather deficient when it comes to crippling maladies. I did, though, with her help, push into a freestanding headstand, something I've never done before.  I held it.  And then a standing backbend, walking my hands down the wall, with Yoga Friend coaching me inch by inch.

It was a breakthrough; it was utterly thrilling; and it changed forever my view of myself as someone who has no upper arm strength and who simply can't do those kinds of things.  I have seen the world, and it is upside down.

Props to the teacher, too, for not taking no for an answer, and for teaching me that following instruction properly goes a long way towards achieving a pose.

I'm not one of those people who gets all preachy about yoga being life-changing and all, though I do think everybody should dabble in it at least, particularly as we age, to keep ourselves flexed and strong. Now, though, I'm starting to think it may be a true eye-opener for me.  Talk about letting go of fear.

Photo:  Fitsugar.com. 

Sleep deprivation is no fun ...

I know, because I'm sleep-deprived. Between work demands and a child throwing up (one of the joyful benefits of parenthood) and my need to catch up on my favorite show, House, MD, I've been subsisting on six hours a night for the last three nights. Bad idea.  

According to this CBS Early Show report, new research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that lack of sleep adversely affects our health, suppresing our all-important immune system. It also causes high blood pressure and anxiety and inhibits blood sugar control. 

We're supposed to get at least seven hours a night, and sadly, I'm not getting that these days. I'm partly to blame: With so much to juggle, I've taken to working late into the night so I can think in relative peace. (Kids underfoot don't help with the concentration.) But it's not just that; I worry so much about falling behind I use the late evenings to get ahead. Only, how much am I getting ahead if lack of sleep is leaving me behind, health-wise?

So what to do with the likes of me? Acupuncture and relaxation techniques may help, but honestly, I think I just have to—and if you've ever read this blog before, you know it's something I've struggled with—triage my life and set priorities. I'm sure I have to simplify my existence somehow—organizing my home, which I did this Sunday, does some of the trick (but more about that later)—and put sleep first. 

As I write this, it reads 11:18 pm on the cable box clock. Oh, the irony. So I'm packing it in for the night. I am woman, hear me snore.

Watch CBS Videos Online

—CityMom

Music doesn't just soothe the savage beast ...

... it keeps him healthy, too. According to CNN, playing or listening to music opens up the blood vessels, allowing blood to course through more freely. It's an excellent de-stressor—a good thing since stress can tax both the heart and the immune system. (Dr. Mike Miller of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore says music "gives us an overall feeling of good, well-being -- a sense of euphoria in some cases.") The only caveat? You must actually like the music you listen to, since stress levels actually rise if you pick something you can't stand.

I'd always sort of guessed this to be true, since nothing snaps me into a better mood faster than putting on music I can dance to. Except, perhaps, running. Better yet, running with the iPod. But it's gratifying to know research proves it. Even more gratifying is finding out that my children's music lessons are actually fending off stress and illness. It makes the push-pull over daily practice seem totally worth the trouble. (All that cajoling is a serious pain in the ass.) 

We already know that music helps improve certain brain functions, especially those to do with math. And the discipline they acquire from playing everyday totally helps them in other ways. But knowing it keeps the kids happy and healthy is the best part. 

—CityMom

(Photo from Aramstudios.com)

You know you're out of shape when...

They say your body changes every seven years. It hasn't been quite that long since I took stock, but the first four of the last seven years were taken up with childbirth, recovery, and then supa-dupa recovery with Pilates or yoga three times a week, with the result that my bod was so fine, I hardly recognized it anyway. (I'm not bragging -- it's a fact that any butt-kickin' Pilates teacher worth his or her salt is going to whip you into shape. It works.)  

Then I stopped. I could blame working almost full-time, or the lack of parking at my old studio that made getting to classes ridiculously stressful. But I think it's just my failing. I quit when I'm on top of my game. (Fodder for another post when I get the nerve.)

I lied to myself, of course. Told myself I was still fairly fit from vigorous obsessive housecleaning and the occasional walk to school. I ate pretty much what I wanted, and lord knows drank enough. Results: Predictable, and so drastic and horrifying that I'm marking this as Change Year. Sagging shoulders, thighs gone condo, a complete lack of core strength, and a belly that lays next to me when I sleep like a warm puppy, to paraphrase Anne Lammott.  Oh, and I've gained about two pounds a year over the past four.

Of course, regular exercise has other benefits than toning -- reducing the risk of heart disease and breast cancer being among them.  Important stuff.  It time to get back into the game.  Beyond time. 

So, I chose a Level 1 yoga class at 8:15 a.m. this morning (heaven knows why) and managed to drag my arse to the studio on a half-cup of strong tea. Despite not being able to squeeze into my leotards and hence wearing an old t-shirt, I was probably one of the two youngest people in the class, and everyone was using props -- bolsters, blankets -- so I was feeling confident. Piece of cake!

I was a travesty. Knees and vertebrae popping and crackling like that hideous breakfast cereal. I swear other students could hear me as I labored to do the most basic twist. They sure could hear me gasping as I attempted to hold a down dog for longer than 30 seconds. I couldn't sustain my breath long enough for a decent om, let alone any regular pattern.  Even more bizarre, I had lost the ability to relax on even the smallest level. I couldn't unkink my wired nerves enough to plant my feet or sit still in lotus. Sad.

Humbled, I am going back next week -- and I will try never to backslide again. Frankly, at my age I can't afford to.  Because taking stock in seven years without having done regular physical activity is too scary to contemplate.

~BurbMom

Don't worry about me being happy

The tiny kingdom of Bhutan was in the papers again yesterday for the concept of gross national happiness, a measure concocted by its former king. It's a philosophy that's shaping up to be an antidote to pretty much the rest of the world's "complete dedication to economic development"—a devotion that's unspooling into a tangled economic mess nowadays. Bhutan's position is revolutionary. According to the article, "Under a new Constitution adopted last year, government programs — from agriculture to transportation to foreign trade — must be judged not by the economic benefits they may offer but by the happiness they produce." Imagine a world where the goal is to make everyone happy, not just the monied or powerful few. 

Bhutan aside, I have been thinking about happiness. Not about how to get it, but how we seem quite intent on attaining it. Intent to the extent that it has become a pursuit along the same lines as, say, being thin and looking young and getting rich. We will be happy, damn it! 

But what's wrong with that? We should want to be happy. And of course we do! But what I'm talking about, though, is this seeming drive to be happy all the time, to the point where melancholy, ambivalence or ennui—you know, the stuff that makes us human—is seen as failure. This pressure to be happy. We will be happy, damn it! Don't worry, BE happy! According to Common Ground, we've equated happiness with living a life devoid of negative emotions. Got dumped? Slap a smile on your mug, get out there and meet someone new! Credit card woes got you down? Be glad you have a roof over your head! "But, when we suppress the negative emotions," says the article, "we also suppress our ability to feel the positive emotions, to feel happiness and joy." 

So what's the answer? Writer Richard Schoch suggests redefining happiness so it doesn't simply mean having a smile plastered on our faces no matter what life throws us. He writes, "Lasting and profound happiness is the active orientation of your life towards meaning, purpose and value. It's a reflection upon the character of your life as a whole. This kind of happiness is strong enough to withstand misfortune and does not depend upon good fortune. It isn't about feeling good, it's about being good."

I say it's about striving for balance and feeling comfortable in one's skin. It's about being mindful (there's that word again), aware of our impact on others and on the planet and tapping into our need to do right by ourselves and others. Schoch summarizes Aristotle's view on happiness as this: Flourishing in the art of living. That seems about right. To live well is to, well, live.

—CityMom

(Photo from Politics of Well-Being.)

Middle age: Time to rock and roll!

I've seen a movement starting among my buddies lately, and it's something extremely cool: Folks in their late 30's to mid-40s set are busting out in a big way. Here's a brief wrapup of what my posse is doing:

* Travelling to India and learning to cook the cuisine back at home -- no easy task.

* Losing weight (17 pounds so far! in three months!), adopting an almost completely new and healthy dietary lifestyle, and running a 5K next week. I'll give you a hint who this is, too:  First name "The."  Last name "Dude."  I'm jealous.

*Starting a film production company with a glorious documentary idea. (Another hint here: City. Mom.)

* Taking serious tennis lessons. Finally exercising regularly and training for a marathon. (This is a husband-and-wife team.)

* Adopting a child of another race.

*Taking fascinating courses at One Day University (no credits, no grades) - just to learn something new.

*Falling in love, the sweepingly romantic and overwhelming kind, and moving to Cleveland.

*Starting a smashingly successful travel site with a good idea, one partner and relentless hard work.

*Finally trying oysters. (This was my mother. Not quite the age group for this piece, but still -- way to go, Mom.)

For many folks, reaching middle age used to trigger a so-called crisis.  Either that's changed, or we are learning to funnel our fears of old age into more productive outlets. Or there are just too damn many  choices these days, so it takes us decades to figure out who we really are and what we want. Or we're so old nothing scares us anymore. 

Me, well, I adopted two cats. Uh, finished my basement. Gave up coffee. These count but for a little. Am dealing with middle-aged things like parental illness, wills and homeowners' insurance. But I draw inspiration from all of you. I'm readying myself for the Big Leap. 

I keep thinking of my roommate way back, a medical student, who had a 42-year-old classmate. That's apparently not unusual; a search easily uncovers tales of med students in their 50's.

Stay tuned.

~BurbMom

Photo:  Gordon Donovan