An Analogy from the New Editor

Today the new editor and I and our boss had a meeting. We talked about ways to get more papers coming our way. We talked about things we could do to prove to the scientists/authors that the service we provide has value. The new editor said, "We don't want them to think submitting a paper to us is like going to the dentist."

I thought that was a great analogy, and I told him so. People who think in analogies impress me so.

Wow, Depression Packs a Punch

I apologize for the depressing, “woe is me” entry below. I deleted it from my list of posts, but it’s still there. I posted yesterday in a moment of weakness.

Today’s a better day. Have my hormones evened out? I wonder. I talked for 30 minutes with a woman at work this morning who helped me a lot. She’s a PhD-level biologist and said that she is going through menopause now and last week in a meeting, she just started crying. She said thank goodness she was with people she knows and has worked with a long time, all biologists, who, she said, “realize that we’re all just a mixture of chemicals.”

That’s a good way of looking at it: we’re just a mix of chemicals, and mine aren’t reacting well together right now.

Mark and I will meet with the doctor to see if there’s another option besides clomid—since I’m not ovulating anyway. I mean, there’s no use taking it every month (expensive, not covered by insurance) if it’s supposed to make me ovulate but doesn’t and I suffer the terrible side effect of being moody.

The woman I spoke with this morning said she knows of women who’ve tried to have children and were unable, and now they are living a pretty good life with a loving husband, a nice cabin in the woods, vacations—because children are expensive. Her point was, it’s fine either way; I’ll live a good life either way. I’m determined to.

No Baby on the Way

Today I found out I’m not pregnant.

I’m still not ovulating.

Depressing.


Last month was my first month on Chlomid at 50 mg. Since I didn’t ovulate, as evidenced by my low, low progesterone level measured at day 23 of my cycle, Dr. Busacco doubled my dosage.

Even at 100 mg I think I didn’t ovulate. The results of the test of my blood taken Monday will tell. If my progesterone level is 10 or above (unknown unit) then I likely ovulated. I think I didn’t because my cycle was short again (though a day longer than the last two months) and my basal body temperature, which I’m recording every morning, did not stay above 98 degrees more than six days, when it should be that high for 10 to 14 days.

Is it in God’s plan for us to have a baby?

Please pray for me—if you feel comfortable doing that.

It All Began with a Burp

Mark and I’d been dating a month or so when I asked him to a family dinner at Mom’s house. After dinner, Mom asked me to go out to her truck to get something she’d forgotten to bring in. So I walked out to the dark garage, opened up the driver’s-side door to the truck and was searching around when I let out a big burp, a testament to the meal I’d just eaten.

I found what I was after so closed the truck door—and Mark was standing right there. I was so embarrassed since I’d just belched so loudly and it reverberated off the four walls in the closed garage.

I apologized and excused myself over and over, and Mark said to me, “I don’t care what you did. You can do anything you want in front of me.”


Wow, no guy had ever said that to me, and I never felt like I could do just anything in front of any guy I’d ever dated before.

Little happenings, beginning with him telling me I could burp—or worse—in front of him, that could be overlooked on their own but couldn’t be ignored in culmination, convinced me he was “The One.”

Four months later, on my birthday, I caught him by surprise and asked him to marry me. July will mark eight years.

What to Do with Donuts

You all know I work as an editor, right? The nature of the job is "hurry up and wait." Last week, this week, and next I was, am, and will be in "hurry up" mode. For about the entire month of January I was in "wait" mode and while at work wrote some great essays for my blogs (see www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com about Redwoods National Park. I wrote that at work one day.) So until things ease up at work, I'll post essays from years past. The following one is from the column I wrote last year. Maybe you'll get some ideas.


What to Do with Donuts

At work you receive a memo announcing a meeting Wednesday morning. The last line of the memo reads, “Breakfast will be provided.” You are happy with that since you know eating breakfast is a healthy habit and your first step to weight loss. (See Breakfast Boon [previous blog entry] for a list of benefits from eating breakfast.) Eating at work will allow you to sleep in a little the morning of the meeting.

Wednesday morning you sashay into the conference room, all bright eyed and perky, thanks to the extra 10 minutes of shut-eye. When you see the box of donuts—what’s supposed to pass for breakfast. You deflate.

You resist temptation and take a seat at the end of the conference table, as far away as possible from the sweet, sinful pastries lying wait in the center.

Then what happens?

After an hour of PowerPoint presentations, overhead slides and endless discussion, you…

Scenario 1
…are so hungry you can’t concentrate, so you get up and politely reach between Terry and Susan and grab a napkin and a custard filled, chocolate-iced piece of heaven, which you take back to your end-of-the-table seat. Turns out you eat the sweet so quickly, without ever setting it down, you didn’t need the napkin after all. Well, maybe to dry your fingers after you licked them clean.

Scenario 2
…take a long drink of water trying to quiet your stomach. You’re so hungry and it’s growling so loudly, that it’s nearly disrupting the meeting. When the meeting lets out, you plan to take your lunch break early and go to McDonalds and get an egg mcmuffin if they’re still serving breakfast, or a chicken or fish sandwich if they’ve switched to the lunch menu. You’ll pick up a salad to take back to the office for an afternoon snack because you know eating lunch so early will inevitably leave you hungry in the early afternoon.

While planning what and when to eat, you missed the last five minutes of what Bill was saying. You hope he doesn’t ask for your opinion. You’re so hungry.

Scenario 3
…excuse yourself and go get the apple you packed.

Scenario 3 is the healthiest answer.

Scenario 1 happens to all of us at one point or another. Hopefully you have packed a healthy lunch and snacks and can cut back on your calorie intake at dinner too so that the fat and calories from the donut you scarfed in the meeting won’t bear ill effects and you won’t feel guilty. Instead of the custard filled pastry, a cake donut—or anything not filled with something else—is a healthier choice.

Scenario 2 is OK too. We should all try drinking water first when hunger pangs hit, instead of going straight for food because we may be thirsty—not hungry at all. But denying yourself a morning meal, even if it’s a donut, leads to big calories later, like the egg mcmuffin you planned to eat if you got to McDonalds in time for breakfast, or the fried fish or chicken sandwich you’d have if the restaurant had switched to its lunch menu.

So that you won’t make any food decisions “willy-nilly,” packing is always the best option. Again, packing your lunch and healthy snacks—yogurt, string cheese and wheat crackers, a piece of fruit with nuts—is always the best option.

Another good option is asking the organizer of the meetings to provide fruit, yogurt, and whole wheat bagels for breakfast at future meetings. A satisfied, well-fed workforce is better than a trans-fats filled one, functioning on a sugar buzz.

A Boon for Breakfast Eaters

My Lost Summer: the blog I started in order to promote My Lost Summer: a memoir. Six months into keeping this blog, I realized how boring it was with every post having to do with my book. Since July 2006, this blog has simply been a collection of unrelated essays. Well, related in that they have something to do with me, and I do try to keep them at least tangentially related to My Lost Summer: a memoir. However, nothing has particularly moved me to write lately—and I write best when I am passionate or at least moved my something. So, until somebody pisses me off or does something surprisingly kind, enjoy this article that was run in my column last year (having to do with health & fitness).

Be healthy!

The first—and easiest—step you should take towards becoming more healthy is so, so simple; it’s eating breakfast. Breakfast eaters get myriad benefits including
*a revved up metabolism started early so that it burns the maximum number of calories to fuel your activities
*fewer total calories consumed throughout the day
*an increased leptin output.

What’s leptin? Leptin is a hormone that suppresses appetite. Eating a significant meal early in the day ensures our bodies’ leptin production, says Meg Jordan, Ph.D., R.N.—as reported to First, September 2003. The book Fit Not Fat at 40-Plus: The Shape-Up Plan That Balances Your Hormones, Boosts Your Metabolism, and Fights Female Fat in Your Forties-And Beyond has more of Dr. Jordan’s thoughts on leptin’s influence on appetite.

Since leptin suppresses appetite, it follows that those of us who eat breakfast would take in fewer calories throughout the day. In fact, researchers at the University of Texas, El Paso, studied the food diaries of 586 men and women and determined that the more food people ate in the morning, the fewer calories they consumed in an entire day. So eat up early—though what we eat for breakfast may affect what we eat later on.

That’s right. Your first step to losing weight—eating breakfast—is not as simple as just popping any convenience food into your mouth. Eating refined carbohydrates like sugary cereals, toasted white bread, waffles, or bagels, will likely begin an overeating cycle. Instead, opt for complex carbs, proteins, and fats. Whole wheat toast with peanut butter and a banana, say, or a bowl of high-fiber cereal with low-fat milk and blueberries. Both options are quick to get you out the door and on your way to starting your day.

Feeding yourself a healthy breakfast of complex carbs, proteins and fats should prevent your feeding the vending machine any money before lunch, making you thinner and your change purse fatter.