Sick and single.

The one real problem with being sick is that I have to go out, while sick, and get my own medicine, my own things I need.... Bleah.

Otherwise I quite like not having to worry about bothering people with my coughing, or having to take care of other sick people while I feel like cr*p.

It just would be nice sometimes to be able to have someone to send out or to make phone calls while I feel like death warmed over.... I don't like driving and searching for the right meds while I feel dizzy and like I'm going to pass out....

And it would be nice to have someone bring me tea while I cough my lungs out.

Or go buy an expectorant when my sinus infection turns into a post-nasal drip and starts settling in my lungs....

But other than that, I like being single and sick.

Disability awareness and understanding....

I've recently been reading a fantastic blog called Love That Max. And its made me think in some ways about my growing up with a hearing impairment, but also my experiences working with differently-abled kids when I was younger.

I worked at a summer camp with a kid named James. James was born with half a brain. He couldn't talk, but he had some amazing qualities. He had a wicked sense of humor, and even though he couldn't walk well, he would create his own games with the other kids....but we did have to correct the other kids when they called him a baby, "no, he's your age, he just hasn't been growing as fast as you". But the telling thing was when I'd go back to the house and talk about his good qualities with my relatives. Because they were always saying "Well, you know, he's never going to get better, he's never going to improve, yadda, yadda, yadda" and that pissed me off. Not because I thought James was magically going to transform into a tall, sturdy child, but because I was talking about his positive qualities, and they mistook it as something else.

I also worked at a summer camp in MD with hearing-impaired youngsters. That was unique for me and the kids. It was good for them to see someone older with a hearing impairment, something I really had not had, growing up. And in terms of my learning, I was glad (mostly) to have been mainstreamed, although I wished there had been some adaptations made for me... it would have made all the difference in high school if I'd been able to get help with my note-taking (trying to hear, lip-read, understand, and take notes all at the same time? urgh.) My mom, a few years later, when I lent my sister my chemistry book, made a comment about my notes...about how few they were and how bad they were. In retrospect, looking back, the times I had good notes in class were times I knew the subject well enough to be able to take the notes. Or where it would be easy to just put a keyword or something...

The thing is, there are limitations with everyone. The differently-abled just have different limitations. I can't swim with my hearingaids on. (they make waterproof watches! waterproof cameras! Why can't someone make waterproof hearingaids!?) I also take them out at times because I get tired of sound, of hearing. But that doesn't make me less of a person....

But where parents of differently-abled children have to watch out is overprotection. My mom (and a certain extent, the whole family) do this overprotective thing of me that drives me bonkers. Even now. And I realise that some of it comes from advocating for your child. But I think that is the one thing I'd call on parents to be aware of.

Because people judge. But educators judge by different yardsticks. I've been aware that my speech isn't always "up to par", and that I don't always hear things that others hear. But when I started singing lessons, all of a sudden, my speech, which had been deemed just fine, etc by a lot of speech therapists, started to improve, according to my mom. And I learned to match pitch better... I still have a horrible memory of music lessons at the British School, where the teacher would play a random note and ask us to identify it. That, I still cannot do. I can tell if something is a wrong note. I can even sing a note that's played. But I cannot identify the notes.. when they are played.

But what is fascinating is that taking the singing lessons really improved both my hearing and speaking, as well as my singing. But that isn't a tactic that would be considered, even in the modern world. It would be "Why do you want to take singing lessons? You can't sing." And I still feel like I need reassurance that I am doing ok at singing... because I can't always hear myself...

Because, as most people with disabilities know, to some extent, I have limitations. And I will never be a hearing person. And there are some advantages to that.

girls, girls, girls!

So, I read a lot of blogs. And I've been noticing a theme in certain blogs (ones I didn't link up to through the same sources). There is more and more concern about little girls and what they are exposed to. And how utterly pervasive being sexual has become. At younger and younger ages. And you see shows mentioned on Facebook like Toddlers and Tiaras (which I refuse to watch), but it has to get these subjects from somewhere!

My friend Maryanne posted her dilemmas in raising a daughter here and here .

And this woman, a transplanted Brit, talks about some of her reactions to "The Social Network" and how she is concerned about how to keep her daughter's self-image healthy.

I then ran into this post on an Australian site. This was compounded by the fact, as seen in the comments for the previous entry, I'd noticed that Barbie has gotten thinner, when I was shopping for props for the theater.

But it doesn't stop there. There's one site, by an American woman, that I stop into, every now and again... I peeked in and found this post. I don't really think the Power Rangers are necessarily empowering, and I suspect the only way to negate this is by getting away from the media.

But unfortunately, as I've noticed from work, its not much better in the world of children's literature. And I'm not the only one to notice, as seen here. And a lot of the girls books are princesses, and rainbow fairies, and the boys books are dinosaurs... and there seem to be fewer crossover books.

So toys are out, TV is out, books are out... and even clothes. I've read blog posts by people (this was a while back) pointing out the difference in children's decor...

I'm sorry, but to have a daughter, you have to live like the Amish. I do worry. I worry for the future of the American female, because its become such a culture of sexuality and celebrity, for the wrong reasons. Where are the positive toys? Where are the positive books, movies? *sigh*

Living gluten-free, the pitfalls...

So, on a messageboard I'm on, someone asked about gluten-free pastry flour...because they were making cookies. Now actually, I've found that if you are adapting something, its easier if the original recipe calls for pastry flour... because the author does not want to encourage gluten.

But back to the messageboard. The person was making cookies for a church event...and wanted to make them for a friend who had recently been diagnosed as a celiac. I posted that this was a wonderful thing, and it is the kind of thing that I would appreciate muchly. I got attacked.

Usually, at church things (or most events, for that matter) I have to be very careful. There is hidden gluten in most things. I know about meatballs, and Father's casserole. I only take the cheese if I can get to it first, and if it is sufficiently far away from the crackers. I can't just 'eat the filling', because sometimes the filling has flour too...

I was reading a recipe the other day, for roast potatoes, and the author had glutened them! If I was eating at someone's house, then ugh. I'm lucky in that I have a reaction to gluten, almost immediately, but I'm unlucky too because some of my reaction is a brain fog... I just end up in this *duuuuuuhhhhh* haze, where I can't think. I can have a gluten reaction to a piece of candy, to makeup, to hair products....

I just have to be hyper-vigilant. And read every single label. Every single time.

I'm so glad that restaurants are creating gluten-free menus. I am grateful whenever anyone makes something gluten-free.... because I just feel so much better living gluten-free...

Why I want to hide up in the woods sometimes....

So, I got on a new forum, for gluten-free, and someone posted a link to this movie.

I'm wondering if some of my endometriosis issues came from Nutrasweet, now. In high school I gained, then lost, a ton of weight. But part of my weight maintenance was drinking a ton of coffee, with a ton of nutrasweet. I remember my hands shaking so badly when I tried to drink coffee...

This worries me on so many levels, because in other arenas, such as genetic modification, it is so much dependent on the research submitted by the company. And this company obviously played games with its results. And its been shown that other companies just do basic testing, or insufficient testing, fudging results...with the recent outcry against corn syrup there is now a drive for faster-growing sugar beets. For Genetically modified sugar beets.

But so many of our foods have additives, now. And additives that its been shown that people have reactions to. Dyes that are outlawed in Europe. Corn syrup. Gums. Modified food starches... Or chemicals, and our water has chemicals added, and everything comes in plastics, which have been proven to leach into foods...

What do I do? I try to eat as local as possible. I try not to eat any fake sugars, I don't eat stuff because its low-fat or sugar-free... I try to eat organic, because its got a little more control of what is in it. I do eat some boxed foods, (Udi's breads) and gluten-free cereals and pastas...

Flu, living alone, and rereading books.

I have a bug of some sort. Just achy, my eyes hurt, I'm stuffy, and dizzy. Bleah. Right now I kind of think I might be hungry, but am not sure....I just ache...

I'm rereading a book that inspired me when I was on the weight-loss roller-coaster again a few years back...Frances Kuffel's Passing For Thin. I still remember what it was like being over 220 lbs. I was fat, but invisible (and in some ways still am...I'm still fat, no question). The problem is that I have a real disjunction between what I see in the mirror and what the reality is. I'll get dressed, look at myself in the mirror, think I look nice, and then see a picture of myself and cringe...

but I am losing weight. I could pull a pair of jeans off without unbuttoning them the other day! (size 16, but still, progress). That's the good thing with joining a CSA. Even though you end up with a lot of food in the house, it encourages you to cook and eat the fresh stuff...

I just wish I felt up to eating anything tonight... bleah.

Thoughts on food and eating....

So I was reading Mark Bittman's column this morning, on McDonald's oatmeal, and one of the comments really got me thinking, and thinking back to when I visited Paris.

Here's the page for the comment

Lets see if I can copy and paste the comment itself:

hmmm, doesn't look like it. Grrr.

Anyway, in a nutshell, the gentleman in question apparently spent three hours trying to find out why the Newman's Own salad dressing at MCD's HAS corn syrup, where the grocery store version does not.

And really, this, to me, exemplifies what has happened to the eating patterns of our country.

Not only is everything highly sweetened, most of it has corn syrup. Whereas in Europe, most things do not. There's also freshness, and fads.

Even with all this produce being trucked in every day, food isn't fresh. I've had some foods stay ;fresh' in the fridge for months (which, yes, says something about my housekeeping, but I digress). I know I can taste the difference between organic and not, and my fruit intake does suffer in the winter, because there is less organic fruit in the market. There is a real difference with fresh food, with fewer chemicals...

I've been reading a weight-loss blog where she has lost over a hundred pounds. Fabulous! But right now she is sick. She is using Medifast, which is a lot of chemicals, and I start wondering if she is really getting healthy. Its a little scary reading her blog, because she talks about being addicted to food, and binge eating. And guess what? Its the chemicals and fat and sugar that they put in the foods. The artificial flavors, etc. One post she wrote that was incredibly telling to me was that she binges looking for a 'taste memory' for something to taste as good as she remembers....

That to me says that all these 'natural flavors' they are using, yes, even in some organic products, are addictive. And it worries me.

No, I'm not skinny, but you know what? I'm losing weight doing the CSA, because its fresh. Because I have to come up with soups and stuff to use the produce, and that gets me eating healthier.

And I use sugar and honey. But now I'm scared because I read in an earlier piece by Bittman that, apparently, one of the things they have been doing genetic engineering on is sugar beets. To me, that says that the industry said "ok, people want sugar, not corn syrup, how do we go about creating sugar as cheaply as corn syrup, so that we can load up the foods with sugar?".

Unfortunately, I do buy packaged bread, because of my food allergy, but other than that, I try to stay away from junky foods... I just remember being struck by how much the food in Europe is better. How the same products that have corn syrup here don't there.

And the people who end up eating at McD's, the ones who do because its cheap and they only have a limited income... they are the ones who really need a healthful option. And oatmeal-flavored sugar is not a healthy option. There has to be a limit, a control, and we have to get big Agribusiness out of our government.... If they just want to make money, fine, but lets stop subsidizing them on our tax dollars...