The air is chilly and crisp, coats but no hats or gloves.
The watery light of mid day becomes the twilight of mid afternoon.
Evening rushing looks black as night.
On the corner, we crunch over seperated needles of petite trees.
A gust of wind carries the evergreen scent of an altogether different place.
Sweet bells and laughter.
Brightly colored ear muffs and scarves.
Candied almonds and roasted chestnuts.
(Have you EVER bought them? There are only a dozen in the warmer)
Steam billows from down below.
The moist warm air rises through the grates, kisses exposed ankles and gets trapped in the opening of your slacks.
Shops and homes all decked in red velvet bows fresh from deep storage.
Excitement and hope and maybe a drink or two make the crowds bearable.
Stuffy office parties and last minute shopping at Herald Square, we make it through intact.
We'll need the babysitter again next week.
Quiet nights at home.
The radiator clanks then hisses.
Open a window and draw a little heart in the condensation.
The kids are sleeping soundly, dreaming of the presents stuffed tightly in the tippy tops of crammed closets.
Hopefully they won't find them tomorrow getting a towel.
Forget Silver Bells, this is Christmastime in the city.
9 Desember 2011
5 Desember 2011
Mashed Potatoes and Celeriac: This Doesn't Even Qualify As A Recipe
I am mentally prepared for winter this year. Last year I balked at winter vegetables. Rather I longed for tomatoes and strawberries and fresh baby spinach. I admit I ate fewer vegetables during the fall and winter than I should have. Not that that is such a big deal, but I feel better when I eat 5 fruits and veggies a day. Getting to that number between November and April can be a challenge for me.
This year I plan on working on that. I won't be perfect. Winter veggies take longer to prep and I can say with confidence that aside from carrots my children don't eat veggies that grow in the winter. But this isn't about my kids, this is about me accepting winter veggies for exactly what they are...fiborous and tough and maybe slightly delicious.
As a going away present, my CSA gave us 3 bulbs of celeriac in our last delivery. Celeriac is also known as celery root. Celery root is funky and rooty and severely ugly. I can't say I really know what to do with it, though I have thrown it into stock and vegetable soup. But vegetable soup is a shameful cop out for any proud veggie. How does one eat celeriac so that it shines in a leading role? Sheesh, I don't know.
Someone mentioned to me to mash it. But the flavor, like starchy celery, didn't appeal to me. So instead I boiled it alongside some purple potatoes. I added cream and butter and salt, mashed them and I was in heaven. The texture was lighter than my normal dense mashed potatoes. The celery flavor was delicate and nicely matched with the earthy potato. All in all I have to say...I think I like celeriac mashed potatoes even better than regular mashed potatoes. I think someone somewhere is turning over in their grave. Someone....somewhere....
Definitely try this. I think I will even buy celeriac in order to keep making this dish. One winter vegetable down and many, many left to go
Enjoy!
This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays
Runaway Growth
Forty years into the "War on Cancer," casualties are mounting -- and we still don't know what motivates the enemy.
Please STOP the Race for the Cure and START the Race for the Cause
The Experimental Generation
In June 2010, a dermatologist cut a weird growth from my left wrist. The growth was wart-sized, grape-purple and stippled black. It was sensitive to the touch and bled when scratched.
Two weeks later, the doctor told me the tumor was malignant -- melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
The doctor also told me this:
You're part of an experimental generation.
She meant that in the past 30 years, she'd seen an alarming rise in skin cancer, and not just among older people. (I was 45.) Despite the advent of sunscreen and the fact that people don't go outside as much as they used to, she'd even been seeing more moles -- possible precursors to melanoma -- on children.
One or more risk factors for melanoma, she reasoned, must have changed. My doctor's guess: the human-caused depletion of atmospheric ozone, which allows more ultraviolet light -- a leading melanoma risk factor -- to reach our skins.
But other variables have also changed in recent decades, including the chemicals we're exposed to through air, water and food. How much might exposure to these be increasing the risk for melanoma and other forms of cancer?
Mostly, the answer is: We really don't know.
And that's the experiment, in which we've become the test subjects -- without our knowledge or consent.
Less Death, More Cancer
My doctor's language, inevitably, recalled Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Writing in the years when America first went whole-hog for synthetic chemicals, Carson warned that we were subjecting humanity and nature to a vast, uncontrolled experiment.
In 1964, Carson herself died of cancer. And in a decade that saw rising cancer rates and death tolls, fear of the malady metastasized. On Dec. 23, 1971, President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, pledging to make the "conquest of cancer a national crusade."
In the next several weeks, you'll likely see 40th-anniversary reports and pronouncements on how this epic initiative -- inevitably dubbed the "War on Cancer" -- is going. Most will gauge progress toward keeping cancer patients alive, or toward the "cancer cure" that Nixon sought. You'll likely hear disappointment that cancer remains uncured, countered with hopeful tidings of new gene-based therapies.
But here's a fact you probably won't hear much: You're actually more likely to get cancer than when the War on Cancer began.
In announcing his "conquest," Nixon noted that cancer struck one in four Americans. Four decades later -- and after hundreds of billions of dollars in research, radiation and chemotherapy -- the figure has risen to about two in five. Nearly half of all men, and more than a third of all women, will get cancer. That's about 1.6 million new diagnoses each year.
And for most major types of cancer, according to National Cancer Institute statistics, incidence remains higher than it was in the early '70s. While record-keeping in the early 1900s was less authoritative, cancer registries suggest incidence also rose steeply for most of the past century; by one estimate, it rose 85 percent between 1950 and 2001 alone.
Meanwhile, between 2003 and 2007, the incidence of liver cancer rose for men, along with thyroid cancer among women. Melanoma climbed for both genders; so did non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia and cancers of the kidney and pancreas.
The news isn't all bad: Incidence of two major types of cancer, colorectal and cervical, have dropped steeply in recent decades, largely because of improved screening. And cancer now kills less surely. Death rates for the most common forms -- lung, breast, colorectal, prostate -- have fallen in the past 20 years.
Even so, 570,000 Americans die of cancer annually -- and the overall cancer death rate is only about 6 percent lower than it was in 1950. Our boat is still leaking; we're just bailing faster.
This trend of "less death" and "more cancer" is starkest among children. Forty years ago, a child with cancer faced a virtual death sentence. (I had a sister who died of neuroblastoma, in 1971, at age 5.) Today, most child cancer victims survive, and death rates keep dropping. But incidence keeps rising -- by about 0.6 percent annually over the past 20 years, mostly driven by leukemia. An estimated 7 million American kids under age 10 are now living with cancer.
Nor is there any easy explanation for dramatic rises in cancers that strike primarily young adults, like testicular cancer. While cancer incidence is dropping in people over age 65, probably because of smoking's long decline, it's rising in people under 50 … despite smoking's long decline.
Our Chemical Romance
Cancer itself is complicated; it's really more than 100 diseases, affecting numerous parts of the body and presenting a wide range of medical challenges. But broadly, cancer happens when cells in our body grow out of control.
Human bodies make cancer cells constantly, and as far as we know, they always have. (Clinical descriptions of cancer seemingly date to ancient Egypt.) Usually, our bodies kill them off. When such cells do thrive, the causes of the disease are sometimes readily identifiable: Lung cancer is largely attributable to smoking; a small number of cancers are caused by viruses (with liver cancer, for instance, linked to hepatitis B and C). Diet and sedentary lifestyles have been implicated in some cancer. Genetics play a role, though likely much less than most people think.
Meanwhile, ever since surgeon Percival Pott observed in 18th-century London that chimney sweeps were prone to cancers of the scrotum, we've also known that many environmental pollutants are carcinogens. Asbestos (still used in automobile brake pads) is one. So is benzene, a common pollutant in automobile and factory exhaust. Likewise formaldehyde, found in consumer products including some wooden furniture and recently designated a "known human carcinogen."
Industrial workers still often bear the brunt of the most severe exposures. The threat is also elevated for inhabitants of areas like Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," a stretch of the Mississippi River known for massive toxic releases from the petrochemical industry, and for exceptionally high cancer rates among its mostly poor, mostly black residents.
Yet the increase in cancer rates isn't confined to specific regions or occupations. Increasingly, researchers are interrogating the environment as a cause of cancer -- and suggesting that cleaning up the environment may help prevent it.
After all, the past century's rise in cancer has been paralleled by the rise in synthetic chemicals and other pollutants in everyday life. In the years following World War II, plastics took over for wood, metal and glass. And from 1950 through 1975, pesticide production -- Rachel Carson's key concern in Silent Spring -- grew sevenfold, to 1.4 billion pounds a year.
In 2008, according to an EPA inventory, there were some 84,000 synthetic chemicals on the market. (There are surely more today.) Most are made from coal, oil or natural gas. But only a handful of these substances have ever been tested for health effects. We're in contact with many of them on a daily basis. They're in diesel soot and they're in shampoo. They reach us through the packaging that contains our food, the pesticides on apples and the flame-retardant fabric woven into children's car seats.
Some of these chemicals accumulate in our bodies. Others are shed into the environment, where they may persist for decades.
A growing array of studies, for example, link cancers including breast, prostate, leukemia and multiple myeloma to pesticide exposure. I was personally intrigued that a 2007 study from Italy tied melanoma to household pesticide use.
Perhaps the most surprising survey was Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now. The April 2010 report was issued by the President's Cancer Panel, chaired by two appointees of President George W. Bush. The widely publicized report cited "a growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer."
Wrong War, Wrong Race
Cancer patients, understandably, care less about why there's cancer than how to treat theirs. And as cancer victims go, I'm lucky; I quickly learned that mine hadn't spread. My only keepsakes so far are a couple of scars (including one for the lymphectomy).
I'm glad for that, and glad that there are ways to help people sicker than me. But in this four-part series, I'm less interested in the War on Cancer everyone will be talking about. It feels like the War on Terror, or the War on Drugs: a hugely expensive effort to fix a problem whose causes we're ignoring.
What I want to know is, why are we getting sick? Why has melanoma incidence tripled since the 1970s? Why is thyroid cancer rising even faster? Why are men younger than me increasingly getting tumors in their testes? Why are babies getting more cancer?
And in a country where you can't swing a surgically excised lymph node without hitting someone's Race for the Cure, why does no one ever hold a Race for the Cause?
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Soft-Pedaling Cancer Prevention
We celebrate those who beat cancer ... but ignore efforts to prevent it
| News cycle: Stories about Lance Armstrong's recovery ignored the fast-rising incidence of testicular cancer. |
In October 1996, Lance Armstrong, then 25 and the world's seventh-ranked professional bicyclist, learned he had testicular cancer. The cancer had spread to his lungs, brain and abdomen. He was given a 40 percent chance of survival.
"I intend to beat this disease," he told reporters.
Armstrong survived, of course -- the brain surgery, the grueling rounds of chemotherapy -- and went on to seven straight Tour de France titles.
Armstrong's recovery was received joyously. Headlines like "With Each Day, a Triumph" were standard; thousands of fan letters and emails arrived weekly. In 1999, Armstrong told Bicycling magazine, "The cancer -- I owe my life to it. … I wouldn't be married. I wouldn't have a kid on the way. And I'm a [better] rider."
News accounts noted everything from testicular cancer's predilection for young men to survival tips from psychologists. But readers were rarely, if ever, informed that testicular cancer was becoming increasingly common. In the 20 years preceding Armstrong's diagnosis, its incidence in the U.S. had risen by 41 percent. And it has kept rising: By 2007, testicular cancer was 75 percent more common than in 1975. And no one knows why.
Armstrong himself seemed disinterested in what causes testicular cancer. While his Lance Armstrong Foundation, created in 1997, has distributed countless yellow "Livestrong" wristbands, like most cancer initiatives it's all about supporting cancer sufferers, not pursuing root causes.
Or, as Armstrong said shortly after his diagnosis: "I don't want to waste my time saying, ‘Why me?' I have a problem and I want to fix it."
Spinning the Wheels
It's hard to believe we'd need to argue that preventing illness is preferable to trying to cure it. It's as if we'd abandoned sewage-treatment systems because we have antibiotics for cholera.
And curing cancer is proving much harder than developing antibiotics.
Forty years into America's "war on cancer," you're 50 percent more likely to get cancer than when it began. Childhood cancer rates have grown steadily for decades, according to National Cancer Institute statistics, and cancer is rising in people under 50. Yet the Institute's own funding patterns emphasizes new treatments over prevention.
For instance, in 2010, the National Cancer Institute spent $364 million on prevention programs -- and $1.16 billion on treatment research. (Asked about research priorities, an NCI spokesperson said "grants are awarded on a competitive basis" and research categories "[don't] fully capture the complete range of research objectives" because some research applies in multiple categories.)
Treatment is likewise the focus of the vast majority of funds raised by your average "race for the cure" fundraiser.
Treatment funding has done some good: Childhood cancer and testicular cancer, for example -- both virtual death sentences as recently as the 1970s -- are now mostly treatable. And the rate at which Americans die from cancer has declined from its early-1990s peak.
However, mortality remains just 6 percent lower than in 1950. And providing cancer care is expensive. Spending on treatment has quadrupled in the past three decades. Last year, it reached $125 billion -- 5 percent of the national medical bill.
While that spending is driven largely by the aging population, caring for younger sufferers like Lance Armstrong is pricier because treatment is usually more aggressive. Science magazine recently cited the case of a young father with stomach cancer: His four months of end-of-life treatment cost $350,000.
Moreover, treating cancer is hard -- both on patients and on researchers, who've spent decades searching for a cure. Cancer cells don't mutate just once; they keep mutating, and can develop resistance to drugs.
So why not put more effort into prevention?
It's not a new question.
In his controversial 1979 book The Politics of Cancer, Samuel Epstein, a professor of environmental medicine, asserted that "cancer is caused mainly by exposure to chemicals or physical agents in the environment." If those chemicals were removed, he argued, cancer would be "essentially preventable." But he charged mainstream experts with downplaying the role of industrial carcinogens -- and with pursuing lucrative treatments for cancer at the expense of prevention. Epstein cited ties between what he called "the cancer establishment" and the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries; in the 1980s, for instance, the NCI Executive Cancer Panel was chaired by oil magnate Armand Hammer.
Epstein's attacks were roundly criticized by the medical establishment. But little has changed, says epidemiologist Devra Davis, author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer.
"The National Institutes of Health," she quips, "really should be called the National Institutes of Disease."
Why Don't We Know More?
Popular culture too prefers "beating" cancer to sussing its source: For every movie about what carcinogens do, like Erin Brockovich, there are 10 Brian's Songs or 50/50s, celebrating cancer's noble victims or plucky survivors.
Public officials follow suit. When President Richard Nixon was pushing the National Cancer Act, in 1971, he issued a 1,300-word statement. While it briefly acknowledged evidence that "human cancers can be prevented by avoiding exposure to certain chemicals," just 100 words of the statement concerned prevention. (Seven years after the surgeon general's announcement that cigarettes cause cancer, Nixon's statement didn't even mention smoking.) Nixon's repeated references to a "cancer cure," meanwhile, signaled the chief goal.
Critics say those priorities are no accident. As difficult as curing cancer might be, it could be harder to reduce the malignant growth of special interests.
More scientists are now, like Epstein, raising alarms that synthetic chemicals drive cancer. Consider testicular cancer. Studies have linked exposure to hormone-mimicking chemicals (like those found in some pesticides and plastics) to reproductive abnormalities including undescended testicles, a cancer risk factor. Meanwhile, a 2008 study suggested that a byproduct of the pesticide DDT (still found in most Americans' bloodstreams) increases the risk of testicular cancer.
And DDT is just one of at least 84,000 synthetic chemicals. Some are known carcinogens; the vast majority remain untested for health effects.
But passing laws to reduce exposure to such chemicals is difficult, partly because of the chemical industry's political influence. According to opensecrets.org, the industry employs nearly 500 federal lobbyists and regularly spends $50 million a year on lobbying; top spenders this year include Dow Chemical, the American Chemistry Council and DuPont Co.
Epidemiologist Davis says she and other researchers who confront industry face threats to their funding or careers. Her Secret History of the War on Cancer documents the derailing of several researchers who explored tobacco or industrial pollutants. She cites, for instance, Wilhelm Hueper, whose pioneering research into industrial carcinogens got him fired by DuPont; he later worked for the National Cancer Institute, where industry pressure hamstrung his efforts until he left, in 1968.
When concerns about chemicals do arise, Davis observes, business interests take a page from the tobacco industry: They tout bought-and-paid-for studies showing their products are safe, and question the science behind the alarm bells.
Consider BPA, a plastics additive that's caused cancer and reproductive problems in lab animals. For years, industry fought state-level bans on BPA in products like baby bottles and sippy cups; in 2009, the American Chemistry Council said that California's effort would "needlessly restrict consumer products deemed to be safe by scientific experts worldwide." In fact, there was some scientific concern about BPA, and a sign-off by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was later revealed to have been heavily influenced by industry input. Then, just this past October, the ACC announced that manufacturers had quietly removed BPA from such products. "[T]hese products are not on the market. There is no need for parents or consumers to worry about them," said an ACC spokesman.
Davis now runs the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Health Trust. "Our motto is ‘Making Prevention the Cure,'" she says. "No matter how much money we spend on finding and treating cancer, no matter how good we get at treating it … if we don't reduce the demand, we'll never win."
In the meantime, mystery chemicals continue to proliferate, at a clip not even Lance Armstrong could outrace.
Next week: The Toxins We Live In
4 Desember 2011
Health or Something Else?
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| Courtesy ANH-UK |
A New York spider gave me an insight into US private healthcare
Occupy Wall Street is right – a rash of bites showed me how private healthcare keeps Americans cowed and compliant
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/04/new-york-spider-us-private-healthcare
Refresher Course
It is far easier to leave things alone than to change them and the garden is no exception. In 2004 I planted out the front of the house after ripping out the non-native foundation shrubs that the previous owner had installed. The design of the arrangement that I implemented looked very nice upon completion, but the plants were still small. The last seven years have produced a lot of growth, and the area to the left of the doorway has grown into an area where shrubs have embraced each other with abandon.
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| A beautiful clump of Shuttleworth ginger (Hexastylis shuttleworthii) as originally planted; it is now obscured by one of the shrubs. |
Nature often produces tangled thickets of growth in the wild, but let’s be honest – this is a garden. I appreciate being able to recognize individual plants for what they are and would like to be able to do so here. So I decided it is time to exert a bit of control over this area. In particular, the shrubs in the back – a white flowered form of Illicium (I’m not sure that they were properly labeled as to species or cultivar in the nursery!) – have become a bit of a pruning challenge to keep them from overtaking the area.
Here is what it looked like in early 2005, less than a year after being planted. This represents one half of the front left side. The two Illicium shrubs are in the back - they were chosen to be larger so that they could screen some part of the window (mostly because we wanted to obscure the view from inside the window). Between the shrubs is a group of non-native variegated Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum) - a group that is no longer visible, by the way.
In front of those is a grouping of Leucothoe axillaris plants that have grown leggy because of the crowding of the other shrubs. In front of those are three native azaleas. At some point I added a fourth azalea and one of the Leucothoe died.. I have since moved the 4th azaleas in recognition of the overcrowding so at this point I am still dealing with 3. At the very left of the front you can see a healthy clump of Northern maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) and that small bit of green in front of the rock next to it is the Shuttleworth ginger (Hexastylis shuttleworthii).
Now that I have explained what plants are there, here is a picture of what it looks like now. It's a bit of a jungle! I've added a few perennials in front, so that is a contributing factor, but it clear that the area was over-planted to begin with and the shrubs in the back are too big for the space. Where are the windows?
1. Recognize that changes are needed. I’ve done that. Reasons for my change include: plants have grown too big, excessive pruning is now required, other plants are being crowded which is affecting their appearance. You could have other issues like poor plant performance or drainage problems that need to be dealt with.
2. Evaluate what the space needs. This is the time to do a site analysis: How much space do you have, what is the sun exposure, what is the moisture level, do you have any restrictions for size and height of plants? I have measured the area and it is 15 feet long by 11.5 feet deep. The sun exposure is full morning sun until about 12 pm, so it should be able to handle sun/part shade plants. The moisture level is a bit on the dry side especially the area that is closest to the house. I have two windows so the plant height needs to be considered for them.
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| Initial planting, spring 2005 view |
Here is what it looked like in early 2005, less than a year after being planted. This represents one half of the front left side. The two Illicium shrubs are in the back - they were chosen to be larger so that they could screen some part of the window (mostly because we wanted to obscure the view from inside the window). Between the shrubs is a group of non-native variegated Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum) - a group that is no longer visible, by the way.
In front of those is a grouping of Leucothoe axillaris plants that have grown leggy because of the crowding of the other shrubs. In front of those are three native azaleas. At some point I added a fourth azalea and one of the Leucothoe died.. I have since moved the 4th azaleas in recognition of the overcrowding so at this point I am still dealing with 3. At the very left of the front you can see a healthy clump of Northern maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) and that small bit of green in front of the rock next to it is the Shuttleworth ginger (Hexastylis shuttleworthii).
Now that I have explained what plants are there, here is a picture of what it looks like now. It's a bit of a jungle! I've added a few perennials in front, so that is a contributing factor, but it clear that the area was over-planted to begin with and the shrubs in the back are too big for the space. Where are the windows?
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| Fall 2011, seven years after planting |
Gardening is change – things grow, things die, people make mistakes! I don’t think that is a surprise to any of you. What I’m faced with here are two of those factors: things grew a LOT and I made some mistakes. Here are some of the steps I plan to take during the next few months to restore some sanity to this area. These are things that anyone can consider when it comes time to refresh an area:
1. Recognize that changes are needed. I’ve done that. Reasons for my change include: plants have grown too big, excessive pruning is now required, other plants are being crowded which is affecting their appearance. You could have other issues like poor plant performance or drainage problems that need to be dealt with.
2. Evaluate what the space needs. This is the time to do a site analysis: How much space do you have, what is the sun exposure, what is the moisture level, do you have any restrictions for size and height of plants? I have measured the area and it is 15 feet long by 11.5 feet deep. The sun exposure is full morning sun until about 12 pm, so it should be able to handle sun/part shade plants. The moisture level is a bit on the dry side especially the area that is closest to the house. I have two windows so the plant height needs to be considered for them.
3. Research what to put there (use the details from your evaluation!), including what to keep of the existing vegetation. To satisfy the aesthetics of the general population (including future buyers of the house), I will get something evergreen for the area closest to the house. I already know that I want to keep the Leucothoe and at least two of the azaleas, but I will not keep the non-native Solomon’s seal. I want to incorporate a native perennial in that area instead and it needs to be something tall. This step is actually the most fun, I think. It should also be time well spent so that my choices are good for at least another seven years!
4. Consider your implementation details – what is the best time to plant and where can you get the plants? Luckily I can plant almost year round in this area. My only concerns are obtaining the plants and waiting to prune the Leucothoe close enough to spring to protect the open plant stems from freezing weather. I think I can work on the layer closest to the house first since all of that will be removed and replanted.
5. Take pictures to remember what it looked like when you finished so you can compare later. Who knows, I may have a whole new set of issues to deal with next time. But I hope that if I did my planning correctly, I’ll have very few.
I would encourage you to finish up with mulch to protect the area and to consider labeling your plants. If nothing else, when the label gets swallowed up by the plant, it will be a sign that your plants are growing!
All this will take some time for me to complete (need to do some research!) so I can't show you the finished project now. So far I have removed one of the large shrubs in the back and the non-native perennial in the back. Here is the progress so far - and look, the window is rediscovered!
All this will take some time for me to complete (need to do some research!) so I can't show you the finished project now. So far I have removed one of the large shrubs in the back and the non-native perennial in the back. Here is the progress so far - and look, the window is rediscovered!
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| Fall 2011 - on the way to a new look |
1 Desember 2011
Are We All Too Busy To Eat Healthy?
Every couple of months I write some cry your eyes out post about how I am so busy. And I get some awesome responses from you guys in support, telling me to hang in there. I thank each and every one of you who has commented or even just read such a post. But as I continue to hit patches of busy-ness, writing more whining and complaining posts doesn't make for good compelling reading. Or even a cathartic writing experience.
I have yet again hit another such patch. While I have been quite busy at the office (which is a good thing), it is our current school situation that is the biggest culprit. My children and I now spend just shy of 12 hours of every week day outside of our home. And of my just over 12 hours spent in the home, 6-7 are spent sleeping, 2-3 are spent caring for the kids or preparing food and 1-2 are spent in other chore related ways, like emptying the dishwasher or making lunches. That leaves little time for the things that I love, like writing. No wonder I never talk on the phone.
So I have now carved out a love-hate relationship with food preparation. When I started this blog I was inspired by all that I read. I tried new things, even on a weeknight! But today making homemade food sometimes feels like a ball and chain. But what choice do I have? Muster up the energy to cook something simple like sausages and boiled veggies, or order food that will make us all feel sick. Last week I was exhausted fighting some cold and I couldn't even think of stepping foot into the kitchen. So we picked up some pizza. What a mistake. I spent the whole night queasy and I couldn't sleep. Some convenience. Yes, the kids ate with no drama-rama, but I have to imagine that their bellies were tender that night too.
I love the idea of a local, organic and non-processed diet. But I will not sit here and tell you that it is a sustainable lifestyle for most people. The vast majority of people lack the skills to make a non-processed lifestyle work with all the commitments they have in life. And my 'experiment' to prove that any family can eat all homemade foods has lead me to dozens of amazing and inspirational blogs kept by full time bloggers, stay at home mothers and home schoolers. That's awesome, but not all the tips really work for me. I am not home to try all these cool recipes out.
So after 18 months of blogging, I have come to one succinct conclusion. We are all just too damn BUSY! The modern American lifestyle is overstuffed with way too many activities and we have made room for them by cutting out things we really need to do like sleeping and preparing healthy food. And we continue to convince ourselves that we need junky convenience foods and faster smartphones in order to do more work and brain cell sucking activities like searching the Internet. But wait, are we convincing ourselves? Or is it the companies that are selling us the phones, computers and junk food?
Today, The average American workday is 7.5 hours. That makes sense, 8 hour day, 30 minutes for lunch give or take a few. That number has remained fairly constant over the years. In this link, you can see that weekly hours worked has remained the same since the mid sixties at about 40-41 hours total per week. That is actually slightly less than in the forties when the average weekly hours worked was slightly over 43 hours. But no huge difference over the years. Then tack on the average commute, which is today just shy of an hour per day, or over 100 hours each year. I guess I can keep on complaining because my work day is 9 hours each day and I can boast a whopping 2+ hours of commuting time each day.
The change in sleep over the last 100 years is much more dramatic. The average amount of daily sleep has gone from 9 hours in 1900 to 7 hours in the 1970's to just over 6 hours today. I myself admit to getting only 6 hours of sleep regularly. I shoot for 7 hours but don't really feel good unless I get a full 8 hours. The fact that kids are getting less sleep saddens me. Reports show that School aged kids today average only 9.5 hours of sleep each day when they should be getting more. That is less than kids were getting 30 years ago. Sleep is important for everything from physical repair to hormone regulation to supporting memory. I know all this, but so many nights I stay up writing this blog instead of turning off the electric lights and the ever portable iPad.
But naturally it is the time spent in front of TVs, computers and Internet capable phones that is so troubling. According to this study and the article published in Businessweek, kids are now using more than 8 hours of media per day. That includes cell phone and iPod usage, texting, Internet, gaming and TV watching. I don't even want to know how many hours I spend using media. It is virtually all day at work. And then between various personal Apple devices, I overdo it a little. The problem I find with this trend is not so much that we are watching so much TV or reading online, it is that we are not setting down the devices to prepare healthy foods. It is that we cannot turn off the computer to go to sleep. We seem so afraid that we will miss something. Surely this cannot be good for us. And our health is surely suffering from the lack of rest and the abundant 'convenient' food.
I don't mean to say that we should just utilize our time better. That's a cop-out like saying we need to eat less and exercise more to combat obesity. The biggest problem in being too busy today is that in order to stay socially connected in today's world we HAVE to be computer literate and text and stay up on Facebook. There aren't quills for letter writing, parlor visits or calling cards anymore. Companies are pushing you to not even get mail anymore by sending you your bill via email. We cannot live without technology. It is not going away. I don't think we will get any less busy than we are right now. I suppose it could get worse. It could turn into The Matrix.
I bounce between wondering if blogs like mine make a difference to anyone who eats the Standard American Diet and not having any effect whatsoever. Or does my writing into the ether just solidify a group of people who have all independently come to the same conclusion, that we are too busy and we need to make lifestyle changes in order to maintain our health? Are we visionaries? Are we cutting edge? Have we discovered the missing link that could save us from more health problems? Or are we the fringe? Are we the crazies? Are we the Miss Haveshams' still clutching our old failed dreams even as the world passes us by?
Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could all learn to live in balance. Do you think anyone will ever get that to catch on?
This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays
I have yet again hit another such patch. While I have been quite busy at the office (which is a good thing), it is our current school situation that is the biggest culprit. My children and I now spend just shy of 12 hours of every week day outside of our home. And of my just over 12 hours spent in the home, 6-7 are spent sleeping, 2-3 are spent caring for the kids or preparing food and 1-2 are spent in other chore related ways, like emptying the dishwasher or making lunches. That leaves little time for the things that I love, like writing. No wonder I never talk on the phone.
So I have now carved out a love-hate relationship with food preparation. When I started this blog I was inspired by all that I read. I tried new things, even on a weeknight! But today making homemade food sometimes feels like a ball and chain. But what choice do I have? Muster up the energy to cook something simple like sausages and boiled veggies, or order food that will make us all feel sick. Last week I was exhausted fighting some cold and I couldn't even think of stepping foot into the kitchen. So we picked up some pizza. What a mistake. I spent the whole night queasy and I couldn't sleep. Some convenience. Yes, the kids ate with no drama-rama, but I have to imagine that their bellies were tender that night too.
I love the idea of a local, organic and non-processed diet. But I will not sit here and tell you that it is a sustainable lifestyle for most people. The vast majority of people lack the skills to make a non-processed lifestyle work with all the commitments they have in life. And my 'experiment' to prove that any family can eat all homemade foods has lead me to dozens of amazing and inspirational blogs kept by full time bloggers, stay at home mothers and home schoolers. That's awesome, but not all the tips really work for me. I am not home to try all these cool recipes out.
So after 18 months of blogging, I have come to one succinct conclusion. We are all just too damn BUSY! The modern American lifestyle is overstuffed with way too many activities and we have made room for them by cutting out things we really need to do like sleeping and preparing healthy food. And we continue to convince ourselves that we need junky convenience foods and faster smartphones in order to do more work and brain cell sucking activities like searching the Internet. But wait, are we convincing ourselves? Or is it the companies that are selling us the phones, computers and junk food?
Today, The average American workday is 7.5 hours. That makes sense, 8 hour day, 30 minutes for lunch give or take a few. That number has remained fairly constant over the years. In this link, you can see that weekly hours worked has remained the same since the mid sixties at about 40-41 hours total per week. That is actually slightly less than in the forties when the average weekly hours worked was slightly over 43 hours. But no huge difference over the years. Then tack on the average commute, which is today just shy of an hour per day, or over 100 hours each year. I guess I can keep on complaining because my work day is 9 hours each day and I can boast a whopping 2+ hours of commuting time each day.
The change in sleep over the last 100 years is much more dramatic. The average amount of daily sleep has gone from 9 hours in 1900 to 7 hours in the 1970's to just over 6 hours today. I myself admit to getting only 6 hours of sleep regularly. I shoot for 7 hours but don't really feel good unless I get a full 8 hours. The fact that kids are getting less sleep saddens me. Reports show that School aged kids today average only 9.5 hours of sleep each day when they should be getting more. That is less than kids were getting 30 years ago. Sleep is important for everything from physical repair to hormone regulation to supporting memory. I know all this, but so many nights I stay up writing this blog instead of turning off the electric lights and the ever portable iPad.
But naturally it is the time spent in front of TVs, computers and Internet capable phones that is so troubling. According to this study and the article published in Businessweek, kids are now using more than 8 hours of media per day. That includes cell phone and iPod usage, texting, Internet, gaming and TV watching. I don't even want to know how many hours I spend using media. It is virtually all day at work. And then between various personal Apple devices, I overdo it a little. The problem I find with this trend is not so much that we are watching so much TV or reading online, it is that we are not setting down the devices to prepare healthy foods. It is that we cannot turn off the computer to go to sleep. We seem so afraid that we will miss something. Surely this cannot be good for us. And our health is surely suffering from the lack of rest and the abundant 'convenient' food.
I don't mean to say that we should just utilize our time better. That's a cop-out like saying we need to eat less and exercise more to combat obesity. The biggest problem in being too busy today is that in order to stay socially connected in today's world we HAVE to be computer literate and text and stay up on Facebook. There aren't quills for letter writing, parlor visits or calling cards anymore. Companies are pushing you to not even get mail anymore by sending you your bill via email. We cannot live without technology. It is not going away. I don't think we will get any less busy than we are right now. I suppose it could get worse. It could turn into The Matrix.
I bounce between wondering if blogs like mine make a difference to anyone who eats the Standard American Diet and not having any effect whatsoever. Or does my writing into the ether just solidify a group of people who have all independently come to the same conclusion, that we are too busy and we need to make lifestyle changes in order to maintain our health? Are we visionaries? Are we cutting edge? Have we discovered the missing link that could save us from more health problems? Or are we the fringe? Are we the crazies? Are we the Miss Haveshams' still clutching our old failed dreams even as the world passes us by?
Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could all learn to live in balance. Do you think anyone will ever get that to catch on?
This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays
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