Major Design Flaw

When the weather permits, and the boys aren't dragging their feet, we walk my 5-year-old to school.  It's not quite a 1/2 mile each way so it would seem like an easy task.  Typically before we even get out of sight of the house, my 3-year-old is asking me to carry him.  When I refer to him as my husband's "mini-me", I'm not joking.  I'm pretty sure if I had the ability to carry my spouse home from the playground, he would ask for it as well.  I can't decide if it's a touch of laziness or if he just wants me to hold him [my 3-year-old, not my husband].  Somehow, though we always manage to make it to the school on time.  My kindergartner won't let me kiss him anymore, as he has to look cool in front of the other kids, so I have to sneak in my sweet lovin' before we get to the school grounds.  He runs off to play before the whistle blows to line up.  Now you would think that at this point we could leave, since my doddler typically takes a solid century to walk home.  But no, my 3-year-old will not leave the school fence until every single kid is inside.  We will watch his brother go in and you would think this was all he was waiting for.  Nope.  He's like the playground police.  Wants to make sure every straggling kid makes it in the door before we head out.

So what is my point?  Well, yes I'm a little long-winded about our routine on school days because it occupies a lot of my time and energy 2-3 days a week.  What I've noticed on these school days, is that a little bit of poor planning went into the design of the exit strategy for this elementary school.  Clearly I've shown that I have plenty of time to analyze the situation while I wait for my youngest to be ready to leave.  Alright, the school parking lot is a little ridiculous.  It is set up well, in that you pull into the lot, drive down a lane on the right, turn left into the parking area, and when you're ready to leave you continue out the other side of the parking area and continue on out of the school grounds (so you sort of make a circle).  This should work well for traffic flow.  It gets backed up a little at the entrance as children are crossing the street, so there is an understandable wait while this happens.  The real issue is that the lane you enter the school grounds on, also doubles as the exit lane for buses.  It's plenty wide for this to be accomplished.  Buses are given priority where the lanes comes back together, but some parent's decide that their time is too valuable to sit in the line waiting to get out, so they hop in line with the buses in the hopes of gaining priority as well.  This is a huge pet-peeve of mine.  The area is clearly labeled showing the appropriate traffic flow, but those who choose to ignore the signs (because the universe revolves around them), throw a wrench into things, slowing down the natural process.  It kind of makes me want to grind my teeth, and this is when I'm not even waiting in my car.  Apparently this bothers other parents too, as they are so stressed in dealing with this at the end of the school day, that they can't even wait until they get home to light up their cigarette.  Classy.  I think I'd rather pull my hair out and have a permanent eye twitch than subject my children to the effects of my nasty habit - but that's just me.

In addition to major issues with traffic patterns, there is a small issue (I feel) with the sidewalk.  I love love love that the sidewalk is wide enough for approximately 6 kids to walk side-by-side.  This works out great when everyone is getting out of school and there is a rush of people all trying to get off the property.  When we arrived at our first day of school, one piece of advice provided by a school official was to encourage kids to walk along the fence which would keep them as far as possible from the area where parents are driving out of the parking lot.  Of course!  This makes perfect sense.  Should be easy enough, especially since there's so much room.  Now does anybody else see why this might prove a little bit difficult with curious kids?  Do we really need a yellow stripe indicating where the edge of the sidewalk is?  Somehow we manage to stay off the street when we walk around the neighborhood, and none of our sidewalks have this stripe.  Is it to indicate not to park there?  A sign might help with that, or perhaps a little common sense.  Now maybe some children/parents really need that stripe there to act as a warning, but I can't believe that my preschooler is the only one who thinks it makes a great balance beam.

I love my kindergartner's school.  Love his teacher.  Especially love that he really likes going and learning new things.  But sort of wish that parents would set a better example at least while they're on the school grounds, and that maybe the stripe be scraped off the sidewalk - though I'm sure he would still like to walk on that part just to test fate.

The Dirty Dietitian

Where oh where has my motivation gone?  I find myself wrapping up my fall semester of classes and have pretty much lost all my momentum.  I'm still loving that I'm getting this degree and the material is certainly still very interesting.  I think I'm just ready to be done with these classes so I can move on to the next ones.  Big projects are coming due and a final exam next week will wrap things up.  I am amazed to find that I still have more space left in my brain for new information.  And I'm loving sharing everything I learn, though I have to remember that most people don't want to know all raw information I've put together. 

I decided, after my rant on shake diets, that rather than continue to be frustrated with the poor diet choices that others make I would instead start a little help page on Facebook.  I can post little tips each day and answer questions that people may have.  This way I can pass the information I gather along to those who want to know more about healthier eating/lifestyle.  There are a lot of people out there who want to make the best choices, but are not unhealthy enough to warrant an insurance-covered visit to a dietitian.  I've named my page "The Dirty Dietitian".  I wasn't feeling particularly clever, and figured this sort of summed up my take on nutrition education - delivery raw, crude, or "dirty" details.  Though as I think more about it now, it sort of sounds like some guy's fantasy.  Like after the Naughty Librarian would be the Dirty Dietitian?  Ah, whatever.  If I can manage to help even one person, then I'm content.

Pffffft. Yes, that's the sound my brain just made.

I'm pretty sure my brain has turned to absolute mush.  When I began my Master's program I was so excited and could hardly wait to dig into the material.  That really hasn't changed.  Every morsel I read seems to get stowed away in my now carefully categorized brain.  What has changed is the amount of detail I'm putting into all of my work.  And wow, the level of work that's coming out of me.  In my undergrad years I thought I was working hard.  I would be presented a case study in one of my nutrition classes, and I thought I was rocking the assignment if I managed to point out what deficiency the patient had.  At the level I'm at right now, case studies like that look absolutely ridiculous.  Over the past few weeks I created a case study.  And when I say "created", I mean from the bottom up.  I crafted the entire patient!  Pulled him out of thin air, developed his identity, drew a time-line of the evolution of his problem, and in the end I offered solutions that I crafted from reading the current research literature on his health care conundrum.  Over the weekend I became insanely jealous of others in my class who might be working in a hospital right now.  They didn't need to go to such lengths... they had a pool of sick individuals right in front of them, and only had to pick out the most interesting one and discuss nutrition interventions to help the patient.

Does it bother me that I probably put twice as much work into my study as some others?  Nope!  Every moment of the 15 hours I devoted to that project was worth it.  I learned a lot.  For example, did you know that if you want to convert mmol/L to mg/dL in regards to LDL cholesterol, you would divide the mmol/L by 0.0259?  Did you know you divide it by something else if you're dealing with Triglycerides since the molecular weight is different?  Was is 0.0113?  The real question is do you really need to use valuable brain space to remember this?  And how do I get my eye to stop twitching from the lengths I had to go to in order to find these conversion calculations???  But honestly, I really did learn a ton, especially about my innate desire to take that mediocre undergrad mindset and stomp it out of existence in this body. 

A little heavy reading (pun intended)

So I'm reading pages and pages of research articles that have been done in the realm of sleep, sleep deprivation, and ghrelin.  Ghrelin is a hormone secreted by your stomach that lets your body know that it needs to eat something.  Ghrelin is complimented by Leptin which tells your body you are satisfied.  Okay, so what have I found so far.  Well, we need approximately 7 hours of sleep each night.  No kidding, right?  Getting more sleep than that and you are at risk for being overweight/obese.  Getting less than that... same problem.  But it's not just a matter of crawling into bed 7 hours before you need to wake up in the morning.  You also need to be getting quality sleep.  Quality sleep means you drift frequently from the lighter stages of sleep (stage 1 and 2) to the deepest stage of sleep (REM - rapid eye movement).  How can you tell if you're doing this?  Well, I found an application for my smart phone that senses it if you really want to test yourself.  Or if you share your bed with a very light sleeper you could ask them if you toss and turn a lot.  Movement during sleep (unless you have a sleep disorder) indicates you are in the upper levels of sleep, whereas sleep paralysis happens in REM sleep (thus you move about as much as a big rock).  Okay, so if you are getting 7 hours of quality sleep, with nice sleep waves, then you are setting yourself up for a good day with normal levels of ghrelin.  What happens if you aren't getting a good night's sleep?  Well, first thing in the morning your ghrelin levels will be depressed.  So the lower the ghrelin levels are, the less internal encouragement you have to eat.  Which sounds great... however, mid-afternoon into the early evening these ghrelin levels will spike up.  A low ghrelin in the morning lends itself to a high level at the time of day when we have the hardest time denying our cravings. 

Oh, but it gets better.  Okay, so let's say you are doing a great job getting plenty of rest at night.  This generally means that you would be on track for a great day with ghrelin showing up at meal times letting you know you're hungry but not encouraging you to overdo it.  For this next scenario, we are going to assume that you have started a diet and exercise program so you can shed a few extra pounds.  You've lost a little and are feeling good.  Now Mr. Homeostasis seems to want to add in his opinion.  Homeostatis is the body's natural way of trying to "maintain".  It doesn't like change and it wants things to stay just as they are.  In order for this guy to maintain your weight, he kicks in ghrelin as a last ditch effort to make you put that weight back on.  Ghrelin tells you that you are ravenously hungry and need to eat eat eat!!!  Everytime I think about this, all I can say is "where the heck was homestasis when I was putting the weight on????" and why didn't he want me to stay lean?  No use thinking about it now.  Just need to remember this information when you are starting to lose some weight and want your efforts to continue.  I think if you're anticipating that little push of hunger (from ghrelin) then you can be better prepared to handle it, instead of throwing in the towel and hitting up that bag of Halloween candy.

Coming soon, I will fill you in on the dirty little secret of gender differences in weight gain in regards to ghrelin.  Dumb female body!!!  For now, just "digest" the sleep and ghrelin tid bit.  It's exhausting to think about it.  Almost makes me want to take a nap (but don't since it doesn't count towards your 7 hours at night).

That's right, lit review . . .

... that was me that just rocked your world.  I bet you never saw it coming. 

You might want to picture me jumping around throwing punches in the air as I have just conquered an assignment that has been weighing on me all week.  For my master's program we have an option of doing a research project instead of writing a thesis.  Now, as interesting as writing a thesis about food recalls and 24-hour food diaries might be (bleh) I chose the research option.  It sounded really interesting and I love the idea of discovering something new that helps all kinds of people.  And bland writing about boring topics really makes me want to roll my eyes and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So one of the first classes I have is about setting up your research proposal.  Making sure you have an appropriate idea with measureable objectives.  And for this week, we needed to do a literature review to show what research had already been done, and identify an area of need.  Normally this would excite me.  However, I don't know exactly what I want to study.  It changes every week!!  So I had to pick one of the many topics I have an interest in.  Then I had to look up current research on the topic, and put it together in a short review which read like a story as opposed to a book report with lots of quotes.  Ick.  I didn't want to do it.  It's that first sentence that kills me.  That first one that gets the mental engine to turn over and gets the ideas flowing. 

But I did it.  That first sentence came pretty easily, and it was amazing how I was still staring at a basically blank word document, but my brain had already drawn lines from my research notes to the place in the review where they would just naturally fall into place.  It was as if I could see the whole review outlined in my brain and all I had to do was to just sit down and give my fingers a moment to put it together.  It's done!  And not to pat myself on the back (which I'm doing anyway), but I think I rocked it.  I think if I wanted to choose this for my topic,  I put together a fantastic case for the research's need.

Hello!! I'm walking 10 feet behind you!!

Just returned home after completing a deathly slow walk to the school for an open house.  My 3-year-old likes to doddle, but doesn't every preschooler?  So we walked down to the school, dropped off our bag of communal school supplies, and met my 5-year-old's kindergarten teacher.  Checked out the music room, visited the library and found where Daddy is on the globe, inspected the basketball hoops in the gym, and then headed back to the house.  We had just turned out of the school grounds when apparently the mom (whose entourage rode bikes to the event) encountered a flat tire with one of them.  Without even thinking about it for a moment, she instantly started screaming at her kid.  I mean really barking at him.  Oh, because I'm sure he intentionally gave himself a flat tire.  We were about 10 feet behind them and other families were walking close by too.  She yelled at the kid to get into the bike trailer with his sibling as she tried to continue riding her bike and pull the other beside her.  Clearly this wasn't going to work.  I was even going to offer to help her walk the bike... but the yelling continued.  Now she was screaming at the other kids that were waiting at the top of the hill.  She managed to make it up the hill with the lame bike but apparently the kids should have known not to continue riding for home, because she screamed again!!

What's the point of my story?  Well first, didn't I wish we had driven to the school after having to listen to that crap the entire walk home.  As if walking slower than a snail wasn't enough, now my boys had to listen to this lady ripping each of her kids a new one (and naturally they stared at her like she was an alien each time we got close).  Second, we all have frustrating moments.  And I certainly have had days at the end of which I felt like a mean mom as I spent most of my time scolding and reprimanding.  But my goodness, could we maybe control it a little especially when out in public with other parents and kids walking nearby?  It made me wonder how loud the screaming was going to be once she got home if this was the behavior when complete strangers were in close proximity.  Especially since she informed the youngest child that she was going to beat the other one with his broken bike!  Shouldn't this be a happy time of year with a household full of school-age children?  On the verge of having their days fully occupied? 

I have given myself a mom-of-the-year award for being able to maintain my composure when out in public.

Nervous and Excited

Tomorrow marks the first day of classes towards my Masters in Nutrition.  And I'm so nervous!!  I can't really explain the nerves I'm feeling.  Am I afraid I won't be able to keep up?  No.  I've got 7 years of hospital experience under my belt and a strong desire to get my hands dirty and learn more than my brain can possibly hold.  I think what makes me nervous is the fact that despite my best efforts, I've become somewhat accustomed to conversations with preschoolers.  Not that these aren't interesting in their own way, but answering "why mommy?" eighty times in a row doesn't really prepare me for forming scientific hypotheses.  My 5-year-old just informed me, as I was taking him to bed, that someone was controlling his butt as he farted the entire way to his room.  That kind of discussion doesn't really help me to determine the etiology of gas production, since I'm pretty sure the root cause of his was broccoli and not someone with a remote control.  So when it comes to getting back into the scholarly mindset I'm a little apprehensive.  Perhaps this will subside once class begins and I get into a routine.  More than anything, I can hardly wait for the opportunity to expand on what I already know and to nail down all those nagging little questions that I've had since my undergraduate days.  And at least I will always have my boys around if I need to develop new interview questions regarding bowel movements.