1? 1mil?

I've either written this post a million times, or I've never managed to get it published... but it's a simple, powerful observation and if I haven't written it yet, shame on me.

Time spent with positive influences (ahem, people) in your life is time that flies, time that energizes, time that is well spent and makes you feel like you can come home and tackle that to-do list (clean all the things, even!) and have energy to spare - to share - to make a NEW list and start on THAT!

So the next time you come home from lunch, dinner, happy hour, coffee, or conversation and find yourself drained, needing a nap, wanting to turn your phone off... think about it. Think about how you could be coming home from the kind of conversation that is truly no better time spent, no relationship more worth nurturing. And invite one of those people to hang out - it'll do ya good.

So is this an Easter post? Sure, why not! There's a metaphor for rebirth in there somewhere, you can find it.

Happy Easter!

Must-Read

If you're not reading, and using, the recipes from Smitten Kitchen - and I am sure you are, because you are cooler than me and more experienced in finding all the cool stuff on the internet - then you should be. Her baking recipes are brilliantly good, and she lists ingredients by weight!! Oh, the accuracy. Oh, the obsessive ability to calculate Weight Watchers points. And oh, oh, oh, the snickerdoodles. Start with these and you'll be a committed fan.

More Zumba Wisdom

Oh, you laugh - and laugh away! It is a silly title. But my lovely, authentic and fun Zumba teacher said in class the other day, "If you want to lose weight in your hips, you have to vigorously move your whole body. And if you want to lose weight in your arms, you have to vigorously move your whole body. If you want to lose weight in your belly..." And everyone laughed, and kept dancing, and she added, "Your body decides what its weight loss process is going to look like, and where it comes from, so we'll just keep moving."

I've hit a plateau in the weight loss - or rather, I've lost the motivation to be disciplined enough, since early January, to lose the 6 or so last pounds that will in turn display The Number I Want on the scale. I don't need to lose these pounds, but it turns out that following Weight Watchers 5.5 days a week and doing almost whatever you want 1.5 days a week doesn't cut it. That will keep you at exactly the same weight - which, I admit, is an accomplishment of sorts! - but with the cherry blossoms arriving, real food starting to grow again (no more apple, orange, banana Every. Single. Day.), and a renewed commitment to reaching the goal, I'm back on the wagon. 7 days a week.

Rattling Around

Rattling around in my head today is an article from Scientific American about this gene, called CHRM2, whose various expressions appear to be correlated with depression, unruly childhood behavior, high intelligence and alcoholism.

Wha-a-at? Yes. Fascinating.

The theory goes that when this gene is confronted with unstable, uninvolved, volatile parenting... well... it is more likely to result in alcoholism or aggression in teenagers. And when this gene is confronted with engaged, positive, nurturing and involved parenting... it results in wildly successful and intelligent citizens.

It is truly being called the orkidebarn or maskrosbarn theory (Swedish for... orchid child or dandelion child). Dandelion children are the resilient children... they can, and usually do, thrive in any kind of environment. But the orchid children - they are delicate. They have the capacity for incredible beauty, for outshining others - but they also have the capacity to wilt beyond repair without tender, careful care. They're not to be stepped on. Mistakes weigh on them.

I suspect we'll learn more and more and more in my lifetime about various genes, and the effect nurture has on them in each person, depending on the variance in the gene we happen to be housing. But isn't it fascinating!?

(More here.)

Book Report

It is March 1 - and I even had an extra day in February! - but I failed in my goal of finishing the 1,004 page book loaned to me by a dear friend, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Alas, it was a self-set goal (not required by the loaner), which makes failure even worse!

But it's hard to compete with the two books I did start - and finish - while the giant red behemoth of a paperback languished bedside. I like it, I truly do - but it meanders, it lingers, it takes time with an old-fashioned style of narration. And it is HEAVY! Sometimes it annoys me, resting too heavily on my stomach in bed at night. It really should be on a Kindle!

So first up, I cannot recommend enough Room by Emma Donaghue. It's a "run-don't-walk" to your library/friends/bookshop/Kindle store kind of book. I literally intended to read for 20 minutes one night, to dip my toes in, to only slightly cheat on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell... and 3 hours and 20 minutes later, at 2 AM, I was within 45 pages of the end. It is that good. It made my heart race, there were sections where I could not read fast enough and was holding my breath. If you have an ounce of trust in me, you won't even go read about Room - you'll just go read Room.

And second, I joined the bandwagon and read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. It's pure YA fun and the writing is not nearly as skilled as Donaghue's, and the plot is not QUITE as compelling as hers either, but I read it in an afternoon/evening, and book two in the series was loaned to me today. Yay for friends, and yay for borrowing!

So that's this month's Book Report. You?

The Perception Gap

Just want to pass along that handy term for your next dinner party or stimulating intellectual discussion. It's from a David Ropeik op-ed in the Times, and he says:

... Our risk perception system, which blends thinking and feeling and mostly takes place subconsciously, often produces fears that fly in the face of the facts. Many of us are more afraid of some risks — like mercury or pesticides or genetically modified food — than the evidence warrants. And many of us aren’t as concerned about some really dire dangers as we ought to be, like climate change, particulate pollution or acidification of the ocean. The problem is, being too afraid, or not afraid enough — a phenomenon I call “the perception gap” — produces dangers all by itself. For that reason, it’s worth exploring just why our fears don’t match the facts, as a first step toward protecting ourselves from the real dangers that arise when we get risk wrong.

Some of us, ahem, miiiiight have mothers and grandmothers who routinely display (or displayed) bold illustrations of this perception gap.

And it miiiiight be influencing our own daily fears, and is worth thinking about - either doing more research and less seeking of validation, as Ropeik suggests, but also, for me, being aware of the very real consequences of long-term low-level stress, and long-term low-level fight-or-flight decision-making.

Food for thought... 'tis better to make peace with my daily choices and live calmly, than to warmly welcome my existing facts-and-feelings perception gaps, nurturing them to my own detriment...

Sick day.

For most of my working life (from my first job at 15 until age 28) I was not the beneficiary of paid sick days - nor of any other employment benefit like health care, life insurance, vacation time, retirement savings, etc. For a little over two years, I have had the option of all of the above and today, I went home sick.

But, oh, how quickly we adjust to a new reality! What have I spent some of today doing? I was worried about the work going undone, the emails going unreturned, the lack of hard deadline for my return - will I be better tonight? In the morning? Will I have this cold as bad as John has had it, which has knocked him over for a week? I have been checking my BlackBerry, thinking of little things and sending an email or two to the co-workers I just left hours ago, and obsessing about one piece of casework in particular - where I can't save a life by being at work, but I can be the best listener they have right now, and that has some serious value.

But what I haven't done today is stop and be grateful that I am getting paid right now. My paycheck won't be less for having to miss work today - so I don't have to cut a few dollars from the budget to compensate, as I did for so long - and since I'm not at a super-small business*, I don't have to worry about retribution, lost hours, or a lost job, for not showing up. I don't have to lie about annoying allergies when I really have a head cold, and I get to hope that my 3-hour-nap and chicken noodle soup and tea and salt water gargles and Neti Pot will end up making me well sooner - which is what sick time is truly all about.

So before I let the last two years of safety net whitewash over the previous 13, I'm taking a moment to feel grateful while the tea water boils. Again.

* Not all very small businesses would engage in such practices. But some would, and do - and did in my working life. If they're not required to abide by FMLA or other labor laws, they definitely don't, for reasons both sensible - and evil.

It's Official

Today is February 15th... which means I can say, for the first time since I can remember, I got through an ENTIRE Valentine's Day without one person - not by phone, by message, by letter, by Facebook, by overhearing in the world, by smiling stupid ignorant face that I want to desperately correct but somehow cannot - saying to me "Happy Valentime's Day!"

I can die happy.

I've always been glass half empty...

John and I have been listening to a lot of Florence and the Machine these days. Tonight I said, "So she's saying I'm gonna drink myself to death right?"

And John replied, "No I thought it was I'm gonna treat myself tonight."

Answer found here.

Help!

Who has a gourmet recipe for a tres leches cake, or something like it? I love to make cakes, but since I eat less of them now, I must find reasons to make them. And one of my sisters-in-law has a birthday coming up, and she wants a sweet, moist, dense, delicious, cinnamon-y tres leches cake. I've made one once and it was "meh". Might you have a tried and true recipe for me?

Also: auto-correct would like to call this a tres leeches cake. Real nice.