Princess and the Pea

Airport Pulp

Every once in a while when at an airport too early for a flight I’ll indulge at the news stand and buy a few magazines.  I don’t tend to have fashion or sports magazines lying around at home broadcasting perfect bodies and unrealistic beauty standards.  Can’t help it.  I’m too familiar with the research that shows that women experience lower body dissatisfaction a mere 15 minutes after exposure to such publications and that the longer you keep kids away from popular media the better their self esteem. 

On the other hand, I like to keep up with the latest celeb gossip, health trends, movie or book reviews, because it’s also important to know the pulse of current cultural fads. So I decided to randomly choose 3 magazines I wouldn’t normally pick up:   Wired, Teen, and Cookie (never had heard of it – it’s a parenting magazine not recipes).

I guess it wasn’t so random because I was inspired to get Cookie because one of the features screamed out at me, “Why are you so tired?”

I perused them over the next three hours.  The sleep article, while well written by this freelancer who likely got a freebie trip to the spa, Miraval, for a sleep clinic consultation, did not gleam any new information for me since I pretty much teach the cognitive behavioral approach to life stress anyway. And, of course, one’s sleep is an obvious causality of stress.  But who actually practices what they preach? Since I suffer from chronic insomnia I thought there might be some new gem I could gleam.  I pretty much ticked off all of the following sleep hygiene to-do’s – been there, done that.

√ Hormonal cycles affect sleep, especially a rise in body temp that happens in women ALL THE TIME along with their menstrual patterns, pregnancies, and natural aging – so no relaxing baths at the end of a long day. (I’m probably peri-menopausal so no hope on body heat issue until I’m too old to care.)

√ Exercise releases endorphins that help stabilize mood – but don’t exercise too late in the day. (Exercise?)

√ Cut caffeine to one cup a day.  (Gave up coffee years ago to rid myself of the accompanying muffin – but give up my sometimes twice-daily, engine boosting Chai? Never.)

√ Write down worries at night, make check lists, release the frets, and replace rumination with pleasant distractions. (Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t – especially when my kids swipe the pen and pad to doodle or write threats to one another.)

√ Have time before bed to relax (Well, it helps if someone else does the laundry and cleanup).

√ A bedtime routine is just as important for grownups as it is for kids. (Duh.)

√ A snack of carbs – like cereal with milk – is an Ok evening snack because carbs and milk both release tryptophan, which can help sleep. (Ok, a new nutritional fact for me, but I often snack on cereal at night as it is since I haven’t gone grocery shopping yet.)

Bottom line: Until cloning or robotics is perfected and I can have another ME around, sleep is out.  Which brings me to technology.

I then opened Wired magazine (April) and I think I am a convert.  I found many new and interesting things that I simply was not aware of on the technology side of things.  For instance, there is a new advertising medium out there call hypersonic sound, where you can hear voices or music in some specific location where the sound is beamed only to where you are situated… You literally hear voices without any reference point. What would my former psychiatric patients think of this?

Also, there is a new gadget for women – some kind of “smart bra”.  I’m afraid I am going to have to quote (page 034): “Even small breasts can bounce up to 3 inches during exercise, causing significant discomfort.  Researchers in Australia are using motion capture to design a bra that dynamically adjusts cups and strap stiffness as a woman moves around.”  Wow.  I appreciated the reference to small breasts.

This led me to Teen, a quarterly magazine.  The spring issue is the “Guy Guide.”  I sort of found myself appalled from the moment I opened it and read the intro about how to “catch your crush,” “have the perfect hair,” and “see how you can become an even better version of you.”  Thank god it's not a monthly magazine.  The section on puberty was not too bad and there was a whole page on boobs: hairy nipples, uneven size, tenderness, and yes, the flat chest anxiety (page 91): “If you know you are eating healthy and are a good weight for your shape, just relax.  Whether you end up with lovely A-cups or curvy D-cups, you’ll get there in your own good time.” (Well, I’m still waiting – a time frame would help). This brought me back to the smart bra.  Now what if those Australians add in a shape morpher for the type of clothes one wears?  That could eliminate the bizarre trend of parents giving their high school senior daughters a breast augmentation for graduation.

So what about creating "even a better version" of you? For starters, how about liking the original one?

Gone Blog-Wild

Is it me out in the world blogging or are girls and women getting more attention for public journaling?  Just this last week on the front page of Living&Arts in the Boston Globe, was an article entitled Dear Blog…  Several Vermont teens were interviewed about how they use blogs to post daily ruminations.  The author reported that the dramatic increase in teen bloggers “is propelled almost entirely by girls” based on Pew Internet survey.  Blogging is not unlike the old fashion way we older girls may have confessed in our green or red leather bound diaries with gold latch and key – perhaps not totally secure against family intruders but more so than today’s online versions.  It makes me wonder how Jane Austin would take to all this uncensored scribbling.

The New York Times had an article in February, Sorry Boys, This is Our Domain, about how girls dominate the social network sphere – sans video gaming – in various activities such as blogs, graphics, photos and creating websites.  Savvy little creatures, I say.  I know my 8 year old could probably build a web page from all her online Webkins experience.

It’s really not a surprise to me all this fuss about blogging. I was surprised, however, to read in the Boston Globe article that of adult Internet users only 8% are blogging. It seems so much more prevalent to me. I’ve just joined in a conversation with other mid-life bloggers, which has extended my notion of cyberhood.  Cyberhood encompasses all of us connoisseurs of online kaffe klatches, no matter what age.  From my perspective it seems that we chicks are indeed generating a lot of interesting content – and nobody has to “hear” if they don’t want to.

As I looked up these articles which I had bookmarked on del.icio.us (just love this bookmarking feature since it helps with what I call “maternal attention deficit disorder –or maternal ADD), the New York Times popped up a box offering similar articles I might be interested in.  Of course, I had to check out an article on well-to-do women bloggers (think Leslie Stahl and other notable women), entitled Boldface in Cyberspace: It’s a Women’s Domain.  I mean really, now.  It’s pretty obvious that women will chat wherever they can.  It’s part of the biological make-up.  Women socialize for the survival of the tribe.

Midlife Bloggers Unite

For many months I’ve been writing personal essays mostly to myself.  I’ve been trying to cultivate a practice of reflective writing.  The most obvious material has been right in front of me… raising two girls.  But increasingly I’ve been reflecting on other issues, like being middle aged (whatever that means).  My thoughts are not just about parenting, or being female, or a working mom, but about aging, friendships, finding balance in a world with relentless demands, and about spirituality and health.  (The irony is that I teach mind-body techniques to other women and it is an effort to practice them myself.) Writing in isolation is a lonely venture so I’ve made a commitment to staying and getting connected with other women – Sort of a prescription for health.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who had just learned of the death of a childhood friend’s husband – age 44, just three weeks after a cancer diagnosis.  This fell upon the heels of me getting a call from a dear friend, age 41, who was have having an emergency CAT scan that afternoon.  My lunch mate had told me that her mother had once said that if you get through your forties with your health intact, then the rest of life – the second half – is a pretty sturdy ride more or less. 

And it was raining out, to add to the strange overture of our lunch date.   But lunch was yummy and our conversation turned to more pleasant topics, like finally finding ourselves in a good place in life.

That said I was delighted when I came across a post at BlogHer calling out to us middlers a few weeks ago. See original post by MsMesa.  Well, her cry has caused an avalanche of comments, and lo and behold, I have a whole new group of friends.  Thanks to Lori, Between Us Girls, who offered up a blog roll, which I copied, because that is the beauty of social networking. I’ve been checking the comments every day and visiting blogs. And I am truly amazed at the creativity of these women. Check out the blog roll.

It's a nutty world

Rosie was born with food allergies, more than I could count on 10 fingers. Thankfully, she’s outgrown many – except peanuts, tree nuts, and soy protein. It was because of an incident at pre-school involving Rosie reaching into a cracker jar smeared with peanut butter from a sloppy classmate that triggered an allergic reaction and ushered in the EMTs. The school has since been “nut-free” (except for some of the teachers).

When she outgrew milk and egg allergies around age 5 she could finally eat pizza, cake and ice cream at birthday parties. When she got to first grade in the public school, however, she was ushered to the allergy free table and felt like a pariah (there was only one other boy with a milk allergy). Luckily, a few friends decided to forgo peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and began to sit with her. I attended parent meetings that essentially were Parents of Kids Who Could Die from a food allergy vs. Parents of Finicky Kids who only eat PB&J. The compromise of those meetings netted out that any classroom birthday celebrations could not involve food. Needless, to say we’ve become avid food label readers and carry emergency medicine but have not needed to use it.

I always reflect back on my pregnancy with her because I followed one of those ridiculous high protein diets (and gained 50 lbs) – and she became allergic to every high protein “brain” food I ingested. I must say she IS very smart, in the 75% for height and weight, and a graceful athlete. Maybe it is her father’s genes. Anyway, when I was pregnant with my second, Adele, I avoided all those foods. She has no allergies and is consistently in the 25% for height and weight – she’s a “peanut” so to speak. And she hates being the tiny one. Our family allergist says this is all anecdotal, but I’m convinced that both my pregnancy diets influenced my girls’ development.

We’ve adjusted to all the food restrictions but I worry most when Rosie is older. You know, when she’s a regular risk-taking teen, unsupervised at house parties, and all that. The most anaphylaxis events happen in teens and adults, not children. I worry that Rosie can’t eat ethnic foods, confections, and Belgium chocolate (many foods are “manufactured in facilities that process foods with peanut and tree nuts” which leaves a lot of items, like comfort foods, out of the shopping cart). I worry what might happen when she travels abroad (as I assume she will) where ingredients are not well labeled. Most people just don’t get the food allergy thing – how it changes a household and lifestyle and creates a subtle backdrop of anxiety no matter how “normal” things are.

So I was happy that a little recognition of the issue appeared in a New York Times blog by Tara Parker-Pope. She wrote about Trump’s show, The Celebrity Apprentice, where one of the celebs, Trace Adkins, had as his charity the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (his daughter has the same allergies as mine). FAAN saved us in the early years with their cookbooks and newsletters. Adkins didn’t win the contest but now proceeds of his hit song via iTunes sales are going to FAAN. Check it out.