If you had told me a month ago that the single largest predictor of whether I will lose weight or not was my calcium intake, I would not have believed you. And yet... it seems to be true. Weird. I'll have to watch and see on this one.
Food & Health: February 2004 Archives
So the original Jane Roe wants to have Roe v. Wade overturned and has talked a court into hearing her argument. Why does she want this? Because of the supposed psychological harm to women from abortion. Never mind that worldwide, a lot of women have abortions every year with no side effects, psychological or physical. Just because she feels an abortion would have harmed her (she didn't have one, mind you) doesn't mean the rest of us should be denied health care.
The reality is that the Religious Right managed to brainwash her into believing that what she did was wrong, and convince her that she needs to do something. Hell, that she can do something. Last I heard, decisions of the Supreme Court can only be overturned by the Supreme Court, and they've upheld Roe v. Wade multiple times.
Goddammit, my nose has been whistling for days now. I am going to have to kill somebody. Or myself.
For Christmas, I bought Noel a box of candy sushi bought from Stupid.com. It was supposed to be gummi sushi, but it turned out to be hard candy, which actually wasn't as weird as I wanted it to be (it's now discontinued). Anyway, now I have found a place in San Jose that sells chocolate sushi. Maybe this will be my present to Noel for his birthday.
So apparently I can eat duck with no ill effects. Except on my friends. Sorry, C.
Made dinner last night for my two dear friends, E. and C. Started with a nice spring greens salad, then roast duck stuffed with apple-raisin stuffing (Joy of Cooking) with wild rice and JoC's No-Knead yeast rolls. My mother's Apricot Brandy Pound Cake (which for some reason E. kept hearing as "Apricot Brandy pancake") and coffee for dessert. The rolls turned out a bit tough -- I overkneaded -- but the rest came out delightfully, apart from the minor detail of my leaving the neck on the duck (well, it was tucked inside and I don't know what those things are supposed to look like). The dog ate well on trimmed fat and drippings, and the duck meat actually turned out nicely; it was tender and tasty, and not tough and stringy like I kind of expected it to be. The pound cake was, of course, perfect.
And we broke out the good china for its inaugural use. I love that pattern. We even used our nice crystal that we got as wedding gifts, even though it wasn't quite the right shape for white wine.
And I wasn't vilely ill afterwards, which was the point of this exercise. Although I doubt I will ever roast a duck again for an everyday meal.
Apparently my vision is weird in a way that's weirder than the opthalmologist has ever seen before. His nurse got all worked up because my glasses are just prisms, not focusing lenses, as if I were trying to scam them or something. I explained the whole seeing two overlapping images thing, and it confused her no end. "You mean you see two overlapping images? All the time? How long has this been going on? Have you ever seen a doctor about this?" I wonder if she thought I just made up my glasses prescription for the optometrist.
And after all that, I have no new glasses prescription, because my eyes were so confusing to the doctor that he referred me to his colleague the pediatric opthalmologist -- because my double vision is a childhood condition. The funny/surreal moment was when we were sitting there talking about the double vision and he said, "Well, I don't treat pediatric conditions; I handle adult eyes." I just blinked at him. Apparently, like the graduate schools I applied to, he feels that 33 is a trifle young to be out on your own.
Anyway, I have an appointment with the pediatric opthalmologist next week. And now I get to spend the rest of the day with dialated pupils TWICE.
As a side note, he was surprised to see that my corneas are very large (13mm; as large as they can be and still on the normal end of the scale). In fact, they were so large to him that he measured them with a teeny pair of calipers. This may or may not be related to the double vision.
I've been thinking a lot about food lately, and not just because I keep forgetting to have meals until I'm stuck in a studio for three hours on end. Mainly because I want to eat better, and I need to eat better to deal with the whole inherited diabetes thing.
Anyway, I've come to the following conclusions about myself:
- I can eat whatever I want, pretty much, as long as I don't eat it to the exclusion of good food.
- I eat too much bread, and too few fresh vegetables.
- If I eat breakfast, I can't get a handle on my food for the rest of the day, no matter what I do.
- If I skip breakfast and have lunch at 11 am, I'm fine.
- I often eat the whole sandwich when a half would be plenty.
It's a pretty scattered set of observations, but from that I'm deciding to make a real effort to not eat white flour or sugar most days of the week. Not give them up altogether, but just cut it way down. I don't know if the whole Atkins vilification of wheat is true, but I do know that there's only so much room in my day for food, and if I fill it up with bread I don't have room for things I should be eating.
So I'll start my day with a breakfast at 10 or 11 (my break between math and studio) which will be vegetable and protein (maybe a salad with hard boiled egg -- this is very difficult when you are a vegetarian). Then I'll have either a snack at 4 or an early-ish dinner which can have a small amount of carb in it -- like a wheat bread sandwich. If we're having dinner that night, it can be a normal dinner, or maybe I'll just have a snack, which can also have some carbful ingredients. Dinners here are generally small, anyway, because we're too lazy to spend too much time cooking for each other.
Anyway, that's the plan so far. In case you were on the edge of your seat about my eating habits.
If I can't stop hiccuping, I will have to KILL MYSELF.
Tomorrow: Why people who can't retain information for more than two seconds should not be allowed to take college-level art classes.
For some reason, I've been having headaches for the last few weeks. These headaches are strongly correlated with reading, or looking at small things close up, so I suspect that my mother's warning's have come true, and I have actually RUINED MY EYES by reading too much. I have been reading a lot lately; about a book a day, or sometimes two. And I having been hanging out on the web too much, and reading on the screen is stressful on the eyes. Luckily, I have an eye doctor appointment in a week and a half.
In the mean time, I have been considering hunting down my old reading glasses, with the crappy lenses that make everything all rainbowy, and using them, just to tide me over. Not reading for a week is absolutely not in the running as an option.
Added at 11pm: I used the reading glasses tonight (have them on right now, in fact), and they do help somewhat. This is a bit relieving (these headaches are not likely to be caused by a brain tumour if glasses make them go away) and also worrying (the one ability I fear losing more than any other is my sight). Also, it's rather irritating to see little fricking rainbows on everything from these crappy lenses, but I'm getting over that.
