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March 29, 2006
Don't Forget What You Already Know
A few weeks ago I bought the new CD by Jason Mraz, entitled "Mr. A - Z." I have since been rather obsessed with the song "The Geek In The Pink." It goes like this:
I could be the one to take you home
Baby we could rock the night alone
And if we never get down
It wouldn't be a let down
But sugar don't forget what you already know.
Leave it to me to find the CR meaning in pop music that quite obviously has nothing to do with CR.
As of late, I've been focusing so much on my work: training my new staff, organizing workers, making the world safe for health care professionals to join the union of their choice -- that I haven't paid enough attention to my CR. I've had to remind myself not to forget what I already know: that I need a solid high protein breakfast to get through the day, that when I carb-out I get anxiety attacks, and that eating lots of high sugar high fat gak makes me feel terrible.
My new set point seems to be 102 - 104, some twenty pounds below any weight I had throughout most of my adult life, and even though I've had some CR slippage in the last few busy weeks, I'm maintaining my weight. When I overdo it at one meal (like Tria out with co-workers) I almost naturally make it up over the next few meals. Caloriewise, that's okay. But nutritionally, it can cause problems. My days are such small caloric packages that I rely on my healthy quotidian staples (brewers yeast, eggwhites, breakfast-salad-for-lunch, crucifers, nonfat dairy) to get all the nutrition I need. When I go out too much and miss out on these healthy foods, I find myself having food cravings again. Little MR has said many times that eating good nutrition cuts out most food cravings, and she's right. Unfortunately, the reverse is true. Lose the nutrition and the food cravings come right back. I've got to remember what I already know.
For now, I've shelved the question of going lower, but I'm hoping that the CR Conference next week re-awakens my enthusiasm the way my excellent new staff members and exciting campaigns have renewed my enthusiasm for work. It will be tons of fun to see Little MR, Miss Tenacity, and all my CR'd friends. And best of all, at the end of the night, I'll get to go back to the hotel room I'll be sharing with my Orange One! Of all the benefits I've gotten from CR, that's the best.
Posted by april at 2:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 26, 2006
Women
There's been some discussion recently on the CR'd women's blogs about feminism and its flavors. It's a topic I've thought a lot about, and my thinking continues to evolve. My views for the last ten years could be summed up as:
1) Equal pay for equal work is good. Economic justice for women in a must.
2) Makeup, sex, and sexiness are good. Anyone who tells you you're not a feminist because you like to wear makeup and have sex should be removed from the planet. If you don't like to have sex or wear makeup, fine, don't. But those two things can be a lot of fun, both together or separately, and women should not be put down for enjoying either or both.
3) Women are mean and nasty to each other, and usually it has to do with jealousy.
I've made some wonderful female friends through CR. Mary, my CR mom, is a great example of a woman who is happy with her life and therefore can be genuinely suppportive of others. She has a great job, a sexy husband (I'm not hitting on you, Tim, I'm just stating the obvious!) and wonderful children. I consider Amy one of my friends, and I enjoy every step along her CR journey. Christine is one of those beautiful women to whom I'm always drawn because I feel like they probably know what it's like to be hated by other women, and her CR experience proves this true. (Have you seen Christine? She was drop-dead gorgeous pre-CR, and now that she's doing CR she must be scarily beautiful! Aaron must thank God every night that he married her while he had the chance! He is very lucky!) Zeynep and I certainly didn't start out friends, but we've gotten quite close as of late, and it was she who kicked me into gear to start writing again after my awkward experience of late February that temporarily made me lose interest in writing. Lindsay from the UK has been with me for my entire CR journey, and was the first to figure out that my major life changes of just over a year ago included MR! I wonder if Danielle, Sarah, and Jessica are still reading. I hope so. We have a wonderful little CR women's bloggie community. I hope Jamie returns to writing, as with all the interesting voices that pop up and then fade. Come back! You don't have to blog every day to have a fabulous blog. Just write when you can!
I've had issues with women. I find men easy to handle. They're gay or straight, older or younger, in a position of more or less authority. The lines are usually clear cut. All of my best friends are men. I've often found it difficult to relate to other women. I am an extrarodinarily straightforward person, and women don't seem to like that. I see what I want -- I go get it. I hunt it down and drag it back to my open air hut: see example of MR, happily writing away in his upstairs office. I am agressive in a way that suits me very well in my professional life and has darn-near ruined my personal life many a time. I am not demure. I do not wait to be asked to dance. I believe in The Rules, I know they work, but I have trouble following them.
So much of the difficulty between straight women can be boiled down to jealousy. I think that way too often, we act like men are in such short supply that if we don't attack and tear each other down, there may be no men left. This is absurd, if you look at the large numbers of men about.
Here is the odd thing about how I feel now that MR is the love of my life: I feel much more friendly towards other women. It's like I finally realize, deep down to my bones, that it's not a competition. For those of us who like men, there are more than enough to go around! My male friends, while wonderful, gorgeous, sexy, brilliant men, are constant reminders of how happy I am to come home to MR. At the end of every day, I thank Goddess that I can come home to my Orange Angel and my male friends return home to their wives or partners, who hopefully enjoy their company just as much as I enjoy MR's.
I used to really hate it when other women made choices different from mine. After Vermont, I feared any women who had the appearance of a cultural feminist. I rebelliously wore my nails long and red, my hair long and red, and when not at work (where I have to dress conservatively in business suits) I would wear the sexiest skirts and dresses I could find. Even now, the hot pink on my nails is an OPI nail color (salon quality, of course!) called "I'm Not Really A Waitress." I could go on for hours about the class implications of makeup, hair and nails, but suffice it to say that I have choice words for any women who looks down her nose at these symbols of feminity. Make your own choices, but don't call me stupid, not a feminist, or a member of the patriarchy for mine. I've been organizing women workers for 10 years -- have I not earned the right to wear nail polish?
A lot of the fire has gone out of my fear of other women's criticism since I met MR. HE likes my type! He loves my hair and nails and... well, no more need be said on the topic at this juncture. He loves my style and doesn't whine about how much my hair cuts cost. Being in love is an amazing thing. Everyone should try it at least once, just to see if it does weird things to you. I've never done drugs (except alcohol) but I can't imagine that it could be any weirder than being in love. Being in love makes the world look like a fun place. I can look at women who wouldn't touch eyeliner with a ten foot pole and feel something other than fear and hostility -- at least ten hours out of every day. Why? Because I already have the man I want, and while we don't rule out the possibility that at some point in the next 600 years we may take other lovers for a time, I know I've found the man I want to spend the rest of my radically extended life with. So I don't care so much what choices other women make. I'm, in some profound way, no longer shopping.
Many CR'd women have written and spoken about the difficulties we face with other women as we get thinner. We lose weight and we approach our culture's standard of ideal female beauty. We bring upon ourselves in this process great disapproval from our sisters who are not so happy with their bodies. Where does the competition come from? That's a subject for some grad student to investigate, and I don't have time to deal with it on the blog. But I think so much of it, among straight women, comes from pure and simple jealousy over men. And I don't know what to do about it other than to force every straight woman to find her ideal man, stalk him, and remain happily partnered with him for eternity. For me, there was no cure for the competitiveness besides finding my own love. I admire any of you out there who are more emotionally mature and can find some other way to handle the question of female competitiveness.
And to Christine: good luck. As Alana Davis and Ani de Franco before her said in "32 Flavors," one of my favorite songs of all time:
"Everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room."
I suspect your female friends and colleagues will continue to give you trouble as you lose weight and get healthier due to CR, and you may find yourself drawn to different people -- male or female -- who are more supportive of the new you. That's what happened to me. I just stopped spending time with people who wanted me to change back.
I was saying the other day to a male co-worker who somehow got stuck arguing with me on the topic that the problem is as follows: Women can't be neutral. Whether we wear makeup or don't, wear skirts or pants, color our hair or not, etc., society around us infers something about our sexuality and our sexual availability from our appearance. Men, on the other hand, can wear a business suit without wondering, "Is my skirt too short? Is this shirt too revealing?" or on the other hand, "Do I look like a nun? Will I be dismissed as a castrating bitch if I dress this way?" No matter how a woman looks, she's going to be put into some camp or the other by those who just take a quick glance at her. And for the most part, it's not men enforcing the dress code! How many times have you heard a man say, "She looks like a cheap whore?" about a woman walking down the street? But how many times have you heard a woman dismiss another woman as cheap or slutty based only on how she looks? Why do we care so much? Are we really so insecure that we have to tear down random women we run into in the mall? If we weren't somehow threatened by women who in their dress signal that they are more sexually available, I doubt that we would even notice.
I look forward to a better day, where straight women don't view all other women as competition for the last man on earth. That would be a nice change. But in the meantime, I will continue to wear my makeup, long hair, and red nails: not because I need them to keep my man (though he does like them, and if he didn't I'd beat him with a raw celery stick) but because I enjoy embracing those outward symbols of feminity as part of my style. If that's not your style, wear combat boots and goth hair. Or whatever. That can be cool too. In my mind (and I may be under the influence of the mind-altering experience of being in love!), nothing is cooler than a woman proudly embracing her own style, and whatever it says about the world. Perhaps, for a day or so, we women can just let each other be who we are?
Posted by april at 10:40 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
My Second CR Birthday
Today, I am two.
It's been two years since I took the plunge, dove into the deep end of the pool, and began stirring my mixed metaphors to make for lovely scenery on my CR journey.
It was wonderful to wake up next to my CR superhero, the great MR, who brings me supplements in bed and holds and cuddles me all night. Every day with him is the fulfillment of a fantasy, and of all the wonderful gifts my CR practice has given me, he is the best.*
My weight has dropped a tiny bit over the last year, from a 104 - 106 fluctuation down to about 102 - 104. I've improved my diet with the addition of a daily megamuffin half, and I've improved my cooking by using MR as a taste tester almost every night. Now I enjoy an amazing MR salad (kale, napa cabbage, mustard greens, tomatoes, arugula, red pepper, topped with the April special dressing of nonfat plain organic yogurt mixed with Trader Joe's Salsa Verde) for lunch every day and a thermos of fancy green tea. I still drink my cabernet most nights, though I pour MR his three ounces of pinot noir.
Over the course of the year, my priorities have shifted. Between MR moving in, an upturn in activity at my work, and the demands of running a two-person, two-cat, three bedroom household vs. the one person, two cat tiny one bedroom apartment I used to live in, I've gotten busy. Sometimes I've given my CR less focus than it needs,
but overall I think I've done well. I've settled into a routine with my CR practice, so that it forms a backdrop in my life instead of the focus. I still go a little crazy sometimes eating and drinking with my friends at fine Center City Philly establishments (does anyone even remember how much wine we had at Tria?) but I make up the calories in other ways, and even when I'm out I focus on high protein, high quality, lots of unsaturated fats foods instead of high-carb nightmares. I am no longer tempted by the pizza at meetings with nurses, and I no longer fear that someday I will gain back all the weight I've lost.
I've temporarily shelved the question of going lower. I'm so happy at my current state of CR practice, and though I enjoy fine-tuning it (ie adding a half a megamuffin to my afternoon) I'm not at a point where I want to focus on CR to the extent that I think it would take to bring my calories even lower. I know that when I fight my current calorie level, I get really hungry... so hungry that I consider biting my co-workers' hands. That's illegal in PA, and since I'm the supervisor and have to set a good example, I figure I'd better stick to my very functional CR strategy for now.
CR forms a firm foundation of health and well-being on which the rest of my life: work, love, friends, family and cats, can stand. It's really true that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. I am so grateful for the life and health that CR has given me. I know I'll never go back.
Happy birthday to me...
* Results not typical!
Posted by april at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 24, 2006
Election Day
I have a union election today so that's why I've been out of the loop.
I'm eating a megamuffin.
More soon.
Posted by april at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2006
Is He Being Punished?
That's what one of my co-workers said when I explained that Luke wasn't joining us for lunch because he was fasting. "It's not my fault!" I said. Somehow they blame me. However, Luke is into fasting from time to time. He once did a four day water only fast. I'm sure we can convert him... it's only a matter of time.
Meanwhile, I've been running around like a crazy person. I left the house at 5:30 am yesterday and got home at 9 pm. Work is nuts, and I'm missing cooking for my angel. Tonight at least I will be home in time to eat dinner, though not to cook it.
Posted by april at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 20, 2006
Overwhelming Craving For Tomatoes
Here's a puzzle for the blog readers: Why am I suddenly craving grape tomatoes? I ate almost two whole pints yesterday -- nice ripe organic ones. I couldn't help myself... the desire was overwhemlming. MR thought it was cute. If you've got to go nuts on something, let it be tomatoes.
This has been a super-busy weekend. On Saturday I took MR to the train station for a trip at 6:37 am, came home and ate and cleaned the kitchen, ran to Whole Foods and Trader Joes, had a strategy discussion on the phone with my boss Edward, drove to New Jersey for a meeting with RNs (where I ended up eating the turkey sandwiches the nurse had prepared for our lunch along with several spoonfuls of potato salad) then back home to go to the Cresheim Cottage Cafe where my mom and I had a delicious dinner. I ate the shrimp and mussels stew and we split the dip trio. Pinot noir. Yum!!! At nine I set out to pick up MR from a train station in New Jersey and we got home about midnight and to bed at 1. Then up again at 5:30 the next morning... can't miss Sunday breakfast!
Yesterday I did the house cleaning for the week, interuppted liberally by calls from nurses and staff. In the afternoon Luke came over (he and his wife live about five minutes from me and MR) and we worked on a flyer. He graciously picked up cat food for me, since I was out and Kieffer was threatening to eat me alive. Then MR and I had dinner and I did a short bit of work for the Mprize. Then I crashed. Slept through most of the night, in spite of work stress dreams. Woke up with a flyer written in my head.
Tonight I am going out with VLC! I'm bringing Luke and Susan out to meet their predecessor. We're going to Tria... what should we eat?
I wonder if they have grape tomatoes...
Posted by april at 6:25 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 15, 2006
The Nutmeg Haters' Club
Yesterday between meetings, my new organizer Luke and I had some time to chat. I used the time to (in addition to training him on how to do his new job) further asses his potential as a CR convert.
As it turns out, his taste in food is ideal for a CRON newbie.
Loves:
brussels sprouts
all bitter greens (especially kale)
eggplant
beets
blackberries
scallops
and many other healthy foods
Hates:
nutmeg
Now there's nothing CR un-friendly about nutmeg -- it's just a spice. MR puts it in the megamuffins. But here's the thing about nutmeg:
I hate nutmeg!
I know this guy will work out well because he hates nutmeg.
CR un-friendly weaknesses:
pizza
crabcakes (not too bad if baked not fried and almost all crab meat)
rice crispy treats
Starbucks hot apple cider with caramel and whipped cream
Meanwhile, I didn't get much food yesterday because I left my megamuffin in the office when I went out to do meetings in Center City all day. I also made the mistake of ordering just a garden salad instead of a garden salad with grilled chicken since Luke is a vegetarian and I didn't want to be one of those annoying people who eats meat in front of vegetarians. But MR gave me a stern talking to re getting my protein so in future I may eat the chicken anyway. If I'm smart, I'll just pack my megamuffin and all will be well.
But hold the nutmeg.
Posted by april at 7:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Close Call
Yesterday I spent about three and a half hours in a Starbucks meeting with nurses. This morning as I left to meet a nurse at the same Starbucks at 5:45 am, she called to say that the Starbucks was closed because yesterday afternoon someone drove their car into it. I just missed it. Close call.
Posted by april at 7:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2006
Too Much Kale?
Communication is something I've been working on lately, and I think I've been making progress. However, even the best of relationships suffer from the occasional miscommunication. This weekend, MR and I had a classic misunderstanding.
It all started when I headed out to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's on Saturday morning. I left at 7:30 to get there at 8, just as WF opens. I had the list that MR had prepared, and I was ready to go through the greens and other produce, carefully selecting the freshest for our week of salads. I could have sworn that MR indicated that I should buy dino kale X 2 and regular kale X 2. So I bought two bunches of each.
Oooops. He meant only one bunch of each kale, and now I can't find the list to prove that he wrote X 2. He claims he never would have done that, and in the interest of spending the next 965 years happily in love, I will drop the subject. But in the meantime, I have a lot of kale to use, and MR doesn't like cooked kale. So today for our lunch I am making a Greek salad with eggwhite feta and kale kale kale.
Over a bed of dino kale and green kale, I will spread tomatoes, red peppers, black olives. Then I will top it with "eggwhite feta," a creature I create out of cubed eggwhites soaked and marinated in red wine vinegar, olive oil and oregano. To finish, I will top the entire salad with a cup of nonfat plain organic yogurt mixed with four tablespoons of salsa for a creamy spicy salsa dressing. Yum! Dessert will be apples with hazelnut oil and a few hazelnuts.
Tonight we are going out to dinner for the first time. Since MR doesn't eat anything that isn't calorie controlled, we've always enjoyed our own cooking at home. But tonight he is collecting one of his birthday presents, which was a gift certificate to Applebee's, home of the calorie controlled menu. Want to guess what he eats? Look at the nutrition info on the Weight Watchers menu and see if you can figure it out.
Posted by april at 11:08 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 10, 2006
Keeping It Fresh
MR and I have been together for over a year now, and living together since late July. We have no problem keeping our relationship fresh, and we work hard at showing how much we love and appreciate each other. I still see him as my CR super star, sorta like a rock star idol, even though I go to sleep next to him every night. I love the fact that I live with a guy I have a major crush on. So I don't worry that our relationship will go stale or boring. But I do worry that I'll run out of exciting new ideas on what to cook for dinner.
Tonight is one of those nights when I was worried that my genius might have run out. I stared into the fridge, waiting for inspiration to strike, wondering if I should hang it up and feed MR my quotidian diet times three.
Then inspiration struck. Curried Cream of Cruicifer:
40 cals (half cup) canned pumpkin
120 g cauliflower
151 g broccoli
1/2 cup vegetable broth
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt
curry and garlic powder
49 g red pepper
180 calories Quorn tenders or alternate protein source
1 teaspoon flax oil
Dice all veggies. Bring broth to a boil and add veggies, stirring until lightly steamed. Add Quorn or alternate protein source, season with curry and garlic to taste. Add half salt if necessary. Stir in red pepper. Remove from heat and add yogurt and flax oil. Re-season if need be. Serve hot!
MR loved it. My genius has not faded away. Long live the curried cream of crucifer!
Posted by april at 7:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 9, 2006
A Quick Answer
In response to comment: I actually mentioned two days ago that I have been so busy I have not had time to pick up the results of my blood work. The previous results were excellent: very low cholesterol, good iron, a bit low on B vitamins so I added more B supplements and some mushrooms to my diet.
When I have time to pick up my blood test results, I will share any interesting results with you.
Posted by april at 1:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 8, 2006
No Kiwi For You
One of the health care professionals I'm working with just called, practically in tears, because she went for allergy testing and found out that she's allergic to kiwi!!! Her lips are swolen, they had to medicate her, and now she can barely function. All because of a kiwi. She loves kiwi. She is heartbroken.
The moral of the story is: never take your kiwi for granted. I know I love mine.
And golden kiwi... nothing like it. Tastes like Mountain Dew. A true gift of the gods.
Posted by april at 10:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Evangelist
I just hired another staff member. I really like him. He has some solid experience, he went to Harvard, he's about 36, he's a philosophy PhD but we'll try not to hold that against him, and he seems dedicated and hardworking. Between him and the new woman I hired, I feel like I have a great staff. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes in my everyday life. My entire work world has been re-formed in less than a week. As Aubrey de Grey would say, "Fab!"
My new staff member, let's call him Luke, has made a terrible mistake. He has expressed interest in CR. I met him for the first time the day before the reporter came over for dinner so I happened to mention it. He said that he had recently done a fast of some kind (I never figured out if it was a juice fast or water fast) and that while he found it beneficial, he was also shocked at the horrified reactions of family and friends. I am used to horrified reactions to our dietary habits, so we discussed that for a moment. Then this week he's had a bad cold, so at one point I mentioned that I can't get sick anymore since CR. He said, "I have to learn more about this CR thing." Hahaha!
I have always been the kind of person who wants to spread the word. If I think something is good, and it's worked for me, and I have reason to believe it will work for you, I'm going to tell you about it. I try not to be a pest, but I'm sure I often fail. My rule in work circles has been that unless someone expresses interest, I don't tell them about CR in detail. It tends to come up at some point (like when I'm measuring my almonds at lunch on the baby scale) and I give a very brief summary of what I'm doing. Then I drop the subject unless I am asked. Susan, my wonderful new staff member who started last week as an organizer but was working as our administrative person before hand for a few years, has rarely expressed any sort of interest in CR, so I don't talk about it at length. But Luke strikes me as a prime target for conversion, and I find myself contemplating the days of VLC when I had a fellow healthy eater person following me around all day, from Philadelphia to Scranton to Pittsburgh, raiding vegetable trays, charting the locations of conference hotels with free fruit baskets, and discussing the merits of different brands of brewers yeast. Luke and his wife also live in our neighborhood, so I'm thinking that after a month or so when he gets used to working with me, I could invite him and his wife over for dinner and he could ask MR all the science questions he might have by that time. And of course we could impress them with my version of CR cuisine. I have high hopes for converting another organizer -- someone who lives the wild and crazy meeting to leaflet to meeting to phone calls to Scranton type of life and can weigh in on the side of getting healthy food when we're in charge of ordering lunch. I'm also hoping that having another healthy eating person around will shift the balance in our office and make the others eat a bit healthier. Peer pressure is so powerful, even when it's example not exhortation. I've never seen Luke eat anything -- the two times I've met him have been non-eating situations -- but he starts Monday, so we shall see.
I finally got some sleep last night. I've been up at 4:30 all week and had very stressful, non-stop days every day. I haven't had time to go pick up the results from the blood tests I got week before last, and I haven't had time to do much exciting cooking. I did get home last night in time to make dinner, and I made MR a very quick and easy weeknight pumpkin curry with eggwhites. Just threw a cup of pumpkin into about a half a cup of no salt organic veggie broth and added curry, garlic and some chipoltle Tabasco sauce, along with cubed eggwhites for protein and 100 grams tomatoes. Stirred in a cup of nonfat plain organic yogurt after removing from heat to lend a creamy taste and texture, then served with a teaspoon of flax oil and steamed brussels sprouts on the side. I ate my brewers yeast and broth soup for dinner with brussels sprouts as my vegetable, plus a cup of nonfat cottage cheese with Carolina Treet and flax oil. My nice quotidian diet: easy to prepare, nutritious, and exactly what I feel like eating after a long day at work. It's nice that MR doesn't mind eating different foods when we sit down at the table together for dinner. I enjoy cooking for him, but my nutritional needs would often not be satisfied by a smaller portion of what I'm cooking for him. It's much harder to pack all necessary nutrition into a calorie package the size of my daily target, so on weekdays I usually stick to the diet I have carefully engineered to come close to meeting all my needs. Recently I've added a megamuffin (find recipe here) half as my afternoon snack, replacing a carton of organic yogurt and some almonds. The megamuffin is engineered to be perfectly Zoned and have 10% of the RDA of everything per 100 calories. My half megamuffin is 130 calories, so cheaper calorie-wise than my previous yogurt and almond combination, and much better nutrition.
I was so exhausted last night that I fell into bed shortly before nine. Getting up before 5 am for days and then working like crazy till late will do that to you. Even though I left the office after 5:30, I had still worked an 11 hour day. Today I have the incredible luxury of eating breakfast at home (I've been leaving so early that I've grabbed a megamuffin to eat out and about between meetings) and then heading off to work at a more reasonable hour. Tonight I'll be home by 7, so I'll be able to eat dinner at home though I won't have time to make dinner. MR has been doing a lot of his own cooking lately, and I miss cooking for him, but work is what it is. I still manage to cook his dinner more days than not, as long as you count the weekends when I always cook.
Off to get ready for another day!
Posted by april at 5:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 5, 2006
Rejuvenation
The other day as I interviewed a candidate for an organizer job, he asked me why I sound so pessimistic about the timeline for nurses organizing in Philadelphia. I said it was because I had been organizing for a very long time -- ten years now -- and it has made me realistic. Realistic enough to know that the world isn't just waiting for me to burst on the scene. Realistic enough to know that the conditions that make people want to organize are largely out of our control. Realistic enough to know that change takes a long, long time.
I told him that the main reason why I started CR in the first place was to try to live long enough to see a radically different kind of world. Sometimes I feel like I must count on the success of Aubrey de Grey and MR's work to bring forth the radical anti-aging biotechnology, or else I'll never live to see even the beginning of a change. It's so hard to live in a world where so many people are miserable, yet for forces in the culture and in their own psychology, they refuse to take the steps that would allow them to take control of their lives.
I've been going through a period of rejuvenation in my organizing work, and feeling more connected to it than I have in ages. I keep telling MR, "This is what my life is really like," as I walk out the door at quarter till six in the morning, not to return until nine at night. I have two campaigns in full bloom, two more in the little tiny bud on the branch stage, and a brilliant new organizer who needs lots of training and attention to reach the incredible potential she already shows. I find myself feeling the enthusiasm of a young organizer as I set out in the morning before dawn to meet the professionals on their way into work, but with the endurance and skill and strength of a very old organizer who has won a lot, lost once or twice, and learned what it really means to fight the fight for the long haul.
My organizing rejuvenation makes me wonder if this is how it will feel to partake of the first generation of anti-aging biomedicine. To have the experience and wisdom of age, while feeling my body getting physically younger. CR was a rejuvenation in itself, and I know that I rely on the greater strength and stamina that CR gives me to make it through my long and stressful days. It is often said that youth is wasted on the young, and as I experience a kind of second youth in my work, I see all the ways in which I could not appreciate the energy of my first organizer youth when I was 22 and 23. Watching my newly minted organizer begin to try her wings (I never met a metaphor that didn't need some mixing!) I re-live many of the same emotions I went through, but this time with the distance and analysis of someone who has been through and learned so much more.
CR has so much in common with organizing. Both require a major transformation that has effects far beyond the immediately obvious. Both require individuals to take control of their lives, in spite of society's pressure to conform. Both can be stressful and cause you to make a mess of the kitchen. When I hear people complain about their bodies and their health but continue to eat gak, I am filled with frustration. When I hear nurses and other health care professionals complain about their working conditions but shy away from taking the very steps that would result in an improvement, I want to rip my hair out or worse. But over the years I have learned distance, patience, and to take the long view. None of this has come easy to me, but it was a matter of my very survival.
To learn to live with the frustration, I had to learn to forgive the part of myself that sees things I want to change but can't quite motivate to make the change. I still struggle with it every day, and when I find myself becoming furious with either the nurses or the gak-eaters, I force myself to reflect on all the ways in which I am still not fully in control of my life. I still frequently eat too much of the wrong foods and fall short of my goals. I appear to be a human being, and it manifests in all sorts of annoying ways. I never want my bloggie friends to think for a minute that I hold myself out as an example of perfection. That's not what this is about. This is about striving to become the people we want to be, and supporting each other, even when we make different decisions.
I have told you what helps me to be the person I want to be. Good, healthy food; a quotidian diet that is easy and fast and ultra-nutritious and yummy spiked with a weekly night out at one of my favorite Center City restaurants; hard work in an environment where I am supported by the most amazing people on earth; the love of a brilliant and beautiful slightly orange man; a supportive and loving family that sees me as an adventure, not a freak; soft, furry cats who howl a bit more than strictly necessary but love me; daily meditation and care for my soul, not just my body. Maybe some of those things will work for you, maybe they won't. I offer them only as observations, maybe suggestions, not prescriptions. You are the only one who can figure out what works for you.
I am so happy now, so truly blessed in all areas of my life, but life has not always been perfect. I still cry about old injuries, still feel the pain of things that didn't work out the way I wanted or loved ones I lost. I cry about people I can't help, those I've loved and will never stop loving but simply can't save. I cry about people whose lives I saw destroyed by depression, anger turned inward on self, abuse of substances of whatever kind, or just plain lonliness. I find myself paralyzed by sadness over things that happened twenty years ago, and MR holds me until I feel better. It's better to feel the pain than to push it down until it erupts in less healthy ways, but it's still not a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I am grateful to have my angel here to hold me, and I wish that everyone had such an angel in their lives. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the consciousness that in a world of such pain and lonliness, I have found so much love and happiness. It doesn't seem fair, and it's not. But depriving myself of love wouldn't help others, it would just make me look silly. I do all I can to love those around me, even if it's just praying for them.
Just prayer... what a silly statement. No matter what you call it, the results of actively focusing your attention on the well-being of someone else, even someone whose life you can effect in no material way, can be very powerful. In just the last few months I've received the incredible gift of friendship from someone I had spent a lot of time praying for, and I believe that her life has been enriched as well. Sometimes all you can do is pray (or meditate, or send positive energy, or just stop annoying the person in whatever way you see fit), yet this is a powerful action to take.
There are so many ways in which you just can't change other people, yet changing your response can cause change far beyond what you had originally hoped to accomplish. I finally hit a point in my organizing work where I realized that I had to create a life for myself, independent of work, else I would wither away while waiting for something to happen and have nothing at the end to show for myself besides a whole bunch of notebooks of contact sheets and a whole lot of messages left on answering machines (you may have to be an organizer to get that one!) I worked hard to find life and love, and I did. For awhile, my work seemed less important. But as I experience a rejuvenation in my work, I find the love and life outside of work that I developed supports and strengthens me. There is more of me now (well, physically there is less of me now, but you know what I mean!) and I will need the additional strength and calm and power to face the challenges ahead.
It's not all about broccoli and brewers yeast, now is it?
But I have to make dinner. So go meditate on that.
Posted by april at 4:45 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 4, 2006
Are We Going To Talk More About Sleep?
So said MR last night as I raised the topic for the fourth time. I got home after another twelve hour non-stop day utterly exhausted, threw together a quick and easy dinner, and then sat down with my angel to discuss the merits of sleep. Then he tucked me into bed at 8:30. Unfortunately, Philomena, annoyed by my lack of attention to her this week, proceeded to meow loudly for much of the night, interrupting my sleep. Still, I slept in a bit (till 5:41am!) and I feel much more rested now.
The quick dinner I made for MR was a chunky stew of
200 g eggplants
200 g grape tomatoes
73 g (leftovers!) zucchini
250 g eggwhites (cubed)
4 g fresh basil
garlic powder and dried basil
1 tablespoon brewers yeast (lewis labs!)
all stirred together in 1 cup no salt organic veggie broth and topped with a teaspoon flax oil
dessert was blackberries with hazelnut oil and hazelnuts. 3 oz pinot noir.
I ate my usual brewers yeast soup and cottage cheese with Carolina Treet.
Now for breakfast and off to the races again!
Posted by april at 6:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 2, 2006
Dinner With Reporter
Here's what I made for the reporter from the Philadelphia Weekly:
Salad of blackberries and beets over arugula with a hazelnut oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Eggplant, eggwhites, and grape tomatoes simmered in red wine, garlic and basil, a fourth cup of Trader Joe's marinara in the reporter's
Mashed cauliflower
Pinot noir
She couldn't finish her food... normal people can never handle the volume. I made her almost as much food as I made for MR because she mentioned that she is pregnant, and if you're pregnant you need to eat. She was charming and asked us tons of questions. Of course we love talking about CR, food, life-extension, SENS, and our goofy courtship. I find that reporters always understand how I fell in love with MR's writing -- fellow writers can understand that for a true writer, the writing conveys the essence of the soul. That tells you much more than you learn from a personal ad, a date, or meeting at a bar.
We had a lovely dinner, and we sent her home with a megamuffin. She asked many intelligent questions about CR, SENS, life-extension, food, and our lives. She also brought me some Starbucks coffee, which makes me very happy.
Tomorrow morning, off to the races again. 7 am meeting, two interviews during the day, and the usual work work work. Then tomorrow after work I'm going out for a glass of wine with my friends Jeff and Jon. Jeff is threatening to cancel but Jon will be there. We're going down to a little wine bar in Center City called Tria where they have precisely five ounce pours -- there's a mark on the glass. Then home to cuddle my Orange One and our calico cat.
Posted by april at 9:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 1, 2006
Yes, You Could Say All Of This And Worse...
That's a line from "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You," one of my favorite Sting songs of all time.
I've had a rough week. I've had another staff member quit -- it's not unusual that young organizers can't handle the pressure and melt down but it's still disappointing when it happens. However, I just hired an absolutely brilliant woman who has been our administrative person into one of the organizer slots, and she is working out beautifully. I also interviewed a guy I think would do very well today and offered him the job.
You're wondering what this had too do with CR, and the answer is NOT MUCH! MR made my brewers yeast soup for me tonight, and I ate part of a Subway salad I'd ordered at a lunch meeting.
Tomorrow we have a reporter for dinner. I mean, to dinner. We don't plan to eat her. We don't know her calorie content.
Posted by april at 7:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack