Tis the season for...moths?

Living in Oklahoma, there are plenty of seasonal bug invasions that we come to dread each year. At the beginning of summer there are those pesky Junebugs who cover the entire porch, seem to attack at random and inevitably end up in the house buzzing around only to end up in a papertowel in the trash. Then, as the summer trucks along, the dreaded mosquitos make their entry and magically find ways to bite me on every area of my body no matter how well concealed. And as the heat of summer begins to fade into those perfect evenings of fall where there is no better place to be than outside having a glass of wine and chatting with the neighbors these huge swarms of gnats take over and make it difficult to breath or open your mouth without getting one up or in. However, the past couple of weeks I have encountered a new invasion that I do not remember from years past: moths. They are everywhere!! The other night while sitting on the porch I could count at least 100 of them on the window screens and every day I am dealing with a handful of them in the house. Does this happen every year and I have just somehow missed it? Maybe our old neighborhood did not have them? Either way, just like all of the other buggies that come and go I am certainly ready for these to go.

Thoughts on the ACS webinar

As I was watching the ACS webinar on scientific writing it occurred to me how much of the basic English grammar that I learned as a child I have forgotten. Simple terms like "predicate" and the difference between active and passive voice are not as recognizable to me anymore. I guess this is just an example of the "use it or lose it" that I have heard many times. It frankly made me immediately think about the show "Are you Smarter Than a 5th Grader," which I watch from time to time, and how many academically astute people I have seen lose all of their winnings on seemingly simple questions. As we get older and further our education we tend to focus on one specialty which tends to override all of the other important information we have learned along the way. There are times when even basic biology slips my mind and I have to go back and remind myself about certain aspects. It really is a shame to let so much knowledge that is acquired over the years to go to waste, but there are just not enough hours in the day to use it all. Fortunately I have a teenager who still had things fresh on his mind, so maybe he can start proofreading for me....

Changing the way we eat

Today while sitting at lunch with my older son he says, “Let’s have pizza.” At which point I have to remind him that I cannot eat pizza. I have a food allergy.

About this time last year I tested positive for Celiac’s Disease, which is simply an allergy to the gluten that is found in wheat, rye and barley. Based on a variety of symptoms I have likely had the condition for years and it actually took doing my own “testing” through diet changes before I convinced the doctor to run the test. Initially I was pretty bummed knowing all of the foods that I would have to give up. However, it did not take long to figure out that almost everything I would want to eat I could still make at home using gluten free products. Eating out is quite a different story and even though plenty of restaurants have gluten free menus there are still cross contamination questions to take into consideration. All in all I have not found the diet to be too difficult to manage. The only food I have not found a way around is egg rolls (rice paper wrappers do not fry easily and I almost set the kitchen on fire trying it!). And, unfortunately, gluten free beer is just not tasty.

Not only did discovering this allergy make an improvement in my health, it made me start looking differently at what we are really eating. I have never been a very discriminate eater and processed foods are what I have grown up with. But, over time I have begun to form my own opinions about how foods are affecting human health and after my son was born I decided to work on some big changes. I am a believer that the hormones and antibiotics pumped into cattle and chicken are a huge contributor to numerous health problems seen today including early development in girls and the sudden increase in autism. I could rattle off a list of problems that could all logically be linked to these meats. For that reason, we are planning on bringing back five deer during hunting season to stock our freezer with and are hoping to also have a cow from a family member slaughtered as well (we know what they have been fed and that they are all natural). Not only will we be able to remove all of the unknowns from purchased meat, but we will also be removing a lot of fat from our diet (venison is super lean) and it will save us a ton of money.

The next step for me is to begin removing processed foods from our home. That one will be a little tougher because it will involve a lot more cooking from scratch than I am capable of at the moment. Hardly a day goes by that I do not hear something on tv urging people to not eat foods with ingredients they cannot pronounce. And as I have had to look more and more closely at ingredient listings searching for gluten I have realized that there is no way some of the stuff we are ingesting can be good for us. It will be many, many years before science starts putting two and two together with a lot of these food issues, too late for most of us around today. That is why I want to make informed and healthy decisions for my kids so that when they do learn that high fructose corn syrup can turn you into a yellow, three-eyed, vampire-werewolf that they will already be one step ahead.

I recently heard on a show that the diet of some civilization near the north pole consists of 70% whale blubber and yet they do not have heart disease or many other ailments that we see in the western world. Asian cultures do not have the staggering obesity rates and have fairly long life expectancies also. These are both examples of how we are getting it all wrong as far as our diet and we really need to get back to more natural ways. Unfortunately, that is tough simply because eating badly is so much cheaper. But, I am hoping that my family can make it work because yellow is really not my color.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Part 2

Last week I blogged about the partial lake shutdown at Texoma. Well, late Tuesday afternoon the Army Corps announced that the ban on water contact is now lake wide due to the blue green algae bloom. Unlike the Grand Lake situation over the 4th of July, the Army Corps did not drop the ball and wait until the last minute to make the announcement. Knowing that the biggest weekend of the year for lake traffic is upcoming they made sure to get the work out well in advance so that people could weigh the options and make other plans. In addition, they provided more information about the bloom, the fact that just because you cannot see it does not mean it is not there and all of the health risks. The media has also been diligent about spreading the information not only on the local news but also through radio. It will be interesting to see how many people heed the warning and how many go ahead and make a weekend of it regardless of the risks. We know a LOT of those who have weekend houses and boats on the lake and so far we are hearing a pretty even mix of those still coming and those making other plans. Regardless of the decision, at least they have the information they need and the effort has been made to keep them safe. I am very impressed by the improvement in the Corps handling of the situation this time around and hopefully this will set a precedent to only be improved upon in the future.

Oh, how having a family can change your priorities...

As I was putting together my CV for this course (of which much of it was already written) I realized how empty my activities have been for the past couple of years. At one point I had driven myself to near insanity with the amount of campus organizations I was involved with, on top of classes and research. Although I have still been active in my lab, the majority of my other activities came to a grinding halt when I had my son almost two years ago. I am left to wonder how this will be looked at by future schools or employers. Although my reasons for slowing down are valid, they will only see the paper existence of me and any assumptions they choose to make will be out of my hands. While I may have the opportunity to discuss my life in greater detail in an interview, I still wonder how I will be viewed. Many mothers are capable of not missing a beat even when they are being awoken at all hours of the night and may have missed showering for a couple of days unbeknownst to them. But for me that was not the case. I chose to walk away, if for no other reason than to keep myself from driving off of the Willis Bridge. And, while I am getting back to that place of multi-tasking bliss, I will never be as ambitious (or maybe just as insane) as I was previously. I presume that I will end up just fine and that my perceptions of myself are much harsher than those of anyone else. And, maybe that paper existence of myself is no more important than my son's baby book which has also been put in the corner until I have time to get to it.

Meet the Teacher Night

My 14 year old son started high school at Norman North last week and tonight was "Meet the Teacher Night." For most parents this is a fairly laid back and informal event, but for myself this is the first of many meetings I will likely have throughout the year. My son is on an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) due to a long time struggle with behavioral issues and this has kept him from the high level of scholastic achievement that he is very capable of. My goal tonight was to make it known that I want to be as involved as possible with his progress and that, unlike many parents, I want to be contacted as regularly as possibly to ensure that I am fully informed. The most interesting visit of the night was with his Biology teacher who is apparently the former head coach of the football team. At one point or another we all had a coach as a teacher and from my experience they were pretty uninterested about actually teaching. My initial impression as I walked into the classroom was that he was the typical coach; big, brawny and quite brash. However, after speaking with him I got the feeling that he actually might be the perfect fit for my son. He does care about the students learning, does not accept a lack of effort and most striking was that he does not like to correspond with parents through e-mail. He is one of the few who feels that e-mail is too impersonal and would rather talk by phone or simply set up a face to face meeting. From my experiences over the past few years it seems that most teachers are too overwhelmed with the number of students that they have and simply have a lack of interest in building relationships with the parents, so I was thrilled to see this from someone who I initially perceived in a more negative way. I was also excited about the classroom setup, as the lab equipment is all present in the actual classroom (very different from when I was in high school). Now, if I could only get my son as interested in science as I am I think this could be a very good year for him!

Cooking is a science...

I use to really hate cooking. Probably because I was not very good at it. A home cooked meal was a tasty box of Hamburger Helper or, on a really good night, I might get lucky and pull off a crock pot roast. Over the past few years I have become somewhat more domesticated and my cooking has greatly improved (which occasionally is still not saying much!). Tonight I attempted a new recipe and, unfortunately, it did not work out so well. It became one of those dishes that ends up being sprinkled with some salt, pepper and, in this case, creole seasoning just to have some recognition of flavor. It was during that desperation to create something edible that I realized how much of a science cooking really is. For example, in a chemistry lab you can mix together a handful of different chemicals, but if you do not know how they interact it can be a disaster. It is no different in the kitchen. Certain things work together and others do not. Yet, now I can think back on all of those organic chemistry experiments that did not go well either, so maybe I just cannot follow a recipe.........