So Far, So Good

I read this book in January, and I loved it. I can't wait to see the movie- I had no idea they were making it until I saw this ad in a theater.

 This semester has been better than last in every single area of my life. I'm doing a much better job of maintaining a good work/life balance, I'm able to work out thanks to not having a broken foot, I know what to expect and I'm comfortable at my school/with my students, and I see the light at the end of the tunnel to keep me going- what's up, May 27th!!

I figured I'd recap how January went in terms of my 3 Main Goals. The above pretty much covers One and Two, so I guess I'll go into a little more detail about Three. In January, I lost 6 pounds towards my goal of 18 pounds. I didn't count calories or obsess over anything, I just went back to eating mindfully and working out. Speaking of the latter- holy shit I was out of shape! It reminded me of how I work out primarily to be a fit, healthy, strong person, not just to "be skinny, yay!" Being able to tackle a hike, or go on a long bike ride, or do a hard yoga class, or go snowshoeing without feeling as though my heart is going to hummingbird out of my chest and explode in front of my face- that is why I work out. I love lifting weights and seeing myself get stronger each week. I look forward to the random crazy poses in yoga that challenge my flexibility, balance, and strength. I truly enjoy a brutal interval workout in spinning that makes me question whether or not my legs can even keep moving, and then they do. I think that Goal Three has probably been the foundation for making Goal One and Two so much more doable: I have more energy and I'm in a better mood, and (totally obvious observation alert) what do you know, that makes life in general a lot easier. As to the GoodReads 52 books in 2012 goal, I'm about 2 books ahead right now, and I'm finding, as I did last year, that having this goal is great for curtailing mindless internet surfing.

January pretty much zipped right before me before I could blink, and it's strange to think that I have only 4 more months left before I am a certified teacher with only 4 classes left towards my second master's degree! Our lease is up the end of May, and we're not sure yet if we're staying in Colorado through the summer until I find a job overseas in Aug/Sept, or if we're going to spend the summer bouncing around the U.S., road tripping and visiting friends before I take up said overseas job. I'm hoping for the latter, but that depends on job situations out of our control. For now I'm just enjoying teaching, getting myself back into shape, and having dedicated free time to spend with Bobby and our friends, actually having a life outside of school/work.

Oh, Right...

A perk of leaving my house at 7 a.m.- sunrise as captured on my cell phone, no filters/editing

I suppose I never did the follow-up post to my 2011goals in review post. I know we're almost an entire month into 2012, but I figure I'll get these goals nailed down for posterity, so I can either revel in victory or toil under shame, depending upon how they work out.

As I mentioned, I think a huge issue last year was my glaring oversight in not making pre-grad school and during-grad school goals. This led me to decide that I would make a set of goals that were specific to January 1st- May 31st. That encompasses my entire second semester of grad school, plus all of my student teaching, plus the end of our lease here in Colorado. What happens come June 1st is truly completely up in the air. A lot depends upon where Bobby is working by then, where I might be working, where family members are in the U.S. and where we might be visiting them, etc. There is a possibility we may go month to month and stay in Colorado through August, maybe not. Basically, the only logical thing is to plan from January to May because that is the only thing I'm sure of at the moment. I'm also taking into consideration how much of a brutal, stressful time suck grad school+ student teaching is (something I had no idea about last January) which led to a significant paring down of any goals. In fact, I only have 3, as follows, in no particular order:

1. Work/Life- specifically Work/Relationship- balance: A lot of the particulars of this goal are personal to my, well, personal relationships, but let's just say that last semester was a big stressful wad of no social life and little to no fun/going out. This isn't good for me, or the people who put up with love me. Therefore, I set up my weekly schedule so that I do absolutely no lesson planning/homework on Friday night after school, all day Saturday, and Saturday night. This gives me two nights a week of guilt free, I'm not worrying about homework freedom. It also averts the problem of letting fear of finishing a project interfere with needed downtime, which I wrote about at length. Plus, it gives Bobby and I a guaranteed date night, or time for hanging out with friends, or making random day trips to Boulder/Denver, etc. And I get to stay out late/sleep in, because homework/lesson planning are not even options.

2. Graduate School and Student teaching: My goals here are simple and straightforward: successfully complete my student teaching (with all the reviews and lesson planning and grading and after school work and professional development that entails) and end the semester with another 4.0 in all of my grad classes. Come May I will have 27 hours towards my graduate degree and have all of the necessary training for my certification. I've kicked ass for the first half of this journey, and I want to finish strong.

3. Health and Fitness: Return to my former level of fitness and lose the 18 pounds I gained while on crutches. I know a lot of people think it's terrible to focus on a scale, but facts are facts: before breaking my foot, I was incredibly active and ate whatever I wanted, in moderation. After breaking my foot, I wasn't active at all, and I turned to food for entertainment/stress relief. There were several times when I wasn't hungry at all, was physically full, but was so bored and stressed that I would knock back dessert and sweet coffee and sodas because it was the only fun to be had when one is chained to a chair with a broken foot doing 5 hours of homework. I am not saying that everyone who gains 18 pounds does so because of inactivity and eating poorly, but for me, that is clearly the case. Further, only 1 pair of jeans fit, none of my professional slacks fit, and half of my button front shirts do not fit. Further still, in only two weeks of going back to my previous activity levels/eating habits, I have dropped 6 pounds. I'm not counting calories or obsessing, I'm just returning to my previous lifestyle of frequent, fun activity and eating mindfully. I went snowshoeing- one of my favorite activities- last week and was so out of shape that I had to stop after every single hill, no matter how moderate. This is not a feeling I enjoy, at all. I want to be fit again. I will be fit again. My specific goals in this arena are to do the following, weekly: 2 hours of cardio, 2 hours of yoga, and two sessions of weightlifting (full body, free weights). This schedule is necessary for my sanity in order to counteract all the time I am forced to sit for hours on end as I commute and lesson plan and do homework and grade papers.

4. Read 52 books in 2012: This is the only yearlong goal I'm making, because I can do this wherever I am in the world. I love using Goodreads to keep up with this easily, and it definitely motivated me to turn off the internet and pick up a book instead.

Really, 1-3 Jan-May goals all come back to this: organizing my time wisely. I'm trying to avoid the trap of feeling pressure to get homework done, not wanting to do it, forcing myself to sit at the computer, and then wasting 3 hours on the internet as I try to avoid said homework. If I can structure my weekly schedule more realistically/efficiently, I can easily have time for a social life and working out, and still be successful in school and student teaching. So far, it's going well. I think just keeping a laser focus on these three areas will keep me sane over the next few months, not to mention give me a lot of happiness and stress relief, too.

Christmas Plagues, Hurray!

I've been eagerly awaiting Christmas break for a good while now. I have an entire month off of my graduate program, and I have 17 days off of student teaching. Here's how I planned it out- I would leave school on Friday, December 16th, attend two Christmas parties, and then do some things for my teaching certification (I have to submit scads of paperwork and evidence, it's obnoxious). I figured I'd be disgustingly lazy on Saturday, sleeping in, screwing around on the internet, eating crappy food, reading books, squandering time like a champ. Sunday I would clean the house from top to bottom, do all my laundry, finish up my evidence submitting for school to the CDE, and then Mon/Tues/Wed I would do the semester planning, syllabus writing, lesson planning (a huge project). This would, theoretically, leave me with 10 straight days during which I had no worries, cares, responsibilities, or deadlines/projects looming over my head.

So, everything went according to plan until Sunday night. I went to bed, happy and tired from a productive day, ready to wake up early and hit the library. Instead, I woke up at 4 a.m. itchy and fuzzy headed. There was a huge welt on my elbow, and on my knee. I thought I had been bitten by something. Bobby told me it looked liked hives (which I've never had). I went back to sleep, only to be awoken at 6 a.m. to lumpy, swollen hives all over both of my arms, my side, and my leg. Here's an idea, just picture this, you know, all over-

I took this picture and sent it to my mom so she could tell me if I was going to die. I'm only kind of kidding.

 We decided to head to Urgent Care, which opened at 7 a.m. By the time we got there, most of them had faded. I chalked it up to the cleaner I had used the day before during Winter Clean-a-thon 2011, the doctor gave me some steroid cream, and I went along my way. Later that night, they came back with a vengeance, this time all over my upper body, with huge dinner plate sized welts covering my stomach. I chugged Benadryl and conked out, sleeping from 6 to midnight and then from midnight until ten a.m. Vacation was off to a GREAT start, lemmetellya. Tuesday I spent the day at the library in order to stay out of the house. I came home, and promptly broke out in the worst hives yet covering my entire body and making me feel like my skin was going to burst it was so swollen, prompting Bobby to say "I didn't know it was possible for hives to look like that". It was gross. At this point we decided that I needed to leave the house and go to a friends' place. In the time it took us to drive 10 minutes, half the hives were gone, and by the time I had been at their house for half an hour, I was hive free. Clearly, our apartment was trying to kill me.

Bobby spent about 7 hours re-cleaning the house from top to bottom to get rid of the cleaner, as well as buying new pillows/comforter/towels just in case it was some funky dust allergy. I came home to find our tree on the back porch, visible only through the safety of the sliding glass door.

Banished, for crimes against my skin and immune system

I was hive free, but I had wasted 4 nights and 3 days high on Benadryl, getting little to nothing done because my brain was on a puffy cloud of medicine, sleeping up to 15 hours out of 24, and being woken up two or three times a night by the return of the hives when the medicine wore off. To say it sucked would be a bit of an understatement. I was www.Grinch-fest.com.org.edu.screwchristmas after the first day, once the "this is ridiculous but what can you do other than laugh?" roll with it optimism wore off. Since Wednesday afternoon of last week I've been hive free, but, just to make up for it, I've had one day of a crushing sinus headache that lasted all day, and today I've been in bed after puking my guts up randomly this morning and then having chills and nausea all day. I am falling apart here, people! I read some David Sedaris to make me feel better about not having to work as a Christmas elf, and yeah, it helped a tiny little bit, but not much.

Good news is that the holiday weekend, including all day Friday, was great. Christmas Eve was spent with a good friend and Christmas Day proper was absolutely wonderful. So, I'm still grateful, if a bit bitter. It's like an 80/20 mix. I fully realize that having hives from a cleaning product and/or a totally unnecessary Christmas decoration in the form of a dead tree are pretty much standard first world problems, but hey, they're mine, and they tried to Grinch-snatch my Christmas vacation, so there it is.

The Way We Think Things Will Go vs. Reality

Getting to hang out with all of these lovely people over Thanksgiving break in Texas was a welcome respite from everything I'm about to whinge about below...

I had the idea that I would chronicle this year of my teaching internship right here on my blog. I envisioned it being similar to my first year teaching in Japan. I would share funny stories, insights, frustrations, and put it all in post form so it would be there to review in the future when nostalgia hit.

Of course, in reality, I've barely blogged at all these past few months. A lot of this can be chalked up to taking 3 grad classes while student teaching 30 hours a week and still volunteering, while trying to find time to hang out with Bobby. At first, I attributed my lack of time to being on crutches- it seemed a logical enough scapegoat. Then, once I was off the crutches and still stressed and tired and with no downtime to do frivolous things like blog, I decided it was because of all the homework I was doing, working ahead so that I'd have Thanksgiving week free of assignments- and yes, that was part of it.

But mostly, I think I'm  not managing my time very well. Not the majority of the time, but at least 25% of the time, I'll let my fear about not finishing a project/lesson plan/book in time get in the way of my being able to give myself some downtime. This happens, especially, when I'm procrastinating. 75% of the time, I can hit the library no problem, bang out 6 hours straight on Tues/Thurs, and then work all day Mon/Wed/Fri, and then do homework on Sat/Sun. And I'm productive, and it's good work, and I feel good about it. But then, say, 25% of the time- I just don't.wanna.do.it.dammit. And in those times, I don't just admit "you know what? I'm going to dick around on the internet for 4 hours instead of doing my homework because I'm just not feeling it today, so I should just put it away and go do something fun with Bobby, or blog, or work out, or go on a walk, and actually enjoy this time." No, what I do is live in denial about the fact that homework/lesson planning/reading that book on __________ just isn't going to happen, and instead I'll remain at the desk, frittering away my time. I'm not good about taking breaks, I guess is what it comes down to. Or I'm not good about building them in, maybe that's it. Either way, I have a tiny handful of assignments left in this semester, thanks to all my working ahead, and I'm currently sitting at a 4.0, so I know I'm doing something right. And my stress level has gone waaaaaaaaay down in the last few weeks. But now I'm feeling the crunch again, and I feel guilty about not "working all the time", which results in the stupid situation of not being able to let myself actively choose downtime, instead of just sneaking it in.

The problem is, I do have a lot, a LOT of work to do. And yeah, I'm getting the majority of it done. But I need to come up with a different approach for next semester, or else I'm going to go insane. This coming week I am sorting scholarship applications for the non-profit, planning a lesson and teaching it on Friday, writing a behavioral plan tonight and interviewing a student tomorrow, doing two other assignments for my courses, completing step 4 of an application for an international job which includes photocopies of my whole life and passport photos in professional clothes for visa applications, grading 17 incredibly long essays + character diagrams + background analysis work for AP Literature, reading a book called "Teaching with Love and Logic" and taking detailed notes as part of a SMART goal for my teaching internship, plus my usual commitments of my teaching internship. I'm also getting back in the gym and hitting up spinning classes today, Thursday, and Saturday, as well as yoga on Thursday and Sunday (skipping the gym "because I'm busy" has been an excuse for too long this semester; I've been this busy the whole time, that's never going to change, but what is changing is my ability to fit into any of my professional clothing).

All of the previous has to be done by Friday night, so I only have one day off from teaching (Thursday) and 4 evenings to work on all of it. This weekend the homework/lesson planning starts all over again with an equally packed schedule for next week. One good thing is that two classes will be FINISHED this Saturday, and my third grad class will be finished on Wed, December 7th when I reflect on the last lesson plan I have to submit for the semester. I really think this whole experience would be very different if I wasn't going to grad school full time *while* student teaching. Don't get me wrong- I love that I'm getting credit for my student teaching, and I love that I'm getting a master's degree out of the kind of education classes I have to take for certification either way. But it's intense, ya'll. F'real though.

I'm really hoping to be able to blog more consistently, if only as a way to focus my thoughts. I promise they won't all be navel gazing bitch-fests about being busy like this one is. Honestly, I'm really enjoying so many things about this year, I'm just not enjoying my schoolwork. The teaching? It's great. My school, awesome. The kids? So, so cool. I love 'em. And all 3 of my mentor teachers are kind and helpful and intelligent and I am lucky to have them supervising me. I just need a break from all of this damn homework. Then I can be a tiny bit less crazy.

Every little bit helps in that department, trust me.

Regarding the Happenings of the Last Month- Month?!

An illustration of my thirst for knowledge. What mysteries lurk beneath the bell??

 I am totally immersed in school work, researching, and student teaching. I spend hours researching the most mundane things that are brought up in my graduate classes, simply out of curiosity. I'm reading at least a book a week- on top of school books- about education, lesson planning, child psychology, and anything else to do with kids and the teaching of said kids. Between my 3 full days a week at the school, plus commuting, the things I'm volunteering to do and the graduate classes and homework, plus the random obsessive researching, I'm pulling about 50-60 hours a week. That's before you add in the volunteering I'm still doing for the two non-profits I have worked with for over a year now.

My school is awesome, and I really adore the kids. My mentor teachers are great. What's weird is how I can be so passionately excited one day, and then so exhausted and almost ready to pack it in the next. I've never had this experience before. On the days I'm exhausted and overwhelmed, it's not that I truly want to quit. It's that I am humbled by how much I have to learn, and I am sometimes paralyzed with fear that I'm not doing it right, or that I'm failing the kids, and sometimes the gravity of my potential impact on them (even as a random student teacher) really hits me and it freaks me out. After only a month there, they are fiercely loyal, and kind, and protective of me in such sweet and peculiar ways. We have inside jokes. I suggest books to them, they suggest books to me, and we wave to each other in the halls. I'm bone tired, and I feel like I've been there for a year instead  of a month, but it's really incredibly satisfying. The happiness that it brings them when I do something as simple  as check out a book for them that I think they'd like seems like more than I deserve. I'm reminded that, although so many people claim to not want to teach high school students because they're already "set in stone", they are truly still so impressionable, and young, and innocent, and can swing wildly from one future to another.

Other than all that, I'm ready to get off of these damned crutches. One more week. And then I'll really be flying. In other school news, I start my final class towards my post graduate certificate in sustainable development. Me + school, together forever.

And So it Begins...

For those of you who have been keeping up with my months long journey to alternative certification, I just wanted to give an update. Yesterday I started what will be a school-year long internship, 24 hours a week (minimum), which at this point looks like three full school days (Mon/Wed/Fri). I'm getting my certification in secondary English, while taking online classes towards a master's degree in education. It's a legit brick and mortar school here in Colorado, but they're kind and allow you to take the classes online so that you can do a post-bacc certification from anywhere in the world. Plus, a lot of post-bacc certification courses have you take random education classes, and it's nice that the education classes I am taking are going towards something instead of just a clap on the back and a check mark for completion.**

Although I don't plan on saying anything bad about the program or the students or the school or any of that, I will still, for obvious reasons, not share the name of the school in which I am interning. The most I will say is that I purposefully chose a Title I school because of my convictions regarding education inequality in America. I would feel like a chump if I cried all over the pages of "Savage Inequalities", kept up with all  the lawsuits against school districts in Texas and Colorado, and then blithely signed up to student teach at some high end fancy school attended by angel babies filled with SAT words, a fierce love for all things learning, and showered in $$$. I have more than one mentor teacher in the English department, which is neat because I get exposure to every grade level in high school, plus every class from AP English to intervention classes. I'm also assisting in the drama department, and this week we have auditions. It's nice to get thrown right into the mix of things. Classes are going well- my first week's assignments all came back A's- and I'm really enjoying the literature they are giving us. I'm also doing my nerd thang and supplementing all of  this with random books on education from the library. Any suggestions for me?

The only womp womp of all of this is my broken foot. Being in the classroom will be a lot better when I'm not clicking around on awkward crutches. Seriously, awkward like whoa. Thoughts on crutches, which I shared on FB, I shall now share here as well:

For a person with excellent balance, good coordination, and a strong upper body, I'm not really sure why I'm such a flailing baby giraffe on my crutches...also, since I've never broken anything/had a cast/had crutches I have to say that my childhood jealousy of those with crutches was totally stupid. Crutches are not like arm pit stilts, contrary to my fantasies of their fun potential as a 9 year old...they're just awkward and hurt my hands.

Unrelated- our tomato plants are going crazy and tonight it's caprese salads for dinner- heirloom tomatoes and basil from our garden, plus balsamic vinegar from the farmers' market. I'm watching Bobby pick tomatoes from the dining room window, and afterwards we're off to the grocery store to see if they have their  local goat cheese mozzarella in stock. If not, I can handle that being the biggest problem of my day.

 **I am not knocking those who took that route, I'm just saying, either way I have to pay for those classes and do the work, so ending up with a degree for taking them makes me a happy cat.

Lowered Expectations and Absences, Illustrated via Cupcakes

I might need to adopt this kind of attitude to stay sane through this injury...

 I've either been in bed with my foot propped up on a pillow, or sitting at the table with my foot propped  up on a chair, for the last two weeks thanks to a stress fracture. I think stress fractures should be called "ninja injuries", or, to make it really roll off of the tongue, "ninjuries", because this thing came out of n.o.w.h.e.r.e. Seriously, I was strolling around the farmers' market on a beautiful Saturday, caressing heirloom tomatoes and shoving chard in my re-usable bags, after which we ate some lunch, came back to the apartment, and lazed around watching some shows on the computer. Nothing extraordinary, heck, I didn't even work out the week prior other than weight lifting- twice, instead of my usual three times.

Yet somehow I woke up on the very next day to a throbbing in my right foot that hurt so badly I was whimpering and crying. Upon inspection, it was swollen to twice the size of the left foot, so much so that even the sheet rubbing against it caused pain. Lots of ice and ibuprofen got me through Sunday, and a doctor's appointment on Monday confirmed a stress fracture. I was pretty heartbroken about missing out on all of the hiking, camping, and biking to be had in the last month of summer/first part of fall when I was told that October 1st was when I would be back in commission. Now, I know that a broken foot has nothing to do with my hands, and my hands are all I need to blog- especially given the inordinate amount of time I have spent sitting/sprawling around- but honestly it just really bummed me out and I kind of spent the last two weeks pouting about how my summer was ruined. I had planned on doing Warrior Dash but had to stay home last weekend instead, and right now, as I type these words, Bobby is at Red Rocks seeing Death Cab for Cutie with a girl from work because I just couldn't crutch my way up to row 42. So, yes, a bit of a bummer. But I'm shaking off the funk, looking on the bright side and all that jazz.

Please, on my behalf, get out and hike and bike and walk around the neighborhood and swim and play in the park as much as you can. Know that someone is very jealous of you. That someone is me. Just to clarify.

Weighty Matters

I've extolled the virtues of my Vibrams five finger shoes, and have waxed poetically about how much they've helped me start running again. I started a new experiment back on June 12th, but I wanted to wait to make sure it stuck. Well, it has more than stuck, and even after taking a break from July 4th to July 26th due to traveling and having friends in town, upon starting up again yesterday things are going just as well.

I'm talking about lifting weights. Not just dumb bells, but being able to lift free weights again. On June 12th, Bobby and I started lifting weights together on Mon/Wed/Fri. We do three sets each of three exercises- squat, dead lift, bench press. Weight is added with each set, so that the reps are 10-8-6 (sometimes that last set is only two or three reps, just as many as you can squeak out). The first day I started off just lifting the bar- 45 lbs- for all exercises. This was too light for squats/dead lift, but a bit heavy for bench press (I was able to do a full 10 reps, but I was feeling it). Progressively over the weeks we added more weight each time, until, on the 4th of July, I had progressed to being able to easily bench press 65 pounds, I could push through  a few reps at 75 pounds, and, more incredibly, I was able to squat and dead lift my body weight- 135 pounds!

In spite of my bum hip/crap back, this actually happened

In the grand scheme of weight lifting, this is not some crazy impressive stuff. But in the grand scheme of my old creaky hip, this is incredible. The first few weeks, my left hip would just ache and ache in between sets of squats. Not in a painful, stop doing this way, but in a painful, "you're strengthening me and pulling me back into place and I've been effed up for a decade and this will take some coaxing" kind of way. It felt disconcerting, but I felt in my gut that it was not a "STOP" kind of a pain, but a "be careful, but keep it up" kind of pain.

Yesterday was my first day of lifting since we left for vacation, and man I am feeling it today. But I was able to do even more reps at 135 pounds on dead lift, and I only lost 10 pounds on my squat. My bench press has slid back a bit too- I was at the point where I could press 75 pounds a few times, now 65 is feeling a bit tough- but I know it will all be coming back to me soon. And more than that, I'm excited to see where I'll be after a year of lifting. I have some lofty goals, but I think they're reasonable. And after only a few weeks of squats, I can't believe how much muscle I've gained. I'm not much bigger (girls can't bulk up like a dude, despite all the fear mongering around weight lifting) but my shape is already changing. I've also noticed that I'm stronger on my bike, and running is easier, too. All in all, I'm over the moon happy that I'm at a point where I can throw some weights around again.

Since this is a fitness update kinda post, I figure I'll throw in a C25K update here at the end. Since coming back from the Texas road trip beginning of May, I've found it hard to get back into running. I averaged about twice a week from mid May to the end of June, and I made myself swallow my pride and start over with Week 3 to be damned sure I didn't tweak my back/hip or hurt my feet. A short road trip since then, then a long road trip, plus the focus on weight lifting has put C25K on the back burner. It's not turned off getting cold and crusting to the pot, it's just kind of simmering away in the background. I'm more than happy to continue to take C25K very slowly, because I think this is crucial to why my hip/back have been able to adjust to running, and why I have not screwed up my knees. I'm going to be at grad school orientation from Sunday, July 31st through Thursday, August 4th, so for now I'm focusing on getting back into the swing of weight lifting this week, and I'll start C25K up again next week. However, I know that all the biking and weight lifting I'm doing are also helping me to become a better runner. After the Texas road trip I came back and really fell in love with biking, and for two weeks all I did was bike, no running, but I was averaging 60+ miles a week. After that stint, I went for a run, and it felt so easy. Cross training for the win!

I will definitely have to specifically focus on some running come next week though, because I'm registered to run Warrior Dash on August 20th. I'm excited and nervous, but who wouldn't be, if you're going to be jumping over fire, and crawling through mud under barbed wire? Seriously, check out that link and look at the course. It's equal parts funny and kind of ridiculous.

Hangin' Around

Bobby and I both do yoga, and we wanted to find an easy way to store our mats. I know, you can just roll them up and put them in a corner, but inevitably the fall over, roll out, or worse, they never get a chance to really air out in between sweaty vinyasa sessions. I'm sure there are all kinds of expensive ways to store one's mat, but here's what we did after brainstorming and looking around for ideas. We went to Home Depot, and bought** two wooden toilet paper roll holders and a dowel rod. Bobby measured the dowel rod and cut it to fit, and before we knew it, we had a pretty ace system for storing our mats. Check it:

 These guys are now hanging on the hallway wall, right in front of our guest room/study door. They're out of the way, and it was cheap and easy.

 Plus, they fit into the theme of "we hang our physical fitness/recreational equipment on the walls". As our friend Matt said, a bike on the wall is the most common form of art in a Colorado home. True.

While we're on the subject of cheap things to do with yoga, I highly recommend Dave Farmar's podcasts and Shiva Rea's "Yoga Shakti" DVD's for at home practice. The former is totally free, and the latter is about $20 for 4.5 hours of customizable practice. 

Happy yoga'ing!

**We did search three thrift stores before we bought them. Some things just need to be purchased new.

23 and Me- Results

I know I should be posting pictures from our vacation, but I got my 23 and Me results in yesterday and I wanted to share how the end of the process works, since I've already written about getting the test as a gift and the process of sending off my DNA to be analyzed. All together it took about 6 weeks to get my results back. They e-mail you with a notification that your profile is ready, and then you go to their website and log-in with a user name and password.

The website is very user friendly, and your results are laid out in your profile. There is an extensive menu that runs down the left side of the screen, with various categories- My Health, My Ancestry, Sharing and Community, and 23 and We. Each of those categories has subcategories. For example, underneath "My Health", are sub categories for disease risk, carrier status, drug response, traits, and health labs. I found the "My Health" sub-categories to be the most interesting, because, of course, they were the most pertinent to my personal health. When you clicked on "disease risk" the screen populates with a full page of information. The first section lists the diseases for which you have an increased risk, the second section is populated with the diseases for which you have an average risk, the third section is populated with the diseases for which you have a lower than average risk. In this sub-category, my Parkinson's risk was locked. I had to unlock it to see the results, since that is deemed a sensitive and potentially worrisome thing to find out, and they give people the option of choosing to know or not. I have average risk, all good there! And as someone who has had a mole removed which came back abnormal, I also was happy to see that I have a substantially decreased risk for melanoma than the average population. That plus avoiding the sun since I was 15 plus my love affair with sunscreen bodes well, abnormal moles be damned. I had another mole removed just yesterday at the derm's office, and instead of worrying like a crazy person, that little category on 23 and Me is making me feel a lot better.

The "carrier status" sub category of "My Health" gave you info on what genes you are carrying for certain diseases. In this sub category there was also a locked section that I had to choose to unlock- this told me whether or not I carried the BRCA mutation, which is responsible for an increased risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. I chose to unlock it, and I don't carry the mutation (from my "disease risk" section I found out I have a much lower risk of breast cancer than average as well, so I wasn't expecting to have the mutation). It's fascinating to me to look through the "drug response" section and see how they can predict how I will react to drugs, just based on my genes. They include caffeine in this section, and I learned I was a slow metabolizer (meaning caffeine affects me strongly) which doesn't surprise me since it makes me crazy jittery. The "traits" section got as specific as talking about the way my taste buds work, and that my hair is curly, and my eyes are green. The "My Health" category alone would have been worth the profiling, just due to all the fascinating info you get from the sub categories.

But then you get the fun of digging through the "My Ancestry" category, which was also neat. I'm 100% European ancestry, overwhelmingly Northern European. They have various maps to show the ancestral progression of your ancestors, and how different genes are linked into different groups. This was interesting to me because I read the fabulous book, "The 7 Daughters of Eve" and it was rad to see the science behind our human gene groups.

I know I said I wouldn't share anything negative, but honestly my genes overall are pretty good. There is even a profile for longevity, and apparently I have a higher than average chance of living to be 100. In fact, there was only one area where I had a higher than average risk of disease, but it was substantially higher. My risk of getting DVT (deep vein thrombosis) is more than 3 times the average risk. In addition to that, under "drug response" it specifically said that I was substantially more likely to have DVT as a result of taking birth control. Back to the disease risk section, that section also mentioned that my 3X greater risk for getting DVT was even greater if I took birth control pills. I was surprised to read that, but it was very helpful information. Lately I've been going back and forth on whether I should take BC for my acne or take another medication, and I mentioned to Bobby that I wished there was a way for me to objectively evaluate which would be better for me to do, healthwise. As a result of this screening, I'm much more likely to take another medication over the BC pills (which I haven't been on for a few months anyway).

One other helpful tool on the website is that every single disease, drug, and carrier gene listed is a hyperlink, which takes you to a full page of information about the disease, and how lifestyle changes can lower risk. And, at the bottom of every page, they are sure to stress that genes are not destiny- you could have a carrier gene and never get the disease, you could get a disease with zero risk factors, etc. So much is in your own hands when it comes to your personal health, and I really like how 23 and Me stresses that. The other categories give you the ability to compare genes with other people (only if they invite you and you accept, or vice versa, random people do NOT have access to your info!) and Bobby and I had fun comparing our profiles. The "23 and We" section is basically a ton of quizzes that you take, which, combined with your genetic profile, helps researchers compile huge databases of lifestyle factors in conjunction with genetic risk. Overall I'm very happy to have my profile done, and I would recommend it if you're a science geek like myself. The full screening frequently goes on sale for a fraction of the normal price, so if you want to get it done you might want to check in periodically and wait for the inevitable sale.

Feel free to ask any questions if you want more info!

23 and Me

I mentioned in my Christmas post that Bobby gave me a complete DNA mapping from the company 23 and Me- you can check out their website here. The complete package covers both ancestry and health, so I'll know way more than I ever thought I would about my genes and my body. I'm a science nerd on the side, so I find this incredibly fascinating. I sent off my info about a week ago, and the process was pretty simple on my end.

Everything I needed came in this little box.

I had to wait 30 minutes after eating, drinking, or brushing my teeth before spitting in this tube.

Instructions on how to seal off the tube and how to correctly collect the sample.

When you're done spitting...and spitting...and spitting some more, you pop the tube in this specimen bag (I took these pics of the process before actually spitting in the tube, I didn't think you all really needed to be treated to the sight of a tube filled with my frothy spit...I could be wrong though. Better safe than sorry.)

And then the specimen bag goes in this postage paid bubble wrap envelope. It's all so...small, neat, and simple. Then you head on over to their website and create a profile and register your kit with your name and the barcode that was printed on the tube. And that's it! You just sit back and wait while people in a lab far away figure out the deepest secrets of your genetics.

It's hard to believe that a mere decade or so after the initial draft of the human genome was published, and about 8 years after the project was complete, I can, as a random consumer, send off some spit in a tube and in 6-8 weeks at max receive such detailed scientific information. What's also cool is that they compile the information (anonymously, of course) so that they can do research on disease- what causes it, how to prevent it, what demographics of people are more susceptible to certain illnesses, etc. So, on top of it being a fun personal thing for me to do, it's helping aid scientific research. Plus, I can't emphasize how excited I am about he ancestry portion of it. I know my ancestry definitively going back to my Great Granny's grandmother, but after that things get fuzzy. One of my future projects is to do some genealogical work, and I think the ancestry component of the DNA mapping will give me some interesting insight on that.

One last thing though. I do plan on doing a follow up post when I get my results, but some of it may need to be a bit vague. This is for both personal privacy and practical reasons. They do advise you not to share, publicly, any risk factors for disease that you are made aware of. This is because they don't want anyone unfairly discriminated against by health insurance companies. Because a risk factor is just that- you have a risk for a certain disease. It's not a diagnosis, and you may never ever get that certain disease. But, if you trumpet all over the world "whoa, I totally have the gene for breast cancer, scary!", then you may be excluded from getting health insurance on those bounds. Which is weird, because that's basically a "hypothetical pre-pre-existing condition...maybe...someday...or...maybe never at all". Interestingly enough, I discovered that the U.S. passed a law in 2008 called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA for short, to specifically protect people from being discriminated against for genetic markers for disease. You are, in theory, protected from being discriminated against when it comes to plain Jane health insurance (although many women who tested positive for the BRCA gene, indicating a higher than normal breast cancer risk, have reported being denied health insurance). Unfortunately, the law does not cover life/disability/or long term care insurance. I find it a bit strange that they would specifically pass a law to protect people, but only protect them (kinda sorta) in the area of health insurance.

At any rate, I'm excited to get my results and share the experience I had with the company! I'm still in awe of the huge advances in science that have been made in my lifetime and I think it's rad that I can take part in it like this.

I Got 99 Problems and They're All My Teeth

So, in preparation for the big move I hit up my gyno and a dentist to get checked from head to toe while I still had insurance. I went to the gyno for a full inspection, I peed in a cup, they drew my blood, and then refilled my Retin-A and birth control. I'm perfectly healthy and I now have my prescriptions for the next year. The next and final stop was a dentist. Now, I had 4 cavities filled and 6 sealed back in July, and ever since then I have religiously flossed TWICE daily, so this was more of a "I need to get my teeth cleaned" kind of thing. So, I just went to the place down the street from me, the guy that cleaned Puppy Bob's teeth. Nice dentist, nice office, nice dental assistants.

So, I go in for a teeth cleaning, smugly expecting congratulations on my perfectly flossed awesome teeth... and instead I'm told I have EIGHT cavities. WHAT. THE. HELL. He tells me they were probably already starting last July, after I tell him I've lost all faith in flossing upon hearing that with the exception of one they are all in between my teeth. Anyway, he says "we can do it all today" so my tooth cleaning turns into a 3 hour marathon of dentistry. I leave, go home, and sleep all day.

That was over two weeks ago, and my teeth have been killing me. Bringing me to tears when I eat. Feeling like I'm chewing cold rocks when I'm eating room temperature soft bread. It was awful. I went back in last Wednesday to have my bite adjusted- aka to have my fillings sanded down- but this last weekend two separate meals brought me to tears. So, I went in *again* today, had my bite re-adjusted, and he re-did two fillings. My dentist was super nice about the whole thing, and the two followup visits I didn't have to pay anything, even though this last one- this morning, in fact- one of the fillings he re-did wasn't even one he did in the first place. So, I'm thinking positive thoughts and popping lots of ibuprofen. In the meantime, I'm starving. But I'm not quite ready to chance eating yet, so instead I think I'll take a nap.

Other than my teeth, everything has been awesome. I've been hanging out with friends and family, sorting through my apartment, and tomorrow I start my 4 day training for the Census job. It gets to come with me to Colorado, so I'm excited I have a job before I even get there. I'm also interested to meet the other people at training. After my experience with the test and the interview let's just say I'm expecting some interesting people.

Ok, goodnight. My teeth are starting to wake up from the shots and I want to be asleep when they do.