Socially Acceptable

Check out my most recent post over at Easy to Love But Hard to Raise about navigating the confusing social world of the elementary school play date.

We Are Everywhere

Writing my most recent blog post over at Easy to Love… this morning, Diagnosis: Bain or Blessing? reminded me that tired parents of special needs children are everywhere. Our stories are ultimately as unique as each of our beloved children, and yet so much the same in our hopes, our survival, and our celebration of the complexities that life has brought.

“On Bicycles” by Amy Walker

Check out Bellingham Village Books reading of Amy Walker’s On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life. I can’t attend so please let me know if you do, I’d love a report.

Bicycling has changed my life. When I was a kid, my bike rides were my solace, taking me “far” from home, connecting me with friends over the summer, building my confidence as a solo explorer of my own township. In college my bicycle was transportation and saved me hundreds of dollars per year on parking passes. In my 30′s, my bicycle was gave me the motivation to start a non-profit car share, to enable others to give up a car and take the bus and bike instead. When my twins were born, riding my bicycle with them in the trailer or on tag-alongs made me feel like a warrior, capable and strong. Now, my bicycle is rehab from knee surgery and part of the exercise I can just squeeze into my busy writer-mom life. I’m still dreaming of overnight bike camping trips with my family, and perhaps someday even more ambitious trips like those taken by my gal pal Laural Ringler and her family, from Bellingham to Mexico and in European cities, as she shares  on her Family Adventuring blog and in regular features in Adventures NW.

Bicycles have influenced my life more than any car ever could and I’ve loved each of them like a friend. If bicycles haven’t yet changed your life for the better, consider giving them a test ride. They’re so much more than transportation and exercise.

More Fertility Help On the Horizon

Although the authors of a new Swedish study suggest it will be ten years before this technology is available to the public, a new molecule Cdk1 has been discovered that can help the maturation of mammalian eggs.

Women whose bodies are unable to produce mature eggs can not currently be helped by in vitro Fertilization (IVF).

With the success rates for fertility treatments growing steadily via discovery of new technologies and greater understanding, the term “struggling with infertility” might soon become a faint memory.

Dr. Seuss Must Be Rolling

I don’t usually watch TV commercials. I have a DVR and generally fast forward through them. I LOVE movies and I respect the artistry involved in film making, including an especially creative commercial, but I also think of most commercials as subliminal messages that whisper, “You’re not good enough unless you own this (look like this, etc.).”

Last night, when the kids made me stop fast forwarding so they could watch an ad for the new movie, The Lorax, but instead we discovered a car commercial, I was sure that Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) must be rolling over in his urn.

There he was, the modern cartoon Lorax, romping through a car commercial in an untouched Truffula forest, without a hint of irony. While searching for a clip of the commercial I discovered that several people had beaten me to my rant, including this article, Is the Lorax Really Just Hawking Big SUV’s? at The National Post.

The Lorax has been one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books since I was a budding environmental scientist, collecting frogs at the age of six from the corn field ditch in my back yard. For those of you that are not familiar, Seuss’ classic clearly refers to a bad guy, the Once-ler, in search of fortune, who cuts down every last Truffula tree in the forest to be made into a variety of unneccessary consumer goods, converting the land from fairytale to wasteland, forcing several dependent species to relocate or die. The Lorax has been accused over the years of being “anti-capitalist” and “blatant indoctrination of children,” and perhaps rightly so. But would Dr. Seuss approve of the Lorax appearing in a car commercial, even if that commercial mentions fuel economy?

We can’t ask him, but if you read The Lorax yourself, I think you’ll agree that this beloved author would be very disappointed. Why couldn’t the Lorax appear in commercials for taking the bus or riding bicycles, for energy conservation, or alternative energy like solar or wind power? The answer is $$. None of these environmental ventures spend (or can afford) that kind of bank on marketing the way car companies do, so the environmental movement is destined to be helmed by certainly less recognizable and dynamic cartoon characters.

A part of me is really torn on this issue. My grandfathers and my sister worked for car companies in Michigan before the jobs moved to Mexico and other countries. But if I’d written a book with as much staying power and clear message as The Lorax, leaving it behind among my greatest works for the world to appreciate some twenty years after my death, only to have its core message and ideals polluted (pun intentional) for financial gain, I think my ghost would haunt these folks who truly missed my point with Paranormal Activity proportions.

I will definitely watch the newest remake of The Lorax with my kids, at home on DVD, where we can fast forward through the commercials (for things other than movies that now grace even DVDs), and pause to discuss the global significance of Seuss’ story. Is it brainwashing? You betcha. Just like learning about Dr. Martin Luther King’s message. If we don’t learn from our past mistakes and make better choices in the future, we won’t have any natural resources left to fight over.

But please, don’t take my word for it. Reread The Lorax and decide for yourself.

Further reading:

NPR blog post The Lorax Speaks for the SUV’s

The Washington Post The Lorax Helps Market Mazda SUVs to Elementary School Children Nationwide

IVF Success Rate Increasing

According to this article at FoxNews.com, a new method has been developed that could increase in vitro Fertilization (IVF) success rates from 32-35% to 45%. The new method uses incubators in the handling process to maintain eggs and embryos in conditions similar to those in a woman’s body.

One might think, “Of course, why didn’t they think of that sooner?” But working with microscopic cells in a controlled environment while continuously looking through a microscope is a lot more elaborate and expensive than it might sound. Below is a photo of the standard method without incubators.

This increase in success rate could mean so much to families who choose IVF: fewer disappointments and subsequent attempts equals fewer $$’s spent on those attempts, and potentially shorter backlogs at the doctor’s office.

Invasive Carp in the Great Lakes?

Of the many environmental issues we have to consider, invasive species get my attention.

The U.S. Supreme court just failed to take action on a suit requesting measures that would keep invasive Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes water system.

When it’s time to scrutinize a potential Supreme Court appointment, the media and politicians focus on a hotbed of issues like abortion, immigration, and capital punishment. But maybe we need to look more closely at the environmental record of future potential appointees.

I worked in environmental restoration for many years and the downside of that field is when you realize that what you’re working on was pretty avoidable, if we’d only known more, thought first, and/or worked together better.

Spending money and time now to prevent the invasion of such a huge and intricately connected water system would be far less than the effort we’ll expend responding to the invasion over the next 30+ years.

If I’m going to remain the eternal optimist that I am, all I can say is watch for an uptick of environmental job openings in the Midwest over the next 20 years. Maybe we can retrain those unemployed auto workers into carp fisherman? I better finish up here so I can work on the proposal for my new carp cook book?

Instinct and Emotion

I’m a few minutes past 40 and occasionally I look back, playing the hindsight game, and wonder what I might have done differently. Of course, there are lots of little things I would change (hurting other people’s feelings and making a fool of myself float to the top of the list). But one of the bigger choices might be that I would have studied the brain, like the Watson of DNA decoders Watson and Crick. We poorly understand how much (or little) our brains influence human nature, decision-making, and personality.

I can’t help wanting to grasp how our brains influence writing, improv, parenting, relationships, and virtually every other outward expression of our being.

When I struggle with any situation, it’s a swirling battle between my brain and my emotions, but then I think, aren’t my emotions created by my brain? Why such conflict? If our brain is the original source of both, why do they have to battle, why haven’t we evolved to a place where instinct and emotion harmonize, where we respond more like the colony of poorly communicating ants that we are?

This morning I read an article What Can Animals’ Survival Instincts Tell Us About Human Emotion? over at Science Daily about a researcher who is trying to tease out these details.

New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux says that we still don’t understand the complex connection between instinct and emotion and that it will probably be some time before we do. Study in this area is slow. We’ve mapped the human genome and found cures for literally hundreds of diseases, but why do we understand the brain so poorly? It’s because you can’t get a reliable, scientifically verifiable answer out of a guinea pig about how he’s feeling today, and because even us “advanced” humans struggle to accurately interpret our own feelings. Did I freak out about my hubby’s inquiry about money because I was angry? Confused? Afraid? Sad? It was more likely a combination of several of these emotions, and it only took me three days of introspection to think I know.

I’m psyched that scientists who took the path that I did not are working on this, I just hope they solve this great mystery before I’m gone.

Letting Go

Check out my post over at Easy to Love But Hard to Raise today. I write about learning to let go of the dreams of “normal” and the grief that comes with lost dreams.

Gratitude

My family and I just returned from a trip to San Diego, which included a stop at Legoland (also known as 8-year-old boy heaven), the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and the lovely beaches of Carlsbad, CA. We got some exercise, synthesized some Vitamin D, and spent a lot of time in the hotel hot tub.

Trips like this remind me to be thankful. Thankful that we have jobs and our health so that we’re able to go on these trips, thankful for my giving, loving hubby and precocious kidlets, thankful for the comfy home I get to come home to. My son Tristan tugged on my sleeve in the airport on the way home saying, “Mom, I love you because you take me to Legoland and Birch Bay Water Slides, but I love my own bed too.”

While in Carlsbad, I also coerced my hubby to take a surfing lesson (Learn to Surf with Heather Pine) so I could experience it vicariously. He sliced it up, despite his numb toes and the 55 degree (F) air temperature. All he could say was, “Wow, that was more of a workout than I expected.”

I started a daily gratitude journal, and will soon help the boys start their own to remind us of all that we have. I also began reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, who had these wise and very relevant words that felt just for me:

“Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back, just gently come back to the present moment….We’re willing to sit still, just be there, alone.”

When we were in San Diego I kept trying to pull myself into the present moment, not where we were headed next, not judging what we’d just finished, but where we were right there where we stood. Each time I came into the present moment, I found gratitude. I discovered a thankfulness for all the blessings in my life.

Now all I need to do is practice that some more right here at home. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.