Entropy: a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder

Earlier this week Tish had a great post about retrosexual men. I quote:

A retrosexual is somewhat different from a metrosexual. It’s all in the suit-rumple. Some time ago, I figured out that by 5pm one can easily figure out the straight guy (or retrosexual) from the metrosexual (or man of questionable sexuality). The two can start out with the similar level of grooming–but by the end of the day, the retrosexual will have 5 o’clock shadow (won’t matter if he’s blond or dark-haired) and will be either rumpled or have a spot somewhere on his suit/shirt/tie. He will also smell a tad “manly”–not necessarily offensively so, but “manly” nontheless.

Can women be retrosexual? If so, I think I am. Of those “before” and “after” pictures you see, I’m always a “before.” Oh, I might fix myself up to look like an “after,” but it turns into an “after life happens” before I know what hit me. I clean up pretty well, but ten minutes into a party, the high heels are under a table somewhere, the lipstick is missing in action and my hair has escaped its shell of hair spray and gone it’s own wild way. After one hour, the pantyhose are stuffed in my purse so I can dance barefooted. By two hours, I’m the one smelling of tequila because I’ve spilled some on my once-fancy dress while I was dancing. By the end of the night, I’ve clipped half my hair up on top of my head because it was getting in my eyes and sticking to the back of my neck. (I say half because it all starts out up there but some always falls out of the barrette.) When I get home, I look at my raccoon eyes in the mirror and wonder, “How did that happen?”

I’m entropy in action.

I’ve always admired women who are totally put together. They wear makeup to the grocery store. Their jeans have creases, not at the tops of the thighs but down the front of the legs. They know how to accessorize. Their socks match. They have no coffee spots on their t-shirts because they probably don’t wear t-shirts in the first place. They have all those traits which elude me. I just look kind of … frazzled all the time. When I was younger I could tell myself that my disarray was endearing, but that illusion is gone. I can’t pull off cute anymore.

That doesn’t mean I don’t try to be an “after,” but fixing myself up is like cleaning the bathroom. It never stays done. The minute you walk out of the room, someone promptly messes it up again.

So if you see me somewhere and wonder why I’m coming apart, just be kind and try to picture what I must have looked like a couple of hours ago. Try imagining Linda Fiorentino. I won’t mind at all.

Sundays are sure turning into Weight Days, aren’t they? This is another one of my self peptalks.

From CNN.com:

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Being overweight puts a greater burden on women’s health than men’s, a new study shows.

Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York and colleagues calculated the amount of illness due to overweight and obesity in the United States. They found that overweight cost U.S. women 1.8 million years of perfect health, compared with just 270,000 years lost for men. Obesity cost women 3.40 million years of perfect health, compared to 1.94 million years for men.

Muennig suggested in an interview that this gender difference could be due to the social stigma that excess weight carries for women but not for men.

This article fascinated me. I think it’s true that the way we experience weight is often different by sex, at least below the morbidly obese level. While men carrying a few extra pounds is seen as “solid,” for women that translates to “chubby” or “fat.” Some of that is the height difference, making 20 pounds less noticeable on a man than a woman, but I think there’s more to it than that. From an aesthetic point of view, a woman with a belly tends to jiggle, while a man with abdominal fat often doesn’t. Same for thighs. We worry a lot about jiggles, and unfortunately we don’t carry our pounds the same at 45 as we do at 25. Childbirth and gravity do a number on us and in turn we do a number on ourselves, upping our stress and dissatisfaction levels.

It reminds me of a post I wrote recently. In Aging Is A Class Issue, I included this quote:

Spector suggests that low status might drive cellular ageing because such people are under greater psychological stress. This could have subtle metabolic effects, exposing their cells to more oxidative damage, he says.

“The greater psychological stress of being in a low social class, with more people above you in the food chain and less control over your life, is the unseen hand that might mean more stress at cellular level,” he says. “Oxidative stress does make telomeres shorten.”

Implied in that study is the idea that stress shortens lives. This seems to back up the contention of Dr. Muennig that the stress of fat discrimination takes a toll on women’s health. The more stress at the cellular level, the more impact on health.

One angle not examined by this study, from what I can tell, is the affect of starvation diets and yo-yo syndrome, where we gain and lose the same pounds over and over again, on health. Women tend to do these things more often than men do. It’s all about pressure to be thin, both societal and internal. We’ve all got stress, but often our thought patterns add to it, taking a toll on our bodies.

Where we need to start is by loving ourselves the way we are, no matter what our weight. Changing our eating habits shouldn’t be punishment; it should be a positive step we take to improve our health and our relationship with food. Doing that, I believe, would even out some of the disparities mentioned in the article. We can’t change how society views us, but we can change how we see ourselves.

It’s healthier that way.

Good food is–or should be–sensual. Dining is full of tastes, textures, colors and aromas which delight all our senses, creating a total experience of pleasure that’s fully present in the now. In some ways it’s like good sex. We experience it in real time, connected to both our bodies and our minds. Food is also tied tightly to memory, as I talked about in Food As Bonding and Food As Comfort. Having a dish later can remind us of the good times we had the first time we tasted it and the person with whom we enjoyed it.

Tish wrote about it eloquently when she said:

I don’t like the idea of sacrificing the things I’ve come to enjoy–fine food and good wine. One of my friends once said that we enjoy good meals because of the years we were starving young folks and had to eat lousy meals. To some degree, this is very true. When you’ve eaten a lot of Hamburger Helper and ramen noodle soup, the idea of going back to something as similarly lacking in pleasure is upsetting. I want my salmon with sun-dried tomatoes and basil cream! I want my lamb shank and potato pancake with caramelized onions! And I want my Australian Shiraz, dammit!

This is one of the difficulties with changing our food habits. Without conscious thought we strip food down to its barest nutrients, robbing it of all sensuality, thus stealing from ourselves the pleasure we can take in food. How can plain broiled fish compare to salmon with sun-dried tomatoes and basil cream?

But when we have an unhealthy relationship with food, we strip it of pleasure, too. Chips and cookies gobbled down quickly aren’t enjoyed. They’re instantly regretted, giving guilt instead of pleasure. I firmly believe that if you’re going to splurge, it should be on something you love rather than whatever is closest at hand, something that’s worth giving something else up for.

I’ve read advice that says to examine the foods that you crave and figure out what component it is that pleases you and decide to which sense it’s connected. I’ll happily give up butter for a teaspoon of sour cream on my baked potato. It’s the tart creaminess that I love, not the mountain of toppings that restaurants use. The same is true of chocolate. It’s the smooth texture that’s important to me and I can get the same thing from a sugar-free Creme Savors candy for only 9 calories. DoF’s comment on Food As Comfort show this so well:

I quite eating chips with my sandwich at lunch. I love chips but the sandwich is really something special at a gourmet coffee shop near campus.

He’s figured out what in his meal gave him pleasure and eliminated what didn’t contribute to it. We can all do that. Let food matter to you! If I try to substitute rice cakes for something that is a scent pleasure, it’s not going to work. I’ll keep eating until that need is filled, ending up with a lot of junk in my diet when it could be satisfied for less calories with a little of the craved food. As Penny said:

Comfort foods can be enjoyed in smaller portions–usually a more satisfying solution than not-quite-right substitutes. If mac-n-cheese makes you feel warm and happy, have it every once in a while–but get it at the deli, in controlled quantities

Quantity matters, no matter what diet you’re following. Once you identify what sensual need it’s filling you can meet it. Small bites works for me. Slowing down the eating process gives me time to fully engage in the now-ness of it. I can taste each element instead of having it disappear in a blur of a few minutes. Food becomes a pleasure again, even though I’ve limited the calories. This is where low fat cookbooks come in handy. They focus on preserving what we love about a food while removing the unimportant bits, like extra fat.

We can also keep the sensual experience alive in how we cook and eat. Scent is extremely important to me, so I use a lot of spices like rosemary and thyme for the way they fill the air long before I start to eat. I get to enjoy it for an hour while it’s cooking, setting me up to be satisfied with just a little bit of the actual food.

For some people it’s eye-appeal. Use beautiful plates. Light candles. Use a little parsley as a garnish to make it look attractive to you. These little things like this add no calories but make eating an experience again.

When we deny our bodies, we also deny our minds. We need to integrate those aspects of ourselves to make us healthy. When our minds are satisfied, our bodies follow. That’s the biggest step to returning food to its proper place in our lives. Embrace the sensuality of it and you’ll embrace yourself.

• Happy thing: a new job that I’ve been waiting on since March came through, a staff web design position which is going to make a huge difference for me
• Not so happy thing: The scope of the project is huge, probably 5 times bigger than anything I’ve ever done before, stage one deadline is 2 weeks and I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed right now
• Happy thing: good glaucoma checkup - pressures are back down to normal range after a year of eyedrops
• Happy thing: I got the ok to wear my contacts again
• Not so happy thing: with the contacts I can’t see anything closer than my fingertips, including my computer monitor. Back to the bifocals. So much for vanity.
• Happy thing: friends like you who don’t mind me whining from time to time
• Happy thing: Tangerine Diet Rite Pure Zero
• Happy thing: got a new picture taken at -20 lbs and I can actually see a difference in my face
• Happy thing: new underwear with a lion on the front and “queen of the jungle” on the back

Yesterday a web site I visited used a java (not javascript) menu. (Don’t even get me started on that kind of design ….) A box popped up telling me I needed to update my version of java. Since I haven’t done that since upgrading to XP a few years ago, I said ok. But to my surprise, when then the java install ran, there was a box labeled “install Google Desktop” on the main screen along with a publicity bit for GD. Thankfully, the default was set to no. I refused the option and continued the installation.

Since when did these products become affiliated? Anyone know what’s up with that?

Another java annoyance: the console stays active in my toolbar even after navigating away from the page which called it. There’s no close option on the icon itself. It didn’t deactive and go away until I closed all my IE windows.

Lorraine Gariboldi, executive director of the Life Center of Massapequa Long Island, New York discovered the hard way that rhetoric which may fly just fine with anti-choice zealots can cost big time if expressed in public. She opened her mouth to Newsday (Long Island, NY), then discovered that her vitriol resulted in the loss of a $90,000 grant in a program to bring pro and anti choice groups together to reduce teen-aged pregnancy.

From Newsday.com:

“Working with Planned Parenthood did not change my opinion of the work that I do,” Gariboldi said on Feb. 7. “Meeting their peer educators and hearing what they had to say confirmed to me that I’m in the right business.”

“They’re teaching young people to teach other young people how to be sexually active using deviant methods, in my opinion, of sexual behavior to avoid pregnancy,” Gariboldi continued. “You can call it outercourse instead of intercourse, and bestiality in some cases, masturbation — those kinds of behaviors they’re promoting as good and healthy.”

After the quotes were published on July 17, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi rescinded his offer of a county contract as part of the “Common Sense for the Common Good” program on the advice of the steering committee, saying Life Center broke a compact to respect other parties’ views.

JoAnn Smith, Planned Parenthood of Nassau County’s executive director, said they are exploring a lawsuit for slander.

Don’t you just love it when people are held accountable?

Storm in a gift bag.

From the PI:

Seattle Public Library now offers free music downloads

Seattle Public Library has entered the digital download music age, with free downloads 24 hours a day on its Web site (www.spl.org).

The new service, offered through Cleveland-based OverDrive, offers selections from 600 albums in a variety of genres.

Those with a library card and a PIN can access the service by clicking “Digital Books & Music,” then clicking “Go to OverDrive Digital Books & Music.”

The library has offered downloads of audio books and e-books since September, and it’s proven “very popular,” says the library’s Rachel Martin.

The library’s computers are not configured to provide such access.

A quick search reveals that the Pierce County library system (Tacoma area) also offers downloadable books. Wow. My library barely carries hard copy books.

Does your library offer e-books? Ever downloaded them?

There are million stories out there. This is mine.

In 1978, I was a freshman in college. During Christmas break, I got a sobbing phone call from my best friend. She was pregnant. Her boyfriend told her it wasn’t his problem. For reasons of her own, she didn’t feel she could tell her parents and she didn’t have a car. There was a small private clinic that did abortions in the next little town over from me. Would I help her?

On the day of her appointment, I drove the 50 miles to just over the South Datoka state line, picked her up and brought her to Iowa. I held her hand in the waiting room and was there when she came out. I put her to bed with a heating pad for the cramps and held her while she cried out her relief and sorrow. The next day, I drove her back home.

If that had happened in 2007 and had she been a few months younger, I would be looking at a year in jail.

The House and Senate have passed bills making it illegal to transport a minor across state lines to avoid parental notification requirements. An amendment to allow an exception for grandparents and other trusted adults was defeated. The Senate version allows for an exception for a life-saving procedure, but the House includes a provision mandating a national parental consent requirement. If the House and Senate versions are reconciled, the president has promised to sign it, saying that helping a young woman in need undermines state law.

The noose just keeps getting tighter. I’m ashamed to say that 14 Democrats in the Senate helped put it around women’s necks. Four Republicans–Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins of Maine, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania–voted against it.

Would I have still done it had this law been in place? Without hesitation. It was her life, her body, her decision. No one had a right to take that away from her.

This is sheer bullying tactics. I’m disgusted with my party for rolling over on it. Were one of my daughters in need and didn’t feel she could come to me, I hope some friend would do for her what I did for mine.

Since the dawn of time, menstruation has been surrounded by mystique. Early cultures, including those in Mesopotamia, India, Greece, Egypt and the western hemisphere revered it as the source of life. Later, patriarchal, cultures abhorred it. The Torah and the Christian Old Testament contain rituals for purifying women after their flow; from the 8th to the 11th centuries CE, the Christian church even refused communion to menstruating women. The rhythms of our bodies became a source of shame.

Now research in Japan casts those earlier, more feminist views in a modern light. At the meeting of the American College of Cardiology, Dr Shunichiro Miyoshi and his colleagues at Keio University in Tokyo presented a study which showed that the menstrual flow contains stem cells originating in the lining of the uterus which may may be harvested and cultured to produce heart cells. In half the cases, the stem cells began functioning electrically, in other words, like heart muscle, within 5 days.

Menstrual blood is indeed the stuff of life.

In related news, stem cells have also been extracted from fat cells and can be turned to smooth muscle cells, such as heart, bladder and digestive muscle cells.

Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the latest to show that fat can be a rich source of the body’s master cells.

“Fat tissue may prove a reliable source of smooth muscle cells that we can use to regenerate and repair damaged organs,” said Dr. Larissa Rodriguez, an assistant professor in the Department of Urology at the University of California Los Angeles medical school.

Very cool.