bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
This has never happened before. The comments on my "What do you mean by reliable?" post about breastfeeding and lactational amenorrhea have gone onto a second page. Give yourselves a hand.
(There's a tiny link at the bottom of the page of comments that points you there. I wish it was bigger.)
The other day Hannah and I sat down over our after-school tea and hashed out a problem we'd been having with the oldest kids' school. We needed to try a "new thing" and after tossing out a few scenarios and undergoing some careful self-examination, we thought of a different thing to try. We aren't sure it will "work" (oh these poor guinea pigs oldest children) but we can at least feel confident that what we'll try will teach somebody something.
And afterwards, we agreed that it's really convenient to have a co-worker. (This presumes that one gets along with one's co-workers. We're not living in a Dilbert cartoon, thankfully.)
I know you're interested, if you are a homeschooler, so I'll explain the problem and our solution. Some time ago, we wanted to start nudging the oldest kids (at the time, 9, 9, 11 years old) towards independently reading and discussing their World History lessons (we use the Story of the World textbook, though not the activity guide).
I wrote in May about our first attempt:
Today I tried a new thing: I delegated.
"Today you will each have a job," I informed them. They looked at each other and made faces.
"The first person will be the Reader. Can you guess what the Reader's job will be?"
"Um, to read the book?" "I want to be the first Reader!" "No, me!"
"The Reader's job is to read the book, slowly and clearly, so that everyone can hear. And if someone asks, 'What did you say?' the Reader has to repeat it."
"Is the other person the Writer?"
"Wait, I'm getting to that part. The second person is called the Story-Hearer. That person's job is –"
"To listen?"
"The Story-Hearer's job is to pay close attention to the events that happen in the story, and remember what happened in what order. The Story-Hearer should be able to tell the story back at the end."
"Do they have to write down what they hear?"
"No, just listen. The third job –"
"I know, the third person's job is the Go Get A Glass of Water And A Snack-er!"
"The third job is the Important-Thing-Noticer. The Noticer –"
"Has to notice important things?"
"Important details. Like the names of people and countries. Dates. Lists."
"Do they write it down?"
"Uh, maybe. We're going to try it a couple of different ways first."
This worked okay, but never very smoothly. The distinctions between the Story-Hearer and the Important-Thing-Noticer were a bit muddied, and they would sometimes argue about whose fault it was that something was missed. The Important-Thing-Noticer would interrupt the Reader to ask how to spell a name, and that would slow everyone down. And crucially, when we asked them afterwards to summarize the chapter, we learned that they had often not identified the same "important details" that Hannah and I would have identified… something like, they would remember Kaiser Friedrich and not Kaiser Wilhelm.
Hannah and I realized we had been taking too many things for granted. When we adults read a historical passage, we apply all our skills honed over years in high school, college, and much postgraduate reading. Not only that, but we already have in place filters that help us recognize "which people are important." We know Kaiser Wilhelm is important because we have seen that name before. And we also recognize style cues the writer puts in the story. The kids don't know how to do that yet. We have to teach them how to do that.
At first we thought we might look for a "study skills" curriculum, one that would teach specific skills of summarizing and skimming and note-taking. I pulled down a large homeschooling supply catalog and flipped through it. But after reading the reviews, we suspected that most of these curricula were readers supplying texts to practice on, rather than content telling how to read for information.
We realized we needed to ask ourselves some questions.
How do WE do it? How do we read for information? How do we know which details are important and which can be left out of a summary?
I asked Hannah to think how she would read a chapter in SOTW about something she was unfamiliar with. Next week's lesson is to be on Japan's Meiji Restoration, so that would do. She slowly paged through the section, and spoke carefully about her thoughts. We think there are two ways we identify "important details:"
—- First, by applying facts we already know from our previous education. When we see a name we recognize from, say, college history classes, we think "Aha! That is a Historical Figure!" and we take note of it. When we see anything happening in, say, Europe between 1914 and 1918, we think "Aha! This is probably related to World War I in some way!" and we take note of it.
—- Second, by recognizing certain patterns of narrative that appear in history books. Such-and-such a leader made a series of reforms, and the reforms are numbered 1, 2, 3, … and the reforms had such-and-such a result. This group gained power and that group lost power, and here are 1, 2, 3 ways it happened. The population suffered this, that, and the other problem caused by bad government and so they revolted . You see. We recognize the pattern, and then we know that the Important Things are the facts in the story that fit the pattern. (It's a simplified model, but we're dealing with a simplified history here, too.)
Can we expect children of ages 10, 10, and 12 to be able to do it the same way we do?
—- We definitely can't expect them to recognize very much in the way of facts, figures, names, and dates. They have picked up some of this, of course, but most of the details they are seeing for the first time.
—- We can't expect them to recognize the narrative patterns very quickly. But maybe if we tell them the patterns ("In this story, a leader made three reforms, and something happened as a result"), they will be able to pick out the details ("As you read, write down the leader's name, a list of three reforms, and the result"). And perhaps over time, we can teach them to recognize the patterns.
What, exactly, are we wanting them to be able to do? Can we clearly articulate that to ourselves?
—- We want them to read the chapter through once, understanding the story.
—- Then we want them to read the chapter again, writing down the Important Things. After some discussion, we unhappily concluded that, by "Important Things," we mean neither more nor less than "the things that WE think are the important things." Perhaps we can work on that one.
—- Then we want them to put the notes away till the next day, and then, to be able to use the notes (and not the original text) to write a summary paragraph or to answer questions about the story.
That should do it.
So how to proceed? We decided we'd continue dividing up the jobs of Reader, Story-Hearer, and Important-Thing-Noticer, with two crucial differences:
— The kids would read the same text twice, with a different Reader each time.
— The first time through, both other children would "be Story-hearers." The second time through, both other children would "be Thing-Noticers."
Happily, by dividing up the jobs previously, we have already taught them how to be Reader, Story-hearer, and Thing-Noticer.
In between the two readings, we'll supply them with a Pattern that the chapter follows. There's always a background section, and there's always a concluding sentence or two, and we'll tell them where those begin and end. We'll give them the road signs to watch for in the middle part: "In this chapter, one group was struggling for power with another group, and they each try several different things to gain power." Then we'll tell them that, as they read through the second time, we want them to do these three things:
- write a sentence to summarize the background section
- write a list of facts that fit the pattern we gave them
- write a sentence to summarize the conclusion.
I think this is worth a try. Will let you know how it turns out.
Neither of us would ever have come up with this approach on our own. Like I said: it's nice to have co-workers.
If you were interested in the comments two posts ago about lactational amenorrhea, perhaps you will also be interested in this post at Betty Duffy which, I think, perfectly encapsulates many of the emotional and spiritual ambiguities around avoiding pregnancy even for a good reason.
I'm continuing to work through the "troubleshooting guide" that is Part 4 of Introduction to the Devout Life. An index of all posts on St. Francis de Sales' work Introduction to the Devout Life is here. A post outlining part 4 of the book is here.
Having given advice in dealing with temptations to sins great and small, Francis turns in 4-10, "How to Strengthen Your Heart," to weaknesses. Sin and weakness are distinct problems, and so Francis means to give distinct advice about them.
Perhaps five hundred years ago people made more careful distinctions among the categories of sin, temptations to sin, and weakness. They are not the same. A sin is a specific act; a temptation to sin is an internal or external urge toward a specific act; weakness is, I would venture, a tendency to be assuaged by and easily overcome by temptations of a particular sort. The more I read this book, the more I come to believe that our attempts to reform ourselves are seriously muddied by treating weakness as sin and sin as weakness.
For example, lots of people write about their weaknesses (vanity, laziness, impatience, selfishness, gluttonous tendencies) with a distinct tone of guilt. But guilt or compunction is entirely inappropriate towards weaknesses. It's appropriate towards sin, towards sins — towards instances when our weaknesses made it easier for us to be overcome by temptation, and so we committed sins against charity or whatever.
It's a weakness to be impatient; it's a sin to haul off and scream at our kids for inconveniencing us, or to curse another driver on the highway. We should feel guilty about — and repent and confess — the screaming and the cursing, not the impatience. But too often we feel generally "bad" about the impatience, and then we use it to excuse ourselves from the actual sins. "I have anger issues." How convenient. It's a lot easier to confess "I have been impatient with my kids" than "I smacked my child for no good reason, six times since my last confession."
The remedy for sin is, as always, repentance and confession. St. Francis offered a few strategies against temptations, including distracting yourself from them, specific forms of prayer, and an act of the contrary virtue followed by acts of the love of God. So what does he have to say about weakness?
It's a two-pronged approach. Here's the first prong.
From time to time consider what are your greatest weaknesses then adopt a life completely contrary in thought, word and deed.
Before I get into the examples, I want you to notice a couple things about this advice.
First of all: "From time to time." Francis seems to mean that when we are beginners, we can sustain these efforts only in short bursts. Maybe as we strengthen ourselves, we can work on it more frequently and at greater length.
Second: "consider what are your greatest weaknesses." We've all got a number of weaknesses, some minor, some significant. Pick one or a few. Don't try to fix everything about yourself at once.
Those two seem to get us off easy. But the third doesn't: "completely contrary in thought, word, and deed." Even though we may perform this exercise towards only one of our numerous weaknesses, even though we may perform it only occasionally or part-time, when we do it we should be thorough. I wonder if he means us to make a fresh resolution "from time to time" to throw all our efforts at living that "completely contrary" life, knowing that as time passes and our zeal wanes we will gradually return to our old ways; later we can make the same resolution again. Maybe if we do this regularly "from time to time" the effects will last longer each time and we will emerge stronger — each time less plagued by that particular weakness.
On to Francis's examples. I have added annotation and paragraph breaks to improve blogginess.
For example:
If you are inclined to be vain:
- THOUGHT: Consider the worthlessness of worldly things, the effect they will have on your conscience when you come to die, how unworthy they are of a generous heart, being no more than the playthings of a child, and so on.
- WORD: Deprecate vanity whenever you can, no matter what you feel, then honour will bind you to its opposite. We come to hate what we disparage though we were at first attached to it.
- DEED: Do humble, lowly tasks as often as possible, even though with apparent reluctance, for this will so weaken your vanity that when temptations come you will have less inclination to consent and more courage to resist.
If you find that you are inclined to be avaricious:
- THOUGHT: Consider the folly of this vice which makes us slaves of what was made to serve us; consider that you will have to leave all your possessions to someone else when you die; that he may squander them or use them to his ruin, and so on.
- WORD: Deprecate this vice, praise contempt of the world.
- DEED: Go out of your way to give alms and perform acts of charity and let occasional opportunities of gain slip by.
If you are inclined to flirtation:
- THOUGHT: Often consider how dangerous this is, both to yourself and to others; how unworthy to profane the soul's most noble affection for the sake of mere amusement; and that it is the mark of a frivolous spirit.
- WORD: Often praise purity and simplicity of heart…
- DEED: …Conform… your actions to your words as far as possible by avoiding affectation and everything that even savours of flirtation.
There you go, three examples. I am sure you can easily imagine how you could follow this formula to fight all sorts of weaknesses: impatience, gluttonous tendencies, short-temperedness.
One thing I noticed in this bit of advice: Francis is basically telling us to go ahead and be what the world calls "hypocrites." We should deprecate emphatically the very weaknesses we are most subject to, and praise emphatically the very virtues we lack the most. This is a practice that is widely ridiculed. In my experience those who mock "look at so-and-so, he doesn't practice what he preaches" disdain not the preacher's practice, but the preaching.
But Francis isn't interested in your effect on other people here. He's interested in helping you strengthen yourself. And his remedy is to talk the talk first — the easy part — and then (he says) walking the walk will follow. "Honour will bind you" to behave in accord with your speech. "We come to hate what we disparage." "Conform your actions to your words as far as possible."
Fake it till you make it. That's the first prong of Francis's two-pronged approach to your greatest weakness.
The second prong is much simpler and is to be practiced whenever you are feeling especially free and strong — when you are in "a place of power" so to speak.
In time of peace, in other words when you are free from temptations, make acts of the contrary virtue, seeking out occasions if they do not present themselves, and in this way you will strengthen your heart for the future.
Francis doesn't give examples here, but I can supply an example from my own life, if that's not too presumptuous. When I was strengthening myself against gluttony a couple of years ago, I found myself feeling particularly powerful at one point: I wasn't being tempted as strongly to eat far more food than I needed at one sitting. I thought I'd better make the best of this "place of power" and so I started deliberately going to places that had been hard for me in the past, and practicing eating moderately there. I made "acts of temperance," you might say. It seems really silly to identify taking the kids to a buffet restaurant for lunch as an act of virtue, and I wasn't thinking of it that way at the time, but looking back I think maybe it qualified. At the very least, if it doesn't serve as an example, it can perhaps serve as an analogy.
So: Identify your greatest weakness (and its contrary virtue); from time to time adopt a way of life completely contrary to the weaknesss in thought, word, and deed; and when you feel strong and free to do so, make acts of the contrary virtue.
UPDATE: Wow, the comments went onto a second page! That's never happened before!
(When you get to the bottom there's a leetle teeny arrow link pointing to the second page.)
Christy P emailed me a link to an article about "ecological breastfeeding" and lactational amenorrhea at Inside Catholic.
Of course, I've read lots of these articles over the years, and had my own stints of lactational amenorrhea, and I've made it out of lactational amenorrhea 3 times without any surprise pregnancies (going on four, I hope). So little of this is new to me.
Except having been out of the loop for a little while, I didn't know that CCL is not, apparently, emphasizing breastfeeding amenorrhea as a spacing method as strongly as they used to. Here is part of a comment from "Steven" who self-identifies as a CCL teacher:
the reason that EBF is not mentioned in the same way in CCL teaching as it was previously… is because EBF is not NFP. While breastfeeding has many benefits for mother, baby and everyone in the family (including Dad!) it is simply not a reliable method of spacing babies.
CCL's focus is on teaching the sympto-thermal method of NFP, which is very reliable if used correctly….there is no way to ensure that EBF will lead to extended post-partum infertility. I agree that it increases the odds, but there are many women who have an early return of fertility who are faithfully applying the seven standards of EBF. …
However, the CCL curriculum still highlights breastfeeding and encourages couples to breastfeed their babies for many of the reasons you highlighted, including the delay of fertility that occurs for some, but not all, women. … I believe that our current policy of focusing on reliable methods of NFP and including the benefits of breastfeeding in our program is the right one.
The author responds:
I do understand how EBF is not the same as NFP. However, if EBF is wholly embraced it can be a reliable form of natural child spacing for many women…
And at this point, I say: I guess that depends on what you mean by "reliable."
I am an NFP user, CCL-trained, who has had 4 children and no surprises (yet), and has never weaned before the age of 3. Lactational amenorrhea has ended for me at 6m, 7m, and 11m postpartum (still going at 8m right now).
Let us take for granted that I am on board with Church teaching and can write purely about practical matters of pregnancy spacing.
At this point I would not use the term "reliable" to describe ecological breastfeeding for spacing. Some women are fortunate (or blessed, or whatever term you want to use) to find that amenorrhea lasts a long time; some are not. Even if that were true for most women — maybe it is — the fact that you can't tell in advance whether you fall into the "most women" category would make it not "reliable" (it would if that "most" was "all but a tiny few" but it is not). There's a significant element of unpredictability there.
Rather contrary to the suggestion that women risk selfishly doing EBF for the fertility suppression at risk of harming their babies, I'd say that EBF is worth doing for the baby's sake, and if you get some spacing out of it, that's just a bonus.
Another thing I want to throw out there: A lot of people seem to be measuring the "reliability" of EBF as a baby-spacing means with "how many months of amenorrhea did I get." I'd say that unless you're happy with lactation being your only spacing mechanism — which is fine for many families, I know — the measure of reliability has a lot more to do with whether you can detect the return of fertility clearly enough that you know when to start abstaining in anticipation of switching to NFP.
If you look at my "how many months" data, it sounds pretty good. I wasn't following the 7 standards the first time (I was in grad school and did a lot of pumping) and I still got 6 months of amenorrhea. Here I am still not cycling at 8m postpartum.
But for us, it has been a significant sacrifice to continue with lactational amenorrhea. I haven't (yet) tried to kick-start the cycles by depriving my baby of time he needs with me, but we've certainly been tempted. And the reason for that is that my pattern of return to fertility has been an early onset of fertility signs which last many, many weeks. And no, before you tell me it is probably a "basic infertile pattern," I can assure you that it is not, not according to any sort of system (CCL, Creighton, or Billings). EWM for months straight. Oh, and, three out of three times, the first ovulation has occurred without a "warning period."
I wouldn't use the term "unreliable" either for EBF — the connotations of the word are too negative. Truth is, it's useful for many couples. Many informed couples are, clearly, willing to rely upon it because of their own very subjective judgment; which is what matters for them. And again, the standards that increase the odds are good for babies and worthy for that reason. But I'm not willing to call it "reliable" under any objective standard. There's just not enough predictability.
Derek Lowe links to a truly disturbing case that gave me a sympathetic lurch in the gut.
Imagine that you're a graduate student and your laboratory results don't work.
Now imagine that you can't figure out why they don't work.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it wasn't too hard for me to "imagine" that.
OK, now, suppose that you begin to suspect… sabotage.
Can you imagine actually going to your PI and saying, "I can't get my stuff to work, and I think it's because someone's out to get me?"
Me either. I'd probably start to doubt my own sanity first.
Fortunately for Heather Ames at the University of Michigan, she had the self-confidence to get to the bottom of it all, and in the end a postdoc in the lab was caught on camera tampering with Ms. Ames's research.
The headline on the linked article seems off to me — I'd say this is "the scientific side of malice" rather than the "malicious side of science" — but whew, definitely worth reading. One thing that's interesting is that sabotage doesn't quite fit the established definition of "research misconduct." May be time to expand that definition. Having his name appear in Nature like this (not what he'd hoped for I'm sure) seems an apt punishment.
OK, I've been through my ENTIRE blog since the beginning of 2008 and I have stuck every post that had anything to do with weight loss into one or more of four provisional categories:
I am still not sure what form to put everything in. I guess the biggest question is, should I take the "personal" subtopic and divide it up into two or more separate threads? There seems to be a difference between "just telling my own story" and struggling to articulate principles that might help other people, but the dividing line is difficult.
I could just leave it as it is now, put together chronologically. If you'd like to see roughly what that would look like, only backwards, you could start with the earliest posts (which as of today appear at this link: http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/weight-subtopic-personal/page/19/), go to the bottom, and read upwards/page backward.
(Note for the future: As I continue to post in that category, the "earliest" posts will move to a page with a higher index page number. So that link may go out of date.)
If you've an opinion, let me know in the comments.
I just had to pull this analogy out of the comments to the last post, because I think Tabitha hit it out of the park. I had written that I didn't think cutting back on habits and "just maintaining" the numbers on the scale was a good goal, because going back to old habits isn't "maintaining" behavior, it's "gaining" behavior. Tabitha wrote:
I see what you mean, Erin. It's like when my NFP teacher told me that if you "take chances" your behavior says you are seeking a pregnancy.
The eating behaviors aren't a perfect analogy, of course, but it makes sense that you either have the healthy habits or gaining habits.
I remember encountering that language in NFP class too, and I thought it was a very helpful and realistic way of thinking about it. There is no such thing as "avoiding pregnancy" and "taking chances" at the same time. The criterion of whether you're "seeking pregnancy" or "avoiding pregnancy" is to be judged by what your ACTUAL REAL BEHAVIOR is consistent with.
That's not to say there's not room for an oops, as in, an honest mistake interpreting a chart, or medication screwing up your fertility signs — that's a time when you might say "I was avoiding pregnancy but I got pregnant anyway" — although a better way of phrasing it would be "I THOUGHT I was avoiding pregnancy but I got pregnant anyway."
But see here, if you have sex during your fertile time, you're "seeking pregnancy" even if you don't want to get pregnant. Your biology doesn't care one whit about your intentions, or whether you have your fingers crossed.
And yeah, Tabitha's right — regaining weight is kind of like that, although it can be a little more complicated because there are more behaviors involved. If you change enough of your habits from "new weight-maintaining habit" to "old weight-gaining habit," well, you're trying to gain weight, whether you want to or not.
That's why I want to point out that it's much better to think in terms of permanent change to new, low-weight-maintaining behaviors, and eliminating the old, high-weight-maintaining behaviors.
I'm almost done going through and finding all my weight loss posts and categorizing them into broad categories so that I can maybe, eventually, produce a printable version.
Along the way I'm re-reading some of them, remembering where I was at each stage, and occasionally thinking of interesting updates. (Remember those cookies on my dresser? Guess what? They are STILL THERE.)
One thing I've been trying to figure out is whether there is really anything original or unique about my own approach and philosophy. I know that I have an original and unique personal experience and an original and unique voice, because everyone does, sheesh. But what is there in the meat of what I did and what I write about that is different from all the other gazillion books out there? If not, why bother? (Of course, the other way of looking at it is — if so many other people can publish and self-publish the same old advice over and over again, why not me? But I digress.)
The part that seems to me like it might not have been done (much) before is the notion that what we really can control is the habit-changing, not the numbers changing. To let go of the numbers and embrace the desirable habits whether they "pay" in numbers or not. Add that to the idea of measuring and celebrating success in habits, not in numbers — and the idea of adding habits slowly, systematically, and deliberately —and I'm not sure I've seen that anywhere else.
The closest thing I've seen is in The Beck Diet, which is a cognitive-behavioral therapist's take on it. I am not a cognitive-behavioral therapist, but it seems like a good approach (or at least, it seems similar to mine).
Is there something I'm missing, or does that sound about right?
This occurred to me a couple of weeks ago when a friend who has been changing her habits and who has dropped 20-odd pounds in the last several months posted that she was changing her goals during an upcoming stressful time. She was going to work on maintaining her weight rather than on losing weight during that period of predictable high stress.
It is the sort of thing that years ago I would have said "Great goal!" about, but these days I just don't believe that anymore. I commented that I didn't think maintaining the scale was a "goal." The reason I gave is that it's not directly under your control the way habit is. (Post and comment are here.)
It bugged me and bugged me for a few days because there was something else about the notion of easing up on yourself, and just maintaining weight rather than continuing to lose it, during a stressful time that bugged me. Even though on the surface it sounded perfectly reasonable.
And then this morning I think I figured it out. Here on the other side of weight loss, it's perfectly obvious that "how I lost the weight" and "how I maintain the weight" are THE SAME. There is not a significant difference between my behaviors as a weight-losing person and my behaviors as a weight-maintaining person.
Oh, sure, I must be consuming more calories. (Especially since I am breastfeeding an eight-month-old.) But the habits are not very different. At least, if you compare these three versions of me:
… well, (A) and (C) behave very, very differently. (B) and (C) behave much the same.
(Whereas conventional energy-balance wisdom might seem to imply that (A) and (C) would behave similarly, and (B) is the one who would be behaving differently.)
I guess I now believe that maintaining is just as hard, or just as easy, as losing weight. I guess I now believe that you can't really save much effort and stress by changing from "trying to lose" to "trying to maintain." Going back to old habits is not "maintaining" behavior, it's "gaining" behavior.
What you can do to ease up on yourself, to make things less stressful, is to temporarily stop adding new good habits and "maintain" the ones you have.
Like much that I've learned, it's kind of bad news. But it's good news in a way too, I think.
If you have a child with food issues, or if you just like good food writing, check out this essay by Dara Moskowitz Grundahl in Minnesota Monthly. It's from last year but somehow I've missed it till now.
Dara M. G. is the best food critic in the Twin Cities, hands down. She used to write for the free weekly City Pages and now writes for Minnesota Monthly. Her reviews are always more than just a review — I look forward to them every week. Anyway, her essay is about what happens when a food critic has children with, er, different priorities about food.
I’ve based most of my professional identity on this idea, that if you want to know what the best doughnut in town is, you simply go to 12 or 20 of the likeliest places and find the best. And you want the best, don’t you? That’s self-evident, right? Everyone wants the best. I do. Or I did. Before I got pregnant, before I had kids. Now I’ve got a one-year-old who will eat anything—shabu shabu, red curry, sand—and a three-and-a-half-year-old who will eat almost nothing. Conseqently, this food critic has learned a few things about food.
…If you read the foodie press, you’ll know it’s a point of pride among today’s parents to brag about what arcane foods their child delights in: Japanese nori paper, capers, Roquefort cheese. Ideally, the sentence you want to drop at the playground runs something like this: “Little Gabriel is such a snob, he won’t eat cassoulet with truffle oil—only real truffles. I’m going to go bankrupt!”
Not us.
This is painful. As a food critic, it destroys the dream I had when I first got pregnant, that of running around to obscure taco holes and barbecue dives with my little sidekick. More urgently, as a parent, it means I have no way to bribe him.
Read the whole thing, which includes some reviews of children's picture books about doughnuts:
Perhaps what I like so much about [children's book] Who Needs Donuts is that, aside from imagining a world in which children are unafraid of the city, it features the only professional doughnut-gatherer I’ve ever run across—besides myself.
Dara and her son-who-won't-eat take a trip through the Twin Cities in search of the best doughnut, a journey which (of course) functions beautifully as a food-critic's column. Read it — and tell me what you think.
You may remember one of my commenters, LeeAnn, who blogs at Apostle to Suburbia. I found out this morning that LeeAnn recently lost her husband David in a tragic accident. She has posted an obituary on her blog here.
Truly we do not know the day or the hour. Please add your prayers to mine for her and her four children.
I haven't started yet, but I'm pondering adding push-ups to my exercise routine. This video may help me get in the mood.
As for me, an old wrist injury makes "normal" pushups pretty hard to do, so I think I might try the trick with the barbells or possibly the bosu half-ball thingy.
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