bearing blog

bearing blog


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].

  • In which I think I figure out how it is possible to enjoy running for fitness.

    Yesterday evening instead of going to the gym we took turns running around Lake Calhoun while the children played at the 32nd Street Beach playground.  Mark went first and I went next.  I didn't run all the way around, just the 2.5 miles from the playground to where we left the van.  Of course I walked to the playground, so I did make it the whole way.

    The last time I ran around Lake Calhoun was in April when I was practicing for my 5K race.  I wasn't pregnant yet.  I would be, only a week or two later.

    I gave myself plenty of time, telling Mark to meet me back at the van with the children in half an hour.  Probably because I wasn't pushing myself to go very fast — twelve-minute miles — I enjoyed the whole run.  Maybe I've discovered the secret to running and liking it:  Running hard is never fun, at least not for very long.  But if you get used to running hard, then running easy — well, it is fun, outside in the nice weather, anyway!  And of course, the harder you practice running on a regular basis, the faster you can go and still call it easy.  I think I'm starting to understand this running thing.  

    (If my theory's correct, you have to spend most of your running time NOT enjoying it so that sometimes you CAN enjoy it.  But that I can understand a lot better than just never enjoying it at all anyway.  It's like working for the weekend, you know?) 

    So I ran an easy 5 mph, most of the way around the lake.  I was running easy because it's starting to feel a little uncomfortable in the pelvis to run hard.  I've developed this odd sort of skating, waddly stride that, I think, is the result of unconsciously trying to keep my pelvis a constant distance from the ground.  I probably look kind of silly — maybe no more silly than the other people I see running, some of them very fit-looking, who don't really run, it's more like a gentle shuffling jog.  

    I enjoyed the sight of my pregnant shadow running along beside me, slowly revolving around myself as I made the circuit of the water.  I do look pregnant now — not with the huge cantilevered sort of bump, but with the sleek maneuverable definitely-starting-to-show sort of bump.  I marveled to think what might have crossed my mind, back before I started exercising, at the sight of an obviously pregnant, 35-year-old woman, in maternity running pants and top, running around the lake.  I wouldn't have thought ill of her, but I certainly wouldn't have thought she was the same sort of person as me.  I probably would have assumed she was one of those addicted-to-running sorts.

    Hardly!  And yet, there I am, still going.

    I carried my cell phone in my hand (no pockets in maternity running wear) in case I had to call Mark and let him know when I got sore and uncomfortable and needed to switch to walking.  But instead, with this easy run, I felt better and better as I went.  The muscles in my sides seemed to warm, open up, and let me breathe more freely.  A tightness seemed to spread across my lower abdomen, but it wasn't a warning sort of tightness, instead it felt supportive and secure, holding everything in firmly.    As I came around into the full evening sunlight, the sweat broke on my neck, back, and shoulders, and the breeze off the lake cooled my skin.  

    When I got back to the van — I'd beaten Mark there by several minutes — and slowed to a walk to meet him on his way back from the playground — I was even a little bit reluctant to stop.

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    1 comment on In which I think I figure out how it is possible to enjoy running for fitness.

  • Reader poll: LEGO edition.

    I never get enough commenters to bother with poll widgets — I can do the math in my head.  Answer in the comments.

    When you are sweeping the floor and you find in your dustpan a tiny little piece from a building set, or a marble, or some other insignificant mass-produced plastic object — what do you do?

     - Throw it away with the other sweepings.  It's just a LEGO
     - Pick it out of the dustpan and it away.  These things cost money
     - Save it in a box of other little found bits, and put it away later
     - Save it in a box of other little found bits, and make the kids put it away later
     - Call one or more children to your side, dramatically show them how you Almost Threw Away Their Stuff, remind them to take care of their things, and make them put it away
     - Depends on my whim of the moment

    Most of the time I'm the throwing-it-away sort, except for some reason I'm protective of pieces from board games.  

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    9 comments on Reader poll: LEGO edition.

  • Autumn is coming.

    Melissa surprised me yesterday by bringing apples picked from a local apple orchard for the children's tea.  Good ones, too — a crunchy, sweet, light green variety called Ginger Gold, and another green-blushing-to-red, tender-fleshed sweet one — don't remember the name.

    "You're kidding — apples are ripe already?!"

    "Not many but some.  We went to pick raspberries, and they said we could try apples off the tree and if we found some that were ripe, pick more." 

     (I love the bounty of apple orchards.  Pick one, take a bite, finish it if you like or throw it on the ground and look for a more auspicious tree.)

    I'll give it a few more weeks, I think, even though some of the early apples are my favorites.  Most of the year you go around eating Granny Smiths and Fujis from the grocery store, and they're pretty good, you know, the default fruit, nice with peanut butter or a slice of Tilsit cheese, but nothing really special.  And then autumn comes, and you pick apples from the apple orchard and — wow!  It's like a completely different fruit.  Every variety is like a completely different fruit.  Mind-blowing, how good the orchard apples can be in September and October.  

    I think I've found a recipe for Sunday-morning breakfasts this autumn:  Kristin's Non-Traditional Dutch Apple Pancake.  A little bit of sautéing, a little bit of baking, and you're good to go.

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    4 comments on Autumn is coming.

  • Normal eating vs. disordered eating.

    Christy P.  pointed me to a blog item/discussion thread at the NYT Well Blog asking "What Is 'Normal' Eating?"  I started to read through the 150+ responses and after a short while got very fatigued with "arrrrgh!  how wrong most of these people are!" feelings, and had to stop.  It is a good question, but I don't think there is much wisdom to be found there in the answers.  Maybe you are interested, though — so here it is.  

    I will use it for a springboard to write about something I've been thinking lately.    I've been mulling over whether it is at all helpful to think about overeating — garden-variety overeating, not obviously disordered behavior like binge eating — as a mental illness (an organic one — body chemistry is involved)  in and of itself.

    I started wondering about that as I was reading through (and participating in) the discussion at Megan McArdle's.  A lot of people, both the obese and the anti-obese, are obsessed with "blame" — Should we blame obese people for their obesity?  Should we avoid blaming them?  Should we blame the food processing industry?  Advertising?  Is blame counterproductive?  Are overeaters rational actors in an unhealthy environment?   Who's responsible for obesity?

    These facts are unassailable:

     - Rigorous control of one's behavior, when it really is rigorous, reverses obesity.

     - Most people who attempt such rigorous behavior don't actually succeed in producing it long-term.  Some think they do and are wrong.  Others are aware of their repeated failure.  

     - It is really, really, really difficult for people to eat less than their bodies tell them they should.  

    Whatever our eventual philosophy turns out to be, I think we must refuse any line of thinking that either leads us into "self-control is useless" OR into "obese people must have no self-control."  The first is contradicted by facts, and also rather insulting to human agency and free will.  The second is contradicted by the claims of many, many obese individuals, and also rather unkind and insulting to specific humans.  Let's be charitable and take people at their word when they say they are trying hard, okay?  And at the same time let's recognize that a portion of the people who try hard really do succeed, and their hard work and success is not meaningless, okay?

    Which is why I keep coming back to the overeating-as-mental-illness model:

     - It's individual:  no two people can be treated exactly alike.

     - It's not immutable:  hard work, often extraordinarily hard work, and treatment, has successfully treated it.

     - Yet not everyone can overcome it:   many people have to live with and compensate for it their whole lives.

    This leads me to two conclusions:

     1.   It is dishonest and dangerous to 'normalize' overeating (that is, to say it's just another kind of "normal")  in a misguided attempt to make sufferers feel better about themselves or to remove stigma.  It is and always will be intrinsically disordered (to borrow a phrase from another field of human behavior) to eat, over long periods of time, more food than is necessary for physical health. 

     (I say "over long periods" because it's pretty obvious that humans rationally anticipate future scarcity by building up fat stores, and also that it's normal human behavior since time immemorial to use food in social celebration during special feasts.  Neither of these, however, describes the constantly grazing, every-plate-looks-like-Thanksgiving behavior that characterizes the overeating I see around me.)

    2.  And yet, it is unfair, unkind, and unhelpful to shame and blame people, or categorize them as lazy or without self-control, because they have not succeeded at the kind of drastic, long-term change that would reverse obesity.  It's really hard.  I don't say it's impossible because some succeed.  But many don't.  It doesn't mean they can't.  It does mean that it's asking more than most people can handle without a significant commitment of resources that they might, reasonably, be unwilling to make.  

    We know better now than to shame people because they can't handle, say, bipolar disorder or drug dependence on their own.  We know, too, that it's not pointless to try to encourage people to do the hard work of regaining control of their lives.  Maybe we need a similar sort of sanity about overeating.

    What does this have to do with normal eating?  Well… 

    I question whether "normal eating" is really what recovering overeaters need to be shooting for.  I'm not sure it's possible to eat normally, once you've been a compulsive overeater, just as most people agree that it's not possible for a recovering alcoholic to use alcohol like a "normal" person.  I think it will always be somewhat artificial, never natural, for me to consume the amount of food I physically require.  I am able to celebrate with food, to enjoy it as a social interaction, to feast; but always with a kind of calculation and attention, like a diabetic who must remember to measure blood sugar and apply corrections to the daily insulin dose.

    Appropriate eating — healthy eating — for a recovering overeater is not the same as for someone who naturally eats "normally."  Part of the reason  that so many people in threads like the one at the NYT blog are so wrong wrong WRONG– is because they fail to see that normal behavior is not what's best for abnormal people, and the corrections that abnormal people need to make are, well, ridiculous to try to apply to the whole population, especially the healthy ones.

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  • Intimacy and Lordship.

    Darwin expresses frustration with the "Jesus is my Pal" attitude:

    One of the elements of modern (often Evangelical, but sometimes Catholic) spirituality that I find most foreign is when people talk about Christ as being "my best friend." It seems an even more familiar form of the relationship suggested by hopeful missionaries, "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?"

    It's possible to err in either direction on these things, and I make no representation that I am a perfect Christian, but I don't think of myself having a "personal relationship" with Christ, certainly in a "best friends" kind of way.

    The ways in which I would normally envision Christ are not guy-next-door, my-buddy-the-savior kind of images. Christ the King, enthroned in eternal splendor into union with whom all Christians wish to enter for life everlasting. Christ Crucified, pouring out his blood for the sins of the whole world. Christ Risen, triumphing over the reign of death which had doomed humanity since the Fall. Christ in the Eucharist, kneeling before the glittering monstrance in which the Body of Christ forms the center of a sunburst of golden rays, with the crucifix above and the tabernacle behind. 

    I have a reaction to that sort of thing that's pretty similar to Darwin's, but I don't think he's got the right idea of what that "best friend/personal relationship" thing is really trying to express.

    I think the "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" — a phrasing that is really foreign to Catholics — is  best understood as an attempt to express two things:

    1.  The perfect knowledge Jesus Christ has of each individual.    A one-way sort of knowledge.  That He knows me better than anyone else knows me, including myself.   

    2.  The intention Jesus Christ has to save each individual — that Jesus Christ didn't just die to save everybody, He died to save me.   

    Not being of the Protestant persuasion, I naturally prefer to emphasize — when I think of salvation —  a more corporate, Church-centered, we're-all-in-the-barque-of-Peter-together view.   But the individualistic view is also a true way of looking at salvation. And I am pretty sure the "personal relationship with Jesus" thing is an expression of it.

    The problem with the "best friend" imagery associated with belief in such a personal relationship isn't its intimacy, it's that it implies an equality that isn't there.  I am not Christ's equal; but "friendship" implies symmetry.  And yet it's hard to find a modern archetype of a relationship to point to which expresses the vast asymmetry and the tight intimacy at the same time.   We are divorced from an idea of the relationship between a man and his Lord and Master as an intimate one. If we can envision a relationship like this that is as intimate or more intimate than the best of friends, we will be getting back on track.

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    3 comments on Intimacy and Lordship.

  • Today’s antidote to general beginning-of-the-year homeschooler’s anxieties.

    Says Sara at Shower of Roses, who homeschools children through eighth grade and then sends 'em on to a private Catholic high school about which she says "while excellent, has not been perfect:"

    And if you're worried about being a bad teacher, imagine how it feels to pay for one!

    Heh.  I admit to occasionally being struck by fits of hyperventilation about what I'm taking on.  Can I really do this well?  I have always calmed myself down by reminding myself that I don't have to do it perfectly.  I only have to do it as good as, or better, than a school!

    (And then I remember how things were for me in elementary school, and I realize that it isn't going to be all that hard to meet that minimum.)

    (Sara's commenting on Jen's very edifying post-discussion about "12 reasons people say they can't homeschool even though they may want to" in which she invited comments.  59 and counting, and a very good post to visit if you're curious about how — or why — homeschoolers do it.)

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  • Before quickening.

    Yesterday I went for my morning swim and found myself unable to complete it.  It started out alright, but then I did 100 yards of my (admittedly very poor-form) breaststroke and — Owwwwww!  

    The round ligament pain has begun.

    Also I couldn't swim three strokes without gasping for breath.  Pregnancy seems to be catching up with me.  We'll see if I can give it a run for its money, after I start taking some more Floradix.

    ***

    I had my first appointment with the midwives this morning, at seventeen and a half weeks.  Mark came along, of course, and (while I was in the bathroom peeing on the sticks) I could hear him regaling them with stories of my ice cream cravings.  You see, I called him at work to ask him to pick up ice cream on the way home.  Twice!  And once I specifically asked for strawberry, which is not all that unusual, but the other time it was rocky road.  I haven't eaten rocky road in about 25 years. 

    I happen to hate lying still for the fetoscope, and the midwife knows this, and she had the Doptone all ready for me, so I finally got to hear the baby's heartbeat.  I hadn't been consciously worried, exactly, but it was so good to hear that familiar whooshing sound.  I haven't felt any movement yet — I tend to be late in "quickening" — and it was good to finally get a sort of external affirmation, that yes, there's somebody in there, really. 

    Until that baby starts to move, makes that human contact — I may intellectually know that there is a new person in there, but it's hard to feel as if it's true.   Instead pregnancy feels like something that is happening entirely to me, like a condition I have.  Only after I can feel that person exercising his or her limbs, hiccupping, moving, does it begin to feel like what it really is (and has been all along) — a relationship.  

    Technology has taught us so much in the last few generations about what's going on in the womb from the earliest days of pregnancy.  It's so obvious in the pictures now, what we're seeing.  Genetics, the understanding of how the chromosomes come together in the very first moments to create the individual out of what was before only pieces of other individuals, make it so plain, there really is a real person there from the very beginning.  Yet it's not hard to understand why, lacking that knowledge, people used to think of "quickening" as the beginning.  That is when I make contact, that is when I feel myself capable of the beginnings of love.  

    To feel oneself capable of love, thank God, isn't a prerequisite for actually being capable.  But it's easier after that.

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    7 comments on Before quickening.

  • The title ought to be enough to get you to click over.

    Christy P. sends this article along with the subject line, "Have a tissue nearby."  

    Best advertisement for kangaroo care that I ever read.

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    1 comment on The title ought to be enough to get you to click over.

  • Dumbest line yet about the tornado in my neighborhood.

    Mike Kaszuba of the Star Tribune writes without a trace of irony,


    "…the many foreclosed homes in these inner-city neighborhoods have complicated the cleanup. Some homes were in such disrepair that their garages had collapsed into the alley…"


    Yeah, that's right, my neighbor's garage was in the alley because the home was in such "disrepair."

    Had nothing to do with the 3-foot-diameter TREE THAT FELL ON IT.

    The photo accompanying the story is of a collapsed garage.  Astonishingly, the owner of the garage is not only not in foreclosure, he is actually pictured in the photo.   Yet his garage was in such disrepair that it was unable to withstand a "huge maple tree" that "crashed through the roof."  

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  • Adjustments.

    Maybe it's the tornado that hit our neighborhood during the first week of school, or maybe it's getting used to the new schedule, or maybe I've assigned too much, but my new 4th-grader is frustrated.  He didn't get any play time this week, he insisted.  He doesn't like starting schoolwork right after breakfast.  He has to work practically until Daddy gets home.

    The truth is I almost always need to tweak the workload in the first couple of weeks.  We have new subjects, new and more challenging workbooks, and frankly I expect a lot of him.  But my desire is for him to be done with his work by tea-snack time around 3:30 or 4 every day, with a good hourlong break for lunch and play in the middle, and so I will be taking a good hard look at the amount of stuff I'm having him do MWF.  Last year I had him do 4 math lessons a week (Saxon) and I have been trying to have him do 5 this week — too much?  Should I shave some more of the problems off the lesson?  Have I assigned too much reading?  Should I cut back on the morning chores he's supposed to do?  Or is the problem on his end, his attention is drifting? 

    I was too preoccupied with getting my own stuff done this past week to really pay attention and diagnose the specific trouble — this coming week, I must.  But I better not let him get wind of this — I mean, that IF he keeps not finishing his work, I'm probably going to give him less of it to do.

    I seem to have gotten the level about right for the new kindergartener, though.  Well, I've been through that one before.

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  • Dosage.

    You've heard the expression "to self-medicate with food," right?  Generally thought of as a bad thing.  Emotional eating and all that.  Causes you to envision a lonely woman plowing through a pint of ice cream straight from the carton, or some such thing.

    It's not all bad, really.  Food does affect your mood, because it does affect your body.  And sometimes it's simpler than that.  

    You have a sore throat?  A cup of hot tea with a generous dollop of honey will really do you good.

    Low on iron?  Have some beef at every meal.

    Pregnant lady with a sudden attack of nausea at bedtime five hours after dinner?  TRY EATING SOMETHING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

    So as I was downstairs in my pajamas finishing off my bowl of plain yogurt and blueberries, which I wasn't exactly hungry for but I thought might help me feel better and get to sleep, I found myself wandering into the kitchen to refill my bowl.

    Now why am I doing this?  I wondered, even as I scooped into the yogurt carton.  I wasn't hungry to begin with.  I ate what I served myself, and I had a good reason for it.  Now why am I in here getting more?  I  considered it carefully as I started in on the second bowl, and hit on the reason:

    Because I don't feel better yet.

    That's it.  That's the reason.   I'd decided to eat something because I hoped it might quell the nausea long enough for me to get to sleep.   Well, here I am thirty seconds after finishing my bowl of yogurt, and I still don't feel all the way better, so I'm eating more.

    Funny!  I *might* give it a chance to work, before I give myself a double dose.  If I have a headache, do I swallow a couple of painkillers, think, "Nope, headache still there," and use what's left in my glass to swig down a couple more?  If I have a cough, do I take one spoonful of cough syrup, then go back for seconds when I'm still hacking a couple minutes later?  

    No, maybe the problem with self-medication with food isn't so much that we use food as a drug.  Maybe we should use it more like a drug — when we have a problem that food might solve, take the smallest dose necessary, and wait for it to have an effect (or not) before trying something else.  Why should it be different from any other?

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  • Civil War battlefields.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic is blogging a family trip to Virginia, where he visited several Civil War battlefields.  We are starting our unit on the Civil War this week, and plan to visit Stones River (TN) in a month or so as a side trip from a family wedding; so the posts are timely for us , and very well written too.  Check them out.

    For me, it was all history through the veil, yet again. I felt robbed of something–like I couldn't see Petersburg, the way I might see Pearl Harbor, that I was more like a Jew surveying the cemetery at Normandy. The group asked questions, mostly concerned with tactics and strategic errors, which the ranger dutifully answered. It was like listening to a doctor discuss with great interest and curiosity, your grandmother's cancerous tumors. This is why I can never be a Civil War buff. I am not fascinated. I am compelled. I would turn away, if I could.

    What you see above is the train of Rebels fleeing the city, as the Union troops enter from the other side. I was thinking about the Richmond yesterday, and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." For those who are unfamiliar, the song is a mournful ballad about the fall of Richmond and Petersburg. I'm told that it's a great song, and I don't so much doubt this, as I doubt my own magnanimity. 


    I'm reminded of one of my father's favorite quotes, "The African's right to be wrong is sacred." Or Aaron McGruder's line, "I reserve the right to be a nigger." I can no more marvel at The Band then a Sioux can marvel at the cinematography of The Died With Their Boots On. I wouldn't fault the man who could, but it's not me My empathy is a resource to be rationed like all others. My right to be wrong is sacred. My right to be a nigger is reserved. 


    I started to play the song yesterday, and stopped myself. Again, I was angry. Again, another story about the blues of Pharaoh, and the people are invisible. The people are always invisible. "These motherfuckers," I mumbled to myself. Kenyatta came in from work and caught me rambling. This is just what you want to hear after coming off the late-shift–your past-drunk spouse ranting about some group you've never heard of. 

    Inside we got the grand-tour and at every stop the kids riddled our guide with questions. I had that love-hate thing again–deep admiration for the family who'd preserved the place for 11 generations, and the heir who still lived in the house. And then anger for the slaves, and anger for the Native Americans. 

    I love the lore of the Wilderness. Early in the fight the Union had pushed the Confederates all the way back to Lee's headquarters. Lee stood up, about to lead the counter-charge himself, until a division of Texans held him down, "Go back General Lee!" they yelled. I think that is so beautiful, the complete disregard for logic, and personal safety. Still I see it through a cracked glass. It's like reading a lush love story about a man and a woman, who do not like you.

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