Denise's blog

Obesity on the Rise in the U.S.

2009-07-01T16:39:09-05:00

The F as in Fat Study came out today and to nobody's surprise it says obesity is rising in the United States.

It is at this point in my blog post that you might expect me to get just a little bit snarky but I'm not doing it. It's hard but I'm taking this very seriously and if you read to the end, you'll find out why.

Let's look at some of the facts and figures from the study. Really look at them. Try reading them out loud. In front of your kids. Or your parents. Or how about the guy standing next to you in the elevator. I'm not kidding.

* Adult obesity rates increased in 23 states and did not decrease in a single state in the past year.

* the percentage of obese or overweight children is at or above 30 percent in 30 states.

* Adult obesity rates now exceed 25 percent in 31 states and exceed 20 percent in 49 states and Washington, D.C.

* Two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight.

* In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent.

* In 1980, the national average for adult obesity was 15 percent.

* Sixteen states experienced an increase for the second year in a row, and 11 states experienced an increase for the third straight year.

Those are serious facts and figures. So serious that President Obama addressed the obesity epidemic during a health-care reform discussion at town hall meeting.

If we can help somebody control obesity, they are less likely to get diabetes. And if they are less likely to get diabetes, that means that we are going to be saving a whole lot of money in hospital costs.

Looks like maybe Obama was reading the F as in Fat report this morning, too. From the study...

A recent analysis commissioned by TFAH found that the Baby Boomer generation has a higher rate of obesity compared with previous generations. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, obesity-related costs to Medicare and Medicaid are likely to grow significantly because of the large number of people in this population and its high rate of obesity. And, as Baby Boomers become Medicare-eligible, the percentage of obese adults age 65 and older could increase significantly. Estimates of the increase in percentage of obese adults range from 5.2 percent in New York to 16.3 percent in Alabama.

During his town hall, he was very kind to a woman named Debby and called her exhibit a. Yes, I'm being a wee bit snarky. I am sure Debby appreciated his concern and offers to help but the calling her exhibit a bugged me.

But what the heck, if you can't beat 'em... let me give you an exhibit b.

I've blogged a bit about TW's mom coming to live with us and what it's like stepping into the caregiving role. I've mentioned that TW's mom is obese, she has diabetes, she has heart disease. She's been dealing with all of those things for many, many years. The diabetes and the heart disease and a bunch of other issues are all directly related to her weight. If she could lose weight, a lot of her health risks and health problems would be more easily managed and... she'd feel a whole lot better.

But it's not as easy as just saying, "Oh, we're going to help her lose weight." We've said that and you know what, we can't do it.

She eats a good, balanced diet most of the time. Her blood sugar is being managed really well, thanks to TW. But no, she isn't losing any weight. She isn't losing any weight because she has so many health problems that she usually can't get out of bed more than to walk three steps to a portable toilet. Or, if we're lucky, she can walk three steps to get into a wheelchair and inch herself the 10 feet to the bathroom to use the real toilet and get a shower.

Because she can't get out of bed, or when she does her energy level is incredibly low and her pain level is so high, she isn't burning any significant amount of calories.

She's stuck using a lot of medications to manage her symptoms and her health issues - almost all of which are related to... obesity.

TW's mom is our exhibit b. She is a 73 year old woman who is on medicare. She lives with me and TW and some of our kids. TW takes incredibly good care of her, though it's difficult on everyone.

On Monday morning, our exhibit b showed signs of stroke. Of course our exhibit b said she was FINE. Or rather she slurred something that was suppose to sound like "I'm fine" but was so slurred that she was obviously NOT fine.

Exhibit b was taken as quickly as possible to the emergency room of the hospital that accepts her insurance (which isn't the closest hospital but is a hospital not too far away.) The hospital looks a bit shabby from the ER but the facility itself looks a lot better than the one we visited when TW's sister had her seizures on the plane in December of 08.

After more than eight hours in the ER and another 24+ hours in a room at the hospital, we've learned that our exhibit b did not have a stroke. She has a blood clot in her brain, thus the symptoms that mimicked a stroke. (Oh wait, this just in... maybe it wasn't a blood clot and instead is a MIGRAINE? Not joking, that's the latest conjecture of our exhibit b's team of doctors.)

The treatment for the blood clot has helped her... some. (seems problematic if aforementioned migraine was really what the problem was..) But she needs an angiogram and angioplasty and possibly stents... risk of death from both procedures... 1 in 1000 for angioplasty and 1 in 500 from stents.

In the meantime, our exhibit b is in a room in this hospital that her insurance will pay for. In that hospital is a nursing staff who consistently complains about our exhibit b's weight and how difficult it is for them to help her move around, how difficult it is for them to help her out of bed to change her bedding, how difficult it is for them to do their job because she is obese.

Our exhibit b is also in a hospital with a nursing staff that doesn't understand how to read her glucose meter, yet bolus info needs to be sent to the pharmacy to show that our exhibit b is getting insulin. This nursing staff also does not know how to use the insulin pump. Well that's what they say. They consider it a luxury item so they do not have to know how to assist our exhibit b with the pump.

Interesting to think about, isn't it.

Obesity is on the rise.
Along with obesity, many people will have diabetes.
Many, many people who have diabetes have insulin pumps.
Our hospitals are not currently staffed to deal with insulin pumps and regularly complain about how difficult their jobs are because their patients are obese.

Are our hospitals equipped to handle obesity? Are they prepared to handle all of the issues that come with diabetes?

Based on our experience with exhibit b, the answer to those questions is definitely not.

Here are some bloggers who are thinking about the latest F is for Fat study:

Kathy Posner questioning Chicago's Taste of Chicago festival in the face of our fatness.

Huffpo (but only for the comments)

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

Wanted: GLBT Book List MEME

2009-06-30T19:36:48-05:00

I'm an avid reader. I'm a lesbian. PRIDE month and sassymonkey's day off have conspired to bring me here to blog about queer reading lists. I have stumbled upon some problems while writing this post. Let me tell you about those problems.

First problem, while I am an avid reader and a lesbian, I don't generally choose books simply because they're written for a queer audience. I sometimes do, if I'm lucky enough to have heard about a new GLBT book or we wander into a woman's bookstore. Generally speaking, I just read whatever I stumble across and those books tend to not be queer. (Check out my Queer tag if you don't believe me.)

Except in the case of YA fiction. Thank goodness for Lee at I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?. What a great blog if you love YA fiction and if you love queer YA fiction you are never going to run out of great books to pick up at your library.

What generally happens when I get a craving for a good queer character or story line and I haven't just stumbled across a new GLBT title or into a woman's bookstore is that I turn to my old favorites and hope they have something new. People like Sarah Waters (don't let anyone tell you The Little Stranger doesn't have a lesbian storyline, they're lying to you), Robert Rodi (Hysterical guy whose website indicates his blog is coming soon. That will be awesome. I love him and enjoyed seeing him at the Printers Row Lit Fest a few weeks ago), Katherine Forrest (Oh look, stuff I haven't read!), Jeanette Winterson (Isn't it time for her to have a new book because really, the kids books are nice but I'd like something grown up please.)

When I turn to my old standby authors and come up empty I am faced with a new problem. With almost 1000 individual blogs in my feedreader, only Lee's blog mentioned above consistently recommends GLBT books. My book bloggers recommend great books but none of them focus on the queer folk. And none of my queer bloggers consistently talk about books, either. (Liz Henry talks about books but not often enough and not always queer specific. And yes, she is sometimes too science fiction-y for me.)

I can find book lists like About's Lesbian Summer Reading List for 09 and that's helpful. (Yes, my library reserve list is growing.)

There's always the Lambda Literary Award List to turn to but still, not a regularly updated resource for new queer books.

Which leads me to another realization. There are no interesting GLBT book list memes. (Or if they are, they are so darn hidden that I can't find them ... and I'm incredibly good with a search engine.)

I found reading challenge obsessed - GLBT Reading Challenge which is fabulous. But, this is not a book list meme.

Here's another PRIDE reading challenge that I like but it's still not a book list meme.

Time to build one and I'm challenging you to help me build it. Once we've built it, I'm going to ask you to pass it around. A lot.

This meme should go the way of all great book list memes:
* bold the ones you've read
* Italicize the ones you intend to read
* Underline the books you love.

Can we get to 100? It feels like 100 is a good length for a book list meme - 1000 from the Guardian feels like way too much, don't you think?

~~I'll start us off with these~~ 7/5/9: Updated the list to include initial suggestions:

1. Annie On My Mind
2. Written on the Body
3. Fag Hag
4. The Complete Claudine
5. The Price of Salt
6. While England Sleeps
7. Luna
8. Fingersmith
9. At Swim, Two Boys
10. The Swimming Pool Library
11. Nightwood
12. Gaudi Afternoon
13. Middlesex
14. Henry and June
15. Affinity
16. Tipping the Velvet.
17. Life Mask
18. The Sealed Letter
19. The Intersection of Law and Desire
20. The Dave Brandstetter mysteries
21. Fruit
22. Hood
23. Skim
24. The Book of Salt
25. The Geography Club
26. Boy Meets Boy
27. The Bermudez Triangle
28. Butterfly Tattoo
29. A Home at the End of the World
30. The Lost Language of Cranes
31. How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, & Musical Theater
32. Hero
33. From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
34. Empress of the World
35. The Complete Poems of Sappho
36. Kushiel's Legacy (series)
37. The Lesbian Body
38. Beebo Brinker
39. Heather Has Two Mommies
40. Stone Butch Blues
41. The Renunciate Series
42. Zami
43. This Bridge Called My Back
44. The Runaways
45. Cycler
46. Gossamer Axe
47. Earth Logic, Fire Logic, Water Logic (series)
48. The Gilda Stories
49. The Shattered Chain
50. Ammonite
51. Trouble and Her Friends
52. The Marq'ssan Cycle
53. Dykes to Watch Out For
54. Fun Home: A Family Traigicomic
55. Rubyfruit Jungle
56. Curious Wine
57. Coal
58. Another Mother Tongue
59. Diving Into the Wreck
60. Dusty's Queen of Hearts Diner
61. Well of Loneliness
62. Fried Green Tomatoes
63. As Meat Loves Salt
64. Patience & Sarah

Leave your suggestions for the GLBT book list meme in the comments. I'll compile them all and when we've got the definitive list, I'll set up a Mr Linky or something so we can all pass it around to our friends and family members (straight folks are welcome to play too!)

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

BlogHer Groups get new RSS feeds!

2009-06-30T16:19:34-05:00

I've loved having these great BlogHer Groups to join and interact in. I'm loving them even more now that there are brand new RSS feeds for each of them.

If you use a feedreader to follow your favorite content, you can add BlogHer Group feeds to your feedreader and be notified anytime a new forum post is created or a new piece of content is shared within that group.

Visit your favorite group (or groups) and click the orange RSS icon to grab the feed.

Virginia wrote a great post about how to get started using a RSS feedreader, for those of you who haven't taken the plunge yet.

~~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager

Cancer doesn't care if you're a food blogger or a mommy blogger or a craft blogger...

2009-06-26T16:54:47-05:00

Remember when I used to blog about cancer a lot? No? Well that's ok, I almost can't remember that far back either. But it's true, I used to be a health blogger and I blogged about cancer several times a month.

My feedreader was filled with women who were blogging about surviving cancer, blogging about loved ones who weren't surviving cancer, and blogging about how to prevent cancer.

When I think about what caused me to stop blogging about cancer, I realize that I unsubscribed to most of the cancer bloggers I'd been following because it got to be too much.

Yea.

As someone blogging about cancer from the outside, I had the luxury of turning my back on cancer.

Suddenly, something has happened to my feedreader. There are blog posts about cancer lurking around every corner. Cancer doesn't care that you're a food blogger or a mommy blogger or a craft blogger.

There's a lesson there.

knitnut blogged about the day she got cancer.

There was a day – a single specific day – on which I got cancer. I don’t know what day it was, except it was probably about four or five years ago because that’s how long it takes breast cancer to grow from a single mutated cell into a discoverable lump.

A Mama's Blog blogs about the results of her biopsy.

How do you ruin your family and friends days by telling them you have cancer? I decided to send an e-mail to a close friend, and figured that was a good way to start telling my family and friends. I wouldn’t have to say it- I wouldn’t have to speak it. But then I had to type out the phrase- I have cancer. It didn’t matter if I had to say it or type it.

BlogHer CE Tammy Donroe from Food on the Food blogs the C word.

I’ve struggled with whether or not to bring this up on the blog. This is a food blog, after all, not a cancer blog. And I don’t want this to become a cancer blog (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But this blog is about my life through food, and if I censor my life too much, then it doesn’t feel honest. Plus, logistically speaking, it was going to be tricky to hide it. Sooner or later you were going to wonder why all of my dinners of late have been composed of 50% potato chips and 50% tequila. The increased unexplained absences might seem suspicious given my previously consistent blogging schedule. And the mood swings. My god, the mood swings. PMS is dreadfully boring by comparison.

Korean Cuisine is wondering what to do when her treatments end.

I've spent the last 7 months fighting this horrible disease. It's all I know at the moment and it utterly consumes me. My daily regimen consists of visiting two separate hospitals to get radiation to hopefully kill off any errant cancer cells that might be left over from my surgery. How do you just brush it off and go back to living?

Which leads me back to that lesson.

I might have turned my back on cancer blogging for awhile, but cancer doesn't go away. Cancer changes your life, whether you have it now, or you've survived it, or you're just a blogger like me.

Share your cancer blog posts and those written by bloggers you read. I've learned my lesson. No more turning my back on cancer.

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

Quirky kitchen requirements

2009-06-16T18:28:57-05:00

Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the kitchen, I was reminded of just how differently TW and I view the kitchen... and some of the stuff in our kitchen.

These differences were made apparent when we moved in together in the summer of 2002. Boy what a shock that was.

TW knew I had a thing for magnets but I don't think she realized that my thing for magnets meant that I like my refrigerator magnets to completely cover my fridge in some crazy mishmash kind of way. I don't like them organized neatly. If you're going to organize them, you need to do it with some metaphor for life or in some quirky way that will make those looking at the magnets stop and say "Hey! What's Dillon from 90210 doing next to the Buffy magnet and not next to the Brenda from 90210 magnet?" -- See, quirkyness. (I'm not the only magnet freak around here: Pinch My Salt is one of my people. And check out this 25 things ON my fridge meme.)

I thought TW adjusted to this little requirement pretty well though she never did understand why I hated the Frigits being on the refrigerator. (I do not like kids playing in the kitchen. Or maybe she understood and just didn't give a darn?)

Apparently she did not understand my fridge magnet requirements since while I was on that fateful trip to California last month, she ORGANIZED my magnets. They are neat. And tidy. And she moved a bunch to the freezer! Gasp! I am truly hating this magnet arrangement and it's taken a serious amount of willpower not to go in there and fix the problem.

I know, I know, this arrangement prevents the little dog from pulling magnets off of the fridge and ingesting them which prevents me from yelling at the dog which prevents TW's mother from being upset because her dog is such a poorly behaved cur. But still. I hate the magnets this way. I think I'd rather go back to having little kids playing with Frigits in the kitchen.

Something I had to adjust to in the kitchen was TW's fixation on white boards and calendars. I did not understand the need for either thing in the kitchen, on the refrigerator where only magnets should appear. (Particlarly since TW is not all that great with a calendar. She tends to write things on the wrong date or write in a way that causes people to not understand what it is she intended to say.)

But, the big kids and I adjusted to this little quirk of TW's so well that every year I go out looking for exactly the right calendar to fit the little whiteboard on the fridge (impossible to find now, by the way.) And, the big kids learned to use that tiny whiteboard to ask for stuff at the grocery store and leave interesting comments for other members of the family to read - and look for interesting comments, intended for them, written by TW. ("Bring down your dirty cups and plates!" "Who has stolen all of the spoons?" "Stop playing Marilyn Manson at midnight, it scares Prince J!" stuff like that.)

So we adjusted to that... but then we moved here, to this little house in Illinois and suddenly that little whiteboard and calendar was not enough for TW. Suddenly we needed a full sized whiteboard hanging in the kitchen...

Which is amusing when we can write things like this..
(click to view full size)

And this...
(click to view full size)

But as amusing as all of that is, it's a little too much whiteboard and there are days when I am tempted to pull it off of the kitchen wall, toss it into the trash bin and hope nobody notices. Unfortunately, someone would notice. Several someones, actually. Fine. Big whiteboard stays. (I think I'm thankful we don't have this calendar whiteboard combo.)

Next issue, the kitchen clock.

TW insists we need a kitchen clock. In fact, she has ranted about the need for a kitchen clock off and on for about seven years. I can usually ignore her but last week she sounded like she was having a break down over a kitchen clock. So, I was willing to discuss it and try to understand it.

I pointed out that we have three clocks in the kitchen right now.

1) A microwave clock.

TW indicates that the microwave clock never has the time set. Every time she looks at the time on the microwave clock, it says 00:00, so she resets it only to find it back on 00:00 again.

Hmm this is odd, I know I've set the clock too - at least twice. I've never actually noticed the time on the clock because I look at the time on my iPhone, on my computer and in the bedroom (where we have a different clock issue but that's another story.)

So, I got up to look. She's right, it says 00:00 again. Hmmm... the next day, as I was nuking some coffee in a hurry, I realized I hit the clock button which explains why it is always at 00:00. Poorly designed face on the microwave. Check one for TW.

2) A clock built into the stove.

TW indicates that this is broken. Hmmm is it broken or is it just not set properly?

I went to look and while it isn't showing the correct time, it does seem to work. The time is different every time I look at it, I think it just needs to be reset. Check one for me.

3) A little bedside clock that was BlogHer 08 swag.

This has been sitting in the kitchen since we moved in and I have no idea why, but it is in there. Why aren't we using that? TW indicates this clock must be wound, by hand.

Wound? Really? Awesome! I volunteer to wind it everyday! How cool is that? I used to love to wind clocks?

This made TW yell. Loudly. About how this was not the RIGHT KIND OF CLOCK! She needs a WALL CLOCK! All kitchen clocks should be WALL CLOCKS. Because, and this is a direct quote...

I don't want a kitchen clock to tell me what time it is. I want a kitchen clock that will bring us timeeeee awarenesssssss.

WTF does that mean?

Time awareness?

I think she's gone off the deep end, don't you? Maybe I should buy dry erase clock and see what happens...

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

From Chastity to Chaz

2009-06-12T21:19:01-05:00

I was born in 1963, which makes me 45 years old (for just a few more months.) This is important because it means that I grew up watching The Sonny & Cher show. I LOVED The Sonny & Cher show. I mean you didn't see women like Cher walking through the Piggly Wiggly and you certainly didn't see women talk to their husbands the way Cher talked to hers. And then there was Chastity. The best shows were the ones where Chastity appeared, usually singing "I Got You Babe" along with her parents. I loved that.

And then I grew up, and Chastity grew up and we both came out (or sort of came out) at about the same time. Ah, someone I recognized and was comfortable with was queer and while she wasn't just like me, she was someone I could relate to just a little bit. After all, we had grown up together. She on TV and me watching her every week.

So there was the grown up Chastity making her way as a lesbian in a straight world, doing the whole activist bit and getting butchier and butchier by the minute. I saw her talking more and more about gender roles.

At some point, watching her from afar, I began to wonder if her shift was not so much about being a butch lesbian but about a deeper gender shift.

So when we heard the news yesterday that Chastity announced the transition to Chaz, I wasn't at all surprised. My honest first response was "It's about time." (And I'm not the only one who felt that way.)

TMZ broke the story with Chastity Bono -- Becoming a Man.

Chastity Bono, civil rights advocate, journalist, author and musician,
is in the early stages of changing his gender -- transitioning from female to male, TMZ has learned.

Bono, the child of legendary entertainers Sonny & Cher, began the process earlier this year, shortly after his 40th birthday.

From here on, I will only use the name Chaz because that's who we're talking about. That's who this person is, and has always been.

What does it mean for a person who was born a gendered female to transition to a male? That's a little complicated because it's really up to the individual.

Transition can mean everything from sex reassignment surgery to simply living in the opposite gender, without any significant body modifications at all.

We don't actually know whether Chaz will have reassignment surgery. His transition may be social or it may be surgical.

As in the case of Thomas Beattie, the transgendered F2M who just gave birth to his second child - you can be one gender but retain the genitalia of another.

Gender is complicated.

If there's one thing I'd really like people to take away from this it's that we're talking about gender and not necessarily sexuality.

And that's what Dan Savage gets wrong in his piece, Becoming a Man about Chaz.

This just doesn't happen to my gay male friends. This has never happened to a gay man that I've know personally. And I can only think of a single gay man in the public eye—one of the Arquettes—who has ever announced that, after years of consideration, he realized he wasn't honoring his true identity—e.g. he'd really been a woman all along—and was transitioning from male to female.

Chaz was never a lesbian woman. Chaz was transgendered. Chaz isn't becoming a man, he's always been one. Actually, F2M's tend to be far more invisible and discreet than M2Fs.

If Dan doesn't know any gay men who have transitioned, then it's because he doesn't know any transgendered men. This doesn't have a single thing to do with gay sexuality or lesbian sexuality, this is about gender.

And, Dan also didn't stop to consider the possibility that some of those men who he thought were gay men, were really trans and could not or chose not to transition.

Transition is not an easy thing to do, even if you know it's the right thing for you to do.

Trans people have families and friends who they don't want to disappoint or let down. They don't want to disrupt the lives of those they love. They don't want to be killed or have someone who loves them be killed. Have you ever heard of Calpernia Adams?

Coming out gay isn't easy and coming out trans isn't any easier.

More folks weigh in on Chaz. Read the comments.

After Ellen

Women Born Transsexual

GLAAD Blog

Are you wondering Cher has responded? (I don't blame you since she is honest about saying she had a difficult time the first time Chaz came out.)

"Cher is very supportive and has known about Chastity wanting to do this for a very long time," a source tells PEOPLE. "This will be a long process but it's something Chastity has wanted to do for many years."

Chaz has been a wonderful advocate for lesbians and will now be an even better advocate for the transgender community.

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

My Kitchen Needs Stuff

2009-06-09T14:23:19-05:00

You'll be happy to know I'm pretty much adjusted to the new layout of the kitchen. I no longer feel like killing someone when I need to nuke my coffee and there's a traffic jam at the microwave because of the toaster oven placement. Life in the kitchen is pretty good.

Mostly.

I still think we need some cool new stuff to help us move to the next level of organization but the thrifty me is slow to make any purchases.

Let me recap what we had before I started this kitchen series:

IKEA FÖRHÖJA

- The microwave, toaster oven, sodas, water and Glucerna live here now. Along with the little plates and bowls used most often for microwavable and toaster ovenable foods.

IKEA TRONEs (ours are red)

- These used to be mostly useless. They were supposed to be for kids to put their shoes in when they came in the door but in this house, that just wasn't happening. Now, they contain the sandwich bags, aluminum foil, etc.. and the extra plastic shopping bags. Good solution to a couple of our organizational problems.

Antonius (with mix of wire and plastic bins)

We still have one empty wire bin (the bottom one) but I'm much happier with how we're using these - except when someone leaves the top bin open just a little too much and a dog jumps up there and pulls out a bag of bread to much on.

Shelf Expander

We bought one of these the first week we moved into the house and I didn't understand the need. I guess it does help to see the cans in the back, with such a tall and deep cabinet it would be more of a black hole than it already is.

Wire spice rack

This was also purchased when we first moved in and it didn't work hanging on the inside of the door over the stove. It's working out much better hanging on a wall near the other spices. Good solution to the problem of spices falling into cooking pans every time you open the cabinet door.

While I was gone, TW bought this:

Plastic drawer organizer for knives

I can't find the exact knife organizer that TW bought while I was on my trip to California. It's inexpensive. Plastic. Holds knives plus extra utensils. It's working really well to keep knives and extra cooking utensils handy.

Those are the things we have, here are some things I think we might still need.

Custom Drawer Organizers

We have just a little bit too much clutter in the utensil drawer and the utensil bin. We have an empty drawer that I think would solve both problems and I like these drawer organizers to help with the different sized utensils we're dealing with.

Tea organizers

The tea drawer is still a mess and I'm leaning toward organizers like this to help solve the problem. I'm probably fooling myself by thinking we'll actually use these the way they're intended, right?

Check out these blogs that share great kitchen gadgets everyday:

Gadgets Kitchen

Cooking Gadgets

The Kitchen Designer

What are the kitchen organization gadgets that save your life everyday?

~~Denise

An App a Day Keeps the Doctor Away?

2009-06-03T08:00:00-05:00

I am fascinated by the amount of email I get every day announcing a new health & wellness app for the iPhone (or iPod Touch.) It's like every day someone is trying to convince me that I must download this great new health tool to help me a) lose weight b) get fit c) put on a bandage d) track my poop.

I'm not kidding.

I don't know if the large amount of email I receive about these apps is related to my subscription to every health & wellness newsletter or website known to man or if you're getting these kinds of emails too.

And then there's TW, my partner, who talks an awful lot about health & wellness apps for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) even though she's afraid of iTunes and only has the Loopt app installed (and that one only because I installed it for her... and listened to her rant about it for days afterward.)

I figured it was time for me to do a bit of research and try out some of these apps. (If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?)

I've got mixed results, possibly because I don't want to lose weight, get fit, put on a bandaid or track my poop. I'm just not that into wellness, for myself. I'm all about telling everyone else how they can stay healthy and get fit (and put on a bandaid and track their poop.)

One other thing you should know, before you start reading my little reviews of these apps - I'm thrifty. That means I refuse to shell out money for apps of any kind, not even the ones that help me track ... (how many times can one woman say poop in a post?)

For the record, the GI Monitor, does help you track poop and I might consider shelling out money for it if TW decides she wants to give it a try. It looks like an interesting tool with an interesting report you can just show your GI Doc when you're trying to sort out a flare. I probably would not shell out money for the iPoop app, though. It seems like more of a joke tool than a real tool. You, on the other hand, might want to give it a try if you're someone who likes poop jokes.

And one more app I'd consider paying for, the C25K app. I am a huge fan of the Couch to 5k program and the app looks pretty darn good. If you want to get into shape, if you want to work up to being a runner, this is a program I can recommend without reservation.

Now that we've got that out of the way, on to the free apps that I did try.

I downloaded the Restaurant Nutrition app because I thought it might be a popular one with the folks trying to lose weight. It's got all of the big fast food restaurants and a few of the more sit down types of restaurants (P.F. Changes, On the Border etc...) If you're trying to figure out what the healthier fast food choices are at your favorite drive-thru, this will help. If you want to track your calorie, fat or carb intake at these restaurants, the tracker will do that. It's not a bad tool, it's just not one that I need because I am very, very good at knowing the calorie counts of fast food. It's an occupational hazard, leftover from my former life.

I didn't download the Free Menstrual Calendar from Fertility Friend but my 19 year old was using it for awhile and says it did the job.

iTrain was so complicated that I didn't get very far with it before I ditched it. I do not need a training app that's so complicated that it takes me two hours to figure out.

WebMD Mobile(I worked at WebMD from 2001-2007)

For years, before the iPhone was ever launched, I used to tell my boss and coworkers that WebMD needed mobile apps. Now they have a pretty darn good one. Last night, I was a little skeptical because I couldn't get the symptom checker to load anything. This morning, it's all happy again and telling me that my inability to sleep could be related to everything from depression to pinworms. Ah Symptom Checker, how I love you. The first aid section is much more detailed than other first aid apps that I've tried. The drug tool... not good enough. I want a picture of the drug when I say it's pink and oblong. Overall, I'm pleased with this one and I'll probably keep it.

iFirstAid Lite isn't a bad choice if you travel to a lot of foreign countries. Being able to get emergency phone numbers depending upon where you are could be important to world travelers. The actual first aid info is a wee bit simplistic. Poisoning seems to assume you've inhaled something or come into contact with some chemical, rather than the more obvious swallowed something issue. WebMD's is much much more rich in content here.

Step Trak Lite was disappointing but don't take my word for it because I am always disappointed with pedometers. I had to carry it in my hand in order for it to really track my steps. Yes I always have my phone in my hand so this shouldn't be a big deal... except when I was carrying a bunch of bags or a bunch of laundry. That was inconvenient. Also, during a 5 minute walk from my house to the candy store, the iPhone went to sleep causing the app to stop tracking my steps. I wish it continued to work while it was sleeping or that the app would prevent it from going to sleep.

8 Glasses a Day is silly but amusing at the same time. Are you trying to remember to drink more water? Download this and see what happens. My problem with it is that the number of glasses remaining shows up as a little red tab, just like notifications that you've missed a call, have a zillion unread emails or need to update 15 apps. I don't like those little red tabs. If I have them on my phone, I must make them go away immediately. (This is my own little issue - I've talked about it often, this compulsive need to read, answer email and file it immediately. It carries over to my iPhone and those red tabs.) If you aren't troubled by the little red number, you'll be ok with this. Me - I had to drink my eight glasses immediately or just pretend like I did it. Yes, I lied to the 8 Glasses a Day app.

Last, but not least, the Shy Bladder app. I downloaded this because I have been known to tell TW to whistle or hum while I'm trying to pee. (TMI, sorry.) I tend to not go to the bathroom all day and when I finally take a few minutes to go... I can't. (Again with the TMI...oops.) Anyway, the app made me laugh. It has three water noises along with photos of water running over stones or water dripping off of green plants. It didn't make me have to pee but who knows, it could help you. It would also be amusing in a public bathroom, I think. Imagine being in a crowded airport bathroom and hearing water running over stones from the next stall. Heh. Amusing, right?

I Chattered and Tweeted, asking if anyone had health app recommendations. @ElisaC recommended the Livestrong Calorie Tracker. Laurie recommends the LoseIt app which she found via a tweet from @nopasanada. (I have to echo the LoseIt recommendation. Since it's free, I downloaded it and I like it a lot.)

Do you have a favorite health & wellness iPhone (and iPod Touch) app? Have you tried any that you just can't recommend?

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

The solution to my kitchen woes

2009-05-31T14:00:00-05:00

I have discovered the solution to my kitchen woes. The solution is not, as Wilma has suggested, to bulldoze it down. The solution was much simplier than that, and much more fun. The solution was to blog the problems right here on BlogHer.com. The simple act of blogging the kitchen, with photos and video, spurred TW into action. (My trip to California might have also spurred this activity since TW tends to DO THINGS while I am gone.)

When I came home from my trip, I found the kitchen reorganized. This even included the moving of the microwave cart, oxygen unit, and freezer, (not a solution I had ever pondered.)

We now have empty drawers and less cluttered cabinets! Here, let me show you some of the changes.

The toaster oven now sits on top of the microwave and the small IKEA plates and bowls that the children tend to use most often when microwaving or toaster ovening are in the drawers of the microwave cart. (I am not sure I love this solution. There tends to be a wee bit of a traffic jam in that area when several of us want to nuke and toaster oven at the same time. But, after two weeks, the layout over there is growing on me.)

The spices and cooking oils are now on the built in shelves on both sides of the cabinets and it doesn't appear as though we have the casserole dishes and spices falling problem that was common before this shift. (Again, I'm not sure I love this solution because the clutter of the cooking oils and spices is visible. I'm getting used to it though and I don't think I can make any solid claim against this new design.)

The The IKEA pull out drawer thingy actually still has an empty drawer. (The first bottom drawer we cleaned out that resulted in the video of the Mr Bartender tool.) There is a problem with this current drawer situation that I will remedy today - small utensils are in a wire drawer and tend to fall out or hang out of the bottom of the drawer. This causes the drawers to not open and close properly. I will simply swap the drawers so that the plastic closed drawer is the one containing the utensils. Problem solved! Now what to put in the other drawer? Empty unused space is not my friend.

TW cleared out the unused junk food (by taking it to the nursing home, I hear) and that makes me much happier. Now if we could just stop bying new and interesting junk food that nobody will eat... that's a whole challenge in itself.

Our counter tops are almost completely empty. This is nice. It makes cooking and clean up so much easier.

Here are some more bloggers talking about kitchens:

Check out Bella Pepper's new pantry!

The Well Centered Kitchen, from the Oregonian

Tips to organize your kitchen - on a budget

Next week... kitchen organization tools to buy and not to buy.

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

Mike Tyson's four year old daughter dies after treadmill accident

2009-05-27T11:14:20-05:00

When I worked at WebMd, we saw a lot of people come to the message boards talking about injuries they had received while using exercise bikes and treadmills. They often laughed off their injuries, talked about being a Klutz and for awhile we had a running thread about the injuries from the Gazelle.

Injuries from exercise equipment are common.

What really troubles me are the injuries that occur when children play on exercise equipment. RJ had a nasty nasty fall on a treadmill when she was eight or nine. I couldn't figure out what she was doing on the treadmill to start with, much less unsupervised. I was just thankful that the injury wasn't greater. I'd heard horror stories.

Yesterday, when TW told me about Mike Tyson's daughter being injured on a treadmill, I pictured an injury like RJ's. Until I heard more details and realized this was a four year old who had been strangled on a treadmill.

I just heard the horrible, sad news that Mike Tyson's daughter did not survive her injuries. This four year old has died due to injuries sustained by playing with exercise equipment.

I'm not a mom who gets all freaked out and worried about her kids getting hurt in freak accidents. I'm just not that kind of woman. Freak accidents happen and I'm generally of the opinion that you can't prevent a freak accident.

I do believe that you can prevent an accident like the one that took Exodus Tyson's life.

Gym equipment is dangerous. It should not ever be in a place where children are left unattended. Gym equipment is fascinating. Our children watch us "playing" on it. It looks fun. It looks like something they want to be able to do.

In 2006-2007, 5500 children under the age of five were seen in emergency rooms because of treadmill accidents.

The Well Blog makes these recommendations:

Parents should keep home exercise equipment locked and unplugged so children can’t start the machines on their own. Equipment should also be positioned so parents have a clear view of their surroundings and can see children approach the equipment when they are using it.

A message board post on SparkPeople reminds us that it's not just the big machines that can be dangerous to children.

Resistance bands are elastic, but are designed NOT to break when subjected to stretching. Even a small 1 lb. weight can be a dangerous weapon in the hand of a small child who often does not realize their own strength - they can bop themselves or another child in the nose, on the head, and cause an injury.

If you have small children in the house, take a few minutes today to make sure you're protecting them from your exercise equipment. If you have older children, talk to them about these machines. Make sure they aren't using them without your permission and your supervision.

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

Letter to My Refrigerator

2009-05-23T12:13:27-05:00

Dear Fridge,

I know it's not your fault. Really, I do.

I know it's not your fault that the people who designed you don't know the first thing about how a family actually uses a refrigerator.

I know it's not your fault that your shelves are designed so that slim and small bottles slip through your rail, landing on the floor, often breaking.

I know it's not your fault that the produce bin seems to have been designed only for children to do science experiments with vegetables turned into slimy, putrefied, liquid.

It's also not your fault that the dairy bin doesn't hold enough cheese for our family. Or that the bologna we bought for the 10 year old who desperately needed to eat a bologna sandwich turns green.

I know it's not your fault that your top shelf won't hold two gallons of milk, a gallon of iced tea (with added fiber! shudder!), plus a half gallon of low fat plum juice (shudder!), a gallon of Tang (who drinks this stuff?), a flat liter of Pepsi, a bottle of Tomato Juice (again who drinks this stuff?) and a five gallon bottle of water without crashing.

It's not your fault that we shove leftovers into you knowing full well that we will not eat them.

It's not your fault that we have yogurt nobody will eat, pudding nobody will eat, or errr, what is that stuff? (Shrug, nobody will eat it, whatever it is.)

None of this is your fault.

Yet there isn't a day that goes by that someone (me) doesn't curse you. There isn't a day that goes by when someone (TW) doesn't curse you really loudly. There isn't a day that goes by when someone (all of us) don't spill something in you and blame you. There isn't a day that goes by when we don't blame you for not being able to find the sour cream we are SURE is lurking inside of you (it is, it was just buried under the leftovers nobody will eat.)

I blame you for all of these problems but it isn't your fault. It's my fault. It's TW's fault. It's the kids' fault. It's the refrigerator designer's fault.

I promise to do better to:

1) not blame you (as often) for issues you have neither caused nor contributed to.
2) keep you neat and tidy and organized.
3) stop putting leftovers inside of you that nobody will ever eat.

Dear, dear Fridge... I'm sor... what was that crashing noise... not another broken bottle of salad dressing! ugh!

Canny Granny has a bit of an odor problem inside of her fridge.

Well Fed offers spring cleaning for the fridge tips.

Heh, check out refrigeratorzilla.

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

New! PicApp plug-in on BlogHer.com

2009-05-22T17:05:23-05:00

Lots of bloggers, including some of our contributing editors, use PicApp images in their posts. Now, thanks to the efforts of PicApp and our product team, we've got a brand new PicApp plug-in on BlogHer.com that will make it easy for everyone to use the PicApp's image library.

If you're using the rich text editor, you'll see a brand new Pic-App icon (the one all the way on the end, that looks like a little person.)

Click that icon to open a popup window.

Use the search tool in the PicApp gallery window to search for images for your post. When you find one you want to use, drag it to the top bar in the gallery window. You can use multiple images from one search or choose images from multiple searches.

Select the type of display you want.

Name the gallery.

Click embed and the code for the gallery will be added to your post.

Click submit and your image gallery will appear within your post - it's almost like magic!

[PicApp_Gallery:id=2]

Give it a try and let us know what you think about the new PicApp plug-in.

~~Denise

BlogHer Community Manager

Fix My Kitchen

2009-05-12T10:59:35-05:00

The more time I spend thinking about the problems we have with our kitchen, the more problems I discover. I hate it when that happens. I also realized that I was getting fixated on the complaining and not spending nearly enough time thinking positively and working toward solutions.

Off I went in search of blog posts to help me quit with the whining and inspire me to DO something.

At Apartment Therapy, I found the suggestion to open the cabinets and stand back, look and re-evaluate... That's what the video and photos are really about.

Maybe you should watch the (very long) video to see what some of our issues are...

Take note of the end and the real desire Liz has for someone to come to our house and FIX our kitchen. It's not just because she's watched a few too many home improvement shows on TLC. She just understands that this kitchen isn't right.

One of Liz's suggestions, after I turned the video off, was to "buy more stuff to store stuff in." Uh huh. Right. Buy more stuff. Ugh. I'm sort of anti-buy-more-stuff. Then I saw the title of this post, The solution is not buying more plastic made me laugh. The post doesn't really help me with my organization problems but it is inspiring me to do the every day cleaning... every day.

Ack! The Amateur Gourmet says we should take everything out of the cabinets. That scares me. Maybe I should give that a try for the freezer and fridge?

My mom made a few suggestions yesterday on the phone, one of which we'd already accomplished long ago - a shelf in that little empty space at the end of the cabinet. (And really, if you watch the video... that has never happened before! I swear!)

Another of her suggestions is related to adding shelves to what she thought was an open section of the kitchen. (Mata suggested shelves in last week's post, too.) They're right, we can do something like that but that open section is not really open any longer.

There's a freezer there now. And an oxygen unit. Those have to be there, there's no other place for them. Above those areas... what can we put up there that will help us with storage? (This is a rental, so anything we put there will need to be able to come down without too much difficulty.)

What about this wall? We can't have anything too long or too wide, We have to be able to get a wheelchair through the door (and there's a heating vent in the corner.) Maybe a low, under window storage unit of some type? Any suggestions?

I'm also looking for a really good solution to the problem we have with the cabinet over the stove - the one with the spices and magic cooking stuff that is such a mess in the video. Do you have a cabinet spice rack that WORKS? Some magic words for very deep, very high cabinets that might allow the cook to reach the things she needs?

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

I hate this kitchen

2009-05-05T17:33:43-05:00

When we decided to rent this little yellow house in Glenview, Illinois I knew I hated the kitchen. I've lived in a lot of houses that had bad kitchens. I dealt with those, I could deal with this. Besides, I don't spend much time in there since TW does all of the cooking. Instead of feeding seven to nine people, we'd only be feeding five. That meant we'd need less cabinet space than we were using in the also bad kitchen we were living with at the time.

Let's not forget that we assumed this little house would be temporary. We planned to live here a year and then move on, hopefully to something with a better kitchen.

Yea. Right. I told myself all sorts of things just to help me get through a traumatic move. I didn't expect it to be the kitchen situation that drove me to the brink of insanity.

But it has.

It's not all about me either. TW hates the kitchen more than I do, which is as it should be since she's the one who does the cooking. I think even the little kids hate this kitchen (though you wouldn't know it from the amount of time they spend surfing the cabinets and scarfing down food.)

Here we are, a year and a week past the original rental contract signing and we've renewed the lease. We're here for at least another year and I am making a commitment to do something to resolve the angst we all feel when we enter that darn kitchen.

There's nothing we can do about the tiny, apartment sized dishwasher. As the primary kitchen cleaner upper, I can deal with that. I don't even mind it very much because I hate the rest of the kitchen so much.

I can't move the cabinets, change the flow of the room or magic up more counter space.I can't fix the poorly designed refrigerator either.

Rather than focusing on the things I can't change, surely I can figure out how to arrange the cabinets so food doesn't fall out when we open the doors. Or so we can find the food we know is lurking in the depths of those horrid cabinets. Surely I can come up with a storage strategy for items that are rarely used and make items we use every day more accessible.

Well, I probably can't.

I've read a zillion organizational books that tell you all about the kitchen triangle but I can never remember what you're supposed to accomplish in that triangle. (See, this is why I'm not the cook in the house.)

I'm going to need a lot of help figuring this out, and I can hardly wait to see what TW has to say about this. (No, I haven't mentioned any of this to her... she'll find out about it when she reads this post. Yes, that's how she finds out about all of the important things I'm thinking about. No, that's not a problem in our relationship.)

I'm surfing some blogs and websites that talk about kitchen organization. Check these out:

The Kitchen Spring Cure 2009

Monkey See video about setting up a kitchen

Hanna is hungry is doing the Kitchen Spring Cure

Grumbles and Grunts just to keep me in my own reality.

In my next post, I'll show you my kitchen in video and in photos (and I won't be doing any heavy cleaning or organizing before I share.) In the meantime, you can see the original video I took of the house before we moved in.

I'd love to hear stories about what you love and hate about your kitchen? Even better, stories about how you learned to love your not so perfect kitchen. (Oh who am I kidding, nobody learns to love a not so perfect kitchen.)

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings

BlogHer Chatter can help you update Twitter (and even Facebook)

2009-05-04T20:53:48-05:00

Last week, the BlogHer product team rolled out our latest tool - this one designed to help you manage your social media identity. If you use BlogHer Chatter and Twitter and even Facebook, we now offer you a one-stop-shopping approach to telling your peeps (and your Tweets) what you're up to. Props to our friends at Cerado who helped us build it!

Here's how you use it.

Step One: Update your account settings

To automatically update your Twitter stream with Chatter updates, log into BlogHer.com and click Settings from the My BlogHer menu. Click Account Settings. Move to the block that says Twitter settings

and fill in your Twitter username and password and check off the box that says Submit my chatter posts to twitter.com. Scroll to the bottom of the account settings page and click submit.

Step Two: Now, Chatter something

Look! It's on your Twitter

Next, send a Chatter message and ta da... your Chatter hits the Twitter stream, and if you have your Twitter set to automatically update Facebook, your Chatter will appear there too. Give it a try, this will make it much easier for you to update multiple streams at once. (This only applies to initial Chatter posts, not replies you make to your own Chatter stream or to someone else's Chatter.)

But wait, there's more. Comments and Favorites are now appearing in the My BlogHer stream and we have RSS feeds too. We also updated Chatter by adding a 140 character countdown to help you craft your Chatter posts more efficiently.

Now, a word on Internet safety: We don't ask for your Twitter username and password lightly. It's in a private part of your profile that cannot be seen by anyone but you, and once you enter your password it will DISAPPEAR because we do NOT want to keep it. :) Online security is a very important issue and we're interested in the OAuth functionality that will allow us to provide this service to you without having to ask you for your Twitter username and password.

We hope these tools help make your life easier and look forward to your feedback. If you have any questions or problems, leave a comment or email denise@blogher.com if you prefer.

~~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager