My 40th High School Reunion is this year. Somehow, I was asked to be on the reunion committee 10 years ago for the 30th reunion. I agreed to be the administrator for our reunion Facebook group. One of the things I did besides helping people reminisce was to acknowledge birthdays. People liked it, a lot of us had fun at the 30th reunion, and I kept celebrating birthdays. I was surprised at how appreciated it was by people, these small acts of kindness. Consequently, I have kept posting about my classmates’ birthdays for the last 10 years.
I was contacted by one of the heads of the reunion committee to ask if I would continue my role as reunion promoter for our 40th reunion. Given my health risks, the fact that I have no one who can cover for me at work if I get sick, and the fact that I work with kids who are also at high risk for severe or long Covid, I avoid crowded indoor gatherings. And knowing that there are Trump supporters who are likely to attend the reunion, I don’t want to get harassed for wearing a mask.
I told the reunion committee member that I was happy to help, regardless, but that my attendance was going to depend on the venue, basically, whether it was indoors or outdoors. Her response was, “You have to come! You’re our girl! You deserve to be there!”
I had breast cancer in 2012 and two heart attacks in the space of 8 days caused by Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) in 2017. I didn’t expect these diseases at the ages I was, 46 and 51 years, respectively. Treatment, recovery, and facing my mortality was painful and scary. I try to live my life with the awareness that time is precious.
What I don’t think about is whether I deserved the illnesses or whether doing ten years of birthday greetings on FB somehow protects me from disease exposure because I deserve to be there.
I stopped believing in divine intervention decades ago. People get sick and die, people who don’t deserve it. Babies, children, families, refugees, living in all kinds of harrowing internal and external environments of famine, disease, violence, and war.
Everyone gets sick. Everyone dies. It is true that some suffer more than others but none of this is about deserving, except for people who’s basic rights to live without violence, with good food, clean water, access to medicine, are violated.
For the rest of us, it is just about the body, its capacity for life and healing as well as its capacity for sickness and death. Loss is painful and at times devastating. But there are many types of losses that are the normal.
In cancer recovery, we often speak of the “new normal”. It is a useful concept for many. When I got cancer, I worked with an psychologist who had a lot of experience with people facing physical illness. I told her that I not only wanted support through my cancer assessment and treatment but that I wanted to work hard to prevent depression or experiencing traumatic stress. Her main recommendation was to integrate my cancer experience into the rest of my life and to not compartmentalize it. She noted that people who try to shut off potentially traumatic experience from the rest of their lives, are more likely to get depressed or traumatized.
I can only speak for myself, but I found that accepting cancer as part of my life, writing nearly daily about my experiences with cancer assessment, cancer treatment, and my day-to-day life to be very healing. I don’t mean that it wasn’t painful. I experienced all of the grief emotions. I mean that my grief process was one that brought forth acceptance and healing. I drew on this when I got sick again.
Death and illness, life and healing, anger and happiness, joy and sadness, growth and decline, anxiety and equanimity, all of these things are part of the oldest normal.
Be well, friends.
P.S. The reunion has outdoor opportunities, so don’t worry about whether I can attend or not.
As you can see in the photo, Basie, our 9-year-old cat is beautiful. He is also snuggly and purrs a lot. Basie has asthma, which has gotten worse. He’s been a “good eater” for many years but during the pandemic, with someone at home all of the time, we did not do a good job monitoring his food intake. Basie would eat all of the time, if he could. Consequently, he is on a diet to lose 7 pounds. He has lost about 1/10th of a pound. 7 pounds is a third of his total body weight since he was weighed at his last veterinarian appointment. His vet has prescribed special food. I’ve been measuring it carefully. Basie complains loudly but he is getting used to it.
Having to lose a 1/3 of one’s weight is A LOT. As a comparison, if I had to lose a 1/3 of my weight to get into the “healthy weight” category for my height, I would have to lose nearly 60 pounds. Basie’s current weight makes his asthma worse and puts him at risk for diabetes. When I tell people that Basie is on a diet for his health, they don’t bat an eye. It makes sense that he needs to lose weight. When people see photos of Basie, they recognize what a beautiful creature he is.
Now, let’s talk about weight and people, specifically female people. How many of us have had our worth judged by our weight? How many times have we had our worth judged by our weight? I’d say that it would not be unreasonable to think a typical number is in the thousands.
How many of us have been judged for trying to lose weight or not trying to lose weight? Or trying and not being successful? How many of us have prioritized how losing weight can make us look more attractive versus physical or emotional health benefits?
There’s a lot of policing of women’s bodies and there’s a lot of reactivity about that. People can be repulsed by the sight of an overweight person and say something negative. When called on it, the response is often, “I just care about their health”. This response is bull shit most of the time. It’s just fat shaming. I’ve also seen reactivity when women tell someone that they are exercising and watching their diet, “BMI doesn’t really mean anything. It’s biased and a form of fat-shaming. You should never follow a restrictive diet. You need to love your body.”
I had a lot of shame with my body and being overweight from the time I was a kid to about age 48-ish. I had shame about my body and my weight even when I was not overweight. I had an audio-tape in my head that told me everyday that I was fat. By the time I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 46, the tape only played when I was overweight. Having breast cancer provided me with a natural opportunity to re-visit my relationship with my body. I decided to make a concerted effort to try to stop the tape and over time, I learned to love my body and to appreciate what it allows me to do in my life. The daily tape stopped and although I still have to work on it, the shame is nearly completely gone.
Even when I had a negative body image, I was careful around my daughter to not talk about my weight, her weight, or the times when I was engaged in a campaign to lose weight. Once she became an adult, like 21 or so, I commented once that I was trying to eat less. (This was after my SCAD heart attacks in 2017, while I was completing cardiac rehab.) She said, “But Mom, you’re not fat.” I replied, “I like my body and I think I look good but my doctor thinks it would be better for my heart to weigh less.”
Like a lot of people, I put on weight in the first few years of the pandemic. I’ve tracked my meals with apps for years and although I did not follow plans perfectly (I tend to do a fair bit of late night snacking after a day of healthy eating), I was not really eating more than I did when I was younger, and weighed less. I am active and walk 3-4 miles almost every day in addition to hiking during the summer. I’ve done this for 12 years. Nonetheless, my attempts to lose weight in the last few years, have been difficult.
In the meantime, I’ve injured the ball of my right foot. I have Morton’s Neuroma, which is caused by a thickening of the nerve under the metatarsal bones. The nerve thickens like a callous in response to repeated pressure on the ball of the foot and then the bones hit the nerve. It causes extremely painful shooting pains in addition to soreness. The injury was caused by my stair training last spring and summer in preparation for our camping trip to Alaska (which ended up being postponed). So my right foot was getting pounded by walking up and down all of those steps. My first response was to change my shoes from hiking shoes to HOKA’s, which are thickly padded and made for foot rehab. That helped and then it didn’t. I stopped doing the steps. For hiking, I bought a second pair of HOKA’S, a different model, and then I switched shoes halfway through the hike. That helped put the pressure in a different place but I was not able to do some of the hiking, especially when it was rocky or there were lots of tree roots.
By December of this year, I was in pain my often than not and by last month, I could barely walk around the house. So I went to my internist, thinking that I could get a referral for physical therapy (I thought I just needed to stretch my calves and Achilles tendon). Instead, she diagnosed Morton’s Neuroma, which is not treated with PT, and referred me to a podiatrist. I was able to get into the podiatrist the next day and I am now getting treated with accompanying improvement.
The main goals of the treatment is to 1) reduce inflammation of the nerve and 2) reduce pressure on the ball of my foot. I’m taking a series of steroid shots to reduce inflammation of the nerve quickly. I’ve started wearing orthodics that shift my weight to my arches from the ball of my foot. I have selected shoes that all better for my particular foot problem. I met with a different podiatrist (a well-known evidence-based podiatrist) earlier in the week. He told me that for the short-term, my bare foot should never hit the floor, even in the shower. So now, I have shower shoes and house shoes.
What does this have to do with weight? Not surprisingly, carrying more weight puts more pressure on the ball of my foot when I walk or run. Carrying more weight also makes my heart work harder and I have a chronic heart disease. Yes, there is a bias against women and weight in our society and that affects the medical field. And yes, programs like Noom and Weight Watchers contain harmful elements. And yes, restrictive eating is a bad idea for some people. This is my body. Losing weight is a good goal for me, and I know that tracking what I eat, being selective about what I eat, and reducing what I eat can be a helpful combination for me.
Losing weight is not easy, especially after menopause. Research on weight loss suggests that diet is more important than exercise in dropping pounds. (Exercise has so many emotional and physical health benefits. I am not discouraging people from exercising.) I’ve long suspected that in following a weight loss plan like Noom or Weight Watchers (I’ve lost weight on both in the past), I’d have to eat less than the plans suggested. I’d been on both Noom and WW during the pandemic and even when I followed them, I didn’t lose weight. I’d never really considered weight loss drugs before but I thought it was worth exploring. I take a statin drug now for my cholesterol. Losing weight is really hard. Why do we think we’re “cheating” if we consider other options?
I had my annual physical last December with my new internist. (My long time internist, Dr. Hyde, is enjoying a well-deserved retirement). I brought up my weight. She mentioned her weight loss success by reducing late night snacking. (She is not overweight and looks no older than 40.) In other words, she made weight loss sound easier than it is for many people. I told her that I’d tracked so many consecutive meals on Noom, thousands, that the counter went back to 1. I’d exceeded the counting capacity of the program. I told her that I’d been keeping within my points on Weight Watchers. I said, “I’m giving this one more effort to be incredibly scrupulous and to make sure that I am tracking portion sizes correctly. I’ve lost a couple of pounds since Thanksgiving. But it is so difficult to lose weight since menopause and if there were weight loss drugs that I could take that didn’t have bad side effects, I would do it.”
She told me that I qualified for weight loss drugs. We discussed options. I expressed interest in the oral medication, Contrave, which is a combination of two drugs that have been around for a long time. The combination is associated with modest weight loss for about 45% of people and it is not contra-indicated for me in light of my cardiac issues. She told me to do research and to message her if I wanted a consultation with the pharmacist. This is a new process at my medical clinic. You meet with their pharmacist for a new prescription. So I set up a telehealth visit with the pharmacist after one of my healthcare team informed me that my insurance does not cover Contrave (it’s $500/month) so I could not get a prescription. I replied, “Can’t the pharmacist prescribe the generic forms of the two medications that make up Contrave?” The health coordinator replied that this was possible. I am perpetually stunned by the amount of medical knowledge that’s required to advocated for my needs.
To make a long story short, I got the prescriptions ($15/month) and completed my first week yesterday. Even on the starting dose, it seems to be making a difference. I’d been losing an average of 1 pound a week since Thanksgiving and lost 2 pounds last week. My portion sizes and snacking have decreased a lot. I have lost a total of 10 pounds and I am starting to feel the difference. I am hoping that all of my efforts to heal my foot injury will translate to wonderful hikes in Alaska this summer.
Like Basie, I am beautiful. My body is a marvel. I hope to lose more weight so that I can do more of the things that I like to do, like ceramics, cooking, walking, and hiking, all things that require my being on my feet.
I hope sharing this will help reduce some of the baggage around women and their bodies. Our bodies are beautiful. They keep us alive. This is my body. I do with my body what I believe is best for me. You have your body and you make your decisions for yourself. This is body autonomy and it’s a beautiful thing to support in one another.
Our dear friends, Robin and Nate, were visiting from North Carolina recently. They asked a question about a parking sign they’d seen in Seattle, Robin had even taking a photo of it, “No Parking West of Here”. “We saw this weird parking sign. How do we know what direction is west?”
I thought immediately, “What’s weird about that sign? West is the direction of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains are to the east.”
My second thought was, “Oh yeah. I live here I know the landmarks.”
A life with without major landmarks is confusing. Disorientation is exhausting.
I am at a point in my life when I am establishing new landmarks. Actually, that’s not accurate. I am at a point of my life when I am mindful of the fact that I am in a perpetual state of landmark establishment.
I still think, every day, about the fact that I was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 8 years ago.
I still think, every day, about the fact that I had my first heart attack (the second, 8 days later), nearly 2 years ago.
Despite this daily mindfulness, these landmarks have changed in my life.
I have been working hard on my mental and physical stamina. I am working hard to have a positive influence on my health. I meditate regularly. I do yoga twice a week now. I have increased my exercise and a couple of months ago, I tracked my 500th meal.
I am feeling healthier and more fit. I have had fitness testing and my cardiovascular health has improved a good deal in last last year or so.
Despite all of this, I am still considered, “obese” with my current body fat percentage, which was calculated in fancy ways. I actually think I look good. But that’s not what it is about, is it? I thought I looked good 25 pounds ago. I started working on my fitness so that I can do more of the things that I want to do and to reduce my body fat, because it raises my risk for disease.
I have used “looking good” as a landmark for so long. For so long, I didn’t think I looked good. For decades. Bit by by, I developed a better body image.
Looking good is not the same as health. I have improved my health in a great many ways. I can accept it if my current fitness doesn’t improve. I will work to see if I can improve it. I will hike, do yoga, and meditate.
I will do my best to enjoy the process, which does not require, at any time, looking in the mirror.
I will do my best to focus on what I can do right now.
Here are some photos from what I was able to do last week, hiking with John and our friends, who happen to be relatives, near Bend, OR. (Note: I appear in none of the photos because I was the photographer.)
This post is from 4/6/13. I had been home for nearly a month following my TRAM surgery. I was bored. I was trying to do a daily post following the Health Activist Writers’ Month Challenge. I decided to do it before I read the writing prompts. I didn’t like them. But I appreciated the purpose of the challenge and tried to give include some kind of health related message in each post.
For today’s Health Activist Writers’ challenge post, I have a challenge for YOU.
I challenge you to join the WRF, the World Resting Federation. Yes, you read right, the World Resting Federation. Yeah, we get confused with another world federation. We have a similar name plus we also wear really cool costumes and have cool names. My resting name is Googly Eyes. We also engage in bouts to see who is the hardest rester. I am able to use the mesmerizing power of my cattywampus bosoms to render my opponents wide-eyed while I catch some major zz’s.
Are you ready to rest with the best?
Come see my next match.
It’s on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Limited edition commemorative pj’s will be on sale.
I’ve been struggling with water, the gift of life, aqua, good ol’ H2O.
There was leaky pipe in my office last Saturday, which would have created a deluge had my office mate not been there to see it so a plumber could be called to fix it.
Yesterday, as usual, I went for my three mile long walk. It was rainy, which is not unusual for this time of year. I donned my Gore-Tex armor, which has served me so well-Gore-Tex hat, Gore-Tex hiking boots, Gore-Tex parka, Gore-Tex boots, Gore-Tex pants.
If I lived a considerable distance south of these parts, I might even call myself a Gore-Texan. (Cue music.) The rain at night, lasts a fortnight (clap, clap, clap, clap). Deep in the heart of Gore-Tex!
I came home from my walk, my boots squeaky, my socks soggy, and soaked through my coat, insulated long-underwear shirt, t-shirt, and bra! Only my Gore-Tex pants managed to maintain my faith in the magical rain shedding powers of Gore-Tex.
I took my smartphone out of my ZIPPPED Gore-Tex parka pocket. Uh-oh. It was covered in water. The screen was flickering! I quickly turned it off and opened it up. It was wet on the inside! I dried it off but being fool hardy, I tried to turn it back on even though my brain was telling me, “Leave it off and call AT&T.” It turned on but was frozen on the “Samsung” boot up screen. So I turned it off and broke it down again.
“My precious! My precious phone! My extremely complicated work, medical, family, personal life calendar is on there! The names of all of the new patients I will see between now and March 5th are on there!”
“Golem, I feel your pain,” I thought to myself. “I am a psychologist. I am not addicted to technology. I am an excellent problem-solver. Get a hold of yourself, woman!” I took a deep breath and called AT&T.
A very sweet technical support rep named Shannon answered. “Oh, I just did that. I was so worried. I keep EVERYTHING on my phone. Surround your phone with rice to get it to dry out. Leave it for at least a day. I’ll call you tomorrow and see how you are.”
Shannon has felt Golem’s pain as well. I confirmed with her that if the phone didn’t dry out, it was curtains for the information on my phone. (And yes, Google is supposed to automatically back up my calendar but that stopped working and I’ve been procrastinating about figuring out a fix for that problem.)
“My precious! My precious! God, you can take my breast but not my SMARTPHONE!” I was again, I’m afraid, losing some perspective. So I then imagined the Albert Ellis section of classic 1960’s psychologist training film, “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy“, also known as “The Gloria Films”. Gloria, a real person with real life problems, agrees to be taped seeing three super famous clinical psychologists (Fritz Perls, Carl Rogers, and Albert Ellis), one at a time. Pioneers in fields can be kind of extreme. The Gloria films illustrate this quite nicely. By the time I saw the film in the 90’s, it was for historical purposes. The film served up unintentional hilarity with a side of guilt since Gloria was a real person with real problems. They were not getting addressed.
So what does this have to do with my meltdown about “My precious”, you may ask? Albert Ellis was a brilliant psychologist who developed Rational Emotive Therapy (RET), which is the foundation of modern cognitive therapy. The goal of RET is to use reason to reduce psychopathology. However, Ellis did this in the absence of stuff like, you know, demonstrating empathy and establishing rapport. He also had a rather distinctive nasal northeast accent. Combined with his lawyerly therapy style, it was pretty funny. “I can see that your situation in inconvenient, but it is not terrible and awful.” Or my favorite when Gloria puts her self down and he responds by telling her that if she makes a mistake it does not make her a “no good-nik”. The sight and sound of Dr. Ellis trying to use 60’s-era hip slang was double hilarious. Check it out for yourself here.
“Elizabeth, your anecdotes require too much exposition! What does this have to do with your phone?”
Thank you, patient readers. Basically, I tried to reason with myself as I often do, but this time I remembered Albert Ellis, and it made me laugh.
That pulled me out of my tizzy and I went about recreating my schedule, piecing it together from memory, emails, and other non smartphone dependent methods.
Today, I took my phone out of it’s rice bed and it awoke!
Thank you, Albert Ellis. Yesterday was inconvenient and more than a little stressful but it wasn’t “terrible and awful.” I hope you forgive me for laughing at you and for being able to do a dead-on impersonation of you. You were definitely not a “no good-nik.”
For today’s Health Activist Writers’ challenge post, I have a challenge for you.
I challenge you to join the WRF, the World Resting Federation. Yes, you read right, the World Resting Federation. Yeah, we get confused with another world federation. We have a similar name plus we also wear really cool costumes and have cool names. My resting name is Googly Eyes. We also engage in bouts to see who is the hardest rester. I am able to use the mesmerizing power of my cattywampus bosoms to render my opponents wide-eyed while I catch some major z’s.
Are you ready to rest with the best?
Come see my next match.
It’s on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Limited edition commemorative pj’s will be on sale.
This post was inspired by the Health Activist Writers’ challenge for the month of April. I write “inspired by” because I have yet to use one of their suggested daily writing prompts.
As a child psychologist, I am often advising the mothers of my patients to take more time for self-care. A frequent response is, “I know, but I just don’t have time,” to which I reply, “If you feel you have no time for this than you have been without time for yourself for far too long and this is even more reason to do it!”
I know I am asking a lot of moms who are already taxed with parenting, work, and household responsibilities. I have struggled with the same life balance issue myself over the years, especially since becoming a mom 14 1/2 years ago. One of the valuable lessons I am continuing to learn as a breast cancer patient is to take care of myself, I mean REALLY take care of myself. It’s not that I was living a martyr’s life but I was not taking sufficient care of my health. To do this properly, takes time.
In 2002, I was laid off from my very first job following the completion of my post-doc. To make a long story short, the job was ugly. It was the first time in my life that I was treated like I was incompetent. Down deep I knew that I wasn’t incompetent but to be treated this way for nearly three years in my first “real job” and right after becoming a mom was a major blow. The lay off itself was done in a fairly nasty and unfair fashion. It was toward the end of that job that I had my first of two incidences of Major Depression. (The second incidence occurred a couple of years later but only lasted 2 weeks because I got back into treatment immediately after recognizing that I was not myself). It was BAD. It wasn’t just sadness, which is what a lot of people mean when they say, “I’m depressed.” I had no appetite. Food was flavorless. I lost 10 pounds in a week. My sleep was messed up and I had to will myself through each day to have enough energy to parent Zoey who was a toddler at the time. She has always been an empathetic girl and at the time, was learning to read facial expressions. I remember feeling heartbreaking guilt and sadness one day. She was sitting in my lap, looked up at my face, used her fingers to push my mouth into a smile while anxiously asking, “Mama happy?”
Being laid off and depressed was a major wake up call for taking care of myself. And since I was laid off and able to collect unemployment for a few months, I was able to make use of the time to figure out what to do with my life professionally. At that point, I decided that I would never rely on one source of salary again if I could help it. So in 2002, I applied and tested for my psychology license in Washington state and in 2003, started my private practice. Meanwhile, I was writing research grants and ended up being employed through two of them, the longer one landing me on the research staff of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington. I worked there until 2007 until the research money ran out. I was unable to secure funding for more grants. As the money ran out, I expanded my practice and then by the time I left U.W. in April of 2007, I was able to build up my practice to full time. Although being in private practice had not previously been an aspiration of mine, it ended up being the perfect job for me.
So although I would not have taken that job had I known what it was going to be like, I got some very positive life lessons out of it. Also, I made a number of friends at that crazy job including my dear friends, Jennie and Lisa, whom I’ve mentioned in my blog. Hmm, taking the opportunities afforded by crappy life circumstances to glean important life lessons? Gee, that kind of sounds like my breast cancer experience thus far.
Fortunately, I was able to use some of those life lessons from my crappy job experience to cope with my breast cancer better and to avoid getting depressed again. Sorry, I hate being depressed. And yes I have grief, but healthy grief and clinical depression are not the same thing.
So having breast cancer and especially the time off after my major surgeries, has given me some time to revise my life plan so that I am a happier and healthier person. As I mentioned previously, taking care of myself takes time and emotional space. I will not always need this much time and this much emotional space but right now I do. At first, this was a hard adjustment for my husband because healing has meant my being more emotionally distant than usual. (And no, I don’t just mean less sex.) We had to develop different ways of spending time together, for example, John started accompanying me on my walks on the weekends. He also eats all of the healthy dinners I make ahead of time in reasonable dinner-sized portions and freeze. The walking and the diet change have been part of the reason that John has lost 22 pounds. My taking care of myself has also meant that John had to take on more responsibility and learn how to take care of me after surgeries. It has also meant John taking care of some of his own health issues better.
For Zoey, my cancer has meant worrying about a parent’s mortality at an earlier age than average. It has meant seeing me less energetic and weaker at times. But overall, I am very happy to report that Zoey has more than risen to the challenge. She fairly quickly snapped out of the angry, eye rolling teen stuff that she was directing toward me and started treating me much more respectfully and affectionately. She is often there with a glass of ice water when she sees me fanning myself during a hot flash and she secretly changed my screen saver to a banner that reads, “I love you, Mom,” just because. Sure we have our moments and she is still able to be disrespectful and her eye rolling muscles aren’t totally lax. And having a mom who is a breast cancer patient when she is a 14 year-old girl makes her life harder. I wish she didn’t have to go through this. But she has grown enormously.
Finally, by taking care of myself, ultimately, I will take better care of my patients. Some of them are feeling a little anxious and impatient because I am off work again for an extended time. But if I don’t take care of myself, I will not have enough energy to do a good job. And as my dear friend, Nancy points out, by taking care of myself and coping positively with a major life stressor, I am modeling valuable skills for the families I see.
So even though the villagers were not initially happy with my changing my life to have a stronger focus on self-care, ultimately, my self-care is reaping benefits for the villagers.
I do believe that there is more than one good solution to every problem but perhaps this lesson could be helpful to some of you readers out there.
My recovery continues, though at a slower pace. Nonetheless, I’ve passed a few milestones in the last week:
1) I tried on the swim suit I bought awhile back and not only does it fit, but I look normal in the chest area. Woo hoo!
2) The miracle lounger went back to the medical supply company this morning. I still need to spend a lot of time sleeping as well as most of the day off of my feet but sleeping in bed has gotten comfortable again and our couch is again comfy. I miss my tray table, though. My laptop computer is warm and although it is comfortably resting on my legs right now, I expect it will cause some hot flashes later in the day.
3) I averaged 3 miles a day of walking, for seven days straight! Yesterday I was beat so I stayed in. I didn’t make myself feel guilty about it but instead reminded myself that walking every day is above my health goals. I started walking every day instead of 5 times a week because it felt good and I wanted to do it. So yesterday I was mindful that my body was not up to doing a “bonus round” of exercising.
4) On Sunday, I cooked for the first time since the surgery. I wanted to bring something to my brother and sister-in-law’s for Easter dinner. I roasted some asparagus. It took me 15 minutes, including washing, trimming, and cooking. They were delicious.
George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest book "The Neural Mind" is now available.
My Eyes Are Up Here 