Time to Give Up Sugar and Take Up Smoking

Lately I have given up junk food except for a moderate amount on social occasions.  My motivation is, of course, climbing.  I don't have time this year to maintain the intense training schedule I had last year (exercise 2 times a day, yoga classes, climbing at least 3 times weekly, etc.), so if I want to be in good climbing condition this summer I'll have to better control what goes into my system.

Today while I was browsing the news, I came across this article from the BBC.  According to the article, obesity increases your chances of kidney cancer by 80%, while smoking only increases your chances by 50%.  Obesity also increases your risk of breast, bowel, and womb cancer.  I didn't think there was much of anything worse for you than smoking.  After all, I'd always heard it was the leading cause of cancer death, a multi-billion dollar industry targeting children, and harder to quit than heroin.  But, at least for your kidneys, obesity is much worse.  Besides, there's no arguing that the food industry is also a multi-billion dollar industry whose junk food purveyors also target children.

I find it astounding how much health a person gains and maintains, and how much one's life expectancy extends, simply by not smoking cigarettes and maintaining a healthy weight.  On the other hand, it makes perfect sense.  In a way it's simply saying, "Your life is longer if you don't kill yourself slowly."

Buying Busy

In going back to school this year I have discovered two things about education: It is time consuming and it is costly.  It looks a great deal as if the carefree summer I so greatly prize is going to be cut in half by educational activities.  I suppose it's about time; I can't have summer vacations forever.  Eventually, like so many other teachers, I'll have to sell them for something: a second job, more education, extracurricular activities that pay a stipend, etc.  But I look forward so to my summer of freedom.  Mind you, I don't waste it.  I keep busy every possible moment with climbing, reading, cooking, traveling, biking, hanging out with friends, hiking, camping, watching movies, and adventuring as much as possible with as many friends as I can squeeze into my life. 

But this year it looks as if there will be no drastic hair change to look forward to, and only a marginal increase in free time until June is over.  Three days one week are taken up with training for the new Common Core that will be implemented next year.  One week is a trip to Boston for my Teaching American History Cohort (I can hardly complain about that, true.).  Another week will be consumed by a 2 credit teaching creativity class I'm planning to sign up for. (It's for my G/T endorsement, and since I'll be teaching one class of G/T next year, I'll need all the help I can get for that.)  And today, I decided to sign up for a class on the Holocaust for my one remaining free week.  Sigh.  It's all stuff I'm looking forward to learning (with the except of the Common Core training--bleck), but it will cost me hundreds of dollars I don't want to spend, and the opportunity cost in adventure and relaxation time makes me cringe. 

But it will give me knowledge I will need to teach next year.  It will mean that I'll have amassed a great deal of cheap college credit, about $425 for 12 credits, and that I'll be more than half way to changing lanes on my salary schedule.  I may be able to make it up to 15 credits if I really sell my soul.  I'm proud of all that.  I feel like I'm progressing in my career, using my time, becoming a better teacher, and learning things I've always wanted to learn. 

But some part of me is saying that I'm just buying being busier.  By the end of this school year and summer, I will have paid $425 to lose 1/7 of my evenings to class (not counting homework for class), one day of teaching a month, a free weekend during my winter, and a month of my summer.

Sigh. 

Wait, is it Pi Day?

Poop.  I forgot until one of my students told me about it this morning.  That's disappointing.  Last year Pi Day was a big deal, I had a party, I blogged about Pi's emotional role in my concept of womanhood.  I can't even go home and make a pie to make for forgetting Pi day.  Tonight I will go straight from school to my night class, then leave my night class early to go to an orientation meeting for the gifted program at my school at which I will meet my future students and their parents and pretend I know what I'm going to be teaching them.  From there, I'll drive the half an hour home and go straight to bed.

Oh, by the way, I found out I'll be teaching the 7th grade Gifted English class next year.  I found out Thursday.  Finally.

Well, happy Pi Day anyway.

A scene from last year's Pi Day.

Grandma, Pirates, and Me

Years ago, my dad told me a story of my grandma visiting the doctor.  Here's what I remember:

Grandma was workings as a stenographer, or maybe a typist, when she began having severe shoulder pain.  According to what I remember from Dad's story, the sack of fluid that lubricates the shoulder joint had somehow punctured and leaked all the fluid out, leaving the joint grinding with terrible friction.  After putting up with it for a long time, Grandma finally walked all the way to the doctor's.  There, in a fine example of early 20th century medicine, the doctor gives her a shot straight into the shoulder joint and proceeded to wrench her arm around in a circle, which must have hurt like the devil, and then sent her on her way.

As you can imagine, Grandma was not pleased.  Here she had walked all the way to the doctor, paid money she could not afford, only to be manhandled and put in worse pain.  All the way home she was fuming and chewing the doctor out as she walked.  When she got home, she suddenly realized that the pain in her shoulder was gone.  As she worked her shoulder in surprise, she exclaimed, "Oh!  What a good doctor!"

I tell this story, because it was a lot like my experience yesterday with my dentist.  I went in because I'd had a filling fall out back in December and I couldn't stand the pain anymore.  Whole seeds would get caught in the hole and jammed into it, it was pressure and temperature sensitive, and, to make matters worse, it was one of my precious baby teeth.  I finally had an appointment to get the filling replaced yesterday.  It turns out that the filling that had fallen out had wedged itself in between my teeth and was helping to cause more damage.  After being numbed by the hygienist (She numbed me early because I couldn't stand the pain of the cleaning around that tooth.), and waiting for the dentist for half an hour, he took a quick look at the x-ray, pursed his lips, and turned to the hygienist.  He quietly told her that I'd need a "pulpotomy" and a crown.  They debated for a while about whether I'd want a ceramic or a metal crown, and then left the room.  I was in for a root canal and a crown just like that.  

I left that night after two and a half hours at the dentist's, at least three shots of numbing, lots of bleeding gums, $500 or so, happy gas, and slowly drowning in a mixture of spit, blood, Novocaine, and latex gloves, I walked out of there with a pirate sneer from the numbing and a metal tooth to match (temporary until I get the ceramic crown in a few weeks).  I was exhausted, in pain, my head ached, and I was doggedly reminding myself that I was grateful for modern dentistry, because it could have been a lot worse.

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I was hungry, but putting anything in my mouth sounded like advanced torture.  Di recommended mac and cheese, which I hadn't eaten in years, and I threw in some green beans and ice cream as well.  When I got home I swallowed some ibuprofen and heated up the mac and cheese.  I was hesitant to put anything either hot or cold in my mouth, since I now had a metal casing around the most sensitive tooth I'd ever had, and I didn't want it expanding or contracting or even twitching.  I called Mom and complained, I called Di and complained, and I felt very, very sorry for myself.

Until I took the first bite.  I could chew! For the first time in months, I ate without pain.  It turns out that a root canal and crown and Novocaine and gums bruised blue are less painful than a bum tooth.  

What a good dentist.

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