Scrappy Blog

I’m going slowly.  Hope to correct some of that this weekend.

la_directora suggested pictures.

And, since the kitties’ new grandparents have all requested same, I happen to have some!

Enjoy… no doubt more will be forthcoming.

Well, I always knew my husband’s tendency to flirt with other girls would get us in trouble.

In this case, he was out doing the week’s errands and shopping.  And there in the shop window… was Judy. Their eyes met and he felt compelled to go into the store and meet her.  Within minutes, they were in love… gazing into each other’s eyes, with him stroking her soft hair and running a gentle hand over her cheek. 

But K’s an honest fellow, and immediately came home to tell me what happened.  And I love him and want him to be happy – so I agreed to go meet this Judy, and see whether we got along.  Perhaps we could modify our lifestyle, invite her to join our lives. 

Then the plot thickens.  We were there in the store, introducing me to Judy, when I looked up and… our eyes met.  Gracie.  Her slim build, her graceful bones, her intelligent face.  I realized my life could not be complete without Gracie in it. 

So we introduced Judy to Gracie.  They seemed willing to put up with one another in return for the chance to be with their respective beloveds.  Some negotiating took place, and by last night, we had a full household.

 See, PetCo works with a local animal rescue agency and on Saturday mornings, they host animals for adoption.  Judy,  a black shorthair with white bib and paws, was rescued as a kitten; her “foster mother” found her behind a commercial garage and no mother or other kittens were in sight.  Gracie, who is is solid grey in color and has a siamese’s build, appears to have been abandoned at about six months of age.  Both are now around a year old and have lived with volunteer foster families before being put up for adoption – Judy to become used to humans, Gracie to get fed up and healthy. 

  We did a short experiment in the store bathroom, to see whether Gracie and Judy could stand being in the same room as one another.  They seemed to do OK – mostly ignored one another.  And the rescue service brightly informed us that for adult cats, the adoption fee was two-for-the-price-of-one.  And… well…. anyway, now we have two cats.

At home, we’ve found two of the most opposite personalities you can imagine.  Judy has been quite reclusive.  She took hours to even be willing to hop out of her cat box.  Once out, she has hid under furniture and only ventured out to eat or use the box.  She will allow K-=
 to pet her a bit, and can be bribed with treats to come be sociable.  But so far she hasn’t seemed ready to face more than the single bedroom we’ve confined her to.

Gracie… ah, well, Gracie’s another matter.  She spent a few hours exploring the bedroom we’d initially confined her to, and then announced she was ready for more territory.  She’s a perpetual motion machine and tells us loudly about everything she finds; she’s siamese-like in voice as well as shape. And when she gallops through the house I find myself suspecting we actually adopted a herd of elephants.

Anyway, it’s early.  I know we’ll be learning a lot about our two new roommates in the coming days.  No doubt I’ll be one of those people who talk all the time about her cats, for a while.

Often, when I suggest a multivitamin supplement to patients, I am told “Vitamins make me hungry”.  For people who are trying to watch their weight, this is a significant concern.

I’ve always been intrigued by nutritional aspects of health, though, and the recent controversies about the role of vitamin D in cancer prevention have piqued my interest still further.  I’ve started screening more patients for Vitamin D levels and an awful lot of the population is deficient.

Additionally, I am intrigued because of personal experience – recently my metabolism has seemed very slow; my energy levels are low and my weight ballooning despite regular exercise.  My ability to improve my athletic performance has been crappy, too.  At a recent vacation, I ate reasonably, exercised a lot (average 5 miles brisk walking in hilly territory daily) and still managed to gain 5 lbs in a week.  Then, I started taking a prenatal vitamin around a week ago (am not pregnant) and am finding that my appetite has been very, very lively since taking it.  So, curious how that increased hunger was affecting the weight gain, I stepped on my scale this AM – and found that extra 5 lbs was gone along with a few more. 

So of course I got curious.  Maybe vitamins make me hungry, but also increase my metabolic rate?  I hit the library.

Turns out there’s intriguing stuff out there about the role of micronutrients in energy metabolism.  Zinc deficiency, for example, is associated with metabolic slowing and difficulty with athletic performance.  And zinc’s one of those nutrients that is a little hard to get unless you eat lots of red meat.  I looked at my prenatal vitamin – nearly 200% of the US RDA in zinc.  Hmmm.  The old Centrum-like vitamins I used to take have about half that.  Iron deficiency also may be associated with metabolic slowing, and again a prenatal vitamin is likely to supercharge me with iron.  Thiamin is essential for healthy carbohydrate metabolism.  Riboflavin is involved in mitochondrial function, which links directly to metabolic activities.  Pantothenic acid, Niacin, Biotin, Vitamin D, and calcium all seem integrally tied up in metabolic rate… as do microelements like selenium, cobalt, mylybdemum, manganese, chromium, and phosphorus.  And it appears if you’re regularly physically active, your need for all of those elements is higher.

A week’s experiment on myself hardly makes for a scientific finding.  And the medical literature is astoundingly thin on info about the relationship between micronutrients and metabolic rate, or micronutrients and athletic performance.  But having winnowed out what studies exist, I’m very intrigued.  I think I will start pushing my patients to take the vitamins even though they get hungry – because if the vitamins speed their metabolism and increase their available energy, they’ll be a lot more likely to be healthy!  And me, I think I’ll keep taking that prenatal vitamin no matter whether I decide to reproduce or not….

OK, I was somewhat successful in my stated goal for the day.  I took a large load of books to be “released” as BookCrossing books, leaving only a smallish box of books remaining to be labeled. 

Tomorrow I have clinic but will try to devote a couple hours in the evening to something sedentary but organizational – maybe scanning old documents and shredding the originals.  I don’t really need a hard copy of the expired 1996 home elevation certificate, do I? 

Definitely need to bring the leftover Halloween candy in to clinic to give away to the staff and the kiddies, tomorrow.  Otherwise it’ll all go to waist…

So tomorrow’s goal:  label this remaining box of books for book crossing; scan a couple folders of archived files; get rid of candy.

Oh, and compose that letter to the grad school telling them I’m dropping out.  That’s important.

I did several hours of CME today, though. That was worthwhile.

Yeah, it’s the 6th, but I just put my parents on the plane so this is the first day I’ve been free to do anything for myself.

Today’s project will involve books, I think.  K went through and pulled out a big pile of books that he didn’t really feel a need to keep.  I will go through those and figure out whether I have a burning desire to keep any of them (probably not) and then get them somewhere OUT OF THE HOUSE… Goodwill, or Half-Price Books, or perhaps BookCrossing releases.  Would be cool to release a huge slew for BookCrossing all at once – maybe a few of them would actually get reported on!

Then I will do an enormous figurative decluttering in my life by contacting my graduate adviser and making an official decision to drop out of the program.  I don’t need the actual PhD, I think, to make me credible on the job market.  I may need some training in other areas – business, and technical subjects.  That training won’t happen by me writing a dissertation that no one will read. 

There’s an LJ feed for a decluttering: unclutterer .  I’ve subscribed in the hopes of ideas and inspiration.  But I have to say; their recent recommendation that I cut off all my hair so I can get rid of all the brushes, product, hair gadgets, etc…. that’s a level of uncluttering that I’m not willing to adopt.  In case anyone was wondering.

So continuing to think about my little imaginary friend the petty wish genie,

I think #2 would be to do something about the people who own large expensive houses with garages, but park their cars in the street anyway.  Not sure if it would be to change those people’s point of view, or just to be able to instantly let the air out of the tires of any SUV parked on a curb causing a formerly two-way street to become a one-way street.  Or even better, I could wave my hand and the street-parked hummer would become a nice, compact vehicle.  A Prius, maybe.  Or maybe I could just cause all the in-the-way vehicles to suddenly translocate themselves to the middle of the owner’s front lawn.

This can be a meme if you want it to be….

So you’ve just rubbed a small old lamp and a very tiny genie pops out.   He explains that he’s a petty genie, and you may have three wishes – but they have to be small, petty wishes.  No grand plans for world peace or cancer cures or even great personal wealth….

One of my petty little wishes would probably be that all sandwiches are served with condiments on the side. 

What would yours be?

The URL would give it away so I’ll create a link.

No, really, I never thought about it much but it seems like a bad idea:

(I love the Whatever…)