I gave my word... *sigh*

Being me is really ok most of the time, but there are times when I wish somebody would take charge, be firm and save me from myself and my own stupidity.

You might wonder what I did this time? On an impulse I did what I know I should never have done… not only that, but I have always known this would be a really stupid idea. And yet; I did it: I gave up what I love the most to eat: Chocolate! (I pointed out I can't give up both chocolate and ice-cream, but I did say I would not add any sprinkling or sauce.) Not only is this what I cherish the most as a treat; I am literally a chocoholic!!!

I have to be fair: It way my own impulse, my idea, that I actually made a deal with someone I would not eat any candy untill August, and he told me the same thing (... only he included soda as well, but I hardly ever drink that, so that will be his struggle). The reason why I committed this lunacy, was an act of sympathy to someone I don’t even know very well… or, I do know him fairly well, but not in person. To be honest I am not even sure he's got a real problem.

For my part it was the thought of a very nice dress I wanted to wear for Christmas, which didn’t look good on me. Next Christmas I want to fit into what I think is cool, rather than just wear what I find on a rack, which fits. And thinking about the amount of chocolate I eat; giving it up is bound to make a difference to my waistline.

I never really think about myself as too heavy, overweight, obese or any other of the fancy, fashionable expressions used to explain people with a little extra packaging. There is something indulgent implied in those expressions, like as if everybody suffering from weight issues does something fundamentally wrong with their lives.

Same thing goes if we look at the other end of the scale: underweight, skinny, lean… which really aren’t very positive either. I have to admit this problem is not something I can really relate to, but I have friends who feel themselves looked upon as sick just because there isn’t even a slight hint of love-handles or double chin. They will never be curvy or well turned, and to many that is just as problematic as carrying a bit extra. The comments they get are often taken in just as hurtful as the ones big people get.

I like words like chubby, voluptuous, stout… you know: words which give an indication that: “Yes, I have some excessive body mass, but I am still a nice person to be around.

I totally acknowledge the pros of being of manageable size, but I don’t like how those who try to improve their quality of living by joining in on physically active activities, are stared at and thought of as lazy, undisciplined and careless. The reasons to why and how they got the way they did, are as numerous as people suffering from it. Each has their own story… I have never come across anyone who chose to be of unwieldy or impractical size.

Impractical? Yes! There are challenges involved in being too big or too small… driving a car, buying clothes, passing bars at ticket controls, public transportation, eating out, going to a bar, going to a gym (Which I find really strange, cause after all the gym is what really should have been more accessible.)… you find obstacles everywhere, if you do not fit into what is considered a normal size

Situations very commonly avoided by people overly aware of their size are sexual intimacy, social activities, job interviews, new settings and places, and doctor’s appointments, pictures, mirrors and activities in which it can be hard to keep up with others like walks, bike-rides or situations involving bathing suits. It is rather sad, I think, cause these settings can really provide a better quality of life, on more levels than one. I think.

And when you do pick up the challenge and try to overcome the barriers you are hindered by… well, even to take a stand and stand up for yourself, regardless of this being to speak up or to do something to change, in any way, it is hard simply because when you make yourself a participant you also become more visible and you get more attention.

On the other hand: Appearance is very important in our culture. When a person is of socially accepted size, what is left to blame when things in life goes wrong?

It is a lot easier to not do anything, to put life on hold, and just wait for a better quality of life to set in, just like that, by itself.

I can’t say I am deprived of life to such an extent, I am actually quite happy with myself. Ones I made up my mind not to wait around for magic to happen and stopped wearing huge, dark blue tents, I even get compliments on occasions. (Ok, so people notice my eyes and think they are great, but a glimpse in your eyes is something worth being grateful for, right?)...

Right now I feel my biggest handicap is: I am true to my word. I am SUCH an IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are chocolate chip cookies candy?

Cheating Ourselves of Sleep By JANE E. BRODY

Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are, you are among the many millions who unwittingly shortchange themselves on sleep.

Research shows that most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life. From infancy to old age, the effects of inadequate sleep can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health.

According to sleep specialists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, among others, a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep: the heart, lungs and kidneys; appetite, metabolism and weight control; immune function and disease resistance; sensitivity to pain; reaction time; mood; and brain function.

Poor sleep is also a risk factor for depression and substance abuse, especially among people with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Anne Germain, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep, which keeps their brains in a heightened state of alertness.
Dr. Germain is studying what happens in the brains of sleeping veterans with PTSD in hopes of developing more effective treatments for them and for people with lesser degrees of stress that interfere with a good night’s sleep.

The elderly are especially vulnerable. Timothy H. Monk, who directs the Human Chronobiology Research Program at Western Psychiatric, heads a five-year federally funded study of circadian rhythms, sleep strength, stress reactivity, brain function and genetics among the elderly. “The circadian signal isn’t as strong as people get older,” he said.
He is finding that many are helped by standard behavioral treatments for insomnia, like maintaining a regular sleep schedule, avoiding late-in-day naps and caffeine, and reducing distractions from light, noise and pets.

It should come as no surprise that myriad bodily systems can be harmed by chronically shortened nights. “Sleep affects almost every tissue in our bodies,” said Dr. Michael J. Twery, a sleep specialist at the National Institutes of Health.

Several studies have linked insufficient sleep to weight gain. Not only do night owls with shortchanged sleep have more time to eat, drink and snack, but levels of the hormone leptin, which tells the brain enough food has been consumed, are lower in the sleep-deprived while levels of ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, are higher.
In addition, metabolism slows when one’s circadian rhythm and sleep are disrupted; if not counteracted by increased exercise or reduced caloric intake, this slowdown could add up to 10 extra pounds in a year.

The body’s ability to process glucose is also adversely affected, which may ultimately result in Type 2 diabetes. In one study, healthy young men prevented from sleeping more than four hours a night for six nights in a row ended up with insulin and blood sugar levels like those of people deemed prediabetic. The risks of cardiovascular diseases and stroke are higher in people who sleep less than six hours a night. Even a single night of inadequate sleep can cause daylong elevations in blood pressure in people with hypertension. Inadequate sleep is also associated with calcification of coronary arteries and raised levels of inflammatory factors linked to heart disease. (In terms of cardiovascular disease, sleeping too much may also be risky. Higher rates of heart disease have been found among women who sleep more than nine hours nightly.)

The risk of cancer may also be elevated in people who fail to get enough sleep. A Japanese study of nearly 24,000 women ages 40 to 79 found that those who slept less than six hours a night were more likely to develop breast cancer than women who slept longer. The increased risk may result from diminished secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. Among participants in the Nurses Health Study, Eva S. Schernhammer of Harvard Medical School found a link between low melatonin levels and an increased risk of breast cancer.
A study of 1,240 people by researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland found an increased risk of potentially cancerous colorectal polyps in those who slept fewer than six hours nightly.

Children can also experience hormonal disruptions from inadequate sleep. Growth hormone is released during deep sleep; it not only stimulates growth in children, but also boosts muscle mass and repairs damaged cells and tissues in both children and adults.
Dr. Vatsal G. Thakkar, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York University, recently described evidence associating inadequate sleep with an erroneous diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. In one study, 28 percent of children with sleep problems had symptoms of the disorder, but not the disorder.

During sleep, the body produces cytokines, cellular hormones that help fight infections. Thus, short sleepers may be more susceptible to everyday infections like colds and flu. In a study of 153 healthy men and women, Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University found that those who slept less than seven hours a night were three times as likely to develop cold symptoms when exposed to a cold-causing virus than were people who slept eight or more hours.

Some of the most insidious effects of too little sleep involve mental processes like learning, memory, judgment and problem-solving. During sleep, new learning and memory pathways become encoded in the brain, and adequate sleep is necessary for those pathways to work optimally. People who are well rested are better able to learn a task and more likely to remember what they learned. The cognitive decline that so often accompanies aging may in part result from chronically poor sleep.
With insufficient sleep, thinking slows, it is harder to focus and pay attention, and people are more likely to make poor decisions and take undue risks. As you might guess, these effects can be disastrous when operating a motor vehicle or dangerous machine.
In driving tests, sleep-deprived people perform as if drunk, and no amount of caffeine or cold air can negate the ill effects.

At your next health checkup, tell your doctor how long and how well you sleep. Be honest: Sleep duration and quality can be as important to your health as your blood pressure and cholesterol level.

~http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/cheating-ourselves-of-sleep/?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=HL_COO_20130617~

sticks and stones may break my bones, (but words can never hurt me... or, can they?)

Every morning I try to find time to scan through today’s morning paper. It makes me feel updated, to know what agenda the fourth estate set for the day.

Headlines, ingress and pictures give me a guideline to what will be the talk of the day.

For some time now, when I read the news, I have found myself not really paying attention to the news as such; I pay more attention to the language used.

I first noticed that more and more often the headlines are misleading… in the sense they are boosted to catch your eye, rather than tell what the story is actually about. Then I started picking up on the choice of words different journalists tend to prefer.

The thing about trifle details which are part of everyday doings, and that you see, read or hear on a regular basis and never pay any attention to, is that once you DO notice them; they overshadow the general main impression or experience.

Like… the ticking of an alarm clock. You don’t hear it, not really, as it steadily goes tic-tac while waiting for the right time to wake you up. But then, one night, you lay in bed trying to fall asleep, and there it is: “tic-tac-tic…” and your entire you gets so absorbed with the sound it makes you alert and all hope of getting some sleep is lost.

There is a good chance I am more than just a little weirde; but that resembles my attitude and relation to words.

I pay attention to words, I believe that words have the power to catalyze action. I think you can say just about anything, preventing you choose your words right. Even the worst insult can be presented so eloquently it is hard to be offended.

Subconsciously I think we all, to some degree, pick up on these nuances and react to the impact of the words we are exposed to. How you speak or write makes a difference.

When we were presented to news before, we used to discuss issues regarding the event or situation in question. Now we more and more often discuss not the event or situation itself, but social issues the journalist chose to indicate.

If the article add the phrase “ of foreign descent”, we are instantly led astray to not concern ourselves with what happened… we tend to be preoccupied with all the foreigners who have come to our country causing nothing but trouble: Regardless of why, who or how. We generalize and pull them all down.

Instead of mending our society by focusing and trying to fix what is wrong with the system, we are lured into brand marking people; blaming what is wrong on everyone else. It makes us say out loud that our society would be so much better if only we stuck to our own kind, even though we don’t actually think so.

It is sad we are not updated on news without language misguidance, which distracts us.

Maybe this is why we tend to engage less in our local community: we have learned there is such a thing as us and them: Children’s sports teams lack coaches. The Salvation Army lacks volunteers. The Red Cross miss volunteers…. The list is close to endless. Instead of getting involved, spending time healing what is wrong, but by doing that expose ourselves and perhaps prove ourselves vulnerable: we focus more and more on our own comfort, and feel smug about ourselves because, after all, WE are decent people. And while we do so, we criticize what a bad coach our daughter has to deal with, we don’t even think about what an effort he/she makes for our precious offspring.

Very seldom do we give thanks. Hardly ever do we care to tell what is right or well. We adopt the lingo from the medias where we hardly hear, see or read anything good (and if we do, it usually involves an infant or an animal… the two groups still pardoned from our negativity).

Far too often the weak, and yet exposed, groups of people in society are even further degraded… or we enhance the prejudices they already suffer from.

I am old enough to remember when a fight was won when the opponent lay on the ground. Today I have this feeling a fight is about getting your opponent to the ground so you can really hit and kick him properly. Words can do that as well.

I believe we all really want to understand, and we wish things were different… and to the better. To do that, we need to know the full story. We need to be allowed to make up our minds on issues, not on people or groups of people. We can’t make it a matter about whether we like or dislike individuals

We often experience the fourth estate, undeliberately, take side, choosing to tell the part of the story which serves their agenda or cause the best: making money by creating malcontent feelings. (Yes, being negative is a very strong drive in most of us. In example: negativity is such a strong emotion it takes 100 compliments to make up for 1 critisism.) When others are as bad as can be, we, the rest, are great! Sadly, that only inspires aggression and a dividing of people: us and them.

Looking at history that was never a good strategy to keep a society sound and healthy.

Gadgets and gizmos

When we first move into a home, regardless if it is rental or we buy, we tend to look around and make comments on things we need. When time, place and finances are right; we purchase them. (OK, I know there is such a thing as credit cards… but I don’t like them much, besides that is a totally different story.)

So the things we want, and get hold of, are sometimes just fun gadgets which we play with for some time, or they are really useful tools or equipment which play an important role in the maintenance of our homes.

I have to admit I was (by today’s standard) old when I first heard the words gadgets and gizmos. (But then again: I was in my early 20s when I first was online, and if I wanted to find something on the internet; I had to put it out there myself. Yes, that’s how long ago…) A gadget is a small, often funny, tool; a machine if you like, that has a particular function. Often it is thought of as a novelty. Something new we use to solve an old “problem” or to do something entirely new. Sometimes we call the gadgets gizmos. A gizmo is a small piece of equipment, often one that does something in a new and clever way. Apparently very handy, essential and indispensable.  And who doesn't want a few extra little gadgets laying around? They make life easier, and, more importantly, make life a little more fun for everyone

Gadgets make the world go round. They make life more fun and free up time for more important things, like reading or video games. At least that is what the young men in my house tell me whenever I make an attempt to say no to another incomprehensible thing I know will be added to the pile of stuff on my dining table.

I get this feeling we surround ourselves with more and more gadgets. In my house they lay around on the strangest places, never really cleared away, because… well, there is something funny about things which lay around in my house: It can lay put for days… (I sometimes get these fixed ideas of self-righteous stubbornness and I do not remove them. I want the person who pulled it out to put it back in place…) then the first week pass, and I surrender.

I stop nagging and put it where it is supposed to be put myself. But then, like magic, someone finds it interesting again! Suddenly it is back, where it lay for weeks, usually on top of the dining table, because there is space; NOT in the drawer or cupboard or shelf, where I think it should be.

I can’t help but wonder what happened to stereos, with adjustable volume, bass and treble. What happened to the collection of music everybody owned, and which you could browse through and learn about your host/hostess from. Robocleaners which go to their charging station by themselves? Robomowers? Breadbaking-machines? External hard drive for your pictures? (I may be old fashioned, but I LOVE a great photo album with covers and pages to flip through… AND no worries if you will ever be able to open the darned thing again, and your pictures and videos since the last 15 years are STUCK!)

I wonder if I eventually will give up; I still have this plan for my house where everything has its own place, and everything is at its own place. Gadgets and gizmos don’t like it there!

(Wondering what the mug is doing here? It stirrs the contents, by activating a small propeller on the bottom.)

Why I Still blog...

When I started out this blog, my initial thought was to learn how to write in English again. I keep telling my students to write, both in Norwegian and English, but I very seldom did so myself. At least not in English. It somehow felt stupid just to file the texts on my laptop, so posting them in a blog seemed like a good idea.

There are thousands and thousands of good blogs on the net, so I thought: I just keep them to myself, not telling anyone, and it will be “my” blog, which no one ever has to waste time or energy on reading.

I was quite surprised when I found out that on occasions random people from around the world stumble upon my blog and find time to read my scribble.

Time passed and I posted more texts, and now I kind of secretly enjoy the thought of people reading what I write. I have no idea what they/you think of it (basically because my postings are never commented upon, apart from a few emails I have received), but still. There is something, a feeling, about it which is very close to the one you feel when you get attention.

I have been thinking a lot about writing lately... mostly my thoughts are about how to make time, and then... later on... what a bummer it is I didn't. The thing is; I think I know by now why I like writing so much: It is like talking to myself, and I get all the right answers; I give pretty sensible answers to questions... when asked, I think. And in my mind I question many things, all the time. (I am very curious by nature. Mostly I am curious about people. Not gossip or talking about them: I like talking to people, listen to what they like to tell about themselves and get an insight in how they think.)

I like writing, it is therapy, as well as something I can evaluate and see progress or decrease in. Sometimes I am just very frustrated, because I see no progress at all. I find typos and strange choices in words… and my headlines are just pathetic at times.

On the other hand; what is writing well and what is progress?

Well…

To me, writing well means, to me, writing in a way which can fully express my thoughts, opinions and feelings on matters I myself need to figure out. A good text allows whoever reads my texts to relate, and perhaps find new arguments and insight in normal challenges I think we all face now and again. Maybe I at times expose myself as a person, but I THINK I have done that without compromising myself too much. After all: I am who I am.

I think anyone who writes, no matter what genre they write, will agree it is impossible to write without doing so, to some extent.

Progress? I am not sure I make any progress in writing English. I found out, at an early stage, that evaluating your my own texts is really hard. But I do notice that I don’t think about what I should have added as often as I did before. But I have no idea if my rambling-ons are understandable; if there is any sense at all to what I type and put “on paper”.

Or… I am not entirely honest here: I have been told my English is fairly ok, and to me that is a HUGE compliment: Makes me want to continue writing.

Maybe starting out writing in English was a stupid idea. It is not my first language so I am writing about my thoughts in a foreign tongue, but if nothing else I am learning new words by doing so.

My only worry is that I by a mistake should insult or offend somebody, but I don’t really think I have, not yet anyway.