Junior Youth

This afternoon I went to a concert that several of my junior youth girls from church performed in. One of the girls looked very serious through the whole performance. I don't think she took her eyes off the director for a second. I wondered if she was nervous, though she has a lot of choral experience. As the choir sang their last song and walked around the outside aisles, I caught the eye of that girl for the first time and her face just lit up. It made my day.

Since August, I've been one of the junior high youth group sponsors at church. I had really positive experiences with church as a teenager, and I want to help facilitate a similarly good experience for the youth at my church. (Hopefully they are, in fact, having a good time.) I chose junior high rather than senior high because the time commitment was less, the kids seemed interesting, and there's a bigger age difference between me and the oldest ones.

I used to think that people who worked with middle schoolers were crazy. However, I think I am now far enough removed from actually being a middle schooler that that terribly awkward experience is fading. Being a youth sponsor certainly reminds me that I am glad not to be 13 anymore, but they are actually pretty fun to work with. They are funny, energetic, honest, and willing to participate. They like hanging out with each other, which makes my job easy -- I think the most important part of being a youth sponsor is making time for them to just have fun together.

The most rewarding parts for me, though, are the brief moments when I can tell that they are happy that I'm involved in their lives -- whether that's telling me about a school dance, trusting me for advice about a social issue, outright informing me that the consensus is that they like me a lot but not quite as much as a previous sponsor who let them tie her up during a game during the lock-in (because you really can't beat that), or a smile from a kid who sees me at her concert.

Reflections on Extreme Healthy Eating Month

Wow, February flew by! I guess that's what you get with a 28-day month. Extreme Healthy Eating Month went pretty well for me. I did break my vows a few times, but generally I was good about sticking to my list. Sticking to a list of allowed foods was actually much easier for me than just trying to avoid unhealthy foods.

It was easy to do at work, especially - which I didn't expect since we constantly have sweets at work. Right now there are cookies, Starburst candy, and chocolate caramel popcorn available at work, and it's always like that. Home health and durable medical equipment agencies bring sweets to us to try to win our favor (it's a competitive field) but I wish they'd bring healthy foods a little more often.

Where I cheated was mostly at other people's houses; I didn't want to turn down friends' hospitality. I also quickly realized that my favorite salads are those that have blue cheese or feta on them, so I made an exception to my no cheese rule for that.

Speaking of the no cheese rule though, I discovered that I feel a lot better with less dairy in my diet. I ate Greek yogurt almost every day, but we were drinking lactose-free milk (which I don't really like so I didn't have much of it) and other than that, the tiny amounts of cheese on salad were all I had. I don't think I'm lactose intolerant, because I can certainly handle dairy just fine, but I feel kind of sluggish and bloated after eating a lot of cheese. Too bad I also love cheese. I missed cheese way more than sweets.

Since yesterday was March 1, though, I went a little overboard on the sweets. I ate a cookie and some of that chocolate caramel popcorn at work, as well as several Girl Scout cookies at home. By dinnertime I was feeling kind of nauseous, but then Ross wanted to go for Free Pancake Day at IHOP, so we did. Honestly, I kind of just want to eat salad all day now.

February: Extreme Healthy Eating Month!

On the ski lift on Saturday, after eating a cheese and grapes for a snack followed by grilled cheese for lunch, I decided that I needed to do something about my diet. Namely, eat less cheese. So I ruminated about doing a cheese fast for February, but since I need to lose some weight, I wanted to go a little more extreme than that. I settled on the following diet plan. I am calling it Extreme Healthy Eating Month. So for the month of February, I will eat only the following categories of foods:

1. Fruits
   
2. Vegetables
3. Whole grains
4. Lean meats & fish
5. Seeds & nuts
6. Yogurt

I am not being as stringent about drinks. I am definitely allowed water, skim milk, coffee, and tea. 100% juice is fine too, though I don't really drink much of it. No soda (diet or regular) or sweet iced tea. However, I spent most of December and January abstaining from alcohol and I missed beer a lot, so the occasional beer is okay even though it is full of carbohydrates.

My goal is to exercise 40 minutes 4 times a week. I'm sure I won't meet that, but I will try.

Ross is joining me in this endeavor, although he admittedly is not being as determined about it. He doesn't need or want to lose any weight, but I buy and cook most of the food and he is happy to go along with healthy eating.

Our suppers for this week are as follows:
Monday: Leftover panang curry for me; not sure what Ross ate
Tuesday: Baked salmon and asparagus
Wednesday: Moroccan chicken stew
Thursday: Brown rice & pinto beans with salsa and salad
Friday: Buffalo chicken strips & Caesar salad
Saturday: Cranberry, Butternut Squash, and Roast Shallot Couscous
Sunday: Leftovers

Ross's hoarding tendencies pay off

Ross sometimes saves things that I think are ridiculous. Case in point: three napkins from the Melting Pot. Because they have a really nice texture.

We last went to the Melting Pot in September.
















But it turns out that Melting Pot napkins make really good dust cloths. Way better than paper towels.




















I guess I'll hang on to those other two napkins.

2010

2010 was the first year of my life since I was... 2? 3? that did not involve any school. I got to do all sorts of fun things. So let's have a recap!

In January, February, and March, I embraced living in Colorado and went skiing 8 times. I successfully attempted my first black runs and back bowls and made significant improvement to my mogul-skiing skills (that is to say I went from terrified avoidance to slowly and un-gracefully making it down mogul runs with limited falls... I'm still not very good.)

In April, we celebrated Ross's 25th birthday and I took the MCAT. In May, we moved into the church caretaker position and apartment, celebrated my 23rd birthday, and visited Bethel for friends' graduations.

In June, I was a bridesmaid for the first time in my friend Laura's wedding. It was also my introduction to Catholic weddings. I also started a quilting class at church that lasted all summer.

I spent a lot of time in July focusing on fitness, eating very healthfully and running a lot in preparation for Ross's extended family's beloved beach vacation during the first week of August. Ross and I also began serving as junior youth leaders at church.

In September, I was happy to have several college friends visit for a weekend. We hiked, slid down a "glacier" and an alpine slide, visited the Buffalo Bill Museum, and ate good food (a must for this group!). A group of Denver friends started a homemade food co-op which is working out nicely. I started Tae Kwon Do classes.

October brought another visit to Bethel for Fall Fest and the birth of a new niece -- Ariana Marie, daughter of Ross's sister Andrea and her husband Tyson. We enjoyed spending time with Ross's extended family for Thanksgiving in November and visiting colleges with my sister, who came along.

December involved the usual Christmas festivities, which I posted about before, and two days of skiing.

Evidently I can't embrace a good year of no school without trying to get back into school, because I spent all of 2010 and a substantial amount of money applying to medical school. From January through April, I diligently studied for the MCAT, and from June through December, I submitted applications and waited for responses. I applied to 6 medical schools and ended the year with my first interview invitation - at KU in January.

2010 was a year of expanding horizons. Many of these don't fit into the calendar above - deepening new friendships in Denver, refining my beer palate, pushing my comfort zone at work as I continually learn to talk to so many people, learning to play and enjoying many evenings playing Settlers of Catan.

2010 was a wonderful year.

Christmas

Our second Christmas together and in Denver has been an improvement over the first. (I say that mostly because last Christmas day started out quite nicely and ended in me sick in bed - as luck would have it, the only day I've been sick enough to stay home from work was a paid holiday.)

Our Christmas tree, nativity, and stockings. Sorry for the blurriness - the mirrors on the wall behind the tree don't make it easy to take pictures with necessary flash.

Ross and I committed to ourselves and our families before we were married that Christmas would be a holiday for us to celebrate as our own nuclear family. Thanksgiving is our time to celebrate with his family and New Year's Day is for mine.

Christmas Eve involved an a treasured lazy morning full of coffee and pajamas; the last of Christmas shopping; and the Christmas Eve service. First Mennonite has beautiful Christmas Eve service - readings from Isaiah and Luke, choral music, and lots of Christmas hymns followed by wassail.

Christmas Day began with exchanging gifts, and then we headed up to the mountains for a full day of skiing at Winter Park. Christmas ski traffic, both on I-70 and on the slopes, turned out to be much lighter than most Saturdays. We were also delighted to discover the ski in - ski out parking. We came back exhausted, called and Skyped our families to wish them a Merry Christmas, and went to bed early.

On top of Mary Jane peak with the Continental Divide behind us on Christmas Day.

OMT

Sometime in November, I decided to just take the many suggestions I've gotten that I apply to osteopathic (D.O.-granting) medical schools as well as allopathic (M.D.-granting). I've been open to it, but I just found a connection to a D.O. to shadow (which osteopathic schools really want you to do when you're applying). In the last month or so, I have been shadowing a doctor who actually does osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT, the hands-on musculoskeletal manipulations that DOs learn which constitute the difference between them and MDs but that a lot of DOs don't do in practice) one morning a week to see what it's all about.

OMT is pretty cool. And a quick search of PubMed (a database of scientific studies) shows that it works better than placebo or physical therapy to treat some back pain, ankle injuries, and ear infections, actually (which I think is so weird!) among other ailments. With some patients, you actually see a difference in how they move immediately after treatment, which is awesome. It definitely seems like a great treatment option for musculoskeletal pain.

So today as part of my shadowing experience I decided to be the patient. I definitely have some occupation-related back and neck pain (sitting all day with a phone cradled against your shoulder while typing? It gets to you after a year or so) which makes me a good candidate for OMT. Plus, watching a doctor do it doesn't show as much as I would like, because so much of it seems to be small, slow, gentle movements rather than large or jerky movements that would make clear what's happening. To be honest, I sometimes wondered if anything was really happening. So I had my neck, back, and pelvis realigned this morning.

The doctor held my arms in weird positions while putting pressure on the muscles in my back that are always tight (this is called counterstrain, and if I remember right, the idea is that you stretch the tight muscles in the opposite direction). He cracked my T1 vertebra (the only cracking I've seen him do, actually - apparently unlike chiropractic, OMT doesn't involve a lot of that, but it sure felt good). He put pressure with his fingertips on points on my neck and my pectoral muscles. The med student doing a fellowship there had me squeeze my knees together and push them apart against resistance, put pressure on areas of my lower back, and had me move my legs around in a particular way. Very little of it hurt at all, it was not like a massage - they barely moved their hands, it was mostly slow, and it took about half an hour.

This afternoon and still somewhat now, I felt like I'd lifted weights for about two hours. I was SORE. And thirsty. But the good kind of sore - when I feel my shoulder muscles, they are much more relaxed than they have been. My upper back feels refreshingly loose and mobile. When I feel my spine from my shoulder blades up my neck, it actually feels and looks straighter.