Day 330:

After reviewing my blog entry for yesterday I realized I lumped anger and stress into the same paragraph. At least for me anger is a reaction to stress. Stress is kind of hard to define and you just sort of expect to hear people say they are "stressed out" I never seem to be out of stress. I always have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Usually when I'm feeling "stressed" it really helps me to write everything I need to do down in the form of a "to do" list. Simply doing that helps me feel in control and when I feel in control I feel less stressed. That said, my stress is about really mundane things. I remind myself that my biggest problems are credit card bills and weight gain. I could be stressed because I have no job and nothing to eat. My stress is certainly nothing compared to the fear someone feels when facing a great danger like a bear or a tiger. I'd much rather have my problems then someone with a sick child and no healthcare. I've got it pretty good. Let that be the lesson for day 330: appreciate what you've got. A few years ago a friend of mine gave me a book called Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. The author suggests keeping a gratitutde journal, writing down all of the the things you are greatful for. You can go to the simple abundance website at http://www.simpleabundance.com/homepub.html There is a a section on how to create a gratitude journal. Honestly, I never finished the book. If I recall there were so many suggestions on getting in touch with your inner self and being happy that it just stressed me out. I do agree with the being grateful for what you've got though.

Day 331: Anger Management

Most of the healthy aging literature will tell you that anger or stress management is part of healthy lifestyle. I think that most people would tell you that I have a very bad temper. I would say that I am emphatic and when I am annoyed I may appear to be angry. Anger is a really subjective thing. I do get angry but when I do I rarely have any outward signs of emotion. When I am really angry, I become very calm and I start to weigh all my options. I am not above revenge. Sometimes revenge can be as simple as taking the moral high ground and therefore becoming morally superior to the offending party. Sometimes revenge can take the form of making the offender feel guilty. This revenge is most often reserved for my children. Many times when I am angry I feel the need to explain my feelings to the person I am angry at. This seems like a mature idea, right? Maybe its mature but its not always smart. If they made you angry chances are that they don't really care how you feel. They may act like they do to be polite but really they are just thinking how awkward it is that they are being confronted by an angry person.

The Mayo Clinic offers 10 tips to help keep anger under control http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/anger-management/mh00102. Revenge is not on the list.

The weekend and more: 336, 335, 334, 333, 332

I am beyond 30 days into my last year before I turn 50. I have about 11 months to become better or at least the best 50 year old I can be. I've admittedly been lollygagging (is that a word?) As far as health is concerned, I don't have far to go at least this early in the game. I have lots of time. I really need about 18 weeks to transform my physical appearance and physical strength (as opposed to internal strength of character, spirit, etc.). There seems to be nothing that motivates me to get a handle on this. I just organized a conference on aging research and attended a weekend retreat with lots of lectures on the latest and greatest on healthy aging. But I need more than knowledge. I can not approach aging successfully with a diet or exercise routine alone. I need to be in the right mind set and concentrate on behavior change. I'm working on it.

Day 337

Today I had to get ready to go to a three day "Healthy Aging" Retreat. This has required numerous days at the mall trying to make my extra 50 pounds look less noticeable. Despite the clothes melt downs and frustration, this is one of the best parts of my job. Each year the school that I work for holds a three day retreat at a great location and offer workshops on healthy aging. This year there will be some very interesting sessions that go beyond the usual exercise and fitness presentations that you might expect. I need to get to sleep because I am going to have to wake up super early to get to my meeting 110 miles away by 10:00 AM. I plan on getting some physical activity in this weekend as well. Let's see how that works out....

341, 340, 339, 338

I'm sorry. I've gone under the wave of a conference. I have been off line since Saturday. Every waking second for the past four days have been devoted to making sure things went perfectly. Things didn't go perfectly but things went pretty well. Over 240 people attended the What's Hot in Aging Research at USC conference--a whirl wind tour of the best of the best of cutting edge research. You can check out the webcast of the conference at www.usc.edu/gero/USCAgingResearch. It started out being an internal conference where researchers could learn more about what was going on across campus. It ended up attracting not only researchers, but product developers, service providers and even a few media types. All in all it was a great day. Today was just a recovery day. I've ignored everything including myself for the last ten days or so.

The man who is widely considered the father of gerontology, Jim Birren, attended with his wife Betty. Jim was born in 1918 and is the founding Dean of the school that I work for. He is amazing. You can check Jim out on Wikipedia by googling him. His most recent passion is guided autobiography. We offeer a guided autobiography course developed and sometimes taught by Jim but I have never had time to take it. I wonder how much it is like blogging.

Day 341

Tonight I attended the student/alumni dinner. Let's not discuss the calories beyond it was worth it. It was nice to relax and not be responsible for th eevent. The students did a great job pulling everything together. I had to leave my husband at home because his Rheumatoid Arthritis flared up. We think there is some connection with his diet. We have read on the Internet that fatty meats seem to aggravate the symptoms but that has not been confirmed by his doctor. I went to the Farmer's Market this morning and bought brie made from Goat's milk. We think that the high fat content in the cheese might be responsible. Really we just don't know.

Day 342

I have been working on a conference related to aging research. It looks like it will be very successful. Check it out at www.usc.edu/gero/USCAgingResearch.com

Day 342

I just got home and want to post something before it turns mid night. I worked on reducing my calorie intake today because I didn't have to time to eat.

Day 343

It is after 10:00 pm and I just got home from work. I am waiting up for my 18 year old to come home and I am resisting calling my 22 year old to make sure she is o.k. I didn't have time to eat much today and I am not really hungry. This is strange. I realize that I am well into my journey to 50 and I haven't really changed many of my habits. I stopped exercising in mid February.

I wish I had two more days left in the week.

On days like this I have to remind myself why I am writing this blog. I don't have time and I am not taking action to change what needs to be changed. But hey, I received my copy of Martha Stewart Living in the mail yesterday. I love this magazine almost as much as I love Oprah. MSL is a little different though it holds out a lifestyle this is almost impossible to obtain. I want to be Martha I really do, but its just this little thing called a job I have that gets in my way. And then there is the family. Martha never has to deal with any of that at least in her magazine. She has birthday parties for dear friends, yoga, horseback riding and really nice looking dogs. I guess I want people who read this blog to read about a real life or maybe I should say an average life. I'm sure Martha's life is real...I just don't think she shares it with the public. I don't think my life is exactly average though. I think I have a pretty good life. I work every day to make sure it is even better.

MId-week: Day 344

I'm watching a re-run of Alice Waters on Bill Maher right now. I wish I could be so wonderful. But come on...She wants to feed every child every morning, lunch and afternoon snack for free. Awesome. So do I, but how does that work? She's a nice lady but come on...She is anti-micro-wave oven. Alice, we would have to completely change how business is done in America. That's not going to work unless there is some big economic shift.

O.K, so if you have read any of my past posts you know that I am super healthy except for the weight problem. The weight problem is a result of the fact that I have a job that requires me to sit in my chair all day and work on my computer and get no physical exericse. The up side of my job is that I get a lot of information about health all the time. I am not dismissing the weight thing but I have to consider the whole of my life and what that means. For the past 24 years I have been happily married. I have two beautiful, smart and on their way to being very successful young daughters. I don't have much to complain about. But I planned it this way. I had a very hectic, very emotionally weird childhood, that resulted in me being hyper vigilent about anything effecting my adult life.

I had a conversation with a woman who I have known for about 23 or maybe 24 years about this today. I met Linda when I was 22 years old. A year younger than my oldest daughter is now.

I like Linda. In 23 year or 24 years I have never known her to be anything but hard-working and completely competent. She is the kind of person that does not cause stress, but rather relieves it. She's a good person. I believe that is the highest compliment one person can give to another person. I think we all have a responsibility to be competent and hard working at our respecitve jobs. When we are not we cause stress and consequently poor health outcomes in other people. I don't care if there is karmic pay off or not. If you want to lead a good life, try and be a good person.

Day 345

I'm feeling pretty good about today. I had very little to eat and I got a lot done at work. I had a nice conversation with one of my daughter's on the way home. But today started out with a dreaded task. I had to go to the DMV. I bought my younger daughter a used Mini Cooper in September. The previous owner had personalized license plates so we had to wait for new ones. They never came. I ended up spending a couple of hours at the DMV getting new ones. Long story-short, the registration was still attached to the old plates and I had to undo that and get tags for the new plates today.

I have a love hate relationship with the DMV. What I hate about it is not really knowing how to get through the system and the other reason is that I have to wait there for a really long time to get done what I need to get done. Today started out poorly. I forgot the paperwork I needed at home and that cost be about half an hour. When I returned to the DMV I had to wait in a line that wrapped around the building while it was raining.

The thing I love about the DMV is that its full of every kind of person on earth. You have lots of time to hang out with total strangers and make friends with people you would otherwise have no reason to meet. Today I made conversation with a Fed Ex guy. His name was Randy and although he is much more complex than merely a Fed Ex guy, I got to find out a lot about how our packages get shipped across the country.

Day 346

I think that my life is pretty good. We talk a lot about making trade offs and balance in our life. There are whole books, magazines and talk shows on television and radio that discuss balance. I think this is just another illusion. Balance? What's that? Can you balance your life on a daily basis, weekly? monthly? or do you just balance the whole thing out over the years? I work when I need to work and most of the time I need to work. I'm a little awkward with my spare time. I try to garden but I don't really know what I'm doing. The beautiful thing about growing food is that you don't need to know much to make something happen. Better yet, we don't really HAVE to garden because someone will sell us food at the grocery store. I must admit I have turned into a food snob. Most of what is at the grocery store is mushy and bland. One of the things I want to do this year is to grow really good vegetables. One's that taste good and can liberate me from what's at the grocery store.

Day 347

Last night I watched Alice Waters (www.chezpanisse.com/about/alice-waters/) on the Bill Maher show. I knew her name and associated with cooking but I never really knew what she was about. She is a pioneer in promoting eating food in season and grown locally and is considered the creator of California cuisine. I feel really ignorant that I don't know that much about her. It makes me wonder what else I don't know. I am a big believer in locally grown produce. That's why I am such a big fan of the Farmer's market. I didn't know that there was a philosophy behind it and people and movements. I just know that the carrotts I buy at the Farmer's market are smaller but sweeter than what I buy at the grocery store. (I think I've covered the blue berries which are a thousand times better when they are fresh). Ms. Water's is the co-owner of Chez Panisse in Berkley. I've never been there but I have been to a resturant in Napa named Mustards Grill. Cindy Pawlcyn is the owner and she has a garden right outside of the resturant and according to their website, www.mustardsgrill.com, they have a two acre farm that provides at least 20% of the resturant's produce. This is probably one of the best places I have ever ate in my life. The only problem is trying not to get full before you get a chance to try everything. Check out the website and the menu. She owns several resturants in Napa but I keep going back to Mustard's every time I go up to visit.

I am trying to grow my own produce and my container garden in the backyard is coming along but I think I will not have anything to actually eat until late this summer. I planted micro greens and they have grown in pretty well. I'm not sure when they are ready to be cut. I think I want to try and convert some of my yard that is now covered with grass into a garden in order to produce fresh food year round but I am worried that I will treat the garden as I do my own body. I take really good care of it for a while and then I get really busy with something else and it falls a part.

Day 348: Mid-Life Stress

The days seem to be drifting away. It is Friday evening and I am getting ready to start my weekend. Two days hardly seems like enough time to recharge and five days is never enough time to get everything done that I am attempting to get done. Yesterday I helped one of my colleagues Dr. Anne Katz promote a conference on Mid-Life Stres and Working Women. You can check out the conference at http://life-long.weebly.com/.

The one day conference is on Saturday, April 17 at the USC Andrus Gerontology Center. The conference will focus on identifying the physical manifestaton of stress and look at ways to reduce stress by promoting balance between the demand of work and home. I remember that this was an issue that Michelle Obama talked about frequently in the presidential campaign and that's what made me pay attention to her before I started paying attention to her husband.

There are several one hour workshops. One is entitled "The Back Stabbers: Peer-to-Peer Conflict in the Workplace," and another entitled, "On My Last Nerve: Effective Strategies for Managing Stress in Everyday Living." I think I'm going to sign up for that one.

Day 350 and Day 349

Somehow Tuesday and Wednesday of this week have been blended. My efforts to eat foods that are good for me have worked out but at the expense of taking in way too many calories. I havn't gained any weight but I am in danger of doing so. I've been way too busy to plan any meals and have to take advantage of food when I can. This means box lunches and working lunches and frozen food when I get home. I will elaborate tomorrow.

Day 351: Botched

I have no sage advise to give today. Maybe I don't have any sage advise to give at all but on some days more than others I feel I am making progress and coming to realizations about the art of living well. Today was a big mixture of emotions and priorities, commitments and opportunities. My husband is out of town so all of the household duties fall on me. This involves feeding two dogs and three cats starting at sunrise. My youngest was back to school after a hectic spring break and my oldest was back to northern California. Then I was off to work a couple of hours late. I had scheduled a lunch with one of our alums, a student who had worked for me for five years as an undergraduate and masters level student. He is now a medical doctor. This is one of the best things about being part of an academic community. It takes time, but eventually you get to see people blossom.

In my excitement to see him again, I scheduled lunch at the same time I had a standing meeting with the Dean. The Dean was good enough to reschedule our meeting. I had already skipped breakfast and lunch out was way more food than I wanted to eat but I was really hungry because I didnt' eat breakfast. When I got back to the office I met with the Dean and then had a unscheduled staff meeting that I called because I felt like I was out of touch and needed to regroup. I don't understand how people can take off more than a day or two of work. Its really kind of stressful for me not to be at work. That's sad isn't it?

When I returned to my office our web master Trevor Nelson had left me a container of spare ribs that he had slow smoked on the weekend. Yes, I ate them. All of them. They were delicious and then I skipped dinner. So not the right way to eat. I know better. I realize there is a pattern between friends and family, and food.

Day 352: A day well spent

I took the day off today to spend with my oldest daughter who came down from the S.F. Bay area for Easter. After spending most of the morning talking with her we decided to visit the L.A. County Arboretum. My younger daughter met us at there. It is a beautiful time of year to go for a walk in a garden. This is the time of year wisteria is in bloom. Wisteria comes in many different colors including lavendar, pink and white. They have a great lavendar wisteria vine at the Arboretum. We are lucky enough to have our neighbor's wisteria vine growing along through the trees in our backyard. No matter how despondent I get about all of the repairs I need to make to my house, I can always look in the backyard and feel pretty good about where I live. Connecting with the environment is essential.

I don't know how to express this in more sophisticated terms. I intutively know this is true. I just feel it. I ran across a blog on the Huffington Post by Ervin Laszlo www.hufingtonpost.com/ervin-laszlo/quantum-consciouness-our_b_524054.html on quantum-counsciousness that alludes to being atuned to the greater world around us and to each other. I have not had the time or perhaps the capacity to think this out intellectually but I sense that it is true and we have to be connected in order to achieve a sense of well-being.

Day 353:Easter Sunday

I hoped that I would not spend the entire day in the kitchen but I did spend the entire day in the kitchen. It takes a lot of effort to put an entire meal on the table. Today I made osso bucco and whole wheat pasta and a basic egg pasta with basil. I found a great website http://www.cookingforengineers.com/. This website had a great osso bucco recipe that is similar to Mario Batali's. What I love about the site is that it is written very clearly and has photos that you can follow along with. I don't have much experience cooking anything other than steaks so this was pretty challenging for me. I bought two beef shanks at the farmer's market from a rancher that sells organic, grass-fed beef. According to Americangrassfedbeef.com grass-fed beef is lower in fat and is better for your health. I think it taste better too.

My husband made chocolate truffles and all in all we enjoyed ourselvles today. The scale may dampen our spirits in the morning. It takes a long time to make things froms scratch and even so we use items that are store bought such as cream and butter. Tomorrow I will start watching calories much more closely.

Day 354

Today I went to the Farmer's Market, the Honey Baked Ham Store and to Claro's ( my local Italian Market). I still don't know what I am going to make tomorrow but I have enough to make something good. I tried to make a lamb cake today. This is a cake made from a mold shaped like a lamb. My lamb's head fell off and now I have kind of a Easter egg cake. I use my imagination, OK.

Anyway, two nights ago I must have slept the wrong way on my right arm. I woke up with a very limited range of motion and my arm felt like someone punched me. This is nothing that will keep from doing whatever I want to do, but I am a little slower. I am shocked at how rude people are in public when you don't get out of their way fast enough. Today, when pulling in to the Farmer's market (remember this is early in the morning when people are hob knobbing with their local farmer) I had someone honk at me because I wasn't making my turn in the parking lot fast enough. I wondered if this person had any idea that I might be temporarily disabled or that I enjoy calling people out on their behavior. But today, I didn't really feel like getting excited about this idiot. Then I went to the grocery store and even though it is fairly painful for me to move my arm I found that people are not willing to wait a fraction of a second for me to get out of their way. I feel like their should be a public awareness campaign on treating each other with dignity including those with varying abilities.

Day 355

I'm getting ready for Easter Sunday. I have one day to shop and do any prep for my Sunday dinner. I am slightly conflicted because I would like to spend the day in my garden but I realize I cannot do both. I have to decide on what will give me more satisfaction before returning to work next week. My oldest daughter is driving down from the San Francisco Bay area a brief weekend stay. I may have friends over for Easter dinner. Regardless, I plan on making a lot of food. I like to cook or rather create food that gives others pleasure. When I see people eat what I have made and enjoy it, it makes me feel good. I'd like to be able to create art that makes people feel this way, but food is more universal and more pragmatic. You have to eat, right?

Tomorrow I'm going to the farmer's market. I'd love to be able to go in my own back yard and pick what I am going to cook but I hardly have more than seedinglings and a few herbs right now. I plan on buying fennel, green garlic and baby maui onions. This will make a great side dish when combined with cheese. I haven't decided if I'm going to make a ham or pork loin or maybe a pork crown roast. I do plan on making another batch of home made pasta but I'm not sure if I'm going to do a cream sauce or something else. Remember, I'm not doing calorie restriction for Easter. I showed a small loss on the scale this morning so maybe I'm feeling a little cocky.

Both of my children are out in the world tonight. I'll stay up until I know they are safe. I hope tomorrow's blog space I can spend telling you about what choices I made at the Farmer's market.

Day 356

Today started early. My 18 year old daughter was involved in a student film making project that wrapped about 2:30 AM. She got turned around on her way home and by 3:00 AM we both pretty much knew she was lost. By the time we figured out where she was and how to get her back home it was 4:00 AM. It was one of those times it seemed silly to even be angry because I was so glad she was safely at home. Lack of sleep can really take a toll on your body. I think most of us are capable of withstanding a few nights of sleeplessness but when it becomes chronic it really takes a toll on your overall health and well being. Researchers at Harvard host a web site, http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep, on healthy sleep patterns on the overall benefits of getting a good night's rest. Dr. Edward L. Schneider, the Dean Emeritus of the USC Davis School often cautions us to sleep in an environment free of distractions including unnecessary noise and light. For example, the light that comes from digital clocks, cell phones and ipods may be preventing us from getting a good nights sleep.