Thera Pee

An old friend recently asked me why I haven't been blogging.

Well, I've been a bit depressed since the holidays, so that's why.

I've had an internal struggle with how much of myself I want to share in public, and how I wish to spend my time.

I've been wrestling with whether or not I'm even comfortable with how I feel about anything, and how much of my struggle is okay to make visible to my children, since they're around me all the time. I am not a good actor; I wear my heart on my sleeve. So, I'm sure they've picked up on my melancholia.* It's for this reason I've never been a fan of the idea that homeschooling is the answer for everyone, and even though I wince a little when people say "I couldn't do that," I simultaneously wonder if I'm making a good choice.

February is always hard for me, and thank goodness it is over. I decided this year I would leap into February and hope for the best, but my birthday (very early in the month) hadn't even arrived before something awful happened. And, it didn't even happen to me, but to people who are very dear to me.

Last February was terrible, too, with implications for quite a few of my friends and family. And so I feel a bit like a bad luck charm, but I know it has nothing to do with me at all.

But anyway, it has me pondering various aspects of my existence and rearranging my priorities.

Life just seems too short to spend time reading about how blogger A is disrespectful to his readers and blogger B needs to go screw herself, or how eating a little bit of sugar is going to cause us all to rot from the inside out. I kind of wish more people would decide that it's not worth wasting our precious hours giving these actions and ideas any support. Feeding that type of energy absolutely will rot us from the inside out.

I post all this in the interest of transparency. I don't get a lot of hits on my blog, but I have enough that I would hate anyone to come away thinking I totally have my poo-poo together, because I don't. I'm thoroughly human.

I'm trying to rebuild.

Two words (for anyone who has seen So I Married An Axe Murderer): Thera Pee.

For me, this will take the form of art, and at the very least a small, if not permanent, hiatus from health discussion groups (I think -- I have an ancestor with the surname Fickel, so that's my excuse). Here is my first watercolor painting in twenty-four years or so (using 29-year old watercolors):

*Another word for "melancholia" is "lugubriousness" which makes me giggle a little bit, and thus defeats the purpose. :)

LEARN THIS!

This was a crazy, hopeful, and exhausting day.

I am so fortunate that my mom-in-law is here, so she could play with the kids today, and get them to their acting class. It was like cloning myself, except much better, because I got to spread the exhausting wealth.

(Really, Java? Update EVERY DAY? Is that really necessary?)

So, the day started out by meeting at the local coffee shop with Monika and my school board member. I was really nervous about it. People are usually confused as to why a homeschooling mother (or relaxed or eclectic or unschooling, or whatever I am at the moment) would have any business talking to people like the local school district superintendent, or the other administrators, or the school board members. They themselves are puzzled at first. If I have such a sweet deal on my end, why talk with them?

Well, because... I think more people can have this sweet deal. It's not out of reach.

Research shows that what standardized tests measure best is socioeconomic status. If that's true, then my kids were going to "be fine" (on the basis that doing well on a standardized test means "being fine") no matter what. And, no matter how much song and dance we do, are we going to raise the test scores of kids in the lower socioeconomic levels, if that's what is really being measured?

Judging from the information that a child's likelihood of staying in school through adolescence is directly related to whether or not he or she was talked and read to by an adult before age 3, it's my opinion that the school system, whether or not its true purpose these days is to make factory workers or not, is trying, the wrong way, to minimize this "achievement gap" which is really a resource gap from early childhood.

I think it's safe to say that most teachers become teachers because they have a passion for making a difference in the lives of children. Only now, because of legislation like No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top, they are slaves to standards and bureaucracy, rather than serving the young souls for whom they care so much. So often, the finger is pointed at them.

There's a lot of finger pointing going on, because everyone is under so much pressure. We could try pointing fingers at the administration, but I can tell you that those folks are doing more than we know, too. These are also people who went into the field to serve young people, but instead, they too are slaves to standards and bureaucracy. They collect all the information given to them to report to the State so that the schools can get money, so the teachers can eat and clothe their families, and the school buildings have light and heat and cafeterias with food.

Every cent that goes into schools has to be justified by hours in a seat (that is the October Count, if you are in Colorado), and now test scores.

So, if we are incapable of changing the achievement gap through forced education, the schools with the lower test scores and attendance (from the lower socioeconomic strata) are going to continue to have less and less funding.

Rather than be a slave to the almighty dollar (which is easy for *me* to say), because we really can't get in a time machine (a TARDIS!) and go back and make sure that child was well-nourished in the womb, or that his or her parents only had to work one job a piece, so that they would have time to read and talk to that child, there are two major things we can do to remove barriers to success for these learners.

We can provide opportunities. We can provide resources.

Well, unless your school district is one that has decided that after-school programs will now pay rent. Then, the lower-income schools and families will automatically be locked out of using that *public space* after school. And, if your school district has decided in addition that after-school programs must be attended by a certified teacher employed by said school district, and said teachers are already overextended, then you might just see most of the after school programs disappear.

And, of course, if you have too much homework to participate in after school programs, or there is not adequate transportation to where they happen, because the school district cannot provide buses to take you where things are happening.

The school day, in general, entailed much boredom for me. Like everyone else, I lived for that last bell. That's when the fun began. So many opportunities for growth and learning were provided after that bell, like drama club, Odyssey of the Mind, Optimist Club, Mathletics, United Nations, dancing, art, gymnastics, piano... all the things that don't "count" in traditional schooling, but serve, rather, to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to college applications.

In our city, we have a fairly large pool of retired individuals, many of whom worked in engineering at the original Hewlett-Packard facility. We have many talented artists, too. But these folks aren't considered useful as mentors by our current school district policy. They have a system for background checks in place. Why not use it?

Liability. Nevermind that most of the big news-making stories of late, the ones that, when I hear about them, drain the blood from my body as fast as light leaves a room when I flick a switch, happened in schools, and were perpetrated by people who are part of the school system.* People who would have passed a background check. Before they cracked. Students, or teachers. The people whose performance we are watching so closely these days. The people under a great deal of pressure. (*Note that because so many of us are affiliated with the school system -- a third of the world's population is school aged -- the chances are pretty high already that tragedy will somehow be associated with schooling).

We have essentially put community and school in separate silos, not allowed to intermingle during the September through June, 7 am to 4 pm time periods. So, for most of a child's life, he or she is not allowed to interact with the whole of society; rather his greatest connections come from those he makes with other immature humans. Any connections he makes with adults are usually fleeting, and fraught with assessment. Every adult has an agenda when they meet a child. We're all consumed with worry about the future of the planet and these children, we can't help ourselves. "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" And then we give our stamp of approval, or we don't.

So, when I brought up this troubling situation of tweens entertaining the idea of suicide, I thought my school board member would be surprised, but he was not. He knew all too well of this phenomenon. And he also said that he hears over and over in his position with his church, the message that "Nobody knows me" from the youth.

Teen angst. Adolescence. What if these are manufactured, and not natural, phenomena? What if they are the natural outcome of an existence without relationships in which one can be authentic? What if they are the natural outcome when every adult in our life has some sort of agenda for us?

And that brings me to exactly why I am so passionate about this topic. I was working on a PhD in Neurobiology and Molecular Biology in the mid 1990's, having completed an undergraduate degree in Psychology. My specific interest was the biological basis of Learning and Memory, and our laboratory was interested in the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's Disease. My specific research was on the relationship between estrogen and memory. In the background research I did to prepare my hypothesis and research design, the groundbreaking work had been done on one particular topic -- that stress hormones, particularly the glucocorticoid cortisol, block memory formation.

That's right. So increasing the pressure on every child to do better, and every teacher to *make* those children do better, may be accomplishing the opposite of what we intended. Instead, our "achievement" (since we like that word so much) yielded adolescence, teen angst, low test scores, and a population who has learned to be helpless. Because the harder the system tries -- the more stress is placed on achievement -- the harder it becomes to "achieve" or even remember what was "achieved." So, why try at all?

For this reason, whenever I sense stress in my children, during a learning situation, I encourage them to take a break. And, well, nothing is compulsory for them, so any learning they do is usually in the context of neurotransmitters of pleasure. It's amazing how much they remember.

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On the biological front, I've been studying a text written by Gerald Combs. The Vitamins: Fundamental Aspects in Nutrition and Health was published earlier in 2012. I purchased it -- the first current textbook I have purchased since I left the educational system in 1999 -- because it looked like it had a good recent summary on the research done on Vitamin K2. I was not disappointed! I read that chapter back in April of this year, and after a busy summer, have finally picked it up again.

Related to the rest of my post today, and heavy on my mind, are the long-term effects of malnutrition in utero. See for yourself (from page 318):

"Animal studies of long-term potentiation, a synaptic model of learning and memory, have revealed that maternal deprivation of the vitamin during gestation and lactation specifically reduces the development of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor subtype in the young. Although the metabolic basis is not understood, these effects appear to be related to the loss of dendritic arborization in vitamin B6 deficiency. These lesions are thought to underlie reported effects of impaired learning on the part of the progeny of vitamin B6-deficient animals and humans."

Considering how I was wasting B6 on a low-carb diet, I wonder about the potential effects on babies born to mothers in similar situations. More research for another day.

On GAPS and Safety

The Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet was created by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride for her child who suffered from learning disabilities, and was based on Dr. Elaine Gottschall's Specific Carbohydrate Diet, a popular intervention in the "biomedical community" of parents treating their kids on the Autism Spectrum. Below is a letter I personally wrote to the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) in response to the growing popularity of the GAPS diet with WAPF members for treating all manner of health issues.

If you want to see the Weston A. Price Foundation's response, you will have to get your hands on Volume 13, Number 3 -- the Fall 2012 Issue of Wise Traditions.

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I think the Foundation's endorsement of GAPS has pushed the Carb Wars further in the low carb direction. People appear to be making the illogical conclusion that because it is effective for some children with Autism, not only is it good for all kids with Autism, but it will cure everything. In 2006, I successfully treated my own son in the context of a well-rounded Weston A. Price Foundation recommended diet, which included fruit, maple syrup, honey, rapadura, raw milk and soaked grains, so I don't see the utility in GAPS for all Autism Spectrum Disorders. From my online forum experience and as a past Chapter Leader I have endless feedback that GAPS has become a panacea rather than a temporary therapeutic approach.

In 2009, I personally got swept away in the low-carb wave, and by Spring of 2010, was battling fatigue, depression, hair loss, dry skin and menstrual problems. My son's anxiety returned, and my kids have since not been as healthy as they were in 2007 and 2008, on a well-rounded Weston A. Price Foundation-inspired way of eating. All the broth and liver in the world did not make up for the effects of the lost glucose. We are still recovering from that experiment!

WAPF is itself is a non-profit organization. I believe its most important contributions are in the areas of connecting consumers with local, nourishing foods, underscoring the importance of animal foods and saturated fats in the diet, and highlighting the destructive effects of food additives. Those recommendations alone have the potential to make a great impact on the health of any individual. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the Chapter Leaders are in the health business and are thus biased, more apt to follow trends, or recommend things that worked for them personally, without understanding that there may be no universal solutions. Quite a few of them are demonizing carbohydrates. Many benefit from the client base attracted by the Weston A. Price Foundation. All of the "Real Food Bloggers" (like the ones who try a diet on the bestseller list because it mentions Green Pastures CLO) and tangentially-related health professionals (Chris Kresser, Paul Jaminet), even if they don't speak at the conference, definitely affect the direction the organization is trying to take. People turn to these sources to recreate the kind of support they get at local chapter meetings. Their well-marketed messages, in the interest of attracting hits, advertisers, and clients, are becoming louder than the organization's message.

While Price himself discovered that there were healthy individuals all over the world eating many different types of foods in different combinations, Chapter Leaders, bloggers and Paleo gurus are spreading the message that "carbohydrates feed yeast, fructose causes fatty liver disease, and glucose spikes insulin!" This type of fear, coupled with the rapid weight loss one experiences on a low-carb diet, is driving people to try extreme diets in the name of improving their health, rather than taking a balanced approach. GAPS, for a person who is still struggling on a well-rounded WAPF diet, looks like the perfect solution. The basic tenet that glucose fuels a healthy metabolism via mitochondria and thyroid is now overlooked. Somehow we've made this all about the intestine, and for folks who are unfamiliar with the context of a whole organism, these scientific arguments are difficult to sort out. I got sucked into it, too. Scientists are fallible. They make mistakes in their research and in their conclusions. The idea that there is a perfect solution at all is a logical fallacy in itself.

I am suspicious that these low-carb approaches do not support hormonal health in menstruating, pregnant, or nursing women. Furthermore, its safety during pregnancy and breastfeeding has not been established. Pregnancy ketosis in animals is analogous to toxemia in pregnancy, and can be induced by simply reducing a pregnant animal's feed ration. This organization's mission, from what I could tell when I originally joined, was especially to prevent the malnourishment of mothers and children, and thus, I cannot understand why so many "volunteers" would advocate the use of a diet which promotes ketosis, specifically in this population. I think if the organization is going to support the use of the GAPS diet for "curing" all these health problems, at the very least, its safety during pregnancy and breastfeeding needs to be investigated before harm befalls unborn children.

Amy Lewark, MS
Ohio University Neurobiology '99

The staff of life, Part 1

Nothing smells quite as good as bread baking in the oven. I just had a delicious slice of homemade bread, made from wheatberries I ground myself, kind of as an experiment, but also as a reminder.

Back when my life was all diapers, playdates and naps, I first got caught up in the whole health food craze. Craze is really the best word for it; you don't have to go far on the internet or in the health food store to hear illogical ideas about which wholesome food is going to put your life in jeopardy next. Even before that, though, Kaiser had taught me about avoiding refined flour and sugar, so I was always out the outlook for a good loaf of bread which didn't contain white flour.

So when the opportunity presented itself to learn how to make bread from wheat in its purest form, I was all ears. My initial attempts to make bread yielded either flat or crumbly loaves. It was so frustrating. I borrowed a hand-crank grain mill from my mother-in-law, and I could grind about a half cup of flour in 5 minutes (I think -- it's been a while). Eventually, my entire operation would radically advance in technology with an electric grain mill and high-capacity mixer, allowing me to make five loaves of bread beginning from the grinding of the grain to their exit from the oven. I would make five loaves of bread once a week, and sometimes some of those loaves would become cinnamon rolls or pizza. Many times it was hard for us to not devour the first loaf right out of the oven.

The benefits of using freshly ground flour include the following:

1) Reduced cost. After the initial investment in equipment (of course), the cost for the wheat is about 27 cents per loaf, and a 50 lb bag of wheat yields about 83 loaves of bread. One pound of wheatberries yields about 4.5 cups of flour, and it takes 10-12 cups of flour to make 5 loaves of bread. These calculations are based on $22.12 for a 50 pound back of wheat, not including shipping.

2) Increased nutrition. Most of the nutritional benefits of eating wheat are from the germ, which is stripped from the grain in industrial milling because the germ oil goes rancid rapidly. The germ contains the full complex of B-vitamins, but according to the woman who taught me (and multiple internet sources), 90% of the nutrition has oxidized and been broken down within 72 hours of milling.

3) Reduced toxins. Have you ever read the label on a loaf of bread at the grocery store? I cannot even find a loaf of bread at my closest local grocery store, Safeway, which does not contain azodicarbonamide. In fact, even the breads baked in-house contain it because it is part of a dough conditioner that is put directly into the flour they use at the store. When I first discovered this, nearly eight years ago, there was very little information about it on the internet, except that it was an industrial foaming agent used in the manufacturing of plastics (like baby food jar seals), and had been banned in the United Kingdom. It is now banned for use in Europe and Australia.

So, I happily made my own bread, which contained just freshly ground wheatberries, water, yeast, honey, sea salt, Vitamin C and canola oil. We ate it at pretty much every meal. Grilled cheese sandwiches were an almost daily staple. Everett seemed able to tolerate cheese, even though milk and yogurt gave him digestive trouble.

In the early part of my pregnancy, I was very good about making bread weekly. Then, I developed sciatica, and it had been weeks, or perhaps even months, since I had made bread. We were eating out more and more, and during one trip to the chiropractor in Denver, we ate at my favorite restaurant (wide spaghetti and meatballs), and Everett and I both got a terrible case of food poisoning, which lasted nearly a week. I had been seeing a specialist during my pregnancy because I had polyhydramnios, which turned out not to be a result of a structural abnormality in the baby (thank goodness). After that week of food poisoning, however, I started losing amniotic fluid at a very steady rate.

I was placed on bedrest for a week at 30 weeks of pregnancy, and had visits to the maternal fetal specialist twice a week to monitor my amniotic fluid levels. I was told to drink at least 96 ounces of water per day, as well, and doing so didn't really seem to work, so I switched to an electrolyte beverage, and that did seem to work, with respect to the amniotic fluid. However, at 37 weeks, my blood pressure elevated again, and I was put on bedrest for that week, at the end of which, I had labor induced.

During one of my trips to the specialist, I had a friend watch Everett. She took him to McDonald's and got him some milk with his Happy Meal. When I came to pick him up, she was holding him in her lap, and he was crying in her lap. She explained that he just randomly became afraid in the Playland, and refused to play in there, crying and screaming. It was very much unlike him, and she was a close friend and neighbor who we saw very often, so he was comfortable with her. I took him home, and he was strange the whole evening. I actually had a high school friend come visit from out of town with her daughter, and he was totally bouncing off the walls (typically he was a pretty calm kid, though he had anxiety, he was not high energy). The entire evening he was loud, violent, his pupils were fully dilated, and his cheeks were bright red. I could not get him to listen to me or calm down at all. It must have made quite an impression on my friend (or my reaction to him did, because I really wasn't sure what to do), because I didn't hear from her again for several years. It was amazing to me that just drinking milk could cause him to have that kind of reaction. It had to have been the milk that caused the reaction; we ate at McDonald's at least once a week at that time, and had never had that kind of reaction before. That was my reasoning at the time, anyway.

In fact, before we eliminated milk from his diet, besides frequent illness I did have trouble getting him to acknowledge me, even though he was calm. He would kind of zone out and have a far away look in his eyes. Also, he frequently had bright red cheeks, and slept fitfully, waking if I wasn't right there next to him, and when he woke, he usually did so crying. He always sweat when he slept, leaving a moist spot where he lay his head.

After that episode at McDonald's, I was very concerned about him. I had him evaluated by the school district, and he was classified as having auditory, tactile, vestibular, oral, and visual sensory integration disorder. At 27 months of age, he knew all of his letter sounds, could count past 30. At that time, nine years ago, kids that young weren't getting Asperger's diagnoses (according to our family physician), but the school district Autism Team was entertaining the possibility. They came to see him at his gymnastics class and during a playdate, and ruled out Asperger's. Apparently, he was too social (even though it was difficult to get him to look me in the eye). According to the speech therapist, he had the vocabulary and speech of a seven year old, and she could see nothing wrong in that respect. However, she did suggest that we try removing gluten from his diet.

Okay, here it was again... gluten being a potential problem. But, I made bread every week, and according to traditional and historical wisdom, it was the staff of life! How could it be hurting our health? I would wait until absolutely necessary to make such a change. Instead, I would focus on eliminating all food chemicals from our diet after reading the book Fed Up with Food Intolerance by Sue Dengate (see also The Feingold Association).

Absolutely necessary came sooner than I thought it would. Lucy was born, and her reflux was worse than Everett's. It was not manageable with Mylicon (simethicone). I was already on a mostly dairy-free diet, but just even having a taste of dairy caused her to projectile vomit after nursing, and choke in the night. Soy would be a problem for her as well. I would try a trial without gluten, just for myself, for a couple of weeks.

The first time I had gluten, not only did Lucy's reflux return (she didn't even spit up once during the day when I avoided casein, soy and gluten), but my hands were achy, and I was so exhausted for the next 48 hours. Also, I would get pain in my right kidney, much like I had toward the end of my pregnancy with Lucy. So, there it was. I had to avoid gluten.

It was a lot easier to avoid gluten for Everett now that Lucy and I had such immediate and devastating side effects. The benefits that we saw from eliminating dairy with him just got better. His attention span increased, he was calmer, the wet spot from him sweating in the bed disappeared, and he stopped gagging at every meal. Many of his sensory integration issues (tactile, oral, auditory, vestibular, and visual) would disappear on a gluten-free, casein-free and salicylate (food-additive)-free diet.

Which of course, begged the question, WHY?!

As the Yo-Yo Bounces

Part 1:  The Early Years

In the past few, oh, maybe 6 or 7 years, I've developed a certain notoriety in my community. I'm never sure whether to think of it as a good or bad thing. See, I'm obsessed with food. Yes, I'm obsessed in the sense of always looking for something good to eat, but also obsessed in the sense of making absolutely sure that I'm making the right food choices for my health and that of my kids. I wasn't raised like that at all. This isn't some sort of fancy I have to occupy my time. No, the reason is because I teeter on the brink of health and disease.

I'm a canary in this coal-mine world. I've had symptoms of allergy, arthritis, cancer, chronic fatigue, depression, diabetes, hypertension and hypothyroidism, and that's just A through H. Every time I've gone to the doctor to get things under control, throw in the towel, get a prescription, my lab results have been normal. There's a certain sense of relief that comes with normal lab results, but also a growing frustration as I struggle with those symptoms. It's a frustration that keeps me reading, gathering knowledge, and questioning everything.

How did I get here? I ask myself this question all the time.

When my mother was growing up, she was regularly fed things like liver and cod liver oil. She grew up in poverty (the daughter of a painter and a bookbinder), but from what she has told me, it sounds like her parents did an exceptional job feeding her. Perhaps it was the way most baby boomers were fed; her parents were older, born near the turn of the 20th century, before vegetable oils and hydrogenation became commonplace. As an adopted child, she was fed formula made with PET evaporated milk. In fact, back in 2003 when Erick's mom gave me my copy of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, my mother marveled that there was a published cookbook containing real food.

Due to a blizzard in Brooklyn, my dad was born in an uncomplicated fashion at home, without a medical professional in attendance. He was the youngest of four children and grew up in a very small town in upstate New York. His mother shopped at the local co-op, and when they could afford it, they had raw milk from the local dairy. He also was not particularly privileged; his father was a brick mason, and his mother was a nurse.

Neither one of my parents needed orthodontic intervention, and grew up with perfectly straight teeth. Neither needed glasses until they were in college. Their parents did not need these things, either.

My mother, however, was not allowed in the kitchen, so she did not know how to cook. A couple years before having me (her first child), she was diagnosed with Graves' Disease (which is ironic because Graves was her maiden name) -- autoimmune hyperthyroidism. She took antithyroid medicine for some period of time before I was conceived.

She had an uncomplicated pregnancy. When the time came, she had a four-day long prodromal labor.  She was turned away from the hospital multiple times before she was admitted. After being in labor for so long, she was given narcotics, and I was delivered by forceps. Unlike many babies in the 1970's, I was fortunate to be breastfed for the first year of my life. She claims that I immediately slept through the night. Maybe that's true (uh, narcotics!), but my parents are deep sleepers, so I doubt the reality of that claim.

There were a lot of Cheerios in my infancy, starting around six months, and continuing well through high school. We were purists and did not put sugar on them. My mom didn't "do" baby food. She had a baby food grinder and took it with her everywhere. To all the restaurants, I mean. She didn't cook -- so that meant we ate out several times per week. McDonald's was a treat; typically we went to sit-down restaurants. I had favorites at each restaurant and never deviated in my order. Paisan's (an Italian restaurant on Colfax) was the wide spaghetti with meatballs. Village Inn was the barbecue, bacon and cheese chicken sandwich with fries for lunch or dinner, french toast and hot cocoa for breakfast. La Bola was the chicken chimichanga. There was a Domino's Pizza around the corner from our house, so we had plenty pizza.

At home, our fare was pretty simple. I remember really liking braunschweiger sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise.  I would not eat whole wheat bread. No way. My mom always bought a loaf of Roman Meal bread for herself -- that's what she had eaten growing up. Another regular meal was tuna fish tacos, which was simply canned tuna with melted cheddar cheese made in the microwave. My mom made spaghetti with meat sauce quite often, which I detested (those noodles were terrible compared to that freshly-made pasta at Paisan's). A favorite meal was Fettucine Alfredo, made from a mix. My parents would kick it up a notch by adding shrimp (which my sister would hoard before passing the bowl to the next person at the table). We ate very little in terms of vegetables. Dad hated them.

I loved to "cook" as a child. When I say "cook" I really mean "bake." I was about seven or eight years old when I made my way around the kitchen. My favorite thing to make was a brownie recipe out of my mother's USDA cookbook. It called for shortening. We went through that stuff like gangbusters, because I made those brownies all the time. Maybe once a week.

I remember feeling pretty sad for my friends, because their parents seemed overly concerned with making them eat "healthy food." I remember walking to the bus stop with a friend who had to pack her own lunch (she was one of three kids at the time), and her mom had strict rules that she have a fruit or vegetable in her lunch box. I don't remember any rules like that for me -- and most of the time I did not pack a lunch, unless Spooky Spaghetti was on the menu (I swear one time mine had a maggot in it). I liked many of the school lunches, and I particularly liked the chocolate milk (If you don't want your milk, I'll drink it for you).

We didn't have candy around the house. And we very rarely had pre-made cookies or desserts in the house. The only sugary cereal we ever had were Golden Grahams, and those were an occasional treat. There was no alcohol, either, and my parents, at that time, did not drink. They were teetotalers; their fathers had both been alcoholics.

We didn't play outside much; I grew up in a house with a small yard near a busy one-way street, surrounded by rentals. We watched a lot of television. Many of my friends' television time was limited.

I was in ballet class until I was about eight years old. It was not too long before I noticed I looked different than the other girls. I remember the dance teacher complaining that I would not suck in my "tummy."

In first grade, I got glasses. I was the only kid with glasses, until junior high, when I had a quick relationship with the other kid with glasses.

When my teeth came in, I was missing a central lower incisor.  I never did get lower wisdom teeth.

I sucked my thumb until I was eight, so we always blamed my giant overbite on that.

I was the first girl to get breasts in the fifth grade. I remember being singled out during P.E. that year, being told that I was overweight. I probably went home and made a pan of brownies after school that day.

My sister was always thin. She still is. She ate all the shrimp. I ate all the brownies.

Genetics, my arse.