One of the insurance plans through MESSA that every union I know pushes is the short-term and long-term disability insurance. Considering my health history, I always signed up for it. I was always told about how easy the program is, how helpful it is, and how really every teacher should get it. I believed that.
The Reality: yes, short-term disability is rather easy to get and maintain, and it's super helpful. Long-term disability, on the other hand, is a nightmare. Despite what MESSA says and promises, their overarching goal is to get as many teachers off the long-term disability as possible. This is mainly due to their underwriter, Cigna.
See, MESSA's disability insurance plan is underwritten by Cigna, which means that Cigna is really in charge. Now, MESSA's reps will tell you that they have final say over whether or not to keep a client on the long-term disability plan, but the reality is, they just don't question Cigna often at all. Cigna is known in the medical community as one of the more evil insurance companies, so this situation is definitely not in a teacher's best interest.
When you apply for either form of disability, MESSA requires a mountain of documentation. Every medical provider you have seen, including massage therapists and chiropractors, must turn over their entire file on you with visit notes included. MESSA can request (highly recommend and pay for) specific tests and more as well. In all reality, the point of the documentation, at least in Cigna's eyes, is to find something, anything, that can make their case that you're not disabled. Given that they review your case every three to six months, that's many times in which you can get denied your insurance benefit that you paid for.
If you end up on long-term disability, MESSA requires you to apply for SSDI (the federal disability program). They pay for the advocate (Carl isn't really a lawyer, but he's an amazing lay advocate with a phenomenal office), and when you get approved, MESSA deducts what you get from SSDI from your disability check from them, which is fair. Since the process takes so long, you end up getting back pay since SSDI is retroactive to the date the judge says it starts, and MESSA takes almost all of that.
My Advice: After everything I went through with MESSA, the best advice I can give you is to sign up for the disability insurance if you're planning to get pregnant any time soon or know you need to be out for a short time due to a surgery of some kind. If those don't apply to you, take the money you would pay for that plan, and put it in a savings account you don't touch. Buy CDs, and keep them rolling over. Don't plan on the long-term disability benefit to be there. Even if you do pay for the benefit, doing this is still smart.
My story: My doctor finally convinced me that I needed to go on medical leave. I applied for and qualified for short-term disability, and that process, while onerous for someone who was quite ill, wasn't horrible. Once that ran out and I was switched to long-term disability, that's when things got awful. I was approved, then I was denied, then I had to fight that, I won it back, and then six months later, they bumped me off again by misreading the same document they'd misread the last time and putting too much evidence on one test that was done by someone who admitted at the time she really didn't know what she was doing (which I documented and explained several times). If I'd had the money to get that test re-done, I would have and would have fought for my benefit, but I didn't, and so I lost my benefit due to a nurse at Cigna misreading my file. When I lost my long-term benefit, I lost my MESSA health insurance, too.
I ended up qualifying for SSDI, though, using the same documentation that Cigna and MESSA said proved I could be an elementary teacher (I taught high school and middle school) or a correspondence teacher. MESSA has definitely taken a massive chunk of the retroactive pay, but at least it means I'm done with them.
SSDI is nowhere near the monthly benefit that the MESSA disability benefit is, and our family finances have taken a severe hit. Sadly, that's just the way it is, so it's going to take us a long time to dig out of this hole.
Bottom line: Don't depend on MESSA to be there for you. Don't listen to what they say: watch what they do and what they allow Cigna to do for them. Set money aside, any money, anything you can, so that you have a rainy day fund in case you get really sick from the job. Don't do what I did and trust that MESSA will always have your back.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Monday, May 6, 2019
Why I Garden, or, How We Try to Survive with High Food Prices
About a year ago, I lost my long-term disability benefit (due to shady practices, but I digress), and when my daughter turned 18 in the same month, our family income went down by a huge amount. We still have two teen boys living at home (with the possibility of both of them on the high school swim team next year!), so our food budget couldn't take much of a hit compared to all the other areas of the budget we could cut or pare down.
Or so I thought.
I had been a careful shopper for years (being a single parent will do that to you), but we'd gotten into some bad habits, and there were other things I just hadn't thought of with my disability. Now that I've finally qualified for my social security disability benefit, we will finally be able to pay some bills that we haven't been able to (praises be!), but things will still be tight. Here are some things I've learned in the last year on how to survive with the high (and likely going higher) food prices.
1. Utilize that kitchen!
If you have a kitchen and, even better, a pantry area, the best way to start is to really evaluate it (I know, in all that magical spare time you have, but hear me out). Stand in the middle and think about the tools you have, the ones you actually use, and if you can move things around to have even more food storage. Do the same with the fridge (with kids, I have to do this every few months, to be honest). Do the same with the freezer. Can you get a deep freezer? Is even a small one possible? If you have a pantry area (even if it's just some shelves in the basement, like ours), take a good look there.
Then, once you've looked it all over and have a better plan in mind for use, take out everything you don't use, is expired, you don't like, doesn't bring you joy, and start a list of tools you need for cooking and prepping your own food. Now, if you do use it but not often, can it go anywhere else to make room for a more needed item or food? Don't throw out your grill tools in January is all I'm saying. Keep in mind that the more specialized a tool, chances are, the less you will use it. The more uses a tool has, the more likely you are to need it in an easy-to-get-to spot.
The idea here is that you (and other family members) are going to be cooking more. You need an optimal space for both food storage and food prep. You need good tools that will survive much use (if you can afford them at all, which is often not the case these days, but keep an eye out at estate sales, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and more). Anything you don't use (that omelet maker from college, say), sell it.
1a. Make your own!
The point of having a good working kitchen is to make as much of your own food as possible. This means you have to actually cook. Figure out how many fast food meals or restaurant meals you can actually afford, and keep that limit tight. Cook the rest of the time (or, really, all the time). Cook in large batches, and then freeze or can the rest. Use that crockpot at least once a week. If you have an Instant Pot, get that thing out and working at least a couple of days a week. Get on Pinterest for really good recipes and meal ideas. Sheet pan suppers, casseroles, grilling, they all can really help cut your food budget.
If time is the real problem in cooking, get the others in the family involved. There is nothing wrong with a middle school or high school aged kid doing at least one dinner a week for the family. It's a good survival skill.
For example, I bake my own sourdough bread. I have the time to do it in the oven, but if I didn't, I'd use a bread machine. I can get 2+ loaves out of a five pound bag of flour (often goes for $3.50 a bag here), and since I grow my own sourdough starter (just flour and water and wild yeasts picked up along the way) and have water and salt on hand, I can make bread for us a lot cheaper than a comparable loaf would cost even at Aldi. We tend to go through 1-2 loaves a week, and those are my double-sized loaves, so we really do go through a lot of bread. Flour also keeps really well in the freezer, so when it goes on sale, I make sure to stock up. I mostly do it for health reasons, but it's definitely been a boost to the overall food budget, too.
There's a simple joy that comes from making it all yourself, and this way, you know exactly what your family is eating and how much everything costs.
2. Plan those meals!
For years, I felt that meal planning just wasn't realistic for us. What if I was in a fibromyalgia flare, what if the kids had a thing they hadn't told me about, what if we all really wanted pizza... I admit now that I was entirely and thoroughly wrong. Meal planning is critical for keeping food costs down.
I've tried a few ways to do it, and what I've found works best for our family is the monthly meal plan. Each day of the week has a theme. I'm thinking of changing those, but for now they are: Meat Monday, Taco Tuesday, Fish/Veggie Wednesday, Leftovers Thursday, Italian Friday, Leftovers Saturday, Big Cook Sunday. So, at the end of the month, I go through the pantry, the kitchen, the fridge, and the freezer to see what I still have that needs using up. Then, I get out my cookbooks and my iPad for Pinterest and saved recipes, and I plan them by the themes right on down the line. I also make sure to check the calendar for nights when I'll need to use the crockpot or whatever. Then, once that's done, I add all the ingredients that we need to buy to our shared grocery lists on Trello. Since we get most of our money at the beginning of the month, that makes it easier to get to the three main places we shop for food and house stuff.
**Side note: Trello is a wonderful app for a busy family! My husband and I use it, first and foremost for managing grocery lists, but it's also helpful for sharing to-do lists for around the house and more. If you haven't looked at it, give it a try. Best app I've found for managing all the grocery and market shopping.**
Lastly, make sure to put in the plan the occasional pizza night or special treat. Put it in the budget, and keep that money aside. There are times when you just need a cheap Costco pizza or two because all the best laid plans have come crashing down or whatever.
3. Know your prices!
It is really important to know where to get your food for the best prices. It's also important to not spend every waking minute tracking down a sale and wasting gas to do so. We have pared down the vast majority of our shopping to three stores, and what we get there is pretty consistent, so we know the prices. We primarily shop at Aldi (if you haven't tried Aldi yet, you really should!), Costco, and a local market that has the best meat at the best prices (Kalamazoo Meat Depot!). We also have a few local orchards, markets, and stores we hit, but they aren't the top priority like the other three are.
Before shopping, check fliers to see what the loss leaders are. If chicken is on sale for a good price at one store, don't buy it anywhere else, just there, and adjust any meal plan accordingly. That said, don't waste money on something just because it's on sale. If your family doesn't like it, then it isn't worth the money at any cost. For example, today, Aldi had frozen turkey breasts on sale, and I almost got one. That's a lot of meat for a decent price. Then I remembered that, the last time I made one, the boys didn't really like it, and I ended up having meat left over. Same with certain veggies. I don't need leftovers I have to figure out magic with because no one likes what I bought. So, know your family, too, and be honest about what they will and won't eat.
4. Grow your own!
My husband and I have made it a priority this year to grow enough food to feed our family to the absolute best of our ability. We have reclaimed landscaped garden beds and are in the process of getting them ready for planting (which will be Memorial Day weekend for most of the plants, earlier for some, later for others). This means moving plants, adding to the soil, getting the hay for mulch ready, growing seedlings, and all the rest, and to be honest, I really can't do as much of that as I'd like due to my pain levels, but my husband is able to do a lot of it. Once planting starts seriously happening, that means getting help, following the garden plans, and making sure not to waste all the time, money, and effort by not taking care of the plants once they're in the ground. It also means planning what to do with all we harvest so there's no waste.
I will admit, I do like gardening, though I realize not everyone does. Many people have done the math, though, and in the end, it's still cheaper to grow your own when compared to buying a comparable product. Growing your own fruits and veggies in a sustainable, organic manner is almost always cheaper, though there are some up-front costs.
If you don't have much space, even just growing your own herbs in a windowsill makes a big difference to the taste and quality of your food. Growing in containers in small spaces can really cut down on the food bill. If you can't grow your own, then figure out the cheapest places to buy produce, and don't be scared to hit up farmers and people with big gardens. See if you can exchange labor for food, join a CSA, or help out in any way.
5. Cut down on food waste!
This is a big one for our family. Kids leave food out, no one eats up the leftovers, we forget about the zucchini in the fridge until it rots, you name it. I have found a few things help with this, though, and we've been cutting down on our food waste quite a bit as the year has progressed.
Or so I thought.
I had been a careful shopper for years (being a single parent will do that to you), but we'd gotten into some bad habits, and there were other things I just hadn't thought of with my disability. Now that I've finally qualified for my social security disability benefit, we will finally be able to pay some bills that we haven't been able to (praises be!), but things will still be tight. Here are some things I've learned in the last year on how to survive with the high (and likely going higher) food prices.
1. Utilize that kitchen!
If you have a kitchen and, even better, a pantry area, the best way to start is to really evaluate it (I know, in all that magical spare time you have, but hear me out). Stand in the middle and think about the tools you have, the ones you actually use, and if you can move things around to have even more food storage. Do the same with the fridge (with kids, I have to do this every few months, to be honest). Do the same with the freezer. Can you get a deep freezer? Is even a small one possible? If you have a pantry area (even if it's just some shelves in the basement, like ours), take a good look there.
Then, once you've looked it all over and have a better plan in mind for use, take out everything you don't use, is expired, you don't like, doesn't bring you joy, and start a list of tools you need for cooking and prepping your own food. Now, if you do use it but not often, can it go anywhere else to make room for a more needed item or food? Don't throw out your grill tools in January is all I'm saying. Keep in mind that the more specialized a tool, chances are, the less you will use it. The more uses a tool has, the more likely you are to need it in an easy-to-get-to spot.
The idea here is that you (and other family members) are going to be cooking more. You need an optimal space for both food storage and food prep. You need good tools that will survive much use (if you can afford them at all, which is often not the case these days, but keep an eye out at estate sales, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and more). Anything you don't use (that omelet maker from college, say), sell it.
1a. Make your own!
The point of having a good working kitchen is to make as much of your own food as possible. This means you have to actually cook. Figure out how many fast food meals or restaurant meals you can actually afford, and keep that limit tight. Cook the rest of the time (or, really, all the time). Cook in large batches, and then freeze or can the rest. Use that crockpot at least once a week. If you have an Instant Pot, get that thing out and working at least a couple of days a week. Get on Pinterest for really good recipes and meal ideas. Sheet pan suppers, casseroles, grilling, they all can really help cut your food budget.
If time is the real problem in cooking, get the others in the family involved. There is nothing wrong with a middle school or high school aged kid doing at least one dinner a week for the family. It's a good survival skill.
For example, I bake my own sourdough bread. I have the time to do it in the oven, but if I didn't, I'd use a bread machine. I can get 2+ loaves out of a five pound bag of flour (often goes for $3.50 a bag here), and since I grow my own sourdough starter (just flour and water and wild yeasts picked up along the way) and have water and salt on hand, I can make bread for us a lot cheaper than a comparable loaf would cost even at Aldi. We tend to go through 1-2 loaves a week, and those are my double-sized loaves, so we really do go through a lot of bread. Flour also keeps really well in the freezer, so when it goes on sale, I make sure to stock up. I mostly do it for health reasons, but it's definitely been a boost to the overall food budget, too.
There's a simple joy that comes from making it all yourself, and this way, you know exactly what your family is eating and how much everything costs.
2. Plan those meals!
For years, I felt that meal planning just wasn't realistic for us. What if I was in a fibromyalgia flare, what if the kids had a thing they hadn't told me about, what if we all really wanted pizza... I admit now that I was entirely and thoroughly wrong. Meal planning is critical for keeping food costs down.
I've tried a few ways to do it, and what I've found works best for our family is the monthly meal plan. Each day of the week has a theme. I'm thinking of changing those, but for now they are: Meat Monday, Taco Tuesday, Fish/Veggie Wednesday, Leftovers Thursday, Italian Friday, Leftovers Saturday, Big Cook Sunday. So, at the end of the month, I go through the pantry, the kitchen, the fridge, and the freezer to see what I still have that needs using up. Then, I get out my cookbooks and my iPad for Pinterest and saved recipes, and I plan them by the themes right on down the line. I also make sure to check the calendar for nights when I'll need to use the crockpot or whatever. Then, once that's done, I add all the ingredients that we need to buy to our shared grocery lists on Trello. Since we get most of our money at the beginning of the month, that makes it easier to get to the three main places we shop for food and house stuff.
**Side note: Trello is a wonderful app for a busy family! My husband and I use it, first and foremost for managing grocery lists, but it's also helpful for sharing to-do lists for around the house and more. If you haven't looked at it, give it a try. Best app I've found for managing all the grocery and market shopping.**
Lastly, make sure to put in the plan the occasional pizza night or special treat. Put it in the budget, and keep that money aside. There are times when you just need a cheap Costco pizza or two because all the best laid plans have come crashing down or whatever.
3. Know your prices!
It is really important to know where to get your food for the best prices. It's also important to not spend every waking minute tracking down a sale and wasting gas to do so. We have pared down the vast majority of our shopping to three stores, and what we get there is pretty consistent, so we know the prices. We primarily shop at Aldi (if you haven't tried Aldi yet, you really should!), Costco, and a local market that has the best meat at the best prices (Kalamazoo Meat Depot!). We also have a few local orchards, markets, and stores we hit, but they aren't the top priority like the other three are.
Before shopping, check fliers to see what the loss leaders are. If chicken is on sale for a good price at one store, don't buy it anywhere else, just there, and adjust any meal plan accordingly. That said, don't waste money on something just because it's on sale. If your family doesn't like it, then it isn't worth the money at any cost. For example, today, Aldi had frozen turkey breasts on sale, and I almost got one. That's a lot of meat for a decent price. Then I remembered that, the last time I made one, the boys didn't really like it, and I ended up having meat left over. Same with certain veggies. I don't need leftovers I have to figure out magic with because no one likes what I bought. So, know your family, too, and be honest about what they will and won't eat.
4. Grow your own!
My husband and I have made it a priority this year to grow enough food to feed our family to the absolute best of our ability. We have reclaimed landscaped garden beds and are in the process of getting them ready for planting (which will be Memorial Day weekend for most of the plants, earlier for some, later for others). This means moving plants, adding to the soil, getting the hay for mulch ready, growing seedlings, and all the rest, and to be honest, I really can't do as much of that as I'd like due to my pain levels, but my husband is able to do a lot of it. Once planting starts seriously happening, that means getting help, following the garden plans, and making sure not to waste all the time, money, and effort by not taking care of the plants once they're in the ground. It also means planning what to do with all we harvest so there's no waste.
I will admit, I do like gardening, though I realize not everyone does. Many people have done the math, though, and in the end, it's still cheaper to grow your own when compared to buying a comparable product. Growing your own fruits and veggies in a sustainable, organic manner is almost always cheaper, though there are some up-front costs.
If you don't have much space, even just growing your own herbs in a windowsill makes a big difference to the taste and quality of your food. Growing in containers in small spaces can really cut down on the food bill. If you can't grow your own, then figure out the cheapest places to buy produce, and don't be scared to hit up farmers and people with big gardens. See if you can exchange labor for food, join a CSA, or help out in any way.
5. Cut down on food waste!
This is a big one for our family. Kids leave food out, no one eats up the leftovers, we forget about the zucchini in the fridge until it rots, you name it. I have found a few things help with this, though, and we've been cutting down on our food waste quite a bit as the year has progressed.
- Enforce leftover nights. Leftovers are a fact of life when cooking, and they can't just get thrown out (that's money you're throwing out!). We have two leftover times built into our food plan each week for this very reason, and it's been helping.
- Enforce the meal plan. Just because the kids are hungry now while you're out and about doesn't mean you guys stop for fast food. Enforce the meal plan, and you're more likely to use up what you've already bought.
- The adults need to pack at-work lunches starting with the leftovers first. Kids often don't have good ways to heat up food at school, but if you have a fridge and a microwave at work, then you can heat up leftovers.
- Have a bin in your fridge where all leftovers go, and put it front and center. That way, it's harder to say you didn't see them at all.
- Lastly, try to keep meat and/or dairy-based leftovers separate from everything else. This way, if those go bad, they go in the trash but the veggie-based leftovers can go in the compost bin.
- Compost! We started getting serious this last winter about composting everything we can, even paper products and floor sweepings, and it's amazing how much less trash we produce and how much good soil we're creating for the garden. Seriously, it doesn't hurt as much to throw out that nasty zucchini if I know that it's going to save me money in compost and fertilizer later.
6. Put it up!
Canning, freezing, and dehydrating are all important tools for keeping food costs down. When tomatoes come in, putting them up (canning, freezing, and/or dehydrating) when they are ripe and at their best will keep you from buying tomatoes later in the year when they cost more and don't taste as good. Doing freezer dump meals when you're able to buy in bulk, freezing up leftover sauces, or freezing the produce from your own garden all save money, too. Growing your own herbs and drying them or using them to make flavored oils is vastly cheaper than buying those, even on sale.
If you are able to, getting fresh produce or meats in bulk really is the cheapest option. You can get a much better price overall buying a whole chicken than the cut up pieces, and that is true for pork and beef as well.
When it comes to canning, be sure to follow safe recipes (I love the Blue Ball Canning Book, but there are many, many good, safe resources) and the right canning system. For acidic foods, water bath canning is fine, but for everything else, you'll need a pressure canner. Not to mention good canning jars, which are useful for so many things that I find myself constantly thinking that we need more. While Ball jars are the most common, there are other, cheaper ones out there that are just as good. I personally prefer the kind sold at Big Lots.
7. Evaluate what you eat!
In the end, all of these guidelines don't mean much if you don't at some point sit down and really evaluate what you eat. If you're buying a lot of boxed, prepared things, they seem cheap (Jiffy cornbread, 3 boxes for a dollar!), but in the end, they are almost always more expensive. Sure, frozen pizzas are handy for when you don't feel like cooking or when the kids come home from school starving and all the leftovers got eaten up the night before, but they really are a hit to the bottom line. If you price it out, vegetables are cheaper when fresh, frozen, or canned (check the salt and preservatives on those cans), much cheaper than when they are added in with other stuff to make a prepared freezer dinner or you pay someone else to take those same veggies to make you something in a restaurant.
One of the things my husband and I have found is that, due to budget, we are buying far less from the middle aisles of the grocery stores than we were before and instead are buying more fresh foods and food ingredients to make our own dinners. It's added up to weight loss for him and better GI health for me. It's another reason why I don't see us going back to the old habits or eating out more.
One of the things my husband and I have found is that, due to budget, we are buying far less from the middle aisles of the grocery stores than we were before and instead are buying more fresh foods and food ingredients to make our own dinners. It's added up to weight loss for him and better GI health for me. It's another reason why I don't see us going back to the old habits or eating out more.
Also, small point: as a general rule, the fewer paid hands that touch your food, the cheaper it is. The more meat is cut up, the more it costs. The more food is processed, the higher the cost. If you switch to real foods and cook and bake as a family, it's not just cheaper but also healthier.
As an aside, these are rules that work for us because we have a house with storage, a working kitchen, running water, etc. When we had more money, we got things like a deep freezer, a FoodSaver sealer and the stuff needed for it, a stand mixer (really helps with bread since kneading is hard on me much of the time these days), and kitchen tools for cooking and baking. While I see good deals at estate sales and on FB Marketplace, those don't help if you don't have the money for them or the place to use them. If you are in that situation, please reach out for help. It would be a blessing to people to help you with food, a place to live. If you have reached out and are tired of hearing no and getting smacked in the face, please know that you aren't alone and you shouldn't lose hope. The tide is turning in this country as more of us fight just to survive and are tired of the system being against us. One more call might be all it takes.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Gardening and Medicinal Herbs
This year, my big garden project is adding in a medicinal herb bed (in addition to expanding the gardens and trying to grow enough food for all of us for a year--more on that later). I've gotten to the point in my disability/medical journey that medicines just don't work on me, but herbs seem to help at least some.
In my medicinal herb bed, I'm growing comfrey, fennel, oats (for milky oat and straw), red clover, elderberry, motherwort, sweetgrass (that's for a local tribe, though), plantain, dandelions, garlic, nettles, and borage. The sweetgrass finally got here today, so after that acclimates (and after the snow Saturday night melts on Sunday or Monday), I'll be able to get that in. The red clover and garlic are up, as are some of the oats (I'm thinking the squirrels got to those, so I'll have to plant more seeds). I've been transplanting motherwort I've found around the yard, so I think that will work out, and I even already got a tincture going of the new, young leaves, to see if it helps.
For other herbs, I'm growing bay laurel (for the first time in years--finally found a source in The Grower's Exchange, and I'm so excited!), Roman chamomile, chives, garlic chives, basil, lemon basil, thyme, lemon balm, lavender, green sage, golden sage, catmint, catnip (this one grows wild in the yard), more garlic, oregano, arnica, and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Some are going in the Garden Tower, some in containers I keep by the pool, some in the kitchen garden by the back door, and some in the beds by the pool (more sun there).
This summer, I will be either foraging or going into the garden to get the herbs I need for trying new teas, tinctures, and more. I'm really hopeful that the nettles will help with some stuff, but in reality, this is all fairly new to me. In researching herbs and our family's various issues, I keep finding some that really might help me. Even if it is just a little bit of help, that will be enough for me. I'm still not used to taking tinctures (tend to put them in my water bottle since I don't drink alcohol), so I'm also looking into oxymels and other kinds of herbal mixtures.
As fo growing all our own food, that's a big project in process. I read a few different sites with different recommendations for how much to grow, and then I tweaked them a bit since we don't eat as much salsa, say, as other families. The big job this year, other than expanding the kitchen garden and using the Ruth Stout method on the back garden in hopes we can feed that soil and keep it productive, is going to be putting all the food up and then tracking it. So, I've started a rough spreadsheet (on Google Drive so I can put it in my phone rather than try to remember where I put the garden binder), and I'm starting to get that set. We plan on canning most of it, though a lot of the veggies are better frozen or dried. Between our two dehydrators and our canning operation, we should be good. Putting up the herbs in addition to the usual canning is going to be a real energy drain, but I hope I can get the kids to help even a little.
With the floods in the Midwest this spring and so much going on with global warming messing up the usual patterns, food prices are going to go up. That means we have to grow as much as we can this year and put it all up so we have food available all the time. With my medical issues and inability to take meds, I'm going to be growing and putting up herbs for use all year and doing what I can to get a better handle on this fibromyalgia.
In my medicinal herb bed, I'm growing comfrey, fennel, oats (for milky oat and straw), red clover, elderberry, motherwort, sweetgrass (that's for a local tribe, though), plantain, dandelions, garlic, nettles, and borage. The sweetgrass finally got here today, so after that acclimates (and after the snow Saturday night melts on Sunday or Monday), I'll be able to get that in. The red clover and garlic are up, as are some of the oats (I'm thinking the squirrels got to those, so I'll have to plant more seeds). I've been transplanting motherwort I've found around the yard, so I think that will work out, and I even already got a tincture going of the new, young leaves, to see if it helps.
For other herbs, I'm growing bay laurel (for the first time in years--finally found a source in The Grower's Exchange, and I'm so excited!), Roman chamomile, chives, garlic chives, basil, lemon basil, thyme, lemon balm, lavender, green sage, golden sage, catmint, catnip (this one grows wild in the yard), more garlic, oregano, arnica, and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Some are going in the Garden Tower, some in containers I keep by the pool, some in the kitchen garden by the back door, and some in the beds by the pool (more sun there).
This summer, I will be either foraging or going into the garden to get the herbs I need for trying new teas, tinctures, and more. I'm really hopeful that the nettles will help with some stuff, but in reality, this is all fairly new to me. In researching herbs and our family's various issues, I keep finding some that really might help me. Even if it is just a little bit of help, that will be enough for me. I'm still not used to taking tinctures (tend to put them in my water bottle since I don't drink alcohol), so I'm also looking into oxymels and other kinds of herbal mixtures.
As fo growing all our own food, that's a big project in process. I read a few different sites with different recommendations for how much to grow, and then I tweaked them a bit since we don't eat as much salsa, say, as other families. The big job this year, other than expanding the kitchen garden and using the Ruth Stout method on the back garden in hopes we can feed that soil and keep it productive, is going to be putting all the food up and then tracking it. So, I've started a rough spreadsheet (on Google Drive so I can put it in my phone rather than try to remember where I put the garden binder), and I'm starting to get that set. We plan on canning most of it, though a lot of the veggies are better frozen or dried. Between our two dehydrators and our canning operation, we should be good. Putting up the herbs in addition to the usual canning is going to be a real energy drain, but I hope I can get the kids to help even a little.
With the floods in the Midwest this spring and so much going on with global warming messing up the usual patterns, food prices are going to go up. That means we have to grow as much as we can this year and put it all up so we have food available all the time. With my medical issues and inability to take meds, I'm going to be growing and putting up herbs for use all year and doing what I can to get a better handle on this fibromyalgia.
Monday, March 25, 2019
It's Bread Day, So Let's Talk Sourdough.
I make bread from my sourdough starter once a week, usually on Mondays. So many people act like making bread is really hard or really complicated, but it isn't that complicated, and honestly, with a mixer, it isn't too hard for me with my disability on most days. If it is too difficult that particular day, I wait until the next day in hopes my pain will be better. I use a couple of hacks to make it easier for me with my fibromyalgia, though, which I'm sharing today.
First of all, I stopped trying to make the perfect loaf of bread every time. Seriously. My bread is different every week, either due to using different flours or due to changes in humidity or how long I let it rise or whatever. Since I eyeball so much of this process and wing it, the bread varies a bit. My starter is a wild yeast starter, so that population changes and fluctuates a bit, too. It's okay. The kids still eat it, my husband always loves it, and if you put enough peanut butter on it, it's all good. The bread is fairly forgiving of my pain and disability, and it really doesn't need a ton of manhandling or figuring.
I keep my starter in a quart jar with a plastic top in the fridge most of the time. The fridge doesn't kill the yeast, just slows it way down, which is really handy on conserving spoons (energy in chronic illness talk). I feed it once a week, leave it out long enough for it to settle and get bubbly, and then I put it in the fridge until the next time I need it.
When I feed my starter, I pour it all out of the jar into my Kitchenaid stand mixer bowl. Now, I know most people say never to use a metal bowl for sourdough, but that's because so many bowls used in home kitchens are aluminum and not stainless steel. Or, at least they used to be. Stainless steel does not react with the sourdough, is used in commercial bakeries, and is just fine for using at home. Anyway, I pour it all in, using a favorite silicone scraper to get as much out as possible, and then I use warm water in the sink to rinse out the jar really well and set it out upside down to drain.
When it comes to feeding or baking with sourdough, I have found that adding the liquids first works best. So, when I feed the starter, I add about half a cup of water or so first, mix that in really well so it's uniform with no lumps, and then I add in about a cup of flour. Once that's all mixed in (using my stand mixer on bad days, by hand if I'm doing well enough), I use my Ball jar funnel and fill the starter jar to about the 1.5 cup line or so. That usually leaves me with the amount of starter I need for baking bread.
Quick note on flours: if you're going to get into bread making at all, you'll want a few flours on hand. First, if you want to do a whole wheat bread much of the time, you'll need a good whole wheat flour. I prefer stoneground myself, but honestly, I get whatever's on sale, usually King Arthur. Now, there is some evidence to say that we all should only be using organic flour, and if you can afford it, that's your best option. Our Costco sells a great one about once a year for a few months, a great organic all-purpose flour that makes for a decent bread flour, but really, nothing beats a good bread flour for helping to develop the crumb just right. If your starter seems not to be as bubbly as it should when it's to room temperature and has been sitting out for awhile, then it needs a hit of rye flour. Rye flour has the highest amount of wild yeasts in it, so it gives your starter a boost of more yeasts and different ones. So, I usually keep on hand bread flour, at least one kind of whole wheat flour, organic AP flour, a multigrain flour (if I can find it--often makes a dense, good bread), and some rye flour just in case I need it. There are so many good flours out there these days, and if you can find good prices or have a good bulk buying option, have fun finding what works for you and your family.
After I put the 1.5 cups of starter back in the jar, I am left with enough to start bread. If I have too much, I put a half cup or so in another bowl or jar to use later for English muffins or pancakes or whatever. When I have the energy or the need within a couple of days, I use that up. If I have the energy on bread day, I get that other recipe's poolish going, too.
For my bread, I use this recipe and double it. It has never steered me wrong. I get out my kitchen scale, measure the water into the bowl with the leftover just-fed starter, mix that up thoroughly, then dump the flours on top and lastly the salt. Then, I put it on my mixer for several minutes until it looks about right, and then I put a damp towel on top of the bowl and stick it in my oven with the light on for several hours.
Now, sourdough is a great kind of bread for us disabled types. There's a lot of rest time in between each step, and the most is with the first rise. If I'm struggling by the end of all this, I stick the bowl into the fridge to wait until the next day. If not, I know I'm not baking bread until later that evening, and I usually wait for my second wind around 8 or 9 at night for the rest. It's pretty forgiving stuff.
I stopped doing anything beyond shaping it and letting it rest before baking ages ago. Doing a full second rise and then a third rise just seemed too much, and while it helped with flavor, it didn't do enough to warrant all that extra time and mess. So, I just do a long first rise, dump it on the counter with some flour, knead lightly a few times, form a ball, and stick it in my big glass bowl I've already oiled. Then, if I don't have it in me to bake it right then, I stick that back in the fridge until the next day. If I do, then I put my cast iron pot (with the lid) into the oven, crank it up to 450, and get it good and hot for half an hour. I dump in the dough, use a knife to slash it a bit, pop the lid on, and bake for 30 minutes. Then, I take the lid off and reduce the heat to 425 and bake for another 15 minutes. That's it. I pull it out, put it on a rack to cool, and the family has bread for a few more days.
What's nice is that my husband and my son are both okay with helping, so if I crash after putting it in the oven, they can help with the rest. I really need to teach my kids how to do this over the summer this year so they can take over entirely if needed.
While I don't have a problem with gluten like so many with fibromyalgia do, I have found that my bread is easier on my GI system. It tends to be the only bread I eat. With my soybean allergy, I can't eat most commercial breads anyway. With this bread recipe, I don't have to think about sugars or oils, just flours, salt, and filtered water. It is easier to make and easier on my system. Now that it's a part of my weekly routine, I know I almost always have a loaf of bread I can eat sitting on the bread board in my kitchen. Unless my son eats half a loaf after swim practice.
First of all, I stopped trying to make the perfect loaf of bread every time. Seriously. My bread is different every week, either due to using different flours or due to changes in humidity or how long I let it rise or whatever. Since I eyeball so much of this process and wing it, the bread varies a bit. My starter is a wild yeast starter, so that population changes and fluctuates a bit, too. It's okay. The kids still eat it, my husband always loves it, and if you put enough peanut butter on it, it's all good. The bread is fairly forgiving of my pain and disability, and it really doesn't need a ton of manhandling or figuring.
I keep my starter in a quart jar with a plastic top in the fridge most of the time. The fridge doesn't kill the yeast, just slows it way down, which is really handy on conserving spoons (energy in chronic illness talk). I feed it once a week, leave it out long enough for it to settle and get bubbly, and then I put it in the fridge until the next time I need it.
When I feed my starter, I pour it all out of the jar into my Kitchenaid stand mixer bowl. Now, I know most people say never to use a metal bowl for sourdough, but that's because so many bowls used in home kitchens are aluminum and not stainless steel. Or, at least they used to be. Stainless steel does not react with the sourdough, is used in commercial bakeries, and is just fine for using at home. Anyway, I pour it all in, using a favorite silicone scraper to get as much out as possible, and then I use warm water in the sink to rinse out the jar really well and set it out upside down to drain.
When it comes to feeding or baking with sourdough, I have found that adding the liquids first works best. So, when I feed the starter, I add about half a cup of water or so first, mix that in really well so it's uniform with no lumps, and then I add in about a cup of flour. Once that's all mixed in (using my stand mixer on bad days, by hand if I'm doing well enough), I use my Ball jar funnel and fill the starter jar to about the 1.5 cup line or so. That usually leaves me with the amount of starter I need for baking bread.
Quick note on flours: if you're going to get into bread making at all, you'll want a few flours on hand. First, if you want to do a whole wheat bread much of the time, you'll need a good whole wheat flour. I prefer stoneground myself, but honestly, I get whatever's on sale, usually King Arthur. Now, there is some evidence to say that we all should only be using organic flour, and if you can afford it, that's your best option. Our Costco sells a great one about once a year for a few months, a great organic all-purpose flour that makes for a decent bread flour, but really, nothing beats a good bread flour for helping to develop the crumb just right. If your starter seems not to be as bubbly as it should when it's to room temperature and has been sitting out for awhile, then it needs a hit of rye flour. Rye flour has the highest amount of wild yeasts in it, so it gives your starter a boost of more yeasts and different ones. So, I usually keep on hand bread flour, at least one kind of whole wheat flour, organic AP flour, a multigrain flour (if I can find it--often makes a dense, good bread), and some rye flour just in case I need it. There are so many good flours out there these days, and if you can find good prices or have a good bulk buying option, have fun finding what works for you and your family.
After I put the 1.5 cups of starter back in the jar, I am left with enough to start bread. If I have too much, I put a half cup or so in another bowl or jar to use later for English muffins or pancakes or whatever. When I have the energy or the need within a couple of days, I use that up. If I have the energy on bread day, I get that other recipe's poolish going, too.
For my bread, I use this recipe and double it. It has never steered me wrong. I get out my kitchen scale, measure the water into the bowl with the leftover just-fed starter, mix that up thoroughly, then dump the flours on top and lastly the salt. Then, I put it on my mixer for several minutes until it looks about right, and then I put a damp towel on top of the bowl and stick it in my oven with the light on for several hours.
Now, sourdough is a great kind of bread for us disabled types. There's a lot of rest time in between each step, and the most is with the first rise. If I'm struggling by the end of all this, I stick the bowl into the fridge to wait until the next day. If not, I know I'm not baking bread until later that evening, and I usually wait for my second wind around 8 or 9 at night for the rest. It's pretty forgiving stuff.
I stopped doing anything beyond shaping it and letting it rest before baking ages ago. Doing a full second rise and then a third rise just seemed too much, and while it helped with flavor, it didn't do enough to warrant all that extra time and mess. So, I just do a long first rise, dump it on the counter with some flour, knead lightly a few times, form a ball, and stick it in my big glass bowl I've already oiled. Then, if I don't have it in me to bake it right then, I stick that back in the fridge until the next day. If I do, then I put my cast iron pot (with the lid) into the oven, crank it up to 450, and get it good and hot for half an hour. I dump in the dough, use a knife to slash it a bit, pop the lid on, and bake for 30 minutes. Then, I take the lid off and reduce the heat to 425 and bake for another 15 minutes. That's it. I pull it out, put it on a rack to cool, and the family has bread for a few more days.
What's nice is that my husband and my son are both okay with helping, so if I crash after putting it in the oven, they can help with the rest. I really need to teach my kids how to do this over the summer this year so they can take over entirely if needed.
While I don't have a problem with gluten like so many with fibromyalgia do, I have found that my bread is easier on my GI system. It tends to be the only bread I eat. With my soybean allergy, I can't eat most commercial breads anyway. With this bread recipe, I don't have to think about sugars or oils, just flours, salt, and filtered water. It is easier to make and easier on my system. Now that it's a part of my weekly routine, I know I almost always have a loaf of bread I can eat sitting on the bread board in my kitchen. Unless my son eats half a loaf after swim practice.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Baby Steps Toward Sustainability
It's been a rough couple of weeks around here. Massive weather swings and strong storms have taken me out much of the time with pain, and all three kids have been sick but all with different things. This has definitely messed up my plans for spring so far, that's for sure.
Spring has been a bit slow to come this year, and we're all getting grumpy about it. Then again, I remind myself of how things were when I was a kid, and March definitely was not a true spring month. More like a late, grumpy winter spitting snow and ice at random. Same with April.
Instead of working in the yard (which has only finally lost the last bit of snow yesterday), I've turned my attention to indoor issues with sustainability as well as more detailed garden planning. One of the things that has been bothering me is the paper trash.
Recently, my husband and I decided to add in paper trash to the composter (our large, used turning bin that really does a nice job). I'd been reading up on Pinterest on what can go into a composter from household trash, and it's a lot. Way more than we'd been saving. So, I put bags in the bathroom, bedrooms, and next to the kitchen trash with signs saying what to put in there. While getting the kids to put the paper trash in the compost bags is hit or miss, Robert and I have been getting much better at it. In doing so, he and I have been floored at just how much of our trash is compostable and how much waste we have been producing. And here we'd been happy that we'd cut down on our waste... Seriously, it's rather something to go through a trash bag and pull out everything that you can put in the composter instead. For the bathroom trash, it's about half. Half! It's amazing how much kleenex we've gone through this winter alone.
So, after seeing how many cotton rounds I was going through, I ran across a pattern for something similar on Pinterest. I made one, and in a quick trial for my homemade toner (witch hazel tincture using lemon balm and some other herbs with a dash of tea tree oil), I was really impressed with how well it worked.
So, this weekend when the pain was bad but okay enough for fairly mindless work, I made ten of these to use instead of cotton rounds. I also used this from Pinterest as a base idea to make my own makeup remover solution from my lemon balm witch hazel tincture and got reusable microfiber rounds from Dollar Tree.
A trial of that tonight showed it to be quite the success! Moreover, the round washed right out in the sink with a bit of soap, so that's drying in the used wipes bin.
With my son having a GI virus this weekend, the homemade antiseptic solution and reusable wipes (like these only blue, and I cut them down into fourths) have been getting quite the workout. I have found that the solution really does dry out my hands quite a bit, so next time, I'm using gloves. Still, it's nice knowing that the alcohol in the solution kills whatever has gotten him sick so the rest of us don't get it.
Eventually, I will need to replace the microfiber and synthetic cloths with all cotton in order to eliminate the microfiber waste in the water and all, but this is a first step, a baby step. Next, I need to make more handkerchiefs for everyone, though the used kleenexes will definitely be put to use in the composter.
While the paper waste is something the worms like, it isn't good for us to use so much of it. Paper towels, kleenex, paper napkins, cotton rounds, and q-tips alone filled two paper grocery bags for the composter today, and that's just in the last few weeks. So much waste, and this is an area we can cut down in. Now if I can just get the gardens planned out and start working in those to get them ready for planting...
Spring has been a bit slow to come this year, and we're all getting grumpy about it. Then again, I remind myself of how things were when I was a kid, and March definitely was not a true spring month. More like a late, grumpy winter spitting snow and ice at random. Same with April.
Instead of working in the yard (which has only finally lost the last bit of snow yesterday), I've turned my attention to indoor issues with sustainability as well as more detailed garden planning. One of the things that has been bothering me is the paper trash.
Recently, my husband and I decided to add in paper trash to the composter (our large, used turning bin that really does a nice job). I'd been reading up on Pinterest on what can go into a composter from household trash, and it's a lot. Way more than we'd been saving. So, I put bags in the bathroom, bedrooms, and next to the kitchen trash with signs saying what to put in there. While getting the kids to put the paper trash in the compost bags is hit or miss, Robert and I have been getting much better at it. In doing so, he and I have been floored at just how much of our trash is compostable and how much waste we have been producing. And here we'd been happy that we'd cut down on our waste... Seriously, it's rather something to go through a trash bag and pull out everything that you can put in the composter instead. For the bathroom trash, it's about half. Half! It's amazing how much kleenex we've gone through this winter alone.
So, after seeing how many cotton rounds I was going through, I ran across a pattern for something similar on Pinterest. I made one, and in a quick trial for my homemade toner (witch hazel tincture using lemon balm and some other herbs with a dash of tea tree oil), I was really impressed with how well it worked.
With my son having a GI virus this weekend, the homemade antiseptic solution and reusable wipes (like these only blue, and I cut them down into fourths) have been getting quite the workout. I have found that the solution really does dry out my hands quite a bit, so next time, I'm using gloves. Still, it's nice knowing that the alcohol in the solution kills whatever has gotten him sick so the rest of us don't get it.
Eventually, I will need to replace the microfiber and synthetic cloths with all cotton in order to eliminate the microfiber waste in the water and all, but this is a first step, a baby step. Next, I need to make more handkerchiefs for everyone, though the used kleenexes will definitely be put to use in the composter.
While the paper waste is something the worms like, it isn't good for us to use so much of it. Paper towels, kleenex, paper napkins, cotton rounds, and q-tips alone filled two paper grocery bags for the composter today, and that's just in the last few weeks. So much waste, and this is an area we can cut down in. Now if I can just get the gardens planned out and start working in those to get them ready for planting...
Monday, February 18, 2019
Sustainability and Accessibility
We need to have an honest talk about the sustainability and homesteading movements when it comes to accessibility and equity.
I've been doing a lot of reading and research lately into sustainability and homesteading, mostly because, as a disabled stay-at-home mom, I am trying to find ways to cheaply feed and care for my family. I've watched many YouTube videos, read many blogs, read through several books on permaculture and homesteading, and I think I've come up with some good ideas on how to change our gardens this year and make them more prolific yet easier overall to manage (in particular, implementing the Ruth Stout method and square foot gardening).
One thing I have not seen in all my research is any kind of discussion on how to do this as a disabled person. I've seen a few videos and blog posts about homesteading in older age, but even those really did not discuss the elephant in the room: disability. How can we convince everyone to follow the permaculture philosophy or employ sustainable practices in their homes if we don't make sure everyone has a fair and equitable chance to do so?
I'm reminded of the plastic straw debate I saw raging on social media this last year. So many people exhorted one and all to give up plastic straws, some places even passed laws banning them, and everyone shared sad pictures of ocean creatures suffering from plastic straw debris. Thing is, the disabled community online argued against it. Some even wrote beautiful treatises explaining how there really were no good options for them and how they and others were treated online when they spoke up and said that they should be able to use what they need in a fair, equitable manner. While plastic straws aren't sustainable, they are desperately needed by many in the disabled community (not to mention children and people with dental issues). Shaming someone who needs a plastic straw because that's the only decent option available to them may make a sustainability advocate feel good, but all it does is make the other person arguing for accessibility feel like they don't matter.
I find myself dealing with this as I watch gardening videos and think of how I would be able to get around a particular garden, how I wouldn't be able to create that garden in the first place due to my particular disability issues, and how much physical labor is really involved for so many gardening practices. While I have found raised beds that work with wheelchairs, for example, they're horribly expensive, which means they're out of the reach of most disabled people.
I find myself wondering, as I watch homesteading and sustainability videos or read more blog posts and stuff on Pinterest, if I can even do some of the things I see. I know from personal experience that I cannot can food by myself. I don't care if it's a simple job or one that is more labor intensive (I'm looking at you, tomatoes and apple pie filling!), canning takes more than I have most days, which means I would only be able to do it on the weekend with my husband's help or maybe for a couple of hours with my mom or my son. Before I can even get to that point and put up the food, I have to harvest, often daily. That's often not easy for me, especially if a storm is coming, but I have to harvest or the food we've worked so hard to grow will go bad or be lost.
For example, just getting food ready for the week takes a lot of energy I don't always have. My stepson does better if I have after-school snack options already prepped and packaged for him every week. That means that I have to stand in the kitchen and cut and weigh and put in bags (that I've had to wash and dry so as to save the cost of new snack bags, not to mention the environment) first this thing, then that thing, every week. Some Sundays, I really struggle to make that happen. Buying foods in bulk is another example. Once we get the food home, I have to get the FoodSaver out, weigh out everything, put it in bags, seal each bag, and then carry it to the deep freezer (down a few steps). My husband is really good at helping me (or even just taking over and doing it), but I often end up going to the store during the day when he's at work and then am stuck back at home alone dividing, bagging, and getting everything to a usable level. Sure, it's all much cheaper than buying so-called convenience foods, and it's not like we have a ton of money lying around to burn, but there's still a cost in terms of time and personal energy.
I guess that's what I'd like to see from the sustainability/environmental movement: an acknowledgment that not everyone has the time or energy or health or whatever to do all of what they suggest. I know that, per permaculture and homesteading best practices, we should raise animals, but honestly, I grew up doing that and know just how hard it really is. I don't have it in me these days to wrangle a goat who doesn't want to go in the pen or chase after chickens to get them in the roost at night. So, what other options are there? What equitable, accessible options are there for those of us who need to do things more cheaply and better for the environment? Please think of us disabled people, too, when you come up with your practices and philosophies.
If you have any good ideas, please post them in the comments! Let's all help each other out!
I've been doing a lot of reading and research lately into sustainability and homesteading, mostly because, as a disabled stay-at-home mom, I am trying to find ways to cheaply feed and care for my family. I've watched many YouTube videos, read many blogs, read through several books on permaculture and homesteading, and I think I've come up with some good ideas on how to change our gardens this year and make them more prolific yet easier overall to manage (in particular, implementing the Ruth Stout method and square foot gardening).
One thing I have not seen in all my research is any kind of discussion on how to do this as a disabled person. I've seen a few videos and blog posts about homesteading in older age, but even those really did not discuss the elephant in the room: disability. How can we convince everyone to follow the permaculture philosophy or employ sustainable practices in their homes if we don't make sure everyone has a fair and equitable chance to do so?
I'm reminded of the plastic straw debate I saw raging on social media this last year. So many people exhorted one and all to give up plastic straws, some places even passed laws banning them, and everyone shared sad pictures of ocean creatures suffering from plastic straw debris. Thing is, the disabled community online argued against it. Some even wrote beautiful treatises explaining how there really were no good options for them and how they and others were treated online when they spoke up and said that they should be able to use what they need in a fair, equitable manner. While plastic straws aren't sustainable, they are desperately needed by many in the disabled community (not to mention children and people with dental issues). Shaming someone who needs a plastic straw because that's the only decent option available to them may make a sustainability advocate feel good, but all it does is make the other person arguing for accessibility feel like they don't matter.
I find myself dealing with this as I watch gardening videos and think of how I would be able to get around a particular garden, how I wouldn't be able to create that garden in the first place due to my particular disability issues, and how much physical labor is really involved for so many gardening practices. While I have found raised beds that work with wheelchairs, for example, they're horribly expensive, which means they're out of the reach of most disabled people.
I find myself wondering, as I watch homesteading and sustainability videos or read more blog posts and stuff on Pinterest, if I can even do some of the things I see. I know from personal experience that I cannot can food by myself. I don't care if it's a simple job or one that is more labor intensive (I'm looking at you, tomatoes and apple pie filling!), canning takes more than I have most days, which means I would only be able to do it on the weekend with my husband's help or maybe for a couple of hours with my mom or my son. Before I can even get to that point and put up the food, I have to harvest, often daily. That's often not easy for me, especially if a storm is coming, but I have to harvest or the food we've worked so hard to grow will go bad or be lost.
For example, just getting food ready for the week takes a lot of energy I don't always have. My stepson does better if I have after-school snack options already prepped and packaged for him every week. That means that I have to stand in the kitchen and cut and weigh and put in bags (that I've had to wash and dry so as to save the cost of new snack bags, not to mention the environment) first this thing, then that thing, every week. Some Sundays, I really struggle to make that happen. Buying foods in bulk is another example. Once we get the food home, I have to get the FoodSaver out, weigh out everything, put it in bags, seal each bag, and then carry it to the deep freezer (down a few steps). My husband is really good at helping me (or even just taking over and doing it), but I often end up going to the store during the day when he's at work and then am stuck back at home alone dividing, bagging, and getting everything to a usable level. Sure, it's all much cheaper than buying so-called convenience foods, and it's not like we have a ton of money lying around to burn, but there's still a cost in terms of time and personal energy.
I guess that's what I'd like to see from the sustainability/environmental movement: an acknowledgment that not everyone has the time or energy or health or whatever to do all of what they suggest. I know that, per permaculture and homesteading best practices, we should raise animals, but honestly, I grew up doing that and know just how hard it really is. I don't have it in me these days to wrangle a goat who doesn't want to go in the pen or chase after chickens to get them in the roost at night. So, what other options are there? What equitable, accessible options are there for those of us who need to do things more cheaply and better for the environment? Please think of us disabled people, too, when you come up with your practices and philosophies.
If you have any good ideas, please post them in the comments! Let's all help each other out!
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Gratitude Can Be Really Hard Sometimes
On this Sunday after St. Valentine's Day with a month to go before Lent, I've had several reminders that I should be grateful. In reality, I do have much to be grateful for. I have a loving husband, a car that works, a church family that is kind and supportive in many ways, and today, I could walk. Not perfectly, not entirely under my own power, but I could walk.
Ever since the flu shot last December, I have had a hard time walking. I've gotten a little better in the months since, true, but when my fibro pain is bad, the walking thing and weak arms thing gets really bad.
Today, I could walk with my walking stick (that I use instead of a cane since it's a better height for me). When I helped with the Sunday School class, I was able to stand for a few minutes here and there. When I couldn't walk easily at all to get to the Communion rail, a lovely member of our church helped me get there and back. The little Girl Scout who sold me my cookies carried them to my car while I concentrated very hard on putting one foot down, then the other, over and over without falling.
I am grateful I can walk. My muscles burn now as I rest with my cat, Mr. Floofers, on my legs, holding me down so I can't go anywhere (he is a very needy cat). I feel like I ran a mile when in all reality, I probably didn't even walk that many steps yet today. The pain is rather overwhelming.
But at least I can walk. I am grateful that I can walk.
Ever since the flu shot last December, I have had a hard time walking. I've gotten a little better in the months since, true, but when my fibro pain is bad, the walking thing and weak arms thing gets really bad.
Today, I could walk with my walking stick (that I use instead of a cane since it's a better height for me). When I helped with the Sunday School class, I was able to stand for a few minutes here and there. When I couldn't walk easily at all to get to the Communion rail, a lovely member of our church helped me get there and back. The little Girl Scout who sold me my cookies carried them to my car while I concentrated very hard on putting one foot down, then the other, over and over without falling.
I am grateful I can walk. My muscles burn now as I rest with my cat, Mr. Floofers, on my legs, holding me down so I can't go anywhere (he is a very needy cat). I feel like I ran a mile when in all reality, I probably didn't even walk that many steps yet today. The pain is rather overwhelming.
But at least I can walk. I am grateful that I can walk.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
Halfway through February: Update on Goals
The last month or so has been absolutely awful in terms of my fibromyalgia and pain. Actually, ever since I got the flu shot last December, it's been awful (see last post's footnote for that explanation). That's made my goals a bit more difficult than I thought when I set them. Between the weather and my body recovering slowly from the flu shot, well, it's been so much harder than usual.
January:
Morning and Evening Routines Update:
While I got a little better, I still completely fall apart if my pain level is too high. I'm only getting my routines in about half the time, which I suppose is better than before, but it's still frustrating. I've decided to continue this as my monthly goal each month until it's a solid routine.
Knitting Update:
I managed to finish the shawl I'd set as my January WIP-to-finish project, but I'm still not done writing and editing the pattern, and the knit-along I'm running with it is coming up super fast. Must get that done asap!
Writing Update:
My writing daily and book plans have been entirely put on the back burner as I try to heal from this mess.
February (so far):
Water intake:
I'm doing better on this, but I'm still not front-loading the day with enough water, which means I'm drinking way too much of my daily water not long before bedtime, which is not a good thing. Lol! So far, though, I'm doing better on this, so I just need to flip my daily intake amounts to make it better.
Knitting Update:
I've added a new project, but I'm also working on my WIPs planned for this month. I'm not sure I'll finish them, but I have a decent chance if I really work at them.
The new project is a pair of thicker socks for the women's shelter in town. This winter has been a cold one, and while I donated several hats, scarves, and mitts to the warming shelters during that extreme cold snap, socks are always needed. It's also an easier, more portable project than the two monthly WIPs.
Writing Update:
I have not done any at all this month. That needs to change, but the fibro fog makes writing and keeping track of my writing very difficult.
New Project--Why Not? :)
Last month, I started learning more about herbs and trying to study herbalism. I still have a long way to go on this, but as a part of my education, I am adding in two new herb beds to the gardens this year in hopes of growing beneficial and medicinal herbs for us.
This has really gotten me thinking more about our gardens and sustainability, which has led to studying more about permaculture and ways to make our gardens both prolific due to building up the soil and easier for me to manage. We will be trying the Ruth Stout method in our gardens this year, which promises very little watering and weeding, both of which are tough for me to do. My husband is excited to try it, especially since we have a free source of hay (his mom has a hay field and lots of old hay she wants to get rid of!) and it could make for bigger yields than we had last year.
So, the current plan is to rip out the decorative perennials in the garden beds by the back porch, transplanting most of them elsewhere on the property or selling them, and then putting in a big veggie garden there. So, we will have the back garden (gets the most sun, has the most room for the big things like tomatoes, squash, peas, beans, and potatoes), the back garden beds (get decent shade, so those are for the brassica family, lettuce, some beans, and a few herbs), the beds by the pool (still mostly decorative and will need serious mulching this year with cardboard in some areas to kill an invasive trumpet vine), the Garden Tower (which I think I've figured out how to improve this year), and the two new herb beds (filled with herbs, aka weeds, so they should be not much work other than gathering). Um, that's a lot. I'm hoping to get more herbs and veggies put up this year, and I've been promised more help on that score.
All of that has also lead to working out how to grow my own starter plants. Today, we went to Horrocks (an amazing small Michigan chain that's part farmers market and part nursery and part hipster store), and I got almost all the seeds we need for this year (and at least two more years if I store them right). I spent a good hour today reading through each packet and planning out what I'm starting when, so now I have that calendar set. Now I just need to measure all the beds once the snow melts again to figure out how many of each plant I need to start. This has led to some research on how many plants I need to feed our family of four-ish (with Anna off at college but Stephen now on the swim team, my food numbers have definitely changed).
So, long story short, I've been researching more lately because I can't be quite as active as the little bit I was before the flu shot, and I need to get a lot more done, not just on my goals but also around the home if we're going to try to feed and care for all of us better.
January:
Morning and Evening Routines Update:
While I got a little better, I still completely fall apart if my pain level is too high. I'm only getting my routines in about half the time, which I suppose is better than before, but it's still frustrating. I've decided to continue this as my monthly goal each month until it's a solid routine.
Knitting Update:
I managed to finish the shawl I'd set as my January WIP-to-finish project, but I'm still not done writing and editing the pattern, and the knit-along I'm running with it is coming up super fast. Must get that done asap!
Writing Update:
My writing daily and book plans have been entirely put on the back burner as I try to heal from this mess.
February (so far):
Water intake:
I'm doing better on this, but I'm still not front-loading the day with enough water, which means I'm drinking way too much of my daily water not long before bedtime, which is not a good thing. Lol! So far, though, I'm doing better on this, so I just need to flip my daily intake amounts to make it better.
Knitting Update:
I've added a new project, but I'm also working on my WIPs planned for this month. I'm not sure I'll finish them, but I have a decent chance if I really work at them.
The new project is a pair of thicker socks for the women's shelter in town. This winter has been a cold one, and while I donated several hats, scarves, and mitts to the warming shelters during that extreme cold snap, socks are always needed. It's also an easier, more portable project than the two monthly WIPs.
Writing Update:
I have not done any at all this month. That needs to change, but the fibro fog makes writing and keeping track of my writing very difficult.
New Project--Why Not? :)
Last month, I started learning more about herbs and trying to study herbalism. I still have a long way to go on this, but as a part of my education, I am adding in two new herb beds to the gardens this year in hopes of growing beneficial and medicinal herbs for us.
This has really gotten me thinking more about our gardens and sustainability, which has led to studying more about permaculture and ways to make our gardens both prolific due to building up the soil and easier for me to manage. We will be trying the Ruth Stout method in our gardens this year, which promises very little watering and weeding, both of which are tough for me to do. My husband is excited to try it, especially since we have a free source of hay (his mom has a hay field and lots of old hay she wants to get rid of!) and it could make for bigger yields than we had last year.
So, the current plan is to rip out the decorative perennials in the garden beds by the back porch, transplanting most of them elsewhere on the property or selling them, and then putting in a big veggie garden there. So, we will have the back garden (gets the most sun, has the most room for the big things like tomatoes, squash, peas, beans, and potatoes), the back garden beds (get decent shade, so those are for the brassica family, lettuce, some beans, and a few herbs), the beds by the pool (still mostly decorative and will need serious mulching this year with cardboard in some areas to kill an invasive trumpet vine), the Garden Tower (which I think I've figured out how to improve this year), and the two new herb beds (filled with herbs, aka weeds, so they should be not much work other than gathering). Um, that's a lot. I'm hoping to get more herbs and veggies put up this year, and I've been promised more help on that score.
All of that has also lead to working out how to grow my own starter plants. Today, we went to Horrocks (an amazing small Michigan chain that's part farmers market and part nursery and part hipster store), and I got almost all the seeds we need for this year (and at least two more years if I store them right). I spent a good hour today reading through each packet and planning out what I'm starting when, so now I have that calendar set. Now I just need to measure all the beds once the snow melts again to figure out how many of each plant I need to start. This has led to some research on how many plants I need to feed our family of four-ish (with Anna off at college but Stephen now on the swim team, my food numbers have definitely changed).
So, long story short, I've been researching more lately because I can't be quite as active as the little bit I was before the flu shot, and I need to get a lot more done, not just on my goals but also around the home if we're going to try to feed and care for all of us better.
Monday, January 21, 2019
A New Year, A New Set of Objectives
I'm an educator, so of course I think in terms of overarching goals and objectives. I can't help it. I even think of my day in terms of daily objectives: today, by 5 p.m., I will complete the following...
I tend to approach the new year that way, too. My overall goal for the year is to improve my health, and that starts with acting with intent (my word for the year). A lot of what I have been doing in the last few months is reactionary; I feel bad, so I do this, or this takes me by surprise, so I do that. This year, I'm trying to move more with intention and purpose, all in the effort to stop the worsening of my fibromyalgia or at least slow the progression of my disease.
To start, I have to be bluntly honest with myself: I am disabled, and I am worse in January 2019 than I was in 2018 or in 2016 when I went on medical leave. My average pain level has been creeping up so that, now, a six is a really good day, and good days don't come often enough. It is easy for me, after years of practice, to deny and ignore my pain levels, and while it's okay for me to do that for short periods to get something done, say, it isn't good for me to stay in that denial for long.
So, my annual overarching goal is simple: I need to either maintain or improve, even just a little. The time for researching and trying little changes (or even big changes for a month) is over. I know some of the things that work for me, and it is time to implement them with intention.
To do this, I've broken my objectives down into monthly units (see, teacher) that build on each other.
I tend to approach the new year that way, too. My overall goal for the year is to improve my health, and that starts with acting with intent (my word for the year). A lot of what I have been doing in the last few months is reactionary; I feel bad, so I do this, or this takes me by surprise, so I do that. This year, I'm trying to move more with intention and purpose, all in the effort to stop the worsening of my fibromyalgia or at least slow the progression of my disease.
To start, I have to be bluntly honest with myself: I am disabled, and I am worse in January 2019 than I was in 2018 or in 2016 when I went on medical leave. My average pain level has been creeping up so that, now, a six is a really good day, and good days don't come often enough. It is easy for me, after years of practice, to deny and ignore my pain levels, and while it's okay for me to do that for short periods to get something done, say, it isn't good for me to stay in that denial for long.
So, my annual overarching goal is simple: I need to either maintain or improve, even just a little. The time for researching and trying little changes (or even big changes for a month) is over. I know some of the things that work for me, and it is time to implement them with intention.
To do this, I've broken my objectives down into monthly units (see, teacher) that build on each other.
- January: Morning and evening routines.
- I have gotten into bad habits of not going to bed doing everything I should do to make sleep easier and better for me, and my morning routine is shot. This one has been difficult with worsening pain due to a flu shot1 right before Christmas, but I am improving and shall keep moving forward, day by day.
- February: Water.
- Over the fall, I stopped drinking as much water as I need, and while my kidney numbers in December were normal for the first time in ages (yayayayay!!!), I can tell that I'm not getting enough water for my kidney. So, my first objective is to see if my daily water intake goal is accurate (I'm thinking it might be low), and then my main objective for February is to drink enough water daily.
- March: Movement
- Starting in March, we hope, we will have a lot more to do in the yard and garden. I hope to have a seed propagation set-up going by then as well as the beginnings of the gardens. To be able to do that, I have to move (more than just the usual chores and walking at home) every day and get my body more willing to do the necessary garden work. That means daily yoga. While I've been trying to do this, I have not been doing it regularly with intention, so that's March's goal with the idea that I'll start working on it before then.
- April: Survive and Maintain Forward Progress
- To be honest, April is always a tough month for my fibro. I have an appointment with a neurologist then (regarding the flu shot thing), so there's that, but it's also about the weather. April is usually quite the rainy, stormy month here in Michigan, and that means pain.
- May: Diet and Lifestyle Check
- By May, I've often slipped into bad habits for me (due to rising pain levels from the weather), so May is for making sure I'm following my morning and evening routines, drinking enough water, moving with intention daily, and not hiding in denial. It's a month for solidifying good habits, not bad ones.
- June: Garden and Herbs
- I've dabbled in herbalism here and there over the years, but I've decided to get serious about it. I'm currently studying as much as I can, and while I'll start foraging for herbs before June, much of what I need for my stores either will need to be planted by June or start harvesting by then. I will also start drinking nettle tea daily to see if it helps with the pain, as some sources say it might.
- July: Lose weight
- My goal is to lose weight before July, but July is a good time to stop and evaluate what works and doesn't work for me. For years, I found that I had to take in fewer than 1300 calories per day in order to lose weight, but I think that number has changed. I track everything I eat, and by July, I should have enough solid data to re-evaluate my caloric intake goal and lose weight more effectively.
- August: Survive and Maintain
- August is another tough month for me. My asthma gets worse, the gardens need more work, the kids start getting busy again, and my husband always ends up working more hours. My hope is that I will have my new, better habits ingrained by then, but it will definitely be a test.
- September: Put Up All the Herbs and Veggies
- Most of my culinary herbs need to be put up in September, but that's hard due to kids back at school and such. My goal is to put up more this year and also put up all the medicinal herbs. Get the dried herbs into tinctures and oils, get the tomatoes canned, get it all done. In the last few years, I really haven't done enough here, so it's a major goal.
- October: Diet
- Before the holidays hit, I want to make sure that I'm eating my best diet so that it's a solid habit. I've already implemented monthly meal planning (works better for us than weekly, go figure), but I want to make sure that, by the end of October, I'm eating the most optimal diet for me.
- November and December: Survive and Maintain
- November is a rough month, weather-wise, here in Michigan, and then there's the extra stress of holidays and family whatever in December. My goal is to keep doing what I've found works every day and not to let any of my habits slip.
- At the end of December, I want to be able to figure out what helps me maintain my fibromyalgia levels and be able to point to solid changes that have worked.
These are my fibromyalgia goals. I also have monthly goals for my knitting and crafts and personal goals for my herbalism. The new templates in Evernote have been very helpful in this regard, and if you haven't checked those out, please do. Evernote is one of the ways I've been surviving all of this--quick place to write things down, good way to not lose anything important my fibro fog might forget.
Today is a snow day for the kids, but I have physical therapy for the flu shot thing. Time to implement my morning routine!
1 In December, I got a flu shot finally after much discussion with my doctor, and it was different from the injection on. I can taste injections and IV drugs, and this one tasted really odd for a flu shot with almost a floral taste in the back of my mouth instead of the rotten metallic egg taste. The day after the shot, I started having serious trouble walking and almost fell several times. My grip strength in my hands is worse, my arms are weaker, and my legs don't work right still. That said, I am slowly improving, but it's definitely been scary. Physical therapy seems to help a little, as do my own exercises at home. We'll see if I'm better by April or not.↩
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
The Teaching of Poetry: Some Thoughts
One of the areas that can stymie many ELA and English teachers is the teaching of poetry. Personally, I believe that is because, over the decades, we have de-emphasized the teaching of poetry. At the turn of the 20th century, poetry was a full half of the curriculum. Now, it's a tiny fraction, maintained almost entirely alone during April's Poetry Month in large part due to the AP Literature and Composition's hold on the overall English curriculum in so many schools. Many English majors take few classes dedicated to the sole study of poetry, and many survey classes eschew all but the most important pieces.
This means that the current crop of ELA teachers have little experience with poetry compared to prose except, perhaps, on a personal level in their own writing. In many conference sessions and conversations, I heard teacher after teacher confess that they feel uncomfortable in teaching poetry and consider it a weak area. This shows in some of the lesson plans and curriculum ideas available on TeachersPayTeachers.com as well as in many teaching texts. Formulaic plans with emphases on easy-to-grade areas like rhyme scheme and figurative language (one of the few areas of poetry in the Common Core) abound, and they are wrong.
I am a huge believer in and proponent of Baron Wormer's and David Capella's Poetry Centered Classroom Method. I personally used that method with various age levels and English classes with great success. First of all, every time I used it, test scores went up. Secondly, students of different ages and ability levels all agreed that it taught them how to read closely and think critically. If you can get a copy of Teaching the Art of Poetry, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Their follow-up text, A Surge of Language, is also very helpful in seeing how to implement the method in an actual classroom.
There are great methods and ideas in those books, but I would add a few here for when you incorporate poetry as your curriculum currently dictates.
1. Have students write poetry more than just during April.
One of my favorite tricks was to pull out acrostic poems when we were all getting quite tired of the usual vocabulary quizzes. Instead of having to write sentences on all ten words, I had students write three acrostic poems (their choice of which vocabulary words to write about); the word got spelled down the side of the poem, and the definition of the word had to be in one of the lines. The rest of the poem was up to each student. The first time I would use it with each class, it would take a bit of explaining what an acrostic poem even was, as many had never been exposed to that poetic form at all. Once they got it, creativity would flow, and amazing poetry was written as a result.
For differentiated instruction, put the writing of poetry on menu choice boards or include it as an option for reactions to novels or explaining important concepts. While the CCSS and the AP curricula emphasize essay writing above all others, students whose minds are more poetic struggle with writing essays and should be allowed to shine from time to time.
Pick a poetic form to go with each unit. Use that form to help students better see how figurative language is really used. When I taught a class of 8th graders The Outsiders, we watched many slam poetry performances, and the students had to write and perform their own, one of the more powerful experiences in my career. Students wrote of their struggles, successes, pain, and love in powerful, phenomenal ways, ways they could not have if we had done yet another essay. Think outside the box, pantoums for Brave New World, sonnets for Jane Austen, fitting the form to the themes or topics.
2. Encourage students to use the writing process on their poems just as they do on other writings.
It is not usual to hear of teachers having students write shape poems for Valentine's Day or poems for special occasions, but it is less usual to hear of those assignments following the writing process. Students write one draft, and it is expected to meet the standards, and then they move on to the next assignment, never to revisit that poem again. We might do that with short essay answers or even other short prose writings, but we rarely do that with essays. To show that all writing follows the writing process, please plan enough time for rough drafts and peer editing, just like you would for any other important writing assignment. Show students rough drafts of famous poems so they can see how it can look.
3. If you have students read their poems to the class, treat that as a sacred moment.
Requiring students to read their work out loud to their classmates is in the CCSS, sure, but it is also a difficult thing for most students. It's scary. Don't bully them or guilt them into it. Instead, set down strict rules for those listening, that any mocking or mean comment results in being sent from the room or something as severe depending on your school's policies. Make it clear that all students will be safe in reading their poems aloud. For those who still don't feel safe to read aloud, offer other options, like recording themselves for just you or for the class to read or reading their poems just to you in the hallway. Respect their fears.
One thing that seems to help students in reading their works aloud is practice. If you can find time for them to practice reading their pieces to others, it is very helpful. Starting them on reading to just a partner, then groups helps prepare them for the whole class.
4. Sneak poetry into your curriculum whenever you can.
Don't just use it for teaching metaphor and simile or during your Shakespeare unit. Use poetry for teaching all the things! If you find the right poem, you have a great, short mentor text that is easier for students to grasp than a huge novel or pages long article. That short text is less intimidating for students to practice close reading on, learn how to cite quotes properly, and even use for learning new vocabulary. For those thinking that poetry is less accessible, try it first with popular song lyrics the students volunteer. Those are poetry, as are the popular slam poetry performances on YouTube (a great way to cover the CCSS critical analysis of video texts!). Any time you're working on a new concept, introduce it with a poem, and see how much easier that works for so many students.
Poetry is the oldest form of human creative writing, older than writing itself. There is no reason to cut it from the curriculum, other than it's difficult to write test questions for and isn't as easily monetized as fiction.
I'll leave you with a story:
Years ago, I was asked to do a guest teaching spot in a 6th grade classroom. I was a new stay-at-home mom and desperately missed teaching, so I jumped at the chance. It was in a private evangelical Christian K-12 school, and in talking with the teacher, it became clear that she had not covered any of the metaphorical language standards or covered poetry at all, so I devised a fairly simple, safe lesson on metaphor and simile.
I will never forget that day: bright faces, interested and engaged learners, and sighs. Oh, the sighs. In the two sections, each time I finished reading the poem out loud that was on the overhead, there was a huge collective sigh like they were finally breathing oxygen for the first time. They gasped as we went through the poem again, splitting apart the metaphors, finding each one together, and some even cried. It wasn't even a great poem. I remember one little boy raising his hand afterward, asking, "What is that? It isn't like anything I have ever read before." So many agreed with him, and I had to back up and explain what poetry even was.
When it came time for them to try writing their own, each section was crammed with students who thought they knew all the rules for writing. I was asked how many sentences their poems had to be, how many paragraphs, and more questions focused on the editing side. You should have heard their gasps when I explained that poetry does not have to follow any of those rules, that they did not even have to capitalize if they did not want to or even use a single period. They turned in some pretty rough free verse that day, but they smiled, breathed easier, and left class chattering about their poems, sharing them with each other, and saying they wanted to write more.
Poetry is part of what makes us human. Don't deny your students that experience. Let them gasp and breathe it in.
This means that the current crop of ELA teachers have little experience with poetry compared to prose except, perhaps, on a personal level in their own writing. In many conference sessions and conversations, I heard teacher after teacher confess that they feel uncomfortable in teaching poetry and consider it a weak area. This shows in some of the lesson plans and curriculum ideas available on TeachersPayTeachers.com as well as in many teaching texts. Formulaic plans with emphases on easy-to-grade areas like rhyme scheme and figurative language (one of the few areas of poetry in the Common Core) abound, and they are wrong.
I am a huge believer in and proponent of Baron Wormer's and David Capella's Poetry Centered Classroom Method. I personally used that method with various age levels and English classes with great success. First of all, every time I used it, test scores went up. Secondly, students of different ages and ability levels all agreed that it taught them how to read closely and think critically. If you can get a copy of Teaching the Art of Poetry, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Their follow-up text, A Surge of Language, is also very helpful in seeing how to implement the method in an actual classroom.
There are great methods and ideas in those books, but I would add a few here for when you incorporate poetry as your curriculum currently dictates.
1. Have students write poetry more than just during April.
One of my favorite tricks was to pull out acrostic poems when we were all getting quite tired of the usual vocabulary quizzes. Instead of having to write sentences on all ten words, I had students write three acrostic poems (their choice of which vocabulary words to write about); the word got spelled down the side of the poem, and the definition of the word had to be in one of the lines. The rest of the poem was up to each student. The first time I would use it with each class, it would take a bit of explaining what an acrostic poem even was, as many had never been exposed to that poetic form at all. Once they got it, creativity would flow, and amazing poetry was written as a result.
For differentiated instruction, put the writing of poetry on menu choice boards or include it as an option for reactions to novels or explaining important concepts. While the CCSS and the AP curricula emphasize essay writing above all others, students whose minds are more poetic struggle with writing essays and should be allowed to shine from time to time.
Pick a poetic form to go with each unit. Use that form to help students better see how figurative language is really used. When I taught a class of 8th graders The Outsiders, we watched many slam poetry performances, and the students had to write and perform their own, one of the more powerful experiences in my career. Students wrote of their struggles, successes, pain, and love in powerful, phenomenal ways, ways they could not have if we had done yet another essay. Think outside the box, pantoums for Brave New World, sonnets for Jane Austen, fitting the form to the themes or topics.
2. Encourage students to use the writing process on their poems just as they do on other writings.
It is not usual to hear of teachers having students write shape poems for Valentine's Day or poems for special occasions, but it is less usual to hear of those assignments following the writing process. Students write one draft, and it is expected to meet the standards, and then they move on to the next assignment, never to revisit that poem again. We might do that with short essay answers or even other short prose writings, but we rarely do that with essays. To show that all writing follows the writing process, please plan enough time for rough drafts and peer editing, just like you would for any other important writing assignment. Show students rough drafts of famous poems so they can see how it can look.
3. If you have students read their poems to the class, treat that as a sacred moment.
Requiring students to read their work out loud to their classmates is in the CCSS, sure, but it is also a difficult thing for most students. It's scary. Don't bully them or guilt them into it. Instead, set down strict rules for those listening, that any mocking or mean comment results in being sent from the room or something as severe depending on your school's policies. Make it clear that all students will be safe in reading their poems aloud. For those who still don't feel safe to read aloud, offer other options, like recording themselves for just you or for the class to read or reading their poems just to you in the hallway. Respect their fears.
One thing that seems to help students in reading their works aloud is practice. If you can find time for them to practice reading their pieces to others, it is very helpful. Starting them on reading to just a partner, then groups helps prepare them for the whole class.
4. Sneak poetry into your curriculum whenever you can.
Don't just use it for teaching metaphor and simile or during your Shakespeare unit. Use poetry for teaching all the things! If you find the right poem, you have a great, short mentor text that is easier for students to grasp than a huge novel or pages long article. That short text is less intimidating for students to practice close reading on, learn how to cite quotes properly, and even use for learning new vocabulary. For those thinking that poetry is less accessible, try it first with popular song lyrics the students volunteer. Those are poetry, as are the popular slam poetry performances on YouTube (a great way to cover the CCSS critical analysis of video texts!). Any time you're working on a new concept, introduce it with a poem, and see how much easier that works for so many students.
Poetry is the oldest form of human creative writing, older than writing itself. There is no reason to cut it from the curriculum, other than it's difficult to write test questions for and isn't as easily monetized as fiction.
I'll leave you with a story:
Years ago, I was asked to do a guest teaching spot in a 6th grade classroom. I was a new stay-at-home mom and desperately missed teaching, so I jumped at the chance. It was in a private evangelical Christian K-12 school, and in talking with the teacher, it became clear that she had not covered any of the metaphorical language standards or covered poetry at all, so I devised a fairly simple, safe lesson on metaphor and simile.
I will never forget that day: bright faces, interested and engaged learners, and sighs. Oh, the sighs. In the two sections, each time I finished reading the poem out loud that was on the overhead, there was a huge collective sigh like they were finally breathing oxygen for the first time. They gasped as we went through the poem again, splitting apart the metaphors, finding each one together, and some even cried. It wasn't even a great poem. I remember one little boy raising his hand afterward, asking, "What is that? It isn't like anything I have ever read before." So many agreed with him, and I had to back up and explain what poetry even was.
When it came time for them to try writing their own, each section was crammed with students who thought they knew all the rules for writing. I was asked how many sentences their poems had to be, how many paragraphs, and more questions focused on the editing side. You should have heard their gasps when I explained that poetry does not have to follow any of those rules, that they did not even have to capitalize if they did not want to or even use a single period. They turned in some pretty rough free verse that day, but they smiled, breathed easier, and left class chattering about their poems, sharing them with each other, and saying they wanted to write more.
Poetry is part of what makes us human. Don't deny your students that experience. Let them gasp and breathe it in.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Ashwagandha Experiment: Day 13 and the End
The ashwagandha experiment has ended for me, though my husband is still considering it.
End results for me:
My asthma is worse, my allergies are worse, and I definitely have my GI allergy symptoms (stool change, stool color change, some abdominal cramping) going strong now with no other possible cause since this is the only new thing I've introduced.
The first few days, I had less pain, more energy, and I really thought it was something I could take that would help. The rebound headache when it wore off, though, was definitely a problem, as were the sleep issues. I felt more rested when I took it at night, but the tracker said I had absolutely no deep sleep those nights, and it was a lot harder to fall asleep (when it already is difficult). Switching to taking it in the morning helped a lot for a couple of days. In trying to ease up the bad headache in the evening (well, worse headache since I always have a headache), I split the pills to stagger dosing, and it didn't seem as effective that way. Going back to taking a whole pill in the morning did not help my pain like it had before, and my allergy symptoms definitely started getting worse.
Another side effect for me was massive lack of appetite. I've been forcing myself to eat even a little and finding that my appetite comes back when it wears off in the evening, which is not a good thing for my weight or metabolism at all. I just didn't want to eat, didn't even think of food as something good (which is weird for me). I do wonder if, for people on medications that make them hungry all the time, it would help counteract any of those symptoms. That isn't the case with me, though, and while it helped me stay in a better calorie range for me, it didn't help with weight loss because of when I was finally hungry and able to eat.
Conclusion: I'm allergic to it, and I'm stopping taking it as of today.
End results for my husband:
He stopped taking it a couple of days ago, mostly due to the bad headaches he was starting to get. We aren't sure if those are due to the ashwagandha, actually, so it's more that he's put it on pause to see if, after this weather system goes through and he tries it again, it works better for him.
He definitely was having GI symptoms, too, though. Worse gas, some abdominal pain from gas cramping, and his gas smelled much worse. We're not exactly sure what it was doing to our gut biomes, but it was doing something. He hasn't had the lack of appetite to the same degree I've had, but he definitely has not been as hungry until it wears off.
Conclusion: My husband thinks he needs a smaller dose than the 600 mg we've been taking (Garden of Life) and a different formulation. He's going to try taking it again in a few days and see if he has the same symptoms, and he possibly will be taking half pills instead.
End results for me:
My asthma is worse, my allergies are worse, and I definitely have my GI allergy symptoms (stool change, stool color change, some abdominal cramping) going strong now with no other possible cause since this is the only new thing I've introduced.
The first few days, I had less pain, more energy, and I really thought it was something I could take that would help. The rebound headache when it wore off, though, was definitely a problem, as were the sleep issues. I felt more rested when I took it at night, but the tracker said I had absolutely no deep sleep those nights, and it was a lot harder to fall asleep (when it already is difficult). Switching to taking it in the morning helped a lot for a couple of days. In trying to ease up the bad headache in the evening (well, worse headache since I always have a headache), I split the pills to stagger dosing, and it didn't seem as effective that way. Going back to taking a whole pill in the morning did not help my pain like it had before, and my allergy symptoms definitely started getting worse.
Another side effect for me was massive lack of appetite. I've been forcing myself to eat even a little and finding that my appetite comes back when it wears off in the evening, which is not a good thing for my weight or metabolism at all. I just didn't want to eat, didn't even think of food as something good (which is weird for me). I do wonder if, for people on medications that make them hungry all the time, it would help counteract any of those symptoms. That isn't the case with me, though, and while it helped me stay in a better calorie range for me, it didn't help with weight loss because of when I was finally hungry and able to eat.
Conclusion: I'm allergic to it, and I'm stopping taking it as of today.
End results for my husband:
He stopped taking it a couple of days ago, mostly due to the bad headaches he was starting to get. We aren't sure if those are due to the ashwagandha, actually, so it's more that he's put it on pause to see if, after this weather system goes through and he tries it again, it works better for him.
He definitely was having GI symptoms, too, though. Worse gas, some abdominal pain from gas cramping, and his gas smelled much worse. We're not exactly sure what it was doing to our gut biomes, but it was doing something. He hasn't had the lack of appetite to the same degree I've had, but he definitely has not been as hungry until it wears off.
Conclusion: My husband thinks he needs a smaller dose than the 600 mg we've been taking (Garden of Life) and a different formulation. He's going to try taking it again in a few days and see if he has the same symptoms, and he possibly will be taking half pills instead.
Monday, October 29, 2018
The Ashwagandha Experiment: Day 11
Things have gotten interesting in the Ashwagandha Experiment in our house. I've messed with taking it at different times and splitting doses, my husband is trying it now, and we have learned a few things.
Thing 1: It really helps to take it in the morning for us.
Taking it at night made it so I didn't get any deep sleep and took forever to fall asleep. I did feel like I had slept really well, but the tracker says I didn't, and the brain fog says I didn't. We both take it in the morning, though we have found it helps to take it a bit later in the morning due to Thing 2.
Thing 2: It is not fun when it wears off.
I tried doing a divided dose for a few days in hopes that it would make the evening easier when it wears off, but instead, it just made it not work as well overall with the headache still hitting hard in the evening. My husband didn't take one yesterday (as part of his experiment), and his headache was bad all day. We're both starting to question taking this at all due to the almost-rebound-like headaches when it wears off.
Thing 3: Divided doses did not help, but taking the one pill didn't help with a bad weather/rainy day, either.
In other words, it definitely is no miracle worker for me. Yesterday, it stormed and rained all day, and I had zero energy and really bad pain. The ashwagandha did nothing to help with that at all despite going back on a full dose. Honestly, the longer I'm on it, the less effective it seems to be, which is weird. I'm going to stay on it the full month to see if that changes.
Thing 4: Both of us are finding that our allergies and GI issues are worse on it.
I've been starting to wonder if I'm mildly allergic to it, especially since my allergies and asthma are worse and my GI symptoms are starting to look more and more like they did with soybean oil (which I've become allergic to). I'm not quite there yet, and it is fall (and a usually bad time of year allergy-wise for me), but if my asthma keeps acting up, I will have to stop taking it entirely. If my husband keeps having the GI issues he is, he's going to stop taking it, too.
In conclusion, over a week later, and I'm not seeing the benefits I did at first. There is the possibility that it's the dosage or the configuration we're taking, but if I'm really allergic to it, then it doesn't matter in the end at all if it works or not. So, I'm going to continue on it and watch everything carefully. If the allergic symptoms continue or worsen, I will have to stop taking it and then see what happens.
Thing 1: It really helps to take it in the morning for us.
Taking it at night made it so I didn't get any deep sleep and took forever to fall asleep. I did feel like I had slept really well, but the tracker says I didn't, and the brain fog says I didn't. We both take it in the morning, though we have found it helps to take it a bit later in the morning due to Thing 2.
Thing 2: It is not fun when it wears off.
I tried doing a divided dose for a few days in hopes that it would make the evening easier when it wears off, but instead, it just made it not work as well overall with the headache still hitting hard in the evening. My husband didn't take one yesterday (as part of his experiment), and his headache was bad all day. We're both starting to question taking this at all due to the almost-rebound-like headaches when it wears off.
Thing 3: Divided doses did not help, but taking the one pill didn't help with a bad weather/rainy day, either.
In other words, it definitely is no miracle worker for me. Yesterday, it stormed and rained all day, and I had zero energy and really bad pain. The ashwagandha did nothing to help with that at all despite going back on a full dose. Honestly, the longer I'm on it, the less effective it seems to be, which is weird. I'm going to stay on it the full month to see if that changes.
Thing 4: Both of us are finding that our allergies and GI issues are worse on it.
I've been starting to wonder if I'm mildly allergic to it, especially since my allergies and asthma are worse and my GI symptoms are starting to look more and more like they did with soybean oil (which I've become allergic to). I'm not quite there yet, and it is fall (and a usually bad time of year allergy-wise for me), but if my asthma keeps acting up, I will have to stop taking it entirely. If my husband keeps having the GI issues he is, he's going to stop taking it, too.
In conclusion, over a week later, and I'm not seeing the benefits I did at first. There is the possibility that it's the dosage or the configuration we're taking, but if I'm really allergic to it, then it doesn't matter in the end at all if it works or not. So, I'm going to continue on it and watch everything carefully. If the allergic symptoms continue or worsen, I will have to stop taking it and then see what happens.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
The Ashwagandha Experiment: Day 5
Today has been interesting.
Last night, the ashwagandha seemed to wear off around 8:30 (putting it at a ten hour range or so), and the headache got really bad, almost like a rebound headache. The fibro pain came roaring back, too. I got super sleepy at 8:30, managed to stay awake through kids' bedtimes and all, but when I went to bed, I had a hard time falling asleep. According to my tracker, I did get deep sleep, though, once I fell asleep.
This morning, I felt more like I usually do and had the same hard time waking up as usual. My husband and I had discussed the rebound stuff, and I decided to take a half pill this morning. I did feel more energy, and the pain started letting up a bit, and by the time I got to my neurologist's appointment, I felt decent. I even was able to bend down and pick things up fairly easily without my muscles screaming.
Then, I went through the more thorough neuro test as part of my appointment. That got the tremors going hard, and the fibro was all ticked off the rest of today. My husband had the good idea tonight that I should take a half pill in the morning and then half a pill after lunch to help with the worst time of day (late afternoon). I'm going to try that tomorrow. It definitely didn't help enough with the pain today, so maybe going back to a full pill but in a divided dose will help more.
Another interesting side effect: lack of appetite. I just haven't been as hungry since starting this experiment, even to the point of not finishing what I am eating. I am a lot more thirsty, and with my kidney, I have to be concerned about that. I was even down a pound this morning and could fit into jeans I haven't been able to wear in awhile. Given that, if I want to lose weight at all, I can't eat much more than 1300 calories a day (long story), this isn't a bad thing.
The sleepiness is starting to hit here at 8:30 again. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
Last night, the ashwagandha seemed to wear off around 8:30 (putting it at a ten hour range or so), and the headache got really bad, almost like a rebound headache. The fibro pain came roaring back, too. I got super sleepy at 8:30, managed to stay awake through kids' bedtimes and all, but when I went to bed, I had a hard time falling asleep. According to my tracker, I did get deep sleep, though, once I fell asleep.
This morning, I felt more like I usually do and had the same hard time waking up as usual. My husband and I had discussed the rebound stuff, and I decided to take a half pill this morning. I did feel more energy, and the pain started letting up a bit, and by the time I got to my neurologist's appointment, I felt decent. I even was able to bend down and pick things up fairly easily without my muscles screaming.
Then, I went through the more thorough neuro test as part of my appointment. That got the tremors going hard, and the fibro was all ticked off the rest of today. My husband had the good idea tonight that I should take a half pill in the morning and then half a pill after lunch to help with the worst time of day (late afternoon). I'm going to try that tomorrow. It definitely didn't help enough with the pain today, so maybe going back to a full pill but in a divided dose will help more.
Another interesting side effect: lack of appetite. I just haven't been as hungry since starting this experiment, even to the point of not finishing what I am eating. I am a lot more thirsty, and with my kidney, I have to be concerned about that. I was even down a pound this morning and could fit into jeans I haven't been able to wear in awhile. Given that, if I want to lose weight at all, I can't eat much more than 1300 calories a day (long story), this isn't a bad thing.
The sleepiness is starting to hit here at 8:30 again. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
Monday, October 22, 2018
The Ashwagandha Experiment: Day Four
I've read in several places now that the Indian herb, ashwagandha, can help quite a bit with fibromyalgia. Given the price and how other experiments in herbals have had less-than-stellar results, I just didn't even try it. This last summer, in an effort to get more use out of the herbs I always plant, I started researching herbal tinctures and teas. I've made holy basil and lemon balm tinctures, and the sage oil is still steeping. Next up (and last given the turn in our weather) is an oregano oil.
Anyway, I tried taking a blend of the holy oil and lemon balm tinctures. Bad vertigo. Really bad vertigo. Maybe it was too much, maybe it's the alcohol, I'm not sure. Next, I'm going to try taking them separately and see if I can figure out which one did the vertigo or if both do it.
In going back through some of my fibro resources about herbal treatments, I kept seeing ashwagandha mentioned repeatedly. It's an adaptogenic herb that has shown some success in helping with fibro symptoms. When I was at the Natural Health Center (great store here in Kalamazoo) getting my multivitamin that I was out of, I saw they had an ashwagandha blend on sale and decided to give it a try.
I had to look up when and how to take it (not on the bottle), and the results were mixed. For some people, ashwagandha gives them energy, so they should take it in the morning. For others, it really helps with sleep and should be taken at night. Given that most of my reactions lean towards the sleepy side, I decided to try taking it at night. My first night was this last Friday night. According to my fitness tracker, I had only a few minutes of deep sleep on Friday night, and I woke up feeling rather refreshed (and so was surprised at the lack of deep sleep, one of the hallmarks of fibro and considered a possible cause). Given the nasty storms all day Saturday, I was in surprisingly decent shape, and my pain wasn't anywhere near as debilitating as it would normally have been. I took it again on Saturday night, and according to my tracker, I had absolutely no deep sleep. I felt like I had slept hard, though, and my husband said that the couple of times he woke up that it seemed like I was sleeping hard. Weird.
Sunday, I had a bit more energy than usual despite the lack of deep sleep the night before, but then the fatigue and pain hit hard again in the last afternoon like it always does. My headache was bad, and so I had a Pepsi with dinner in the evening, and then I took another of the ashwagandha pills with my bedtime pills.
It hit hard last night after I took it, the energy and total inability to sleep. I couldn't fall asleep for hours (not tired in the least though I should have been). According to my tracker, for the second night in a row, I had zero deep sleep. I did finally get some deep sleep when I fell back asleep this morning, after I think it wore off because I suddenly became exhausted.
I've changed the time I'm taking it to the morning to see what happens during the day. Oddly enough, my fibro-induced occipital neuralgia these last few days has been more annoying (feels like pop rocks going off on the top of my head, and it feels cold but isn't), but the pain has been less.
Today is the first day I've taken it with my morning pills, so we'll see what happens. So far, I feel more awake, but it's like part of me is still tired and in pain. It feels weird, but we'll see what happens.
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Once you're a student of mine, you're always a student of mine.
Before I went on medical leave and ultimately had to resign from my middle school teaching job due to disability, I taught high school and middle school kids for a total of ten years or so. Sadly, the fibromyalgia has taken away most of their names from my memory and even some classes and such, but I remember so many of them. I easily taught around two thousand students in those years, but I stay in touch with several even years later on Facebook and Twitter. Great kids who have grown up and moved on with their lives.
They're still my students, though, and I still worry about them. I have a pair of former students, married parents of one and one on the way, and I had to break out the knitting needles yesterday when I read that she is having some troubles with the pregnancy. Didn't even stop to think much beyond what colors I know both like and what I had in the yarn stash and then look through some baby sweater patterns I have on hand.
In explaining it to my husband last night as I was trying to at least finish the hood on the top-down sweater before going to bed, I found myself thinking that people outside of education might think it odd. I haven't taught them in 7 years, haven't seen them in real life outside of social media online, but they're still my students even after all this. Thankfully, my husband didn't even question it (he's awesome that way).
See, we don't teach machines or widgets in some factory. We teach people, and those people touch our lives as much or even more than we touch theirs. They take over huge areas in our hearts, and even after graduation, we find ourselves as teachers wondering how they're doing, what they're doing now, hoping they're okay. I've talked with teachers about former students and shared what I have heard, and they have told me of family members and the latest news. I have never known a teacher not to worry over former students, be proud of them for every achievement, and cry over them when they die (yes, we do keep track of that, too).
So, I'm still knitting on this baby sweater in hopes that it will fit okay and let that little baby know that his mom's teacher cares about him, too, even if I won't ever get the chance to have him in a classroom.
They're still my students, though, and I still worry about them. I have a pair of former students, married parents of one and one on the way, and I had to break out the knitting needles yesterday when I read that she is having some troubles with the pregnancy. Didn't even stop to think much beyond what colors I know both like and what I had in the yarn stash and then look through some baby sweater patterns I have on hand.
In explaining it to my husband last night as I was trying to at least finish the hood on the top-down sweater before going to bed, I found myself thinking that people outside of education might think it odd. I haven't taught them in 7 years, haven't seen them in real life outside of social media online, but they're still my students even after all this. Thankfully, my husband didn't even question it (he's awesome that way).
See, we don't teach machines or widgets in some factory. We teach people, and those people touch our lives as much or even more than we touch theirs. They take over huge areas in our hearts, and even after graduation, we find ourselves as teachers wondering how they're doing, what they're doing now, hoping they're okay. I've talked with teachers about former students and shared what I have heard, and they have told me of family members and the latest news. I have never known a teacher not to worry over former students, be proud of them for every achievement, and cry over them when they die (yes, we do keep track of that, too).
So, I'm still knitting on this baby sweater in hopes that it will fit okay and let that little baby know that his mom's teacher cares about him, too, even if I won't ever get the chance to have him in a classroom.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
The New Year Cometh and Cometh Right Soon
The ESL program I volunteer teach for starts back up the second week of September, and I still struggle with a basic concept: what am I supposed to be teaching?
If I listen to the state of Michigan, I am to teach CASAS test prep so that the adult students learn ESL quickly and move quickly through the test levels, testing out and then moving on to a GED or a TOEFL program. If I listen to CASAS, I would work harder on teaching the Common Core CCR (College and Career Readiness) Standards. If I listen to my program director, she would add that I need to teach the textbook because students feel more accomplished if they finish the books and also need to use the new software our parent program paid for. If I listen to my students, I would just teach pronunciation games and work on conversation skills so that no one would make fun of their accents.
In going through the mountains of CASAS standards (seriously--there are hundreds), it's clear that we volunteer teachers are facing a more than slightly uphill battle. We are to get our students to completely assimilate into US culture as well as be entirely fluent (speaking, reading, writing, listening) in English to a native speaker's 8th grade level. Having taught 8th grade ELA, this is a bit more in my wheelhouse. That said, these are adults, and they have many different levels of fluency in both English and their primary languages.
This year, I'm thinking of having my students read a book in addition to textbook work and work on the computers. I'm strongly leaning toward Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. I know it's a problematic piece (racist against First Nations peoples and black people, for example), but he does a good job of explaining American culture and describing the US geographically. The reading level is perfect, too. Apparently, a former teacher used to teach Maya Angelou, and while I love her work, I wonder if it's a good first text to tackle after doing so much book work for so long. If that goes well, I want to start lit circles after we finish that one and then do a class text in January (no idea what to do then), followed by lit circles.
It is important to read a culture's most important texts, but these days, our canon in the US is undergoing real change. Books written in the vernacular are difficult for adult ESL learners (at least, they would be for most of my students), so that makes many great YA books and solid American books (like one of my favorites, Their Eyes Were Watching God) not the best in this situation. Mark Twain is right out, as is any 18th C. American writer due to vocabulary level and complex syntax. Having never taught American lit, I'm at a bit of a loss.
So, I am asking my readers, what books do you suggest?
If I listen to the state of Michigan, I am to teach CASAS test prep so that the adult students learn ESL quickly and move quickly through the test levels, testing out and then moving on to a GED or a TOEFL program. If I listen to CASAS, I would work harder on teaching the Common Core CCR (College and Career Readiness) Standards. If I listen to my program director, she would add that I need to teach the textbook because students feel more accomplished if they finish the books and also need to use the new software our parent program paid for. If I listen to my students, I would just teach pronunciation games and work on conversation skills so that no one would make fun of their accents.
In going through the mountains of CASAS standards (seriously--there are hundreds), it's clear that we volunteer teachers are facing a more than slightly uphill battle. We are to get our students to completely assimilate into US culture as well as be entirely fluent (speaking, reading, writing, listening) in English to a native speaker's 8th grade level. Having taught 8th grade ELA, this is a bit more in my wheelhouse. That said, these are adults, and they have many different levels of fluency in both English and their primary languages.
This year, I'm thinking of having my students read a book in addition to textbook work and work on the computers. I'm strongly leaning toward Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. I know it's a problematic piece (racist against First Nations peoples and black people, for example), but he does a good job of explaining American culture and describing the US geographically. The reading level is perfect, too. Apparently, a former teacher used to teach Maya Angelou, and while I love her work, I wonder if it's a good first text to tackle after doing so much book work for so long. If that goes well, I want to start lit circles after we finish that one and then do a class text in January (no idea what to do then), followed by lit circles.
It is important to read a culture's most important texts, but these days, our canon in the US is undergoing real change. Books written in the vernacular are difficult for adult ESL learners (at least, they would be for most of my students), so that makes many great YA books and solid American books (like one of my favorites, Their Eyes Were Watching God) not the best in this situation. Mark Twain is right out, as is any 18th C. American writer due to vocabulary level and complex syntax. Having never taught American lit, I'm at a bit of a loss.
So, I am asking my readers, what books do you suggest?
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Let's Talk Pain.
Pain has been in the news a lot lately due to the concerns of the opioid epidemic and how illegal use of prescription pain medications and illegal heroin and fentanyl are killing so very many, especially in the Midwest. The government has cut back, not only on the actual supply of opioids made for legal use, but also on what doctors can prescribe, and chronic pain patients have been speaking up. So, let's talk about pain, something I have lived with for over half my life now. More specifically, let's talk about how medical types (doctors, nurses, support staff) deal with patients in pain.
First, as a point of explanation, I cannot take pain medication. I am not allowed to take any NSAIDs due to only having one kidney and that not doing as well as anyone would like. I cannot take opioids because they don't work (it's a genetic thing--thanks, Dad!). I cannot take the psych meds often prescribed for pain, also due to genetics. I have horrific reactions to them (one made me start to go blind by the third day--yes, I get those kinds of reactions). So, I do not take any pain medications for my severe fibromyalgia, chronic daily headache, and other painful conditions.
I have had a lot of experience with medical types, from having been married to an internist (we dated in college, married in med school, stayed married through residency and his first couple of jobs as an attending, and he left me for a nurse--it's a rather banal, common story) to having chronic pain for over 22 years. I had chronic appendicitis for ten years that was misdiagnosed as endometriosis (8 doctors missed that, so I don't really blame anyone), two major surgeries in a year, lost my right kidney and three inches off to two ribs to a large kidney tumor, and more. I'm a compliant patient who sees her doctor more than once a year for kidney checks, etc., and I do my best to do whatever my doctors tell me to do.
I've got several doctors involved in my treatment these days, and I've been through tons of tests. I used to be flat-out terrified of hypodermic needles, but two surgeries in a year and all the follow-up kicked me of that phobia. I'm not an easy stick, so any time I have to get an IV, they have to stick me, on average, three times. A few people have gotten my IV in on the first try, and the record is seven sticks before getting one to work. I've been assaulted by an ultrasound tech doing a vaginal ultrasound, I've had good doctors, I've had bad doctors, I've known great nurses, and I've known callous terrors. I've been through a lot, and it isn't over (especially if/when my kidney gives out).
I know pain. My average pain level these days is a seven, and no, I'm not exaggerating. See, I know that many med types think patients exaggerate their pain levels to get meds (which I can't take) or attention (don't need that), but I have refined my pain scale over the years. My personal pain scale:
First, as a point of explanation, I cannot take pain medication. I am not allowed to take any NSAIDs due to only having one kidney and that not doing as well as anyone would like. I cannot take opioids because they don't work (it's a genetic thing--thanks, Dad!). I cannot take the psych meds often prescribed for pain, also due to genetics. I have horrific reactions to them (one made me start to go blind by the third day--yes, I get those kinds of reactions). So, I do not take any pain medications for my severe fibromyalgia, chronic daily headache, and other painful conditions.
I have had a lot of experience with medical types, from having been married to an internist (we dated in college, married in med school, stayed married through residency and his first couple of jobs as an attending, and he left me for a nurse--it's a rather banal, common story) to having chronic pain for over 22 years. I had chronic appendicitis for ten years that was misdiagnosed as endometriosis (8 doctors missed that, so I don't really blame anyone), two major surgeries in a year, lost my right kidney and three inches off to two ribs to a large kidney tumor, and more. I'm a compliant patient who sees her doctor more than once a year for kidney checks, etc., and I do my best to do whatever my doctors tell me to do.
I've got several doctors involved in my treatment these days, and I've been through tons of tests. I used to be flat-out terrified of hypodermic needles, but two surgeries in a year and all the follow-up kicked me of that phobia. I'm not an easy stick, so any time I have to get an IV, they have to stick me, on average, three times. A few people have gotten my IV in on the first try, and the record is seven sticks before getting one to work. I've been assaulted by an ultrasound tech doing a vaginal ultrasound, I've had good doctors, I've had bad doctors, I've known great nurses, and I've known callous terrors. I've been through a lot, and it isn't over (especially if/when my kidney gives out).
I know pain. My average pain level these days is a seven, and no, I'm not exaggerating. See, I know that many med types think patients exaggerate their pain levels to get meds (which I can't take) or attention (don't need that), but I have refined my pain scale over the years. My personal pain scale:
- 1-2 Barely ever have this anymore. Honestly, I never use these numbers because they don't exist for me.
- 3-4 Slightly annoying. Easy to ignore for long stretches, but then it reminds me it's there.
- 5 Used to be my average. Easy to ignore for an hour or so, maybe longer in cases of emergency or if my kids need me. I'm still fairly functional but start finding attention and recall to be difficult.
- 6 The pain is getting harder to ignore. I can still ignore it for up to an hour, but it's much harder to do so, and it comes back with a vengeance when I do. Recall gets harder here, especially.
- 7 I can ignore this pain only for half hour bursts. It grabs my attention whenever I try to do something normal (like, walk), and it makes thinking, listening to conversations or videos, and recall difficult. It's also the pain level I had after my exploratory laparoscopy without pain control and the beginning of labor in both of my natural deliveries.
- 8 I cannot ignore this pain except for a few minutes at a time. I can still smile, but it's harder to hide the pain. This one was later in labor when the contractions were harder and closer, what my ovarian cysts often hit me with, and what my headache can go to randomly. I'm functional but barely. I have a lot harder time remembering anything or following any conversation or what I'm reading.
- 9 I start having trouble talking at this pain level. Breathing is a chore, and I start to go inward, really struggling to deal with the outside world at all. This was my last year of appendicitis daily level and what months after my kidney surgery were like.
- 9.5 I stop being able to talk at all. It's scary, so I have to fight down a panic response at the same time as deal with the pain. I can scream in my head, and I do, but everything slows down, and I can't get words out. This is what my natural births got to at the most painful parts and what my first day after the kidney surgery was.
- 10 This is when I start seeing stars and start passing out. Yes, it's possible to pass out from pain alone. I have, several times, and it's very unpleasant. My body is overwhelmed with the pain level, and it shuts down on me without my permission. This was the pain level I had when I woke up early in recovery from the kidney surgery (again, with no pain control), and they rolled me for the x-ray.
I know pain. I've had ovarian cysts (2+ a year) since I was 22, had appendicitis for 10 years (intermittent for the first 9, solid for the last year, almost went insane from the pain), have had surgeries without pain control, broken bones, and I have fibromyalgia now, so my body thinks pain is a normal state. Even little things hurt, from certain sounds to someone grabbing my arm too hard. My skin feels like it's sunburned all the time now (allodynia is a fibro thing), and the pain from that waxes and wanes as my fibro flares up and down. I have a constant headache now, and that can go from easy to ignore to crippled by it depending on the day. Every muscle hurts. I don't even have to do anything for that to be true. It's just my reality.
So, let's talk how pain is seen by med types. Some are truly caring. I will never forget the urgent care doctor who got tears in his eyes when he realized that he couldn't do anything for my pain when I broke my elbow. He was horrified that I was in that much pain and shrugging it off, but it wasn't like I could do anything else. He was a real doctor. My primary care doctor, an amazing internist, truly listens and cares and doesn't like it that he cannot do anything, same with my neurologist. They are all great physicians.
Then there are the ones who don't believe me. My ex told me that my pain was all in my head for years when it was appendicitis and a kidney tumor. I've had doctors roll their eyes when I tell them what my pain level is. I have had ER doctors try to accuse me of being a narc seeker until I tell them to read my chart and then watched their eyes go big when they see the long list of meds I can't take with all opioids right at the top.
Here's a recent example: the phlebotomist at 2 a.m. who ripped skin off with the tape and didn't notice. I don't know how she didn't notice considering she was looking closely at my arm, prodding for a vein for a blood draw, but she didn't. When she decided to use the same vein, she firmly wiped the entire area, including the area she had ripped skin off of, with an alcohol wipe. I gasped loudly in pain, and her first reaction was to blame me. She said, "You have a strong reaction to pain, don't you?" I said, "I have fibromyalgia, so yes, but anyone would after you put alcohol on ripped skin." She then looked closer and said, "Oh, I guess you must have a bad reaction to tape or something." I said, "No, you ripped skin off when you ripped off the tape." She shook her head and didn't believe me, instead going forward with the blood draw and then telling me she would put the tape on a different way. Thankfully, my night nurse was more than understanding and upset when he looked at it and gave me antibiotic ointment to put on the area.
I've had nurses hit nerves when trying to put in IVs (classic signs--severe burning sensation running up the nerve) only to tell me that it can't be true when I tell them that. I've been yelled at by doctors and a dentist for crying in pain. I've been told that I'm overreacting more times than I care to count. I've been told that blood pressure cuffs don't hurt (until I show them the bruises), that they will get an IV in on the first try because they're the best and then get angry at me when they can't and start pulling the tourniquet tighter and tighter each time (bruising me more each time), that something won't hurt that does and then blame me for it hurting, and more. The ultrasound tech who assaulted me didn't even look at me as she was doing it, just stared at her computer with a blank look on her face, and when I talked with the head of the practice, the doctor told me that it was my fault for not telling her to stop, ignoring that I was at a 9.5 and literally seeing stars and couldn't talk.
See, many medical types find that the only way they can do their jobs is to otherize their patients, to become callous to cries of pain. They start saying all patients lie, that all patients are narc seekers, that all patients are just weak and it doesn't hurt that badly. They lie to themselves so they can keep going to work every day and hurting patients in hopes of helping them get better. They have to blame the patients: if they start looking too closely at what they're doing to people already in pain, they won't like themselves anymore. I understand why they do it, but let's at least admit that they're lying both to themselves and each other.
When we talk about pain, let's at least be honest.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Getting Ready for the New School Year, Fibromyalgia-Style
Despite dietary changes and the easier schedule of summer, my fibromyalgia has gotten worse in a lot of ways. Part of it is stress (lots of stress this summer due to family stuff), but most of it no one seems to understand. I had an upper endoscopy to check on my throat after many, many years of acid reflux, and that landed me in the hospital with severe chest pain. Turned out, that was my fibro over-reacting to the procedure and my hiatal hernia (new diagnosis) moving or something.
So, here it is, the last day of July, and I'm trying to figure out the new school year:
So, here it is, the last day of July, and I'm trying to figure out the new school year:
- My daughter is going off to college this fall (Western Michigan University--go Broncos!), and I am so happy for her, proud of her, and trying not to be sad or worried. We still have a lot to do to get her ready to move into the dorm and ready for her new year and new life at WMU, especially being in the WMU Bronco Marching Band.
- My son is starting his junior year in high school this year, and it's going to be a busy one. He's on the lead team for his FIRST robotics team, on the varsity golf team, helping run his school's autonomous car team, and he is learning how to drive. That's a lot! With tough classes on top of that, he's going to need a better home routine and set-up to help him thrive.
- My stepson is starting is 8th grade year, second one in our district, and there are so many positives there. He's switching to band with an amazingly supportive and awesome band teacher (Mr. Stout is one of the finest band directors I have ever had the honor of knowing), in honors classes, and getting the supports he needs at school. Thing is, we need to tighten up the home routine to make sure he gets the support at home that he needs.
So, that means it's time to re-evaluate home schedules, chore charts, all of it. In reflecting on last spring's difficulties with both boys in terms of school and grades and managing their time, I think it's time to bring back a stricter home schedule and definite dinner time. Here's our family schedule as of now.
Some nights, a set dinner time of 6:30 will not work out, but I think it will most of the time. One of the problems with last year was that I let my stepson spend too long after school de-stressing, so he ended up doing his homework later in the evening which 1) stressed him out right before bed, making sleep difficult, and 2) made it so he didn't have enough time for making his YouTube videos or spending more time with his dad. I have a plan for cutting rest time short at 4 p.m. (it involves many alarms), and the boys will be re-arranging their desks in their rooms so that they can more easily do their homework there and not on their beds (where they often would fall asleep in the middle of it last year).
Since I'm the parent who's home, it is my job to keep them on task, hold them accountable, and make sure they get play time in there somewhere, too. I also have to manage my paperwork for my disability, financials, family stuff, everything. That schedule is for me as much as it is for them so that I make sure to spend some time on chores every day and not lose track of time (easy to do in the afternoons as the pain ramps up).
The chore charts have been re-done and updated to not include my daughter, the schedules have been tightened up and updated, and now I have to clear the table (again), inventory what everyone needs for school and then buy new materials, have the boys inventory what fits and what doesn't and buy new clothes, and still unpack the basement. Tons to do in not a lot of time!
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