Summer 2012 Brain Food

Absolutely no way to catch up my blog...life got in the way of my posts...which is really what life is supposed to do: we celebrated birthdays, holidays, attended way too many sporting events, school events, church events and everything else you could think of.  One big event was that my parents are here on a mission.  They arrived in late January and will be here until sometime in 2013 (still to be determined).  The whole family has enjoyed them being here and being able to spend time with us in the evenings and on the weekends.  More on that in the future, I promise :)
So now for my summer reading list.  I sure do love the library and the little bit of extra time I have in the summer to lose myself in a good book.  Since it is already the end of June, this list is of books I have already read and books I hope to read before I go back to preschool and seminary.  Here goes:

1. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout
2. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay
3. The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, and The Death Cure by James Dashner
4. The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn
5. The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran
6. Extremely Loud and Incredible Close by Jonathan Foer
7. Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L Holm
8. The One and Only Ivan by Kattherine Applegate
9. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
10. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
11. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
13. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Hashimoto's

I have been feeling as though I should blog about my last 5 1/2 year journey into my thyroid disorder in hopes it might help someone else who unknowingly or knowingly has a thyroid disorder. But I keep putting it off because 1. I am BUSY 2. this post could possibly be 10 pages long if I'm not careful. So, do I give the reader's digest version or delve into the disease? Even though my real treatment began 5 + years ago, my actual thyroid issues go back to about 1987ish.....

1. Intermittent swelling of my thyroid, neck area for as long as I can remember--very annoying with a constant "gaggy" feeling

2. heat and cold intolerance--cold hands and feet

3. low body temperature

4. thinning eyebrows

5. skin problems--very unbalanced, very oily and very dry at same time

6. lethargy and complete tiredness, exhaustion

7. weight gain and inablility to lose with exercise and proper diet (i.e. exercised at gym 6 days a week for an entire year and ate 1200 calories a day and lost 4 LBS!)

8. brain fog and inability to concentrate

9. headaches

10. restless sleep and upon wakening, still exhausted

11. numbness in hands and feet

12. muscle and joint pain, especially in my legs

13. depressed moods

These symptoms increased as I got older, as I had children. I started at my regular doctor, got told over and over these symptoms are normal for women, probably need an antidepressant. Went to several endocrinologists, said my "levels" were fine and even though I presented with every single symptom of hypothyroidism, I was fine. Started doing research on my own and truly understanding what the thyroid does and how it acts, still got no relief or help from doctors in SLC or McAllen. Felt very discouraged. I felt like I knew what was wrong, but couldn't get anyone else to listen or help.

The thyroid gland governs the body's metabolism and development through the production of thyroid hormones. In the cells, the thyroid hormones help facilitate the production of energy. If your thyroid is not working properly, almost every aspect of your health is affected. When you go to the doctor with thyroid symptoms, your doctor will order a blood test to see what your tsh level is. If that level falls within a certain range, there assumption is you are find and dandy. TSH measures whether or not your hypothalamus is signaling to your brain to produce the thyroid hormone. IT DOES NOT MEASURE IF YOUR BODY IS USING THE HORMONES or what is happening at the cellular level. In essence, it measures if your brain is telling the body to produce thyroid, but not what the body does with it.

After persisting and going to more docs, they found antibodies in my bloodstream and diagnosed me with something called Hashimoto's thyroiditis. It is an autoimmune disorder where your body produces antibodies that in essence attack your thyroid and do not allow it to function properly. Even after that diagnosis, my "tsh level" was still within normal range so no treatment was given. I began to think a. I'm crazy b. I'm a hypochondriac c. I will feel like this for the rest of my life.

To make an already lengthy post somewhat shorter, I found a solution that saved my like. Through what I believe were inspired avenues, I was able to learn about and go to the Hotze Health and Wellness Center in Katy (Houston), TX. There I was treated with bioidentical hormones and within 2 weeks of treatment, I felt like a new person. That was in 2006. Since that time, I have only gotten better and I have learned a tremendous amount about the thyroid and how it functions, how other hormones work in our body, the effect of sugar and refined foods on our bodies and how to be persistent and strong, to be educated and to not be afraid to stand up and challenge a doctor when I know more than them.

This is really the severly condensed version of this story of finding my health again. I would encourage, implore, plead with any of you who are experiencing some or several of these symptoms to go to hwc.com and get some answers or call me or email me. I would love to give you the non-reader's digest version and share with you what I know.

I have included these pics just for fun (haha).

before and after

Overhead Projector

I am behind on the blog thing, been too busy since school started, but for 1/2 a sec, I am sitting at the computer, luxuriously reading other people's blogs and fb posts etc.....and I decided to tell you about the overhead projector. Chelsea had a project to do that included making a outline of the state of Texas that could not be printed from the computer. So, I mentioned to her that it would be great if we had an overhead projector so I could take her original and like "magic", project it onto the wall and we could trace a large replica onto her posterboard. She told me she thought she knew what an overhead projector was, she vaguely remembered one of her earlier elementary teachers using one....Well, lo and behold, our stake center just happened to have one, sitting in the corner of the stake office, collecting dust. We brought it home and did indeed make a great specimen for chelsea's project. She was happy, I was happy in a very nerdy/teacher/eduational way. But, Taggart was FASCINATED! "What is this thing?" "What does it do?" He examined it and touched it and plugged it in, this big clunky piece of ancient school technology. I then attempted to explain what it did, showed him what we could do with it, and explained how when I was in high school and college, my teacher(s) used this "thing" everyday for notes and math problems and lectures....He was confused. "But how does it hook to the computer?" "Don't you plug it into your tv or your computer or you ipod?" "I don't get it." Of course, it made me laugh. Apparently, a little contraption that just plugs into your wall and shines a big light, although fascinating, is just too hard for a 10 year old, computer-generational and technologically advanced kid of 2011 to comprehend!

Summer Reading list, take 2

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park : great perspective book for me, would be a good one for kids to read so they can also gain some perspective and gratitude. It is 2 different accounts of a child's life in Sudan.


Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl: had never read this very, very short book. I love Roald Dahl and I just recently saw the movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is hysterical and very clever. I simply wanted to see how the movie and book matched. In this case, I liked the movie more, which is rare...


The Middle of Somewhere by J.B. Cheaney: I think this book was recommended as a summer read in the Friend. It was pretty funny and boys and girls, ages 8 and up would enjoy it. It is about a brother and sister who take a summer trip with their almost stranger grandfather through Kansas.


The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard: this book was recommended to me by my friend, Meagan Sullivan. I liked this book because I couldn't guess the outcome and that is refreshing. It is definitely an adult read. It is a mystery.


The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe: just picked them up at the library on a whim, the illustrations by Ryan Price are magnificent, and that is what attracted me to this particular rendition. I had read the raven before, but never The Tell-Tale Heart although I had heard/seen it referrenced many times before. I am AMAZED at Mr. Poe's gift, truly remarkable his poeticism (is that even a word). It prompted me to research his life and I found a very colorful and somewhat disturbed individual. Like most writers/poets/artists from the past, he did not achieve much success until after his death.


Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool: This is the 2010 Newberry Medal Winner and it is a revelatory book for me. The writing is superb, the characters are rich and have a lot of depth. I found myself both laughing and feeling emotional as well. I don't want to give much away, it is about a young girl searching her father's past and discovering both things about herself and the town where he is from and the town's people as well. It is clever and insightful. There is some writing on pg 143-144 that is magic to me. I would recommend this book to pretty much anyone 10 -100.

Forever by Maggie Stievater: The 3rd book in a trilogy, I read the 1st because Autumn bought it at the school book fair. It seems since the Twilight craze, all these trilogies and series of books involving fantasy and paranormal, witches, vampires, werewolves, fairies etc...have just taken over the young adult section of modern fiction. I wasn't expecting much. I was pleasantly astounded. This author is a poet. The writing is achingly beautiful, the subject interesting and surprisingly deep. I Loved it. I am a big fan of consequences even in my mythical fiction. I want characters to have conflicts and not necessarily happy endings. This book was a great ending to the series. It did not disappoint and was just as good as the other two, which is rare. Great read for YA's and adults.

Garden

I'll admit it, I was a garden pessimist....some of my most unfond childhood memories are of weeding the garden. Yes, I was a lazy kid..or just uninterested or I didn't see the point. Little did I know that like all of those things you don't appreciate when you're a kid, growing a garden became an important thing for me to do. South Texas with its tropical climate is a little different than Idaho so I had to learn when to grow and how to grow and what to grow. Basically, it is so miserably, blazing hot that not much grows in the middle of summer. You plant end of February or you wait until September. We decided to try container or box gardens (orange fencing is to keep dog out, u can see another box next to it that got planted a couple weeks after that) and planted mostly from seed, except our tomatoes and a few herbs. Well, low and behold, it seems I may have a green thumb after all! I surprised myself by growing quite abundantly: cucumbers, tomatoes, zuchinni, parlsey, oregano, basil, cantaloupe, watermelon, chives, red peppers and I mean abundantly. They grew rampant and beautifully! And they did not stop growing! We had cucumbers and zuchinni for every meal :) We decided to plant pumpkins just recently---not sure if they will grow because it is so hot, but we have an entire box garden full of pumpkin blossoms, so I'll keep you posted. What surprised me the most is how excited and motivated I was to yield something from my semi-hard work and a simple seed---there's some symbolism there, right?

update on reading list

I decided to do a little update on my summer reading list. It is now mid July and I have offiicially read 11 books on my list, only 3 to go! For some reason, I really gravitate to juvenile fiction award winners....I know, I know I am not 10 years old anymore, but all in all, the books I read from that particular section are by far the best things I read. I think this is why: there is not any graphic language or sex, the writing by and far is simple and beautiful, the subject matters (believe it or not) are deep and profound, and they are quick reads. I also like to read what my kids are reading so I spend quite a bit of time reading juvenile fiction and young adult fiction. From my list, I read 2 beautiful books that are jf: Love, Aubrey and Mockingbird. Love, Aubrey is about a girl who goes to live with her Grandmother after a family tradgedy and learns to sort through her feelings by writing letters to herself. And, Mockingbird is about a young girl who has asperger's and how she deals with her brother's death. Both are beautifully written and poignant. I would recommend either to adults and children 9+. Another on my list I enjoyed was the final book in a trilogy called The Forgotten Locket by Lisa Mangum (incidentally, this book just won an award). True to form (at least in my mind), it was not as good as the other two in the series...but only slightly. There are times it got too descriptive if that makes sense. But great YA fiction, great for mothers and daughters. Same goes for Matched---that I did not know was part of a trilogy! So, a little frustrated to get sucked in and now have to wait for the next.


A few other thoughts about the books I have read thus far:


To Kill A Mockingbird---why hadn't I read this before? Of course groundbreaking and thoughtful, but also hilarious!


Animal Farm---seriously made me think I was back in High School and didn't feel like "analyzing"


The Catcher in the Rye--ugghhh! Kept waiting for this book to do ANYTHING..towards the end I got what it was supposed to be, but sorry folks, not a big fan. Enough bad language to last me a lifetime.


Witch and Wizard--fun read, quick read, kids Chelsea's age would like it and of course, it is a series


Hiding Place--about the holocaust, true story, very insightful and some great thoughts on being happy no matter what your situation


Anthem--aka the Giver, Matched, The City of Ember etc etc...of course it came first.....same genre, same good ideas and thoughts.


And, I shall let you all know how Forever turns out after I read it this weekend. Just released on 7/12 so gotta go pick it up at Sam's. I have high expectations for this one so I hope it doesn't disappoint.


That will leave me with 2 books on the list that I already verified were "in" at my library and then I will have to make a new list!

My Summer Reading List

Oh how I love to read! I cannot tell you how much I love to hold a book in my hand, to feel the pages, to smell them even. I am a traditionalist, no kindle or nook for me, I need to have the book in my hand, I like to use bookmarks. The best thing about the summer is unlimited trips to the library, occasional trips to Barnes and Noble, and uninterrupted time to lounge around on my couch, reading. That is, an attempt at uninterrupted time laying about, reading. I have been writing down titles of books that I have seen at Target or that someone has mentioned to me or that Autumn/Chelsea/Taggart are reading or that I've been waiting ever so patiently for the sequel to be released, or they are classics I just haven't ever read, on little scraps or bits of paper or sticky notes all over my house....and now as I gather them up, (I am sure I will find more) I have an official summer reading list. It is one week into my summer vacation and I have read 3....only 11 to go!

1. Witch and Wizard by James Patterson
2. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
3. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
4. A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
5. The Middle of Somewhere by JB Cheaney
6. The Forgotten Locket by Lisa Mangum
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
8. Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
9. Animal Farm by George Orwell
10. Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life by Yimala Rogers
11. Matched by Ally Condie
12. Love, Aubrey by Suzanee Le Fleur
13. Anthem by Ayn Rand
14. Forever by Maggie Stiefvater