Oscar Rundown

 My friend normally publishes a list of movies to watch on her blog as we approach the Oscar nominations. Since she is otherwise engaged, as a public service here is my quick list of movies with how my app ("Just Watch") says they are available as of today. 

The ones in blue I have seen (just TWO!). The ones in green I want to see. Unmarked I'm undecided on whether I'm going to work to see them. (I just finished watching Don't Look Up and can't figure out how to format the color so consider it blue.)

I was surprised at how many are not currently available for streaming. I think some were available via HBO Max but only for a limited time. Maybe they will open up again.

"GG*" means it won a Golden Globe. SAG means it has been nominated by Screen Actor's Guild.

Being the Ricardos	Prime	GG*	SAG
The Tender Bar	Prime		SAG
Belfast	Apple	GG*	SAG
Tragedy of MacBeth	Apple		SAG
CODA	Apple		SAG
In the Heights	HBO Max
Tick tick boom	HBO Max	GG*	SAG
Power of the Dog	Netflix	GG*	SAG
Passing	Netflix		SAG
Don’t Look Up	Netflix
The Lost Daughter	Netflix		SAG
Encanto	Disney	GG*
Spencer	Rent/Buy
King Richard	Rent/Buy	GG*	SAG
Respect	Rent/Buy		SAG
Dune	Rent/Buy	GG*
Cyrano	NONE
Nightmare Alley	NONE		SAG
Licorice Pizza	NONE		SAG
House of Gucci	NONE		SAG
West Side Story	NONE	GG*	SAG
The Eyes of Tammy Faye	NONE		SAG

Cult de Sac

My house in red. Cult members in blue.

I live on a corner of two streets that both dead-end. One street ends at an intersection, so you can turn and keep going, but the other is a cul-de-sac. I have a sign in my front yard that says "No Outlet", which I adopted as the name for my garden blog. All of the houses on both streets are tract houses, built at the same time in 1950. They were one story, three bedroom, small kitchen places with one or one and a half- bathrooms, partial or full basements, and about 1300 square feet on the ground floor. Even in 1950, these were small starter homes. When I moved in, 25 years ago (!) there were a lot of long-time residents aging in place. I have survived to become one of the senior folks in the 'hood, as houses have turned over, been renovated, and younger folks have moved in to start new families. The small size of the houses means no large families, and these houses are also attractive to folks like me, single or couples but without children.

The cul de sac next to me is a special place within the larger neighborhood. Most of the houses back on to the stream valley park, and one has a path down into the park everyone on the street uses. When the pandemic started, remember there was a thing about banging pots or singing? The cul de sac started with that, and over the past two years has built up the connection to where they call it the cult de sac. They have a weekly happy hour outside year round, and in (both) summers had outdoor movie nights. They have a very active and funny What's App chat group. They built a little free library, and have three basketball hoops at different levels lined up for the different sized kids.

I think it's the kids that pull the core families together. I went to happy hour on Saturday, after our first two snow storms, and there were four children six and under playing in the snow. I know of at least four other kids not there because they were quarantining (one four-year-old actually had covid). I remember the solidarity from other parents I found on the soccer sidelines, and I think it was no coincidence that most of my parents' close friends even into old age had kids roughly the same age as me and my siblings. During these pandemic times, opportunities for kids have been so limited, so the bonding must be even more intense. There are two families on the chat group that live not on the cul de sac but on the next street, but they have small kids which I think was their entree to the group.

I had been invited into the cult events from the beginning, but have only just started to try to attend. Saturday was sunny and cold, and everyone stood out in the big cul de sac circle bundled up with their own drinks, watching the kids playing in the snow. Clusters of grownup people moved around, formed and re-formed, about ten in all, chatting about nothing and everything. Parents spoke to kids - and I couldn't always tell which kid belonged to which grownup, because they know each other well enough to pick up any one of them that went sprawling on the ice, pat them and send them on their way. 

I'm looking forward to a little more sociability with my neighbors as I get deeper into the cult.

Report Card: Wrap Up of 2021

I put together my report card for all of 2021. It really is a good exercise, because it keeps me honest. How I feel about how active I am, how much I do of something, is often very different from what the actual truth in the data is. For example, I feel like I'm being pretty active. Yet, by almost every measure, I've been less active almost every month of 2021 compared to my averages from 2020 and 2019. Huh. I've got to buckle down!

I've deliberately put a single, relatively small image of the report card here, because I'm looking at trends, not the specific numbers. This won't make a lot of sense on the phone - if you turn the phone to "landscape" you should probably at least be able to scroll through the whole image. In looking at the monthly changes, darker green is better. Migraines are in red, darker is worse. The three blue columns on the right show changes for 2021, 2020, and 2019, and it's the trends here that matter. Basically, darker blue is better for the measure.

The top group is activity, and as mentioned, everything is down from previous years. In 2021, May shows as the dark green month. That was both high gardening season, and getting ready for the first big sea voyage that went in early June. The good news is that December was up by most measures compared to the previous few months (which no doubt is why my subjective guess is that activity is up overall, the well known subjective "recentcy bias"). One thing that was much better this year than last year is strength. I started doing video training in February, and am doing it twice a week now very consistently. I love my trainer, and we have a nice social chat while I work harder for her than I would for myself. That is going to continue for the forseeable future. I also did a couple of months of physical therapy for my knees, and that is basically additional strength training for my legs not captured here. But I would definitely say that I feel stronger all over now than I did last year.

"Miles walked" is when I set out the door for a walk, and record it on my Garmin. The so-much-higher numbers last year made me go look at the specific data for last year, to see what I was doing. It appears that last year, I made a point of doing the "park loop" almost every day - a mile and a half out the door and through the park and back through the neighborhood. Most were first thing in the morning, after the first cup of coffee but before the second. It was just what I did. And then last winter in the bad weather and the dark, with bad knees and migraines, and an ailing dog that couldn't come with me, I just stopped doing that. I've been out walking more, but it's not a habit or a routine, at a standard time, but something I work in around other things. Hmm.... THIS is why looking at this stuff is valuable to me. What worked before? Why did it stop working? What can I do to get back to something that will work well for me now?

Moving on...

My weight is relatively stable across the year, and for the past three years. I am tracking my food more often than in previous years, and I'll have more to say about that in another post.

The really good news is that my migraines remain at a relatively low level, down from earlier this year and last year. (2019 migraine data is not reliable.) I'm meditating less than prior years - in formal meditations, at least. I think that reflects two things: I tend to go to formal meditations when I'm highly stressed or in pain, and those things are better. The other aspect is I do informal mindful check-ins, a few breaths, a body scan, a gut check, much more often. I don't capture those, of course. They are just part of how I go about my day, like scratching my nose or getting a drink of water. But I may try to work some longer formal sits into my days - I think it has benefits in several ways.

My entertainment aspects continue to cruise along nicely. I read about the same number of books this year as last, and blogged about as often. Sadly, I saw fewer movies, and I'd like to do better with that. None were in theaters, so almost all were alone. (I watched a lot of TV in 2021, but I haven't found an easy way to log that.)  As things loosened up last summer, I got into town a few times, I actually went on four trips away from home, and I got more sailing in, pretty consistently every couple of weeks starting in March right through November.

Going into this new year, I really want to be more active. I'm scheduled to go on another hiking retreat in Utah in March, and so that will be my kedge for the winter. I know it's gotten me out in the cold and the grey a few times I would have passed on otherwise. Freezing rain is supposed to come in the afternoon tomorrow, maybe I'll try the "after the first cup" timing tomorrow!

Intuitive Eating

 

It turns out Intuitive Eating is a Thing. It's even known as IE to its adherents. Forthwith, my exploration of IE with my thoughts.

I found IE (the Thing) from a podcast I follow, Ten Percent Happier. The interview was with Evelyn Tribole, one of the authors of Intuitive Eating, the book which is now in its fourth edition, and several other related books. And founder of a nutrition practice that trains Registered Dieticians and nutritionists to be Anti-Diet Dieticians. The focus of the podcast series is mindfulness, and in this episode Tribole gave her distinction between mindful eating and IE: mindful eating is a specific practice engaged when eating, while IE is a set of principles for living your life with a healthy relationship with food. One could engage in mindful eating while still having an unhealthy relationship with food. 

As is my wont, I plunged into this thing. I got the basic book from Audible where it was included in my membership and I listened to all 13+ hours in three days. I bought in hardcopy paperback the associated workbook, and joined a Facebook group that gave a quiz before they let you in, and an essay exam before allowing you to post. 

So quick warnings before going further:  This is the Anti-Diet, and will go against most of what we think we know about how to eat to accomplish our goals. And, it forbids having certain goals. And it denies what we think we know about how our bodies work. It denies there can be such a thing as a Food Addict. And, it comes across to this skeptical cynic a bit like a religion, because if it does not "work" it is because you, the failed practitioner, don't believe in the principles enough. This is one of the symptoms of a cult. 

So I am an IE skeptic. I am not all in. I think there is a lot of value here, and much of what they say about dealing with food is very healing. And a lot of it is very compatible with what I have come to believe about food and dieting overall. But the way it is written seems to be aimed at an audience that is in a much different place than I am. And some of it rings false with my own experience and evidence, not just beliefs.

So here are the ten principles that compose IE, the Thing:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
2. Honor Your Hunger
3. Make Peace with Food
4. Challenge the Food Police
5. Feel Your Fullness
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
7. Cope with Your Feelings Without Food
8. Respect Your Body
9. Exercise: Feel the Difference
10. Honor Your Health: Gentle Nutrition
    

The first is the big one. Reject the diet mentality, reject everything about diet culture, and here's a big point: do not try to lose weight. As long as you are trying to manage your food with the intention of losing weight, you will never make peace with food. A large part of the thinking is based on the psychological principle that restricting something leads to future rebound - the forbidden fruit tastes sweeter.

I am fully on board with the concepts of body positivity, health at every size (which is also a Thing, HAES), and the evilness of the enormous exploitative economic machine that is the weight loss industry. I fully acknowledge most attempts at long-term weight loss fail, and how much money is to be made in that fact. I've felt the effects of how denying something can lead to obsessing about it.

IE also fully recognizes that our society has a strong anti-fat bias, and that makes it difficult to give up the idea that being thinner is a good thing. And, in some cases, being fat causes economic losses and bad health care from medical professionals that can't see beyond the number on the scale. But, they counter, since almost no-one succeeds at long-term weight loss, and there is strong evidence that weight cycling is very bad for your health, there is no point to trying one diet after another, even if from time to time you are thinner. This condemns you to a life of never being happy with where you are and never being comfortable with food.

IE does not promise that if you fully embrace the process leading through all their principles and then practice them in your life, you will as if by magic end up losing weight after all. Instead, they say that you will simply lead a happier life. And be healthier, if only from stopping weight cycling. I sense a hidden footnote there, maybe it was in the earlier editions of their books, that many people do eventually end up at an equilibrium at a lower weight than where they started out. 

They state that during the earlier stages of their process, many people initially gain weight, as folks move through the first four principles in what they describe as a "re-feeding" process where all food becomes "emotionally equivalent". And they have that word "initially" in there, as if they are suggesting that as people internalize principles five through seven, where you learn how to stop eating, weight starts to come off. But they never say it. Principles eight and nine are to learn how to love your body and exercise only for the joy of it. And only at the end do they bring up the notion that while any and all foods should be emotionally equivalent, not all foods are nutritionally equivalent. 

Much of the practices are geared towards being mindful of and in your body. In my chronic pain practices we call this somatic tracking. In IE, it's called interoceptive awareness. (You've heard of proprioception? The sense of our body in space? This is the sense that goes kerflooey when vertigo strikes, and can cause sea sickness when screwed with. Well, interoception is internal sense of our body. They are real words, but spell checker doesn't acknowledge them.)  Feel and acknowledge and feed hunger, and rely on the wisdom of the body to determine what and how much to eat. As noted before in this blog, as if. This is the holy grail, and I believe it is the right way.

I think these books are geared towards people who are much more immersed in Diet Culture than I am. And I say this as a person who has for twelve years blogged on my diets! Perhaps at earlier times in my life I was much more of a true believer in The Way to lose weight. Perhaps I have demonized foods. But maybe because I have been both analytical and introspective about what I was doing, and because I've always considered myself a skeptical cynic, and because I have become much more tuned to my body through mindfulness and dealing with chronic pain, many of the exercises in their workbook don't work for me. But some do. (I wrote about my movements towards being more at peace with food just before I fell down this IE rabbit hole.)

My main caveat about IE:

I have engaged in weight cycling, but I also have not in 24 years gone back to my top weight. I am happier for not being that roly poly. And I'd like to be less fat in the future, I'm not willing to fully embrace this weight. So with that shred of doubt, I'm not a true believer and thus IE will not "work" for me.

Other bones to pick: 

•  I understand what they say about not demonizing foods, but foods will never be "emotionally equivalent" for me. There are memories and associations, and there are past somatic experiences, and there is knowledge about nutrition, and even often knowledge about the source and environmental footprint of how how food got to my plate. They do not embrace vegetarians and vegans, apparently believing most get there from a health rather than an ethical or environmentalist viewpoint, and any forbidding of food is anathema to them.
• For folks trying to make foods emotionally equivalent, to my eyes they push grain-based carbs rather hard. (Perhaps someone from a different diet history would think they are pushing fats too much.) 
• They discount fresh foods, and think fruit has no staying power (can't disagree) and think vegetables also have little staying power (I disagree) though they list fiber as distinct from vegetables and like fiber. 
• Their workbook has good exercises to do - vary your lunch, for example, while keeping other meals equivalent for a couple of days, and mark down experience with hunger and satisfaction. But the accompanying worksheets are prepopulated with examples that show their biases, which don't always correlate with my own experiences. For example, sandwich lunch versus salad - their "notes" example say salad didn't hold them the way the sandwich did, because the bread helped - but they assume a skinless chicken breast and fat free dressing on the salad, when I load my salads with things like olives and sausages and find the combination of fiber from the greens and fat and protein hold me much better than a bread heavy sandwich. (This is just one example, there are many). 
• We know the food industry works to increase palatability while delaying satiety in an effort to get us to eat more. This is not addressed. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to rely on my body to overcome the forces arrayed against it - except by eating real, whole, foods that haven't been subjected to industrial dark forces.
  

OK, enough for now. I'm continuing to figure things out, based primarily on my own insights leavened by reading. But I want to focus these first couple of months this year on getting strong more than what I weigh. That requires getting up off this couch!
 
 

Seasons of Covid

Happy New Year! Our holiday was OK, but Covid cast its shadow. (Spoiler: nobody is sick yet.) 

Christmas Eve

Peripatetic Big Boy (vaxxed and boosted) had been in San Diego at the college frisbee finals until Tuesday, because he is coach of the women's team. Then he went back to Michigan, packed furiously (because he's moving to Berkeley for the next semester, was going to fly from here), drove himself to my house and arrived on Thursday, the 23rd, with one huge and two small suitcases and his negative PCR test result from Wednesday's swab. We dined together, and he settled into the basement suite. Friday, Christmas Eve, he texted about noon from the basement: "Update: one of my players tested positive". 

So then we began a furious search for a place to do rapid and/or PCR testing in the next few hours (because I didn't plan far enough ahead to have many home tests on hand). Many unwieldy website experiences later, I secured an appointment for 4 pm about half an hour away. Text at 4:30 from the long drive-through line: "Will I run out of gas waiting in line? Only time will tell!".  He arrived back home at 6 pm - the time the family was originally planning to assemble for dinner - along with his negative test result. But he had a bad sore throat (no fever), and more and more of the frisbeers were reporting in positive. 

So then began a furious consultation about whether we believed the test result or not! Should I pack food and take it to BILs house? SO MUCH WORK! But at his point, none of the others had been with BB and so were not at risk for a secondary exposure. We ended up in a cautious middle ground: they would come over, but no BB eating in the same room, my air filter running and open windows and BB masked and somewhat distant for conversations when we weren't eating. 

Julekage! The girl comes through!

This whole thing blew up my plans. This sounds like such a shallow and vain whine - but Christmas Eve dinner is my big event of the year. I had timetables written out, of when to do what. Roast in the oven, vegetables prepped and ready for cooking, when to change the tablecloth and set the table,  cooking commences at this point, candles need to be lit, appetizers and drinks to keep people busy while making gravy... None of this went according to plan. Dinner was an hour late, food wasn't optimal, BB ate by himself in the basement - I set plates outside his room, he came out and got them when I was back upstairs. Tablecloth never got changed, candles never got lit. Almost no pictures were taken. So did it even happen?

And another tradition got booted around. We have to have the Norwegian Christmas bread on Christmas morning. It's called Julekage, for goodness sake - it has Christmas in the name! Several years ago, BB, the baker in the family, took over this tradition. But he spent the afternoon trying to get tested, and I was in a kerfluffle, so suddenly it was after dinner and the Julekage hadn't been started. No-one thought it was a good idea for BB to bake. I declared I wasn't up to staying up and doing it. We discussed making it on Christmas day to have later, but that didn't seem like it made the magic happen. So my girl stepped up and stepped forth and did it! It took her most of the night, but we had also decided that noon was actually when Christmas morning started for us, so that worked out ok.

Christmas night

Christmas morning and evening were over at my BIL's house, with the same rules of distancing. Except for brief appearances, BB stayed alone in the basement suite. He had been planning to leave on Sunday for a fabulous vacation with friends - an AirBnB right outside Yosemite. But I offered and he accepted to stay hunkered down in the basement, where he had his own bedroom, bathroom, open windows, and access to separate living room and even a home gym. I got him an appointment for a PCR test on Wednesday, the first available, and he rescheduled his flight. Sunday, I was done cooking, but it was reasonably pleasant out so I bought hot dogs and buns, set out drinks, and folks came over to hang in the backyard under blankets.

Boxing Day

As BB's last known exposure to the infected people was Tuesday night before Christmas, he decided to try for a test sooner than the (8 days after) Wednesday plan. Monday, he went to a county-run walk-in place, but they ran out of tests and shut down after half an hour. Consulting with friends, he secured an appointment for a PCR test Tuesday night in Baltimore, and combined it with an outdoor firepit visit to a close friend who lives there. Test results came in about 18 hours, negative! Yay! Out of quarantine! He visited with some friends on Wednesday. After big family confab, most of us declined to dine together in a restaurant, so BB and I got Ethiopian takeout together, BIL closed his vaccine clinic which was in a bar and became a customer, and my girl and middle boy went to a private party.

Lines for testing - but with my appointment,
it took me six minutes

Thursday morning, day of BB's flight to California, new twist! My girl's two best friends, folks she and Middle Boy partied with the day before, were both positive! Oh no! (I had not seen my guys in this window, no secondary exposure from this source for me.) So girl and boy, both vaxed but boosted just this week, are hunkered down in quarantine at BIL's house, and I won't see the three of them until some clearance point is reached - not sure what that will be. I provided lots of info on available testing options, but left it to them to schedule. I did say if they are non-symptomatic I would drive them to tests (masked and with windows open). 

BB got off to California, with his plane delayed but not cancelled. Fierce headwinds across the country - just another bit of unpleasantness to add to the mix.

Cool lighting for our little dispersed party

Friday, New Year's Eve, was damp but fairly warm. Some neighbors opened their backyard to a party that started at 3 pm, with a planned small-child countdown and ball drop at 6 pm, and additional plans for adults to continue outside until it rained or midnight, whichever came first. I went over in the afternoon with a bottle of wine and it was pleasant. There are many small children in the immediate neighborhood, and I hadn't been around any for quite some time. I just observed, didn't touch. We remained mostly distant, everyone had masks near to hand, and many actually wore them. And two families on the street were isolating, wouldn't join outside. (Our host actually invited them to mask and come, and both families firmly declined. It was clear this was a relief to some of the others. Risk tolerances vary.) One of the isolating families had another milestone - it was the last day of work for the man - and we all walked over to bang on his door and serenade him (the only appropriate song we could think of was "For he's a jolly good fellow".) I lasted at the party for nearly four hours, but once again didn't make it to midnight this year. Maybe if I don't start drinking at 4?

I had made myself an appointment for PCR testing as soon as I heard of BB's exposure. The test was Thursday am; as of this writing (about 50 hours later) I don't have results.

So it feels like we're all going to get it. What I thought I knew about transmission - that outside would be mostly safe - no longer feels right. As I think my family members here will probably continue a slightly more aggressive risk stance than me, I'm planning on mostly being physically alone for a while. Luckily, this suits me fine. I picture myself walking with the dog and without the dog, working out in my gym, engaging with friends near and far virtually, gardening indoors and outside if the weather permits, reading, watching movies and TV. Basically, what I've done for two years, but with better strength and energy. Maybe, I'll try baking bread. I am so grateful for the many advantages I have in this dismal situation, and feel so strongly for those less well off than me. 

I felt the need to document this time.

UPDATE: Rapid tests should both my girl and middle boy negative, five days in. So I think they will leave the house, masking everywhere for the rest of ten days.