Good for public safety, bad for public health?

In the past few months, city workers passed through our neighborhood converting all the old florescent streetlight bulbs to new LED bulbs.

I became aware of this city program because one afternoon I curiously remarked about workers on our street and that night our bedroom was *lit up.* Honestly, seriously bright.  With the curtains closed.  As I moved through the house I realized every room that had direct view to a street light, be it just on the corner or literally the other side of the block, was now bright enough to read by.

This alarms me.  You know how I feel about sleep, already.  A big part of good sleep comes with keeping non-natural light exposure low. Even the tiniest amount of nighttime light impacts our hormonal systems, both sleep related and others.  While I can and will purchase black out curtains for the bedrooms to limit the amount of light seeping in, our city's cost reduction program will inadvertently mess with the hormonal systems of almost everyone in town.

And their dinner.  In 2010 I wrote this post about my concerns for the lettuce growing in a hydroponic farm I drive by. I know it seems silly, but there is plenty of research to show that every living thing needs rest (and dark) as much as it needs light to thrive and mature.  As I look out the window at midnight, each individual leaf of my basil is brightly illuminated.  This just can't be good for my garden.

I wonder, too, about general light pollution.  I know there are guidelines, maybe even requirements, about how much light a streetlight should shed into the surrounding area.  Searching around on the internet, I couldn't find any exact numbers for what constitutes light pollution, but I'm pretty sure illuminating the interior of my house qualifies for "light trespass."  I wonder what the NASA light maps would look like were every city to install these new LED bulbs.

The New Jersey Astronomical Association feels passionately about light pollution and links to some interesting articles about it. NASA is concerned enough about it for their astronauts to drop a hunk of change on biologically adjusted bulbs.  There turns out, even, to be a documentary about light pollution called "City Dark," reported on here by the Huffington Post. This problem of light pollution is not new, but I think it is probably also not on the radar of most public officials. Really, light pollution is neither sexy nor is likely to capture most people's hearts and imaginations.

Still, I have to feel for the City.  Here they've found a great new way to reduce costs and improve visibility for drivers and pedestrians.  They've eliminated the issue of dealing with the mercury from the florescent bulbs (though this may be more my boogey man than theirs).   City leaders are getting props for being cutting edge.

Jet lagged this week from our trip to Ecuador, the LEDs have particularlly been on my mind.  Waking up after hours of sleep, I can't judge based on the light streaming into my bedroom whether I've finally adjusted to the time change and slept in until 7:30 or if it is hours before sunrise.  2:30am LED looks exactly like 7:30am sunshine.

LEDs must be great for the budget and for public safety concerns. And I think they're equally bad for public health. I wonder how it will all work out.

Fie upon the Evil Food Service Workers

May many tons of hot coal be heaped upon the evil food service workers that served me caffeinated black tea this evening when I asked for decaf.

It is 1:13am, I've been laying in bed for the past 3 hours and I am still wide awake.

Lost in My Own Head

It sort of took me by surprise the other day when I realized my blog has been very quiet recently.  While I haven't posted much, I've been learning and thinking a ton and somehow thought all that would osmosis onto my blog.

One of the main inputs filling my days is an intensive class on attachment by Gordon Neufeld.  Bill and I are taking it with a dozen other parents from the Attachment Parenting International Seattle group.  22 hours of lectures (via DVDs) on attachment, development and maturation is seriously re-focusing how I see my kids, my marriage, myself and the world.  Having my brain rearranged excites me at many levels, but boy howdy is it all consuming.

Our adoption process went on hold for a few months.  Bill needed some time to think it all over, and I really wanted us both to be on the same page before moving into any potential situation.  We've learned and grown as individuals and a couple much over these few months.  Which is also rather painful and all consuming.

Homeschooling wrapped up for the season mid-June.  It ended with a frenzy of activities including guitar performances, soccer games and final tests.  The kids did great over the course of the year, and I'm proud of how much they learned.  I'm happy to brag that I've even submitted Theo's work to a certified teacher and gotten her approval back to satisfy our annual assessment requirement. Now we're down to a bare bones schedule that allows the kids to either dilly-dally and spread a little work painfully over the entire day or finish up quickly and go PLAY.

Theo read 274 library books last year.  Really, just library books - I don't record any reading of the many, many books we own, no comic books (of which we also own quite a few), none of the books he consumes at other people's houses.  I don't know whether to be prouder of him or our wonderful children's librarian.  It's quite a feat on both their parts.

Cake making with All Cakes Considered is one of the highlights of my week.  We're on cake 11 tonight (it's cooling as I type) - the Glorious Ginger Cake.  The cakes taste great, usually look wonderful and make me famous at our homeschool group's weekly park day as I tote in the leftovers.  So far my favorite is the Drunken Monkey Cake, but several of the recent coffee cakes made me moan with happiness.

Pact Camp starts in a few weeks.  We travel down to California each year to learn more about transracial adoption and figure out what is the next step for our family.  The staff and other families at camp bring so much knowledge, information and heart to the week, I feel honored to attend.  And looking, really looking, at where our family is at in meeting the racial identity needs of our children takes a lot of courage for me because I think we're always far behind where I wish we were.  I deeply want to be and provide everything my children need.  So preparing mentally for camp is a bit wrenching and quite consuming for me.

Good thing brains have high plasticity because mine is getting a serious stretch. Maybe I'll do NaBloPoMo in August and see if I can get some of these thoughts more fully formed onto the page. Maybe I'll just sit in the back yard, drink lemonade and watch my kids run through the sprinkler.

55 Ways

Recently, I've spent quite a bit of emotional energy focusing on all the things in my life that aren't they way I want them to be.  Thus making myself pretty miserable creating mountains out of molehills - or at least focusing on the molehills rather than the daffodils next to them.

This evening, playing with the idea that I'm really the only person I can change in this world, I figured I might as well make a list of ways I want to be in the world. As I'm getting tired of the ways I don't like being, perhaps I'll allow myself to substitute in some fresher ideas if they're readily available.

In a short 15 minutes my list grew to 55 attributes.  It seems to me that if I simply focused on seeing/being more of the things on my list, there wouldn't really be much time left to be grumpy and miserable. That's a novel thought.

Here's my list.  Do you have a list?  What's on yours?

big  strong  soft  warm  beautiful  loving  accepting  playful  good.boundaries  flirtations  expressive  fun  open  intense  relaxed  flow.state  proactive  honest  healthy  responsive  feeling  loud  cuddly  attached  friendly  smart  confident  humble  thinking  safe  connected  heard  seen  loved  trusted  asked  powerful  celebrated  supported  generous  grateful  calm  wise  trusting  intuitive  available  present  compassionate  joyful  peaceful  respected  appreciated  gentle  gentled  clear

15 minutes: Agony and Elation

As you may have noticed, FlyLady has a large influence on my life.  FlyLady (whose real name is Marla and who used to teach fly fishing), provides free online homemaking coaching, which sounds kind of fussy and trite. She and her service are neither of those things - focusing not on coordinating details and but on bringing peace and ease in our daily lives.

One of her soap boxes is baby steps.  Our houses (and lives) didn't become complete wrecks in one day and we aren't going to salvage them in a day, either.  Most of her assigned tasks are to be completed in 15 minutes.  After 8 years of her coaching, I often apply this idea to my life.

15 minutes is short, right? I figure I can do any task, no matter how distasteful, for 15 minutes. But here is the distressing truth about distasteful tasks.  Most of them take much less than 15 minutes.  I spin huge and gruesome stories about how it would be great if I could do X but it will take so long and be so hard I just don't have the hours it will take to do it.

This week I've paid attention to these gruesome tasks and how long they really take:

Wipe down the bathroom - 7 minutes

Clean up all the kids toys strewn about the living room - 12 minutes

Wash the huge mountain of dirty lunch and dinner pans - 9 minutes

Help the kids brush/floss teeth, wash faces, file nails, put on pjs - 7 minutes

Put away 5 very full bags of groceries - 10 minutes

Collected overdue library books - 14 minutes

Trim the dog's nails - 2 minutes

Tidy the bedroom and make the bed - 4 minutes

On the reverse side, I often deny myself a few minutes of peace and relaxation because it takes so long. Here are a few things I've indulged in for 15 minutes with great results this week.

Sat in a peaceful room and flipped through a new magazine

Looked out at the sunrise and enjoyed some kombucha

Petted the dog

Read a book to a tired kiddo

Crocheted

Practiced my guitar

I'm always interested in the stories we tell ourselves about life that differ from the reality of it. My timer turns out to be a surprising tool for reflection.

The Peanut Butter Jelly Sandwich Problem

I have an on-going problem with PBJs (beside them being high in carbs and me working not to be).  

Every fiber of my being believes it is proper to spread the peanut butter side of the sandwich first. However, getting peanut butter off a knife is hard work.  Cleaning jelly off a knife is quick and easy, so obviously one *should* spread the jelly first.  Then safely proceed to the peanut butter, free of worry that cross-contamination might occur.

But that would be a jelly peanut butter sandwich, and that's just wrong.

Sleep Hygiene

As you may recall, I'm sort of a sleep geek.  Not, apparently, because I'm good at it, but because I love to gather information about it.  

One of the ideas tossed around in most all sleep books* is the concept of good sleep hygiene. Essentially, doing the right things to help us fall asleep easily and stay that way until our 8 hours have been fulfilled.

Unlike dental hygiene, sleep hygiene is multifaceted and can be quite complex. Good sleep requires a careful balance of the right amount of the right things at the right times.  This list includes sleep (because sleep begets sleep), food, exercise, emotional release/connection, and light.  For some of us, a carefully managed environment plays a big roll in our level sleep. Again with a long list ranging from the location of the room in the house to wall colors to the number and fill of pillows to be used.

Modern life is not particularly conducive to good sleep hygiene.  And yet, in order to survive and succeed in this modern day and age I believe we need, maybe more than at anytime before, to be well rested.  We drive huge, heavy objects at alarming speed and parent small children in relative isolation.  More than any other age, we modern folk need our wits and good judgement about us. 

Today I sabotaged my own sleep in a variety of small ways.  I skipped my scheduled morning walk -  planned to alert my body and brain to the beginning of a new day.  I drank a not-quite completely decaf coffee at 3pm.  Even at 9ish grams of caffeine, this is way to late for my stimulant-sensitive body.  I took a brisk and invigorating walk with the kids at 7pm, now causing the alerting I needed at 7am.  Finally, I watched an episode of West Wing with my hubby.  Beyond the issues of the over-stimulation of the light receptors in my brain now telling me it must be high noon, the level of emotion and conflict effectively dramatized by Aaron Sorken set my adrenaline sky-high.

It seems it shouldn't be that hard to get a good night's sleep. None of these alone were crazy choices and still combined they spelled out disaster for my rest.  My children no longer nurse every two hours at night and sleep deprivation is not currently my perpetual state, so regaining the few hours lost tonight will be relatively easy. And yet, tomorrow I will strive to be extra aware of how I drive and how I handle stress, especially in combination with my small children. 

How are you doing for sleep?  

* my favorite sleep books are

The Promise of Sleep by William Dement

Sleepless in America by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka 

Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival by TS Wiley 

My 5 Hour Thing

I have this sleep phenomena, to myself I call it "the 5 hour thing," where after 5 hours of sleep my body temporarily believes I am rested and restored.  

I first noticed the 5 hour thing in college, when I perceived it as an asset.  Study until the library closed at midnight, walk over the the pub for a drink with a buddy, in bed by 2:00 meant I could nab 5 hours before getting up at 7:00 for my first 8:00 class. Apparently I was somewhat functional, too, based on my grades.

After college I mostly forgot about it.  10 years later, enter babies and true sleep deprivation, then suddenly the 5 hour thing is a major player in getting through the day.  

Now my kids are over 4 feet and the 8 hour snooze is no longer some longed for myth. Suddenly the 5 hour thing is a dreaded phenomenon.  On a normal night, with sleep cycles being 1.5 hour loops, I'm out cold when the magic 5th hours comes. I sleep through the dog's squirrel dreams, kids grinding their teeth, hubby's snores. Occasionally, however, something happens at the 5 hour mark. 

I've learned over the years that there is nothing I can do to trick my body back to sleep if awoken at the 5 hour mark.  I've tried lying quietly in the warm dark for hours, snacks like turkey and cheese, thinking sleepy thoughts, reading a dull book, reading a funny book, melatonin, Tylenol PM, even Nyquil.  No luck.

So last night when hubby had a leg cramp 5 hours after I'd nodded off, I lay in bed for an hour, then gave up and came downstairs. Maybe it is because I'm older, but I no longer perceive myself as functional. Especially at 4am.  Rather than pull out the stack of work I need to do, I've been surfing the web for 4 hours now.  

The kids are awake and Bill is making coffee.  Maybe 5 cups is the cure to 5 hours?

Rubbed the Wrong Way

For the first time in many years, I truly engaged in the elections.  Everyday I followed the news and visited plenty of blogs to get various points of view. Heck, I even donated money.  I am absolutely thrilled with the results and look forward to what 4 years of Obama in the White House could bring our country.

The writers of the blogs I follow are far more in touch and worldly in the ways of politics than I, so I have chosen to keep my trap shut.  But there is something in the McCain acceptance speech that really rub me the wrong way.  I expected to see it all over the internet, but no one has commented on it.  Maybe I'm hearing his intention wrong, maybe I'd have a few too many corn chips, but this really grated on me:

This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

I instantly perceive this statement as a huge discount of the value of Obama's election - that it was really only meaningful to the African American community.  But it wouldn't really have much meaning for us white folks.  Or any of the people of color who were not African American. Or other minorities in the US, like the LBGT community. Just that 13.4% of the US population is affected.

So what do you think - was McCain responding sensitively to the historic significance of the election of a Black man by a country that was founded upon and grown through slavery?  Or was he talking from the depths of "us vs. them" with Obama representing the Other? 

At the End of the Day

This post on ThirdMom set me deeply thinking and feeling today.  I love my daughter so much, I ache for her pain so much. We're doing what we think is right here in our household to help ease that, both in regards to race and adoption.  But at the end of the day, it is still her life and her history that she has to absorb and integrate, with all the pain and sadness and rage that is appropriate for her. I hope there are many moments of peace for her along the way.

Licking My Wounds

I haven’t posted much to my blog in, oh, 6 months. Partially due to the chaos of moving and trying to focus on re-establishing our lives in a new neighborhood.

But also because of several interactions I’ve had with people about my posts. Okay, so one interaction was real and the person had a perspective I had not considered. I valued the feedback and made changes that felt appropriate and good to me. Hopefully that worked for all involved.

Oddly, the other “interaction” was imaginary. Ready for this? Someone I admire, who I thought might have read one of my posts, posted something I feared might have been a side-wards criticism of one of my posts. I spent HOURS obsessing over what she said, why she didn’t send me direct feedback and how it all may have affected our interactions the last time I saw her in person. Finally in search of relief, I read through her entire blog until I found what I had been obsessing about. Not only was it published before I wrote my post, she posted it over a YEAR before I met her. So clearly a case of her post mirroring something I felt uncomfortable about.

My big take away: sometimes I write and post something that doesn’t feel good to me. I need to be quick to correct those posts and quick to forgive myself. While I’m learning the art of self-acceptance, if at anytime y’all feel moved to give me feedback about content or tone, please know that I would love to hear what you have to say.

With that, I return to my regularly random posting currently in progress.

Socks, sleep, the internet

I'm up in the middle of the night again. Well, actually it is almost morning now (4:47am). This seemed like a great time to share one of my favorite factoids.

Research shows that people who wear socks to bed fall asleep faster than those who don't.

Maybe I should have put socks on 4 hours ago when someone woke me because they needed to use the potty.

The internet is an interesting thing (really this is related to the sock tidbit). Looking for the original source on the sock information - I read it in the newspaper years ago - I Googled "reseach socks sleep." The newspaper bit I read had a specific number that intrigued me, along the lines of sock wearers fall asleep 30 (or was it 70?) percent faster. What I found is plenty of sites that note only that "research says." But no-one who actually cites the study. This site mentions it is a Swiss study, and good old Dr. Mercola explains the science behind it (or at least what sounds like credible science, I can't tell you for sure because he doesn't cite his source.)

So, in the spirit of the internet: Research shows people with bare feet who stay up in the wee hours of the night surfing the internet are grumpier the next morning than those who put on socks and go back to sleep!

For the record

Last week I had one of those “I’m exhausted and I can’t fall asleep nights.” My usual solution to that problem is to surf the web in the darkened living room until my brain slows down to feel the tiredness of my body.

This is not a good plan. Usually, I end up reading blogs from various perspectives on the adoption triangle. And usually, I find at least one post that freaks me out, neatly highlighting that I have NO idea what I’m doing, or clearly underlining how little I truly get what Rosie’s experience of the world is/will be.

So, as usual, I’m up surfing. And as usual I find a blog post that fills me with complete dread. What is unusual about this post is that I’ve already seen it multiple times - it is yet another link to the October 10 Seattle PI article , interviewing me as part of their announcement for the “Which Way Seattle: Transracial Adoption of Black Children?” panel discussion. What filled me with absolute horror about this particular link is where is was posted: Harlow’s Monkey . Harlow’s Monkey, as far as I’m concerned is one of the Meccas of the transracial adoption blog world. The writer is filled with knowledge, compassion, honesty and authenticity in droves. She is a pioneer and one of my current heroes.

So why do I care that she posted the link? Well, because of the article. Because working with the media is a messy thing. When a reporter interviews me regarding a topic I am passionate about, I expect my words to go through their filter, the editor’s mill and come out an imperfect version of what I really said and meant. When this article came out, hubby asked me what I thought, and my complimentary response was, “well, he kind of quoted me sort of right most of the time.” My mom loved the article (okay she loves anytime any of her children or grands end up in the media), my friends said it was “nice.” And usually I’m fine with that. They know me, they’ve already heard me talk at length about the subject. They understand when something the writer said doesn’t really jive with my point of view.

But this is different. Here is someone I deeply respect who barely knows I exist, has no idea who I am, and has no basis for determining if what the article says I said really aligns with who I am. And this is her (an all her readers’) introduction to me. Yikes!

To be honest, interviewing for this article could not have been easy that day. Apparently the PI decided at the last minute to run an article. I’m not sure John Iwasaki was given much time to think through the subject. I was contacted by WACAP, our adoption agency to see if our family was available to do the article. I figure they picked us because they know we’re homeschoolers and would probably at home during the day and in time for Mr. Iwasaki to do the interview, write his article and still meet the deadline. Also, interviewing me could not have been easy. Theo’s in a shy-with-strangers-cling-to-mommy phase. Rosie loves new people and was pelting Mr. Iwasaki with her own line of questioning. It was lunchtime, my kids and I were hungry and working on low blood sugar. And we were babysitting a friend’s two year old. Which means Mr. Iwasaki and I were trying to have a complex adult conversation with three hungry kids demanding our separate attentions.

So just to put it out in the ethers and for my peace of mind:

• The article says “Through the first three years of adopted daughter Rosie's life, Cole busied herself with being a mom. The sociological effect of the adoption never seemed particularly relevant to the white woman.” What I said was that my primary focus was on creating a strong attachment with Rosie and that the focus on our relationships to the outside world were a far second.


• The bit about Rosie noticing other African Americans is right, though off a little on our time line. She was in her 2’s when she made it really clear that she was aware who looked like her and who didn’t. “I thought this was a big deal” was an abbreviation of my reaction that, “Oh, we’re at a new developmental level. This is a big deal - It’s time to change our focus from filling her baby-love cup to creating her attachments with the outside world.”


• Before Bill and I were married, we hatched a plan to have 4 children in our family. At the time, the idea of birthing 4 children into a world where so many kids are not getting their basic physical and emotional needs met seemed highly irresponsible. I’m a little foggier on the “high mindedness” of this idea now, but we’d still really like to adopt more kids into our family. Our basic agreement is still 4. I say I have options on 6. Bill laughs.


• I have two refinements to the final paragraph: "My biggest responsibility is to prepare her for how people perceive her and make decisions based just on how she looks," Cole said. "I think that's the challenge for parents of any child of color."
  
  
  
  • In my conversation with the reporter, I believe what I said went something more like this: “As far as transracial adoption goes, one of my biggest responsibilities….” I really did get at Pact Camp that for most transracial adoptees race trumps all other questions of who and how to be in the world. And Rosie is a complex little person who will need to have a full understanding of the multiple layers of own racial identity. Helping her navigate how other people perceive her is important, but probably not as important as how she defines and accepts herself.
  
  
  • About this being a challenge for the parent of any child of color, I would just add that my next sentence got edited out. It went something along the lines of, “And for those of us who don’t have the personal racial experiences our children will have, it has an added level of difficulty for which we need to be truly diligent and resourceful.”
    
    I’m extra sensitive to how John reported this comment because of a recent post by Tama Janowitz in the New York Time’s series called “Relative Choices.” I, and others in the adoption community, found her post astonishing and offensive from a variety of perspectives. I fear being lumped into her camp, “parenting an adoptive child isn’t really any different than parenting a biological child.” Personally, I’m of the deeply held conviction that parenting our TRA children comes with challenges we will never face with our biological children. Two specific ones: being separated from their biological mothers creates a deep primal attachment wound I am convinced will affect our kids their entire lives. Secondly, being a different color than intimate family creates the “Outsider Within” phenomenon that necessitates that these children question and search for their racial identity in a way my look-like-me children never will.
    
  
  
  
  

And with that, balance is restored to the universe.