CherylKatz.org

Okay, well I guess it was always possible that the rumors about Sarah Palin’s son being her grandson were not true.

But Bristol *is* pregnant, now.  I have a lot less to say about this.  I’m glad the Palin family is supporting her.

However.  This means that *if* Bristol isn’t really the mother of Trig, then the story of her delivering a speech, getting through airport security, boarding not one but a series of connecting flights back to Alaska, and engaging in otherwise risky behaviours during the labor and delivery of her fifth child - IS true.  And personally I think it’s a) implausible at best, and b) if true, horrible that she showed such lack of concern for the safe delivery of baby #5, whatever her reasons were.

She’s pro-life.  That is why she carried a Down’s Syndrome baby to term.  (Over 90% of Down’s Syndrome pregnancies are terminated - according to wikipedia.*)  Her behaviour between water breaking and delivery certainly indicates a lack of concern for the safety of the child, an inconsideration for the other passengers on the two flights that could have been grounded if she needed to be brought to a hospital mid-flight, not to mention for her own health.

This is infuriating, to say the least.

I just don’t buy it.  I think that maybe Bristol is 3 months pregnant, and being used as a convenient cover up to the original cover up.  It certainly is a resonably successful diversion to the rumor about Trig’s birth.

The bottom line is that no matter what is true, at this point, something is seriously wrong with Sarah Palin.

*A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies in the United States with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated.

If I were a conservative evangelical Christian, I’d be thinking thusly:

What in heaven’s name is Sarah Palin doing being Governor of Alaska with 5 kids at home?  What kind of good Christian mother leaves her children at home to be educated outside the home, where they could be infiltrated by other people’s values?  THEY MIGHT LEARN SCIENCE!!

But I’m not.  So instead I just think /she’s/ the nut job.

1) She sued the Bush Administration for declaring polar bears an endangered species… because that would hinder her plan to drill the bleeding shit out of Alaska.

2) She’s part of an organization called “Feminists for LIfe,” which at its face doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.  Feminists can be pro-life while recognizing it’s none of their damn business to meddle with the interior of anyone else’s uterus, right?  Nooooooooooo.  (Well, I mean, feminists CAN think that way, but it isn’t the case with Feminists for Life.)  Nope.  They think abortion is wrong no matter the case - incest, rape, risk to the mother’s life.

3) John McCain is 72 and has survived cancer like a hundred times.  (Or at least a handful.)  This makes her so much closer to being president than I am even comfortable thinking about.

4) She may or may not actually be the grandmother of her 4-month-old “son,” possibly covering for her unwed 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy.  To summarize, her pregnancy was a total surprise to her coworkers when it was announced at her “7 month mark.”  Pictures do not indicate much showing.  Her daughter had been out of school for 4 months before the child’s birth, supposedly with extended mono.  And in the family’s Christmas photo, who looks pregnant here?

Personally I couldn’t give less of a crap whether or not Bristol was unwed or pregnant.  Or both, as the case may be.  And it’s not that I want Sarah Palin in the white house to start with, but especially not if she’ll lie to cover up for her daughter while simultaneously showing no holds barred on telling other women what to do with their bodies.

I guess with more media attention this rumor will eventually be verified.  What a disaster for the McCain/Palin campaign.

OK, I just had to add the lagging, nagging thought in my head.  Either Sarah Palin is lying to cover up for her daughter, which is icky.  Or she showed some reckless abandon in boarding a plane with leaking amniotic fluid to take a 12-hour flight back to Alaska to deliver this child.  What does that say about her pro-life beliefs?  I’m pro-life, but if the kid has Down’s I don’t really care about delivering safely?  What would this say about her doctor - bordering on malpractice so that her child wouldn’t be a Texan, as Mr. Palin weakly joked?  I know I’m babbling a little bit, but for the love - something is not right here.

I recently discovered a phenomenon that is sweeping the nation, and I think it really works for me!  It’s called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and I’ve added it into my rotation of cardio workouts this week.

The idea of it is that three times a week or so, I do workouts that push my capacity with short repeating circuits of intense cardio work followed by a period of recovery time.

The way I executed this on Monday was I jogged for 5 minutes at a light pace, to get warmed up.  Then I ran as hard and fast as I physically could, until I was on the verge of asthma attack and/or no longer maintaining that level of exertion, but only for about 30 seconds.  Then I jogged an extremely light recovery for 90 seconds (in reality, the recovery started with walking, because that was all I could muster for a few seconds after all-out exertion.)

Rinse, repeat.  I managed 4 reps total before I had to take it down to a light jog and then cool down.  I got a total of 20 minute workout, which my heart rate monitor reported to me thusly:

Max HR: 181 (95% of “max heart rate”)
Avg. HR: 141

Calories burned: 178

That’s not as many calories as I’d have burned if I’d been jogging the whole time.  However, according to HIIT science, the short bursts of crazy intense activity throw my body into a tizzy burning fat in an attempt to recover, and the elevated metabolism last as long as 24 hours.  (My resting heart rate did not return to 58 as it usually does in the hour after a workout; this time it got back down to about 62 or 63, and I retained the hot feeling long after I’d showered and gone to bed.

I’m no scientist, and I realize I’m not writing especially empirically on this matter.  So if you want more clinical or experienced information about this, google “high intensity interval training,” or look at the following links:

www.hiitsource.com - a pleasant read about HIIT
http://musclemedia.com/training/hiit.asp - a little body-building centric, but this site offers a plan that starts with a 4-min a day workout.  Awesome!
http://www.exrx.net/FatLoss/HIITvsET.html - if you like science and clinical studies, this is the page for you.

So here’s my current fitness “plan” such as it were:

Monday: high intensity intervals run, possibly followed by a pilates or yoga session or a low intensity workout (I just enjoy the feeling of an extended workout!)

Tuesday: extended endurance run

Wednesday: other HIIT activity (tonight I’m going to try jumping rope.) followed by a strength training session

Thursday: whatever I feel like, or day off

Friday: HIIT of some sort.

Saturday and Sundays I like to do extended runs on these days just because time is so much more plentiful.  I always always squeeze in a second fitness activity on each day of the weekend, sometimes even a third.

I’ve already noticed a difference in the way my arms look - less fatty.  I imagine after a few weeks of this, I may just look awesome (trying to keep my expectations reasonable, k?)

A few notes to self (and readers!) here:  I think the time of gauging fitness level by the numbers on the scale is coming to an end.  As I burn fat, I am also building muscle, and these are likely to be at odds with, if not negate altogether, each other.  I’m writing this because putting it out there in the world and in my own public thoughts means that I must acknowledge that this has crossed my mind.

Second, I must resist the urge to think “Suckahzzzzz” every time I see people busting out two hours of cardio drudgery in the name of weight loss***.  I feel like I have been let in on a huge, fortunate secret, even if it’s one that many people have known for a very long time, according to the internets. Nothing I’ve ever done had burned fat off my body in two days the way HIIT has already done.  Plus, it’s improving my base speed and endurance.  I did a standard endurance run yesterday and it was much, much easier than before I’d done the high intensity workout.  I don’t know if it’s that my body responds to training exceptionally quickly or if it’s just that my expectations have shifted.  I just thought that an hour long run would have been much harder than it wound up to be.  I found it easy to run through my fatigue because it just wasn’t as hard work as the high intensity intervals had been.

I’m so excited that my coworker Jeremy mentioned this to me; I’d been complaining that my running improved too quickly and I wasn’t getting the same challenging workout on similar routes as I had been a week or two ago.  He mentioned this as a way to change up my routine and shake off the plateau.  I will certainly report back with more info as I have it (possibly even some pictures!)

***I know that time spent exercising is better than not doing it at all, and I can hardly knock anyone for putting in the effort. But why waste one’s time when such a short workout even only once a week can make such a huge difference?

Some readers may laugh when I write this, but here goes:  I am simply not the girliest girl there is.  Not by a long shot.  Sure, I love me some cute dresses and shoes, but on a normal day you find me in jeans and a t-shirt, flip flops and probably just a smear of lip balm.

Imagine my surprise when I find my 21-month old daughter raiding my shoe rack.  She pulls out a pair of high heeled pumps and puts them on.  She picks up the purse her Grandma brought her (small bag for me = standard size shoulder bag for Sami) and slings it over her shoulder.  Then she walks - no, struts - down the hall to examine her ensemble in the full length bathroom mirror.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not primp excessively in front of my child.  This is her inherent personality expressing itself.  As a mom, it is slightly terrifying.

So here is another slightly terrifying idea (and yet, so funny that I am sharing the link.)  When is too young to start your baby girl in heels?  Some would argue between birth and six months of age.  I can’t begin to tell you why this is terrifying.

Okay, I can begin to tell you.  First: Sami showed a propensity for admiring shoes well before 6 months.  Now she’s not even 2 and is showing an intense interest in heels.  So by providing my 0-6 month old infant with high heels, I’m showing her that high heels are normal and accepted shoes for little girls.  And I know that playing dress up is one thing.  That is going to happen.  But high heeled shoes of her own before she could even walk?  That might have happened over my dead body.

My saving grace at the moment is that Sami knows that heels are shoes for Momma. So they’re part of her imitation ritual.  Imitation and dress up are important activities and I think they’re OK.  She also seems to understand that when Sami needs shoes, HER shoes are the ones she should grab.  And she does.  I am not sure how I’ll handle it the first time Sami throws a fit because she really wants to wear my shoes.

I just hope that I have a long, long time to prepare for it.  Like maybe when she’s a teenager.

Nope, it’s not that some people are just insensitive, self-centered  or mean.  If you have difficulty relating to other people’s problems, you might have empathy deficit disorder.

Sure, we all could strive to be more attentive to others’ feelings.  Some more than others.  I just can’t get my brain around the idea of slapping on a “disorder” title for what I otherwise would call “personality.”

On NPR today I heard a story on the tomato-salmonella problem, which seems to be overblown, considering regions at risk have been identified and many regions have already been cleared by the FDA.

What caught my attention was when an FDA food safety wonk was talking about how hard it is to track the problem.  A market may have up to 4 distributors bringing in tomatoes, who each may get tomatoes from 4 suppliers, who probably get tomatoes from 4 or more farms themselves… the supply chain is convoluted and WIDE.  How in the world can such a problem ever be solved?

I know!  Buy local produce!  I know it’s not a perfect solution, but encouraging more people to know the farmers who grow the tomatoes they eat would be a start.  I don’t worry about salmonella because I can call up the farm my share comes from and find out if they’ve been tested and what the results were.  I find that reassuring.

On the “never ending diaper ado,” I just had to include this link because the columnist’s response sums up my views on diapers.  I’ve always thought that if you compare the resources required to launder diapers (soap, water consumption, gas for drying, etc) to the impact of disposable diapers (manufacture, landfill disposal, etc) you end up with a wash.  The study mentioned invested exhaustive research to back up previous research on the same topic.

Yup, the brits determined that cloth at home, cloth with diaper service, and disposable diapers are roughly equal in environmental impact.  So, bully for anyone who is seeking out environmentally friendly laundry detergent, seeking out sustainable cotton for nappies, buying local to reduce the energy consumption of transport, drying in the sun, using disposables that are made from recycled materials or free of petroleum, or using compostable diapers.  Making choices like those actually DO make one individual’s choice stand above the otherwise equal choices.

Ben and I were watching Daily Show just now and lamenting the “This Week in God” segment.  Lo and behold, Colbert did “Obama’s Church Search” which was not a surrogate, but certainly a salute to the old digs.  Sigh.  I miss “This Week in God.”  The Daily Show hasn’t been quite the same since Colbert left.

And that’s about all I can squeeze up at the moment.

Ben and I went out for a belated anniversary dinner on Tuesday.

I should note that most of the occasions when Ben and I go out without Sami, we go to one place: Sushi Bar Kazumi. As you may note from the Yelp reviews, they are a traditional Japanese sushi bar, and people looking for trendy americanized sushi are generally disappointed. Patrons who knew what to expect from a bona fide Japanese-trained sushi chef have been pleased.

We went this time with the intention of requesting omakase - to be in the chef’s hands. Needless to say, we trust Kazumi San, and have never been disappointed with anything we’ve eaten in his sushi house; we also had no reservations about a) dietary restrictions or b) cost. It was a special occasion, don’tcha know, so I promised Ben that I’d put aside my squeamishness and try anything that Kazumi San put in front of us.

It was, in a word, awesome. In two words, mind blowing, or life changing.

What Kazumi San served included:

Two trios of nigiri sushi, each piece dressed with individual flavors - I should note that I didn’t touch wasabi or soy sauce for the whole evening. We put ourselves in the Chef’s hands, and we trusted him to season each piece as he saw fit. This was no mistake - everything was perfect. What was amazing about the nigiri trios was just how subtle yet profound an impact a dab of sesame paste or plum sauce or scallion can be. There were flavors, but they accentuated the fish, did not mask it.

A whole fried fish bone with a nigiri duo - the fish bone was surprisingly buttery, helped I suppose by the battered-and-fried part. I couldn’t believe I was eating it, but I thoroughly enjoyed every unexpected bite, including the fish tail, which I ate at the Chef’s personal entreaty.

A monkfish liver and plum sauce hand roll - tiny roll; HUGE flavors. I never would have eaten monkfish liver in my former life, but the presentation was just right, and I trust Kazumi to know his seafood and have perfectly fresh, seasonal offerings.

Maki roll with scallops inside and avocado and snapper on the outside - this isn’t too far outside my comfort zone, though the scallops are perhaps more raw thatn I’m accustomed to. Yep, I got over it.

Nigiri of sea urchin with oyster - this was a study in texture and the order of introducing flavors to my palate. We each had two pieces of this nigiri, and for my first I ate it with the oyster against my tongue. I ended up tasting and smelling the rich, salty ocean air smell one might recall from walking the San Francisco piers. Not awful, but not a foody smell or taste. The second nigiri had the sea urchin against my tongue with the oyster as an accenting flavor and not overwhelming texture. And this I truly liked.

I ATE ALL OF THESE THINGS. Remarkable.

Not a smear of cream cheese nor a shred of imitation crab to be found; I got totally outside what I’ve generally known as “sushi,” which might be better described as sushi-inspired cuisine. This was the real thing, and easily the best culinary experience of my life - Ben agrees that it was truly great, but is (as usual) hesitant to quantify what “best” means. I’m sure that there were several more dishes that have by now escaped my memory. The ones I included were because they were so new to me as to be deeply etched in my brain. Kazumi San got me to eat battered, fried fish bones, for the love. I liked them! I’ll never forget that.

Parallel with the dinner was the conversation with Chef Kazumi. He was very encouraging as he could tell that I was pushing myself outside my comfort zone. He shared stories of his life in America, 28 years of running Sushi Bar Kazumi and his family in Japan, his eight years of sushi training and the difference between a true sushi chef and a “sushi maker.”

While we were there, one of the boys who works in the restaurant as a waiter came in with some friends. THe first thing they ordered was basically a huge pile of tiny octopi chopped up with roe and mushrooms and baked with ponzu sauce. Truth be told, it did not look very good to me, so I’m glad it wasn’t intended for us. We learned a lot about the waiter-boy as well. (Who must have been in later high school years, though he looked like he was 12 to our wizened eyes.)

At the end of dinner, Kazumi San even shared some traditional Japanese methods of everyday cooking, and told us about a good market we’d like to check out. And then he surprised us for our anniversary with a scoop of green tea ice cream absolutely buried under whipped cream and served with a fried banana. Outrageous.

I wish I had a clever wrap up, but just reviewing this all in my head has me on the brink of a food coma. The good kind.

Here is a great article on bra sizing. Theory, not practice. Link courtesy of Nicole.  Thought I’d pass it along.

Sorry, dudes. I’ll have a food post up later!

I didn’t receive email for most of yesterday.  In fact, most likely anything sent to me bounced.  If you were one of those senders, please send again!  The path is clear now.

This time through no fault of my own.  If you’ve sent me something after 8 PM last night, I haven’t seen it.  Since this is on my host’s side, I don’t know when I’ll be back up.  Keeping my fingers crossed.