Impromptus at Leisure

             Consistency has always been one of my shortcomings.  I can start any new program or goal with gusto, only to be quickly stifled by my waning interest and quickly my real-life responsibilities take over.  It is the reason I am always on the lookout for new diabetic technology.  If I can have some new gizmo or gadget I will get interested in taking care of myself. For a while.  And then the apathy sets in again until I find my next new thing.   It is also why there are huge gaps in this blog.  I resolve to write consistently and do so for a while and then once again I have let months pass with nothing.  I tried around New Year's when excitement is high all around for all types of new endeavors, but that only lasted a few days.

     I convince myself that my lack of blogging is linked to the desire not to bore people or to put out anything that is less than inspired.  But I think both of these simply are a fancy cover for my lack of discipline.  Rousseau once said, "A sentiment takes possession of my soul with the rapidity of lightning, but instead of illuminating, it dazzles and confounds me; I feel all, but see nothing; I am warm, but stupid; to think I must be cool. What is astonishing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried; I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant, could never say or do anything worth notice." Since I first read that I have time and again felt it resound in my soul.  And if that is, in fact, true, the only thing I need to produce un-boring work is to provide myself with the time and space to get "cool" and that takes discipline.

     Thus, I resolve, once a week, to give myself the leisure so that I may make those impromtus and possibly even do something worth notice.  I've heard it said that to be a writer you need to write something everyday.  I don't know if I will publicly attempt that one yet, so I will set a more realistic and achievable goal, to write and publish a post weekly.  Let's see if I can follow through.

Practical Dreams

    Sometimes I dream big, owning my own private island with a dock out front and at least four boats tied up to it right next to a perfect right point break and a private tutor to come school the kids for six hours a day while I write and sail and surf everyday.  Sometimes I dream a little more practically.  Owning a MacGregor 26 is more of this kind of a dream. It's got an affordable sticker price, can be trailered so I don't have to pay slip fees, and it is virtually maintenance free if you don't count scrubbing jelly off the deck from my kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  And it is the perfect boat for my Florida trip.  It can sail in just 12 inches of water, it has solid foam flotation so that even if you drill a hole in the bottom it won't sink, not that I'm planning on doing that, and it is totally self-righting so in the rare chance I might be knocked over by a rouge wave, it will pop right back up. You can throw a motor on the boat and go so fast that a harbor would be within minutes if I got word that the weather is making a turn for the worse.
    As I was perusing the MacGregor website, as I do on a regular basis, I noticed that Captain Mike Inmon who runs the MacGregor factory has an offer for a free DVD if you go visit the factory.  Maybe it was all of the old books I had read or maybe just my imagination, but, I was always under the impression that all the boat builders were in some old wooden garage somewhere tucked away on the East Coast.  So when I found out MacGregor was only a 45 minute drive from my house and that I was more than welcome to stop by at any time and learn how they made a boat out of rolls of fiberglass and resin, I put a visit on my calendar.
    Last Friday I made the drive up to Newport Beach and paid a visit to Captain Mike. He greeted me with warmth like a proud papa excited to see me and show me all that his factory held.  We started

Pancakes and Christine Colby

Today I made pancakes. Lots of small, dollar-sized pancakes. And today I served them to my seven-year-old daughter and her friend who slept over last night.  Shea and Julia, today, are the same age I was when I would wake to a hundred tiny, dollar-sized pancakes and bacon, and being the same age, we ate them all.  Today, I served up those same pancakes without the bacon (Shea has been a self-proclaimed vegetarian since the age of three).  Today I became Christine Colby and I couldn't have been happier.
    You know those moments in your life when you stop and look at yourself as if from the outside and realize you had become the people you had looked up to for so long.  The first realization came during my first year teaching at Santa Ana High School.  Being barely older than the students themselves, I often felt like I was playing dress-up wearing business suits to try to hide my youthful appearance. I had been chased out of the office a time or two because someone thought I was still a student.  During the first test I gave,

Sensor Dating

        I have had the great fortune of trying out a new continuous glucose monitor recently.  I currently am using the one my insurance says they prefer, but, a friend of mine happens to work for another company out there producing the CGMS’s.  So, I thought I would give it a try.  Being a scientist by training, I decided to run both sensors at the same time to see first hand which is more accurate and which I like more. As I did, I was began to get the distinct impression that wearing two sensors at the same time is a lot like dating two guys at the same time (not that I speak from experience, I have rarely been lucky enough to find one guy to date, let alone two at once). I realized that Johnny, my first CGMS, had developed a sort of relationship over the last year and a half.  The first couple of numbers he spits out with any new site, I tended not to trust fully until I had confirmed them with my regular blood sugar meter.  Once a day or two has gone by and he was consistently telling the truth, I began to trust what he was telling me.  I slept a little easier knowing he was on guard to wake me up if my blood sugars got a little too low or way too high at night.  I could have a conversation with him (really a series of pushed buttons) to decide on a range of acceptable numbers where he wouldn’t have to alert me.  And the more I worked with him the more time I spent in that range, that range that would extend my life by at least a few months if I could stay there permanently. 
    Working with Johnny changed my diabetic world.  I could finally sleep at night without great fear, I always had an extra set of eyes to search out wayward sugars.  He was my first CGMS and I will never forget what he taught me and how he changed my life.  But then Michelle, my friend with an inside track to new technology, introduced me to Nick.  And Nick was different.  Instead of just dumping Johnny, I decided to try having a relationship with both at the same time. And that’s where the trouble began.