One of the things that most motivated me to start blogging was that I wanted to bring art therapy to the diabetes community, to let people know about its existence, show how it’s used, and suggest it as a treatment option to those seeking extra support beyond traditional diabetes care. Art therapy can be a powerfully effective means of addressing psychiatric diagnoses like depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, but it can be equally effective at helping people with less severe problems that are distressing and adversely affect quality of life – coming to terms with diagnosis, dealing with interpersonal conflict over diabetes management, struggling with motivational issues, or even dealing with diabetes on top of stress related to major life changes like starting or graduating school, getting married, having a baby, relocating. If you know me or keep up with the blog, so far I haven’t said anything you don’t already know, but stick with me here for a bit.

As far as therapy goes, I think most people could benefit from it in one way or another because we can all better ourselves, and therapy is a means to that end. That being said, I know the majority of people with diabetes don’t have so much stress, diabetes-related or not, that they necessarily need therapy, so besides writing about art therapy, I’m driven to get people engaged in creative activities. I feel like it can never be said enough times that every last one of us is an artist. We’re all capable of picking up a pencil, a paintbrush, a ball of clay and creating something that is reflective of what’s inside us, which is, by its very nature, beautiful. No one can say or do anything to convince me otherwise, and I can’t emphasize enough that it is simply part of my fundamental understanding about people. To be is to be creative.

I get that not everyone enjoys art-making, although I would suggest that at least some people who feel that way, might think differently about it if they altered their expectations. As an analogy, diabetes dragged me, my hopes, my expectations, my soul into an abysmal void when I was pissed that the cure I had been promised hadn’t materialized, and I was convinced I’d be dead by the time I was 30. Once I started to see diabetes as a part of my life, something that had made me who I am, and something that could enhance my life, not only did it stop dragging me down, it has lifted me up. I still have the same disease, but after re-framing it, it’s taken on new meaning, and I experience it differently. So I think whether or not some people enjoy art-making has a lot to do with what they expect from themselves, from the process of creating it, and from the end result.

No-Sugar Added Poetry

Not everyone wants to go soul-searching for their inner artist though, so I fully endorse engaging in creative activities of all kinds. If it’s not making art, maybe it’s making music, writing, woodworking, cooking, gardening, knitting, designing and administering websites… the list is long. Being creative comes in all sizes, shapes and forms, and since it’s an inherent part of human nature, we should all find the outlet that suits us.

Basically, that’s what I hope people will take from reading my blog, even if I don’t specifically write on those topics regularly. The blog is my primary vehicle for espousing those ideas, and that’s one thing that makes it personally valuable for me. While this is my home base, so to speak, when the opportunity to share my thoughts on diabetes and creativity arises, I’m all over it. So when Manny from Diabetes Hands Foundation, tudiabetes, and estudiabetes asked me to write the introduction for their poetry book project, I was all about participating. For anyone who has missed it, No-Sugar Added Poetry is a compilation of poems written by members of tudiabetes, people touched by diabetes, patients, caregivers, and even a healthcare provider. In addition to the Introduction that I wrote, Dr. Bill Polonsky from the Behavioral Diabetes Institute and author of Diabetes Burn-out wrote the Foreword.

I honestly don’t feel that my words can fully express what a wonderful book this is. The poems are heartfelt, genuine, and revealing. The book is well constructed and the layout and design are beautiful. Much like sampling a delicious food or traveling to an exotic destination, describing it only relays so much. You have to be there, you have to be with it in order to fully experience it, and having had a hand in its creation, along with so many other fabulous DOC folks, I want as many people to have it, read it, and enjoy it as possible.

I happen to have a couple of copies of the book that I want to give away, but this will be no ordinary raffle. In the spirit of all I’ve said today, I am asking something of anyone who is interested in participating. This is a bit of an experiment, and admittedly, I’m a little concerned that having to “work for it” might result in few entries, but I’m hoping that maybe I’ve said something in this post to inspire you, and if so, my fingers are crossed that you’ll run with it.

So, to be entered into a drawing for a copy of the book, you must submit a drawing… or a painting, sculpture or collage. Then, provided you give me consent, I will share photos of the submitted artwork in a post, and I will send a copy of the poetry book to each of two people whose names I will randomly draw from the people who submit entries. The artwork should reflect anything about diabetes that you’d like to express. The art should rely on imagery, although if words are incorporated to complement the overall piece, that’s allowed. Art can be recognizable imagery or it can be abstract. I’m asking that participants create a new piece of art for this giveaway, as opposed to submitting a photo of a previously created piece, since the point is to inspire people to either try making art, or make more art if they already like to do so. Participants can be any age, and have any type of diabetes, including type 3, so you, your kids, your spouse can all participate, no matter which one of you has diabetes. I don’t need the original art, as I’d much rather you keep it, enjoy it, and share it your friends, family, even your health care team (I would very much dig that, and would love to hear about their response). Please just send me a photo of the art. Deadline for submission is August 15th.

Yes, I know it would be way easier to just buy a book, and if this is too much effort, I really hope you’ll buy a copy since all proceeds benefit Diabetes Hands Foundation. This is meant to be a fun raffle, and even if you don’t win a copy, I hope you’ll feel like you benefited from creating something that you might not have done otherwise. I’d also like it to quite literally illustrate that everyone can make art, and that art, just like poetry, is a powerful way of relaying to others what life with diabetes means. To paraphrase a line from the No-Sugar Added Poetry Introduction, “From imagery emerges a shared experience and mutual understanding.”

Standing out in the freezer case

I heard I’m not the only one with food on the mind come Fridays! By picking up where I left off on the Friday Food File, I’m certainly keeping with the theme of D-Feast Friday that is being explored on blogs elsewhere in the DOC, but I’m going to keep doing what I had initially intended before I went on hiatus, which was a little different from that. As I understand it, D-Feast Friday is a concerted effort to share recipes that the poster deems “diabetes-friendly”, in quotes because we all seem to have approaches to dietary management that range from, “That’s how I do it!” to “ZOMG, I could never eat like that!” I plan to share recipes sometimes, so I’ll be conforming to the format on those occasions, but when I concocted the Friday Food File, mostly I had wanted to share new food products. Thus, I intend to make that the staple for now. I’m also staying with the name, Friday Food File, because, well, I like it, and you know how strangely delighted alliteration makes me.

I do like to cook, but as I’ve said on many prior occasions, I don’t do it as often as I’d like because it can be an exercise in frustration. I have about two square feet of counter space, which is probably a generous estimate, and without a proper work surface, cooking becomes more of a chore than a pleasurable pastime. All of that being said, I have found some new inspiration to do a little slicing and dicing and making and baking, but I’m saving that for another day.

Since I don’t cook often, but we still have to eat, that obviously means we resort to other tactics around my house. Furthermore, Jason likes to eat a lot of stuff that I try to avoid, so we typically make separate meals, even when we eat together. Thus, since I’m often cooking for one, I eat more than my fair share of things like canned soup and frozen dinners. As you probably know, that kind of processed food often has some faults, namely concerning amounts of sodium, and a ridiculous list of unpronounceable, questionable ingredients. I do try to buy the healthiest versions of processed foods that I can find, I do try to keep an eye on the sodium content, but I freely admit this is an area of my current dietary regimen that needs some work. I do like the ease and convenience of foods that only need a few minutes in the microwave though.

Ingredients I can pronounce and identify

In my quest to continue keeping some frozen meal options on the menu while making an effort to fine tune my diet, I’ve been experimenting with some brands of frozen foods suitable for people who are conscious of their nutritional needs, but don’t always want to cook. In my search, I found the LightLife brand of frozen meals that come with the tag-line, “veggie goodness for you and the planet”. I’m not vegetarian, but I enjoy vegetarian cuisine because I love veggies, so I was intrigued. According to the package, “since 1979, five percent of our net profits have gone to protecting children, the environment, and human rights”, and the meal comes in a tray that “contains at least 25% post-consumer recycled plastic”. Frozen food for wacky liberal hippies. It’s like they put it in the freezer case just for me.

I first saw these LightLife entrees in the freezer case at my regular local supermarket, so mind you, this wasn’t at Whole Foods or Wegman’s, supermarkets where they devote prime freezer real estate to foods like this. I stopped, and looked through the glass, making that initial assessment of whether or not I’d open the door to inspect more closely. They passed that test so I reached in to grab the Indian entree, and studied the package. Relative to other brands of frozen meals, the ingredient list was short with ingredients I could identify, and I only raised an eyebrow at “natural flavors” which I will forever find a suspicious ingredient.

Ready to eat

The carbs were on the high end of the range for which I ordinarily aim. With the sauce, it had 62g, and I try to keep frozen entrees below 60g, knowing that I usually add a bowl of veggies or fruit as a side dish. I do like Indian food though, and 2g carbs over what I try to eat is totally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. After all, my policy is that if I like it, as long as I keep it to a serving size and I’m not over-indulging, it’s fair game.

I found the meals on sale, so I bought four of the five varieties that were in the freezer case, certain enough that I would like them. I don’t remember how much I paid for them, but I want to say the regular price was like $3.99, so they are comparable to the regular price of the more conventional brands of frozen meals. I have eaten two of the four varieties that I bought so far. I’ve eaten the Tuscan Portobello, which was grilled portobello mushrooms, spinach, red peppers, and asparagus with whole-grain barley and a slightly spicy sauce. That clocked in at 40g carbs with 400mg sodium. Pictured here is the Indian Veggie Masala, which was cauliflower, chick peas, and sweet potatoes with whole-grain brown rice in a masala sauce. This was the one with 62g carbs and 350mg sodium. It’s worth noting that for frozen meals, these ones aren’t too bad as far as the sodium content goes, although I think I opted not to buy the Asian Teriyaki one because the sodium was a little higher than I’d like, but that’s what I expect from teriyaki.

I enjoyed both, and have no doubt that I’ll like the other two still in my freezer. The vegetables were big chunks. The spinach in the portobello entrée wasn’t that shredded stuff; I could tell it was actual leaves, which is not typical for frozen spinach. The ingredients, minus the sauces, were whole, identifiable, and as fresh as you can get with vegetables that have been frozen, and I thought the sauces complemented the veggies and grains well. I didn’t have any issue with the portion size, which I know is one thing about frozen meals that can draw complaints from some people, and because it was veggies and whole grains, I thought it was filling. I ate the portobello entrée last night, and had 20g of dark chocolate for dessert, and I was good until I got up today.

So I give these thumbs up if you’re not opposed to eating frozen meals, and it doesn’t bother you that they’re vegetarian. For the evenings when Jason is making Kraft mac & cheese, which I don’t touch because I’d rather eat a cookie or ice cream if I’m going to have a bunch of carbs that are void of any nutritional value, I think this will be a better option than Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine meals. If you want to read more about these meals, the company’s website is bepro-veggie.com.

Label reading

Tuesday night, after Jason asked me what I felt like watching, and I told him I didn’t care, he opted to put on the most recent Rambo movie that TiVo had captured for him to watch at his leisure. For future reference, “I don’t care” will not be my response next time. While I was barely watching, I managed to catch heads rolling, blood pouring, and dead bodies hanging, but even with my eyes purposely averted, just the screams of horror, and the swish-swish of long scary knives decapitating and otherwise killing people had me squirming and hoping I wouldn’t be the star in my own Southeast Asian guerilla warfare nightmare later that night.

Coincidentally, a little later, AMC was showing the original Rambo movie, First Blood, which I had never seen. I only half watched, mostly to comment on the bad acting and absurd plot premise. It was not anywhere near as gruesome as its more recent version, so at least I was spared additional cinematic gore. We were not however spared the agony of a crazy amount of commercial breaks. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie on AMC, and it’s hard to overlook that they have more commercial breaks than you can imagine, but Tuesday night, it seemed worse than ever. I didn’t actually time it, but I’d be surprised if more than 10 minutes of the movie played at any given time before there was a commercial interruption. What made it even more annoying was that it was the same commercials over and over again, one of which was for Nutrisystem D.

I’ve already grown weary of weight loss program commercials appealing to those who resolve to lose weight once and for all in 2010, but if I have to see this Nutisystem D commercial one more time, I’ll scream. Initially, the commercial didn’t register with me, even though the onslaught of commercial breaks are also twice as loud as the movie (I kid you not, watch AMC and see for yourself), but by the 4th or 5th time it aired, I started to take notice. A diet plan for people with T2 diabetes that will supposedly help them lose weight and lower their A1c?

I looked on the website. From the Nutrisystem homepage: “Lose weight & help manage the ABCs of diabetes – A1C/Blood Sugar levels, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol.” I clicked to get more details, and on the next page, the claims were as follows:

• Lost up to 16x more weight
• Lowered blood sugar levels 5x more
• Lowered A1C by 0.9%
• Lowered total cholesterol level by 20.9 mg
• Lowered triglycerides level by 42.7 mg

I imagine anyone with T2 who is overweight and loses a significant amount of weight would have comparable results. The obvious hurdle is, of course, losing the weight, but Nutrisystem purports to facilitate overcoming that obstacle.

Then I went digging for a little more information in the form of reviews and opinions. First I found the Diet Blog, a site to which I’ve never been before so I can’t speak to its credibility. My anti-diet philosophy aside, it seemed OK overall though. They seemed to make some valid points worth noting. The Nutisystem D diet is based on a study at Temple University (my alma mater, it should be noted) School of Medicine. The sample size was small with only 68 obese participants, so no definitive conclusions should really be drawn, let alone an entire diet program developed based on them. Furthermore, and even more troubling, “The lead figure on the study, Dr Gary Foster, wrote the NutriSystem Diet’s ‘Mindset Makeover’ behavioral guide. Also, NutriSystem provided an ‘educational grant’ for the Obesity Management In Patients With Type 2 Diabetes dinner meeting at Temple University’s School of Medicine.” Can we say, “conflict of interest”, boys and girls?

My next stop was our very own Diabetes Daily where Elizabeth Edelman did an impressive and comprehensive review which you should totally check out to get more details and insight into this diet. One thing she noted was the obscene amount of sodium in the packaged meals. Sodium is bad for diabetics, and while it’s especially dangerous and needs to be watched by those of us with blood pressure, heart and/or kidney-related problems, if you want to take steps towards avoiding those health issues, you’d likely be doing yourself a favor to keep an eye on your sodium intake. What struck me was the first quote I lifted from the Nutrisystem homepage that the diet would help with the ABC’s of diabetes including blood pressure – yet the food is loaded with sodium? I guess what they strategically omitted was that their packaged meals are more likely to raise your blood pressure, not lower it.

Elizabeth also noted that the diet doesn’t teach participants how to eat once their supply of packaged meals is depleted. This is the problem with just about every diet that exists though, and that brings me to the true take-away message I want to impart.

I don’t believe in weight loss diets, so my bias in that respect should be noted. I believe in eating a wide range of foods, heavy on whole grains, produce and low-fat protein, light on processed foods, all in moderation – well, except for diet soda (it’s my vice, so sue me). It’s vague I guess, but after spending half my life in a tete-a-tete with food, I made peace with food and this works beautifully for me. I’m sure there are a few sporadic souls out there somewhere for whom a weight loss diet has worked to the point that they were able to reach their goal weight and maintain their weight loss, but for the vast majority of people, that isn’t what happens. So what good are weight loss diets? Well, they might help you lose weight for a time, but they are by their very nature nearly impossible to maintain forever so the weight inevitably returns. Weight loss diets make the people who write the books about them, and the people who run the weight loss program companies fat… in the pocketbook sense, of course. It’s a billion dollar industry because people keep feeding it, pun intended.

I know, I know, if you’ve met me or seen enough photos of me, you’re asking who the heck am I to talk about weight loss diets? I’m not fat. I’ve never been fat. I was slightly overweight when I was 14 after eating myself into oblivion one summer to alleviate what I now recognize as depression. My obsession to lose those 20 or so pounds resulted in an 18-year eating disorder, diabetes complications, and all the accompanied fallout. So my food and body issues aren’t the same as someone who’s obese, but if I hadn’t hobbled along with my compensatory behaviors – insulin omission and self-induced vomiting – for the better part of two decades, I can assure you, I’d be as big as a house with an attached 3 car garage and an in-law suite. I’ve despised my body. I’ve been engaged in obsessive power struggles with myself about whether or not to eat something. I’ve felt deprived. I’ve felt completely out of control with my eating. My end result was different from someone who’s overweight, but I think my struggle was comparably miserable, and achieving balance and making peace with food and my body, no less monumental.

My weight is now healthy and stable. Thus, I have no reason to consider weight loss as a New Year’s resolution. There are plenty of things I should consider – exercising and cleaning my house would be good starts – but in the end, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. The very concept of getting motivated to do something that’s likely been an ongoing problem for an extended amount of time, in January of all the cold, dark, depressing months of the year, just because you have to get used to writing a new number on your checks seems inately ludicrous to me.

Yesterday I saw this post, “New Year’s resolutions – no more!”, written by Doris Smeltzer on Eating Disorders Blogs: Advice for Parents, and tweeted by @gurzebooks, a publisher of books about eating disorders. I encourage you to read the post, but in brief, Ms. Smeltzer spent years making resolutions to lose weight. The time came when she found the key to achieving the number on the scale she had so longed to see – chemo to treat breast cancer. She swore off diets after that, but whatever messages had been conveyed to her daughters about loving – or in this case, hating – one’s body were learned. One of her daughters eventually died from an eating disorder. I’m sure that isn’t the sole reason her daughter developed an eating disorder because an eating disorder is a very complex mental illness. However, I suspect, just as Ms. Smeltzer does, that her daughter garnered some very negative messages about her body by watching what many would say is typical behavior – a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. You want to lose a few pounds, maybe you ate too many Christmas cookies, maybe you haven’t lost the baby weight, maybe your genes just don’t agree with you being a size 6 or wearing a size 34 waist, so New Years rolls around, and you decide you’re finally going to lose those pesky pounds by going on a diet.

Ms. Smeltzer, who no longer diets and whose daughter is dead, quoted the spring 1991 issue of Radiance Magazine:

In 1990 Congress investigated hazards and misrepresentations of the diet industry. C. Wayne Calloway, M.D. practices endocrinology in Washington, DC and has held prominent positions with the Mayo Clinic, university medical centers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health. He testified, “The great mythology is that the diet works and that you have failed. Most likely, the act of dieting itself leads to the compulsion to eat. Bingeing is a normal consequence of starving.” (p. 15)

So should you just say screw it? Well, no, not if it’s in the interest of your health to lose weight. I don’t claim to have the secrets to weight loss, and I do think that achieving weight loss is a very individual thing – much like diabetes management. I’ve never had to lose a lot of weight and then maintain it, but if you think I don’t know about learning how to eat like a normal person so that I could maintain weight without slowly – or quickly – killing myself, then hello, I’m Lee Ann, nice to meet you, so glad you popped by today.

Luckily, as people with diabetes, it’s generally easy for us to justify meeting with a registered dietitian, and that’s what I think anyone who wants to change their eating habits should do. The people at Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig are sales people before all else, and they want to sell you the dream that you can be whatever your magic scale number is. I know some people swear by Weight Watcher’s, but if you have to keep going back and paying over and over again, I can’t help but think that they just want to make a profit off you and your desire to lose weight too. Your diabetes team, your healthcare providers are the ones who are better situated and better qualified to help you devise a plan to lose any weight that might be compromising your health. Sales people are not.

So this year, instead of deciding you need to lose 20 pounds, and then beating your poor psyche to a pulp in 6 weeks when you haven’t made whatever progress you envisioned on a diet that you know you can’t indefinitely sustain, decide you’re going to get a kitchen scale and start weighing your portions. Make a new rule that you aren’t going to eat straight from the box, bag or container. Trade your half-gallon of ice cream for single serve bars or cups. Are you going to lose that 20 pounds by doing any one of those things by itself? No, but any one of those things are good steps to take towards learning to eat a healthy, varied diet of the foods you actually like in moderation. Then, if you must make one, spend your New Year’s resolution on something fulfilling, like remembering all the things that make you awesome, no matter what the number on the tag in your pants is.

As I told you on Friday, we went to a wedding over the weekend in Ohio. It took us about 8 hours after getting snarled in traffic in Philly, stopping for lunch, and a couple of other pit stops. If you follow me on Twitter, you likely noticed I entertained myself by tweeting a good portion of the way, which was really nice because my twitter activity has been a little spotty lately. My blog reading has been even more lax, so I tried to read a few blogs, but didn’t make a lot of headway with that because I started feeling a wee queasy.

One of the posts that I caught was Amy’s thoughts on the complications of being a chick and having diabetes. Now, I know there are some things about being a dude and having diabetes that are comparably craptacular. For all of the men who don’t tote a murse of some kind, it amazes me that any guy can keep all of his pre-requisite diabetes supplies in addition to basic necessities like a wallet and keys in nothing more than his pockets. I don’t even like putting my pump in my pocket because I think it looks lumpy, so the idea of cramming my meter, strips, lancing device, candy or glucose tabs, and a pump or pen or insulin bottle with syringe in my pockets is unthinkable. My point though is that I know men have their own set of issues in managing life with diabetes, so it’s not my intention to suggest that’s not the case. I’m not a dude though, so I can only speak about the troubles of being a woman with diabetes with any degree of authority, and as an authority on the matter, Amy’s post elicited lots of nods and that face I make when I agree with an unfortunate and inescapable truth. DiabetesMine is in fact a gold mine of straight talk and encouragement – and accurate accounts of how frustrating life can be with diabetes when you have two X chromosomes.

Pump Garters, Thigh Thing & Leg Thing

When we were about an hour from our destination, it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to bring a critical undergarment to wear under my dress – a pump accessory. I have several different accessories I use when I wear dresses: a couple of different garter pouches, a leg thing, a couple of thigh things, one of which is beat to heck and I keep meaning to replace. They’ve served me well, and while I hate wearing them, I love wearing my pump enough that I tolerate it. While I don’t wear dresses as often as I did once upon a time, partly because wearing a pump with them is a hassle, I’ve had marginal luck with some other solutions, so I’ve stuck with the pump accessories because they generally work.

When I realized I had left this necessary item at home, my mind started spinning, trying to figure out a solution. It’s not like you can just run to Target and pick up a spare pump garter the way I would if I had forgotten to bring extra underwear or something. Pump accessories are made by small companies. Some of the ones I’ve gotten over the last 5 years are clearly handmade. All have been ordered online. I needed something the very next day, so I was going to have to make do without a garment specifically designed for concealing a pump. Quicker than you can say, “Diabetes sucks,” I whipped out my crackberry and fired up Twitter, Amy’s post ringing oh-too-true, but also holding the key to a possible solution. I’m an authority on being a woman with diabetes, but I’m far from the only one. I have countless DOC female friends who are also authorities, and surely one of them would have a suggestion.

So I tweeted, and the responses started to pile up. Several people suggested I stash it in my bra, which I know is a very popular, easy and common solution for pump-wearing ladies who want a discreet place for their plastic pancreas. If only. I am not, um, gifted in that area. I have stood in front of the full length mirror on numerous occasions, as if performing this ritual would somehow be different from the last time I did it. I’ve tried on bras with and without wires, with spaghetti straps, with wide straps, bras with front hooks, bras with back hooks, pullover bras with no hooks at all, and bras with and without padding. I’ve turned my pump up, down, sideways, frontwards and backwards, on my left side, on my right side, and right in the place where the powers that be didn’t give me cleavage. I either have a mutant rectangular lump under my armpit, or I have a mutant rectangular third boob in the middle of my chest. After much experimenting, I can assure you that the bra trick only works if you are of a certain size, and I am not that size. My chest is what it is. It’s mostly proportionate to the rest of me, and it does have its advantages, or so I convince myself since I don’t have $25K to get bigger ones, but it is not, and will never be an insulin pump depository.

Of course, I initially had no intention of wearing a bra at all because one of those aforementioned advantages of being as I am is that I can get away with such a wardrobe omission. As it turned out, I did end up wearing one because I had one that didn’t peek out from under my dress, and I was worried about being freezing so I was looking for extra layers wherever I could get them. Bra or not though, I needed another solution.

There was the suggestion to make one, but that wasn’t a practical solution as (a) I was in a hotel room in (b) an unfamiliar town with (c) limited time, and (d) not enough skill constructing anything with elastic in it to buy the best materials and make something that would serve its purpose without either cutting off the circulation to my foot or being so loose, I’d end up having to hike it up every time I took a step.

A couple of other friends suggested stockings, one specified thigh highs. Now, I have to say that thigh highs are fabulous for keeping a pump under a dress if they’re the stay-up kind with the rubber strips to keep them in place. As long as they have wide bands (I prefer the ones from Victoria’s Secret, personally), put the pump on your leg under the band, and it should pretty much stay put. Once I did that, and I found it slipping down, but I was walking around in Philly, and it was a warm day so I think the movement and the sweat thwarted me. I have also tucked my pump into the top of control top stockings, to the inside of my hip bone, and that’s been an effective solution too. However, the problem was that I was planning to wear open-toed shoes with my dress, and stockings with open-toed shoes looks funny, so that wasn’t going to work either.

Allison suggested a girdle. At first, I wasn’t warming up to the idea. I knew I was going to have to buy something, but I was looking to do it on the cheap, and girdles can be pricey. I also cringed at the idea of something binding like that around me. However, it was the most feasible of suggestion given the circumstances, so I didn’t dismiss it. I also wondered if I might be able to do something with a ace bandage, so that also got on my list of possible solutions.

We checked into the hotel, chilled for a bit, then went to do some other shopping, and grab dinner before we hit Target, where I figured I’d find something to use, even if it was Allison’s first suggestion of duct tape. The women’s underwear section was our first stop. I was glad to have had Twitter to gather ideas from my lady friends in the DOC, and wished I’d had one or two of them with me as I compared various girdle type garments, and stupidly tried to elicit some opinion or response from Jason who looked at me like I had just started speaking Latin. As I expected, even though we were looking at Target where clothing is affordable, the underthings I was inspecting ran a little more than I wanted to spend for something I would rarely, if ever wear again. Some of them definitely had the look and feel of a straightjacket for one’s crotch, so I decided to keep going and hope for something that suited me better.

We then came across the Assets brand of underthings. I don’t know if the brand is exclusively Target’s, but that’s the only place I’ve ever noticed it. I always laugh to myself when I see it because the double entendre is not lost on me, and I’m not ashamed to say that sometimes I have the sense of humor of a 12-year old. I knew they had more than just regular stockings, so we started looking at them. I pulled one thing off the rack that was footless so would work with my shoes. Since there was an open package already, I took enough of it out to examine the waist, and after pulling on it to determine how constricting it felt, I put it back. It seemed like it would dig right into me and cut me clear in half. Jason asked what size I needed, and when I said I didn’t know, he logically suggested we figure that out, find one that was the right size, and then I could more accurately determine if it was going to meet my needs. He couldn’t offer much of an opinion about which product might work, but at least he could look through the racks to find the style and size I wanted.

I finally opted for one that more or less fit like bike shorts, sitting lower on the waist than the first style I’d pulled from the rack, and going down to mid-thigh or so. I wasn’t feeling so confident though having spent too much money on undergarments that ended up being enormous failures in the past, so after grabbing a couple of other things, we stopped to pick up an ace bandage before heading to the cashier. Once back in the hotel room, I took out the article of clothing to inspect all of its unsexy glory, and then give it a trial run. There’s nothing quite as ungraceful, or ironically enough, unladylike as putting on stockings, despite what you may have observed in movies or on TV, but I got it on, fussed to untwist it and get it in place. I slid the pump into the left leg, and walked around the room to see if it felt like it was going to budge, and it seemed completely stable. I sat down to see if it was going to cut into me, and it wasn’t too binding, so I stood up, and declared it the official solution.

Saturday, I wore it without any issues, even when we danced. It was actually easier to get to it than it would have been had I worn one of my pump garters, which is what I had intended to bring with me to wear. Although in the end, hiking up a dress and reaching up between one’s legs to grab a pump always looks pretty questionable. Overall, I was happy with it. I don’t think I’d wear it unless I was without any other options if it were a hot day, which is when I actually prefer to wear dresses, but on a day that’s only slightly warm or even cool, as it was Saturday, it totally worked. Now, if only they’d make test strip bottles a little less bulky so I wouldn’t have to play Tetris to cram my diabetes stuff into my evening bag with my lipstick.

Amy, I’m so on the same page with you. Having diabetes when you’re a girl is awfully complicated.

Ultra Violet

I make no secret of my love of diet soda. If I wanted to be buried when I die, I’d request that a couple of 2-liters be thrown in the coffin with me. Since I’m leaning towards cremation, I suppose I want to be doused in diet soda before they roast me, so my molecules can bond with the diet soda molecules for eternity. I can only hope I’m clutching a diet soda when I take my last breath, and some poor soul will have to pry it from my cold, dead hand. Unless you missed my post about my, some would say disturbing, fondness for artificially-sweetened, carbonated, flavored beverages, you more or less know this about me. And if you have any remote fondness for me, you honor and appreciate the weird love I have for diet soda.

Diet soda makes me happy.

I have my favorites, which I also enumerated for you in the aforementioned post. Inspired by that post, my BlogHer roomie, Heather, presented me with liquid heaven in the form of a 12-pack of Diet Code Red Mt. Dew. Oh the delight! That will forever elicit a big, goofy smile from me. I indulged in a few while in Chicago, but determined to not waste the untouched cans, I packed the rest in my suitcase since cans of soda are considered a national security threat.

When I travel, I always bring a handful of plastic shopping bags and various sizes of zip-lock baggies, just in case. It sounds really old-ladyish of me, doesn’t it? I use them though, for dirty clothes, for damp swimsuits, for anything that could leak or spill or make a mess in one way or another. When we go to San Francisco, I even bring home baked goods from the best breakfast spot on the planet, Dottie’s. The only thing that compares to enjoying one of Dottie’s scones here at home in New Jersey is enjoying one of Dottie’s omelets a stone’s throw from Union Square in San Francisco. Baked goods from Dottie’s are a bolus-worthy souvenir if ever there was one.

Ultra Violet's Blue Froth

Anyhoo, I packed the Diet Code Red, two 1-gallon-sized baggies with 3 cans each, and hoped I wouldn’t have bags full of red soda and exploded cans once I got back to Philly. Much to my delight, the cans survived. I downed a couple of them in the days after returning, relishing the glorious redness of them. The remainder have been sitting in my fridge, partly because I kept meaning to blog about them, and partly because I wanted to make them last.

Obviously, Diet Code Red is to be found in some places, but I haven’t found it at any of the places I shop. I still look and hope though. Mt. Dew annoys me because they’re constantly cranking out new flavors in all colors of the rainbows and flavors that don’t exist in nature, almost never in diet. This is a pet peeve of mine, for sure, and I’ve been known to joke about how they discriminate against diabetics by not making diet versions of their day-glow sodas. So imagine my surprise when I learned that they had a new flavor that actually had a diet version. Someone on twitter told me about it, and for the life of me, I don’t remember who so I can’t give proper credit. They linked to a picture of the light, transparent purple beverage with the blue foam, and naturally I was intrigued.

Just like that though, I forgot about it, until yesterday when I practically tripped on a stack of them in Sears Essentials. Jason didn’t ask when I lit up and excitedly sputtered something about twitter, purple soda, and dire necessity. He just picked up a 12-pack, and I anxiously awaited getting home and putting some in the fridge to chill.

A couple of hours later, I was ready to try it. He eyed it suspiciously as I poured it into the glass, observing that it was in fact violet, but the foam was blue, and pointing out to me that anything blue is likely not designed for consumption. I was too excited to taste it to remind him about blueberries and blue M&M’s.

Sadly, my verdict is that I don’t think I’ll buy it again. It is no Code Red. The can is labeled, “Ultra Violet, with a flash of natural and artificial berry flavor”. I’m not really picking up any berry flavor though. My first thought was that it was somewhat reminiscent of grape soda, which I haven’t had in an eternity. If I remember correctly, Shasta used to make a diet grape, but I haven’t encountered diet grape soda in probably 25 years. Then I drank some more, and ultimately decided it was awfully reminiscent of cough syrup. It’s not so awful that I won’t finish what we bought, but that probably has more to do with how much it bothers me to waste diet soda than anything else. It’s definitely not as bad as Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper, the only diet soda I can recall not being able to even finish.

I’m certainly disappointed, but on the plus side, when it starts disappearing from my supermarket shelves, the same way Diet Code Red did, at least I won’t miss it. If anyone wants to give it a try without buying an entire 12-pack, feel free to stop by because I still have nine cans left.

And please be understanding when I’m less than generous with my Diet Code Red. I swear, it’s nothing personal…

Awesome Gift from Awesome Roomie