6 mos. running update: 1 month to go April 23, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in personal.Tags: asthma, health, running
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I’m in horrid pain today. My quads are protesting at the slightest movement. On the other hand, I’m damn proud of myself.
When I moved back from Minneapolis two years ago, I learned that my exercise-induced asthma was now full-blown asthma, likely from living in a city with smog again. When I was at UMN, walking across campus was causing me to have difficulty breathing, and I was regularly getting bronchial infections. (Last time this happened, I was living in Los Angeles…not a surprise.) I found out that I was unable to talk more than 2 mph without setting things off. However, I kept working at it. When I walked the 10k last year, I was walking 3 mph. I was still having problems with asthma, though, until last fall when my new doc said we had to do something about it.
Yesterday has me in a bit of a head rush. The older boy is now ‘training’ with me: my jogging pace is a healthy walking pace for him. (The fact that he’s about 8 inches taller than me helps.) We went for our jog/walk yesterday and I managed to keep 16 minute miles for 1 hr. 25 min. in addition to 15 min. of walking. By the time we were done, we’d gone 5.9 mi. And no asthma problems, either, despite the trees and flowers blooming.
We still have a month until the 10k!
Now, I’ll admit that I’m really achy today. I’m used to running on a treadmill for two of my three weekly runs (last week was all three because of uncomfortably cool weather), and I can tell a difference when I run outside (especially when I have some ‘hills’, or at least a dike or two). It was definitely worth it. I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to run the whole 10k, and I’ll probably be able to cut my time from 2 hours to 1 hr. 40 min. I know that’s still horribly long for most people, but it’s a sizable improvement from last year.
If I get any faster, the older boy may have to start running, too.
If I didn’t need a job, I’d probably… April 10, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, family, grad school, personal, work.Tags: grad school, independently wealthy, work
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I am always amused when listening to people talk about what they’d do if they didn’t have to work. I sort of found out for myself: I’d probably work.
I had a couple years as a stay-at-home mom, where I primarily was homeschooling the older child. I also had a stint doing it when he was a toddler. I sometimes fantasize about staying home with the younger boy, who would be much easier to homeschool than the older boy was.
Then my husband reminds me that’s not a good idea: I was pretty much going batty by the end of it.
I bring this up because Nicoleandmaggie posted about this, saying boredom would be a problem. Oh, was it ever. I cannot spend all day at home with a child. Believe it or not, I had nearly a spotless house (you’d die laughing if you saw my house now), was taking care of getting kids to appointments, homeschooling, even working on an MSEE part-time…
And going completely nuts.
I really immersed myself in dancing during this period because it was one of the best ways to interact with other adults outside of school. Unfortunately, regular training, teaching classes, and spending time outside of structured dance time did nothing to help the boredom. It kept me busy, but not stimulated. My classes (which I was doing pretty much one per semester) were about all that kept me sane.
The year the older boy hit middle school, he decided he wanted to go to public school full time, and I decided it was time to finish my MA. My dancing dropped off significantly, I was working on teaching or research or homework almost every night. And I was much, much happier.
I guess what that made me realize is that I really, really need to have intellectual stimulation, and reading Scientific American just isn’t enough to do it for me. I like working on problems, figuring things out, working towards a goal. If I were to win the lotto, I suspect I would just keep doing the same thing, probably by funding my own research. (Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to find someone to pay you to do it?) I think the biggest difference is that I’d probably be able to go on trips more often.
Running update – 5 mos. March 18, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in personal.Tags: running
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Given the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having, I decided to start doing some of my running outside. We’ll see how much I can handle without my asthma acting up. However, I managed a 45 minute jog outside today and felt pretty good afterwards. Two months ago, I tried to jog for 30 min. outside and nearly died. Of course, this time, I used my heart rate monitor and made sure I didn’t push myself beyond my normal workout heart rate, and that made a big difference.
I finished the bridge to 10k program and can therefore ‘run’ (using that word loosely, of course) for 60 minutes. However, my pace is pathetically slow, so I am not able to actually complete 10k in that amount of time. I have two months to increase my endurance to the correct length, and I may try to work a bit on improving my speed. However, that plan was stalled a bit by my trip to Arizona and my exhaustion and illness after the trip. It was about 3 days before I felt better once getting back.
As it turns out, my advisor is into running, and she told me about a cool app called RunKeeper. I downloaded it and gave it a try. I love it because it tells me every five minutes how far I’ve gone and my current pace. It makes it really easy to think, “I can keep this up for five more minutes.” And, after doing that enough times, I had my whole run in. I also like the fact that it keeps track of GPS, although I also had my GPS/heart rate monitor with me since I couldn’t get the HRM to sync correctly. Anyway, it’s a cool app if you’re into running.
My last comment is how much I’ve improved my health over the past year and a half. When I first got my HRM, I was having serious problems with asthma and finally recovering from some other medical problems. I was walking just over 2 mph, giving me a pace just under 30 minutes per mile, and couldn’t go more than a mile or two. Now I can ‘jog’ about 18 min/mi. Yes, it’s slow, and I would really like to be under 15 min./mile. (I don’t really know that it’s doable in the two months before the race.) However, I’m still impressed that I am getting close to doubling my speed, and I can easily go 3-4 miles.
Someone always gets sick when we travel… March 9, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in personal.Tags: health, ill, illness, sick, travel
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One of the funniest vacations I remember is a ski trip to Duluth where the older boy got sick. I spent close to two hours cleaning his regurgitated breakfast off the bathroom floor of the fancy condo we rented. I remember other trips where one of the other kids got sick, and one of us was trying to google the nearest pharmacy or 24 hour grocery in whatever strange town we were in. (Of course, these things never happen in the middle of the day.)
Since I was the only one traveling this time, I guess that means it had to be me.
Apparently the desert air isn’t very friendly as I have the mother of all sinus infections. On top of that, it appears I caught some viral thing on the trip here because my whole body is achy. It feels like I have the flu. I thought the two were the same thing, but apparently I had to be twice as sick. Probably to make up for the lack of other people who could also be sick. Or to make up for the fact that I managed to get sick after taking care of all the important reasons why I came.
The nice doctor gave me some antibiotics and told me to get some rest. The way my ears are plugged, I can tell my flight home tomorrow is going to be a bit less fun than I hoped. But thank goodness for modern medicine and airplanes. Hopefully I will be home and well very soon.
In the middle February 26, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in Fargo, personal.Tags: cities, fargo, Minneapolis, small towns
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It’s hard living in Fargo…and not because of the weather.
When I was a kid living in the western part of ND and the eastern part of MT, there were a lot of things that were different. I really like small towns because people know each other and are always willing to help each other out (except for a few ornery people). It was easy to get certain foods like unhomogenized milk or fresh eggs (and usually a lot cheaper than the organic eggs and, if I can even find it, unhomogenized milk that I try to buy now). And there’s pretty much no commute. Of course, it was hard to get other things (like pretty much everything else), the standard of living was not as nice, and the conservative mindset drives me nuts. Oh yeah…and the schools weren’t all that great.
On the other hand, I really hate living in big cities. I hate commuting; it’s stressful and sucks the energy from me. I have horrible asthma even when the smog is at the lowest levels. In fact, it took over a year before I could breathe normally after moving back from Minneapolis. People are rude and inconsiderate. But then I miss certain things like some of the cultural events, cool stores (I’m sorry – I’m a diehard Trader Joes fan), and being closer to other things I like. (I lived in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis and Los Angeles, and there were some real beautiful parks and other places within a couple hours drive.)
Living in Fargo is difficult because it has just enough culture to want to stay but not enough that you don’t miss some of the other things. It feels like a small town because the people are still friendly, and on many occasions, I’ve been helped by strangers when an emergency struck. However, some of the perks of small town life aren’t available.
I don’t feel like I really want to live in a small town, but nor do I want to live in the city. Fargo is a nice compromise, but I feel like I enjoy living here because I don’t want to suck it up and either move to the country or the big city.
Scientist, with kids February 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, education, engineering, family, feminism, grad school, homeschooling, older son, personal, physics, research, science, societal commentary.Tags: feminism, gender equity, kids, parenting, role models, sexism
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FSP has a post asking about the Local Mom Effect. That is, she wonders if being in a department with more women professors who have kids affects the outlook of younger women in the field. I find this post interesting…but also, I hate to say it, irrelevant.
Let’s put it this way: what women?!
When I started school at Caltech, I knew of two women professors out of all of math, physics, and astronomy. I only ever met one of them, knew she had no kids. I knew nothing about the other professor. When I decided to go back to school a few years later, I ended up in a physics dept. where the professors were all men. Later, I ended up in an electrical engineering department where the professors were all men.
I guess that, in my mind, the notion of being one of the few women in the department was no different than being one of the few women with kids in the department. When I went back to school, I had a kid already, so it wasn’t like I really had a choice about whether or not to be a childless woman in physics or engineering.
I will say that when I originally got pregnant as an undergrad at Caltech, I was told by my advisor that women couldn’t do calculus while pregnant and that I should drop out. Of course, he was a guy, so I seriously doubted he understood how women’s brains work while pregnant. (And it turns out that I can do calculus great while pregnant…I just can’t speak a full sentence coherently.) However, I guess I never took it as a message that women with kids don’t belong in science…I inferred that he meant it more personally, and that I myself was not a good fit for science. (Fortunately, major hopping got boring after a while, I ended up back in physics.)
When I went back to school, however, I felt that being the only woman or one of a few was very advantageous for several reasons. First, if I was the only woman or one of a very small number, I was already an oddity. A woman with kids is probably not much more odd than a woman without, and there was really no one to compare myself to (or say that I was doing it wrong). Second, I went back to school in North Dakota, and it really seems like people here more or less expect you to have kids no matter what you’re doing. I know that grates on some people, but for me, it was a blessing: having kids is just another part of life, and most people here learn to do their jobs while having them. (Also, I can’t recall anyone having a fit if I said I couldn’t make it to something because of kid-related issues.) Third, I was older than the average undergraduate or even grad student, so I think people assumed that it was pretty normal for someone my age to have kids. The fact that the younger students didn’t have kids was simply a function of age and never made me feel self-conscious that I did have kids. Finally, when I started my MS, my advisor was fine with the fact that I was homeschooling the older boy and would only be doing my degree part-time. He said this was really no different than other students in the department who were working full-time and pursing their degree part-time, as well.
I have been told, especially when doing my PhD classes, that it was “really cool to see a woman in science with kids”, especially by some fellow grad students. Until I started my PhD, I really hadn’t expected it to be a big deal. It had never occurred to me that I might be a “role model”…but I keep hearing it more than I ever expected to. I also suspect it’s because I often had kids with me or family issues that were more apparent to fellow grad students. Many professors try to maintain a more professional relationship with their students, and it doesn’t surprise me that many grad students don’t see how having kids affects the lives of the professors or that they don’t realize some professors have kids at all.
Realistically, I only got here because I didn’t really know that what I was doing was unusual in any way. If I had been surrounded by women who had kids but never let it on or didn’t have kids, I might have felt self-conscious about being a mom already. With no one to compare to, however, I just assumed that it wasn’t any more abnormal than a woman without kids.
Running update – 4 mos. February 12, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, food/cooking, personal.Tags: Mike, running
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I’ve been jogging for about four months and am very close to going a full hour at my abominably slow speed. I’m finding it’s great stress relief. A few days ago, I was so stressed out that I made dinner, put it on the table, and said, “Have fun guys. I’m going to run.”
Given a choice between running on my treadmill and having dinner with my family, I usually prefer the latter. However, I think it says something about how positively it affects my mood that I made another decision that night.
One thing that perplexes me is that it’s obvious something is going on with my body despite the fact that the scale has barely moved. I can now wear clothes that I haven’t been able to fit into since before I started my PhD program almost 4 years ago.
Mike told me there was an easy explanation: “You’re just getting denser!” Of course, he had a huge grin on his face. I find that ironic coming from him, of all people.
Actually, after a comment like that, maybe it’s obvious why I skipped dinner…
I believe I can fly…or at least run. January 9, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in personal.Tags: 10K, C25k, couch to 5k, exercise, running, training
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see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
I mentioned recently that I’d signed up to do a 10k in May. Today, I completed a step in that direction: I finished the couch-to-5k program I started back in October. It took two weeks longer than expected due to knee issues and illness, but I made it. This means that I can run for 30 minutes solid, but in my case, that’s not enough to finish a 5k.
Since it was my last run on the program and the weather outside was gorgeous (50 degrees….in January…I’m serious), I decided to do try my hand at jogging outside.
There are several differences: my legs got tired in different places, I only need moderately upbeat music to keep my distracted (versus the treadmill, which requires a very special set of VERY upbeat music), and my asthma started acting up immediately. I also noticed, when finished, that the GPS in my iPhone doesn’t work when the phone is against my body (damn antenna detuning).
My solution to the last two is to begin using my Garmin Forerunner. It has GPS, and I suspect that keeping an eye on my heart rate will help me gauge whether my exertion level is inappropriate. My asthma likely started because I was pushing myself too hard. After all, the allergens here are pretty few in number right now because even if it’s warm, it’s still January.
I’m giving myself a week with shorter workouts and then jumping to the Bridge to 10k program. Wish me luck!
Versatile Blogger January 8, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in blogrolling, links, personal.Tags: links, random facts
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Thanks to GeekMommyProf, who was kind enough to nominate me for a versatile blogger award!
I guess I should start with the rules:
1) Nominate 15 fellow bloggers
2) Inform the Bloggers of their nomination
3) Share 7 random things about yourself
4) Thank the blogger who nominated you
5) Post the award badge.
So we’ll start with the bloggers. Some of the ones I would’ve nominated have been taken, so you only get 11.
1 – Design. Build. Play by FrauTech
2 – Life as an Outlier by Miss Outlier
3 – Periodic Boundary Conditions by Miss MSE
4 – GEARS by GEARS (of course)
5 – Mommy/Prof by Mommyprof
6 – 27and a PhD
7 – Scientist Rising
9 – Abbi Reads
10 – Skulls in the Stars
11 – Athene Donald’s Blog
Random facts:
1 – The shortest I’ve ever had my hair is shoulder length, and I hated it.
2 – I had to laugh at GMP’s comment that she is the runt at 6′. I’m the tallest woman in my family at 5’4″.
3 – My only time outside the US was one horrible trip to Tijuana.
4 – My favorite food is peaches, but I can’t eat them because they make me sick.
5 – I lost my last baby tooth when I was 34. Rather forcibly.
6 – I’ve been friends with one person for 19 years over the internet and I’ve never met him in person. (Though not for lack of trying.)
7 – My favorite flower is the Gardenia. (You know, in case you ever want to send me a bouquet or something…)
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
I. Don’t. Have. Aspergers. April 8, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, older son, personal, societal commentary.Tags: Aspergers, Aspie, diagnosis, education, school
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Today, I came across this post talking about expression of Asperger’s in women.
I have to admit that I’m understanding how my son felt in school. When he was in 6th grade, the school decided to do an evaluation and said he was Aspie. The whole thing was rather traumatizing for him. He talked about how the school psychologist talked to him like he was a toddler, using small words in a loud voice. It was very patronizing. He started calling her the psychopath-ologist. The next year, the ‘diagnosis’ followed him to the gifted school he attended. I talked him into going along with it because there was help with social skills and things that he really did need some help with. He said he was okay with getting the help. However, he did keep insisting he wasn’t Aspie, and the teachers kept saying that his refusal to accept would make it hard for him to adjust.
Here’s the problem: he’s not Aspie. When he was 4, this first came up. I took him to out of town to two researchers who specialize in Asperger’s to have him examined. Nope, not Aspie, they both said. However, it’s obvious he’s probably gifted. It was at this point that giftedness could probably be problematic in a normal classroom.
Given my history with the public schools as a child, this had never been a blip on my radar. I constantly had problems, but very often I and my parents chalked this up to the fact that we were pretty much considered ‘poor white trash’. Now I can look back and see how that perception along with my very visual approach to things confluenced to make school hell for me.
But as an adult, I keep seeing things about Aspergers. And people keep saying my son is Aspie. And I suspect people think I’m Aspie. And I’m not. I simply am not. I am amazed at how many traits of Asperger’s are also present in the gifted, and given my experience with my son, I’m sure that there are a ton of kids out there who are being misdiagnosed as Aspie when, in reality, they’re perfectly normal…for gifted kids.
I know people who have kids who are Aspie, and I understand it’s hard to deal with. However, I am getting really tired of this ‘medicalization’ of a gift or a personality type or whatever you want to call it. The problem with calling gifted kids Aspies because they may show some of the same traits is that those labels become a capsule to describe the student. So-and-so is an Aspie, and so every thing they do that seems off or quirky or different becomes a sign of their disability: there is something WRONG with them. How many times do people look at these kids and say it’s a sign they’re brilliant? In my experience, almost never. By the time older son was finished with sixth grade, the fact that he had a college-level vocabulary was being used as a sign that he had a disability, and the psychopath-ologist was claiming he was actually hyperlexic. His English teacher, who at the beginning of the year was saying she thought he was a very bright boy, suddenly said he didn’t seem gifted when asked by the psychologist.
I don’t have any issues with parents of Aspie kids, or even Aspies themselves. However, I am really sick of how society seems to have taken a hold of this ‘diagnosis’ and turned it into a way to categorize anyone who is socially awkward, shy, or quirky. For a lot of kids, all of their gifts and abilities are now being viewed as some sort of dysfunction that falls under the category of Aspie.
And it’s not just kids. I’ve seen this and experienced it as an adult. Maybe I tend to fixate on things, but I need to do that to solve difficult problems. Maybe I feel things more strongly, but why is that a sign of Asperger’s instead of Dabrowski’s Excitabilities? Why are all these things viewed as a problem rather than a sign of uniqueness and intelligence? I know a lot of people view the label as a way to better understand those who are different, but it also seems like a way to write them and their gifts off as an oddity.