Boobs and Poop

I'm back! I took a break, and then an even longer break. I lost my confidence and I guess my voice too. In reviewing my last post - from March! - I can see that my thinking was not as sharp or clear as I'd like. I have a lot to say but am really nervous about saying it or writing it. The truth is that as much as I seem to want to do this, blogging is very hard for me. I have in my recent past really hurt people's feelings with my writing. I have also taken some personal risks and wrote things that later embarrassed me. Worst of all, I've both hurt other people and embarrassed myself at the same time with my writing. Sometimes I guess I'm fearful I'll make the same mistakes again... or if I'm really honest about it, I feel as though I don't deserve the chance to write about whatever I want to now because of the mistakes I made then. There was also an incident. A short, brief conversation. Not even a conversation... my mother made a passing commen...

So it's been awhile. I've been busy and I've sort of gotten the hang of being a parent. Basically, I have resigned myself to the fact that I have no control over anything. But I do the best I can in spite of this. It's been really hard to think clearly. Not so much because of being a parent, or because I still feel like a newbie in this new town, but because I don't really have a good grasp on what's appropriate. I could blame the election of Donald Trump - and he's certainly a clear indicator of what I'm grasping at here - but I think it's more than that. Lately, I've been listening to NPR and watching Fox News. I've been contemplating growing more of our food and buying a clone so I can grow my own marijuana. I've also been shopping at Whole Foods and Nordstrom... I've been driving a Mercedes, and a Toyota Corolla. We live in Diamond Bar, but we rent a townhouse. We're white, but are we that white? The answer to the last q...

So I marched ... I wasn't particularly interested in marching until about 2 weeks prior to the event, when my sister-in-law said she wanted to check it out. I started to wonder if I should go too? I knew a lot of people who would be going to different Women's March events all over the country and started to get early onset FOMO, and I hate missing out. I don't usually march or participate in protests, rallies or anything of the sort. I used to. For that reason, many people are surprised to find how apolitical I actually am these days. When I was younger, I was very involved - CSPAN was my ESPN. I worked for Environment California, I interned for my congressman in Washington, D.C. and I was a proud, proud elected officer of my YMCA Youth and Government program in high school. I was very interested in the political process and public policy. My interest in my youth stemmed from my reverence for anything "anti." Wanting to be involved in the political proces...

There's no question that attitudes about marijuana use are changing due to increased accessibility to medicinal and recreational cannabis, and a general disinterest in the subject from the federal government. So I assumed that there would be a lot of debate surrounding pot smoking and pregnancy, nursing and parenting. I was correct on two fronts. I have come across a lot of interesting information and opinions about smoking pot during pregnancy and/or as a parent. Brave souls ( like Kiri Westby  and Toni Nagy  via the Huffington Post) started the public discussion about responsible parenting and recreational marijuana a couple of years ago. But it's been very challenging to find any conclusive information about the potential effects of marijuana use on a breastfeeding mom and/or her baby. Everyone agrees that trace amounts of THC may or do make their way into breast milk. But more research is needed to determine the potential impact on a nursing baby. The most compreh...

As you all probably know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness (BCA) month . THE month to celebrate boobs! As we near the end of BCA month, many news organizations are now reporting on new findings about a racial gap in breast cancer cases. Some boobs are reportedly at a higher risk for fatal breast cancer than ever before. Thanks to so much attention surrounding breast cancer and the efforts of charitable research organizations like Susan G. Komen , great strides have been made against breast cancer. But sadly, new research indicates that African American women have been somewhat left behind. Incidences of fatal breast cancer in African American women are on the rise, in spite of positive medical advances in recent years.  Researchers don't yet know how to account for the increase in diagnoses of breast cancer in African American women, but some ideas have been tossed around. One idea is that there may be a correlation between fatal breast cancer and obesity, and statis...