Yesterday a friend from the really distant past came for a short visit. In the fall of 1981 Ted and Adam (18 months) and I were stewing in line at the DMV in Butler County, Ohio, trying to get new drivers licenses from our move from Oregon. Why is it always that dealing with DMV is a pain? A very nice young woman offered to loan Ted some money to pay for whatever it was that we needed. Gail Carey had just gotten her Ph.D in nutrition and started work at Procter and Gamble in nearby Cincinnati. For the next 3 years she was like a member of the family, spending Saturday nights making dinner and listening to "A Prairie Home Companion." She reminded me that I also gave her my famous strawberry pie recipe that she's been sharing ever since, and also how to make strawberry jam. (I'd forgotten this. Why don't I remember the good things I've done, only the bad??)
I have a picture of Gail holding Gillian on her chest when our girl was only a couple of weeks old :) We haven't seen her in 23 years, but I never lose a friend who will keep in touch. Gail is a professor at the University of New Hampshire. Her daughter is a high school senior and was coming out to attend Outward Bound in the Sierras and tour UC Berkeley (Cal) and UC Davis, where Gail got her Ph.D. We ate Indian food (well, as usual I ate lentils and rice, all I can manage with the gallstones right now). We talked until late at night and felt the years roll away as if they never were. Some people are just so genuinely good, putting out a positive and happy vibration, that you want to be around them. Gail is like that. Her research for the past 5 years has been on the effects of chemicals in the environment on fat. Her research shows that rats (yes, those poor long suffering rats again that caused Gillian to eschew research) exposed to flame retardants gain more weight as babies than those not exposed. And fat cells exposed in vitro to flame retardant grow and get, well fatter! So here is an unexpected link to the obesity epidemic. Children exposed to the huge number of new chemicals (80,000 in the last 35 years) may be triggering the growth of fat cells. It's not all about McDonald's. Very interesting.
Gail is going to send me some of her good thoughts when I have surgery Monday. I'm going to try hard to keep off that 7 pounds that I've lost so painfully. It really means, no fat! And cutting down on the amount I eat. Gail eats hardly anything, and she's as always thin as a rail. Oh the price we pay for vanity!
Keeping my fingers crossed that your surgery and recovery go well!
Posted by: Trisha | Sunday, August 09, 2009 at 02:46 PM