Probe links food dyes and ADHD

Posted on April 1, 2011 by RegenAxe

On my way to work, Tuesday morning, I heard an NPR article on a FDA probe linking food dyes and kids’ behavior. The gist of reporter April Fulton’s article was that food colorings are causing ADHD behavior in children. I was somewhat skeptical of the articles premise while listening to it and didn’t give it much further thought until later. Returning home that evening, I found Anne lying on the couch with a wet washcloth across her eyes. I asked her, “Are you OK? Did something happen at school today?” She kind of groaned, lifted the washcloth off her face and then sat up and told me her story.

You know how some students are always asking to go to the bathroom during class? There was this one boy today that asked to go to the bathroom in every single class. In the afternoon, we had a birthday party. The mom brought in yellow cupcakes and red Hi-C. I don’t know what she was thinking. Johnny, oh, I shouldn’t have used his name. Anyway, Johnny had to go to the bathroom again and I wrote him another hall pass. By the time that he got back, all of the other students were bouncing off the walls and ceiling. It was total chaos. A minute later Johnny had to go to the bathroom again. I asked him to wait. Try saying your a, b, c, forwards and backwards, I suggested. He started reciting them forward, “a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z” and then backwards, “z, y, x, w, v, u, t, s, r, q, o, n, m, l, k, j, i, h, g, f, e, d, c, b, a”. I asked him where the p is. He said, “Running down my leg.”

Feeling Under the Weather

Posted on January 12, 2011 by RegenAxe

I’ve been feeling under the weather lately, not sick mind you, just feeling oppressed by winter. Anne has a twinge of the crud, but that’s what she gets for hanging-out with all of those runny-nosed guttersnipes. Besides she got a snow day on Tuesday. I had to go to work.

I called my employee hotline, hoping against hope, and I was somewhat rewarded. Instead of the usual recorded message, “All facilities are open and operating normally and Marquis get your lazy butt into work.” Caller-ID, I hate you! On Tuesday, the hotline message strung me along for a while, before dashing all hope. A couple of locales in the southeast US were closed, but nothing about Saint Louis except the usual, “All facilities are open and operating normally … blah, blah, blah.” 😥

Even Anne’s good tidings came with a bit of grief. Most Sundays Anne gets the framework of her substitute teaching schedule for the week. She worked all day Monday, but was only scheduled for a half-day on Tuesday afternoon. She just loves half-day afternoons. Fast-forward to Monday night. The snowstorm is already upon us, but is performing below expectations. The forecast called for 3” to 6” and by then the storm was running behind schedule. Monday night her half-day was moved to the morning, not near as good as an afternoon one.

Tuesday morning, the phone rang for a third time. As per usual this early morning telephone call elicited the desired Pavlovian response: 1) “Oh, [something]!”, 2) The un-ceremonial flinging of covers, 3) The tromp, tromp, tromp of feet to answer the phone. Normally, I only hear this sequenced response, but on Tuesday, I was already up and was sitting at the computer. So I had a ringside seat to this little drama. I also know better than to come between a substitute and her scheduler. Fortunately, this time it had a happy ending. The call came to announce the snow day.

I still had to go to work though. On my drive north I toyed with the idea of taking a sick day, but before I could formulate a concrete strategy, I found myself already at work. There is a certain bravado about showing up at work in inclement weather. One can walk around the office and sneer at the empty cubicles, holes for lesser men, but the bravado quickly passes and one is left with a particularly quiet and rather boring workday.

Happy Hour

Posted on January 8, 2011 by RegenAxe

Oh my God, I haven’t blogged yet! Why you might ask, as if this emergency post’s title doesn’t tell all? Well, the answer is that I spent Friday night out at the barroom, instead of at home, busily writing. Captain Don and DJ arranged a happy hour on Friday night and Anne and I attended. Don has joined the Groupon / Hot Sauce craze, so he had money to burn / save, depending on how you want to look at it. A group of us convened at the 6 Row Brewing Company, on Forest Park Parkway, just west of Grand. The brewery’s name, 6 Row, has to do with the number of barley kernels on a stalk. It sounds arcane to me, but the beer was good. Also in attendance were Chris & Sandi, Mark & Merri, Ron, Susan, Steve, and Stew & Nancy, all Team Kaldi’s members. After a couple of beers, most of us decamped to Pizza-A-Go-Go, on Ivanhoe, just south of Arsenal. We had hot and tasty, Italian style pizza, neatly packaged in a small neighborhood pizzeria.

Years ago, way back in time, like BC (before children), we would regularly attend Friday night happy hours. Sometimes these rendezvous used euphemisms, like the technical staff meeting, but generally they were much less organized. After a while these happy hours became the capstone of our work weeks. A couple of enduring friendships came out these watering-hole rituals, Bob & Nink and Dave & Jill, but along came the boys and away went our happy hours. We’re empty nesters now, but also older and wiser too. I don’t see us making a habit of happy hours, like we use to, but one in a while is fun, especially on a cold winter’s night.

I only had a four-day work week, so it should have been an easier than normal week at work, but it still seemed like a longer than normal work week. Coming back to work after a week off always feels like this. Anne also had an abbreviated work schedule this week. Even so, it took all of her natural fortitude to drag herself to school on Friday. I could tell that by the end of the week that she was tired, because she made a verbal slip when I asked her how school was. She has been an elementary school counselor this week, but since eight to twelve-year olds don’t require much actual counseling, her main function has been one of disciplinarian. Her slip came when I asked her how her day had gone. She responded, “Fine, I only had one detainee today.” “Detainee”, I asked? She quickly corrected herself, “I mean buddy in the buddy room.” I’m still wondering which nomenclature is worse, “detainee” or “buddy”.

Anne took the picture with this post. It is an iPhone picture and as such it is upside down. It shows a duck swimming in the Park. The clouds and the trees are reflections in the water. Even the floating water plants look like reflected trees. Sometimes things look different from another point of view.

Go Blue Devils!

Posted on November 22, 2010 by RegenAxe

The third time was a charm for the Maplewood-Richmond Heights (MRH) Blue Devils. Last Saturday, the Blue Devils were victorious in this year’s Class 2 semifinals. MRH won 33-19 over Lamar. Next Saturday, the Blue Devils will be playing in the Jones Dome (where the Rams play) for the championship. This was the third time in four years that Maplewood has appeared in the semifinals, but it is the first time that they have won.

The Blue Devils jumped out to an early lead with a touchdown. They followed this up with another touchdown late in the second quarter, but missed the extra point. Lamar got on the scoreboard just before the end of the half, leaving the game’s halftime score at 13-7. In the third quarter Lamar tied it up (13-13), but then late in the third quarter MRH pulled ahead once again (20-13). Early in the fourth quarter Lamar threatened one last time, but a missed extra point left the Blue Devils still in the lead (20-19). After that it was all Maplewood and the Blue Devils scored two more touchdowns, while missing one more extra point for the final score of 33-19. It was a hard-fought game, making victory all that sweeter.

I have not been to a high school football game for quite sometime, so it took a bit of recalibration to adjust to the tone and play of this one. MRH played the game with their second string quarterback, because their first string quarterback had come down with appendicitis. The game’s announcer was a partisan for MRH, but also a bit inexperienced too. He generated unintentional laughs from the crowd on an incomplete pass play, where the Blue Devils’ receiver dropped the pass. The announcer excitedly exclaimed, “He totally dropped it!”

Like Maplewood, Lamar is a small high school, about four-hundred students, but unlike MRH, almost half their student body was on the field last Saturday. Lamar fielded a seventy man team, easily twice the size of the Blue Devils. Their football team was dwarfed in turn by the size of their marching band and cheerleading squad. Lamar is a small town in southwestern Missouri. Its one claim to fame is that of being former president, Harry Truman’s birthplace. I don’t think that the partisan announcer bothered them much, because will all of their cheering, they probably never even heard him at all.

Dan and Dave are both MRH Blue Devils alumni and Anne still teaches in the MRH school district. Dave is applying to Duke for next year, so if he goes there he will become a double Blue Devil. Anne wore her white Blue Devils sweatshirt to the game. Many other people were also wearing Blue Devils’ garb too. What she knew though was that her sweatshirt was actually a Soo Blue Devils’ sweatshirt. Her mom went to Sault Ste. Marie High School and was a Blue Devil in her day too. Go Blue Devils!!

Mister Heart

Posted on November 21, 2010 by RegenAxe

While trying not to channel the character Sue Sylvester from the TV show Glee, Anne taught early childhood gym class on Friday. For those of you who are not Glee fans, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) is the show’s antagonist and the school’s gym teacher. On Friday Anne had eight half-hour classes, two pre-school and three kindergartens and three first grade classes. At these grade levels gym class comprises opening calisthenics and then an active game. Calisthenics are never all that interesting and all that need be added about them is that they left Anne feeling sore the next day.

Anne started the day with the game Red Light, Green Light (One person is it. On green light the rest of the class can run, on yellow light they can walk, but on red light they must stop. The objective of the game is to be the first one to touch the it person and then become It.), but that didn’t seem to be a big hit. Cries of cheating left Anne wishing she had a stoplight camera, but failing that she decided to switch games. More popular was the game Duck, Duck, Goose. In this game the children sit in a circle. One child is again it and starts a round walking around outside the circle. Each of the sitting students is passed with a tap on the head (Lightly, please!) and the word duck, until one child is tapped with the word goose. At this point the chase begins. The goose tries to tag the It before they sit-down again. Success makes the goose the It. Failing that, the goose must sit in the center of the circle, the “stinky place”, until another goose fails and takes their place instead.

New to me was the game Mister Heart. This is basically a game of tag, but with room for over-acting and an educational message. In this game one student is Mister Heart and three other students are the doctors and the rest of the children line-up at one end of the gym, while Mister Heart and the doctors stand in the middle of the room. The kids call out, “Mister Heart, Mister Heart, what makes you so healthy?” Mister Heart will answer with something healthy, like apples, carrots or toilet paper (??). After each callout the class takes three steps closer to Mister Heart. The game proceeds until Mister Heart answers with something unhealthy, like cigarettes. At this point all of the kids scatter and run and Mister Heart runs after them to tag them. Once tagged the caught child feigns having a heart attack and collapses to the floor and awaits the ministrations of one of the three doctors. The doctors ask the heart attack victim, “What is something to do for a healthy heart?” The answer acts like a cure and their off and running again. Usually, Mister Heart waits until the class has come close before the trap is sprung. Anne found this game a lot of fun to watch.

Mister Heart, Mister Heart, what makes you so healthy? … Bicycling!