Over the (Muffin) Top

Well, then.

I'm not Catholic, but writing here feels a bit like sliding into a confessional. Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been 16 months since my last post...

A few things have happened since last I wrote. Those who know the personal stuff are already updated, and I won't test the patience of those who don't, so suffice to say that I have had a year of rampant, selective, amnesia.

First, I forgot how to keep my weight off. Then I forgot how to lose it the weight I'd gained. Then I forgot that going to restaurants and eating gluten free tiramisu actually exacerbates the problem. Finally, I forgot that running cures all my woes.

Spring has yet to make anything other than a fleeting dash in and out of Chicago, but on the days that it's reached above freezing I have taken my 165 pound frame out and pounded the Prairie Path. Over the last 2 or 3 weeks I've managed to climb back up to a respectable 6 miles per run, though at an embarrassing Senior's pace of 12:56 minutes/mile, largely since I'm still doing intervals. I run 2.5 minutes and then walk 1.5. I tell myself it's because I'm just getting back into it, which I am, but in reality it burns my brain to think I can't run for 3 minutes when 18 months ago I ran 13 miles with barely a stop for water.

But....plenty of time for Scarlet Letter re-enactments later on. It's time to jostle the cottage cheese from my thighs and send the octopus back into retirement.

I started tracking my food intake and the shame of writing "Baby Ruth" skinnied my intake down in a big hurry. I've also helped myself along by overdosing on Reese's eggs, so I can't even look at them now without shuddering. All Hail the Overconsuming PMS beast! I will probably have to hypnotize myself to forget about Cadbury mini-eggs, but since Easter is over, I figure if I can stay out of Target, Walgreen's, Wal-Mart and CVS until the Clearance sales are over, I'll be free.

And it's working. The up side of gaining weight is that you get a new "first week". I've lost 5.4 pounds since Sunday and with the 17 points I burned over lunch (6.7 miles, 89 minutes), I will doubtless have a decent weigh-in tomorrow morning. I may be up over goal for the first time since hitting my goal, but I am back in the groove, and this might be the best $13 I've ever spent on a Weight Watcher's meeting.

Somewhere along this I have to figure out what happened. Was it the 'I can track in my head?' Was it the cold weather that drove me to the treadmill and then out of the FOX-news blaring YMCA? Was it my new relationship with a lover so much fun that I *liked* to go out and I didn't bother to adjust my weekday eating to compensate for the GF Uno's pepperoni pizza I was eating twice a month? Yes, yes, yes and probably many other things.

I think what I've discovered is that this journey is never over. My relationship with food and overeating is like any other, and requires maintenance.. I must be aware always that I am caring for myself and my diet, and never take for granted that things are OK and don't need my attention. I must check in regularly, and consider that I may need to spice things up once in a while, because even if it looks like it's going all right, anything will turn stale if not paid attention to.

So there it is. I must maintain. It only took 5 years and a flop off the wagon to figure it out. But maybe that's OK; sometimes it is the very act of failing when we learn exactly how to succeed.

Hope to see more of me here and less of me everywhere else.

A the R(eborn)

Homespun Wisdom

Yesterday I finished my first usable bed-sized quilt. It’s a queen-sized log cabin variation that I made for DS, and as soon as I can figure out how to post a picture, I will put it here.

I’ve made bed quilts before, but they were so shabbily constructed that their useful life was confined to stuffing them back into the trash can liner I’d used as a “gift bag”. Quilting is a long, painful process for me, and one that I’m not fully prepared to say that I enjoy. The Working With My Hands part is satisfying, if still disappointing because I have no eye for color, no ability to sew on point and no patience to quilt feathered circles or detailed flowers into the blocks. But I persevere, hoping that someday I’ll be able to do something that I enjoy with at least a modicum of talent.

The thing I like best about quilting is the sewing, called ‘piecing’ in quilt lingo. In piecing, I can watch my efforts over a time continuum that does not resemble moving through a black hole, unlike all the other parts of the quilting process. Fabric selection, washing, cutting, assembly, layering, quilting, binding, and, for me, a truckload of bellowed cursing, are the reams of pain and torture that I endure in order to do the one thing about quilting that I like.

I do all these things because I understand it’s a process, but frankly I’ve always considered it a little bit of false advertising to call ‘quilting’ just ‘quilting’ and not ‘back-breaking thankless work with a tiny bit of creation inserted in the middle’. It’s rather akin to a peanut butter cookie that’s smashed in between foods that give me the dry heaves. I want the cookie, but I have to think really, really hard about making the effort to go get it.

It’s a difficult, stress-laden hobby, and most times, I cannot explain why I haven’t thrown it all in and returned to sewing. Sewing is easy. when I decided to learn sewing, I took a class, bought a machine, and in a few weeks I was churning out dresses, shirts and even a few draperies. Even now, years removed from regular sewing, I can build a shirt in 5 hours. It took me over a month to make this quilt, and I muttered obscenities to myself at every turn of the needle.

Sometimes I think it’s my attempt to teach myself patience or to learn precision work. I’m a high-level thinker and I work in technology, so there’s nothing about my professional life that I can ‘touch’ as an accomplishment. Quilting gives me that, though it also serves as a reminder that Mistakes are Visible, and since I always give my projects away as presents, this escalates them to Mistakes are Visible to Others. Still, despite my poor quality, my poorer attitude and the pinched nerves in my low back that inevitably happen as a project winds down, I continue.

And here’s why: this morning, when I showed the quilt to DS and he just stood on the bed smiling at it and holding me, I knew that it had been worth it.

A the N(eedled)

Free At Last

Last Friday night, I completed the final exam of my last class in my MBA program. Though it will be some weeks before I receive my diploma, I am officially finished with school.

Twenty seven months of constant stress around homework, reading assignments, quizzes, exams and online discussions have left their mark. I am staunchly avoiding my home office these days, reluctant even to sit down for fear of rejuvenating the anxiety of deadlines and self-paced learning. I'm glad I did it, and now I am very glad it's done.

As I am an insane individual, I spent parts of last week looking through other online programs, seeing if I could pick up a 'quick' MS in Technology or a PhD in something of interest to me (Business Administration most definitely is not). After turning in that last exam, though, I decided that I really did need a break. I may enroll in non-degree courses at the local community college, after a suitable hiatus. I've long wanted to learn French, so that in the event I needed to apply for permanent residency in Canada, I would score more points for having some command of their other official languages.

I've also had a long-held interest in automotive technology, based in part on the fact that I have zero knowledge and so am forced to trust whatever coverall-uniformed crew member has been sent out to 'discuss' my car problems with me. As both our cars are elderly, I think it's smart to get more savvy about what I'm driving and how it operates. These courses are also available at the community college. In fact, there are more auto classes than French classes, so I stand a better chance of becoming a skilled tradesman in the North Country than I do a bilingual white collar working stiff. No matter; I am interested in these things, but my brain needs a rest.I can decide whether to continue my education once I've recovered, and if I will study something of interest vs. something practical.

In racing, you're supposed to take one day's rest from running for every mile you ran. I'm trying to figure out if there's some corresponding formula for how long to lay off capital "E" education after I've finished a degree. One week for every month? One month for every class? One lifetime for every MBA? We'll see. I made it all the way to 10am on Saturday before the allure of Having Nothing To Do wore thin. As of this moment, I have 27 items on my Must Do Immediately list.

I did resume running in the spring and actually ran the Chicago Half Marathon last month. It was long, it was hard and I lost a toenail but I really felt good doing it. I'm running a 10k with a fellow Weight Watcher this weekend, and it's very pleasing to me that 6.2 miles is a no-big-deal, standard workout for me now. It's getting colder now, and so far I've managed to adjust to Runner as Popsicle. We'll see how things change once it snows.

One thing that may propel me through the winter is a twitching need to run faster. I can run 10 miles with no issue, and obviously can run up to 13.1 without stopping or falling over. But my 11:23 minute/mile pace needs work. Even at my age, I should be able to cross the finish line a little zippier than I do. So this winter is a devotion to speed work, intervals and conditioning. I'm not going to worry about running without stopping or keeping my speed down so I can put all the miles in. I'm going to run when I feel like it, as fast as I feel like, and then I'm going to walk to rest until I can run again.

I may never do the Chicago Half again--it's a total drag getting up at 4am for a 7:30 race and eating (gluten free!) pancakes on the fly in the dark on the way to the South Side. However, there is a half marathon in the suburbs that is of interest and there's races in other cities that are now worth investigating.

I also have to slim down my eating. I'm up 6 pounds from my pre-celiac diagnosis, and while I'd like to blame the corn vs. wheat thing, I think I'm just eating more. I let my calories creep up while I was running and now that I'm not in full tilt race mode, I can't sustain it, so I've gained. I am giving myself until Thanksgiving to get back to the mid-150s, and I'm running faster now, which should help. Wish me luck.

I hope to be here more often now that I have my life back and catch you up on what's happening. I didn't really realize how much of my life got sucked up into school, and now that it's over, I feel like I have 2 years of catching up to do with the house and with my personal life. Maybe it all worked out that way: it was time for school and now it's time for life. I am totally OK with that: the men in my life are super-cool, and as it turns out, they are a hoot to be with.

More to follow, assuming I can drag myself downstairs to type.

A the E(mancipated)

My Trading Post

I'm in my second-to-last MBA class this term, and while it is butt-kicking dull, it is also insanely time-sucking, and so, as usual, I have no time to write what I wish.

One of the things I am always required to do with these online classes is participate in the 'student louge' or online forum for talking about This Week's Topic. One can only imagine the cliffhangers generated from a bunch of overworked 40somethings trying to drum up creative things to say about the Price Elasticity of Demand or the Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management in a Lean Manufacturing Environment. One can almost hear the paint drying on the growing grass...

Despite my utter frustration with the third-grade level writing and the propensity for my fellow students to agree with one another rather than risk a debate on anything, I continue to write as I always do--long and with attempted wit. As a result, I am largely ignored. I do not understand this, except to surmise that it is simply too much trouble to read my blatherings and/or respond.

So to "get back" at my peers and to thrash out at least a little whimper of a post, I'm copying one of my Week 1 posts out here. We were asked to write out the "3 compelling reasons why we chose one product over another, and conversely, what we would sell if we were a supplier. Finally, why does it all work?" Stay with me; remember, if it's worth writing, it's worth making fun of. And there's no better target of fun-poking than myself.

More celiac writing to follow. Much, much, much to tell, but MBA comes first--at least until mid-October, when my last assignment is turned in.

A the I(n my Penultimate Class)

I am a Consumer Reports girl all the way down the line.

Price is a concern, but is secondary to quality and reliability. I take a very long time to decide on all but the most trivial of purchases, and I admit that even those "impulse" purchases are relative re: timing (it took me 3 months to choose a travel mug).

As a result of what I politely term my 'scientific mind' on purchases, I go for the sturdy, long-lasting, Global Warming-durable items. I'll choose stainless steel over plastic, cotton over polyester, and, in the higher-priced markets, Toyota over Hyundai. Both have lovely body styles, but even though Toyota is way more expensive and far less flexible on price, their cars never die.

My Eureka vacuum trumped the Hoover in microbial pickup and durability of attachments. The 45% silk cardigan I plucked from an obscenely expensive boutique has been with me since college, and the leather backpack I bought as a Starting My MBA Gift in 1995 (no typo, it's been 14 years in the making), just yielded its first tiny (repairable) tear.

The third category of Reasons to Purchase behind Durability and Price is propensity for timelessness re: fashion. Because it takes me so long to decide and because the things I buy last forever, I can't risk too much that's trendy, lest I look like a throwback, or some crazy Chicago lady who lives out of her shopping cart (irony intended). :)

On the seller side, I would not be so presumptuous to assume that everyone is as spastic as me regarding a Zillion year half-life, so I'd do a bell curve of items: 70% in the pretty good/no complaints/will last at least a season stock and then fill up the rest of my inventory with fringe on both sides: half in the fragile-yet-trendy and the other half in the Will Outlive Your Twinkies category.

Why do I think it all works? Because there are always buyers available to purchase items of quality (again, a relative term).

Gluten for Punishment

My sick mind is a powerful being.

Three weeks ago, in what was an otherwise ordinary checkup, I heard both ‘you’re anemic’ and ‘symptoms suggestive of celiac disease’. Because I am so fond of overreacting, I decided to eliminate gluten from my diet immediately. Celiac disease can cut up to 10 years off of your life, and in 60% of adult cases, celiacs have no symptoms. Since it is very easy to ignore a disease that makes no noise, I decided on a preemptive attack. Cut out the amber waves and bring back the villi! My small intestines, my weakening bones and my teeny red blood cells would all celebrate with me.

This proved harder than I imagined. First of all, much like celiac disease, gluten is everywhere. A sticky protein substance found in wheat, barley and rye, it is literally the ‘glue’ that holds processed foods together. When not playing a poison on TV, it’s a great fiber source, a base for any kind of bread or baked good, and sometimes used as a dusting on conveyor belts to keep items clean. An instance of 5 parts per billion can be enough to cause a reaction, though, so in order for a food to get the prized gluten-free label, it must not only be gluten-free, but also be manufactured in plants that separate the celiac foods from the gluten-made.

Soy sauce has gluten in it. So does Cool Whip, reduced fat sour cream, and the calcium supplements I’m taking to overcome my early-onset bone thinning. Howard is still unemployed, so now is not the time to be tossing out good food or spending $12 for gluten-free “Cheerinos”. Ten extra years of life is worth it, though, and from what I can tell, there’s no downside to removing gluten from my diet. There’s more calories in corn-based items, but again, I’d rather be 2 pounds heavier than dead. So if it means I have my stir-fry without garnish, and with rice instead of couscous, then I’m ok to try it for a while.

Celiac Treatment #1: Destroy Everyone Else’s Vacation
We were in Florida that next week. My poor in-laws; uprooted from their routine whenever we come down and now I have to shoo away all flour-like entities from the kitchen. You can’t even cook on the same surface where a flour-dusted item once lay. Forget the fat-free fudge pudding, the Reduced Fat Nilla Wafers and those yummy tortillas we can only find in Florida. The grandparents were really cool about it, and in fact, the corn tortillas we had for lunch on the second day were way better than the flour tortillas I’d been eating for the last 2 years. But still, I felt supremely guilty.

Something happened. I started to feel really good. I had a couple of days where I ate too many prunes (to counteract my reduced fiber intake) and crimped up my inside for a while. And then I took my vitamins before breakfast one day, and all the nasties of empty stomach/gelatin capsules mélange struck me and I was decommissioned for about 3 hours. Seriously, don’t ever do that. I really thought I was going to do an Alien stomach eruption. But once I stopped trying to destroy myself, I felt great. The teenage skin that has never left my face or my shoulders cleared up. I had this feeling of thinness in my tummy that I never had, even at my lightest weight. I was pretty tired, but we’re more active in Florida than at home and I figured the iron deficiency was working against me as well. I slept more than I expected to, but when I was awake and not poisoning myself, I felt awesome. Maybe gluten-free was the path to high energy health.

Celiac Treatment #2: Go off-program to prove illness
Seven days into the new diet, I found out that you’re not supposed to go gluten-free until after the screening test. Apparently the telltale sign of a celiac is a high level of gluten antigens. So if you stop eating gluten, the antigens will go down and you’ll look healthy when you’re not. So with only 2 days left to the test I sprinkled a generous amount of wheat germ on my dinner and then had some more in my cool whip-topped fruit for dessert.

And then I had a reaction. Not a doubled-over, wailing in pain reaction, but my face got flushed and kind of prickly. I was warm all over, and I had jumbling noises in my abdomen into the night. By morning the redness had lessened, but it was still there, and when I put more wheat germ on my eggs, it came right back. Freaked out and horrified by my face, I didn’t do any more wheat germ that day. I figured 2 large doses and a skin reaction would be enough.

My doc told me it would be a week or more before the test results came back. But, as is usual in the case of this new dude, I had results in 2 days. I still have anemia, but it’s improving. My celiac screen was clear.

Clear that I have celiac? Well, no. All antigens came back negative. I do not have celiac.

So what was all that noise back there? Clearly my body reacted to something over the weekend.

Celiac Treatment #3: Be Sick Anyway
I had another reaction at lunch today. I ate a bit of the mayonnaise (has gluten) and now my stomach is upset. So either I’m a complete goon-head and am mucking up my own health in my brain, or I really do have celiac and I hosed up my initial opportunity to uncover it. They should biopsy the crazy part of my brain. Though there would be no point-clearly I’m certifiable. No reactions at all until Celiac was suggested; now they are everywhere. And I still think I’m diseased even though the test came back negative. Sometimes it’s just exhausting being me.

The only real determinant of celiac disease is the small intestine biopsy. Apparently the blood screening is good for confirming the disease but not particularly reliable for an unqualified yes, especially if the disease is mild to begin with. Up to 30% false negative, if, like other celiacs, I am abnormally low in a particular gluten antigen. So even if it’s elevated it would show normal or even negative. I talked to the specialist’s office and they are clearly skeptical. Looks like I might get the periscope-down-the-throat treatment after all. Not my idea of a good time, but hey, if they give me Versed, I won’t remember it. And then I’ll know for sure. No more Psycho Brain posing as Doctor Know-It-All.

Stay tuned. And ask Howard for his Garbanzo Bean and Sweet Potato waffle recipe. I know it sounds hurl-worthy, but they were really good.

A the C(ranial Celiac)

Wheat The People

Every year in March, I go to the doctor for a check-up. I don’t particularly enjoy the paper dress/show me your insurance card combo, but it must be done and my birthday is in March, so it’s easy to remember. Every year when my odometer turns over, I go in for a tune-up.

My doctor drew my blood, listened to my lungs, complimented me on my weight loss, and said he’d call when the results came in. Two days later, he leaves a message on my voicemail. “Hi, Amy. Doctor Kirk here. I got your blood test results and you’re pretty anemic. Give me a call.”

When I reached him, he repeated his message. ‘Man, Amy, you’re anemic. I mean, really anemic.”

He goes on about how anemia can be caused by a number of things, including a simple iron deficiency, but he wants to check everything out on the inside to make sure I don’t have any secret bleeding going on. He gives me the name of a practice near my office and tells me to call once I have the appointment scheduled. Their name? Midwest Digestive Disease.

I’m pretty sure I hyperventilated the rest of the afternoon. Through it, I managed to stay at work (barely) and call the appointment desk for Midwest Disease (that’s what they call themselves). Magically, they had an appointment for the next day. Just an office visit; please have your doctor fax over the blood results. You’ll be here no more than 20 minutes, and there’s no need to fast or freak out.

That’s what they think—clearly they’ve never met me.

The “Midwest Disease” staff was really nice, and the doctor was friendly and incredibly forthcoming with information. He showed me my results on his laptop, pointing out that not only do I have low hemoglobin, but that my red blood cells are smaller than normal. He stands up and points to a poster of the human insides. “Anemia generally has 4 causes. The first, iron-deficiency, has 3 common sources.”

On he went, detailing every possible combination of reasons why this was happening. My multi-vitamin didn’t have iron, I had heavy periods, I was unable to absorb iron, I gave blood regularly; on and on. I’m pretty sure he has Asperger’s, because he was looking in my direction, but he rarely made eye contact. Oddly, the Asperger’s set me a bit at ease. I’m pretty comfortable with brainy, engaging males who are sometimes fleeting in their eye contact. Plus, it somehow made him really human, which reduced my blood pressure off the 4-alarm stage. He said good-bye, and then another very nice nurse scheduled an appointment 2 days later at Edwards Hospital.

The Edwards Hospital staff is other-worldly in terms of their service. In the 3 hours I spent at the hospital, I talked to no fewer than eleven people. Every one of them was friendly, engaging, and working to calm me down. I was freaked out beyond belief, and the procedure itself gave me the dry heaves in terms of its invasiveness and possible Bad News Outcomes. Even so, each nurse had something warm and soothing to say. There was no chit-chat between staffers, no pretending I couldn’t hear them while they gossiped, and no acting as if we were all sitting at a bus stop, except that one of us was wearing heated blankets and an i.v. They worked, they talked to me, and when the doctor came in, he gave a little intro. “This is Amy. She has anemia, and we’re going to check and make sure everything is all right with her.” Then, when it was time to begin, the nurse closest to me said, ‘This is where you’re going to start forgetting things.’
She was right. I had been told I’d be in ‘twilight’ sleep, but my mind is completely blank and black until I was in recovery and Howard was talking to Doctor Asperger.

One business day later, I was on the phone discussing results. No bleeding, no suspicious things, but evidence suggestive of celiac disease. Dr. Asperger wanted to run a blood screening test. I called Dr. Kirk, who responded, "Wow, Celiac". We agreed to screen me, deciding that we’d check my blood for anemia again, now that I’m on an iron supplement and eating spinach with every meal.

I’m not having the test until after I get back from Florida, but in the mean time, I’ve done some research on Celiac Disease. It’s like an armadillo: I’d never heard of it before, and then as soon as I typed it into my search engine, it was everywhere. Even Weight Watchers had a discussion board full of women who had had the disease for years.

Celiac Disease is essentially Gluten Intolerance, a condition where the body does not recognize wheat and its kin as nutrients. It views them as viruses or enemies and ‘flattens out’ the little hairs in the small intestine, refusing to absorb nutrients in or around the wheat. It’s apparently incredibly common (1 in 133 adults), wildly undiagnosed (estimated 97% of those affected do not know) and takes an average 11 years to uncover.

The disease used to be a childhood ailment and the unlucky youngsters diagnosed were doomed to a diet of bananas and baby food for their whole, stunted lives. Now, while gluten-free food is affordable only if you pay in gold bars, it is plentiful, especially if you are willing to cook for yourself. Low fat is tougher, but the closer you stick to the ‘ground’, e.g., eating whole foods, the easier it is to keep the grain out of your life.

Even with all that, going to the grocery store looking for gluten-free foodstuffs is a bit like running with scissors over broken glass while your hair is on fire and hoping you won’t get hurt. Wheat and its long line of aliases are the base metal of foods, the petroleum of the ingestible. Apart from the obvious places--cereal, bread, and pasta, wheat is in (nearly) everything processed, most soups, some make-ups and many vitamins (in the capsules). Moreover, even if you eat something that’s gluten-free, if it was cooked on a grill with wheat, the teeny gluten microbes can stick to the food and make you sick.

If it goes undetected long enough, severe anemia can develop, or significant bone loss, or even cancer. FYI, last fall when I got my mammogram, Dr. Kirk suggested I get a bone scan as well. I have thinning bones. It’s a common thing in tall, thin women, but I was 43 when the test was done, which is pretty young to show borderline osteoporosis. So even though I have no symptoms of celiac, I suspect that something is up.

So, insofar as I can, I’ve given up the Glute. I have found nothing that shows a detriment to removing it from my diet. Whatever I need in terms of fiber, roughage, grain or vitamins can be had from other sources. My carb intake is pretty low anyway, so the challenge will be to wipe it out entirely. I’ll need to take a magnifying glass to every vitamin capsule, every high-fiber wrap in the freezer, and everything that’s not in its original form. It will be tough, but Howard has already donned his Cooked Crusader Cape and declared himself up for the challenge.

The thing that concerns me is DS. Celiac disease is hereditary, and so if I have it, he may as well. Doing the de-glute on him will be much tougher. His favorite food is pizza, and after that is Cheerios. We tried gluten-free pizza last year and he picketed the front lawn. When I offered him gluten-free cookies in apology, he threatened to sue. But if he has it, then the wheat must go. Whatever the pain, I will do it. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children with autism spectrum disorders show a marked reduction in disorder symptoms and behaviors when the gluten is removed from their diet. It can take 6 months to pull it all out and get the small intestine villi back in action, but when they recover, they do so completely; so long the child remains free of the amber waves.

It’s a tough time to be investing in this type of food, but I guess we’ll just have to consider it part of our health insurance premiums. If it truly helps, then it’s worth it. No offense to Dr. Asperger and the cast of Zen Scrubbers I met at the hospital, but even with their terrific service, I’d rather not have to go through any of this again if I can avoid it.

By the way, in the first moments after discovering my anemic condition, I called Howard to find out how much iron was in my regular multi-vitamin. There was none. Zero. Zippo iron in a women’s formula multi-vitamin. I got a supplement right away, but are you kidding me? I’ll be really irritated if I went through all this just because I was too dumb to read a label.

But no, there were lessons here, even if my only illness is stupidity. I don’t need gluten, and we could all potentially be healthier without it. I can always find other ways to gum up my insides. After all, every time Howard travels, I have to cook for myself.

A the G(lute No More)

Bridge to Nowhere

After slogging through a beast of a course last term, I am now enrolled in Economics for Dummies, a prerequisite to the MBA-level Economics for Bozos class that’s part of my regular program. I took economics as an undergrad, but since it has been more than 5 years since the final (way more, in fact), I do not qualify to skip this class, and so I am enrolled with 16 other dunderheads, most of whom are new to grad school, and all of whom have never had the guns vs. butter conversation so prevalent in intro courses.

Because it’s a preemie class, the work load is considerably lighter than the last few terms, where I’ve barely coming up for work or food from the time the syllabus is published until after the final is posted. So after 8 straight terms of bore-in-don’t-stop intensity, I now find myself in a place where I have some time in the evenings for interests other than Finishing This Dang Degree.

My reprieve is well timed, since we’re about to embark on our annual spring journey to Florida, soaking up the sun and pretending that we’re not still on Winter’s last pouting lip here in Chicago. Howard and I, looking for things we can do with my in-laws and also for ways to entertain ourselves later on, decided to take up Bridge. I’d heard many things about the game, and my in-laws are enthusiasts. What a nice thing, I thought, to pick up a game that is known & loved down in Florida, and that Howard and I can share with his family.

As it turns out, Bridge is less a card game and more a combination of Chess, Greek, Cooking, Power Aerobics and Mortal Combat. The books I read make me feel like I’m prepping for a Senate confirmation: give as much of the truth as you can without really saying anything while simultaneously trying to decipher the code that’s going on in the seats across the aisle. You want to be careful that you communicate everything you can to your partner without giving away too much. And don’t undersell: you’ll be sorry if it comes up later. It’s better to take the penalty than to let the other side walk away with all those voters, er, points.

Howard and I have split up the learning tasks, with me studying the bidding structures and Howard working on trick play. So while Howard gets to watch cards whiz by on his monitor, answering condescending questions (and how could we have done that better, hmmmm?), I struggle to translate passages such as this:

“Decide up front what bidding convention you will use, such as “Strong No Trump Rodwell” and remember that 4NT is a false bid, meaning you have between 16 and 18 HCP, and that your response to partner’s declaration is 5C if you have either 4 or zero aces.”

I have no idea what I just wrote.

My personal favorite is the follow-on to this comment, which suggests that partners decide in advance what ‘convention’ they’ll use to communicate during bidding, and that they must share that convention with their opponents. “Secret bidding is unethical in bridge. You have every right to ask an opponent what his bid means.” I find this hilarious. I can see it now:

Grandpa Rosen: 3 Diamonds
Me: What does that mean?
Grandpa Rosen (looking puzzled): It means 3 diamonds.
Me: Okay, thank you.

So glad I asked.

Despite the aggravation of the bid language and the skulk-through-the-grass-and-then-Kill!-Kill!-Kill! tone of the books I’m reading, I do find the game fascinating. This isn’t like Accounting or Real Estate, where the idea is simple, but the terminology has been deliberately stretched & morphed so that no reasonable person could understand it and the profits are left to those who do.

No, Bridge is more like tennis. If you ask someone how to win at tennis, they'lltell you that it’s important to get the ball over the net and inside the lines more often than your opponent. But really, it’s really all about getting your opponent to get the ball over the net and inside the lines less often than you. It’s about chipping away at his points and his confidence until he chucks his racket at the fence in frustration, after which it's just a matter of time before you're shaking hands at the net feigning humble surprise at your win.

So it goes with Bridge. Ladies and gentlemen sit down at the table, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ even when they don’t mean it, politely overlook each other’s errors and pretend not to know what everyone else is talking about during the bid, even though they know precisely what is going on. Play moves from bid to trick, whereupon each side tries to get the other to win fewer tricks than they do (rather than trying to win more tricks than the opponents). After a while, people shake hands, change seats and start over.

I like the dichotomy of it—using cards as weapons while behaving as if they were handkerchiefs, or playing tricks like barracuda while swimming like a swan. It’s the height of competition played at the peak of politeness. Pretty cool stuff for 52 pieces of plastic with odd artwork on them.

And if none of that works and I’m still spinning around in circles wondering why my partner said 2 spades when he really wanted to play diamonds, I can always just offer to play the dummy hand. I’m really good at that.

A the W(eak Two)*

*It’s a Bridge thing.