I called Danielle and talked to her. She lives in Elk Grove which is a good 40-50 minutes away from Davis and has two kids. She said she'd be glad to cut my hair and then said she'd drive to Davis to do it! I was stunned. I made a big pot of chili and I made something separate for the kids and Bear was excited about meeting the kids. She came sans kids, but while we were disappointed it was OK. The food didn't go to waste and she did a beautiful job of cutting our hair. And I liked her.

She's a stay-at-home mom and she was talking about how she does everything for her kids and that her kids always come first. She was talking about how she gives up her workouts for her kids and then she was complaining about her expanding waistline. I was careful at first and then I said what I thought.

"You can't take care of your kids very well, if you don't take care of yourself. The thing I realized when I got diabetes is that I want to be there for my kids and I'd do anything to be here, which means taking care of myself. Kids mimic everything we do and as a result, if you don't take care of yourself, guess what your kids learn?" Her jaw dropped. Then she said,"My mom died when I was 24 from lung cancer. And she always put her kids first, but she smoked. And we begged her to stop." I nodded. I heard someone call that kind of moment a numinous moment.

Lately, Russell has been asking about the nutritional content of everything. I've got a food triangle poster in the kitchen mostly so that Mike knows when he's helping me with food preparation what constitutes a carb and what doesn't. But Russell reads it. Not only does Russ read that, but he reads the labels on every bit of food he can find a label on and is constantly talking about what he gets and doesn't get from various food he's eaten that day. He's always asking me what different vitamins and minerals do (damn those college nutrition classes). Last night, he was reading labels on things and telling Danielle what good things were in the food we were eating and telling her how many servings of vegetables he'd eaten today. She was totally impressed by this.

Mind you, this isn't something we've taught him to do. He's just watching me, mimicking me. I reminded her of that in our conversation. "Russell is learning all about food because he's interested in what I'm doing to take care of myself. He's learning to eat well and take care of himself because I am." Danielle looked like she was going to cry.

We talked more about food and I found out that someone somewhere told her that she was a "type" and that she should eat animal proteins because she can't digest vegetable proteins well. I never comprehend that stuff. I mean, I know people live by these things as gospel, but gimme a break. She's got a milk allergy and allergies to food can make your body react differently and all, but these kinds of blanket types are dumb in my opinion. And she admitted she HATED eating meat. I shrugged and said,"So don't!"

I used to be a pretty strict vegetarian most of the time and when I got pregnant with Bear, I really craved meat, so I ate it. Part of it was that I was terribly anemic. After having Russell, I never went back to being vegetarian except to go vegan during lent. Of course, this lent, I can't eat like that. I suppose I could, but at this point I'm not willing to screw with the diabetes and the stress of figuring out how it works because there's too much at stake. God will forgive me this lent, I'm sure.

To me food has to be a function of doing what I can live with. If I can't live with it on a day to day basis then I need to do something else that I CAN live with.

At any rate, I sent Danielle home with a couple of good vegetarian cookbooks (Vegetarian Mexican Cooking and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest). And it seemed too, that I sent her home with a new way to think about caring for herself and her kids.

I made a new friend.