| You Are a Glazed Donut |
 Okay, you know that you're plain – and you're cool with that. You prefer not to let anything distract from your sweetness. Your appeal is understated yet universal. Everyone dig you. And in a pinch, you'll probably get eaten. |
blog-thing ganked from <lj user="terra_lily"> February 23, 2006
hey you… and <lj user="devi0usblueeyes"> February 23, 2006
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UCLA Study On Friendship Among Women – An alternative to fight or flight February 22, 2006
©2002 Gale Berkowitz
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.
Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research—most of it on men—upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight; In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is release as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone—which men produce in high levels when they're under stress—seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic “aha” moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.
It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the “tend and befriend” notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. There's no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer.
In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.
Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight.
And that's not all. When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). The following paragraph is, in my opinion, very, very true and something all women should be aware of and NOT put our female friends on the back burners.
Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push the m right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience.
drama, drama… February 17, 2006
So the restaurant I work for is opening their new spot tonight. They apparently expected me to be there, but I have an exam on Monday that I have to study for as much as possible. I need to understand chaos theory for crying out loud. If I had kept a cool head and just explained that I need to study as much as possible and can't afford to be there both Friday and Saturday, I wouldn't be in this mess… I panicked and told her the test was today. I told her I would find out if I can reschedule it and I would call her as soon as I knew what the deal was. I wouldn't normally have panicked, but I saw the look in her eyes and I just went there!
help, help, help!!!! February 16, 2006
Here is the deal. The restaurant I work for is opening their new spot tomorrow. They apparently expected me to be there, but I have an exam on Monday that I have to study for as much as possible. I need to understand chaos theory for crying out loud. If I had kept a cool head and just explained that I need to study as much as possible and can't afford to be there Friday and Saturday, I wouldn't be in this mess… I don't think, but I panicked and told her the test was tomorrow. I told her I would find out if I can reschedule it and I would call her as soon as I knew what the deal was. What should I say to her? Crap, I don't know what to do. I wouldn't normally have panicked, but I saw the look in her eyes and I just went there!
FUCK.
valentines day was good… February 15, 2006
some time last week ram mentioned going out for dinner for valentines day. when he brought it up, i suggested making reservations. heh, neither one of us actually did so. when we got there, we were informed that we might be able to get a table in about an hour… so we went elsewhere. all in all, it worked out rather well. we found another japanese restaurant that wasn't quite so posh, so we were able to get a table right away and our dinner was fabulous (and probably much less expensive).
but before we left for dinner, we built a snow woman. 
she ended up looking like a fertility goddess.
i made him a two boxes and a snow globe. i got a little heart box and painted it to match the box i made for him for x-mas and on the inside i drew the japanese character for love(ai) and i filled it with chocolate and gum. the second box looks like a treasure chest. i painted it black and scuffed up all of the appropriate spots to make it look old. i put pirate stickers all over the front of the chest and i hot-glued little wooden sail boat things (ie, anchors and helms). on the inside i put silly putty, relationship quetion cards, lovers dice, nerds candy to serve as the golden nugget “treasure” (it's his favorite), and a little “love” bear. i also took a bunch of plain wooden hearts, painted them red, put sayings on one side and “i love you” in another language on the other (they were in the treasure chest as well). it was fun and he loved all of it. oh yeah, the snow globe has a picture of us on one side and on the other it reads “happy valentines day.”
hee. it was a good a day.
what the hell… February 14, 2006
i'm jumping on the bandwagon…
go here and choose up to 6 words that you think best describe me.
