Without Envy

I love the idea of documenting our d-journey through pictures and while it’s true we have captured a few memorable events on film (or in pixels, rather), unfortunately, there’s just not that much more that’s worth posting beyond what I’ve already shared. So, instead of inundating you with pictures of say, the combined quarter-century worth of kid’s birthday parties, I thought I’d offer those photos that best sum up what I personally find most endearing and important about our journey.

Each, I think, carries nicely a personal sentiment of how it sometimes feels to live life with diabetes. It’s fitting, I think, that only with Lia did I need more than one.

This is a tough one. Today’s post for diabetes blog week is to write about something good that diabetes has done for Lia. The problem I’m having is that accomplishing this tiny task is made a bit more difficult by any number of obvious reasons: It’s a disease. It’s incurable. And mostly it acts like a dick. So it’s kind of like asking the guy who got shot by Dick Cheney to be thankful for the face-full of lead because the quail hunt he was engaged in with the VP wasn’t going all that well for him.

But I get it, positive thinking is all the rage today and so in setting the whole chronic, dick-headed disease thing aside, I wonder where to begin in revealing the flip side of the coin, that is the bright-sidedness of diabetes.

Should I start first with the physical and mental courage it takes to confront diabetes everyday? Courage to endure pain. Courage to not be intimidated. Courage to face fear and take measure several times a day, through the tiniest pinprick of blood, of one of life’s greatest and most ultimate uncertainties. But is it fair to say that courage sprouts out of hardship, or is it already inside us, and rises forth like a bad-ass commando out of the depths and fog where it’s been keeping watch all along?

If not courage, then what of humility? It cannot be easy sharing the stage with such a pinhead of a co-host, when diabetes behaves like a persistent April Fools joke, acting contrary every day of the year. How else do you explain the steadfast grace needed to put up with such mischief if not with humility?

Or might the gift from diabetes be best described as empathy? This is one I could point to were it not like saying in order to better understand the blind one must walk the world with their eyes closed. Honestly, empathy needs no point of reference, just as hope needs no foothold on imagination. They just are, if we let them.

So where does that leave me?

Gratitude for the fact that diabetes is not something worse than it already is?

The experience of overcoming one struggle so that it makes her stronger for the next?

The motivation that turns fear into an advantage?

An appreciation for life?

A sense of community?

The peace of self-content with what is versus what should be?

The truth is Lia is who she is in spite of diabetes. Putting a positive spin on this life-threatening condition — while invigorating to write about — feels strangely like falling into the trappings of a culture driven by the ideological desire to find something happy in everything (though the numbers suggest otherwise). But how can I not play along, if only to satisfy myself that I did everything I could for her physical and mental well-being?

Yes, she’s stronger.

Yes, she has more courage, more empathy, more appreciation, more everything.

I would steal for her the naming rights to whatever life-affirming attributions have yet to be identified if it could mean that for just one day she didn’t have to think about diabetes. But it’s just not that easy. I say so not because I’m a pessimist, I’m not. I believe very much in believing in yourself, and I understand also that in taking this position, I might be making a serious leap in linking my daughter’s regard for her diabetes to a half-century of national schooling in what could be described as social optimism pumped-up-on-steroids.

Seriously, though, I know, I’m taking this too far, and probably out of context of what was the intended assignment. Maybe this whole diabetes thing is still just too fresh for me. Maybe I’ve worked myself into a tizzy because I haven’t yet fully bought in to the critical importance of finding something good about this thing that will be with my daughter the rest of her life. No, that’s not true. Will be with her until there’s a cure.

But I know also I’m not alone. When Lia gives herself a shot or pricks her finger for the umpteenth that day, she does not think of the bottomless well of courage such an act requires of her.

When she feels low, she doesn’t appreciate the fact that it could be much worse.

When she explains again and again to her classmates what that thing is on her hip, she doesn’t think: Because of this, I’m a better person.

She thinks, like I do now, or she will at some point one day: This shit totally blows.

And so speaking to her as her father, mindful also that I’m not one who has diabetes, to help her get through those days where she feels downtrodden and out of sorts, I would say: You are many things, sweetheart. Brave. Smart. A true fighter. You were these things before this moment and you will be these things long after it’s passed. Diabetes doesn’t give you strength. It doesn’t give you courage. Everything you need to get upright and get through these times is dwelling inside where it has been, like the mettle of this little guy, making you you all along.

It sounds crazy, but it’s easy sometimes to forget, who in our house has diabetes. Just for this post, for example, I mentioned to Franca while standing at the kitchen sink last night that today’s blog week assignment was to list ten things I hate about diabetes. We were alone and for both of us the usual noxious sentiments we’d been feeling the past seventeen months began sounding off in our heads, things like the greater health risk, the predicament of tighter control, the regrettable loss of youth and spontaneity.

At the same time, Lia was in the next room over playing the piano and when she overheard us talking, she called out, “Can I do that?” And there it was, her small-but-heedful voice keen to remind us: this isn’t your disease. You’re not the one with diabetes.

And we aren’t, though there’s never a moment in the day we wouldn’t trade places with her, and while the things we don’t like about diabetes have certain similarities in the overall manner of speaking, there is no mistaking our long-term worry for the malice harbored by a nine-year old in the day-to-day struggle for dominance.

It’s easy, also, especially as a parent, when you get such a gift from a child as involvement and ownership to find error in their understanding and then attempt to correct it. Indeed, as Lia read her list to us it was difficult not to stop her and say, “Well, sweetheart, that’s not exactly true, is it?” But “sometimes” for kids means “always” and sometimes “always” means “on occasion”, so we started then rejected the urge to auto-correct her on any part of her list. This is, after all, how she sees it and how she sees it means everything to her, whether or not that assimilation is accurate. It fits perfectly  the age-old adage, don’t knock it till you walk in my shoes, and is, for all of us, one of the most valuable life lessons we can learn.

So, without further ado, here it is, the unadulterated, Ten Things I Hate about Diabetes, Lia Rosa edition.

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Ten Things Why I  Hate Diabetes
by Lia

1. I hate to test every single hour when I’m doing testing w/ my BG numbers.
2. Whenever I’m high, I always have to wait so long.
3. I can only eat “FREE” stuff in the morning for snack sometimes.
4. When I’m at school, every time I’m low or high, I need to call my dad and I miss most of the lesson, so I have to read it over.
5. I always hate getting asked what my pump is and when I tell them they always say, “Huh!?”
6. When I test, I always get stared at and even if I do it in my desk, and I ask them to stop nicely, they look away, and…..BOOOM!…….they look again.
7. I always have to change my site when I am having fun or a friend over.
8. I always have to weigh everything that we don’t have a carb count.
9. My dad always has the JDRF meetings.
10. I always get asked or told, “Are you allowed to have this?” or, “I know you aren’t allowed to have this, so I got you sugar free cookies.” or, “Do you want me to give you this so you can give it to your sister?”

Being so new to this, there are probably a great number of things we do wrong when it comes to treating diabetes. But everyday brings us new levels of confidence and also, strangely, periods of disbelief and elementary head-scratching that make us wonder have we been paying any attention at all. It ‘s much like a daydreaming child must feel who, upon waking from their mid-morning trance, suddenly realizes the teacher has asked them a question. But they say success comes in cans, not can’ts, so fortunately we keep trying again and again, and just like that poor little schoolboy, begging forgiveness and hoping our mistakes don’t lead to something worse.

As opposed to writing about two of our bloopers, I’ll choose a more subtler way to illustrate. Can you spot the difference?

Always read the label

Double vision or over-confidence?

Dear Kids:

As I write this letter I imagine it as a pin hidden in a haystack, buried beneath dawdling levels of virtual white pages, layers upon layers of words and wordsmithed images and deliberation. How many, heaven only knows. Plenty, I hope as that means I have plenty of time to write them. I picture one of you, Lia most likely coming across it, years from now, perhaps as an adult who upon finding herself on a rainy day lamenting her lost childhood, taps on the computer and logging online enters the words, Without Envy.

And you read. And you read and you read and at some point you come to this letter where by then, if you don’t know already it, you will have some sense of just how much your mother and I love you, and how much we love your brother and sister, and especially how hard we’ve worked for and wished for you all beautiful, long, happy lives. Little of what you have read, it’s my hope, will surprise any of you. I try to wear my beliefs on my sleeve, that is, for all the world to see, by not saying one thing and doing another. If your mother and I have done our jobs well, you will all know that the fruits of hypocrisy are smells not so easily removed with the laundry.

I’ve tried also to be honest with what I’ve written and how I felt about diabetes, about each of you,  your mother and our family in whole, and I’ve especially wanted to be honest about life and growing older. Nothing in life is guaranteed, regardless how hard you may want to believe it. There are some things you just can’t control. That is a lesson as painful as any you will ever learn. Focus on the things you can change and live satisfied with the fact that your efforts were not wasted on that which you cannot. Your courage, confidence and ability to adapt will not ever let you down. Trust yourself.

Here, too, are some things of our lives you will read about that you will have likely forgotten. Maybe you will have forgotten all of it. Some might say that’s for the better. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’d like to think that it’s not. I’d like to believe that there is always something to be gained, not lost, from knowing a thing. Undoubtedly, some of what I’ve written will make you feel sad and unhappy and I hope you will forgive me, but one day you will understand my reason for wanting to write about those things. I wish with all my heart that none of you will ever have to feel that way about anything but chances are that you will and it’s important for you to know that writing can help you overcome it, or at least come somewhat to agreeable terms with it.

In fact, as you read this it might seem as if our entire world revolved around diabetes and moments of grief, worry and hardship, of which I’ll admit there have been plenty. But I know you all and I know that each of you knows better. There simply aren’t enough words, images or seconds in the day to share with you all the joy, happiness and love that our children have brought us. You have all made us better, healthier, happier people and for that your mother and I are grateful.

For John, the oldest, but uniquely the newest member of our family, the quiet performer of the bunch, whose own story is worth writing down in a novel.

For Krista, the one always stuck in middle. You understand much more than you sometimes let on or that we give credit for. You are as much a survivor and hero as any one will ever meet.

And for Lia…. Well, way back when I started this blog and was coming up with a title, I wanted to find something that represented not only how I felt about you and diabetes, but how I felt about life on the whole. Diabetes had become a part of us, but it would not become the whole of us and in searching for a way to represent the fine balance between the life we start out wanting for ourselves versus the life we are handed, I thought of the day you were born, two weeks early in the back of an ambulance, far from design and the doctors and modern conveniences of childbirth. To be sure, it wasn’t part of our plan, but I understood then with humility that sometimes the road less envied produces the more spectacular journey.

This is the reality, children. The path you must carve through the universe is yours to decide. Choose your dreams wisely. There’ll be struggles along the way, for you as there is for everyone, but if you trust in your heart and lead with an open mind there is nothing out here that can stop you.

I love you all equally, with all of my spirit.

Yours forever truly,

Dad

“Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it.” Anne of Green Gables.

When I first read about the Diabetes Blog Week, I thought it just wasn’t the thing for me. In theory it sounded great. An opportunity to engage other writers for a week on a similar topic, sharing in different perspectives, stories, and experiences. But I worried about the time and creative commitment, about the topics and whether or not I had anything worthy to contribute. But mostly I worried — and this will sound strange — of opening myself fully to this community.

I know, I write a blog. I put myself out there every time I post something. You can’t get much more open than that. But as I’ve written before, like many of you, I don’t write it for others… well maybe I do some occasionally now, but it didn’t start that way. It began as a way for me to personally come to terms with my daughter’s diagnosis. The fears, the raw emotion, the anxieties that greeted us every day, those were my audience. My goal then and still today is to root those devils out, expose them in their deepest, darkest hiding places and in making them public learn to live in plain sight of them.

For me, to achieve that must take, in part, a better understanding of myself through the words that I write. But I am reminded, often in my writing, that I am not the one with diabetes, Lia is, and to be honest gaining an understanding of what that must be like for her takes so much more and is so much bigger than just sitting down to a keyboard or a computer screen. It takes walking in her shoes, something I and everyone else is incapable of doing; so there are times when I finish with what I have to say and I realize I have no better understanding for what I think about it than when I began. They’re just words on the page, my blabbering on about this or that, knowing full well that buried amongst the squiggles and straight lines is the deeply unsatisfying truth that this is not nor has it ever been my burden to carry.

I wish that it was. Everyday, I wish that it was.

Bad things happen to good people. We know that. It’s been that way forever. The hardest thing for a parent to accept is not that it happened but that we cannot take it away from our children. We can read of how others have learned to deal with diabetes, how young people have grown up and learned to live full, long lives; how they traveled, married, had children of their own. We can read books, watch documentaries, participate in other ways of communicating the same message: life with diabetes is hard, but not impossible.

We can do these things and are lives are better for it, but that shared experience only partially eases our worry, because there are other stories as well, some that aren’t being told because no one could stand up to the telling of them, and that’s all good and well. But it is in these moments of gloomy despair, when we feel most vulnerable to the frustration, confusion and uncertainty of fighting this disease, that we need a helping hand; it’s then that we realize, ultimately, that we just simply cannot do this alone.

With that in mind — and finally to theme of this blog day (sometimes discovering what you think takes a strangely circuitous route) — I’d like to share that my inspiration of late comes from someone who doesn’t even write a blog. To my knowledge this parent of a CWD doesn’t write at all. They do read plenty of d-blogs, however, (in fact that is how we first met) and most importantly, they are as involved in their own child’s health and well-being as are Franca and I. To our benefit, they have been with diabetes a good bit longer than we have and are willing to share their insight, knowledge and personal experience with what it has been like for them rooting out their own marauding demons.

It’s not just us, but Lia, too, who has benefited. She had the chance a couple of months ago to spend some time with their child. This little girl, we’ll call her R, is the same age, in the same grade, and has the same good-natured qualities as Lia. The two spent the day together and it seemed on the surface like any normal play date between kids. They ran around, they jumped on the trampoline, and other than testing together, seemed not to pay their diabetes any attention. But that evening after R went home, Franca and I went to bed forever grateful for having found someone else with whom Lia could relate to on this important level. Unbeknownst to us, however, Lia had been soaking up much more than a new friendship. The next morning when she came downstairs to where we were sitting, she announced to us her BG, how many carbs she was eating for breakfast and how much insulin she had bolused.

This was surprising in that it was the first time she had ever taken such charge of her diabetes and in all honestly it was a degree of intellectual involvement that Franca and I both knew was important for Lia to reach, but after only six months on the pump and just over a year of having diabetes, was something that neither of us were ready to ask of her  ourselves. We — I, especially — was still stuck in the theory that diabetes might be her burden, but it was mine to carry. Lia, it turns out, disagreed and she didn’t need one of us to ask this ownership of her, she only needed to spend time with a little friend, who showed that life with diabetes can not only be normal but also extraordinarily special and confidence-building, and that is a lesson, my friends, that I would not trade the world for.

February one year ago, I shared with you how Franca and I had declared war on sugar a couple of years prior and I thought that with the three year anniversary of that  eye-opening event having passed recently along with our one year marking of Lia’s diagnosis of diabetes, I’d open the door once again and peer inside our pantry.

To do that, I think, it’s important to share our philosophy on food. What is that, you might ask. Well, put simply, it’s a way of thinking about what we eat with the same level of care that we ask ourselves, what do I want out of life. This degree of careful reasoning, of course, takes much more than just listing what foods we like to eat. That would be like saying what I want out of life is to have a nice farmhouse and a family. That’s not a philosophy. Those are things, and like other things — a good job, perfect health — they make up the goals we set for ourselves on a daily basis. As such, it’s difficult to look past them and know that all of the energy, passion and effort expended in their pursuit fits into the much grander scheme. That is, are the things we are doing helping us achieve what we want most out of life. A philosophy helps answer that question and further guide us and keep us on track, by taking a much broader view of the question and focusing on the one thing we believe is the most valuable.

In writing this post I challenged myself to boil down my philosophy of food into one, most valuable word (MVW?). The first one that came to mind was healthy, but I discredited it almost at once as I refuse to fall to the ludicrous marketing strategies of so many food providers, to whom if they had their way, we’d be buying up boxes of cookies and chips for their life-saving nutritional content. To our credit though Franca and I, and to a great extent our children, do spend a great deal of time thinking about the healthier aspects of the food we eat. Most of our grocery budget, in fact, is spent at the outer aisles of the grocery stores on fruits, vegetables and fresh seafood, far and away from the misleading slogans printed on cardboard boxes and cellophane packages.

The next word that came to mind was taste. Whenever we compliment one another on something made in the kitchen, what we are usually referencing is the food’s  taste. But to classify taste as a philosophy is to ignore the mechanics of how the body and mind works in relation to food. One of the most notable findings we experienced when we outlawed sugar and again later in learning how to treat type 1 diabetes was that eating sweet foods seemed to encourage the eating of more sweet foods (this is the short of it, the real culprit here is insulin). Or, to put it in more appropriate terms, after a few days of not eating sweets, we found we stopped craving sweets, thus letting our body reach and enjoy a happier state of equilibrium (homeostasis) that it has evolved over millions of years to work toward. For us, I suppose, in this century and the last, sugar became the preferred method food producers use to get us to like their product. In the eighteenth century it was probably salt. Smells like marketing again. That rules out taste as a philosophy.

After taste failed to stand up to the rigors of philosophy, I thought maybe convenience would serve well. We are a family of five. Both parents work. The kids are actively involved in school and building relationships, and with our free time we’d rather spend it outside on a walk or visiting with friends than cutting up vegetables at the kitchen sink. Unfortunately, how we spend a great deal of our free time is cutting up vegetables at the kitchen sink. That’s just how it is when you choose to shop the outer aisles and prefer your meals made at home. When you add in taste as factor, well, the time required seems to double. I might wish convenience was our food philosophy, but it’s not and likely will never be.

With healthy, taste and convenience out of the picture, the only other word that could possibly describe the most value we search for in food is that it must be real. But what does that mean, real? Doesn’t any food you can touch, smell, taste qualify? You’d think, but that’s not the case if you believe like Michael Pollan, author of the bestselling book, In Defense of Food, that only food that our great grandmothers would recognize as food is real. All that other stuff, he says, is wrought by scientists in lab coats, not by nature, and once it’s pumped up with nutrients, so as to market it better to a society confused and mega-driven by expert advice and false health claims, the pre-packaged result only resembles an “edible foodlike substance”. It’s not real, it’s not food. And it’s making us all sick (here is an in depth article on this very fact. I strongly urge everyone to read the first part about the Afghans. You’ll find it sadly fascinating).

While real most approximates the way we think about food and would serve nicely as our philosophy, honestly, if you were to look in our pantry — a word, by the way, derived from the Middle English term panterie; which is taken from the latin word for bread, panis, and therefore suggests that what’s kept in it is not real — you’d find more than a few processed things. Cereal. Pasta. Crackers. And of course, juice boxes, sweet tarts, dark chocolate and a small corner shelving what can best be described as “bags of stuff”.

So there you go. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, summarizing our philosophy of food into one simple word; and I guess that’s the point and the trouble with formulating a philosophy. It’s not meant to be easy. If it were, people wouldn’t be on their death beds wondering how they had let themselves get so distracted and had failed to achieve all the things they had wanted out of life. A philosophy keeps you on task, so you don’t, in fact, mislive. But as our own pantry shows, a philosophy — even a dependent and loosely, knotted one as that involving food — without an effective strategy designed around a grand scheme, there is the chance still you won’t succeed.

There is the chance, too, as anything a writer may write, that I’ve given this way too much thought and have digressed to the point where I’ve lost you. Maybe a picture would’ve worked just as well….

But I doubt it (other than the fact that it’s noticeably empty, which should give you a clue into what our refrigerator and freezer must look like).

The point is, food and the choices we make about food are just too important (maybe even more important than medicine or science) to our overall health to leave it to clever marketing and profit-driven nutritionists.

Despite all the recent attention (and some old), the truth is not much has changed about our pantry. It still takes knowledge, willpower and a diligent, concerted effort on all of our parts to root out the hidden perils in the foods being offered to us. It can be done, and the dangers of not doing so are high. But it’s a shame that we have to spend so much time in deliberation and worry over it. Our great grandmothers would be shocked and more than a bit saddened considering their unique perspective of having made their own life’s journey and left knowing what really matters.

But first, a funny and embarrassing story. Several years ago I had a truly terrific doctor. I mean a one-of-kind physician-that-you-only-read-about who got to know the well-being of your mind and spirit at the same time he learned of your body’s. He would call — yes call — with the results of whatever blood tests he’d ordered and before handing over the details he’d ask about my wife and kids by name. He followed my work and my writing and seemed genuinely interested in my, and indeed all of my family’s, pursuits of happiness.

Dr. Murphy is gone now, moved on to a different town and practice. Every once in a while I’m reminded of him and his interesting ways, the following of which, I’m sure, will illustrate. I was there for my annual physical and near the end, when the discussion turned to the issue of a prostate exam, he must’ve assumed because of my youth (40’s are the new 20s) and the look on my face, that I was unfamiliar with the procedure. Or maybe he was just having fun.

“You ever play flag football?” he said.

“Sure,” I replied.

“Well, you know how after the quarterback snap.” He assumed then the half-crouched position of a quarterback snapping the ball. ”He steps back and if you’re a defensive lineman on the other team you have to count to five Mississippi before you can rush?”

“With you so far.”

“Well, this will be like that. Once we start, all I need is five seconds.”

I looked at him, wondering how in the hell that was supposed to make me feel better. There’s a lot of ugly, unwanted things that can happen in five seconds or less. Accidents, pregnancies, hurtful words. Suddenly I wished he wasn’t so damn considerate, or funny.

Next, apparently questioning my honesty and experience with flag football or unsure of my ability to relate time in my head, he felt the need to further demonstrate. Holding the quarterback pose still, he hiked the imaginary ball and took a step back and started counting, “One Mississippi.”

He stepped one leg forward and counted “two Mississippi” and extended his right hand and size 12 index finger in a smooth, upward motion, from his waist to the sky. Mississippis three, four and five culminated the experience with him holding that pose and effectively sealing the deal, and quite possibly our relationship. He dropped his arms to his side and looked at me.

“Just like that,” he said with a smile.

I stared back at him, in a slightly new and different way. “I get it,” I said, “but I don’t know where you played flag football. Where I did we kept our pants on.”

I share that story today for two reasons. One, this week is Earth Day and if ever there was a need to drop our illusions (sorry, couldn’t resist) and get down to the nitty gritty (pun here is definitely not intended), it is in the unprecedented times of environmental change that our world is presently facing. Seriously. Dying rivers. Farms that don’t produce food. Climate-related illnesses. Whatever side of the myriad Earth Day debates you fall on, the facts are alarming (I encourage you to click on the links. I think you’ll find the information both remarkable and inspirational):

• Dwindling water supplies
• Massive global food shortages
• Rampant threats to clean air
• Endangered species
• Out of control consumption

The need for involvement goes well beyond the three R’s of Refuse, Reuse, Recycle (these are very good places to start, however). It will take more effort, more sacrifice, and dramatic change to the way we think, how we vote (with our spending as well as our ballots), and how we live our lives, all things which, by the way, as people used to dealing with diabetes, we are already and quite effectively accustomed to doing. It calls for a collective voice and an action on each of our parts as equally unprecedented as what brought us here, because the reality is that no matter where you call home there is only this one world. One sea. One mountain. One opportunity to make it a better place for ourselves and those who follow behind us (for some ideas, see some suggestions from The Nature Conservancy below).

The second reason I shared the story of my doctor is to more directly reiterate the belief that the platform we all speak personally from — one of health and diabetes — should not be dismissed as a non-player in the challenges and struggles facing the planet. True, buying veggies grown locally may not seem related to diabetes care but every time you do so you are voting against genetically modified foods, which the American Academy or Environmental Medicine has suggested “pose a serious health risk”. I would argue that the individual and collective effort and experience of the diabetes community advocating  for better care, better science, and better practices makes us perfect stewards for this call to action.

The effort you put in is up to, and it doesn’t take much to get started, a few seconds the next time you go to the grocery and choose one tomato over another. It may seem small, but like Dr. Murphy showed me: There are a lot worse things you do in those five seconds.

Easy Things You Can Do To Help Our Climate (from the Nature Conservancy):

1. TIP: Travel light. Walk or bike instead of driving a car. Cars and trucks run on fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you’ll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

2. TIP: Teleconference instead of flying. For office meetings, if you can telephone or videoconference, you will save time, money, and carbon emissions. Airplanes pump carbon emissions high into the atmosphere, producing 12 percent of transportation sector emissions.

3. TIP: See the light. Use compact fluorescent light bulbs. These energy-efficient bulbs help fight climate change because they reduce the amount of fossil fuels that utilities burn. You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent, over the life of the bulb.

4. TIP: Recycle and use recycled products. Products made from recycled paper, glass, metal and plastic reduce carbon emissions because they use less energy to manufacture than products made from completely new materials. For instance, you’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle. Recycling paper also saves trees and lets them continue to reduce climate change naturally as they remain in the forest, where they remove carbon from the atmosphere.

5. TIP: Inflate your tires. If you own a car, it will get better gas mileage when the tires are fully inflated, so it will burn less gas and emit less carbon. Check your automobile monthly to ensure that the tires are fully inflated. Follow this tip and save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive.

6. TIP: Plant native trees. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and use it as their energy source, producing oxygen for us to breathe. A tree in the temperate zone found between the tropics and the polar circles can remove and store 700 to 7,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime. A tree that shades a house can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

7. TIP: Turn down the heat. Heating and air conditioning draw more than half of the energy that a home uses in the United States. Turn down the heat or air conditioning when you leave the house or go to bed. You can easily install a programmable thermostat that can save up money and carbon.

8. TIP: Buy renewable energy. Electricity generation produces 40 percent of carbon emissions from the United States. A growing number of utilities generate electricity from renewable energy sources with solar panels, windmills and other technologies. If your utility offers renewable energy, buy it. If not, send them a message asking for clean energy.

9. TIP: Act globally, eat locally. If you shop at a supermarket, the food you buy may travel in a plane from the other side of the world, burning fossil fuels the entire trip. Shop at a local farmers markets and you will find fresh and healthy food, and help save our climate.

Take diabetes, for instance. In many ways, raising a dog is a lot like controlling blood sugars, minus of course the extreme health risk. You study the science. You learn the technique. You get up every day determined to do your best and when things go the way you had planned you celebrate. You applaud and pat yourself on the back. Maybe you even dance and talk silly. Whatever shape it takes, you know in that very moment you’ve done something right. And if it goes the other way and not as you’d intended? Well, you might wonder perhaps, as I’d done with the dog: What on earth did I do wrong.

I find myself doing that more than I should and I hope that my feelings of underachievement go by Lia unnoticed. It is something that comes with parenting, I think. Wanting the best for your children, disappointed when you fall short. Even when something like blood sugar can’t always be explained. Trying to understand why it goes up or down is like asking Jake to account for his running off and then, because knowing why is only half the battle — it still doesn’t fix it, you have him describe what he saw. He just looks at you.

The alternative to that is easier, but frankly no less productive. Such was the case when Jake finally returned and I saw him out front in the yard, tearing through the trash bag containing the shells of moules à la marinière we’d had the night before. I stomped and got blistering mad and banished him for good to the outdoors. By dusk I was over my anger and went out to clean him up, only to find him gone once more.

Oh, were yelling to work with diabetes. I could curse and threaten and abandon all thought of ever showing it kindness again, but it would not listen and before the day would turn over, I’d have shed myself of the disillusion and disappointment and let it back into my heart because so much of who we are is not chosen but given or comes to us freely. In learning to accept that about diabetes, I have also learned to love it.

That is a strange thing to say. I love my daughter’s diabetes. I don’t, of course, love it. I hate it. I despise every moment that I or my wife or Lia, or anyone else, has to spend trying to understand and outwit it. I wish it were different for all of us, and especially for Lia, but wishing won’t change anything and if it could there is one thing I would not want for and that is that she were any other child or I any other parent. I love her and so love all that comes with her.

As for the dog?

Commitment. Loyalty. Obedience.

Two out of three isn’t bad.

I am having a problem with our dog. You might remember Jake. I wrote about forgetting him as we left from a holiday weekend visit with some friends at their lake house. Jake is a pretty mellow dog. He follows me around the house, lays under the desk while I write, and other than shedding, sloppy drink habits, and an audible and extremely aggravating nighttime routine of self-cleaning, he’s fairly easy to accept as far as most family pets go. But lately he hasn’t been listening.

Now, before you say anything, I know this is probably my fault. Like most everything in and about this house, he doesn’t get enough attention. I know that. We worked with him a good deal when we first brought him home from the pound, struggled hard to get down to the bare bones of what makes a good dog tick, and for a while he did really well, and us, too, with his training. With some basic behavioral understanding and simple commands, we could get him to sit and lay down and come to a whistle. Some days he did better than others. Some habits we simply couldn’t get him to break, such as chasing after cars if one happened to invade his immediate space. Other things, for whatever reason, like learning to shake, were difficult to grasp and took a great amount of effort on both of our parts. With practice, however, we managed and eventually even the hard things became simple, too. But something in the last year has changed. I just noticed it in the last few weeks, but I think it’s been building up over time, this will to not do what we say.

In the likelihood that some animal expert out there will suggest it, I’ll be the first to say, I get what it is that I ask for. And all that I ask for from Jake is the same that I’d ask of any addition to our family: play nice. In return, I don’t make of him ridiculous requests, or ask that he do something that’s impossible, as in, say, talk like a pirate or go get his own damn breakfast. I give him his freedom to act like a dog and he gives us his love and companionship. It’s a shared responsibility, which is why yesterday morning when I asked him to come and he looked at me and saw what I wanted but just stood there staring back at me, until I told him to come once more, in a voice more suited for commanding authority, and he turned and ran away — and then stayed gone for hours — that I simply could not believe it.

How could this be? We had worked so hard. We had an understanding. We had accepted him and his imperfections and though our arrangement with him was not ideal, what with the lack of time and attention, there was never a shortage of need or respect.

They say a dog’s motivation is tied closely to its social order, that is, how goes the pack goes the animal. If that’s true, and I believe that it is, then we do have ourselves to blame. But it’s not the question of blame I am searching to fill. I just want what’s wrong to be fixed. I want him to listen. I want what we have in our lives to play nice and if not, at least have a good reason.

Perhaps if we could trade places, Jake would see that I only want what’s good for him, too. The world is a dangerous, sometimes godforsaken place. It is full of  unwelcome things that want to invade our space. It’s important we all stick together. And on my end, I think maybe it’s time to dust off those books and training manuals, because in them, I’m sure, there is something I missed and like anything else in this life, if you give a thing an inch it’s bound to take a mile.