15 minutes

in case you missed it. here is alex's fifteen minutes of fame article....another reminder of why we should move back to colorado!
CDC survey puts the obesity question on the table (right next to the dessert).
By JAMES A. FUSSELL
The Kansas City Star

If we’re not careful, the “Show Me State” is going to turn into the “Don’t Show Me State.”
As in, “Don’t show me your excess body fat.”

In a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking obesity prevalence, Missouri was in the top third of states, weighing in at a bloated No. 13. Kansas wasn’t much better at 19th.

At No. 50, Colorado was the fittest state. That made us put down our doughnut and think:

What’s Colorado doing right that we’re not? And by that logic, what’s Mississippi, the fattest state, doing so wrong?

In pursuit of the truth — and flatter midsections — we raised our thick Midwestern fingers and started dialing.

Southern style

Our first call was to Mississippi State University in Starksville.

So, Lee Ann Joe, exercise physiology instructor, how do you explain your state’s poor showing?

“I guess we just have less activity here,” she said. “We’re at sea level, so we don’t have any hills to walk around. And in the summer, it’s so hot here you don’t want to be outside.”

Anything else?

“I suppose there’s a lot of nutritional aspects to it, too,” she said. “I don’t see very many people eating vegetables around here. And a lot of the vegetables they do eat tend to be cooked with fat of some sort. Another factor is that we’re a poorer state. You don’t have as much money to buy good food, which costs more than junk food.”

Guyana Jenkins, an office manager in the Hinds County Health Department in Jackson, agreed that income and Southern diets were big contributors.

“A lot of Southern people like fried chicken, cornbread and greens cooked with ham hocks and fatback,” she said.

And with more family members working, there’s not always time to prepare fresh, healthy meals.

“So you just grab fast food or a frozen dinner that has fat and sodium,” she said. “I guess they could get more programs to educate people about healthier eating. But then you have to have people who want to change. I wish they had more jobs where they had some sort of exercise routine for the employees, even if it’s just 10 or 15 minutes in the morning.”

Jenkins, who tries to educate her family about healthy eating habits, is bothered about her state’s ranking.

“It’s concerning because I’m a black American, and we’re dying from heart attacks and strokes. I don’t want to be in that category.”

Mountain mentality

On the other end of the spectrum is Colorado, a state where healthy eating and outdoor activities are as much a part of the culture as fatback and fried foods are in Mississippi. And perhaps as racks of ribs and cookouts are in Kansas City.

Alex Passett, the president of Kansas City chapter of the Colorado Alumni Club, says living here has changed him.

“Since I moved here from Colorado (12 years ago) I’ve gained 20 pounds,” the Overland Park resident said. “I don’t know if that’s because of geographic change or just going from my 30s to my 40s. It’s probably a combination.”

Don’t get Passett wrong. He loves living here.

“Give me a choice between a grueling bike ride or a slab of ribs and a tailgate, I’ll take the slab of ribs and tailgate any day,” the 43-year-old Sprint marketing manager said.

But there is a difference. First, there’s the climate. “Colorado’s climate allows you to go outside and do something more often,” he said. “The cold isn’t as cold, and the hot isn’t as hot.”

That gives people more options when looking for things to do.

Anne Schuster, a health and wellness coordinator at the University of Colorado, said Coloradans have cultivated a culture of health.

“In Boulder there’s a strong emphasis on eating foods that are close to nature,” she said. “And in Boulder especially, people work out quite a bit. And that doesn’t mean going to the gym all the time. It could be taking a walk or doing yoga. I think here people really love open space, and here we have access to a lot of trails. And, of course, we’ve got the mountains, and the mountain biking and the skiing.”

That said, Schuster doesn’t like the punitive nature of the body mass index, or BMI.

“BMI standards changed in 1997, and all of a sudden people on the cusp of being overweight were on the cusp on being obese,” she said. As a result, she said, ultra-restrictive BMI standards have a chilling effect on many regular people who find it difficult to get within the “healthy” range.

If you really want to live like Coloradans, she said, forget diets and BMI numbers.

Weight loss shouldn’t be the end goal,” she said. “It should be health. If we focus on eating a healthy diet, and staying active, a healthy weight will follow.”

Then, when someone says “show me,” Missourians will be able to answer “glad to.”

blues.

blues.
Originally uploaded by juliepass

we loaded up and headed out to the blueberry patch this morning. it was hot. it was steamy. it was fun. almost like i remember when we'd go to northern minnesota in the summer and pick wild blueberries in the woods. only it was hotter and there weren't any woods. little two ate everything he picked. little one actually got some in her bucket. but she made new friends, like she does everywhere, and they both loved it. the girls and christine were more focused - 3 almost full buckets for them! 3 1/2 pounds of blueberries later we packed it up and called it a good day picking. now it's time to make panckes, muffins and pies.

flushed away.

so in yesterday's post i mentioned that little two hadn't broken or lost his glasses yet. well, i believe in karma. good and bad. i must have jinxed it with that statement. because this am. i caught the glasses swirling in the toilet and was able to grab them just before they were flushed away. yes. flushed away. so it was off to the store for toilet safety locks. and a lecture with a two year old about not flushing his new spectacles. won't this be fun.

spectacles.

well, life has changed. it changed a few weeks ago when we starting patching little two everyday all. day. do you have any idea how difficult it is to keep a patch on a two year old's eye for 12 - 15 hours a day? i find them everywhere. the neighbors find them stuck to the sidewalk.

well, now we've moved to step two. a patch and spectacles. so far we're not doing much better keeping the glasses on than we are the patch. but we just keep sticking them on. because i don't want to face surgery. here's a shot of max in his new spectacles. amazing that we haven't lost them yet...

obsession.

did anyone catch this story in the WSJ? anyone who's worked retail can certainly relate. even though my time at benetton (remember them? italian sweaters in odd colors, perfectly folded clothing) has long since come and gone, i still sometimes find myself folding things the "benetton way". a girl i know has worked retail for so long she says that sometimes she catches herself straightening canned goods in the grocery store...ahh the things that cause compulsive behavior!

Excuse Me, Do You Work Here?
No, I Just Need to Fold Clothes

Thousands of Neat Freaks Picked Up
The Habit as Clerks at the Gap

By JENNIFER SARANOW
July 9, 2008; Page A1

On those rare occasions her husband, Brad, folds the laundry, Joanne Ross-MacLeod can't keep herself from refolding it. She recently undid a pair of leggings he had bunched up into a small square. She folded one leg onto the other, brought the bottom up past the knees, then the knees up to the waist, in the manner she had learned 20 years ago folding jeans at the Gap.

Longtime Gap employee and store manager Alicia Peat demonstrates the proper Gap jeans fold.

The 39-year-old fabric-product developer didn't tell her husband. But he's used to it. Folding is a subject on which the Kenosha, Wisc., couple agree to disagree. "I need therapy," Mrs. Ross-MacLeod says.

She isn't the only one. The ranks of obsessive folders have swelled in recent years as a generation of Americans has done stints as clothing-store clerks. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, annual nonsupervisory employment in clothing and clothing-accessory stores grew to nearly 1.3 million workers in 2007, up nearly 20% from 1990. Gap Inc. says it has trained "hundreds of thousands" of Gap store employees in the art of folding since the late 1980s.

Along the way, legions of retail grads have spent countless hours neatly folding T-shirts and jeans and stacking them on tables and shelves. Now, their peculiar idea of perfection is straining marriages and leading to bizarre behavior ranging from buying clothes based on an item's foldability to straightening up sloppy displays while shopping.

Thirty-six-year-old Sadaf Trimarchi stopped doing laundry for her husband two years ago, she says, after he complained that she had folded his undershirts so tightly and stacked them so neatly in his drawer that he couldn't tell which were V-necks and which were crew necks.

"He had no idea what he was talking about," says Mrs. Trimarchi, of Leonia, N.J., who learned the basics of her folding technique at Gap during the 1989 holiday season. Her husband, Jeff Trimarchi, 34, says she caught him refolding and he explained his frustration as nicely as possible. "I imagine she took offense," he says.

'Programmed'

Like military veterans who just naturally fold sheets with hospital corners when they make beds, today's retail refugees say they can't help themselves. "It's been programmed into me," says Marcos Chin, a 33-year-old free-lance illustrator in New York, who folds his jeans the same way he did in the 1990s when he gave folding seminars for clerks at Gap.

QUESTIONS FOR MARKA HANSEN

Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America, discusses how the clothing retailer is marketing its brand and how it's returning to its roots.

Phil Walmsley, 24, of Vancouver, still uses the plastic folding board he stealthily slipped into his backpack on his last day of work at Club Monaco five years ago. "I like the idea of having a perfectly folded closet," says the graphic designer. "It's kind of like my own little retail store."

Michael Jenike, chairman of the scientific advisory board for the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation in Boston, says he has treated people who have folding compulsions but doesn't recall whether any of them had ever worked at clothing stores. He says compulsive folding becomes a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder only if someone is spending excessive amounts of time doing it, doesn't want to do it but feels compelled to and the behavior is causing distress. Otherwise, it's just a harmless habit.

The folding craze at Gap began in the 1980s when Millard Drexler, who as a boy had sorted towels at his uncle's towel-delivery service, took the helm as president of the Gap Stores division. At the time, most store clerks hung clothes on racks because hanging merchandise was far easier to maintain. But Mr. Drexler and his team put tables in Gap stores and had employees decorate them with piles of folded shirts and sweaters. The goal was to better emphasize certain items and color choices and make it easier for customers to sort through clothes. Shoppers found the displays inviting -- but displays needed constant attention from clerks.

Other chains trying to mimic Gap's success soon adopted the look, and clerks everywhere were spending hours folding. "Over the past 10 or more years, the trend has definitely been to more folding," says RoxAnna Sway, editor-in-chief of DDI magazine, which focuses on retail design and display.

Romey Louangvilay stopped working at Abercrombie & Fitch three years ago but it was only last October that he was finally able to go shopping without automatically spending 10 or 15 minutes refolding messy T-shirt piles in stores. The 22-year-old assistant account executive for a public-relations firm in New York forced himself to kick the habit after growing tired of having to awkwardly explain himself to other customers asking him for help. "I still kind of have the urge to do it," he says.

Mr. Louangvilay's friends notice his folding tendencies, too, and sometimes jokingly mess up his neat, color-coded piles. "Everyone makes fun of Romey for his folding habits because it's so weird," says Mandella Dwayne Lambert, a 23-year-old mutual-fund accountant in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Everything in his drawers looks like a store layout."

Over the past decade, former retail workers have invented a slew of folding-aid products with names like FlipFold and Mobilefold, many of which are bought by former clothing clerks. Jeff LaPace, president of Customer Minded Associates Inc., maker of the nearly $300 Mobilefold, a portable folding table meant primarily for retailers, says the company has received so many orders from people who used to work at stores like Gap that it's rolling out a less-expensive consumer version later this year.

Some clothing-store alums are letting folding dictate their clothing choices as well. Tychelle Mc Laurin, 35, hasn't bought a sweater or a shirt with wide bell- or cape-like sleeves since she worked at J. Crew in 2004. That's because the compliance officer in Jersey City, N.J., can't easily and neatly fold the sleeves using a "trifold" she perfected after working at J. Crew. "I don't think those styles look attractive folded," she says. "They are difficult to fold -- like folding a batman cape."

Wrinkle-Free

For traveling, Lauren Smith, 24, avoids duffel bags and sticks with hard, rectangular suitcases. They better hold and maintain the uniform, rectangular piles Ms. Smith stacks her clothes into when packing, using the folding technique she learned working at Gap when she was in high school. The packed clothes "look like they would be sitting on display," says Ms. Smith, an interior-design saleswoman in Atlanta. She says her packing technique keeps clothes wrinkle-free.

It isn't clear whether the next generation of retailers will produce so many compulsive folders.

Today, more stores, including Gap, are receiving their merchandise already folded. Other chains like lululemon athletica and Hollister Co. are encouraging employees to make merchandise look messy or wrinkled. Within the past year, mainstream retailers, including Banana Republic's new Monogram concept store and even Gap itself, have begun hanging more merchandise, whether to emulate a sparsely merchandised high-end boutique in the case of the former or to emphasize unique styles and details in the case of the latter.

"In women's, we are hanging more because there is more fashion there and more detail that gets enhanced with hanging," says Felicity McGahan, vice president of store visuals and experience at the Gap brand. Finding the balance between hanging and folding, she says, "is something that we've actually put a lot of time into in the last 12 months."

why all the hate?

why all the hate these days about flip flops?  the stories on the news, in the paper, online.  i get that they're not so hot for your feet, your legs, your back. that they're not appropriate foot wear for the white house (remember the girl's college sports team that wore them to meet the president?) or work (don't totally agree with this, tim gunn).  i understand that they are or can be noisy worn on the wrong foot, or the wrong person with a poor gait (i know what you mean about the noise, oh beehive.  clearly rude flip flop wearers).  

but they're comfortable.  cute. easy.  i keep pairs all over the house.  i put them on first thing in the morning.  and keep them on all day.  i've also found the most comfortable ones ever.  they are my favorites.  i collect them (10 pairs and counting). i love them.  i'd love to wear them all year long - well i do, just not always out of the house.  

eliza b.  if you don't have a pair, you should invest in one.  they're the best. ever. cutest. comfiest. you will get so many compliments on them.  and i can't find but one place in town that carries them.  so they are not on everyone's feet...

eight random things.

i've stayed away from lists lately. ever since the alphabet meme which wiped me out. one month. that was hard. but this is just 8 things. 8 random things about me. surely i can come up with 8 things. and 8 things that won't bore you. join in if you wish.
1. i love to eat cake for breakfast. when there is birthday cake with roses in the house it calls my name in the am.

2. cats creep me out.  yes cats.  can't stand them.  sorry cat lovers, but i'm a dog person.

3.  i've suddenly become an iced tea drinker.  always liked it, but right now i'm craving it.  especially tazo berry blossom, shaken not stirred with fresh blueberries over slightly crushed ice.

4.  i love to buy bowls.  i have lots.  too many alex would say.  but a dish problem is good.  new dishes can just change the feel of a meal.  i'm obsessed.  bought new ones just last week and my caprese salad never tasted better.

5.  i adore markers.  love to write with them, especially the new thin sharpie that doesn't bleed through, color with them, collect them.

6.  i just (today) took down the last christmas decoration.  i have been looking at it for months, but never got around to it.  it finally got on my nerves enough to drag out a ladder and take it down.  now.  i kind of. miss. seeing it.  

7.  baking is my thing.  i could whip up a batch of cookies everyday.  i adore baking.  it is a stress reliever for me.  i love to mix and measure.  chocolate chip. snickerdoodles. peanut butter. sugar.  frosted, sprinkled, glazed.  cookies.

8.  i shouldn't admit this, but i still can sit and watch an episode of little house on the prairie.  of course, this was my favorite. i mean favorite. show from when i was child.  i never missed it. hated mary.  wanted to be laura.

9.  i know i said 8 random things, but i thought of another.  my most favorite.  best show is back on tonight!  project runway is back!  i only hope this season can live up to the others.  i can't wait to have a good show on tv again!  yeah yeah yeah!

lame.

yes. lame. i've been lame about updating my blog. i haven't had much to discuss lately. well, i probably have but nothing very interesting. but now i have some questions...thoughts really, but questions, too.

why when all the other ellipticals at the gym are empty must people get on the ones right next to you? why why why? to take all your air?

why can't starbucks baristas learn to charge the right amount for skinny lattes?

why don't people say thank you anymore?

why does it have to be so blistering hot? well i know that answer, but i had to throw it in.

why do people have to exaggerate things about their kids online?

why can't people communicate?

why does my wrist have to hurt so much?

why can't summer last all year? or at least for 11 months of the year? that would be good. flip flops, sandals, dresses, flowers, playing outside, the pool and beach. summer really should be an all year event.

why do i have so many creative thoughts buzzzzzzzzzing through my head but not enough time to get them on paper?

and the rockets red glare.

i remember 4th of july when i was a kid. we always had huge block parties. huge. the kind you see staged in magazines now. everyone came. there were tables of food, fun, games, fireworks, watermelon, the red white and blue. we loved it. got decked out in our best patriotic outfits. lived for the forth during the summer.

we staged our own little block party this year. lots of good friends and food. a fourth of july parade. with our gator all decked out patriotically. ice cream, bbq, beverages flags and fireworks. great fireworks. great glow-sticks. it's amazing how much fun littles can have with some glow-sticks.

happy birthday, america.