Sometimes I hear myself using expressions I heard as a child growing up in my grandparents’ house. If I asked my grandfather to get overly excited about something that really mattered to me (like a new outfit) but that didn’t register for him at all, he’d see my frustrated face, laugh and exclaim “It’s nice!… Read more »

We here in the Kalita household are on “summer break time.” That’s kind of like “island time,” when there is no schedule, you nap a lot and you eat when you feel like it. We do this simply to recuperate from the hectic last weeks of school, exam season, the innumerable end-of-year events (recitals, plays… Read more »

I don’t believe in doing things the hard way. I’m all about the EASY button. Does this make me lazy? Or efficient? You say tomato, I say tomaaaato. But we can all agree that effective disease management can only benefit from simplification. There are non-techy ways to do this. Have a grocery list before you… Read more »

If a fire starts in the kitchen, which could happen at any time if I offer to cook, you can most often put it out pretty quickly. It’s a new, small, contained fire. It hasn’t yet had the opportunity to grow and destroy the home in its entirety.

Having a debilitating illness like diabetes is not the subject of much hilarity. Fears around organ failure, diabetic comas, dialysis machines and being taken from my daughters too soon don’t register so much as a chuckle in my world.

As a diabetic, there are a few demands on my time. As a mom, there are abundant demands on my time. As a diabetic mom, there are simply insane demands on my time that no iPhone app has been able to fix to date.

It’s a wonderful thing to watch the people you care about moving forward. One friend has left a bad marriage and is moving into her new home this week. Another began her next working chapter as a substitute teacher today. Yet another has finally booked the trip to Costa Rica that he’s been talking about… Read more »

Imagine driving to a business meeting in New Jersey. Upon crossing over the state line, your gps informs you that your destination is approaching …somewhere within the state. Do you turn left or right? Being diabetic and being suddenly, inexplicably ill has been a similar experience. About 4 weeks ago, my energy was completely zapped…. Read more »

If I tell you I’m an Aquarius, you may recall hearing that Aquarians are known for being very social and great communicators. You may also recall hearing that they are typically, annoyingly indecisive. So, you know moving forward that you’ll have to pick the restaurant, but we’ll have a fabulous time when we get there.

Being a mom, I have a big list of things to do. Not really important, cancer-curing things, but things that nonetheless must be checked off of the family management list so that I can hold my head high in Safeway. End-of-year teachers’ gifts must be thoughtfully contemplated and lovingly presented. The dog is overdue for… Read more »

Yesterday, I was neither a great diabetic nor a great mom. But I suppose I should have seen that coming. It was the second day of a recital weekend for my two dancing daughters, and given that I hadn’t done such a bang-up job managing dress rehearsal madness earlier in the week, I guess backstage… Read more »

Ten years ago, despite my largely carnivorous brethren, I had a handful of vegetarian-ish friends. Because they still bought leather handbags and ate fish, however, I decided we could still be friends. Some pursued the diet for health reasons, but most of them were animal activists who just couldn’t stomach the idea of ingesting steak,… Read more »

Typically, as I fall asleep at night, I take a snapshot of what tomorrow is supposed to look like. Last night was no different, as I ran down the list to which I intended to wake: up by 7 am, change out my insulin pump, and eat a balanced breakfast with enough protein to get… Read more »

While at a dinner with some girlfriends recently, I was lamenting the fact that my daughters had passed “resistant strep throat” back and forth for the better part of 9 weeks. It never failed…one would get healthy and go back to school, and I’d get a call from the school to go and get the… Read more »

I did a lot of healthy things today. I started the day off with an early church service, and then a short volunteer stint for the church afterward. I knocked some errands off of my to-do list. I checked my sugars and regulated my insulin. I exercised. I had a glass of wine and a… Read more »

As I approach what would have been my mother’s 68th birthday this week, I’m reminded of the loss I felt growing up without her. The women in my family and of my community certainly rallied to support and raise me, and I will forever hold my personal Secret Life of Bees experience as a tremendous… Read more »

I wish I had made the time to blog last week, because I was full of gratitude about what I am learning through my diabetes education classes. I was optimistic and solid in the belief that despite the enormity of the daily to-do’s associated with having well-controlled diabetes – and a life – I could… Read more »

The hardest habit to break is not having good habits. Good habits are the product of a consistent, reliable routine. And a consistent, reliable routine is the best friend to every successful person I know. Let me just say right off that I don’t like the word “routine.” The very concept just sounds dull and… Read more »

10 years later, I admit it…I am a diabetic. It has taken me a solid decade to embrace this truth. And if you’re a rational person such as myself, that may at first sound a little ridiculous. But if you stop to consider something about yourself that you wish weren’t so, you’ll better understand why… Read more »

I’ve been threatening myself on and off for a while now that I would start this blog, but then I went and said I would – out loud, to another person – the other day, and even gave myself a start date of January 1st. So then it was out there…waiting to be accounted for.