Stop Diabetes Now! Test Yourself for Diabetes 2 or Pre-Diabetes

I am diabetic. So was my grandma. So are many of my cousins on her side. It's a family thang.

Diabetes can be a blessing because it can alert you to live right.

In honor of  Stop Diabetes Now Alert Day March 25, try this test to determine if you are at risk of Diabetes 2 or Pre-Diabetes:

http://www.diabetes.org/are-you-at-risk/diabetes-risk-test/

Waking Up to My Irishness

[Originally published in 1993]

     Somehow it was hidden from me, my Irishness. It took me a long time to figure out why. I started putting the pieces together this summer, after a sixteen-year-old Irishman became part of my family.

Tony Memmel and the Symphony: Hearing His Music So Big...

Tony and his wife and band-mate, Lesleigh

I can only imagine how much fun it was Saturday night for Tony Memmel to hear his own rock music made BIG by the Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Chorus.

Book Launch Give-Away Contest!

 
My new book, Dessert First - Glimpses of Wisconsin Life, is out in paperback. To celebrate, I'm having a drawing for a free copy of the book. Anyone who puts a comment on this blog post is eligible. The deadline for comments is midnight March 31.
 
On April Fool's Day, I will write the names of commenters on slips of paper and put them into my husband's fuzzy ear-flap hat. He will reach in and draw the name of the winner.

I hope there is more than one name in the hat!
  

Dessert First is published!

In these pages you’ll travel from city streets to haylofts. You’ll encounter mice wearing clothes, a bad guy stopped by a smile, a St. Francis in need of recapitation, and two old ladies whose racy conversation leads them to calamity. You’ll find leaves to kick, spring peepers, chickens, fruit flies, deer, drought, and frost. There are earthly delights like a blue Fiestaware dish – and bummers like walking to the gym shower wearing socks.

Inside you’ll find seventy-seven glimpses of Wisconsin life, to be read in any order. This book has your name on it if you like short true stories – if you laugh at everyday comedy – if you’ve lived through highs and lows – and if you believe good trumps evil.

Dessert First is Wisconsin life transcribed through my pen. I'd like to think that my eyes are open and that I see the world as many folks see it. I think you'll find that I describe that vision with clarity, compassion, and humor.

I grew up in Wisconsin, which means that through weather, through rearing, and through schooling, I grew up hardy – and that helped me when, at twenty-seven years old, I lost my parents and younger brother in a car accident. Those deaths taught me to live. From more than three decades of writing, a message comes through: Life is short and often hard – but it’s full of desserts. In this book, I share those desserts – tastier than Wisconsin frozen custard. 

The stories are true...some names have been changed.

You may order Dessert First from Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Dessert-First-Glimpses-Wisconsin-Life-ebook/dp/B00IN7AL6K/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394234962&sr=1-1&keywords=dessert+first+gail+grenier

Hope I can keep up with this 85-year-old

I had coffee yesterday with my friend Peggy Ludeman, who just turned 85. Peggy used to be a student in my writing class, and she's become a friend. I remember back a few years ago, when she came to class all excited because her first great-grandchild had been born. She mentioned that while that baby was being born, Peggy (the great-grandmother) had been playing tennis!

Another story she shared awhile ago: she could tell she was having a heart attack, so she quickly drove herself to the doctor. She said climbing the stairs was a bit difficult.

Yesterday she told me that she has stopped playing tennis because she wishes to stay home to care for her husband, who is battling an illness. With tennis no longer in her life, Peggy wants to ward off fat and heart attacks. So she installed a gym in her basement, with equipment she found at Goodwill.

I told her that Mike and I don't go snowshoeing on days when it's zero outside, but I too want to do something active. I added that I've good a good, weighted hula hoop but haven't gotten into the habit of using it.

She said, "I use a hula hoop!" She explained that she doesn't count her hula hoop use by the clock, but rather by revolutions. She aims for 100 revolutions. She said the secret is to keep a wide stance. "The other day I did 500...but not all at once," she told me.

Okay. I have my inspiration. On to the hula hoop. I love you, Peggy!

Go Outside, Beat the Blues During Winter's Doldrums

Milwaukee Central Library, formerly the public museum

 

[originally published in 2001]

 

     It was a little world, and it was all blue. I pressed my nose against glass to gaze at it, to become part of it, at least in my imagination. It was a small diorama at the old Milwaukee museum downtown, a classic marble building (now the Central Library) that had a totem pole out front. The diorama housed a village of tiny people at work and play, Eskimo people as I called them then. Their houses were made of snow, not of wood like the white Cape Cod I lived in. Their transportation was sled and dog, not a red 1953 Ford like our family used.

     In the diorama, the people seemed to live in an atmosphere of blue, dark blue. Either the sun didn’t shine at all that day, or the land simply took on a blue cast from so much snow and ice and so many clouds. I didn’t care then about the explanation. It was my favorite place in the museum.    

     During the month of December 2000, I felt like I was living in that little diorama. It snowed almost every day. When it snowed, it usually snowed all day long. I’ve never seen a succession of days where such light, fluffy snow fell. There were no driving blizzards, no wet, heavy flakes.

     Nearly every weekday morning before work during the past year and a half, my husband and I have spent about forty-five minutes outside. In summer we go biking, in spring and fall we walk, and in winter we go snowshoeing.

     I’ve discovered that my antidepressant is my time outdoors. The hardest part is getting out of bed; when we bundle up, we’re not cold (at least not after the first five minutes). The trick is to keep our coats, hats and scarves on a hook so we can put them on with our eyes half-closed.

     It’s like we’re living in that blue diorama now, especially at 5:30 a.m. when we begin our trek. Sometimes I think about those Inuit people who live in that dark blue land. As we snowshoe along before dawn, it’s incredibly mysterious and beautiful.

     Sometimes, as I’m tugging my snowshoe out of deep powder, I wonder to myself, “What am I doing?” Then I look out at the tree silhouettes on the snowy landscape. Or I look at my husband’s sweet form in that snowmobile suit, with the earflap hat on top.

     And I know that the blue world is okay. I can do this, at least for a time.

 

                                            [This essay will be part of my new book

Dessert First, out soon on Amazon.com]