Crunched Metal and Sweets

If you've read M&Bs Blog, you know about their bumper-car ride on the Turnpike last Wednesday. Since they chose to encase themselves in a sturdy steel box with great safety features, they are in relatively good shape physically. Megan called me to pick them up after the wreck and the two of them were shaky and shocky. Jordan, however, was her usual cheery self and seemed perplexed about all the hubbub. I immediately bought her 2 new toys from Target to make up for the wild ride she took. I then thought I should get Megan and Brett a treat also, so I got them blackraspberry jam and truffles. I think a sugar coma will be healing.
Although I was calm, supportive and helpful to everyone and thought I had it all under control, I think I was a little stressed out by this event. I realized that I had been stressed when I got up in the morning and started to put my contacts in. It was then I found that I had not taken them out and instead slept in them all night. So I have tried to heal myself also and ate a bag of dark chocolate covered cherries and some truffles. Yummmmm. I'm all better now.

Of Mice and Granddaughters

I've been following the adventures of the Shea/Harper mouse-capades. My theory is that the little rodents love to commute between the Lutheran Church and M&Bs house. But since this is a little tiring for their tiny legs, the prefer for one part of the journey to be in a special metal box. I believe that this is their version of an SST. They can scavenge for bits of Jaxon's dog food and then be treated to a quick ride to the church's kitchen for more snacking...maybe even communion wafers. If Brooke could make little outfits for the mice, then it would be easier to track them. I think a variety of clothing styles would be good, since we don't know their taste in apparel.

And now for something almost completely different, my empathetic granddaughter. When Phil was holding Jordan yesterday and patting her on the back, she began patting his back at the same time. Megan said that Jordan does this to her also. Phil sees this as precocious empathy. He just might be right.

Plastic Brain

I just read an article in "Science" magazine about adult brain plasticity. Now this is probably not DIRECTLY applicable to humans because the research was done on rats, but the results were very interesting. Exposure to antidepressants increased brain plasticity in these rats in regard to their visual systems. Chronic administration of antidepressants increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression in the visual cortex and reduced intracortical inhibition and promoted recovery of vision (the mean scientists had caused long-term monocular deprivation).
Since the mechanism of action of antidepressent drug is not clear, this may help explain it through neuronal plasticity.
What a great idea...Prozac (and Zoloft and Celexa and Lexapro and.....) make the brain more plastic and could promote brain growth and change.
I have an image of my brain made of different colors of Playdough and being squashed and rearranged. Or maybe it is more like Silly Putty.
And why is this important to me? The study of rat brains? Well, it is because in the Chinese system I AM A RAT. So it has to apply to me.
Whoops, I forgot to take my fluoxetine, better go take it now. I might even double my dosage.

Inheritance?

A word about my lovely grandchild, Jordan. I think it may be possible to inherit acquired skills. How else can you explain an 8 month old baby crawling across the den floor, bypassing all of her educational toys, finding the X-Box controller, turning ON the X-Box and happily sitting in front of the TV pushing the controller buttons? I think video game ability must be in her DNA! And that DNA came directly from her game-playing parents! I couldn't be prouder.

My very first time!

I have finally done it...set up a blog site. I noticed that when I read other's blogs, my fingers would start twitching and I had all kinds of exciting, insightful, and, well, brilliant things to say. Now that I have those twitchy fingers on my own keyboard, my neurons have stopped firing and my brain hurts.
With all the interesting things going on in my life, I should be able to write inspiring prose for the benefit of all humankind, but I find it is much more difficult than I thought.
I think I'll start posting some pictures. Everyone is interested in pictures.
Later