I've made this little chart to reflect the sad reality of my everyday working life.
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
Free hugs: better than donuts?
All I can say is: those donuts got me through some tough
times.
When my sister was at death’s door for three solid weeks, and my brother and I spent all day, every day, at the Coronary Intensive Care Unit, sleeping there every night in a chair beside her or on a pullout couch in the family room; when my mother had open-heart surgery – twice – and we waited, anxiously and for hours, in the waiting room, for word; when my mother lived for months in transitional care waiting for a nursing home bed; and when, finally, my mother died at the Infirmary, after years of battling congestive heart failure. In between, there were emergency room visits too numerous to mention, surgeries too numerous to count, and appointments, x-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans too routine to recall.
Suffice to say, I have spent a lot of time roaming the halls of the QEII Health Sciences Centre, and a lot of those hours were well outside of typical “visiting hours.”
It’s not that you get hungry when you’re there, really. But you want comfort, a change of scene, an escape from whatever oppressive reality you’re facing at that particular moment. And sometimes, a trip downstairs (or upstairs, if you’re in Emerg) for a sweet, sugary donut and a hot cup of coffee is really about the only pleasure conceivable, and frankly, available, within the realm of that reality.
But that small respite, or part of it, is soon to be available no more on hospital property. Once October comes, Tim Hortons outlets on the properties of Capital Health will remove all food items that don’t meet Capital Health’s “healthy food” guidelines. That means that donuts, croissants and cinnamon buns will be out, and low-fat muffins and bagels will be in.
It’s a symbolic gesture; I understand that. Health care providers can hardly preach healthy lifestyles and simultaneously sell unhealthy food without appearing to contradict themselves.
The thing is, at the Infirmary, the cafeteria closes nightly at 7 pm. After that, until about one in the morning, Tim’s – and a couple of pricey vending machines – is pretty much all you’ve got.
I will admit that I am an emotional eater. But if ever there was a time and place for emotional eating, a dark and largely deserted hospital corridor at midnight is pretty much a justifiable time and a logical place to engage in the practice.
Plus, let’s look at the real numbers, here. A trip to the Tim Hortons website will tell you that, in terms of baked goods, the worst offender on the Tim’s menu is a Walnut Crunch. At 360 calories and 23 grams of fat, it’s roughly equivalent to snacking on a McDonalds double cheeseburger (430 calories and 22 grams of fat).
But not every sweet treat is quite that bad. A soon-to-be-forbidden Boston Cream donut has 250 calories and 8 grams of fat; not really that egregious, even when compared to a sanctioned sesame-seed bagel: 270 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. Will cream cheese be available or verboten? If it’s allowed, adding a bit of plain cream cheese to that bagel will add 144 calories and 14 grams of fat.
Banning donuts is all about optics, but, admittedly, optics do matter – especially in the context of food and health care. I just think that if administrators want remove a significant source of symbolic comfort in the hospital, maybe they should be obliged to replace it with something equally comforting. How about $1.50 massages and a “free hugs” kiosk?
When my sister was at death’s door for three solid weeks, and my brother and I spent all day, every day, at the Coronary Intensive Care Unit, sleeping there every night in a chair beside her or on a pullout couch in the family room; when my mother had open-heart surgery – twice – and we waited, anxiously and for hours, in the waiting room, for word; when my mother lived for months in transitional care waiting for a nursing home bed; and when, finally, my mother died at the Infirmary, after years of battling congestive heart failure. In between, there were emergency room visits too numerous to mention, surgeries too numerous to count, and appointments, x-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans too routine to recall.
Suffice to say, I have spent a lot of time roaming the halls of the QEII Health Sciences Centre, and a lot of those hours were well outside of typical “visiting hours.”
It’s not that you get hungry when you’re there, really. But you want comfort, a change of scene, an escape from whatever oppressive reality you’re facing at that particular moment. And sometimes, a trip downstairs (or upstairs, if you’re in Emerg) for a sweet, sugary donut and a hot cup of coffee is really about the only pleasure conceivable, and frankly, available, within the realm of that reality.
But that small respite, or part of it, is soon to be available no more on hospital property. Once October comes, Tim Hortons outlets on the properties of Capital Health will remove all food items that don’t meet Capital Health’s “healthy food” guidelines. That means that donuts, croissants and cinnamon buns will be out, and low-fat muffins and bagels will be in.
It’s a symbolic gesture; I understand that. Health care providers can hardly preach healthy lifestyles and simultaneously sell unhealthy food without appearing to contradict themselves.
The thing is, at the Infirmary, the cafeteria closes nightly at 7 pm. After that, until about one in the morning, Tim’s – and a couple of pricey vending machines – is pretty much all you’ve got.
I will admit that I am an emotional eater. But if ever there was a time and place for emotional eating, a dark and largely deserted hospital corridor at midnight is pretty much a justifiable time and a logical place to engage in the practice.
Plus, let’s look at the real numbers, here. A trip to the Tim Hortons website will tell you that, in terms of baked goods, the worst offender on the Tim’s menu is a Walnut Crunch. At 360 calories and 23 grams of fat, it’s roughly equivalent to snacking on a McDonalds double cheeseburger (430 calories and 22 grams of fat).
But not every sweet treat is quite that bad. A soon-to-be-forbidden Boston Cream donut has 250 calories and 8 grams of fat; not really that egregious, even when compared to a sanctioned sesame-seed bagel: 270 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. Will cream cheese be available or verboten? If it’s allowed, adding a bit of plain cream cheese to that bagel will add 144 calories and 14 grams of fat.
Banning donuts is all about optics, but, admittedly, optics do matter – especially in the context of food and health care. I just think that if administrators want remove a significant source of symbolic comfort in the hospital, maybe they should be obliged to replace it with something equally comforting. How about $1.50 massages and a “free hugs” kiosk?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
8 Things I Love About Halifax
When I read news stories about our local council’s obsession with regulating pet behaviour, or the ongoing bickering about which schools to close, or Halifax’s crumbling hospitals, I sometimes stop and ask myself, “Why is it that I choose to live here, again?” Because – let’s be honest here – it is a choice, and there are certainly a lot of other places in the world that I’d be happy to relocate to, if push came to shove.
But moving house is a bit of a drag, not to mention expensive, so perhaps a more productive approach would be to think about some of the things I like about living in Halifax. It’s an exercise which actually requires a lot of effort on my part to be positive and see the sunny side of things. Particularly today, on yet another cold, dreary and drizzly Halifax “spring” day. But I am totally up for the challenge!
So here I go: my Top Eight Reasons Not to Move to New York City. Already that’s too negative. Eight Ways Halifax is better than Toronto. No? Okay, the Top Eight Things I Love About Halifax. There, I said it.
Everyone in Halifax has a favourite beach, and since you can drive to many of them in about the same amount of time it takes a Torontonian to get halfway home every day, I consider beach access one of the huge bonuses of living here. I personally love Martinique Beach on the Eastern Shore, because it’s rarely crowded (and even when it is, it’s big enough to allow lots of space for everybody), it has surfers for entertainment, incredible waves for boogie-boarding, and a gorgeous long curve of sandy beach for walking. Sure, you can drive to within a kilometer of this beach on a hot, sunny day and hit a wall of fog that’s as cold and dense as the ice-packs in your beer cooler, but hey, that’s part of the fun.
Steve-O-Reno’s Cappuccino. Specifically, the cappuccino made by the two lovely women – I think their names are Anne and Leah – who work at the drive-through “shack” on Robie Street on most weekday mornings. A Monday morning stop at the cap shack has a way of making the coming week seem a just little more bearable. Also, I’ve discovered that there is no life-crisis that this coffee cannot make better.
Since we’re talking food, sort of, and I am clearly not averse to making outright product endorsements, I also love the build-your-own salad bar at the downtown Pete’s Frootique. How much easier could healthy eating be? “None. None more easy,” I say, to borrow a phrase from the movie Spinal Tap. To make me crave salad is nothing short of a miracle. And who knew that I liked kidney beans and sunflower seeds in my salad? Not even me, until I built my own at Pete’s.
Another of my favourite things about living here is a relatively little-known walking trail along the rocky coastline just past York Redoubt. There’s a teeny little parking lot just off Purcell’s Cove Road and a path that meanders out along the huge boulders at the water’s edge. The view out there is so beautiful! On Wikipedia, this spot is referred to as the Herring Cove “Look-Off”, but I call it “the Whale Walk,” because I saw whales out there once, munching their way along some fishing nets. I used to enjoy walking my dog out there, but she’s too rickety now to manage all the jumping and climbing. But despite having to go dog-less, I still enjoy it; it’s a quintessential Nova Scotian location and a great place to recharge my “nature batteries.”
Other random things I like about Halifax: swimming in Long Lake, watching the seals sunbathe on the rocks off the tip of Point Pleasant Park, gawking at the cruise ships that dock down at Pier 22, and eating French fries on the wall by the Spring Garden Road public library in the summer.
But do all these things make up for the petty politics and the embarrassingly stagnant level of social progress that Halifax seems to have become famous for? Well, yeah, I guess they do. All the cat bylaws in the world can’t ruin a gorgeous sunny day by the ocean.
But moving house is a bit of a drag, not to mention expensive, so perhaps a more productive approach would be to think about some of the things I like about living in Halifax. It’s an exercise which actually requires a lot of effort on my part to be positive and see the sunny side of things. Particularly today, on yet another cold, dreary and drizzly Halifax “spring” day. But I am totally up for the challenge!
So here I go: my Top Eight Reasons Not to Move to New York City. Already that’s too negative. Eight Ways Halifax is better than Toronto. No? Okay, the Top Eight Things I Love About Halifax. There, I said it.
Everyone in Halifax has a favourite beach, and since you can drive to many of them in about the same amount of time it takes a Torontonian to get halfway home every day, I consider beach access one of the huge bonuses of living here. I personally love Martinique Beach on the Eastern Shore, because it’s rarely crowded (and even when it is, it’s big enough to allow lots of space for everybody), it has surfers for entertainment, incredible waves for boogie-boarding, and a gorgeous long curve of sandy beach for walking. Sure, you can drive to within a kilometer of this beach on a hot, sunny day and hit a wall of fog that’s as cold and dense as the ice-packs in your beer cooler, but hey, that’s part of the fun.
Steve-O-Reno’s Cappuccino. Specifically, the cappuccino made by the two lovely women – I think their names are Anne and Leah – who work at the drive-through “shack” on Robie Street on most weekday mornings. A Monday morning stop at the cap shack has a way of making the coming week seem a just little more bearable. Also, I’ve discovered that there is no life-crisis that this coffee cannot make better.
Since we’re talking food, sort of, and I am clearly not averse to making outright product endorsements, I also love the build-your-own salad bar at the downtown Pete’s Frootique. How much easier could healthy eating be? “None. None more easy,” I say, to borrow a phrase from the movie Spinal Tap. To make me crave salad is nothing short of a miracle. And who knew that I liked kidney beans and sunflower seeds in my salad? Not even me, until I built my own at Pete’s.
Another of my favourite things about living here is a relatively little-known walking trail along the rocky coastline just past York Redoubt. There’s a teeny little parking lot just off Purcell’s Cove Road and a path that meanders out along the huge boulders at the water’s edge. The view out there is so beautiful! On Wikipedia, this spot is referred to as the Herring Cove “Look-Off”, but I call it “the Whale Walk,” because I saw whales out there once, munching their way along some fishing nets. I used to enjoy walking my dog out there, but she’s too rickety now to manage all the jumping and climbing. But despite having to go dog-less, I still enjoy it; it’s a quintessential Nova Scotian location and a great place to recharge my “nature batteries.”
Other random things I like about Halifax: swimming in Long Lake, watching the seals sunbathe on the rocks off the tip of Point Pleasant Park, gawking at the cruise ships that dock down at Pier 22, and eating French fries on the wall by the Spring Garden Road public library in the summer.
But do all these things make up for the petty politics and the embarrassingly stagnant level of social progress that Halifax seems to have become famous for? Well, yeah, I guess they do. All the cat bylaws in the world can’t ruin a gorgeous sunny day by the ocean.
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