Ramblings of a Homeschooling Family Manager

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2012-01-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

My garden is growing!!! I'm so excited. This is the first year I've started plants from seeds (most of them anyway) and they seem to be hanging in there. We had a rough patch with very little growth for what felt like a couple of months, but I think I've figured out what was going wrong, and now everything is heading in the right direction again. When I was trying to problem solve I first turned to fertilizer. When that didn't help, I thought about it some more and decided to cut back on my daily watering schedule. Bingo- after not watering for a few days then going to every other day, all of the plants are greening up and getting noticeably bigger. I have 10 tomato plants, 3 collard green plants, and a row of lettuce that I planted using a pre-prepped strip. My tomatoes from seed are Brandywines, red cherries, and jelly beans. I also picked up two tomato plants from Home Depot. One of those is a container variety and I can't remember what kind the other one is. The collards are also from Home Depot.

The lettuce strip was so easy to plant and now I have a full row of little green seedlings pushing up through the soil. I started some lettuce from regular seeds and tried putting it in a container but it bolted right off the bat, so I planted the strip directly into the garden to see if that would yield better results.

I'm hoping we'll have tomatoes like we did last year- they were so delicious! I think I waited to late to start the new plants, and then I had the difficulties with them not growing, so we're really behind. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though! Gardening is a learning experience for sure, and I am such a novice, but it's fun and the results, when I get it right, are so mouth watering that it's worth it to keep going!

Wounded

2012-01-13T21:34:00.000-08:00

I fell down the stairs yesterday. Luckily, I was almost at the bottom when I tripped. I thought I WAS at the bottom, which is why I tripped. I was looking at a paper and kind of multi-tasking, watching the stairs around it. I guess that distorted my depth perception, and I went forward like I was on the flat landing when I really had a couple of steps still to go. Doh!

Wow, did it hurt at first. I fell hard and thought I'd broken my ankle. I grabbed for my phone and called home in a panic, but by the time DH got to the phone I managed to sit up and the pain was lessening a bit so I figured I'd be OK. Well, I am and I'm not. Even though I was sore as all get out I ran my scheduled errands, which involved walking, before finally settling down to assess the damage after I got home. My left ankle is so swollen! I haven't had cankles that bad since I was pregnant. My right knee is all scrapped up, which is minor but it stings like the dickens. My right toe is barely scrapped at all but I got some sharp, shooting pain for an hour or so after it happened. There are a few other little scrapes here and there, but my ankle bore the brunt.

DH put me to bed with my ankle elevated and iced and an Aleve for good measure; he's a pro at treating foot injuries. His expertise comes from lots of personal experience since he's a soccer player. (Yes, I married a jock.) I slept with it elevated all night, but even with that the swelling is worse today. I'm staying off my feet as much as possible, but the lack of movement triggers the fibro; can't win!

I am so aggravated with myself for not paying attention when I was going down those stairs. I'm normally so careful on stairs, typically hanging onto the banister. All it takes is one time, and wham, you're sidelined. I'm just thankful it wasn't worse; I could've done some real damage if I'd fallen at the top of the stairs. In the scheme of things, I got off pretty darn easy.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: the Movie

2012-01-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

After finishing the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt I had to watch the movie again. I saw it a long time ago but only vaguely remembered it so on to the Netflix queue it went. I was bitterly disappointed. The book is SOOOOO much better; how John Berendt could allow his wonderful book to be so mangled by John Lee Hancock, who wrote the screenplay, is beyond me. (To give credit where it's due, John Lee Hancock has improved- he also wrote the screenplay for The Blind Side, which was great.) The book was loosely factual; Berendt apparently took some artistic license here and there. The screenplay then took that and mixed everything up even more. People who didn't know each other at all in the book were all of a sudden bosom buddies in the movie. According to IMDB, both the book and the movie also made gay characters straight. They even gave the writer in the movie, John Kelso, who was played by John Cusack and is loosely based on John Berendt, a female love interest. John Berendt is gay too but he doesn’t have any sort of love interest in the book so I didn’t know that until I read it on IMDB. (There are too many Johns involved in this movie!!!)

I can understand why the characters were all mushed together- there were so many quirky, colorful people in the book and they all needed to be tied in to make one cohesive story, but it was not well done. They also shortened the trials that took place from four to one and left out the political aspects of the vendetta against Jim Williams by his neighbor and major supporter of a largely incompetent DA. Williams, the main focus of part two in the book and the focus of the entire movie, was found guilty of murder twice in Savannah. He also had one mistrial before the fourth and final trial, which took place in a different city, ended in a not guilty verdict. The real life trials took 10 years and Williams spent a good amount of that time in jail, which made it all the more tragic when he died just a few months after his acquittal. Of course they had to shorten that up to get the movie down to a reasonable time, but they lost some important aspects of what happened by doing that. In addition to leaving out the political vendetta, they lost the implications that the Savannah juries found Williams guilty in large part because he was gay, not because the evidence was there. The gay aspect was touched on, but it wasn’t central.

The casting was good for the most part, but I think Jude Law as Billy Hanson, the murder victim, was a mistake. Jude Law is a good looking guy but he's not drop dead gorgeous and that's what they needed for that role. I couldn't find any pictures of the actual Billy Hanson on-line but he was described as being "the finest piece of *** in Savannah", and I'm sorry, but Jude Law just didn't cut it. Somebody buff, too- there was a need for muscles and a six pack, and they dressed Jude Law in baggy, baggy jeans that did nothing for him. He’s talented enough that he carried the acting part convincingly, but visually it didn’t work for me.

The Lady Chablis played herself and she was hilarious. In the book she's in Part 1 and I don't think she knew Jim Williams or Billy Hanson in real life. (I could be remembering that incorrectly- maybe she knew of them but didn't interact with them?) There was one of her scenes they included that should have hit the cutting room floor because it made no sense in the context of the movie, but it was funny. In the book Berendt makes friends with a wide variety of people in Savannah and is invited to all sorts of social events. One of these events is a cotillion hosted by a black fraternity for their chosen debutantes. This has nothing to do with his association with Jim Williams and the trial, it's just another thing that happens as Berendt is in Savannah.

Well, the motivations for this are not made clear in the movie at all so it makes no sense. The movie isn't about an author's adventures in Savannah, the movie is about a murder and the subsequent trial. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, John Kelso is going to this cotillion for no clear reason. He mentions it to the Lady Chablis, why I have no idea, and they have a conversation about how she wants to go and he's trying to talk her out of it. In the book he tries to convince her that she would be bored by telling her that the girls are all goody two shoes types, they've never done drugs or had abortions or stolen things or gotten into any trouble whatsoever, and he gives this whole list of criteria the girls have to meet to be chosen as debutantes. In the movie, he says something like "most of the girls have never shoplifted". Huh what? Going from these girls are sweet innocent goody-goodies to "most" of them haven't shoplifted? What the heck? Anyway, in the book Berendt thinks he's convinced her that she would be bored to tears, but she shows up anyway, as she does in the movie. It's probably the funniest story in the book, and it's pretty funny in the movie too so I understand why they wanted to put it in, but it doesn't fit. If I were part of the black community in Savannah I would be upset about the way Kelso described the girls, too- "most" of them haven't shoplifted. These are upstanding, decent girls who deserve better than that. Sheese.

I could go on nit-picking about the things that bugged me in the screenplay, but I'll move on to the positives. John Cusack and Kevin Spacey were, of course, amazing. They are both really talented guys and gave great performances. This is definitely a case of watch the movie first and save the book for afterwards. Or skip the movie and just read the book- it's a treat.

My linky thing still isn't working, so here are some links for you:
The book:
http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Garden-Good-Evil-Berendt/dp/0679751521/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325968291&sr=1-1
The movie on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119668/
John Lee Hancock, who wrote the screenplay:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0359387/
A picture of Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey captured his look perfectly):
http://people.bu.edu/lzoller/family/April1/jim_williams_real.jpg

Bittman Goes Semi-Vegan

2012-01-04T21:40:00.001-08:00

You've probably heard of Meatless Mondays, with the idea that going meatless once a week is good for you and the planet. Now Mark Bittman from the New York Times is advocating semi-vegan, where you go vegan for a few meals each week. Sounds good to me; sounds like what we do already, actually. DH and I aren't vegan and don't aspire to it, but we do enjoy vegan meals. I was toying with the idea of going vegan but I realized I had my... issues, shall we say, with soy so that went right out the door. Not that you can't be a vegan while avoiding soy, but soy products make the vegan diet so much more enjoyable. Products like tofu, soy bacon, (which makes the BEST BLTs) and Earth Balance, to name a few of the soy products we were starting to really enjoy. Going out was not a problem- tofu and soy-sauce-seasoned meals abound at ethnic restaurants all over the place. This darn soy sensitivity makes things so complicated!

But that's not what I intended to blog about; got carried away with a rant for a second there! What I want to blog about is the many, many delicious vegan recipes that you can find on the web, and that yeah, going vegan for a few meals every week really is a good, tasty, healthy way to eat. Try some of the links I have listed on the right; many of them are to vegan blogs. Robin Robertson at Vegan Planet is a good place to start; I always have several recipes out of each of her cookbooks I've purchased that I really enjoy.

For me personally, I don't advocate going vegan 100%. I don't think it's healthy for a lot of people. Some can do quite well and even thrive on a vegan diet, but there are many others who can't. You have to know yourself and see what makes you feel the best. I can tell you I feel pretty darn good on a vegetarian diet- I'm happy DH and I made the switch.

Here's a link for you since my link embedder thingy seems to be malfunctioning tonight: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/01/magazine/eat-vegan-recipes.html?ref=magazine

What Are Ya Doin' New Year's Eve?

2011-12-31T12:28:00.001-08:00

Or does the song say New Year's Day? Anyway, what are you doing? Whatever it may be, however you choose to celebrate, I am wishing you a wonderful 2012. We're having a quiet day; this has never been a big holiday for me. I'm catching up on laundry, working on the perpetual disaster that is our kitchen, and after that I'll plant some tomatoes and lettuce in our itty bitty garden. I'm feeling the need to get ready for the busy times to come once DH goes back to work and the kids are in full stride with their activities again. We'll do a little celebrating, though- I picked up the SUPER pack of fireworks, although sparkle and noise makers would be a more accurate description, at the grocery yesterday.

This holiday season was busy all the way through up until today. In addition to all of the holiday-specific activities and travel, we were running errands, Moving our Money, signing our updated wills, and on and on and on. Never ending.

The Move Our Money project turned out to be quite time consuming but I'm glad we did it. I've done my banking with a credit union for years and years, but a while back they went through a period where their customer service was not good. I got aggravated and moved a lot of our funds over to Wachovia; not everything, but a lot, like the kids' college savings accounts. I also had another checking account there and some other savings, Girl Scout troop accounts, and so forth. I liked Wachovia. They were very nice, they had fantastic customer service, (I was on a first name basis with my favorite bank person), they had branches EVERYWHERE, and they didn't charge fees.

Well, not so much now that Wells Fargo has taken over. They still have very good customer service as far as the employees I've interacted with, (even though my favorite bank person left or was fired during the transition) but they started charging fees. Um, no. I'm done; DH and I went and pulled all of our accounts (the Girl Scout accounts are still there for the time being) and moved everything back to the credit union. Thank heavens the credit union has improved in recent years! I think the lapse in customer service had to do with growing pains- they went from a one-company-specific credit union to one that is open to anyone who lives in the area, and that was a difficult transition. Well, maybe that's not the cause, I don't know, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Since I continued to maintain a relationship with them I've seen improvement. They even have some free standing branches now that aren't too far away, which is convenient.

Now that it's done and our Money has Moved we can go into 2012 as proper hippies and Occupiers, with all of our money out of the evil big banking industry.

Occupy Wall Street!!! Power to the 99%!!!! :)

Current Read: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

2011-12-28T22:01:00.001-08:00

I just finished Part 1 of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Yes, the one that was made into the movie staring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack way back about 100 years ago. Did you know it's a non-fiction book? Neither did I, but it is! So the story goes like this. The author, John Berendt, was from New York but took a liking to Savannah and started hanging out there off and on. More on than off as time wore on. He met, interviewed, interacted with, and partied with many of the more colorful locals, and during the time he was there Jim Williams was accused of murder. He was already writing about this guy, then the guy goes out and kills somebody. (Allegedly.) Wow, that can make a big impact on a story; talk about being in the right place at the right time! Well, not for the murdered guy, but for the writer. A total scoop, and well written, at that.

I'm starting on Part 2 for a little pre-bedtime reading. If you read this book, one note of caution. If you are at all faint of heart, do NOT Google the Lady Chablis, a major character so far in the book, like I did. There are You Tube videos; they are... interesting. (And look- no links this time! This is a G rated blog, after all.) ;)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T08:04:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays to all. We've been busy around here, mainly cooking for the last couple of days. Christmas prep has been woefully inadequate otherwise, but there are only so many hours in a day. Not pushing myself too hard (maybe a little bit, but not excessively) or getting overly stressed is always a goal for me over the holidays. They are supposed to be fun and special- how can that be the case if I'm wiped out and stressed to the max? So I let things go. We got to travel, so the trade off was decorating at home. Much to Martha Jr.'s chagrin, I might add. She wanted me to pull out the second box of ornaments (the one with all the Hallmark ornaments that are individually boxed) but I just couldn't do it. She's willing to put the ornaments on the tree but I'm the one that has to get them re-boxed when the holiday is over!

There are a few things I haven't given up! We are hosting a "Christmas After Party" tonight. (Name credit goes to The Wild Child.) A few friends, desserts, hot chocolate, and a fire in the patio fire pit where we'll be toasting s'mores and popping popcorn. I think the fire is turning into one of our family traditions- we started a few years ago and I really enjoy it. Before all of that, however, we have our brunch. We started brunch a bazillion years ago back when I had a lot of family in the area. It was a way to claim part of the holiday for myself; now it's tradition. We open presents first then laze around for a while, then we'll go eat eggs and french toast and home made cinnamon-raisin bread and fruit salad, as if all the calories we consumed yesterday (when we have our big, traditional meal) weren't enough! I splurged, I binged, and I'll be paying for it, but for now we feast!!!

Merry Christmas to you and yours! (Or Happy Hanukkah, or whatever you celebrate in your family.) With love and hugs.

Travels and Some Thoughts About Nutrition

2011-12-18T22:02:00.001-08:00

The Eldest finished up her first semester as an official college student on the 9th so we packed up and headed out on a journey to cold northern climes. It was a challenge to pack since we don't really have winter clothes but we got by. Can't let a little thing like that stop you! It was cold the first few days but then it warmed up by the time we left. It was great to see my family. I miss everyone so much- it's hard to live so far away from all of them.

Now that we've returned home I can assess the damage- to my weight, that is! I managed to do OK. I went up a little bit but nothing significant in spite of the fudge I bought in the mountains; now I have to continue the battle to get back down to my goal weight. The holidays and traveling are no excuse! I stopped walking for about a week to a week and a half since we were so busy but I got right back to it today. I feel so much better when I walk every day so it was important to get that going again.

My cousin and I had a great discussion about nutrition while we were visiting. We talked about how important it is to make sure our food is nutrient dense, among other things. After that conversation, DH ran across an article today about how food companies are lying to us. It boils down to this- processed food isn't food at all, it's chemicals made to look like food. (Michael Pollan writes about that quite eloquently.) Our taste buds may not know the difference but our bodies sure do, and if you are consuming empty, non-nutritive calories then your body will just send out the order for MORE, MORE, MORE in an effort to get the nutrients it needs to function properly. You'll only know you're hungry and you'll over eat, but you're still not giving your body what it needs, so you aren't satisfied, so you eat more, and so on. When I gained all the weight in the first place I was eating a "Standard American Diet" (aka SAD), I was stressed out, I wasn't exercising, and I didn't know much of anything about nutrition. I ate junk food, processed food, and fast food on a regular basis and my portions were out of control. I was a mess; it's a wonder I didn't gain even more than I did.

My Nutritional* Influences

I went to Weight Watchers several years before my big weight gain. I gained a little after I graduated from college and wanted to get it off before my wedding, which I did thanks to Weight Watchers. (I walked all over campus when I was in college. Once I graduated and got a regular job I didn't walk everywhere any more and that's all it took.) I learned a little about nutrition from Weight Watchers but not enough, obviously, since I didn't stick with it and gained back all the weight I lost and then some. I still like WW and think they have the best commercial program out there, but it didn't work for me long term. They are a good starting point since they do teach you about portion control and they encourage exercise, which are important components to a weight loss program, but they don't get into the importance of eating REAL food enough. I went on from there. I took a class at a local hospital wellness center on nutrition and weight loss called the LEARN program which was fantastic. I lost some on that program too, but life got in the way and for one reason or another (having babies, problems with my feet that meant I couldn't walk for exercise, etc.) I wasn't able to lose and maintain on that program AT THAT TIME either, but a lot of what that class taught me went into the program I came up with for myself. When The Eldest was little I was involved with La Leche League, a nursing support group that is so much more than just nursing support. They also talked about nutrition for the breastfeeding mom and for your children once they transition to solid food, and one of their main principles was EAT WHOLE FOOD. Sound familiar? Michael Pollan says the same thing, basically. Real food, whole food, whatever name you have for it, it means NOT PROCESSED. Cook from scratch. It's the best thing you can do for your body.

I've also done quite a bit of reading about nutrition. One of the best books I've read is by Brian Wansink called Mindless Eating. He's a researcher who is figuring out why we eat what we eat and you'd be amazed at what he's found out. I first heard about him on a TV show; I can't remember which one, but I was impressed enough that I bought his book. He gives you really great strategies on how to avoid mindless eating traps, like how to handle a buffet without over eating. Michael Pollan, whom I've already mentioned, has the right idea. I didn't discover him until after losing the weight, but he's got some good ideas that will help me maintain. La Leche League titles first brought my attention to the importance of real food back when The Eldest was little, and even though I didn't follow through with that at the time, I sure do now!

Articles in magazines like Cooking Light, tips on Oprah, healthy eating shows on Food Network, (although they don't seem to like the healthy shows too much- they are into selling FOOD so there should be no hint that it can cause anything negative like weight gain, diabetes, and other food related illnesses), articles on-line, and everything I can get my hands on about nutrition have all influenced me and enabled me to put together my own program. I've been successful too, even if I've gained a little back. I've kept off the majority of what I lost and it's been over four years now. I've already beaten the odds; the numbers say I should have gained all of the weight back a long tome ago. It's not easy, there's no denying that, but it's not impossible either and I'm living proof. Even with fibromyalgia, even getting up there in years, I'm still doing it. You can, too! :)

*Is that a word? If not it should be!

Neti Pots

2011-12-16T19:36:00.001-08:00

Jinkies! Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to recommend Neti Pots in my post about dealing with colds.

NPR's Backseat Book Club

2011-12-07T15:37:00.000-08:00

NPR's All Things Considered is sponsoring a kids' book club aimed at the age level of my younger two. I love it because it's a great source for new titles for the kids from a reliable source. So far, the books have been The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, all winners. DH read The Graveyard Book aloud to the kids about a year ago; I listened in a few times and was hooked- I read it myself when they were done. I finished Breadcrumbs a few days ago and now I'm in the middle of The Phantom Tollbooth. I don't read everything the kids read but I enjoy children's literature so I'll read anything good. (I'm passing on Martha Jr.'s Warriors books, thanks.)

I'm fortunate enough to be part of a grown up book club. I love it both for the company of some really great women and for the book suggestions. I haven't enjoyed all of the books (and even HATED one I suggested!!) but they've almost all been books I wouldn't have found otherwise. There are so many titles out there these days that it's hard to narrow it down to just the exact book you want to read at any given time. Now that it looks like bookstores are going away (sob) I don't know how I'll pick out books because I do, in fact, judge books by their covers. It's easier to choose a book if I can see it, pick it up, and leaf through a few pages. I read the back cover and the flaps. That doesn't always work, but it helps "sell" me on a book. That's not the case with choosing books on my Kindle. I find it's a lot harder to make selections in the Kindle "store" than in a real store; a lot of the time I wind up not choosing anything. Sometimes I'll see a book in the bookstore (or Costco or wherever) and then go back and buy it on my Kindle. They need to have stores with "sample books" you can go and hold and look over, then decide on whether or not to buy them electronically. (And I think Barnes & Noble is going that way.) I just pray that, even though I love certain things about my e-reader, that actual, real, paper books will continue to abound on this planet.

A Busy Night

2011-12-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

It's Vita Mix time at a local store! I've been by twice during the demonstration period (just by happenstance) and stopped for the samples both times. Since I have a Vita Mix and love, love, love it, I am always on the look out for more recipes. The lady running the demo is the same lady I met running the same demo around the time I got my VM about a year or so ago. She gave me a yummy smoothie recipe that I've made regularly since then and a few new recipes tonight. There were some other very cool people hanging out watching the demo and sampling the smoothies; it was fun to chat with them and tell them how much I enjoy my Vita Mix.

While the little ones, DH and I were watching the Vita Mix demo, The Eldest was in her art class getting her final critique. The assignment she had to complete was an "altered book"; I think she did quite well with it. She chose the book "The Blade Itself", one of her favorites. She went through the book and cut out key quotes, arranged them on paper, and decorated accordingly. That doesn't begin to describe the time and effort she put into it; she was working down to the wire this afternoon. I am very proud of her.

Speaking of my artistic Eldest, here's a pic of her from back around Halloween. She was going to a laser tag event with a "Lady Gaga" theme.

Since Martha Jr. helped her out (with things like feeding her dog while she was working on projects and studying for finals) The Eldest promised to get both of the younger ones going on World of Warcraft. They're sitting over there now designing characters and getting started. My computer nerds! Well, guess that's what happens when Dad is a computer engineer. They cut their teeth on computers so it was only a matter of time before they all got on WoW. I'm surprised I've been able to hold them off this long; sigh.

PS: The Eldest says to look here for a pic of her in her normal state.

Cold Comfort

2011-12-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

I still have this stinking, rotten, sniveling miserable cold and I'm about tired of it already. I got it from DH (thanks, Hon) over the Thanksgiving holiday. I've canceled or modified just about everything, but life goes on. At least there are coping strategies that can help lessen the misery a bit. Other bloggers have given practical advice; I'll add a few things I find helps.

First of all, get that Vitamin D from the sun. Go out and sit in the sunshine a few minutes every day if you possibly can; making your own vitamin D is better than a pill any day. Don't forget that other vitamin, too, the one that comes from oranges! Vitamin C, of course. Load up on the citrus fruit. I don't know if either of these vitamins are proven to lessen the length or severity of colds, but they are good for you regardless. Can't hurt!

Secondly, remember that steam is your friend. I feel the absolute worst when I first wake up every day so a nice, long steamy shower is a soothing way to get everything going. I also use my neti pot in the shower and it seems to keep things clear for a while. If you can't do the long steamy shower, try the stick-your-head-over-a-bowl-of-hot-water-with-a-towel-drape trick.

Warm liquids are also helpful. My high school drama teacher taught me the benefits of hot tea with honey and lemon and I swear by it for easing a sore throat. Although milk isn't really recommended (dairy tends to create more mucus and yucky stuff, or so I've heard) I treated myself to a hot chocolate the other day that hit the spot. We've also been eating a lot of soup. I would recommend chicken soup but we're vegetarian so I've chosen not to do that anymore. Ramen noodles are good, but I can't find a vegetarian version that doesn't have soy in it; that may not be an issue for you like it is for me. We make what we call chicken-less chicken soup quite often; it's basically the matzoh ball and soup mix from the grocery (which is vegetarian) with added onions, carrots, celery, and noodles. Liquids in general are a good idea- drink more than you normally do.

I use over the counter medications at night before I hit the hay. You need to talk to a doctor or pharmacist for any advice about particular medications, but I tend to like the one or two ingredient stuff. If you are mixing multiple medications with multiple ingredients you could wind up over dosing on something so you have to be careful.

Cough drops are invaluable but a lot of them contain soy lecithin so I have to read the labels. I like Ricola lemon mint, which is like candy but it does calm down a moderate tickle; DH likes Fisherman's Friend, which is really nasty and super strong. If the Ricolas aren't working I'll take one of his Fisherman's Friends; shudder.

Lotion tissues. I normally hate, detest, and despise lotion tissues, but when my nose is runny and sore I switch to lotion tissues and they are suddenly wonderful! They make it bearable to wipe your nose yet again.

Last but not least, you can always try some spicy food. We went out for Indian last night but I wound up with the least spicy thing on the menu, dadgummit. DH made chili for lunch today and that was about right. A little spice just helps with clearing things out, I find.

While none of these suggestions will shorten or cure your cold, maybe a little self-pampering will help you get through it with more grace. Also remember to get as much rest as possible, take it easy, wash those hands, and toss anything disposable that might be contaminated when the cold is over (like chapstick and toothbrushes). Here's hoping this is advice you won't need this winter!

Busy Days and Fibro Flare Ups

2011-11-29T20:21:00.000-08:00

I didn't join NaBloWriMo (National Blog Writers' Month) so I haven't posted daily. In fact, I haven't been posting much at all lately. I've noticed that with blogs, there seems to be a point where the writer gets burnt out. All of my favorite bloggers eventually slow down, stop posting as frequently, and even sometimes stop posting altogether. It makes me sad; it's like losing touch with a friend. And here I'm doing the same thing. (Not that I have more than a few readers, mainly relatives, but still.)

I get it, though. Life just gets too busy sometimes. The more you have to blog about, the less time you have to write it up. I've been through some really hectic weeks lately, so much so that I was getting worried about having a bad fibro flare up. I did have a couple of (thankfully short lived) flare ups and now I've got a really nasty cold. (Fevers, chills and sweats, body aches, coughing, coughing, coughing. Blech.) I knew I was over-doing it, I knew I was making myself vulnerable to getting sick, but I couldn't seem to say NO and cut back. There were so many important and valuable and enriching activities for my children, from helping with a friend's fund raiser for her wonderful non-profit to my daughter's 11th birthday, which she donated to a dog rescue organization. (Instead of presents, she asked for donations for the group.) Then there were the every day things on top of that, like driving around The Eldest, running Girl Scout meetings, getting The Wild Child to his tutor, among the many other things we do in a week. To top it all off, I started physical therapy for my shoulder impingement. (Which is helping, thank goodness.) Errands and a Thanksgiving vacation smooshed in between. All wonderful, but all TOO MUCH!!! Not good for a fibro patient at all.

And now I have a cold, and I have to slow down. I've canceled activities left and right, most of them things I was really looking forward to, but what can you do? Sometimes you can soldier through a cold, but this one came with a fever so not so much. Plus I don't want to infect anyone else; that wouldn't be very nice. Taking it easy for a few days is probably the best thing I can do both for the cold and the fibro. In fact, I'm not sure that I wasn't experiencing a fibro flare up yesterday when I had horrible body aches. I've found that when I don't walk regularly I get achy. Well, for obvious reasons, I haven't walked in a few days. It was either that or the fever or a combination of both that led to the aches, but whatever the cause it was miserable. I made sure to get out of the house today, as rotten as I was feeling, and walk for about 10 minutes and the body aches have mostly subsided. That's a really important lesson for fibro sufferers- if you don't move every day, things get worse. You have to be careful not to over-do it, but it's equally important not to under-do it as well.

Anyway, I'm under the influence of cold meds so I'm probably more rambly than usual, so I think I'll end here and go lay down for a while.

Updates; Thoughts on Fibromyalgia

2011-11-09T20:38:00.000-08:00

We've been busy around here! Hopefully things are calming down a little bit, just in time for the holiday craziness to pick up. Here is a list of things that we've had done lately:

1. All of our windows and doors were replaced. This job started waaaaayyyy back in early summer and carried over to just last week, when the last adjustment was made to try to get the new front doors to close properly. The final inspection is complete, the final check has been written. We are energy efficient (satisfying one of my Earth Day resolutions) and hurricane resistant.

2. We have a new A/C, also upping our energy efficiency. This one was an emergency replacement; couldn't be worse timing. The final inspection is delayed a bit, but I think all of the work is done.

3. The leak in the roof over The Wild Child's bedroom has been repaired... again. Hopefully this time the repair will hold.

4. The Wild Child's bedroom has been completely ripped apart and made over. That involved moving him out (everything went in the living room), ripping out the ceiling, putting in a new ceiling, re-texturizing it, repainting the whole room, having the carpets cleaned, and moving him back in after sorting through all of his toys. (And the sorting process can take up an entire post of its own.) His room looks like the "AFTER" on one of those organizing shows. He's so proud of it now- he picked the wall color and his new ceiling fan, and decided where all of his furniture would go. He's got a new dresser since his old one was NOT "boy proof"; we found a modular one at Ikea that he's very happy with. It's a really cool room for a big kid.

*This was not a DIY project- we found a great contractor to do the construction, thanks to our next door neighbors. We did the moving in and out!! DH installed the ceiling fan and put together the modular dresser units. I sorted through the mountain of toys and put the ones he kept back in the room. DH and I both went to Goodwill to drop off the toys he's outgrown/doesn't need. (And it's embarrassing how much there was.)

5. Since the carpet cleaners were here, we had them clean our room too. While they were cleaning our room, the guy said we should have the carpet stretched and he knew a guy...

6. So we had our carpet stretched. You have to move even more out for a stretching than for a cleaning, so our living room held all of The Wild Child's things plus a good chunk of my things for quite a while. (The carpet is still old and even the professional cleaning didn't get out all of the stains, but it looks a LOT better.)

7. And then we put the house back together again.

Whew!

I'm so thankful all of this happened after my dad got out of the hospital, where I was visiting him almost daily over the summer, and into a rehab facility. He's still there; my brother filled me in yesterday since I haven't been able to visit him lately. He had some damage to his spine from all that happened and his legs are partially paralyzed. I don't know what his chances are for recovery or for walking again, or living on his own. Time will tell. What I do know is that I haven't been down to see him in some time and I feel awful about it, and so thankful for my amazing brother who is handling all of this on his own.

As for everything else, we keep perking along. Girl Scout, 4H, and homeschooling group meetings, piano lessons and tutors. Homeschooling lessons. Our two new dogs to take care of. Doctor's visits and grocery runs. Driving The Eldest around to her classes. (She's driving to her local classes; I'm still taking her to two night classes that are further away.) I've also started physical therapy for my bum shoulder; hopefully it will resolve quickly.

With the fibromyalgia it all gets to be overwhelming, but it's a good life. I wish I had the energy to do more, but it is what it is. I think I manage pretty well considering. Sometimes I shut down; sometimes my brain shuts down for me. When I get overwhelmed I tend to forget things, appointments and so forth, and I think it's my subconscious taking over and saying SLOW DOWN!! The "fibro fog" takes over too; I get spacey, have trouble articulating my thoughts, and when it's really bad I feel dulled down. I think that's the worst part of fibro for me, the fog. Did you know researchers found that there is an actual loss of gray matter in the brains of fibro patients? That's scary. That's also why I take a few minutes out of almost every day to do my "brain exercises". Don't know if it's helping, but it can't hurt, and it's fun. Sudoku and concentration games, trivia quizzes, and jigsaw puzzles. (I have the links listed over there on the right for you if you want to give any of them a try.) Physical therapy for my brain.

I wish someone would come up with a comprehensive program for fibromyalgia. If I could design an intervention, it would include an exercise program tailored to the individual that consists of gentle cardio and strength training, cognitive therapy like my brain exercises, (although there are better programs out there than I can find for free on-line), stress/time management, organizational skills training, relaxation therapy, a nutrition program, and, oh, throw in a life coach or something. I've done a lot on my own but there's a lot of room for improvement. On the positive side, I walk almost daily (cardio) and I try to eat healthfully and maintain my weight. I do those brain exercises. Where I'm falling short and could use guidance- weight training, relaxation therapy, stress/schedule management, and organizational skills. (Although I can be organized when I put my mind to it, it just doesn't come naturally for me.)

Of course, this won't happen. No room for drugs in a program like this, and that's where the money is. Sigh. But now I'm tired and tomorrow is a busy day, so I'm off to bed so I can get some sleep therapy!!

Have a Heart

2011-10-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

Girl Scouts has been in the news. There is a girl in Colorado who wants to join, only technically she's a he. I'm on a national leader's forum where they are debating the issue. A lot of the comments have been so negative and show a complete lack of understanding and compassion. I explained it to my kids like this- there are girl brains and boy brains, and they are different. (Neither is better than the other, they are just different.) There are also girl bodies and boy bodies. Most of the time, the boy brains go to the boy bodies and the girl brains go to girl bodies, but some times the girl brains get in the boy body and the boy brain goes in a girl body. That's what happened to this child; she's got a girl brain but a boy body.

My kids were able to understand the concept. A lot of the leaders, sad to say, don't. You are what your parts say you are, pure and simple. No room at all for understanding that there are differences in people.

Why does every single group have to fight for acceptance? Why was the civil rights movement necessary? Why do gays have to fight for the right to marry? Just live and let live- it's no skin off your nose if two men or two women fall in love and want to live their lives together. It's no skin off your nose if some child who is living as a girl, because that's who she feels she is regardless of the "parts", wants to be a part of a girls' organization.

Now, I understand that there are boys who would take advantage of this to be around their girlfriends, or find a girlfriend, or otherwise get up to mischief. I am not talking about those boys. Here's the statement released by the Girl Scout council in question:

"Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization, and we accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child lives life as a girl and the family brings the child to us to participate in Girl Scouts, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her. Girl Scouts of Colorado respects the privacy of all girls and families we work with. When a family requests membership for their daughter, we do not require proof of gender, we respect the decisions of families."

The key part of the statement is "If a child lives life as a girl". This would rule out boys looking for trouble. The child must live as a girl all the time, not just to join Girl Scouts. Of course there will be issues to be dealt with. The child has special needs; the other girls in this child's troop would also have to have their needs respected. Bathroom and sleeping arrangements would need to be worked out to the satisfaction of girls, leaders, and parents before any over night field trips. It's do-able as long as everyone involved acts with care, compassion, and understanding, as we all should in all aspects of our lives.

In conclusion, here is the post I sent to the leader's group. (In the first paragraph, I am responding to a post that equates Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, when they are not the same at all.)

Excuse me, but Boy Scouts is NOT for all boys. They are a discriminatory organization that would NEVER allow a transgendered child into their ranks. They do not even allow boys who are gay or the children of gay or atheist parents to join. (Technically- I will allow that there are probably some leaders who are OK with it, but as an organization they do not. One Greenblood-er sent in a quote from their bylaws a few years ago so it is on the books.) That means that there is only one inclusive scouting organization out there, only not so inclusive since they gender-discriminate. This is something I was OK with for my first two children, both girls, but now I have a son who wants to be involved in a scouting program like his sisters (he's secure in his gender, he just wants to go camping and attend all the cool field trips) but he can't. (We don't meet the Boy Scout criteria.) So the statement "there is one for girls and one for boys" is incorrect. They are not equivalent organizations; Boy Scouts is not for all boys.

As for this one child, I am so sorry to hear all of the negative comments from women who are supposed to know better and live by the Girl Scout Law. How can we judge? This is a child who is one sex in her brain, another in his body. This is a real condition, it's not "in the child's head". It has nothing to do with how much counseling is available to the family or having men around. (If that were the case every boy raised by a single mom would have gender identity issues, and such is not the case.) As a teacher for emotionally troubled kids, I beg you all to have a heart. Please don't be so judgmental. This is a child struggling in our world, a child who is not going to go out and intimidate the girls into pretending they are bad at math and all of those other things that happen when boys mix with girls. I agree with the council's statement- if the child presents as a girl, is living as a girl, has parents who are open minded and loving enough to accept that this child is a girl in spite of the "parts", then there should be a place in Girl Scouts for this child and other transgendered girls. I would take this child in my troop in a heartbeat- it's the only thing to do, according to our law, especially the parts about fair, friendly, respecting others, and making the world a better place.

The Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Yer Doin It Wrong

2011-10-20T22:20:00.000-07:00

I was in a buffet line yesterday behind two lovely plus sized women. I couldn't help but see what they were choosing to eat, and yes, I passed judgment, horrible as that is. They were doing it wrong. Well, one of them was, I didn't really see what the second woman chose to eat. What I saw was a plate LOADED with lettuce from the "salad" they served at the buffet. (Which was really just a big bunch of romaine lettuce with a few bits of shredded carrot and the odd crouton.) That was topped with a HUGE scoop of ranch dressing. All that was fine, but what killed me was what they were saying to each other. The gist of it was that they were making a sacrifice by eating only lettuce this time (topped with a huge scoop of a high fat, high calorie dressing), then they would get all skinny and be able to eat whatever they wanted the next time. Oh, that spoke volumes. I know from personal experience, having walked in their shoes, that this strategy won't work.

Where to begin? First of all, you have to make peace with food, but still be able to control portions. There were some good, healthy options at that buffet that they ignored. (Or not, I didn't follow them to see what else they may have chosen; I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that they only chose the salad.) I had a little bit of everything I was interested in. As a vegetarian, I avoided the meat and went with beans and rice. I also chose one small plantain, a small half scoop of a noodle dish, a decent serving of the salad with just a tiny bit of vinaigrette, (I even scored a crouton- ha!) and followed it all up with two very small bites of dessert. (And it was a very sweet, rich dessert- I didn't want any more than that.) I am far from perfect, but I think my odds and my attitude toward food are much healthier and will lead to long term success in the end because I have changed the way I eat. While I don't diet, I do watch my portions and I try to make healthy choices. I also understand that this is something I will have to do for the rest of my life, because if I don't I will gain and gain and suffer all of the consequences that go with obesity. I rebel sometimes, but I usually come to my senses and realize this is the choice I make, the choice to be as fit and healthy as I possibly can be.

As for the far from perfect part, I continue to struggle with some weight I gained back after going veg, which I've written about so I won't rehash it again. I keep track of my weight every day; I find it easier than tracking my food. I thought I was hanging in there right around my "red flag" (RF) weight, a little under some days, a little over other days, but, ummm, no. I finally went back through my weight journal and realized I haven't really been under my RF weight since the beginning of the year. That woke me up. I've gotten back on track and I've been working at getting back down under the RF weight consistently once again. I'm doing it not by eating lettuce for every meal, but by limiting and measuring my carbs, planning low fat/healthy fat meals, and eating healthfully over all. Carbs are my weakness; I'll take a bag of salty tortilla chips over dessert any day of the week. The low/healthy fats thing isn't a sacrifice at all for me, nor is giving up sweets for the most part. I find a good piece of fruit satisfies my need for sweetness as well as any candy or cake ever could.

The second place where the women in the buffet line were fooling themselves has to do with their long range plans- "we'll eat like this now then when we're thin we can eat whatever we want". Well, no. Once you lose the weight you can't go back to your old eating habits, I mean, HELLO, that's how you got heavy in the first place! Once you lose the weight you still have to eat the same way as when you were losing. You can't go and just eat everything in sight. You're setting yourself up for failure if you think that's how it's going to be. Maintenance is the hard part because it's for the rest of your life. It's hard to keep it up unless you have, and here it comes again, CHANGED THE WAY YOU EAT. My failures, the times when I gained, had to do with slipping from the patterns I established as I was losing. I gained on a long vacation and I gained again when I radically changed my diet to cut out meat. (And subsequently used that as an excuse to OD on carbs.)

Now I feel like I'm finally re-adjusting. I've gotten a grip on how I have to eat as a vegetarian and it's basically the same as when I ate meat. I have to measure bread, pasta, rice, and all of those starchy, carb-y things I love to munch on, I have to eat lots of fruit and veggies, and I have to keep up with walking for exercise. It's so simple, yet so hard at the same time. It's hard to pass on the bag of tortilla chips sitting open on the counter every time I walk by. (I have kids; they like the organic tortilla chips with salsa. It's not a bad choice for them, it is a bad choice for me.) It's hard not to dip into the crouton container, also sitting on the counter when I walk by, but I can't do it and maintain my weight loss. I can have a few croutons on a salad, I can't eat them like chips the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes it's hard to keep fresh fruit around the house, wash it up, and eat that instead of those tempting, oh so easy and always at the ready carbs. But I know it's what I have to do. I want to live a long, healthy, vital, vibrant life, so that's the cost. It's worth it. I'm worth it. :)

Pet Adoptions

2011-10-06T10:54:00.001-07:00

I didn't think I was a dog person but now that we have two of them... I AM a dog person after all. I am amazed at how much I enjoy these two goofy creatures who are sharing our home with us. We never had dogs before because our lifestyle as a young married couple was more suited to cats. Our last cat, a stray I took in as a kitten before we had kids, died in June at the age of 21. Once he went that made room in our home for a dog. See, I think we humans owe it to companion animals to give as many of them homes as we can.

We made the world they have to live in. We shaped them to what we wanted through selective breeding and made them dependent on us, we took away many of the skills they need to survive on their own, we changed the environment they have to survive in, and now we allow them to over populate and over breed. We tolerate puppy mills and other forms of irresponsible breeding. We don't adopt when we can. We don't spay and neuter when we should. It's a problem we created and the animals suffer for it. The most obvious way we can make a difference is one animal at a time. Adopt from shelters or rescue groups or take in a stray. Have your pets spayed or neutered; do not breed them. Support legislation to prevent puppy mills.

To make even more of a difference, volunteer with a rescue group or shelter. Take in foster animals. Donate to animal causes.

It's our responsibility as part of the human race who created the problem to take part in making life better for the animals who so adore us. Dogs especially are owed a debt. They work for us in countless ways, they pay attention to us, and they bond with us in a way no other animal is capable of. My Queen Bee is a sweetheart of a dog and I can't imagine not having her in my life now. Sure there's some work involved; she continues to have occasional accidents in the house, she can be a pain in the neck on walks, and we have to figure out how to schedule our lives so that we aren't away from home for too long at the time. It's worth it though because she brings love and laughter and devotion. She follows me around from room to room in the house. She gets excited that she might get to go with me whenever I leave. She gets restless and lets me know when it's time to go out on my daily walk. (Which keeps me motivated and healthy!) She plays with the kids. She's amazing and she's giving us so much more than we can ever repay.

So, if you think you aren't a dog person, give it a try. Research the breed you are considering or work with a reputable positive trainer before you select a dog. (A trainer can help you make a good choice for your family.) A mutt from the pound can be the best dog of all, but do choose carefully. Open your heart to strays you encounter. There is a perfect dog for everyone out there, but it can take some time to find it. Once you have your dog, make sure he or she is a good canine citizen. Teach your dog manners. One of the reasons I thought I wasn't a dog person was because I HATE it when dogs jump on me. Hate it, hate it, hate it. That's because it's rude dog behavior and the owners need to teach the dog better. (Which is something we've worked on with The Queen Bee; she's getting there.) Be responsible for messes and scoop the poop. But most of all, love your dog. They'll love you right back.

Growning Things

2011-09-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

Friends gave us some cherry tomato seedlings last year that did very well in our garden. We're starting up again this year but we didn't get any seedlings. I'm trying to start some on my own and so far, so good, although I did start a few weeks later than I should have. (Hopefully that won't matter too much.) I started a bunch of seeds in a 50 block starter kit, and not just tomatoes. I planted a variety of veggies and I mapped it all out so I know what's what. (We had issues with that last year when we planted seeds directly into the garden. We didn't use markers at first, then we used markers for later plantings but they faded. Don't use sharpie markers on plastic tabs that will sit in the sun.)

So here's what I planted on September 16th:
(I put several seeds in each pot so I'm listing the contents per pot, not per seed)

In the first tray I planted:
3 Brandywine tomatoes
3 Jelly Bean tomatoes
4 Red Cherry tomatoes (we have better luck with the smaller tomatoes; we never seem to be able to get the big ones to maturity without splitting)

In the second tray I planted:
4 Roma tomatoes
3 broccoli
3 yellow squash

In the third tray I planted:
5 Paris Island Romaine
5 Bibb lettuce

In the fourth tray I planted:
4 Kale
3 Spinach (which didn't sprout; wrong time of year but I was trying anyway)
3 Swiss Chard

In the fifth tray I planted:
10 Tendergreen Improved Beans (bush)
These did well for us last year when The Wild Child planted them, but we never had more than a few beans at a time. With more plants, maybe we'll be able to harvest enough for a side dish at some point!

Now that almost everything has sprouted I'm transplanting. I put the lettuce in a large round decorative clay pot with legs. I put the tomatoes from tray 1 in 5" peat pots until they get bigger. I don't think they're ready to go in the ground yet, but they definitely need more room to grow. I haven't gotten to the other tomatoes or seedlings yet. I'll put the rest of the tomatoes in the 5" pots within the next few days. I want to get the beans and squash in the ground since they are BIG. That leaves the broccoli, kale, and Swiss chard; I haven't decided what to do with those yet. If I want spinach I'll have to watch the calendar a little more closely; it's not going to sprout now.

I have a lot of prep work to do in the actual garden. The Wild Child and I planted watermelon at the end of the last season, a little late in the year for them to be any good. Those 2 or 3 plants took over, however! They produced for us, just nothing that tasted decent, darn it. They provided a complete and total ground cover that I'll have to dig up over the weekend. I'm also expanding from 6x8 to roughly 12x6. (Due to the shape of the yard it won't be a perfect rectangle.) I have to buy more edgers and dirt to fill it in. It's a raised bed, sort of. It's only a few inches higher than the yard but it worked last year. I'm planting the tomatoes in the new section since I've heard that you shouldn't plant the same kind of plant in the same spot two years in a row.

All in all, I'm pleased that almost every seed came up. Now if I can only get it all going and producing veggies! I'm kind of worried about the squirrel who's taken up residence in one of the palm trees in our back yard, but he didn't seem to bother the garden last year so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. The dogs chase him off but they're only outside for a limited amount of time every day. (And keeping the dogs out of the garden is another issue; hopefully the border fencing I bought will work.)

We really enjoyed the tomatoes last year. We ate tomato/basil/cheese sandwiches on baguettes at least once a week, sometimes more. We haven't eaten them since the tomato plants stopped producing good fruit; grocery store tomatoes don't cut it. Nothing else grew successfully for us. We got a few yummy beans and a few yucky watermelons, and that's about it. I didn't pay attention to planting times and I threw the seeds right into the ground, which could have been the problem. Ahem. I'm paying more attention this year so I'm hoping for more variety than just the tomatoes. (And basil, but I don't really count that since I bought it at a good size and didn't grow it from seed, and I didn't get it to grow much at all after I bought it anyway.)

We'll see what happens this year!

2 Dogs are Better than 1!!

2011-09-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

The Eldest decided to volunteer with the Greyhound rescue group where we found The Queen Bee. Big mistake, really big, huge. She, of course, being the tender heart that she is, fell in love with a dog, we'll call him The Old Guy, the one that spent the longest time of any dog at the kennel. She begged, she pleaded, she bargained, she even turned on the water works to get us to agree to let her have that dog. I caved first, of course, since I'm a sucker for a sob story. Then we had to wheedle DH, 'cause he was holding out. We kept working on him though, and he finally caved.

We've had The Old Guy since Monday and I consider him my first grand-dog. He's fitting in nicely. He's very different from The Queen Bee. He's old, for one, and mellow. She's not exactly a hyper dog, although she has her moments, but he makes her look like a puppy. He's sweet as can be and we all fell in love with him instantly. He's got some issues. He's 7 years old and he raced a LOT, over 100 times, so he's got an old athlete's body with all the resultant aches and pains. He's stiff when he moves around, and he has a lot of trouble getting up from his dog bed. He really has a hard time on our fake wood floors; they are too slippery for him and he just slides right back down when he tries to get up.

He LOVES his dog beds, even if he has trouble getting up from them. The Queen Bee wouldn't lay on the beds we had for her at first but he had no problems with that. He tried to settle on her bed but she fussed at him. He even tried to settle on my good yellow "company couch" so I fussed at him. (NO DOGS ON THE COUCH!!) He quickly figured out which bed was for him, though, and now he keeps it warm all day. He's also a water dog; he LOVES the pool. That was very exciting for him his first day here. The Queen Bee won't have anything to do with the water at all, no way, no how, but he loves it. He's also got bad teeth- yuck. We're taking him to have them cleaned tomorrow but I think we're going to have to have more done than that. He's going to need some cavities filled, possibly a couple of teeth pulled, since he's got some spots that look cavity-ish and some teeth that are gray. The Queen Bee's teeth are all shiny white; Martha Jr. keeps them all sparkly clean with regular brushings. His teeth probably hurt; he prefers soft food and treats to crunchy.

He's a good boy and I'm sure we'll learn a lot more about him as he gets settled. I'm glad my kid has a tender heart; her dog is a welcome addition to our home.

The Water Bottle Controversy Again

2011-09-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

This is my response to an article on the Bag It web site:

Encouraging people to switch to reusable is a great way to go. I'm not sure that legislating bans on water bottles is the right thing to do. There are too many instances where bottled water is a necessity, not a luxury, and "hydration stations" aren't going to be the answer 100% of the time.

I live in a hurricane prone area; I store up bottled water for emergencies. I also have refillable containers for tap water, 5 gallon water bottles, and so forth, but there isn't always warning. We had a recent contamination event, unrelated to hurricanes, where we couldn't use our tap water for several days; I was so relieved to have my supply of bottled water on hand. I use glass and/or refillable containers for drinking on a day to day basis, but for emergencies it's good to know that bottled water is readily available. Ask hurricane Katrina or Andrew survivors- bottled water meant the difference between life and death to a lot of people.

Legislation should look at reducing the use of plastic packaging, perhaps, or bottling water in some other type of material. Cans, possibly? Something biodegradable? Go back to glass? Soda should not be left out- when you pick on water bottle users, look at soda bottles as well. They are also made of plastic and any plastic bottle bans should include soda as well as water.

As far as comparing bottled to tap, I go by taste- I can taste the difference. There are some brands of bottled that taste like tap; I don't buy those. I can taste a HUGE difference between my preferred brand and tap, however; I easily passed a "blind taste test" for a frugal relative once. (He felt I shouldn't be wasting the money on bottled water.) I do not like tap water; I do not like brands of bottled water that taste like tap. There are even some pricey brands that taste of plastic; don't like those either.

In case you were wondering, I used to drink regular bottled water but I currently drink seltzer water that comes in glass. I will pour some into a refillable bottle when I go out. I'm not using plastic, but there is the impact of shipping to consider, but then again the glass is recycled.

I exist, I matter, and I have a right to drink SOMETHING I like!

Tahini-less Hummus, Roasted Garlic

2011-09-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

If you leave out the tahini, is it still hummus? Because I came up with my own spin on hummus that leaves out the tahini, so is it now just a garbanzo bean dip? I still call it hummus; it has all the other traditional ingredients but I find the tahini to be a bit, I don't know, bitter or something. It used to be hard to find in the grocery but they've started stocking it recently. I also use roasted garlic; yum. The result is not quite as good as the hummus at my favorite restaurant, but it's the best I've ever been able to make at home. I've tried several different recipes too since I have friends who make excellent hummus. I have used their EXACT recipes, but I can not get it to turn out the same way as theirs does. Very frustrating.

So here's the recipe, but it's not a measure-it-out recipe, it's a throw it in there until it looks right recipe.

2 cans garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
Roasted Garlic*, maybe 4 good sized cloves
Juice from 1/2 a lemon, possibly a squeeze or two from the other half as well
Salt and Pepper to taste
Olive Oil to taste
Water, just a little to keep everything the right consistency in the food processor

Throw the beans, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a food processor and blend away. Scrape the bowl down a few times, add some olive oil, and process some more. Repeat with the olive oil and the scraping as needed. When you start feeling like you've added too much oil (OH, THE CALORIES!!!!) add a little water until it gets to the consistency you like. Taste as you go; have some toasted baguette, no, I mean carrot sticks, on hand for the taste tests. Add more salt, pepper, or lemon juice if needed. The Wild Child says to garnish with mint leaves or something interesting if you want.

I've made a couple of batches so far. I put the hummus in the refrigerator to have on hand for my afternoon snack, and I really do eat it with baby carrots, carrot sticks, or celery. That little boost of protein helps me get through the evening without going so crazy on the carbs, a HUGE weakness for me.

* To roast garlic, I cut the bulbs in half and put them cut side up in a muffin tin. (Don't remember where I got the muffin tin tip.) Brush with olive oil and cover with tin foil. Bake at 450 degrees for about an hour. Test by taking the foil off the tin and sticking the tip of a knife in several of the cloves. If the knife goes in easily, it's done. If the cloves are still a little tough, cook a little longer. I find the purple garlic gets done faster than the all white garlic.

10 Years

2011-09-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

I remember watching the coverage of the 9/11 attacks 10 years ago today. It was a weekday and my grandmother called to wake us up. (DH works nights; we're all on his schedule so we were still asleep.) We turned on the TV and I watched from my bedroom. Martha, Jr. was a little thing, less than a year old. We didn't understand the full horror at first, and how our lives would change. We didn't understand the extent of the evil in the hearts of other people on this earth we all have to share.

So now it's 10 years later. I watched a little of the coverage this morning but I couldn't watch for too long; I had to stop before I started to cry again. I've talked to my kids about what happened. I explain to them, about this and other bad things that happen, and to warn them about strangers in general, that there are a lot of bad people out in the world. I also tell them that there are a lot of good people too, and that the good outnumber the bad by a lot. Just look at all the fire fighters, police officers, and others who rushed to the towers to save people; they outnumber the terrorists by the hundreds. That's what we have to focus on- the good people. Protect ourselves as much as we reasonably can from the few bad, and focus on the many, many good. That's all we can do.

National Days of Service

2011-09-10T12:27:00.001-07:00

Did you know we have two official national days of service? We do! First there is the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and, coming up tomorrow, there is the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance. Two days to get people thinking about how they can help others. I've grown to value year round service as a mom and Girl Scout leader; I feel it's important to teach my kids to help others and give of their time and resources and this is one area where I teach by example.

Of course the kids have various projects they get involved with as well. We participate in a park clean up now and again as a family. The Eldest is volunteering at a dog adoption kennel. (She's there as I type, actually.) We've also participated in a lot of activities through Girl Scouts over the years. DH and I talk to the kids about the charities we donate to as well.

I'm happy to see the national emphasis on service. Kids in our area have been required to perform community service in order to graduate from high school for a while now, which I think is wonderful. Some kids just put in their hours as quickly as possible and get very little out of it, it's just another chore, but so many others find meaning and purpose through volunteering. Non profit groups have been created out of kids performing their service hours, and you know those kids went above and beyond the required hours. It's good to see.

Now adults are being encouraged, through the national programs, to give of their time as well. There are so many areas where you see selfishness and a "me me me" attitude from the general public now (like the whole tea party and libertarian movements- it's all "me, first" in that rhetoric) that it's a refreshing change to see people pitching in and helping others. There was a story on the news yesterday (sorry, don't remember the channel, possibly a CNN everyday heroes story) about how survivors of 9/11 have committed to helping out at least once a year in other states that have faced disasters of their own. Stories like that make me proud to be human, proud of my fellow man.

So on this day, the day before the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance, I am taking a few minutes to spread the word and encourage others to get involved, and to teach your children to get involved as well. Everyone can help in some way. Our local community has a clearing house for volunteers; I'm sure there are other organizations out there like that. They match your abilities and time availability to ways to help, even things like making phone calls to people who are shut in. Almost anyone can do that, even the shut ins. You don't have to go building houses to contribute, although that's a wonderful thing if you are able to do it.

So get involved!! It will benefit YOU more than you know!

Still Here!

2011-09-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

Things have been so hectic lately that blogging has fallen by the wayside, and there's no let up in sight. (Well, maybe a little let up if The Eldest passes her driver's license test on Monday!) Girl Scout meetings start later today. (I should really be prepping for that right now.) 4H starts next week. We're in a new co-op; we'll have our second meeting on Friday and we have some serious prep for that. The kids are back to the academics. The Wild Child will be working with a reading tutor twice a week starting today; more driving. My dad is still in pretty bad shape but he's on the mend in a rehab hospital; I've cut back from almost daily visits to check on him to once a week. The Eldest has classes every day which means lots of driving. Even if she passes her test, I'll still drive her to her twice a week classes at the campus that's farther away from us. (Lots of busy highway between here and there; she's not ready for that highway yet.) She's also volunteering at a kennel. The lady that runs the adoption program has taken a liking to her and has done some of that driving, thank goodness. I've also spent a little bit of time volunteering there; the dogs are so darn sweet. We're also working with a trainer for The Queen Bee (our dog) once a week or so. Piano lessons, but the teacher comes to us so that's easy on me. Hurricane prep since they seem to be forming like crazy now.

Sigh...

I love my life, though. I wish things were a little more spread out and there was more down time, but I guess just about everyone with kids can say the same thing. I was feeling a little over-whelmed and my fibro was flaring up for a while but I've felt better the last few days so hopefully that will be better.

There's been time for fun, too. I was able to attend my grown up book club last week, even though I didn't read the book. (I read the sample on my Kindle and didn't like the author's style. Too pretentious for my taste.) DH and I have seen a few movies thanks to Netflix. I wanted to see almost all of the most recent best picture Oscar nominated films so we finished up with "Black Swan" a couple of weeks ago and "The Fighter" last night. That leaves only "127 Hours", which we'll skip. A guy getting trapped while hiking and having to saw off his own arm doesn't sound like a movie either one of us would enjoy. Blech. As far as "Black Swan" and "The Fighter"... meh. They were both OK. DH and I came to the conclusion that we don't really like movies about boxing all that much. I liked the dancing in "Black Swan" and Natalie Portman is amazing, but I wasn't all that crazy about the story. Self destructive behavior is never something I enjoy seeing on screen. OK, she was probably schizophrenic or something and therefore couldn't help the self destructive behavior, but you'd think her mom would have gotten her some therapy or treatment of some sort. Sheese.

So that's what's happening around here. What's been going on in your neck of the woods?

Soap and Chemicals

2011-08-24T13:36:00.001-07:00

I used Dove soap very happily for years and years and years. Love the Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" that promotes self esteem for girls and women. I WANT to like the product, but I don't. See, I have eczema, which typically only bothers me in the dry winter months. This past winter we traveled and spent time in a hotel where they had some fancy spa soaps. I tried the oatmeal soap and it seemed to help the itchies. After returning home I started to experiment with the oatmeal and natural soaps they sell at Whole Foods. I didn't get the same results, and after about six months of trying various natural soaps my eczema was worse, since I'm now itchy in the summer, too.

So I went back to Dove. Only now I can't stand the smell. I never noticed it when I was using Dove all the time, but it smells like plastic! The smell doesn't linger or anything, but I don't like it when I'm washing. (I use the unscented hypoallergenic stuff.)

I don't like anything, soap, food, cleaning products, etc., that smells or tastes of chemicals and/or plastic. When I drink bottled water (with apologies to the environment) I avoid Evian because it tastes of plastic. Or it did the last time I tried it, which was a bazillion years ago. I never could understand why Evian was so popular for so long. It's also the reason I don't like Agave. That aftertaste... might as well be an artificial sweetener. Blech. Same thing for TV dinners, although I've found a brand that tastes like FOOD, of all things. That would be Amy's. They put out some pretty good frozen food! The whole family loves their Margherita pizza. Some of their other frozen food items are also good, although I have to avoid the ones with soy. The kids like them though, so they're good things to stock for a quick meal the kids can make themselves.

I guess we're spoiled since we usually cook from scratch. We have the Amy's pizza about once a week, along with a home made salad, and that's about it. The kids may eat the frozen dinners but I don't. It's amazing how your taste buds can reject the garbage if you're used to eating the good stuff. The same thing goes for fat levels in food. We are so used to cooking and eating low fat/healthy fat foods that now a serving of restaurant french fries will make us ill. Not just me, the kids too. Well, maybe not The Wild Child since he's such a junk food junkie. It always amazes me how we can have such healthy food in our house, yet he still manages to eat an unhealthy diet overall. For instance, we still eat regular white pasta. I know, I know, we should switch to whole grain, but I've tried several brands and no one eats it. So we stick with the white, but we'll put all sorts of healthy stuff with it. The Wild Child will ignore the healthy stuff and eat just the pasta with barbecue sauce on it for a meal. We're having our pasta as a base for a veggie and egg stir fry. He's eating... pasta and barbecue sauce. What the heck can you do? I throw up my hands in despair, is what I do. The child's got to eat.

But I digress. The main point was to write about soap; guess I'm going all Faulkner again.

Where Did Summer Go??

2011-08-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

Summers are supposed to be time to relax, take a breather, maybe go on a vacation, and take a break from the normal routine. Not this summer. It was a busy one with my dad's illness and my son's schedule now that he's been diagnosed with a reading disability. He went to day camp all summer where he got one on one help from a reading specialist. It got hectic getting him back and forth- something my friends with "regular schooled" kids know all about, but which my family is not used to at all. There were a lot of days when I dropped him off and went straight over to see my dad in the hospital.

By the end of summer things turned out alright... mostly. My dad will have some permanent disability due to complications from his surgery but he should be able to live on his own again, and considering how close he came to dying, I think it's the best outcome we could hope for. He's in a rehabilitation center now where he's receiving the therapy he needs, both physical and occupational. I won't be able to visit him every day during the school year, but then I don't feel he's in a state where I need to.

My son is working through his reading program and making progress. We'll continue with the reading specialist during the year, probably a few times per week, but we'll see.

Then there's the dog. We got to bring her home on July 2nd and she is the highlight of the summer for us. What a sweetheart! We want to be good, responsible pet owners so we managed to schedule time with The Wonder Trainer even when I was going to the hospital almost daily. We also wound up volunteering at the rescue center. The Eldest decided she wanted to work at the kennel, which is only open on weekends, which means I get to drive her there. (She STILL does not have her license.) I stayed and volunteered too a couple of times. I also dropped her off then went on to see my dad a couple of times; just depends.

I've fallen in love with some of the dogs there but we can't bring them home. The Dog does not approve of our choices and since she's the queen bee at our house, her decision goes. (Oooh- blog name for the dog- Queen Bee!!) Just as well. Anyway, the dogs I am particularly fond of are a lot of fun. The first one is a mess. He has an under-bite that gives him a fang coming up from his bottom jaw. His nose is stumpy (for a greyhound) and crooked. He's scrawny but muscle-y and his coat is a mess. He's still a puppy and can't walk on a leash so I've taken him on as my personal challenge. I've walked him three times so far and it's been an experience to remember each time. He doesn't walk so much as LUNGE when he gets on a leash. Silly boy; he'll never get adopted that way. He's a little excitable but calms down when he's off the leash. He's still young at just barely 2 years old, but he has wormed his silly little messed up face into my heart.

The second dog is one my daughter noticed first. This one is a girl and she LIVES for affection. She's a barker; she won't shut up when people are in the kennel. My daughter and I were hanging out without a specific job to do last weekend when we decided to see if we could get her to quiet down. We stood by her cage and turned our backs on her when she was barking, but turned around and gave her treats and attention when she was quiet. She got it almost instantly! It was amazing to realize how trainable that dog is; much more so than the Queen Bee. I've been in touch with the Never Say Never Greyhounds blogger about her to see if she thinks this dog would be good for agility and if she knows anyone who might want to adopt her. The NSN blogger said she would need to be evaluated, and she knows of someone but that person lives too far away and is looking closer to her home. I haven't given up! I can't do anything about placing large numbers of dogs, but I can certainly help out with one or two. (So if you know of anyone who would want to provide a loving home for one incredible, trainable greyhound let me know. Or for a butt ugly, scrappy little guy that is too much fun.)

And now summer is over. The Eldest is officially a college student now and starts classes, that I have to drive her to, tomorrow. Regular school starts on Monday and since we try to follow the public school schedule, that means it starts for us, too. Our homeschooling group will get going, Girl Scouts will start meeting again, and the roller coaster has started up once again.

I love my life, but I sure could use some more sleep time!!!

Book Review: Sisterhood Everlasting

2011-08-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I've been on a reading binge lately. First I ripped through the Mercy Thompson books by Patricia Briggs which were very entertaining, although not exactly literary classics. Next I gobbled up Sisterhood Everlasting: A Novel (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) by Ann Brashares. I read the other Sisterhood books several years ago after getting them for The Eldest. (Who had no interest in them whatsoever; they aren't fantasy, after all.) I enjoyed them and also enjoyed the movies so I was happy to see a new installment. This book follows the girls as adults, all of them almost 30. There is travel, with time spent in Sanotorini, Greece, several locations in the US, Australia, and London. There is sadness, too; I won't give too much of a spoiler other than to say keep reading. It gets better and the girls come to terms with what happens in surprising ways. It dragged in the middle and I got aggravated with how much time was spent on detailing the grief the girls felt over what happened; that part was over-done, although it does make the point. I don't generally enjoy sad books so I found that aspect hard to take. Once the writing got past that, however, the conclusion felt right.

Now I'm searching around for what to read next. I think I've settled on a Neil Gaiman book, Neverwhere. I read the sample on my Kindle and ordered the book, so that's the next review you'll get!

The Dog in Pictures

2011-08-03T18:00:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of pictures of our new baby:

Looking regal:

Looking goofy:

The Dog

2011-07-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

Our dog is settling in to our family, our home, our way of life, our crazy schedule, and our hearts. She is an absolute dream of a dog with a wonderful, sweet disposition. We do have our challenges with her; she is still going all "statue dog" on us every now and again, but not as much. Our fantastic trainer, found through the Victoria Stilwell website, is very good with her. She uses positive reinforcement to teach The Dog (have to come up with a better blog name for her) what we want her to do. That's key to training her, too; if you teach a dog the behaviors you want they don't have time or opportunity to engage in behaviors you don't want. We are currently teaching her such nifty commands as "wait" (instead of stay), "leave it", and "back". We use back and wait to get her well back from the front door as we are going in and out, which is sometimes an issue with greyhounds. They are taught to bolt at the sight of an open door when they race, so they tend to continue doing that when they are retired and living in a home. The Dog seems to be dealing with the re-training rather well, however, and actually waited when I went outside today. (And she got a nifty treat for her trouble.)

It's not all work and training. We try to do something fun with her as often as we can, and if we can get her around other dogs it's that much better. We take her to the pet store, the local dog park, the dog park at the adoption kennel, (along with a lot of other owners since it's a great place to meet up with other greyhounds) and to a frozen yogurt place that has outdoor seating. She LOVES these outings and has developed quite the obsession with the car! She was starting to get a little crazy and jumpy whenever I went to my purse, and especially when she heard my keys jingle, so we brought that up with The Wonder Trainer and she gave us some great tips on how to handle it, along with tips on how to get her to get OUT of the car more willingly. (She was doing the statue dog thing about getting out.) For the keys, the idea is to de-sensitize her by taking them out and jingling them all the time. For the statue dog thing, The Wonder Trainer taught us how to practice, practice, practice by putting her in the car then taking her right back out several times a day. When she gets out she gets a great treat. (Today it was turkey dog bits.) We have to shove her out of the car, but she's getting the idea. She tries to get back in immediately, but then it's right back out again. The Eldest and I worked on that with her for about 10 minutes today, and when we took her to the dog park we didn't have a bit of trouble with her. Thank goodness!! (And The Wonder Trainer.)

We had a bit of a scare with her too. She threw up a sock! When we told everyone about it (like The Wonder Trainer and the head of the adoption kennel) they said we were incredibly lucky she threw it up. It could have caused an obstruction, which can be fatal if left untreated. I don't know that we would have recognized the signs, which can include no pooping, since 4 of us are walking her. We all would have assumed she was pooping on someone else's watch. Since that happened, we are now keeping a log where we record when she does her business. (And Martha Jr. lost it, after less than a week, so we'll be starting a new one.) (Sigh...) We may be clueless newbs when it comes to dog ownership, but at least we have a lot of great people to turn to for help and advice. The Wonder Trainer, the vet, the lady that heads the adoption kennel, and our neighbors from around the block who own two greyhounds for starters.

So that's how things stand with the dog.

Update on my dad:
He's still in ICU. They are having trouble establishing a site for his dialysis so that's where he'll stay until they get it worked out. I can't wait for him to get out of the hospital!!! I was visiting every day but I have to cut back; it's too much for me with the long drive and most of the time I visit he isn't awake enough to know I'm even there. My brother lives close to the hospital and he's taking good care of my dad; I need to let him do it. Not that I won't be there in a heartbeat if my dad or brother need me, but I don't need to burn out on it in the meantime. My dad's going to be in recovery from all of this for a long time to come. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

My Dad

2011-07-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

My dad is still in the hospital in ICU. He was touch and go there for a while, but it looks like he's in the clear now. It is such a relief to walk into his room and see his smile when he notices me! He had a trachiostomy so he's got a tube in his neck and can't talk, but he is awake and alert and can nod and make motions. They were going to move him out of the ICU but he's got to have a fistula put in on Monday for his dialysis so they decided he might as well stay put for now. He'll be moved to a rehab center sooner rather than later. The hospital gave my brother the names of two rehab centers for us to choose from so we took a tour of each. We agreed on the one that seems to be more aggressive in their approach to treatment. I think they will work harder to get him better more quickly than the other place. He'll also have a private room there and won't have to share, another plus. He's not a sharing-his-space-with-a-stranger kind of guy.

I told him I want to see him at least once a month when he's better. I don't know him as well as I should and I almost lost him; I've got another chance and I want to take advantage of it. We were seeing each other a couple of times a year, but that's just silly when he only lives about 45 minutes away. I am also getting to know my brother better and I am so happy about that. He's a good guy; I'm so proud of him and proud to be his sister. He's been amazing through all of this. He's very "take charge" and makes things happen. There were a couple of things I mentioned that he hadn't thought of (and even more that he did think of, of course) and bam, just like that, they were handled. Very impressive.

I've been driving to the hospital almost daily. Luckily my fibro hasn't acted up too much; it hasn't been a limiting factor in seeing my dad. Not that I'm not wiped out when I get home every day, because I am, but it's been manageable. I've even kept up with some chores around the house. Not everything I need to do, but the essentials. My kids have clean clothes, at least; there's something to be said for that!

Hospital Mode

2011-07-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

Once again, I find myself with a loved one in very bad shape in a hospital ICU unit. This time it's my dad. He suffered an aortic aneurysm, something not many people survive, on July 1. My brother and I have pieced together what happened that got him to the hospital, and it appears he was at his primary care provider's office, someone there realized he was in bad shape, and they called an ambulance to rush him to a nearby hospital where he had emergency surgery. He's been heavily sedated since then and we haven't been able to talk with him. We've talked TO him and he's been able to nod yes and no every once in a while, but he's pretty much out of it. He's been in a lot of pain even with the medication. He's had complications from the blood clots and the surgery that include acute renal failure, liver problems, and fluid around his lungs. His feet have also been affected by compromised blood flow to the point that they were talking about amputation. His feet at least seem to be somewhat better at this point so I don't think they will want to amputate anything after all, thank goodness. Now the rest of him needs to recover!

Dealing with all of this is so stressful. My uncle came down for a week but had to fly back home so it's basically my brother and I dealing with everything. My brother is closer to the hospital so he's borne the brunt of it all, but I'm doing what I can. I've been to the hospital (a 45 minute drive each way) every day except for the day of The Wild Child's birthday party. I've had loved ones in ICU before but there was always another generation ahead of me and lots of other adult relatives to help with all that needs to be done. I learned a lot from going through those situations though, even if I wasn't the primary decision maker. This time it's just the two of us. My brother is young (I am 17 years older than he is) and hasn't been through anything like this before (to my knowledge) but he grew up with my dad so I told him he has the ulitimate say in what happens. I didn't start spending time with my dad until I was 18. Of course I want to be consulted and have input, he's still my dad too, but I will defer to my brother if we disagree. That led to some problems for me- I wasn't strong enough in insisting on keeping informed and letting the doctors know that they do need to talk to me as well as my brother. The ultimate decision may be his but I do want a say and I absolutely have to be informed of all that is going on. I expressed that to the nurse and the nursing supervisor today and I think they heard me, so we'll see.

Aside from that, I'm in hospital mode. That means keeping a hospital bag ready to go every day that holds my Kindle and other reading material, my "to do" notepad, a cushion for those hard hospital chairs, some water, a snack or two, and my charger. (Works for both the phone and the Kindle.) Sometimes I'll take a light jacket but this hospital isn't chilly so I don't need it this time around. I also take my cane seat thingy since they are a little stingy with the chairs in the ICU. (Although I asked and the nurse got me a recliner today- a joyous thing since I was able to nap for a few minutes, and boy, did I need it!) If there is a regular chair available I can use the cane seat thingy as a foot rest. When you've got fibromyalgia it's kind of essential to find a way to get comfortable. The other days I've stayed for long periods of time have been really difficult when I only had a regular chair, or no chair. Plus the driving itself is hard; for some reason a lot of driving really makes me ache.

But I'm coping. DH is helping out by taking over everything at home. He also walks with me to keep up my exercise routine. (A 30 minute walk most days.) It's super important that I keep walking; it helps with stress relief. My stomach is starting to act up from the stress so I know I need those walks! (It's the IBS, which tends to go along with fibromyalgia for many, many fibro patients.) When I realize I'm feeling stressed out I try to remember to breathe deeply and relax. I think I need yoga or something, or maybe I should go back to the acupuncturist. (Oh, if only I had time!) Right now though, I'm going to bed. Sleep is the best stress relief of all.

When Life Rains...

2011-07-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

When things decide to pile up, they can really pile high. Right now, for instance. I was busy for a couple of days this past week with completing and turning in reports, both my Girl Scout leader reports and The Eldest's 4-H project. After that was done I was hoping for a breathing spell but it was not to be- my brother called with news that my dad was in surgery for a ruptured aorta. (He's in ICU and holding his own at this point.) That meant a long drive to the hospital, lots of worry, and hours of waiting. My brother lives close to the hospital and I don't so I spent the night at his house. I didn't grow up with my brother so this was the most time I've ever been able to spend with him. I'm so sorry about the circumstances that brought us together, but I'm so happy I got to hang out with him. He's totally awesome; everything a girl could want in a brother.

On the way home today I had to drive by the kennel where we chose our greyhound to adopt. I wanted to visit her to see if her UTI was better and find out if she would be delivered soon. The head honcho of adoptions looked at me and said "how about if I let you take her home today". Are you kidding me? HECK YEAH, I want to take her home! We've been waiting for 2 weeks, knowing she was ours but yet she was stuck in her kennel. She rode home with me and was a very good girl in the car. I drive a mini-van (go figure) and she stood behind my seat the whole way home. I was able to reach back and put my arm around her for part of the drive.

When we got home The Eldest was in the shower and the kids were playing at a neighbor's house. I had to make phone calls about my dad so DH took over. He walked her all around the house and took her outside to show her where she's supposed to go pee. The kids all straggled in one at the time and were a little on the surprised side to see our puppy waiting for them! (Understatement in use here.) I don't think we could have planned it better; the dog (hmmm, have to come up with a blog name for her) was able to deal with them one at a time.

The Wild Child has been beside himself all day. He's wanted to feed her and walk her and groom her and bake treats for her from scratch and... well, NOT clean up after her! He won't leave her alone; he's been trying to engage her in play all day unless we really lay down the law. It's exhausting to keep on top of him! She's tired now; I'm hoping all of the upheaval today will leave her tired enough to sleep through the night once we put her to bed. For the first few days "bed" will mean her cage. Racing greyhounds are used to their cages so for a while it's comforting to them because it represents the familiar. (Plus she did have one accident today so we want to get her house broken before we give her free run of the place.)

The greyhound adoption people emphasize that the first few days can be really traumatic for the dogs since everything they know has been removed from their lives. Our baby's life changed completely from the time we loaded her into my car. She was used to living in a crate with all sorts of dog friends around her 24/7, but now it's just her. She only had the most perfunctory of interactions with adult people. Now there are no other dogs, there are kids, and the people she's used to for feeding and other care are gone, replaced by new people she barely knows.

I think she's OK with it. I also think it helped that we went to see her more than once and hung out with her before all of the upheaval. I spent at least an hour with her today before we loaded her in my car for the ride home. Once in the house she's been very curious about everything, walking around and sniffing, but she's also wanted to stay with us. She seems to love the kids already, especially Martha, Jr., and will follow her around. She didn't seem to mind The Wild Child's constant attempts to play, and mostly played when he wanted her to. She still has a week's worth of pills for her UTI and I managed to get her first one down her with no problem (peanut butter did the trick) and she ate all of her dinner. We ALL took her on a short walk before dark and that went well, too. No squirrels died and she met a few of the neighborhood dogs. We walked about half the distance of my usual walks and she was tuckered out by the time we were done, but then she had a lot of exercise at the kennel before I brought her home. She's zonkered out now. DH will feed her again before he goes to bed, let her out, then put her in her cage with a Kong toy for the night, and that will be her first day at her "Forever Home".

Our New Baby

2011-06-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

Our first baby turns 18 today, no longer a child. (Legally, anyway.) On her heels we'll be adopting a new "child", the retired racing greyhound I wrote about earlier. When we went to the adoption center last week we found the perfect girl, only we haven't gotten her yet. She was peeing all over the office when we took her in to visit with her; it turns out she has a urinary tract infection. The head of the adoption group didn't want to release her to us in that shape so she's got her on antibiotics to try to clear up the problem. The girls and I went to visit with her again today to check on her and see how things are going. We also spent a couple of hours down there just hanging out with her so she can start getting to know us before she comes home. Greyhounds are raised in such an unusual way that it is quite a traumatic event to leave their kennels and move to a regular home. They don't understand at first that the move is a good thing, all they know is everything is different. It kind of freaks them out, but they get over it and become the best pets ever.

There are some unique quirks to greyhounds. They live their early lives in kennels with a ton of other dogs, being handled by trainers, so they are somewhat socialized. They don't necessarily understand about kids, but they are easy going enough that they adjust quickly. (They aren't great with little kids, though; the adoption people recommend the youngest age as at least 5 or 6.) They have to learn a lot of things that other dogs learn as puppies, like how to walk on a leash and how to play with toys. They are never able to go off leash like a golden retriever or other types of dog that will hang out with you. If they spook or decide to chase a squirrel they run so fast that they get lost! They are sight hounds, which means their sense of smell is weaker than a lot of other dogs, so they can't easily track back to home.

As to our girl, we chose a sweetheart of a dog. She's friendly and smiles. She walks nicely on a leash which is one of the main characteristics I was looking for. She figured out the toy thing quickly (some greyhounds never play with toys) and spent a lot of time squeaking a toy today! She seems to be very playful compared to the other dogs that were hanging out in the office with us. (And no peeing inside today, a very good sign for future house breaking efforts.) (They are all crate trained, but since they've never been in a house they have to be taught that the house is their "crate" when you get them home.) She stood with us for pets and "lovies" and Martha Jr. gave her lots of treats. I think it was a wonderful visit and will help her when she transitions to our house. Hopefully she'll be well enough that we can get her in a few more days!

Green Smoothies

2011-06-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing about green smoothies for a few years now from many, many different sources. They are touted as the latest health miracle, keeping cancer at bay and doing all sorts of good things for your body. While I can't verify or deny the health claims, I do think it's a good idea for all of us to up our intake of greens. I've made a few green smoothies with that end in mind but it's such a pain to try to keep fresh greens on hand. Well, today I made a discovery. (And there are probably tons of people out there who already know this, but it's new to me.) FROZEN GREENS WORK IN GREEN SMOOTHIES! They are so much easier to buy (I can get them at my local grocery instead of trucking out to Whole Foods) and keep on hand. (Frozen lasts a lot longer than fresh.) I can make green smoothies whenever the mood moves me, much to the chagrin of my children. (They just want regular fruit smoothies, hold the greens, please.) Today I made one that was absolutely perfect! I'll give a sort of recipe here, but it's one of those "throw it all in there" kind of things. I don't have amounts for you for every ingredient, but I'll estimate a few of them. It also helps to have a high powered blender; I have a Vita Mix that I love, love, love.

Here's what I blended up:

~ 4 to 6 pitted dates (they are the sugar for the smoothie)
~ frozen collard greens (about a cup)
~ pineapple juice (enough to wet everything down so the blender would work and not freeze up)
~ 1 banana
~ about a tablespoon of coconut butter, maybe a little less (it was the bottom of the jar so I just threw in the remainder; it gives a nice pina colada flavor)
~ frozen fruit to fill the rest of the blender jar to about 3/4 full: strawberries, blueberries, pineapple chunks, mango chunks, peach slices

The dates don't want to blend up with the whole batch or by themselves (they stay too chunky with everything or stick to the sides of the jar by themselves) so I threw them in first with just one or two of the next ingredients and some of the juice and blended that up before proceeding with the rest of the ingredients. With so much frozen fruit you have to use the plunger to get it all going. Blend it all to smithereens and don't look at the color. If you use blueberries, it's not really a green smoothie, it's more... brownish purple. Drink in a dark room. If you don't use the blueberries it's a neon green, also not normally a color you would think of for something you eat, but it works. It's amazing how something that looks so odd can taste so absolutely delicious, but it really does!!

There are a lot of other green smoothie recipes out there that use a lot more greens than I do, both leafy green veggies and green fruits like grapes, honeydew, and apples, and a lot of them come out with more visual appeal than my recipe, but not more flavor! Some of them are sweet like mine, some are more grassy if you like that kind of thing, but they are all so good for you. Cure cancer? I don't know, but a yummy glass full of fruits and veggies can't hurt!

This Water Bottle Thing

2011-06-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

I am a water drinker. I drink water exclusively, usually sparkling, but plain if that's all I can get. Usually bottled. I prefer glass bottles for both health and environmental reasons and pay the extra bucks, but I can only get one brand in glass. That's what I drink at home. When going out, I used to grab a plastic bottle. Lately, I've switched to pouring my sparkling water from the glass bottles into a reusable water bottle whenever I can, so as to reduce my use of plastic.

I am so torn on the issue of bottled water. On the one hand, I understand that those plastic bottles are an environmental nightmare. On the other hand, I want my bottled water!! I can taste the difference in water, even from one brand to the other, and I can't stand tap water. I never have been able to stand tap, even as a kid. I remember one time when there was a problem with our tap water and the military sent out water trucks for everyone. We got a few pitchers of water from the truck and I drank it like there was no tomorrow. My step father teased me because I wouldn't drink tap, but I drank that military water. It's because it tasted better.

Back in the day, you couldn't get water at movie theaters. If you asked for a cup to get water from the fountain they would still charge you full soda price. Then came the bottled water phenomenon, and hallelujah, I could get something to drink at the movies! (Well, until Desani became all the rage. That water tastes as bad as tap because it probably is; yuck.) It was so refreshing to be able to get a water to go with my popcorn. Then they started selling ice cold bottled water at all the outdoor events, which is so wonderful on a hot Florida day. And you can even get bottled water from the shops on the other side of the security gate at the airport!

What's to become of all that, I ask you? Why are the water drinkers being picked on? Why can't the soda drinkers bear some of the blame for the plastic bottle problem? Yes, there are brands out there that are just tap water and taste like it, but there are good brands of water that taste immeasurably better than tap. Are they filtered and clean and free of yucky stuff? Well, I hope so, but I realize some of them aren't. The same can be said of water from a fountain, though; they aren't the cleanest of water sources. Have you ever seen a backed up, spit filled, disgusting water fountain? I've seen plenty of them; I wouldn't let a dog drink from them. Plus that water is warm; there aren't very many chilled water fountains out there.

Then there are security and safety issues. You can't take reusable water bottles into events 'cause they're all afraid you'll be sneaking in booze. You can't take glass bottles to most events or parks or public pools or the beach either since they could break and cause injuries. So the only option is to buy whatever is being sold at the event or park or what have you, and now with all the water bottle bans taking place everywhere, I am to be relegated back to going thirsty since I don't drink soda? It's just not fair.

So I say, if you ban bottled water, you need to ban bottled soda too. Switch back to glass or cans or allow people to use their own reusable bottles everywhere. Don't punish me and leave me thirsty and not punish the soda drinkers, too. (Because if you start punishing all of us, some of us, like Corporate America, will come up with solutions darn quick.)

Slow Recovery & Update on The Wild Child

2011-06-17T09:05:00.001-07:00

This stomach bug really wiped me out. The worst of the actual symptoms you would associate with a stomach virus (ie, tossing of the cookies) was over in about half a day. The recovery took about 5 days. It took a good 4 of those days to be able to eat again; I'm only just back to regular food. The worst part was the weakness; just like a bad fibro flare up. DH got impatient with me after a couple of days. If he couldn't see me throwing up or running a fever then I must be fine, only I wasn't. The kids needed a lot of shuttling around (the kids ALWAYS need a lot of shuttling around) and it was hard to pitch in and do my share of that. We got through it, though. One foot in front of the other, one errand at a time, dropping as much as possible and putting out only the most immediate of fires. All things considered, we managed without too many disasters. Thank goodness DH is able to work from home some of the time; that really made a difference.

But now I'm 95% better, so onward with the busy days!

The Wild Child:

The Wild Child started a special summer camp (run by the folks who did his testing) where he spends an hour every day with a reading specialist then gets to participate in some enrichment activities. I was able to speak with the reading tutor today and I was very impressed. She told me she's using the Orton-Gillingham method to get his brain going; he should do well. It's been so frustrating for him. I was taught to teach reading using whole language methods but he wasn't retaining the information presented that way. I tried sight words and he would get some of them, but the retention again just wasn't there. I know enough to do some kinesthetic work, which could have been successful, but I don't have the specialized knowledge base to go far enough with it. We had a sight word list that he reviewed over and over and over, and he would KNOW those words cold even when I mixed the list up, but when he saw them somewhere else he would blank. He also struggles with the alphabet, again something we've gone over time and again, and he does not retain it. He knows most of the letters but there are about 4 or 5 that stump him every time. He also has issues with upper and lower case; he knows upper case letters but can't match them to their lower case counterparts.

Why Test The Wild Child:

I felt a bit of panic before The Wild Child was tested whenever I thought about his struggles. I knew where he should be, even if he was a slow starter, and how he should respond to instruction, but it wasn't happening. Since The Eldest was slow to start reading then took off and leap frogged over her peers when she was 8, I tried to tell myself to relax, it would happen in time. There was one difference I couldn't ignore, however; The Eldest knew her alphabet from early on. Now that The Wild Child is almost 9 and still doesn't know all of his letters, and seems to be unable to learn despite all of my efforts, I made the decision to have him tested. I called a local children's hospital to get a recommendation and I'm happy with the group they sent me to. It's a relief in a way; there is something wrong but it can be addressed. He can learn to read if he's taught in the right way. Of course I would rather he didn't have these challenges to face, but they are part of who he is and I love him top to bottom, learning disabilities and all.

Busy Days Come to a Screeching Halt

2011-06-13T05:39:00.001-07:00

Wow, what a miserable weekend. We were supposed to go pick out our greyhound on Saturday but I spent all of Friday night and into Saturday morning tossing my cookies. That can really slow things down! No puppy for us. The kids and I were all heartbroken but there was no way I could even get out of bed, much less make the drive to the kennel. I was kind of hoping to recover by Sunday but no such luck. I spent Sunday in bed too, trying in vain to start eating again. I'd take a few bites of some bland food or the other and I'd be done. At least we're having a free HBO weekend. (Or week or whatever; I never know how long these things will last.) When I wasn't trying to sleep I got to watch a couple of fluffy romantic comedies and some eye candy adventure movies. Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal- yum-O. (And if you like eye candy, male variety, then those links are my little present to you.)

And I'm still not 100%. DH is being me today and shuttling kids around; I'm going back to bed. (And DH is wonderful; I'm a lucky girl. He took care of me and the kids and the house all weekend. I do love that man.)

PS: But as sick as I was, I still had to change 2 paper towel rolls.

Busy Days

2011-06-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

There's been so much going on around here I don't know where to start. The biggest thing this week has been the passing of our dear old cat. We thought he was gone when he ran away last year but we found him after almost a week. He was really sick when we got him back and we thought he was going to die then, but he got some fluids at the vet and hung on. I think he hung on for all the pampering and petting and cuddling and loving, which he was showered with when we brought him home. He used to live in the garage but we brought him back in the house since we realized he needed closer supervision due to his age and various medical issues, and that resulted in a lot more attention for him. Martha, Jr. took over his care and was so very responsible with him. The end was hard; he just tanked from one minute to the next. We took him to the vet and the vet sent us to the animal ER. He stayed there over night for an assessment but there wasn't anything to be done, so the girls and I picked him up and took him back to our vet to be put to sleep. Martha Jr. did indeed take it hard, but so did The Eldest. We were all three crying; we loved that old critter.

But we have to move on, and since Martha Jr. was so responsible I decided she's earned another pet. I don't want another cat (I'm allergic, which I found out well after we got our cats, which is one of the reasons he lived in the garage for part of his life) but I was worried about a dog fitting into our slacker lifestyle. We keep very odd hours around here with the homeschooling and all. I was also worried about getting a barky dog. With fibromyalgia I need my sleep whenever I can get it and I can NOT have an animal waking me up at all hours. The Eldest knew all of this and did some research. She discussed her results with Martha Jr. and they came to me with their conclusions- we need to adopt a greyhound. Greyhounds are quiet dogs (they don't bark, they AROOO, and not very often) and they sleep a LOT, around 18 hours a day. Sounds like my kind of dog! We're going to take a road trip on Saturday to a kennel that rescues greyhounds that were used for racing and see if we can find our new baby there.

We've been talking about it and researching it so much that I think we're all excited, even DH who initially said "NO DOG". He's on board with it now; just took him a bit since he's never had a dog. I'm looking forward to having a walking companion. DH runs a few times a week; it will be fun for him to have a running companion. And a greyhound can definitely keep up on a run!!

But all that is minor compared to other issues we're dealing with right now. The Wild Child is still struggling with his reading, to the point that I decided he needed to be tested for learning disabilities. He took six hours worth of tests (over three sessions) and we found out that he does indeed have some challenges to overcome. He doesn't have dyslexia but his issues are very similar. He'll be working with a reading specialist over the summer so we'll see how that goes. They also recommended occupational therapy for him but there are a few more hoops to jump through before I can get that set up for him. And he's also borderline gifted, which is no surprise. (I think he would have tested well over the border into gifted territory but the tester had an accent he had difficulty understanding. My theory is that her accent affected his score. The tests aren't supposed to be affected by that sort of thing, but how could they not be?)

He also had auditory testing today to rule out auditory processing problems; his hearing is fine, which is a welcome surprise. The audiologist said she sees signs of sensory integration problems and said he should do well with the recommended occupational therapy. That was encouraging- she said her son had similar issues and the OT was wonderful with very quick results. I'm anxious to get it set up.

And if that weren't all, we had all three kids checked out by our family doctor this week. The Wild Child had to go to the ER with a needle stuck in his foot (from one of Martha Jr.'s sewing projects) a few weeks ago where we realized he was not up to date on his tetanus vaccine. Which made me wonder if the kids are up to date on all of their other vaccines. We don't have to keep up with that kind of thing for school reasons so I forget about it unless something like this comes up. It's been a while since they had well child visits so it was over due. I still don't know about the vaccines but the family doctor ordered copies of their records from their pediatrician (whom we no longer use) so we'll find out later. We're not homeschooling because we're anti-vaccine, but I don't necessarily believe in following the traditional vaccine schedule to the letter. With our then-pediatrician's blessing, we vaccinated purposely late for a lot of the baby/little kid vaccines. I think their bodies are strong enough now that they are older that we can keep up with the recommended schedule, but I just don't think about it. I catch us all up when I realize, though.

OK, I'm done. I'm too tired to type anymore and the kids want to use the computer to look up funny greyhound videos on You Tube.

I Should...

2011-06-03T20:56:00.001-07:00

I should probably post something since it's been a while, but my muse seems to have left me. Here are some random, rambly thoughts for you instead of a real post:

~ DH won a bike! He entered into a drawing and they called yesterday. He picked the bike up today and it's a cutey! The funny thing is he can't remember who sponsored the give away, but whomever it may be, THANKS!

~ Our tomatoes have WORMS- yuck. But they are only getting a small portion of them; there are enough to go around. We had a little teeny watermelon growing; I was so excited, but then today I checked on it and it's a goner. It's got a big black spot on the bottom. Sadness.

~ I've been working with two friends of mine to save the world! Seriously, we're even thinking of starting a non-profit to... well, to do a lot of wonderful things, but I'm not going to divulge any more information until things are more solidified. It's still not definite so we'll see where it goes. I can tell you, though, that I love working with these two amazing, strong, caring, powerful women. I am honored that they asked me to join them.

~ I've been making No Tuna Bread Salad for a while now; it's a favorite recipe. It's changed a little bit, though. We realized that we like the bread cubes a lot better when I toast them up and turn them into croutons. The crunch is a great contrast to the rest of the flavors in the salad.

~ The purple purse is no more. It started to fall apart (I didn't spend a lot of money on it so it was no surprise) and I retired it about a month ago. I switched to a splashy floral purse but it didn't close up so everything would fall out of it, which just didn't work for me. I went shopping and found a cute faux crocodile purse that I absolutely love. It's just the right size to carry my essentials plus has room for the extras I need to throw in there now and again. I also found a PurseN purse organizer that is FABULOUS. I got it for about $20.00 at Ross or TJ Maxx so don't pay more than that if you get one! I bought a red one but I wish I could find it in other colors/patterns for that price; I can't imagine not using one from here on out since it keeps my purse all neat and tidy.

~ DH bought a yo-yo for The Wild Child. He is thrilled with it! DH started teaching him tricks then researched yo-yos on-line. Did you know there are yo-yos that sell for upwards of $100.00? Me either! They've gone all high tech with brakes and what not. Very fancy. You should see my boys sleeping their yo-yos; wow.

~ I am taking my Girl Scouts to archery tomorrow morning so it's time for bed. Goodnight noises everywhere.

PS: DH found out who sponsored the bike give away; it's printed on the bike! It's a company called Amazing Grass; check them out!

Recipe: Black Beans Like You Get in Miami

2011-05-25T23:21:00.001-07:00

I grew up in Miami, Florida. We didn't eat black beans at home but we would get them at Cuban restaurants and there were LOTS of those around! I no longer live in Miami but there are restaurants nearby where we can pick up a to go order of black beans and rice, so the kids eat them frequently. Black beans are, in fact, the only bean The Wild Child will eat. I decided to try my hand at making black beans from scratch and asked The Wild Child to help me. He told me flat out while we were working on them "I'm not going to eat these". Sigh. I forged ahead anyway, knowing that he doesn't kid about these things, and there is no way on this earth that I'm going to get him to eat these black beans. They soaked all day and simmered all evening. I added all sorts of seasonings and yummy flavors, and they turned out to be pretty good. Guess I picked up how to make them by osmosis, because I made up the recipe as I went along. Martha Jr. proclaimed them better than the ones we get for take out. In fact, we all liked them... except for The Wild Child, who will not, Sam I Am, eat green eggs or black beans.

Here's the recipe I came up with. It's probably pretty similar to other black bean recipes since they taste like... black beans. Please excuse the inexact measurements; I'm a throw things in the pot and see what happens kind of a cook.

Black Beans From Scratch
By ME

1 package dry black beans
Olive Oil, about a tablespoon
Bay leaves, 3 or 4
Pepper to taste, about a teaspoon (or a few grinds of the pepper mill)
Garlic powder to taste, about a teaspoon

Salt to taste, or about one to two teaspoons (the bouillon cube will add some salt so don't go too crazy)
Vegetable bouillon cube, 1 large
Butter, about a tablespoon (optional)
Cumin, about a teaspoon or to taste
Garlic, two cloves, crushed and peeled*

Sort through the beans and rinse. Soak for several hours in a covered container with water covering the beans by at least an inch or two. Add more water if needed so that they stay covered; they will expand a lot. When the beans are ready to cook, drain and place them in a pot with a lid and cover with water once again by an inch or two. Add olive oil, bay leaves, pepper, and garlic powder. VERY IMPORTANT- DO NOT ADD SALT UNTIL BEANS ARE TENDER. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover and cook (stirring and testing and checking that there's enough water in the pot every now and again) until tender, probably about an hour. (But I didn't time them, I just checked on them every time I walked through the kitchen. You can tell when you stir if they are still hard or not by the way the beans hit the spoon as it goes around the pot, so that's a good indication of when to start checking them.) Add more water as needed, but not too much at the end of cooking time so you don’t thin the broth. When the beans are soft add the rest of the ingredients. Continue cooking at a simmer until the bouillon cube is dissolved and the flavors are incorporated. Serve over rice.

*I added the garlic cloves with the salt and other ingredients after the beans were tender only because I thought of it then. You could probably skip the garlic powder and add the cloves when you first start cooking the beans.

According to one cooking show you can also stop cooking as soon as the beans are tender, drain them, and store them in the freezer for later use. I haven't had success with this yet but it's a great idea. (I've only tried it once with a different kind of bean and I think I failed because I cooked them too far past "just tender"; they were mushy and difficult to work with.) With the BPAs lining all of our canned goods now it's a good idea to cook beans from scratch, and if you have a stock of them in the freezer that makes it just as convenient as canned. Plus a lot cheaper!!

Funny Link

2011-05-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

I wish I could write like this!!!

Book Reviews: Swamplandia!, Bossypants, Living Oprah

2011-05-17T07:01:00.000-07:00

I've read three books recently that I'd like to tell you about. The first is Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. This book was getting a lot of buzz and I thought it looked interesting so I suggested it to my book club. They chose it for this month's selection and I got started reading. The beginning was OK but as I started to get further in things took a very dark turn. Now, there may be people out there who like dark books but I'm generally not one of them. There are exceptions for me, of course, but not this time. I hated it. I only read the whole thing because I suggested it to my book club, but I waved them off with a "don't read it" e-mail. (They tend to not like really dark books either.) We talked about it a little at our meeting yesterday and I apologized profusely for suggesting a book I hadn't read first. I fell for the hype. It did look so promising, though. It's set in Florida and it looked quirky, two things that are usually a good omen. The writer also follows the plot style of creating this idyllic world (which she tells you about in flashbacks) then destroying it completely. This isn't a fantasy book but that's a common plot from fantasy novels such as Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy- the characters live in this lovely world (Middle Earth/Swamplandia) then it is ripped apart. The fantasy novels I'm thinking of come to far more satisfactory ends than this book, however. I can't say much more without spoilers, and if you like books of this nature I don't want to ruin it for you. (I will also add that if you have any history of sexual abuse you might find it upsetting. It is not cathartic in any way and there are no lessons to be learned.) I will repeat- I hated it.

I've also just finished Bossypants by Tina Fey. DH started reading this and loved it so he bought me a copy too. (He has it on his Nook which he didn't want to share since I was all germy with my cold and stuff, so he bought me a hard copy from Costco.) She's funny, the book is funny, don't read it in bed next to your significant other if they are trying to sleep 'cause you'll wake them up when you laugh and shake the bed. She writes about her career path and how she got to be who she is. She writes a little about playing Sarah Palin. She writes a little about her time with Saturday Night Live, and she writes a little about 30 Rock. She uses, umm, colorful, shall we say, language, so if that bothers you consider yourself warned. I like her brand of feminism. She dealt with a lot of misogynistic creeps in the comedy world but she just kept going and wound up on top. That aspect is probably my favorite part of the book, more so than the comedy. DH liked the comedy and says if she comes a knockin' I'm in trouble. ;)

Finally, I read Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk by Robyn Okrant, another non-fiction book. This was also light with several funny bits, another one not to read in bed next to a sleeping spouse. The author decides to chronicle her experiment to follow ALL of Oprah's advice for one year to see if, indeed, she will find her "Best Life". The results are mixed, but the journey is funny and fascinating. The way she interprets some of what Oprah says to do got me chuckling; she's very resourceful. I got the book on my Kindle, my black and white Kindle, and missed out on the full effect of the pictures at the end of each chapter. The charts were legible if you set the font size to the smallest setting. (Which you are advised to do somewhere in the book description.) If I see a hard copy of the book in a bookstore I'll thumb through it to see what I missed, but I don't regret getting the Kindle version.

Both Bossypants and Living Oprah are light, fun reads, which I needed to erase the trauma from reading Swamplandia!. Now I just have to figure out what to read next. Any suggestions?

Where is Your Self Respect????

2011-05-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

I had to go see the eye doctor today. (I have a cold and it morphed into pink eye, lucky me!) While I was there I was stuck in a waiting room with a TV tuned to MTV, unfortunately. I could not BELIEVE what I was watching! There was a young 20 something on the show talking to her boyfriend and complaining that he never compliments her enough. She must have asked him "am I pretty?" about a zillion times in the 5 minutes I was watching. She also said something about how she had a boob job just for him and he never seems to be impressed by that. The next scene is in her plastic surgeon's office where she's asking for a new face. Thank goodness the plastic surgeon had enough sense to tell her she wasn't seeing herself the way others see her. (She was, actually, pretty.)

I was gagging! I mean really? Women out there are really that shallow? Women out there are so afraid that all they have to offer the world is how they look? Wow, feminism has failed BIG TIME if that's the case. I mean, why couldn't this girl talk about anything other than how she looked? Why couldn't she go and, I don't know, read a book or something and talk about that? Or watch the news and form an opinion about something? And why, why, why are shows like that on the air? Well, I know why it's on the air, it's because people watch it. So then the question actually is why, why, why are people watching that drivel?

I don't get it. I also don't get why people buy magazines like the "National Enquirer", either. Everyone knows they lie and make up the most horrific, ridiculous stories they can possibly come up with. They hurt people. Stars and celebrities are people, too; what, you don't think reading lies about themselves hurts? Oh, sure, there's probably a subset of people who act out just to get the coverage, (no publicity is bad publicity, or something like that) but then why would I want to read about them, either? And when you're talking about those magazines hurting people, look at Princess Diana.

I believe in voting with my dollars and, I am proud to say, I have NEVER, ever, ever in my life spent a dollar (or any other amount) on one of those grocery store rags. I also don't watch "Jersey Shore" or any of those other shows that thrive on making a group of people look low class and rude. I tuned in to "Jerseylicious" once just to see what the fuss was about. For about 5 minutes, then I couldn't take anymore and changed the channel. I'm sure there are people out there who get a kick out of those shows, and more power to them, but the problem comes in when you let shows like that shape your values.

My biggest beef with the current generation and their values (and to my friends who've heard me rant about this before, please forgive me for the repetition) is this thing that the young girls have now about cheating boyfriends. They don't blame the boyfriend, they blame the girl he's cheating with and get all up in arms and want to beat her up. I mean, really, physically beat her up. Honey, if he cheats on you with one girl, it's not the girl's fault, it's his. If you kick her butt he'll find someone else. Do you think you can beat up all of the other girls in the world? Um, no, you can't. The only option is to kick HIS butt, right to the curb. A cheater is a cheater and will never be capable of a loving, monogamous relationship, so do yourself a favor and let him go. Have the self respect to dump him, because HE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU! Plus he's probably getting off on seeing you get all upset and trying to fight with the girl he's cheating on you with; it's a big ego trip. Don't let yourself be manipulated like that, for Pete's sake.

And now I'm done ranting. My eyes are still dilated and I can't look at the computer anymore!!

Misery

2011-05-05T23:10:00.001-07:00

I am reminded of a song from my youth that goes something like this:

Gloom, despair, agony on me
Deep dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all,
Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

Or something like that. It was from "Hee Haw", which my parents watched when I was a kid. There were like, 3 channels at the time, OK??? Not a lot of choices. But I digress. The reason this song comes to mind is that I have a cold. Not a minor, trifling cold like other people get, it's a mean, nasty, evil cold with aches and pains and agony and all that stuff. Coughing, sore throat, clogged up nose and all sorts of horrible things. It's so bad DH has even jumped ship; he's sleeping on the guest bed in another room so my thrashing about and snuffling and snoring at night won't keep him up. (Traitor. What if I need him to get me something, like medicine or a thermometer or a drink of water or a shotgun?)

I typically manage to catch a cold about once a year; drives me bonkers when I get one. I get out my tea bags and drink lots and lots of hot tea with honey and lemon. I consume tons of Riccola, to the point that I don't know what's worse- the coughing or having to suck on yet another cough drop. A friend recommended gargling with vinegar; sounds promising but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. My grandmother swore by warm salt water gargles, which I also haven't gotten around to yet. (I keep forgetting to take the salt and a cup to the bathroom.)

Mainly, I try to rest. The Eldest just finished her classes so I don't have to drive around picking her up. Martha Jr. had a class today but it's close by so The Eldest drove (I still had to go since she's only got a learner's permit) and walked her into the building. I was able to sit in the car, which was a lot easier than my typical Thursday rush. I was supposed to host a Girl Scout meeting with Martha Jr.'s troop on Tuesday but I canceled that, which I hate to do, but I don't think the moms would appreciate it if their daughters were all exposed to my germs; blech.

And now I am going to go rest some more. That's been typical- I get up and do a few things around the house, then I get wiped out so I go to bed. On the down side, the house is a disaster since the few things I manage to do are not nearly enough to keep up with the messes this family can make. On the plus side, I've caught up on my DVR viewing. I'm at 54% available space!! See- there's always a silver lining.

Projects, Projects

2011-04-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

We've been busy around here preparing for the upcoming hurricane season. After having the windows replaced, I went on to have our annual tree trimming taken care of. When you live in a hurricane prone region it's important to have trees pruned yearly by a trained arborist so they don't FALL ON YOUR HOUSE!!!

In 2005 one of our trees survived hurricane Wilma but sustained a lot of damage. (Our two live oaks and several palms went through the storm beautifully.) This particular tree is a "junk" tree that grows really fast but doesn't do well in storms so it wasn't a surprise. The tree guys came out and removed the damaged branches and started shaping it again, but for a while it looked like something out of Dr. Seuss! I still chuckle when I think about it, and I think about it quite a bit since the tree is directly outside our computer room window. (I'm looking at it now- it forms a lovely, leafy background around my computer monitor.) It grows so quickly that it was back to looking like a real tree in very short order. It did the annual leaf shedding a few weeks ago and the new leaves were filling in within a week; good thing since the tree really cuts the glare from the afternoon sun when I'm trying to work on my computer. Thank you, tree! I love you even if you are junky.

My project for today was to inventory our freezers (we have one refrigerator inside and one in our garage) so we can use up as much frozen food as possible. I like to run light for hurricane season, which starts in June, so that it's not such a big deal if we lose power for an extended period of time. Plus both freezers are jam packed full which is frustrating when I bring groceries home. While I was taking inventory I also cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. The inside freezer wasn't too bad but the entire garage refrigerator was disgusting; blech. I only keep drinks, mostly bottled water, in the garage refrigerator so I've ignored the yuck for a long time. I made The Eldest clean it out a few months ago but she did a.... less than thorough job, shall we say. I went a little more in depth. I pulled out the drawers and bottom shelf and brought them in to clean in the sink, then scrubbed everything else that wouldn't come out. That refrigerator looks brand sparkling new! My back, not so much, but hey, the job's done now.

Unfortunately the freezers are both still packed, even though I threw out some things that were so old I couldn't remember buying them, but now I know what's in them so I won't over buy things we already have. Like frozen pineapple chunks. We have 9 bags of frozen pineapple chunks. I like pineapple chunks, they are yummy in smoothies, but 9 bags are a little much. Just means I'll have to use them all up; smoothies, anyone??

Bag It: The Movie and Earth Day Resolutions

2011-04-22T09:58:00.001-07:00

PBS is running a series of environmental/green programming for Earth Day. I was watching a few days ago and caught Bag It: the Movie, a documentary about all the plastic we use. All the free plastic that is really costing us all big time. They will air the movie again on my local PBS station; they might be showing it on yours, too, and if they are I strongly advise watching it. You have to know these things!!

The movie has led me to my Earth Day Resolution for 2011. I've been taking my own bags to the grocery for years now, I even use my own bags at other types of stores as well, but I am going to go it one better this year. I am going to take my own produce bags and bulk item jars, too. Apparently some stores that sell bulk items will let you weigh your container before filling it, then deduct that weight at the register. I can take my own jars for the fresh peanut butter my son loves. (They have machines to grind the peanuts at two stores we frequent.) I can take the containers I dump my raisins and organic popcorn and walnuts into as soon as I get home; saves me a step so it's all good.

We are also getting ready for hurricane season. I spoke with our tree trimmer and he's given us an estimate. His guys will be out next week to give our trees their annual pruning, which helps them weather any storms that may come our way. It's important to have them trimmed properly; I won't let anyone but this guy trim my trees. He's a trained arborist and even teaches classes for professional licensing. He's a natural born teacher, too. I always feel like I've learned a lot when he gets done walking around with me as he's working out the estimate. He fusses at me EVERY YEAR for not having proper tree rings around some of my trees, and every year I promise to do better. (I think I need to add that to my Earth Day Resolutions; I need to take proper care of my trees!) He also fusses about trees that are planted too deeply. When planting a tree you have to see the flare at the base of the trunk before it goes into the dirt. If you see straight trunk all the way into the ground you are seeing a tree that will not live out a full life span. The roots need to be able to take in oxygen and they can't do that if they are completely buried.

To wrap up, see Bag It, make your Earth Day Resolutions, and make sure you don't bury any trees you may plant too deeply.

Happy Earth Day!

Family Management

2011-04-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

I've never been one to successfully use chore charts. Oh, I try, but I don't have the persistence to follow through and make them work. I think I've finally, finally hit on one that might be different. I made up a "Family Meals Kaper Chart" that assigns cooking duty for all of our lunches and dinners to different members of the family. (Thanks to Girl Scouts for teaching me about Kaper Charts, which is another way to say chore chart, but more fun.) Lunches are mostly handled by DH, like always. He likes to cook and he's pretty good at it. He eats lunch at home with us so it's worked out that he cooks it, too.

That leaves dinners. I enjoy cooking but with the fibromyalgia I find it physically difficult. I'm not good at standing, kills my back and feet, but that's what you have to do a lot of to cook. (I can walk OK, I do that every day for exercise, but standing is painful.) To really cook, there's a lot of standing to prep ingredients, standing while stirring, etc. Plus dinner is at the end of the day when my energy is basically done, so it's a hard meal to put together. Enter the Kaper Chart, which assigns two dinners per week to The Eldest and two dinners per week to Martha Jr. DH handles Saturday night and I get the two nights that are left.

So far, dinners have been really, really late (even by our night owl standards) but really, really good since both girls can cook...mostly. The Eldest is turning out to be quite adventurous in the kitchen! Tonight she made a stir fry (sans soy) with egg, veggies, peanuts, Chinese noodles (baked, not fried) and a sauce she invented served in lettuce wraps that was out of this world.

Sometimes things don't work out. Martha Jr. wanted desperately to make falafels (from the recipe I linked a few days ago) and fried pickles, of all things. I tried to gently dissuade her (it was the end of a long day and both dishes are labor intensive) but she was not to be deterred. Even though we didn't have a recipe for the pickles and had never made them before, she still wanted to make them just like the ones we get at fairs. It was a disaster! The falafels didn't work out, they didn't want to stick together for her and would NOT get brown, and the pickles... I don't even have words. That wasn't the disaster part, though, I mean, you just throw a pizza in the oven and call it a night so the food wasn't a big deal. The disaster was how upset she got about it. She broke my heart! She was so looking forward to her falafels and fried pickle dinner, and when neither of them turned out she was devastated. I was useless; I wanted to get in there and help her but I was so wiped out I just couldn't. (That long day thing.) She's so used to success whenever she tries something that it's difficult for her to cope with failure so I think this was a good lesson for her in the long run, but it sure was hard that night.

The one disaster and the timing issues aside, I am liking this new division of labor. It's good for my girls to learn responsibility and develop their cooking skills at the same time. They have even worked together on a couple of meals so they are developing teamwork skills too. The Wild Child is a little jealous; he wants to cook but he's still young yet. (I told him he can take over The Eldest's nights when she goes off to college.) I am able to recharge a little bit while they cook so I can tackle a few more chores after dinner. Win all the way around- I think this is one chore chart that will be around for a long, long time.

Garden Pictures

2011-04-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

At long last, here are some pictures of my gardens.

This is the planting bed in front of my house. We have a circular drive and this is tucked into the landscaped half circle that's in front of it. All of the plants are supposed to attract butterflies. And they're P's! Purple pansies and purple petunias. (And a few other plants, but the pansies are the stars.)

Tomatoes!! We planted a few other vegetables that didn't do well but the tomatoes took off. I've never been able to grow them in the past but that all changed, thanks to the seedlings from two of my very good friends.

Milkweed plants. We have a few caterpillars on them now and three chrysalids in the area. (That we've been able to find; there may be more tucked around in little secret butterfly hidey-holes.)

The three chrysalids. The picture of the one on my watering can isn't great but you can make it out if you look in the shadowy part.

Martha Jr. and I are worried about this one clinging to a post. It looks a little malformed.

I love my butterflies! What started out as an educational, limited term project for the kids has turned into one of my favorite hobbies. I started with just planting milkweed but that has expanded into planting flowers for nectar for the butterflies in areas of my yard that I previously neglected. It's good for the butterflies and looks lovely to boot- how many hobbies can you say that about!

Falafels!!

2011-04-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

I made falafels last night for dinner that were just as good as the ones at the street fairs. I changed the recipe a bit- we didn't have time for them to sit in the refrigerator (didn't notice that part when I was planning dinner) so I added a couple of tablespoons of extra flour and cooked them right away. I also forgot the garlic while everything was in the food processor (I was tired, OK?) so I threw in some garlic powder and stirred it in right before I made the patties. We had them on pita bread with a quick.... tzadziki.. (spelling?) sauce made with plain yogurt, diced cucumber, cumin, and dill. We also added lettuce, tomato, and some diced scallions. YUM-O.

PS: DH made the tza... yogurt sauce. He looked up several recipes on-line then made his own by throwing together Greek yogurt with some diced cucumber, seasoned with dill, cumin, and a touch of paprika. (He says he'll leave out the paprika next time, but I think it was great just the way it was.)

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2011-04-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Our various gardening projects are coming along nicely. After watching 4 Monarch butterflies emerge from their chrysalids successfully, we have 5 more caterpillars on our milkweed. My flowers in our front planting bed are looking lovely- it's the best grouping of flowers I've managed to put together in that bed so far. Our veggie garden has produced a ton of cherry tomatoes. Not much else, but lots and lots of tomatoes. We have watermelon and pumpkin seedlings; so far, so good on those, but who knows if we'll actually get fruit out of them?

The kids and I are experimental gardeners- we just throw seeds in the ground and see what comes up! Our latest experiments are seedlings we bought at Home Depot. The kids spotted some fruit producing plants and begged me to buy them, so I did. We got a fig tree (it's about a foot tall so we won't get any figs from it for a while, if it survives) and DH put it in the ground for me over the weekend. We also have pomegranate, blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry. Oh, and of course strawberry, but it's too late in the season for anything to come of that. I don't think we'll get anything much out of the other berry plants either since we're pretty far south, but we'll see.

Our worm bin is up and running, sort of. We bought worms; I haven't poked around too much to check on them since they apparently don't like to be disturbed. I know we're doing something wrong, though since we have a ton of fruit flies. (We keep the worm bin outside on our covered back patio so the flies won't get in the house but some of them have anyway, drat it all.) I checked on the problem solving guide where we found the instructions for the bin to see if I can do anything about the flies and it is fixable. I'm going to add more soil, covering the food scraps that are currently in there, and change out the newspaper bedding to see if that helps.

The worm bin led to a 4-H speech for The Wild Child. We attended our 4-H County Events last weekend where each of the kids had to present a short speech. The Wild Child demonstrated "How to Build a Worm Bin", Martha, Jr. also gave a demonstration on how to make a chevron pattern out of yarn, and The Eldest spoke about how to use a grid for art. They all did really well, if I do say so myself, and Martha Jr. walked away with a blue ribbon AND a fancy purple ribbon! She's also advancing to regional competition; she is tickled pink. I'm tickled pink that regionals are NOT on the same day as her piano recital a week later!

This is our first year in 4-H. I tried to sign the kids up previously but for whatever reason I just couldn't swing it. This year we went to their open house and found an old friend running a club; we signed up immediately. There is a big emphasis on parliamentary procedure and public speaking which I really like, so 4-H offers different benefits from Girl Scouts. It's not all agriculture and sewing, which is a common image people have of 4-H. They also offer a heavy dose of science; the first project we participated in with our club was science related. I hate that I didn't find this group earlier so that The Eldest could have participated longer, but oh, well. We'll be involved from here on out with the younger ones, for sure, and I think they'll get a lot out of it. Martha Jr. even found a friend in the club- she took ballet classes very briefly a few years ago and one of the girls that she especially liked from her class is in 4-H. They have a lot in common so I'm happy that they have rediscovered each other.

That's all for now- my gardens are calling me!

Green, Greener, Greenest!

2011-03-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

We've gone veg, I've been taking my own bags to the grocery for years, we have fluorescent light bulbs, (and can't wait for the new LED bulbs since they don't have mercury), we recycle, we have a veggie garden, and now we've taken two more steps toward green. We finally made it to our local bait shop and we have actual, real live WORMS in our worm bin, and, most momentous of all, our new energy efficient windows and doors are going in!! Half of them went in today and the rest will go in tomorrow.

It's a huge expense but we invested for a lot of reasons. First of all, the windows we had were original to the house so they were sub par "builder's specials". The house is over 20 years old and they haven't held up to time at all. Secondly, there's the energy efficiency factor. Even if the glass was OK, efficiency-wise, which it wasn't, the old windows were of such poor quality that there were gaps where the windows were supposed to meet in the middle. Even our sliding glass doors (that we're changing for french doors) had big gaps you could see through, and not in places where you could easily repair them. We were air conditioning the world with those windows! Then over the past few winters, which have been unusually cold, the heater was completely ineffective. It would be stuffy for the length of time the heat would kick on, then once it went off it would freeze again. It was really miserable. Third, they were hard to open and close; not very safe if there was a fire and the kids had to get out on their own.

We've been in this house for 6 years so we've needed the windows for a long time, but good golly, they are pricey. We not only invested in energy efficient, we got impact windows since we are in a hurricane prone area. Which is the fourth reason we invested- impact windows are going to help on our insurance and protect our house just that much more in the event of a storm. (And we kept our shutters, which we'll also use.)

We finally managed to follow recommendations about choosing a contractor and I think it paid off based on the work they've done so far. We got 3 bids and went with the company that had a decent price along with good references. In fact, this company did work for a neighbor and for The Eldest's math tutor. They were both happy with this company which made our choice pretty clear cut. We've had bad luck with contractors in the past so this is a refreshing change, especially for the money we're putting into these things.

It's a large pain in the neck to have the work done- everything has to be cleared out of the way of the windows and several of the rooms in the house are a disaster (like the kids' rooms) so that is no fun. Then there's the waking up 4 hours earlier than we're used to thing, and having the house all in a shambles with strangers tromping through. Very nice strangers, but still. It's going to be worth it when it's all done, though. There won't be much difference aesthetically except for the french doors but there should be a huge difference in our electricity bill, the noise level from outside, and our worry level if we get a hurricane this summer.

As for our green, greener, greenest level, we're probably at greener. There is still a lot more we could do but we're plugging away as time and our resources allow. The windows are a HUGE leap for us. The next step is a hybrid mini van, but since they don't make those yet we have a few more years to go on that one. (A bigger step would be moving somewhere with good public transportation, but that's for way off in the future!)

What We're Celebrating...

2011-03-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

We celebrated Earth Hour today. We turned off all the lights and "screens" and went outside for a family night hike around our block. We took flashlights but didn't need them; our homeowner's association didn't participate in Earth Hour so the street lights were all blazing. I was a little loopy (low blood sugar) and DH and the kids started cutting up; I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt!

Once we got home I tried to start a fire in our outdoor fire pit but it was major fail. I used Girl Scout fire starters but didn't place them well so they eventually burned out without catching the wood. DH, pyromaniac that he is, gave it a try and was a lot more successful. The Wild Child was delighted! (He takes after his dad in the pyromaniac department.) He insisted on making popcorn in our over-the-fire popcorn popper which, in spite of predictions of doom, turned out perfectly. We never got around to toasting our vegan marshmallows; maybe next time.

I have conflicting thoughts about the fire. We weren't using any fossil fuels for it, and with the Girl Scout fire starters we weren't using any lighter fluids, either, but we were still contributing to global warming. Did we offset any good we did by turning out the lights for an hour? I don't know, but I do know I have a new basis for talking with the kids about turning the lights out when we leave a room.

There's something so comforting and primal (and smelly) about a good fire, though. We light up maybe 3 or 4 times a year so hopefully we didn't increase our carbon footprint too much! Plus we're doing a lot to reduce our carbon footprint by going veg all day, every day.

What We're Eating...

Speaking of going veg, we had great vegan sandwiches for dinner. There's a restaurant in our area that serves a vegan sandwich we enjoy so we recreated it tonight for dinner. It's basically a whole wheat baguette with hummus, sprouts, shredded carrot, cucumber slices, tomato slices, and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds. DH added some fresh spinach and I put some avocado on mine. DELISH!! Quick and easy, too, especially since we make the hummus from a mix sold in the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods. (Yes, a processed mix which I normally try to avoid, but it turns out better than any of the recipes from scratch that I've tried, plus it's quick and doesn't dirty up the food processor.) (Not that I haven't gotten some really good hummus recipes from friends, but I can't get my hummus to turn out the way their hummus does even with the same recipe, dang it.)

And speaking of processed food, we also used a regular baguette from the frozen foods section at Costco that you heat up before using. (I love the whole wheat baguettes but they are all made with soy so I have to avoid them now.) :( Oh, how I love bread! Totally, helplessly, hopelessly addicted, I admit it. It's a shame 90% of it has soy, and the 10% that doesn't is the unhealthy white variety. I keep meaning to make my own but I never seem to find the time. (Plus I'd eat it ALL if it was coming out of the oven fresh and steamy- can't let that go to waist... waste.) So the frozen stuff was quite a find! I was buying the baguettes from the store bakery but I shop so late in the day that they would rarely have any in stock; this is our solution, so now we can have our vegan sandwiches, our tomato basil sandwiches, goat cheese with walnuts and honey toasted sandwiches, and portobello mushroom cheese "steak" sandwiches whenever we want them. Yummy!!

What I'm Listening To

2011-03-24T23:09:00.001-07:00

I take half hour walks almost daily around my neighborhood with my trusty MP3 player hooked onto my pocket. Usually I listen to NPR (love, love, love NPR) but they are having their annual pledge drive so I've been listening to my downloaded music instead. (Note to self: mentioning NPR reminds me I have to go pledge!!!) DH put an album on there for me after I heard one song by V.V. Brown. I never listened to the whole album before but after hearing a few more of her songs in my rotation I finally decided I had to listen to all of them. She sings with such feistiness and gusto; this is a woman who is grabbing life with both hands. Her music also has a great beat for walking; it gets my intensity up, which is always good!

Another artist I enjoy is Brown's fellow Brit, Mika. He does not get enough attention over here in the states, but his songs are fantastic. Go watch this video or this one and tell me you're not hooked; they are absolutely infectious!

Whenever any of the songs by these artists come up in my rotation it's all I can do not to dance around the block. I may be a musical geek in the eyes of DH and The Eldest, but I know what I like when I hear it!

What I'm Reading

2011-03-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I was reading Olive Kitteridge for my book club but it made me suicidal (too darn sad) so I had to stop about half way through. In searching for something a little more upbeat, I saw that The Pioneer Woman has a new book out, The Pioneer Woman: From Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, about her romance with her Marlboro Man. I've read her blog in the past so I was curious and ordered a sample on my Kindle. I read the sample and was hooked, so I ordered the book and stayed up way too late reading it. It's a lot happier than Olive Kitteridge, I must say, although there are some sad parts coming up. (She foreshadows.) I know she gets through the sad times, though, from reading her blog. I have to keep reminding myself it's non-fiction; it reads like a romance novel!

But I can't finish it now! I'm supposed to be at a beach clean up in a very short little while, so off the computer and into the shower, nownownownow!!!

PS: We never did make the beach clean up; I couldn't get the troops rallied and out the door in a timely fashion. I'm bummed. My friends were there and it was a gorgeous day out so I'm really disappointed. :(

Luck O' the Irish to Ya!

2011-03-17T22:09:00.001-07:00

Now that St. Patrick's Day is over, here's my post for the occasion; a little late, just like everything lately, but here at last. We didn't go too crazy around here but we all wore green and we ate Irish food and green food for dinner. The Irish food took the form of Irish Soda Bread, which came out with the texture of a pound cake but not as sweet. (The Wild Child topped his with maple syrup and had that for dinner; he can make any meal unhealthy!) We had Holy Moly Guacamole from Hungry Girl that was surprisingly good, and also a little sweet. Plus VERY GREEN. (Yes, a Mexican recipe, but it was green, OK!?!) The recipe is great, too; it gives you the flavor of a good guacamole but cuts the calories by subbing PEAS, of all things, for a huge portion of the avocado. I don't usually watch Hungry Girl because I didn't like one of her cookbooks I leafed through due to her heavy use of artificial sweeteners. I don't do artificial sweeteners at all, so I never made a point to watch the show. I was flipping channels one day, though, and she was making the guacamole. I was so fascinated by the use of peas, which is sheer genius, and had to check out the recipe on the Cooking Channel website. I made baked tortilla chips from spinach flavor tortillas, so they were green, too. Well, the ones I didn't burn, anyway.

We also had broccoli soup, a modified recipe from a mushroom soup recipe on the Poor Girl Eats Well website. (I've mentioned this recipe here before.) You pretty much sub broccoli for mushrooms, but DH made it (I was planning to do it but I was too wiped out from the rest of the day and making the guac and bread- once again he comes to my rescue) and he says he didn't follow the recipe too closely. He read through the recipe then winged it. I think you could make a fine broccoli soup just making the one substitution, though. It's also good with a little bit of shredded cheddar cheese on top, but only if it's a good quality cheddar. (We like the store brand of cheddar from Whole Foods.)

I also bought ingredients for a green smoothie but we never got around to making it, so we'll have that for tomorrow. You don't need to wait for St. Patrick's Day to enjoy a green smoothie, that's for sure!

So that was our day!

UPS Sucks

2011-03-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, UPS does just fine and delivers packages to where they are supposed to go in a timely manner. When they screw up, however, forget about it. When we first moved into our current house UPS delivered a package to our door that belonged to someone 5 streets away. Now, we have an address in our community that is very close to ours and we are constantly getting their stuff and vice versa; it's annoying, but we can understand the error, and we just take them their stuff and they bring us ours. This was NOT one of those cases. The address was NOTHING like ours! The house number and street name could in no way be mistaken for ours.

That's when the fun started. I tried to contact UPS to find out what to do about it. Ever tried to contact UPS? I couldn't get a real person, first of all. Then I had the brilliant idea to GO TO the UPS store. I walked in right before closing time; they didn't even want to let me in at first. I approached the girls at the counter and explained that the package was mis-delivered. They were confused. THE PACKAGE IS NOT MINE; IT NEEDS TO BE RE-DELIVERED TO THE CORRECT PERSON. How hard is that to understand? It was like I was speaking Martian or something. Blank stares. Then they said no, no, no, they couldn't take the package back, and if I wanted it to be delivered anywhere they would have to charge me. I said you don't even know who I am. They said well, we'll just deliver it back to you then. I said BRILLIANT, go ahead and deliver it back to me. That meant they would have to deliver it to the addressee, which is what I wanted in the first place. I left the package and walked out shaking my head.

Jump to today. We got a call from our gatehouse that someone wanted to come in and bring us a package. It's Sunday! UPS doesn't deliver today, and besides, the gatehouse doesn't call for UPS. That means someone else from outside of our neighborhood got our package and was very kindly re-delivering it for UPS.

Thank you, good, honest people for taking time out of your day to deliver a package to us when UPS should have done it right the first time. I am grateful, and I promise I will pay it forward. (They put the package by the door and drove off before we could thank them personally, so this is the best I can do.)

My Seed Box

2011-03-11T15:15:00.000-08:00

Over the years the kids and I have accumulated a lot of seeds, to the point where I had little piles of seed packets in several locations all around the house. I had no idea what I had or when to plant it, and I finally realized it was a ridiculous situation. Organization had to be applied, especially now that we are gardening and the chance of actually PLANTING some of our seeds is high. I gathered all the seeds (I hope)and put them in a big pile. I got out an empty photo storage box from my scrapbooking days (another hobby I'm not keeping up with) and started sorting.

I used the dividers in the box to make a section for each month. (Luckily there were 12 dividers; very handy.) The seeds were filed according to the month when they can be planted. Where a range was given on the seed packet, they went in the closest upcoming planting month. Using that method, we have a HUGE section for March! There's a lot that can go in the ground right now, which is fun. The Wild Child is working on a 4H project so we cleared all of our planting bed except for the tomato plants. (The only plants doing well anyway.) We put down more compost and fresh soil to build the bed up even more, and now it's ready to go. I'm hoping we'll get a chance to get out there and plant more seeds this weekend!

After we finally put the Christmas decorations away, that is...

The Earth's Bounty

2011-03-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

The little ones and I did manage to sneak away for a few hours on Monday to pick strawberries. (But I didn't pull out the camera; we were too busy!) The Wild Child was mainly useless; Martha Jr. and I picked about 4 quarts of berries between us. We also bought goodies from the farm stand store- more produce, jam, bread, and cookies. We had what my grandmother used to call a "vegetable dinner" that night, with a pot of black eyed peas, fresh tomato slices with green onion, squash cooked with sweet onion, and bread sticks. Our modern days twists included some rice to go with the peas and steaming the squash instead of boiling it to death. She would have made corn bread, too; we went with the bread sticks we bought at the market. And of course, we always have "vegetable dinners" now with menus she never would have dreamed of.

Some of the recipes we've been enjoying lately are the mushroom soup from Poor Girl Eats Well and variations. I had some broccoli I needed to use up so I subbed broccoli for mushrooms in the same recipe and it turned out to be delicious. We've also been enjoying the tomatoes and basil from our garden. DH puts tomato slices on an open baguette, tops it with basil and cheese, then pops it in the oven until the cheese gets melty and the bread gets toasty. We had that for lunch today and EVERYBODY ate it, which is rare around our house. (Well, everybody who got to the table fast enough. The Eldest is still sleeping at 3:45 in the afternoon. She's on spring break so she's taking full advantage.) He says don't try it with store bought tomatoes; they won't even come close to being any good.

We tend to cycle through recipes. We go crazy for one recipe or another, having it once a week or so for the longest time, then we get sick of it and that's it for a while. Or permanently. I've been sick of just about ALL of our regular recipes lately, yet too swamped to search out new recipes, so we've been in quite the culinary rut. Luckily I pulled out that PGEW recipe and gave it a try; it was a hit with 3 out of 5 of us, which counts as a win around here! Then I modified it with the broccoli and DH came up with his sandwich, and just like that we've got 3 new recipes in the rotation. We're also pulling an old recipe back in the mix since DH found a miso made out of chick peas instead of soy. It's a recipe from a Robin Robertson cookbook; it's for White Bean Cassoulet if I remember correctly, and the miso is an essential ingredient. We really liked it so I'm looking forward to having it on the menu plan again.

Updates

2011-03-04T11:53:00.001-08:00

Gardening:
Our gardening project is going well! For the first time ever, I have tomatoes. I've tried repeatedly to grow tomatoes in the past but was never successful. I'd get one or two bug eaten tomatoes out of a plant before it died in ignominy; it was truly sad. For some reason, my losing streak has ended and we have tomatoes coming out our ears!

Actually, I think the biggest reason is I got the baby tomato plants from friends instead of Home Depot. They are also in a different location in our yard where they are getting more sun and I put compost in the soil when I was prepping the planting bed. The plants are HUGE and yielding more tomatoes than we can eat! We have some spiders out there too who are eating the bad buggies, much to the children's chagrin. (They HATE the spiders, even when I remind them they are probably protecting our tomatoes.)

We also got some beans from plants The Wild Child and Martha Jr. planted but never enough to rely on them alone for a side dish. We planted some seeds from a lettuce mix packet but the plants from that were too bitter and we finally pulled them all up. We put some strawberries in the upside down planter but they went in too late, plus they were the Home Depot variety so I'm not expecting much.

DH made me a worm bin for Valentine's Day but we haven't started using it yet. No worms; I need to get by a bait shop. (The kids are keeping an eye out for worms in our yard but no luck yet.)

Food:
DH and I are still sticking with a vegetarian diet. We eat eggs occasionally. We eat vegetarian cheese (as opposed to cheese made with rennet, which is NOT vegetarian) quite often and small amounts of butter now and again. We hardly ever drink milk. (I still use it in recipes on occasion, and I wouldn't turn down hot chocolate during cold weather.) I still avoid soy like the plague, but I miss recipes using soy sauce- stir fries and some raw recipes and so forth. I also miss the bread products I've had to give up that contain soy, like the whole wheat bread I used to get at the grocery store bakery.

The kids are perking along, dietarily speaking. The Eldest occasionally indulges in shrimp burritos but is otherwise vegetarian. I buy cold cuts from Whole Foods for The Wild Child (or he gets all peaked and cranky) every now and again; sometimes Martha Jr. will eat some of the cold cuts too, sometimes not. She's mainly veg except for that and eats the healthiest of the three overall. The Wild Child continues to be my biggest challenge. I have to feed the boy, but he won't eat much of anything healthy. As an example, if we have a pasta dish for dinner he'll skip the delicious sauce with veggies, beans, tomato sauce, etc. and put barbecue sauce directly on the pasta and eat only that. If we make whole wheat pasta he cries and won't eat anything. What do you do in that situation? He's gotta eat. Sigh.

Weight:
I've gained another couple of pounds but I'm fighting it. I know where I've gone wrong. I stopped measuring my carbs and I give in to grazing during dinner prep. If I can get that under control I'd get back down to where I want to be, so that's my short term goal- get out the measuring cups for pasta and rice, stop buying those darn tortilla chips (a MAJOR "red light" food), and control bread portions. (As in one slice, not 3.) To try to control my tendency to graze when I cook I made some hummus (from a mix from the Whole Foods bulk bins, which is super quick and easy) so I can dip carrot sticks and cucumber circles. That helps when I actually follow through!!

Fibromyalgia:
I'm still having a hard time with fibromyalgia but things are getting easier as my schedule calms down a bit. The Eldest found a ride part of the way home on two nights a week; YEAH!!! I still have to go get her, but it's a 20 minute round trip instead of an hour or more, which makes a big difference. We've had insane weekends with major Girl Scout field trips but that's calming down as well; no field trips in the immediate future. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Girl Scout field trips, they are just very tiring. I'm hoping we'll be able to start attending our home schooling group meetings again; I had to cut them out since I was so overwhelmed, especially by the end of the week (they meet on Fridays) but the kids miss their friends and I miss the other moms!! I've been sleeping well which is always an important component in keeping fibro under control. I'm still walking almost daily, which is important as well. When it comes to exercise balance is everything; just enough so I don't get "rusty", which makes things worse, and not too much so I don't get sore. (Since it takes FOREVER to get better when I get sore.) I collapse in bed for an hour or two when I get done with my walks, but I stick with it.

The key word to managing the fibro is that balance thing; it's an absolute necessity. I have to balance my schedule, exercise, sleep needs, weight, everything. I so need to take up meditation! (Which is supposed to help balance stress, or something.) If I can keep balance in my life, I can keep the fibro under control for the most part.

Strawberries:
I try to take the kids on a road trip to pick strawberries at least once a year. I had a date set up to go this year with some friends but the fields were closed that day so we haven't been at all yet. :( I've wanted to try again since then but there was just no way to get the free time! I am hopeful we'll be able to go next week. The Eldest will be on spring break so I won't have to worry about picking her up so there are 3 possible days. If I get to go, I'll post strawberry pictures!

The Supreme Court

2011-03-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is my new hero. He was the lone dissenting voice in the case against Westboro Baptist Church, where the court upheld Westboro's side, saying they can spew their hatred anywhere they want, even at funerals. They don't care about the emotional pain and trauma inflicted on the family of the deceased soldier. They don't care about dignity and respect for families who have made the ultimate sacrifice in losing their loved one to protect our country. Do they think our Founding Fathers, over 200 years ago, would have allowed such hatred? Would they be proud to see the Constitution being twisted to allow what Westboro is doing? They would be rolling over in their graves.

There have been several Supreme Court rulings that I have found to be an absolute travesty in recent years. The last one before this was giving corporations the same rights of free speech as individuals. Corporations are NOT people and should not be allowed to influence our elections. That is so wrong on so many levels I can not even believe it. Another ruling I take issue with has to do with imminent domain. Local governments are now allowed to take private property for the most frivolous of reasons. All it takes is a developer with the cash to buy off a city commission, and that house you've lived in, raised your family in, hoped to live out your days in, is now toast. It's disgusting. Where's the common sense? Where's the compassion? It's certainly not to be found in the highest court in our country anymore.

And there- now you know about 3 Supreme Court cases so you're more informed than Sarah Palin.

PS: As my commenter points out, it's eminent domain. And Samuel Alito is only my hero on this one case!! He's far too conservative for my taste otherwise. ~:-P

Word of the Day: Astroturfing

2011-02-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

I learned a new word today and then DH used it in conversation tonight at dinner. I was able to go "AH HA, I know what that means!" Love it when that happens. What I don't love, however, is what the word means and the fact that a word is needed to describe something so despicable. The word is "astroturfing". Astroturfing is defined quite well by Wikipedia so I'll wait while you click on the word and read the definition.

See? Crap like that is why I can NEVER, ever, not in a billion years, ever be a libertarian. They either don't know, out of naivete, or don't care, out of greed to profit from it, that stuff like that happens, and want to deregulate so corporations can do MORE of it! It's basically lying, and I'm sorry, but free speech to me doesn't mean the freedom to lie.

Did you see the acceptance speech at the Oscars for the best full length documentary? Did you hear the guy say that NOT ONE person has gone to jail for the meltdown of the financial industry? Not one. I don't know how many people have lost their homes and livelihoods over the greed that led to that meltdown, and yet no one is held accountable. So, what, no laws were broken? You have to ask yourself why it was that no laws were broken, if that indeed was the case. Doesn't that mean the laws, which are supposed to protect us, were flawed? And who made the laws? Our government. Our government that is made up of people who are all too often in the pockets of big business. When is the general public going to wake up and realize what's going on? Sometimes I wish I could just shake people and say "WAKE UP"!

And then there's the Wisconsin thing going on now. The governor has it out for the unions, trying to prevent collective bargaining. The Tea Party backed governor. Um hmm. Now what does that tell you about the Tea Party? They are anti-union. So Libertarians are against unions? I wasn't aware of that, but it seems to be that way now. Or maybe the Tea Party isn't as Libertarian as I thought? Oh, yeah, they are for the evil corporations while only TRYING to look like they are "for the people". Phhht. The veneer is cracking. Do you think there's any way Wisconsin will stay Republican in the future? I'm predicting a HUGE Democratic landslide in that state for the next elections.

So there you have it, my first post in a couple of weeks, a rant about politics. Maybe my writer's block is better now.

Bleh...

2011-02-17T20:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not blogging! I'm in a slump. My fibro is flaring a lot lately since I can't schedule my regular "home days" the way I need to. I spend my time driving The Eldest around to her classes 4 days a week, which is super draining, and something is always coming up for the other days, including weekends, so I'm constantly on the go. I'm feeling swamped. It'll pass, though. Her current schedule will change at the end of the semester, and even better, she'll be driving herself around as of this summer. (WHEW!) Girl Scout cookie season has passed so no more cookie booths until next year. We have a lot of field trips coming up, including an over night, between now and the end of the month, but next month is looking a little easier.

When my schedule gets out of control like this I get flare ups; it's just part of it. I muddle through the best I can and look for the light at the end of the tunnel. It's not a permanent state of affairs; things will settle down. I'm so fortunate that I typically have more control over my schedule and the craziness is temporary. I hate feeling like I'm whining about things; that's not what I'm trying to do here. I want to explain so that anyone reading will have a better understanding of fibro.

I have a dear friend who is suffering with fibro-like symptoms. She's asked me about it, what it feels like for me and how I cope. It's draining, mainly. Although I try to not let it limit me, I do tire more easily than a healthy person should which is really frustrating. If I had to work full time for a paycheck it would probably do me in; I know I'd spend every second of time off trying to recover with no time to LIVE, so I'm thankful it's not an issue for me. I have sleep issues off and on. I have memory problems and "fibro fog" where I can't think clearly sometimes, especially when I am in a noisy or stressful situation or if I'm tired. As for pain/discomfort, I get sore like I did before I had fibro symptoms but now I don't recover for what feels like ages. Really bad flare ups feel like the body aches you get with the flu. I don't seem to have the classic tender points, although the rheumatologist disagreed when she diagnosed me. My back acts up, especially when I'm on my feet a lot and can't get horizontal a few times during the day.

As for coping, I am so fortunate that I have a fairly mild case and I can mostly keep it under control by living as healthfully as possible, eating right, watching my weight, making time to sleep as much as my body will let me, taking my walks every day, and not over doing things. Balance is really important. (I should take up meditation and yoga; they would probably both help.) When I have a big event to attend that will involve a lot of standing or walking I take my cane/seat thingy, which is a life saver. It got me through my trip to Europe and a lot of other places since then! The only medication I take is a daily Aleve to control inflammation. I've been to an acupuncturist. I can't say enough about how wonderful those little needles are for the muscle aches! (The only problem was the drive over to the office; that got to be tough to work in once The Eldest's classes started. It was one more thing on my schedule!) The kids help out. The Middle Child loves to cook so she'll frequently make dinner for us. DH is my knight in shining armor; he comes to my rescue all the time. His cuddles are my best sleep aid, and that's just for starters. I'm also letting things go like keeping up with housework. I still have our Christmas decorations sitting out in the living room, but I'll get them put away eventually. It's a little embarrassing when I have people over but I can't stress about it. When I'm flaring it's survival mode- only the essentials are taken care of. I'll get through it and deal with the fall out when I'm feeling better. In the meantime, I take as much down time as I can steal away from my crazy schedule and spend a lot of time reading! My silver lining- if I have to hit the bed more often than I'd like, at least I can have the pleasure of books while I'm trying to recover.

Review: Crazy Sexy Diet

2011-02-07T19:56:00.000-08:00

I bought Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr early in January thinking it would be great to get a feel for a veg diet program. What to eat, healthy portions, all that kind of info. I finally got around to giving it a closer look over the weekend and I was so disappointed I returned it to the bookstore. While saying it's OK if you don't want to go all the way vegan it was still pretty negative about ALL food from animals, even eggs and dairy. Personally, with my soy issues, I don't feel I can give up eggs and dairy and still maintain a healthy diet. I don't need someone lying and telling me I'm eating "chicken fetuses" if I choose to eat an egg from a source that is as humane as I can find at Whole Foods. Last time I checked, they do NOT sell fertilized eggs for human consumption at the grocery store.

While there may be a lot of legitimate reasons to forgo eggs, such as protesting battery cages, the nutritional profile, and so forth, making the claim that the eggs are somehow baby chickens is a flat out lie that I found patronizing and irritating. In fact, if the chickens are treated well, eggs are the least offensive animal product. Chickens are going to lay eggs no matter what. If they are kept away from roosters the eggs will not be fertilized. If we don't eat them they go to waste, and where's the sense in that?

I didn't read the whole book. I read through the table of contents and only a few sections caught my interest. There was a lot of justification for eating a plant based diet (which is a good thing, but I get it already!) and not a lot in the way of practical recipes, meal plans, that type of thing. When I read the few sections that caught my interest, I found myself irritated by the author's chummy writing style. It was just too, I don't know, Valley Girl for me. Not with the "like, you knows", but very teenager-y, and gee, aren't we great pals?

I was really disappointed. It was like a nutrition text written by teens, for teens. I'm sure the author meant well and this might be THE book for some people, but it's not for me! I'm thankful the bookstore took it back.

Review: Eat Right America

2011-02-04T21:20:00.000-08:00

After reading the Eat Right America Nutritarian Handbook I decided to give the website a go. Here's my disclosure- I bought the handbook for the regular price at Whole Foods and I paid the regular price to sign up for the website as well. No one has asked me to review either the book or the website and I will not receive any compensation for doing so.

Especially since I'm not that impressed with the on-line information. I signed up for the website at a cost of $19.95 and that gets me the initial assessment and a few months of access. To continue past the trial period you have to cancel or it will cost $9 something per month. So I signed up. The first thing you do is take their assessment, which I did. I found it to be very similar to the Real Age website, which is free. Once you answer all the health questions (and it's helpful to know your weight, your waist and hip measurements, and have the results of your last cholesterol screening on hand) then they give you your "prescription". I was kind of disappointed that they didn't ask things like "are you vegetarian" and "do you have any food allergies". I guess it didn't really matter though since they don't give you a particular set of menus like other diets, they only offer guidelines that are listed in the handbook. They also give information about your current health level and disease risk, which is on Real Age for free.

The only thing that's special about the website is there is more information and they tell you which of the three levels of the nutritarian way of eating that they recommend for you to try. But the handbook makes good suggestions for that, too, so the info doesn't seem to be anything new. There are recipes but I wasn't blown away by the few I looked at. There was a pie chart showing how I eat now and another pie chart showing how I should eat. (Up the veggies, although not much since I'm already doing well on that front, and less processed food, especially when we eat out. Which also bothered me- I feel like I make good choices when I eat out but that's not taken into consideration.)

Over all, I would say meh. Get the handbook, which I love; you won't miss much if you skip the website. My opinion may change as I play around with the website more; I'll let you know one way or the other!

They Wrote My Diet Book!!

2011-02-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

I lost 40 pounds in 2007 and I've kept 30 of those pounds off for over 3 years now, which means I'm beating the odds. 95% of people who lose weight regain it all within 2 years so I'm in the elite 5%. I did it because I figured out something I've finally seen confirmed in a diet book- it's not about fad diets, low carb, no carb, low fat, or grapefruits, it's about nutrients.

My first inkling about this occurred when I read a really negative book several years ago about how you'll fail if you diet so you might as well get used to the size you are and get over it, only I didn't believe it. There was one study in particular that was written about in the book but I disagreed with the conclusions drawn from the results of the study. It was a military study about calorie restriction. A bunch of soldiers were put on diets and lost weight to the point that they were below optimum weight. They studied the reactions of the men and found that they became obsessed with food. They talked about food constantly and even exchanged recipes. The book author said that meant they were going to pig out as soon as possible and regain all the weight. (Which they probably did.) I drew a different conclusion. They were obsessed with food because their bodies were looking for the NUTRIENTS they needed to be healthy.

I think that's what happens to us and why, as a nation, we are so overweight. We have become addicted to the empty calories that are so readily and abundantly available all around us. Our bodies get used to having to eat and eat and eat to extract even a minimal portion of the nutrients needed for health and survival. Our bodies get used to making us crave large quantities of food out of desperation. I don't think it's because our bodies want useless empty calories, but because our bodies panic since the good stuff isn't there in that McBurger. So then we must need to eat lots and lots and lots. We get used to that so when we do start to eat healthfully, our bodies don't trust us for the longest time. It's hard to reset our appetites. If we go about making every calorie count, nutritionally speaking, then our bodies will eventually calm down and adjust, and quit panicking. We'll be able to eat the appropriate amount to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

That's what I did, although I still have a few areas where I could improve my eating habits. I'm not perfect but I eat far healthier than the majority of Americans. I still include too much pasta and white bread in my diet, although I try to control portions when I indulge. I eat veggies including greens like collards, spinach, and romaine lettuce, broccoli, carrots, and lots and lots of tomatoes and tomato products. We eat a lot of beans and whole grain rice. I eat at least one small serving of nuts daily and I love, love, love fruit. I hardly ever eat desserts or sweets.

I also continue to read everything I can find about nutrition that strikes me as taking a healthy approach. I turn my nose up at anything fad-ish. I don't go for restricting food groups, although low fat makes sense to me. (Not no-fat; I love my EVOO.) When I was in Whole Foods I saw a little booklet on sale at the register and I picked it up, and now that I'm reading it I'm finding it is the diet book I would have written. Everything in it makes sense. What is this miracle booklet, you ask? It's the Eat Right America Nutritarian Handbook by Joel Furhman, MD. It says EXACTLY what I believe about health and eating right. If you have any interest in losing weight and/or getting healthy, get this book. There's also an interactive website but I haven't checked it out yet.

Give up processed food, make healthy choices about what goes into your body, get some exercise to the best of your ability, then live long and prosper.

Who Do You Trust?

2011-02-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

I've been in a mini-debate with a cousin about political stuff. He's libertarian; I'm liberal. (I still love him anyway.) ;) During the course of our conversation (via FB) he asked about trust. Why do I trust a particular source I used to back up one of my arguments? That got me thinking. Why do we trust the news sources we trust? Then I ran across a comic that referenced trusting only one news source as a bad thing. That made me go "yeah, I can see that". I rely on more than one source for my news, which is something I'm proud of. I listen to NPR and watch CNN. I glance at the headlines in my local paper and read the op-ed section a few times a week. I read both the liberal and conservative columnists so I can see both points of view. (They do a "from the right", "from the left" thing in the paper.) I skim the headlines on Google, which draws from a variety of sources. I read articles as I "Stumble" across them on-line. I talk extensively with DH, who reads a number of political blogs. I catch Nightline once or twice a week. I occasionally take a look at the White House blog since I like to go right to the source. Oh, and of course, there's always Jon Stewart.

And I think about things. I think about whether or not the arguments the columnists use make sense or not. I think about spin. Can I see a hole in what is being said? Does it agree with what I already know about a given subject? What are they REALLY saying? I frequently find that I can find GAPING holes in the conservative arguments that leave their whole premise in shambles. Basic flaws in logic, usually. (Cal Thomas is bad for that; he doesn't even make any sense half the time.) Rhetoric and name calling, and I have to admit there are liberals and Democrats that do the same thing. (Thank you to Jon Stewart for calling them out on both sides of the aisle.)

As to spin, it's insidious and something to be watched for. I remember the first time I really became aware of spin and how crazy it sounded when you got down to it. It was during the 2000 elections when Gore was smeared by the conservatives as being "too smart". Elitist, out of touch, that kind of thing, but it boiled down to too smart. HELLO- don't we want someone smart to run the country? By casting our ballots and holding elections, we are basically acting as a company hiring a CEO. Would we hire a CEO who would be fun to drink a beer with at the local barbecue, or would we hire someone who is intelligent and knowledgeable and can get the job done if we wanted our company to succeed? Personally, I'm going for the smart guy.

As for my support for our president, that was sparked by one thing. I have children. I have children who have toys that were affected by the product recalls over lead paint. When Obama was in the US Senate he introduced a bill that would have put more safeguards in place to insure that lead tainted toys were kept out of our country in the future. The bill didn't pass, but he gained my respect. He wanted to stand up to the toy industry and protect MY children. He's had my support ever since, even in the primaries.

There's another thing I've come to hold as a basic marker for my decisions. Where does the issue stand in terms of "Big Business"? Because that's a whole group I certainly do NOT trust. From what I've seen over the course of my close to 50 odd years on this planet, Big Business would do anything to make a buck, even at the expense of my children, my health, even my very life. They endanger and cheat their own employees. They endanger and cheat the people that live in their communities. They rape our earth and destroy our environment. They make flawed products and then lie to get us to buy them anyway. They don't care about the suffering of the poor, of animals, of children. They buy off our politicians. I know this is not true of all companies, maybe not even a majority of them, but enough of them that it's scary. That's why I could never, never, never in a million years be a Libertarian. I don't have that kind of blind trust in Big Business. I do not in any way, shape, or form believe the "market" is strong enough to control the evil a large company can perpetuate against us all. I mean, has Toyota gone out of business over their faulty cars? Has BP gone out of business over the oil spill? All you have to do is watch "Erin Brokovitch" to know what I'm talking about. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT US, they only care about the bottom line and profit, profit, profit. I am a liberal because I am hoping for government regulations to protect us against the evils of large corporate entities. I am hoping for honest politicians who will stand up and say enough to the corporations, you will not let greed cause harm to anyone.

But that's enough soap-boxing for now; the kids have schoolwork to do and Girl Scouts will be here in just a couple of hours so I'm signing off to get back to my family managing.

Smoothie Luv

2011-01-31T16:04:00.000-08:00

I just made the most amazing smoothie by throwing a bunch of random stuff in the Vita-Mix. The only problem is I'll never be able to replicate it!! Well, I'll try; here goes. I threw in some...

~ frozen fruit: pineapple, mango, peaches, and the last few blueberries in the bag
~ then I added some delicious practically-fresh-squeezed OJ
~ and a splash of coconut milk
~ Oh, almost forgot- I started out by blending up about half a dozen dates. You have to blend them up first or you get date chunks throughout the smoothie. (Which I like, but the kids have a fit.) The dates are the sweetener, better than sugar or honey.

Then I used the Vita Mix plunger to jam it down while I blended it all up into almost a soft sherbet consistency. It was the BEST EVER.

I think I'm going for seconds...

Organizing

2011-01-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

The beginning of the year is an important milestone in my efforts to keep my papers in order. I've been filing by the month for several years now, so when the new year rolls around I have to clear out the old files to make way for the new. I LOVE filing this way. Here's how it works. All of my bills, statements, receipts, and other business-y paperwork goes in one folder for each month. I do NOT separate out the water bill from the phone bill from the grocery receipts, which saves a ton of work. I pay what needs to be paid, enter it all in my computerized check register, and plop it all in one folder instead of spending 20 minutes filing everything individually. IT WORKS. When I need a receipt to make a return, for instance, I am able to find it easily. When I need to refer back to a bill, I can find those pretty easily, too. It's no harder to look up a bill in my files by the date than by the company.

I do have two exceptions to everything-in-one-folder. The first is credit card receipts and bills. I have one folder for my cards and one folder for DH's cards. Those seem to be the one item where I might need to access more than one month at a time, so it's easier to keep those separate. I try to match receipts to bills and keep track of my spending somewhat (in theory) so I don't want them all mixed up with non-credit card receipts. The idea is to match each month's receipts with the bills as they come in, but I found myself sitting down with a huge folder of unmatched MESS today. I quickly got them in order, though, and matched the receipts to bills for the entire year in about an hour. (I'm so proud of myself for getting that job done; just had to brag.)

The second exception is medical paperwork. Statements from the insurance company, doctor bills, prescription receipts, and so forth.

To finish everything off, I have a second drawer for long term files. That's paperwork from companies that I might need to refer to over time filed in a more traditional manner. Insurance policies, information on car repairs, correspondence from our homeowner's association, initial contracts with phone companies, that type of thing.

So that's my filing system in a nutshell. It's worked for me for a lot of years now and it's saved a boatload of time. I also really like that I clear out my main file drawer once a year so it doesn't get overly full. I keep a small file box in a corner of the room with last year's files; when I need to clear that out the now-two-year-old files go in a storage bag and up to the attic, then last year's go in so it's constantly rotating. Works for me!!

Oh, Hello

2011-01-20T20:50:00.000-08:00

Hi: You still out there? I'm still here, although I've been neglecting my poor blog lately. I've been distracted. You see, I'm married to this really fascinating, sexy, intelligent, charming man and we got to spend a lot of time together when he was off in December. It's been like a renewal to get to spend all that time together, a rediscovery. I've been like the girl in high school who ditches her friends when she hooks up with her new boyfriend, only we've been married for over 22 years now. (Sorry, friends- I still love you all, he's just kept me really, really busy.) ;)

I'm 'fessing up. I'm in love with my husband and can't get enough of him, and it's been reciprocal on his part. I'm a lucky girl.

Resolutely

2011-01-05T18:48:00.001-08:00

Happy 2011! I've been busy cocooning and that's extended to my on-line activities lately, but now DH is back to work, The Eldest started classes again tonight, we've already had a Junior Girl Scout meeting, and life is back in full swing. It is a new year and along with that I've made some resolutions. I've never been a big resolution maker in the past but setting goals is always a good thing to do so I'll give it a go. Here they are, in no particular order:

Around the House:
~ wash one to two loads of clothes every day (this means wash, dry, fold, and put away)
~ keep up with the bills
~ keep up with entering receipts in our money management program

Parenting:
~ implement fair and effective consequences and try not to yell; I will be Zen Mommy
~ make Sunday Family Bike Rides a habit for all of us

Personal:
~ continue my (almost) daily walks
~ ride my bike more often
~ find a way to get back to my goal weight while maintaining a healthy vegetarian diet
~ strength training!!! (This has been a resolution for ages now but I never seem to get around to it.)

And my all time favorite:
~ Remember to write 2011 instead of 2010!!

Merry Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T10:30:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

It's Christmas Eve, and I feel like I'm over the worst of the stressfulness the holidays bring. The shopping is done, the menus are set, it's only a matter of execution and enjoyment at this point. We're having our big meal today for lunch, a tradition from my family, then for dinner we'll have pierogies, a tradition from DH's family. Tomorrow we've started our own Christmas brunch tradition, then it's leftovers for the rest of the day. Last year we had an outdoor fire in our fire pit and had hot chocolate and s'mores after dark on Christmas Day; I think we'll continue that this year as well if the weather is OK for it. We also exchange "family presents" today, then Santa comes tonight and those presents are opened tomorrow morning.

What are your holiday traditions? How does your family celebrate?

And As If Camping Weren't Enough...

2010-12-21T09:46:00.001-08:00

After we got home from camping I had the rest of the day on Sunday to unpack, then on Monday I went on a marathon Christmas shopping spree, then Monday night and Tuesday I had to pack for DISNEY WORLD (and Universal Studios). Suffice to say we didn't leave until late Tuesday night; we got into our hotel around midnight. We were very impressed with our suite when we got to it. It was a spacious two bedroom with a full kitchen for a very reasonable off season price. Our only complaint was with the dampness, which I don't think is anything anyone could help. A/C units will pull dampness out of the air but it was COLLLLDDD the whole time we were there so we had the heat on. There was a lot of condensation on the windows; anything I left by the window in our bedroom would be wet when I picked it up. Blech.

But on to the fun stuff! We were there to meet with my aunt, uncle, cousins, cousin-in-laws, and the mini-cousins. Two of the minis are close in age to The Wild Child and Martha, Jr., and the mini-est cousin is a little guy at just the right age to.... pull the fire alarm at the restaurant we had brunch at on our last day. Oh, yes, he did! (He's two; they do stuff like that at that age.) His poor dad was mortified; the rest of us veteran parents told him not to sweat it. He'll be laughing about it in a few years! Mini-est was full of it, too. The Wild Child recognized a kindred spirit and had a lot of fun running around with him in spite of the age difference. We went to the Magic Kingdom with everyone on Friday and it was wonderful. I love connecting with my relatives and doing something fun like that together makes it even better. That's one of the advantages of living in Florida- everyone with kids eventually heads to Disney World, and when they do we can meet them there. We've had more family reunions there than you can shake a stick at, and we've loved them all.

We also took a day by ourselves on Thursday to head to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. It was interesting but so crowded, even though it was still technically the off season. That section of the park is so new that it's still packing in the crowds, and BOY, it was crowded. The rest of the park was a lot less densely packed with people so they were all there, like us, to see that one section. I must say they've done a nice job with it. The butter beer was yummy. (I didn't drink an entire glass by myself; I shared with DH.) It was like a root beer topped with a butterscotch flavored whipped cream. There were lines to get in the shops, too, but the kids HAD to have wands so we waited to get into Olivander's. When we actually got in we realized why there was such a wait- they had a little show in the first part of the shop with a guy dressed up as Olivander. It was only a few minutes long but we all got a big kick out of it. Once the show is over they herd you into the larger section of the shop, which is also packed, so you can pick out your wand. That's even a lot of fun since they have several different ones. You can get one like the characters used (The Eldest liked Hermione's) or you can get one based on a date of your choosing. Martha, Jr. chose one based on her birthday. The Wild Child lost his already, of course.

After spending time with my uncle and his family we drove over to see my in-laws for two more days. After all the running around and packing and theme parking and fun and activity it was relaxing to be at their house. We were only going to stay one night but once I got settled in I didn't feel up to rushing again, and we were enjoying their company, so we stayed the extra day. We had to head back home late yesterday though since our kitty is boarding at the vet's and he has to be picked up by today at the latest.

So now we're back home, and I have 3 days to get ready for Christmas. Yipes!!!

Camping

2010-12-12T21:47:00.001-08:00

The Middle Child, aka Martha Stewart, Jr., and I went camping with the Girl Scouts this weekend along with 4 other girls and one mom from her troop... and a whole bunch of other troops from our area. We went to one of my favorite places, a Girl Scout camp located upstate a ways. I'm told it's "luxury camping" since we were in cabins and we had showers with hot water, power, and refrigerators. We didn't have heaters, though, and in those non-insulated cabins it was pretty chilly in the middle of the night! We were lucky, though; the temp only dropped into the 50's while we were there. It's supposed to get down into the 30's tonight! Yowsers! I think I would've been bundling us up and driving HOME if it had gotten that cold. I can handle 50's, though. My sleeping bag is pretty cozy, plus I had a fleece liner and doubled up sheet to round it out, then I had on my flannel jammies, socks, and my leg warmers. (Left over from the 80's, but very handy.) I was positively toasty.... until I had to get up and go pee at 4:00 a.m. That was brutal.

Daylight started out cold but warmed up. We spent Saturday morning, through lunch and into early afternoon, participating in structured activities with the whole group. (There were around 100 of us there.) They gave us the rest of the time to do as we pleased, which was perfect. We went back to our cabins, relaxed for a little while, then got started with cooking dinner. For previous Camporees our meals were catered, but they decided not to go that route this time. It was a lot more work in terms of advance planning, but only because I haven't camp-cooked with my girls before. Once we got down to actually cooking, it was fun. We kept it simple for most of the girls with hot dogs on a stick. I don't eat hot dogs so I took leftover chili from home, but I was able to make some boil-in-bag rice over the fire to go with it. I also had a popcorn popper and the girls had fun making several batches. (The last batch burned, probably because we didn't clean the popper out properly before hand. The other batches were perfect.)

The cooking and clean up becomes an activity in and of itself when you're making food over an open fire. The girls got to help every step of the way, from lighting the fire starters to cleaning up using the 3 bucket system and their dunk bags. I think they learned a lot while we were there, in addition to all the fun. They made friends with the older girls in the two other troops at our campsite, too. All in all, it was a great weekend. Give me a week or two of recovery time and I'll be ready to go again!

I'm Still Here!!!

2010-12-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I haven't written anything since November. Writer's block, I guess, plus I've been really, really busy. A Girl Scout camping trip, travel, laundry piled to the ceiling, plus our housekeeper/babysitter/family friend is out of commission for a while. She's having back problems and can't work right now. She's in my thoughts, though; she's a dear friend and I'm so worried for her. She doesn't have insurance so I don't know what she's going to do. I tried to call her today but I got voice mail. Since I don't have family in the area she's a vital part of my support network and it's been hard to lose her help. Thank goodness DH is off for the rest of the month; I might make it with his help.

I can't see having much time to blog the rest of the month, either, but there might be a post or two. Here's wishing you and yours happy holidays if I don't get another chance to write!

Thanksgiving, Veg Style

2010-11-27T08:10:00.000-08:00

Our first vegetarian Thanksgiving turned out rather well, if I do say so myself. We attended a great vegan potluck at the beach for lunch. Well, it was supposed to be vegan but I managed to mess that part up! I took some prepared food from Whole Foods that I assumed was vegan, but I'm not a great label reader and it turns out it had Parmesan cheese in it. Someone realized and put an index card next to it with "NOT VEGAN" written on it. I was glad someone caught my error but I was also mortified since they so nicely asked that we bring only vegan food!! At least the two batches of cranberry sauce I had The Eldest make were vegan, down to the vegan sugar. Other than that it was fun, though. The kids had a ball running around near the water and the weather was picture perfect.

I didn't plan anything for our Thanksgiving dinner. I figured the potluck was enough, plus I've been having a tough time with a fibro flare up for the past week so planning has been beyond me. That means I didn't do any menu planning or special shopping for the day. I still got hungry and wanted a Thanksgiving meal a few hours after we got home from the beach, though! I mentally went over what we had in the house and managed to come up with a meal we could all work on together. I went to the kitchen and called all hands on deck, then told them the plan. The kids really came through and figured out some additional things we could have, even The Wild Child, and we managed, with some great team work, to pull together a feast!

I am still so proud of my kids for the team effort and I'm looking forward to many more holiday meals where we work together to create a feast for us all to enjoy. I like cooking with my kids. The only sour note was DH. He HATES to have people in the kitchen with him when he cooks and he got super cranky about it, but he's going to have to learn to suck it up. The lessons the kids learn from working together are too valuable to let the opportunity go to waste. (He does get kudos for all the clean up he did after the fact. The kitchen was a disaster and he worked on it off and on all day Friday to get it back under control. He's forgiven his grumpiness for that.)

I wanted to take pictures when we had the table all set but we couldn't find the camera. Here's what we had and who helped make it:

Potato prep: DH and The Eldest (luckily we had a bag of mini purple potatoes, a bag of baby sized honey gold potatoes, and one baking potato on hand)

Potato Salad: I finished this up

Mashed Potatoes: The Wild Child, Martha Stewart Jr., and I finished this up

Vegetarian Gravy: The Eldest requested this and I made it

Roasted Purple Potatoes: DH

Baked Mac and Cheese: The Eldest (she decided she wanted this, found the recipe, and made it all by herself; it was delicious and a great main dish for the meal)

Deviled Eggs: Martha Jr. came up with the idea and made them all by herself

Green Salad: DH

Corn Bread Sticks: The Wild Child requested these and helped me make them (although we didn't get them done in time for the meal; I ate them with my leftovers on Friday)

Iced Tea with Simple Syrup on the side: The Wild Child, Martha Jr., and I

Table Setting: The Wild Child and Martha Jr.

As a special treat for The Wild Child I also made four chicken leg/thigh quarters, the one thing I purchased specifically for Thanksgiving. That's the first time I've cooked meat in 2010. He ate two of them; the girls ate the others while DH and I abstained. The Wild Child was so happy! He's a carnivore, through and through. He's also a growing boy and needs meat occasionally since he won't eat beans or other vegetarian proteins. He's so darn picky; drives me crazy.

Since Thanksgiving is about giving thanks, I will finish up by stating that I am thankful for my family. We pulled together to accomplish something that turned out to be really wonderful. I think this will go down as my favorite Thanksgiving ever.

We Need Worms!

2010-11-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

We made attempts to compost recently but I wouldn't exactly say we were successful. After the fancy compost bin arrived (via mail order) and I was doing my research about how to use it, I got the funny feeling that what we needed was not in fact a compost bin, but rather a worm bin. My suspicions were confirmed today when I was stumbling around the internet and found this little gem about how to make a worm bin and what you put in it.

The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, watched the video with me just now. He's very excited about our newest gardening project, and I finally figured it out. If you have a lot of yard waste, which we don't, you compost. If you have a lot of kitchen waste, which we do, you use a worm bin. So simple; I wish I had realized sooner!!

Politics

2010-11-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

I've written a couple of political-ish posts lately, and here's another one. DH has been going back and forth with a high school friend, once again on Facebook, who is rather conservative. They were pretty civil to each other previously but DH lost it today and went negative, which bothers me. I want all of us to be able to hash out our differences in a civil manner, but when people feel things so passionately I don't know if that's possible. We're all running scared. Conservatives are scared of liberals, liberals are scared of conservatives, Tea Partiers are scared of big government, immigrants, and gays who want to marry, and everyone is scared of the economy, and it's all crashing together in one big sea of emotion.

What's scaring me is the rhetoric that no one is doing anything about. I know we have free speech and all, but isn't there a time when free speech turns into threats and inciting riots? There's this conservative radio talk show host, Joyce Kaufman, here in Florida who stated "if ballots don't work, bullets will" in a speech to a crowd outside of a strip mall. Then, and here's the really frightening part, everyone CHEERED for her. What's wrong with this picture? They cheered when she said to use BULLETS. As in bullets that kill people. What did she mean by that? I'm certainly worried about what she meant by that. If I don't vote the way she wants me to I should be shot? The liberals in our government should be shot? Or should the bullets merely be put out on display somewhere? (Snort.) What? To me that was an open, terrorist threat and this woman should be charged. She was CLEARLY inciting violence and I don't know about you, but I don't think that should be covered as free speech. I'm no lawyer but that just seems so incredibly wrong. The same example, you're not allowed to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, seems to me to apply here. She's yelling "fire", as in "fire your guns if you don't like the way things are going", and that's scary.

Oh, and here's the kicker. She was slated to be the chief of staff for a newly elected tea party congressman. She turned the job down, thank goodness, but the fact that she was even up for consideration is absolutely insane!

See, there I go getting wound up myself, when my intent was to write a nice little post about civil discourse. There's so much more to be said; I don't think this will be my last political-ish post. Now that I've gone there, I think there's no turning back!

Re-organizing the Blog Again

2010-11-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

In addition to using my blog as a creative writing outlet, I use it to corral all of the internet links I want to be able to access easily. I have my lists down the right hand side, and now they are all organized and neat and tidy. I've sorted them into several lists instead of just blogs and links. The blogs are the same but the links are separated into various categories for your viewing pleasure. It's easier to find stuff this way! I got tired of having to search through the links for my favorite daily games so that's what got me started. Once I pulled those out by themselves (titled "My Brain Exercises") I realized I had to sort everything, so there you have it. Now you and I both can easily find vegetarian food sites like Global Vegan Kitchen, informative sites like the Huffington Post, and even the ever so popular Rim Shot.

Someone asked me about organizing a list of links/blogs not too long ago. Setting up a blog or homepage of your own is a great way to do it. Even if you don't blog, having the list of links is great. You can sort it however you'd like and you never have to write a word if you don't want to; it can be a blog for your own personal use. I do use the bookmarks feature on my browser as well but I find it to be more cumbersome, so my blog is a handy dandy tool that is a lot more useful than my bookmarks, especially since it's accessible from any computer with an internet connection. Plus the blog links on my blog update with the time of the most recent post, which is really great when you are following blogs like Hyperbole and a Half that only update occasionally. Those posts are hilarious, though, and I don't want to miss it when she puts something new up!

I also have a private homepage on Google which is convenient since you can put all sorts of gadgets on there. I have a box for my Gmail account, several news sources I follow, (NPR, CNN, Top Stories), local weather, a calendar, and so forth. I have a Google Reader box which lists the most recent posts from several of the blogs I follow. I've set up a similar Google homepage for The Middle Child, aka Martha Stewart Jr., with boxes for her Gmail, a virtual pet, and a few other age appropriate items. The gadgets you can add are endless! I can waste a lot of time looking through the various gadget offerings.

But now I need to go get organized in my real house and stop playing with the virtual one!!

PS: I was thinking about changing my background and clicked over to The Cutest Blog on the Block, and guess what I found!! They will turn your blog into a book so you can have a hard copy of all your posts. That is so cool!!! (But I'm not going to change my background just yet; I really like the one I'm using now.)

Show Some Courtesy for Pete's Sake!

2010-11-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

There have been a few times lately when Facebook friends have made snarky comments or jokes about politicians I happen to admire. I've called them on it, as respectfully as possible, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it's hurtful. It really bothers me to know that people I care about would publicly post things that are so thoughtless with no consideration for opposing points of view. (Like mine; ahem.)

Secondly, it’s just plain rude. It used to be that the rules of polite society included "don't discuss religion or politics". That was a rule for a reason! You don't want to upset someone you care about or are in contact with socially, or have them think you're some kind of jerk if you get fired up. (And I can get fired up about politics, so I am talking about myself here.) Up until my last post I've tried to keep politics out of my blog, but it is something I'm passionate about so it's going to creep in from time to time. With the exception of the previous post, I am careful to keep my political views to myself when I am in mixed company. By mixed I mean politically mixed, and I prefer to err on the side of caution. If I don't know where you stand politically, then I'm not going to bring the subject up. I do have friends who share my beliefs; I will discuss politics with them until the cows come home. I am also quite comfortable debating with anyone of any political stripe if I know that we both can disagree respectfully, but it's difficult to figure that out about a person unless you know them really, really well.

That's the whole key- respect. I may not agree with you, but I still respect you. I will not sneer at you or demean you or make tasteless jokes about the politicians you admire. I may try to point out what I dislike about said politicians, but I won't pray for their death or say that they are un-American and should leave the country. I won't say YOU should leave the country if I disagree with you and I expect the same treatment in return.

But we certainly aren't shown any examples of respect for opposing viewpoints in our media these days, unless you count the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Why are we as a society so accepting of this behavior in our newscasters? Why does it take a couple of comics to bring this disgraceful behavior to the national spotlight? There are examples of rudeness and disrespect on just about every cable news program. It's become "cool" to sneer at and belittle the other side, to call them un-American and un-patriotic, and I'm tired of it. Now that behavior is trickling into society so that people don't see any problem with posting demeaning jokes on a public forum. (And by public forum I mean any forum where a lot of people with many differing views participate, such as Facebook.)

But it is a problem. This kind of behavior dehumanizes all of us. It makes it easy to have an “us versus them” mentality, when it really isn’t “us verses them” at all. We’re all in this together, and if we keep electing these radicals (on both sides) to our government who refuse to work together, egged on by an increasingly radicalized media who are egged on by their ratings, then we’re all in trouble. If we follow the example of this increasing radicalization and find it acceptable to sneer at the other side and start fighting amongst ourselves then where can that lead? Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, quoted the Bible when he said “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. (Mark 3:25) Words of wisdom indeed. In that dark time in our nation’s history we were literally divided in the worst possible way. I don’t think we’re in danger of another civil war but I do think the dangers we face if our government doesn’t work are very real. Threats like a crumbling infrastructure, corporate excesses, terrorism, and the economic dominance of countries like China.

We have to work together. We have to stand up and say “NO MORE” to empty, angry, radical rhetoric. Debate the issues intelligently so we can come up with solutions and get things done. Stop snarking at each other because it is not productive. Stop thinking it is OK to post nasty jokes about the other side in a public forum. It’s not OK. It’s not funny. It’s rude and it rips us all apart.

I was told I have a chip on my shoulder the first time I called someone on a rude Facebook comment. I said yep, I sure do. I’ll own it and I wish more people would do the same. Be nice to each other, and if you aren’t, I’m going to call you on it.

I'm So Sorry...

2010-11-02T20:16:00.001-07:00

About my state. It seems the land of Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles has gone Republican of late, so I hang my head in despair. I didn't get fired up for Alex Sink or Kendrick Meek. I didn't make any phone calls. (I got so sick of GETTING them I couldn't imagine making any.) I didn't knock on any doors or stuff any envelopes. I didn't feel any enthusiasm, that contagious stuff that might have encouraged others to think more carefully about who they were voting for. I didn't blog about the candidates I liked. I didn't have it in me this time, and look what's happening. Marco Rubio. Rick Scott.

At least Debbie Wasserman Schultz was re-elected. (Yeah, Debbie, who happens to be a Girl Scout leader!! The Eldest attended an event for teen girls where she was the key note speaker and I've met her a couple of times. We all think she's great!) DH says John Waltz from Kentucky lost; he called us for support a few times and I never got around to sending him any money. I meant to, I just didn't. Ron Klein lost. Dan Gelber lost. It's a blood bath.

But why, why?? Do people really have such short memories? The Republicans are the ones who got us into the economic mess we're in, and now that gee, TWO YEARS have passed they're all mad at the Democrats for not fixing things in the blink of an eye? What? Are people really so angry that they have health care now when they didn't before? Are people really so angry that they have jobs thanks to the stimulus money that they wouldn't have had without it? (The article about the stimulus jobs was in the local paper today. A lot of jobs in education and road construction.) How did the "big government is bad" thing get started? Well, big government and mindless bureaucracy can have bad parts, but you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Big government also does things like prevent companies from killing us all in the name of profits. Oh, what, you need examples? OK, how about lead in children's toys? How about food poisonings left and right? How about cars that accelerate all of a sudden? How about oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico and ruining fishing as an industry for a whole lot of people? Still think we don't need regulations for anything? OH, the market will take care of it! Like how BP is going bankrupt after the oil spill, right? And everyone stopped buying Toyotas the world over, so that company is a thing of the past. And we all stopped eating after the food recalls. Uh huh.

I just don't understand the Tea Party and Libertarian points of view at all. It's so... pie in the sky. It's all about get government out of the way so Big Business can run over all of us. Government is our protection from the bullies of the world, whether the bullies are terrorists or the serial killer roaming the streets or Nazi Germany or King George or BP. I mean, why have we as a species developed governments in the first place? It's to protect our society from things that would harm us so that we can live together in peace and security. Go back to the fundamentals, the very basics even before there was a United States and Founding Fathers and a Constitution. Why do we have government? Why are we not living like gorillas or baboons or dolphins? I mean, think about it. Think about what you want government to do, what you want your government to protect you from and to provide you with.

In addition to protection from bullies we need our government for infrastructure. Governments need to provide infrastructure so that we all can prosper. Infrastructure like safe roads and bridges and an efficient transportation system that we can all use freely. Infrastructure in the form of our electrical grid. Infrastructure like schools to develop the potential in every child so that they can each take a place in a productive society. Infrastructure like a safety net for those who can't work through no fault of their own, like those with chronic illness or disability. (OK, technically a couple of these things aren't infrastructure, but yeah.)

Where's the heart? Where's the care and concern for our fellow man these days? I don't see that in the Republican party, which is why I'm a Democrat. All I see in the Republican party is front men for Big Business, like Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice who has worked for Monsanto, or Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin, in the pockets of Big Oil. What are Thomas' ties to that company today? Did he recuse himself from the Supreme Court decision that allowed companies free speech just like people?

I want to do some research here and give some links to Supreme Court decisions but The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, needs my attention. See? That's how it goes. I have sh*t to do, to quote Jon Stewart, so I'll rant again another day. Sigh...

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween everyone! We had a big day yesterday when a few friends came over to watch the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear"; today we're taking it easy. Since I'm in the throes of a cold I'll be the one to stay home and pass out candy; DH will take the little ones out to trick or treat (and collect donations for UNICEF) while The Eldest will go with some of her friends.

To close out NaBloWriMo, here are some of the pictures I promised from my book club luncheon.

The Middle Child, aka Martha Stewart Jr., arranged the centerpiece:

Black Bean and Butternut Vegan Chili:
(Cooked by my darling DH)

Black Rice Salad:
(I forgot to get a close up before we started to eat!! This was also cooked by DH. The serving dish is a new one I found at Bed, Bath, and Beyond; I love it! I was able to use it for the book club but it will also be great for Christmas, patriotic holidays, and general entertaining since I've decorated my kitchen with touches of red.)

Savory Pumpkin Muffins with Black Sesame Seeds:

Black Olive Tapenade with Carrot Sticks and Orange Bell Pepper Strips:

Ghostly Whipped Cream with Cinnamon Palmiers:

Candied Pecans:
(This serving dish was one of my grandmother's; I'm happy I was able to put it to use.)

The Whole Spread (OK, half of it):

The Whole Spread (the other half):

NaBloWriMo

2010-10-30T21:49:00.001-07:00

I missed posting yesterday! I can't believe I made 28 straight days and messed up at the very end. Rats. It's because of this dratted cold. I don't feel like doing anything, especially sitting at the computer.

So I'm going to bed now, and I'll have to try for a perfect NaBloWriMo month next year.

Halloween!

2010-10-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

BOO! Halloween has arrived (or will in a couple of days, but we've been celebrating already) which means the holiday season has begun. Oh, boy; I'm not ready!! I love the holidays but there's so much to be done. The folks over at Sears are having fun with this whole Halloween thing, though; they're catering to the Zombie set these days. Stodgy old Sears; go figure.

I took a cue from the web today and made up a Halloween bingo game for the kids. (OK, I know I found the link to the Bingo game easily, but now I can't remember where so my apologies for not giving proper credit; the game was NOT my idea.) It's titled GHOST and I tailored it for each of the younger two. (I think The Eldest might not appreciate it; just sayin'.) I made a 5 x 5 table on Microsoft Word and filled 24 of the spaces. I used a clip art ghost for the middle spot. For The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, I used the sight words he's been working on. For The Middle Child, aka Martha Stewart Jr., I used her vocabulary words. They used tiddly winks for markers. I printed out all of the words on a separate piece of paper then cut them all apart with my paper cutter, had them fold the words up, and placed them in my "cauldron". (An inexpensive plastic one from the grocery store.) I pulled the words out one at the time and, for The Wild Child, called them out, but for Martha Jr., I read the definition and she had to find the word. It worked out really well. They had to fill the whole board; they were neck and neck at the end. I was down to two words left so I pulled them both out and The Wild Child had to read it himself while Martha Jr. had to give me the definition. I declared a tie!

The Wild Child wasn't too excited about the game at first but by the end, when he was a little more confident that he could do it, he was really into it. They both wanted to play again!

I love it when I get all inspired.

PS: I figured out where I got the Bingo idea; it was over at Pepper Paints.

Facebook and Photographs

2010-10-27T20:13:00.000-07:00

I've been spiffing up my Facebook page a little bit. I've updated my "likes" and "interests" and I'm going through the pictures on our computer and posting some of those. It's kind of like scrapbooking, only digital, 'cause I don't have time for real scrapbooking these days. I've always loved looking through my pictures and I put my first scrapbook together back in high school. When the scrapbooking-as-craft craze kicked in, I was right there getting all artsy with my pictures, storing them in acid free albums using all the fancy acid free stickers and embellishments. It was fun and I'll probably get back to it one of these days, but now that we have digital cameras and pictures are coming at me like an avalanche, it makes me feel a bit overwhelmed.

One thing I have noticed, however, is that I have a ton of pictures of DH and the kids, but not so many of me. A few other moms I know have commented on this phenomenon; it seems to be a prevalent situation for the mommy crowd. I even have group shots of everyone, but don't bother to hand the camera off to someone else to get in the picture myself. I need to work on that, especially now that all of the kids are capable of taking decent photos. Even The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, is a competent photographer. And then there are friends. One of the other moms in the homeschooling group offered to take a picture of me with the kids the other day and I turned her down, which was so silly. I will take people up on that offer from now on. I'm a part of the family too and I need to get in the picture, and if you've noticed the same thing happening to you, then you need to get in there, too!

Rally to Restore Sanity

2010-10-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

The Eldest is excited about the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this weekend. She adores Jon Stewart and begged us to go to Washington, DC for the event, but we're not up for travel right now. We've heard there will be some local events so there is a possibility for attending one of those. She said she's interested because she wants to make protest signs, the first one mentioned being "everyone here is really cute".

I love that girl!!!

Of Sick Cats

2010-10-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

I missed posting in time for this to show as a Monday post, but it's still Monday to me since it's been a looooonnnnngggggg day. My book club meeting went well; I am so pleased with the menu. After that our cat took a turn for the worse which involved... messes. After dealing with that The Middle Child, aka Martha Stewart, Jr., had her book club at the library, then home to deal with Sick Cat again. My legs and arms felt like jello (thank you fibromyalgia) but I kept going; it was a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other day. After resting for a bit and continuing to check on Sick Cat, I decided to take him to the animal ER after DH got home at midnight. Martha Jr. and I spent 4 hours there before deciding to bring Sick Cat back home. He's no better but we feel he's happier here.

So that's the day in brief, and now I'm going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will easier.

Entertaining

2010-10-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

I've been running around like a crazy person getting ready to host my book club at my house tomorrow. Also like a crazy person, I decided to go with a theme based on the book which is NOT required by the club at all. (The hostess usually provides a place to meet and a nice lunch, no themes.) That means instead of using what I have, I had to go out and buy things to go with the theme. OK, I did have a few things already, and the main color I'm using is one of the colors I already decorate with so I wasn't starting from scratch, but I did want to flesh it out somewhat. I hit all the "evil" big box stores in the area, along with a few specialty stores. I'm having fun pulling everything together but I wish it was easier physically to shop and prepare. This is when the fibro is really a bummer, but I'll get through and have a good time tomorrow, then I'll let everything go for a few days to rest and recover.

I'm off to cook! I'll post the menu and recipes tomorrow after the fact, and I'll try to remember to take some pictures.

Block Party Day!

2010-10-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

Some of our wonderful neighbors get together every year for an annual pre-Halloween block party. We've been going for several years now and it's a great kick off for the holiday season. One of our neighbors in a cul de sac just off our street hosts, loads of kids come out to play, they have games with small prizes for the kids, and everyone and has a great time. Since we live waaaaay down at the end of our block we don't get to hang out and socialize regularly with the neighbors up the street very often so this is a real treat. I love catching up and chatting with people I only see in passing during the rest of the year. It's something I look forward to every year; I'm so glad we are invited.

I'm also glad to be a part of my book club which meets at my house on Monday. It's my first time hosting and I'm excited about it. We read "The Hunger Games" and I'm using some themes from the story for my menu and decorating. (Not that the book club usually follows a theme for our lunches, I just thought it would be fun since this particular book lends itself to the colors that are so easy to find around this time of year.) It should be great; I'll probably post about it again when it's over, but for now I have to get to the prep work. It's time to make my candied pecans!

NaBloWriMo

2010-10-22T22:03:00.001-07:00

NaBloWriMo fail!! It's after midnight and I haven't posted. (Although if I get this in before midnight on the west coast it may show as before midnight.)

But I don't have anything in particular to blog about today. It's been a busy, busy day starting with an emergency run to the vet to make sure the runaway kitty is OK after his adventures. (The vet said he's fine, but I'm not so sure. I'm taking him back to the vet tomorrow; I think he needs fluids since he hasn't used the litter box the whole time we've had him back.) Homeschooling group with the kids, errands, etc., etc., etc.

Now I have a headache and I'm going to bed, so a nice short post for today.

The Reports of My (Cat's) Death are Greatly Exaggerated...

2010-10-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

It seems our sweet old cat Fungus has a life left in him after all. He is home, thanks to a kindly neighbor who fed him for a few days then called us when he saw one of our signs. (I think we've made new friends with that family; The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, enjoyed playing with their son today when we stopped by after they first called. Fungus wasn't there at the time but showed up again later on.)

He's in rough shape. He was already skin and bones but he's lost even more weight. His bones aren't just showing, they're sticking out all over. He's walking funny like he got hurt somehow. I called the vet when we picked him up but they said to just watch him; I'll take him in tomorrow morning when the doctors are there. He's all set up inside our laundry room now. He's been fed (but not too much- we don't want to make him sick all over) and now he's settled on a heating pad and nice soft towel in a box. His poor old bones need the warmth of a heating pad; we've kept one on for him since we first noticed his arthritis. He breaks my heart, the poor old thing. I'm so happy he's home, and so worried at the same time after seeing how bad off he is. I'm dreading what the vet might have to say tomorrow, but maybe he'll be OK.

Recipe for a Tropical Smoothie

2010-10-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

I just made the BEST smoothie ever! Totally delicious. Here's what I threw in the Vita Mix:

Ingredients:
7 dates (put them in first so they blend up really well, unless you like chunks of date, which are good, but I wanted a smooth smoothie today)

1 section of pineapple (I cut the top off then cut off a circle a little over an inch wide, then cut off the skin and cut it into chunks, including the core, and threw it in. This is how the Vita Mix demo lady did it. Cover the rest of the pineapple and store for another use. Or eat it; yum.)

1 mango, peeled and chunked up

1 very ripe banana

1 and a half peeled oranges (we ate the extra half of the second orange 'cause we were hungry)

2 teaspoons of honey (more or less; I eyeballed it)

a pinch of salt (balances the sweetness)

Ice (Eyeball the amount of ice; if you have a lot of people and want a thicker smoothie, add more ice. Fewer people and thinner consistency, add less ice.)

Directions:
Blend up all of the fruit first, THEN add the ice and blend again. Of course, follow your blender's operating instructions. (You have to start the Vita Mix on low and then turn it up to high once it gets going.)

The Middle Child, aka Martha Stewart Jr., and I LOVED this smoothie. (DH and The Eldest weren't home; The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, doesn't like any of these odd things we make in the Vita Mix.) It tastes better than anything you'd get at one of those high priced juice places!

ACK! It's 20 'Til Midnight!!

2010-10-19T20:38:00.000-07:00

I only have 20 minutes to get something written to keep up with my NaBloWriMo daily posting streak. Ummm... I don't have anything. Here are a few random thoughts.

~ I'm still sad about losing our cat. I'm pretty certain he's dead; several people told me cats will wander away to die and google seems to agree. I'm so upset that he died all alone.

~ But life goes on. The weather was cooler today and we had a gorgeous sunset. I managed to squeeze my walk in after The Middle Child's, aka Martha Stewart Jr.'s, Junior Girl Scout meeting.

~ Junior Girl Scouts are different from Brownies. Just in the space of one summer I can see them growing up. We had a planning meeting today where we mostly sat and talked. They would have been restless beyond belief last year and there's no way I would have held their attention. They were a little antsy today, but they followed along and participated the whole time. We were planning some of our upcoming activities, which is boring even for my Ambassador troop (11th and 12th grade), but they stuck with me. They decided on a few things for a ceremony we're inviting some other troops to attend with us as well as the badge they want to work on for the next meeting.

~ I could not survive my life without the support of my housekeeper, who has really become so much more than someone who comes to clean once a week. She's a dear friend now. My children love her. I've grown to love her too; she's a very important part of our family. With fibromyalgia, I can get drained and overwhelmed so easily. She swoops in every Tuesday and brings order to chaos so that I can breathe in my house again.

~ We have total garden fail. I had all these big plans for a veggie garden in our back yard and actually did the hard part by preparing the planting area, then I never got around to actually planting anything! The kids got frustrated with me and planted a bean, so there is one thing growing. Sigh...

~ DH is reading to the kids. Do you read to your kids? It's a night time ritual around here. Martha Jr. is more than capable of reading the books herself, but she doesn't. They enjoy the time with their dad. Sometimes I'll listen in; it's one of my favorite things about our day. I hope they are still looking forward to their night time story when they are teens.

~ DH and I read all of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy to The Eldest. DH read all of the "Harry Potter" books to the little ones. I don't remember when The Eldest stopped coming in for story time; I guess she stopped because she has a different bed time, or he was reading books to them that she'd already read. I think we only read part of the "Harry Potter" books to her so maybe that was it. She was so into them she couldn't wait to find out what would happen next! I'm not sure, but if she still wanted to listen to DH read she could.

~ Some of their favorite books:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Discworld books by Terry Pratchett (But only the three books from the series about the Wee Free Men; the others were too old for them. Even the Wee Free Men were drunks, so readers beware!)
Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George

Are you noticing a theme here? They are all fantasy books. We're kind of big on the genre around here.

~ Amazon should totally pay me for the links today. If I were more motivated I'd give you a link or two to some other bookseller just to even things out, but I'm not that energetic.

~ I stumbled around on the internet for a few minutes today and ran across these jars that are designed for candles or potpourri or something, but you can also use them for lemonade!! (Scroll down to the third picture.) I think this is so clever and pretty. I love things that are casual and practical and pretty all at the same time.

Book Review: Third World America

2010-10-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

The full title of this book is actually "Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream" and it's by Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. It is a non-fiction political book but it isn't as partisan as you might think given that Arianna is widely known as a liberal Democrat. She rags on politicians on both sides of the aisle.

The book starts out with doom and gloom, as these kinds of books are wont to do, but then she turns it around and talks about things we can all do to turn our country around. We can make changes without waiting for the government to get some mojo and take action. The ideas she has are practical and do-able, for instance, if you are fed up with the big bonuses and excesses at the big banks, tired of their "tricks and traps" designed to part you from your money, then just MOVE YOUR MONEY. It's that simple. Take your money OUT of the too-big-to-fail banks and make them just a little bit smaller by banking with a small community bank or credit union. You can find such a bank in your community by inputting your zip code at the Move Your Money web site. This has nothing to do with partisan politics, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. This has to do with exercising our power to choose and letting Wall Street know that there are consequences for bad behavior.

The book ends on a positive note. The author, as an immigrant from Greece, believes in this country. She feels our "can-do American spirit" will surge to the fore to solve the problems we are facing. I hope her positive predictions are right!

Eulogy for Fungus

2010-10-17T20:14:00.001-07:00

Our cat walked away yesterday and hasn't returned. We're all devastated. I got him when I was teaching in the public schools. Some of my students brought him to me when he was a little kitten, too young to be away from his momma, but they couldn't find her so I took him. DH and I bottle fed him until he was old enough to eat solid food. He was also covered in ticks when we got him; the vet doused him in chemicals to kill the ticks and warned us that he might not survive since he was so little, but he did and went on to live a long, long life. I got him a year or two before The Eldest was born and she's 17 now so he's really ancient. We weren't going to keep him when he was little since we already had two cats, but he grew on us like a fungus, as the saying goes, and that's what we named him- Fungus.

He's been a good cat over the years. When we had all three cats, all of them strays, he was so stressed out by the aggressive female in our trio that he lost all of his fur on one side of his body. (She was MEAN.) When we separated them his fur grew back and he had some good years. He's a solid black kitty and he looked like a sleek little panther in his prime. He's deteriorated recently; he has arthritis, bad kidneys, his hearing is going, and he's stopped meowing. He weighs next to nothing and he's on a special low protein prescription cat food. The Middle Child, aka Martha Jr., fed him wet food several times a day, just a bit at the time so as not to upset his tummy. (He throws up easily. He also had dry food available all the time.) She also loved on that animal. She would hold him and pet him while watching TV or cart him around in her arms like a baby. He seemed to adore her too; she always got his motor going.

DH was working outside the house yesterday and the garage door was open. Fungus went out to explore, as usual, but we didn't think anything of it since he usually stays in our driveway or right around the house. When DH went to close everything up the cat was nowhere to be found. We walked around the house and didn't see him, then we walked around the neighborhood but no luck. It got dark as we were walking so we wouldn't have been able to see him anyway, and he can't hear well so he wouldn't come to us when we called. Today I made up a flyer and we posted it around the neighborhood but we haven't had any response yet. I didn't think about calling the Humane Society until this evening; I'll call them tomorrow.

I feel pretty hopeless. I don't think anyone would take him in; there are all sorts of cats running around our neighborhood and people don't think anything of it. Everyone assumes they will find their way home on their own. We also have a lot of dogs in the neighborhood, including a German Shepard that was hanging around yesterday with one of the landscapers. (NOT on a leash.) I know what a German Shepard can do to a cat; we had a German Shepard when I was a kid and she got to a few cats over the years we had her. Wasn't pretty.

I didn't sleep last night; I kept going to the front door to look for Fungus. I've been on the brink of tears all day. I hate the thought of him out there all alone, either dying or already dead. We may never know what's happened to him, but I'll always wonder and feel so sad that we weren't there for him at the end.

Recipe: Southern Style Fried Rice

2010-10-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make something different the other day so I started kind of throwing things in the pan. I had Hoppin' John in the back of my mind, but my favorite HJ recipe uses soy sausage which means I can't have it anymore. I still wanted the black eyed peas and rice so I started from there. I cooked rice in our rice cooker first then, while that was finishing, I chopped up some veggies and put them in the pan to saute. Then I remembered an old Cooking Light Weeknight recipe we used to make with chicken that also used rice and black eyed peas. I wanted that flavor profile so I dug up the recipe and used those seasonings to spice my dish. (Leaving out the chicken, of course.) As I was cooking I thought it would also taste great with egg thrown in, fried rice style, although I didn't actually make it that way. (I made the vegan version, egg free, so I still need to experiment.) Here's the recipe I came up with:

Southern Style Fried Rice

Ingredients:
Cooked rice, about 3 cups
Two cans black eyed peas, rinsed and drained

Olive Oil, about 2 tablespoons
Sweet onion, diced
Garlic, pureed (with salt on a cutting board with the side of a knife, Roger Mooking-style)

4 medium carrots, diced
Salt and pepper, to taste

Spice Mix:
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon, Old Bay Seasoning
¼ teaspoon paprika

Garnish:
Peanuts
Scallions, thinly sliced

Optional:
Egg, beaten (I haven’t tried this with egg yet so I’m not sure if it will need one or two.)

Saute the onion and carrots in olive oil until the carrots are soft and the onion is translucent. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the garlic and spice mix and cook for another minute or so. Add in the rice and black eyed peas and cook until warm.

If you are using the egg make a well in the center of the pan and scramble the eggs until cooked through then mix with the rest of the rice and bean mixture.

Throw in some peanuts and scallions before serving.

Monarchs!

2010-10-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

It's butterfly time again!

We were very excited to see monarch caterpillars on our milkweed plants again today. We didn't see any for a while (they migrate so they're seasonal) so we stopped checking for them, but a nice big fat one was chomping on the milkweed outside our front door today as we were leaving to meet with our homeschooling group. We couldn't miss him, and when we made a quick check of a few of our other plants we found several more. They are cute little bugs! Oh- we also found a queen caterpillar about a week ago. That's a new species for us!

The race begins to keep the little guys in fresh milkweed. I'm coming up with all sorts of new places to put it but they can eat it all down to stems in nothing flat, which means more emergency runs to the Home Depot garden department are in my future!

Words Fail

2010-10-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

I am not inspired today but it's NaBloWriMo so I have to post something. So there it is, my shortest post ever.

Bloggity Blog Blogs

2010-10-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

I follow several blogs, as you can see by the list over there on the right. I add to the list as I find new favorites and drop old ones every now and again, mainly when they are no longer posting actively. Sometimes I have blogs listed that I'm "test driving" to see if I want to read them on a regular basis; sometimes I do and I keep them, sometimes I don't and they are dropped. I used to think a long list was kind of silly; how can you follow that many blogs? Now I get it. They don't all update daily or even weekly. I like that my list tells you when a blog has been updated; I can go directly to new reading material without having to hunt for it.

Unfortunately, since they don't update very often, that leaves precious little to read most days. Today was exciting, though! Hyperbole and a Half updated, after about a month of nothing new. The Eldest got me hooked on that blog; it's really funny in a twisted kind of way. After reading today's post, I'm thankful she wasn't my kid. I mean, The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, is a handful but her antics make him look like an angel!

Some of the blogs are great because of their writing. The Voracious Vegan, The Junk Drawer, Writer Dad, Cry it Out, and 17 and Baking are all well written but they don't update enough to keep me happy. (I mean, really, they should update daily because I want more to read, dadgummit.) They are all worth the wait between posts, though. The Voracious Vegan was posting quite a bit for a while but her posts are infrequent now. She was cast in a play so I guess that's keeping her pretty busy. I follow some of the blogs for the recipes, some for homeschooling ideas, some because I know the authors. The common thread is that I enjoy them all.

I hope you'll enjoy some of my favorites, too.

4 H

2010-10-12T20:05:00.001-07:00

I took the kids (all 3 of them) to their second 4H meeting tonight. We happened upon a really great club run by an old homeschooling buddy of mine and it's working out well for us. They meet once a month on one of the rare days when we don't have anything else scheduled. The meeting location isn't exactly next door but it's not ridiculously far so it's worth the drive, and it's an organization all three of them can participate in.

The kids LOVED the activity tonight. They had to make boats, really air boats since they "sailed" across the floor, out of Styrofoam trays, straws, tape, and index cards. (Wind courtesy of a fan placed on the floor.) The sample was just a tray with a straw stuck in it and two index cards taped to that. Very simple, yet perfect for demonstration purposes. The kids used that as a starting point then got a lot more creative!

Talk about thinking outside of the box- The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, came up with the most amazing boat. He started out by curling the index cards into cone shapes before taping them to the "mast". He added a few more things then went to try it out. He watched how the boats performed, both his and the other boats, then kept tweaking and adding to his design. He even came up with the idea of putting a half tray on the end of his boat, which kind of reminded me of an actual air boat with the big fan on the back. The air from the fan had a lot of surface area to push that way. I am guessing he noticed that a lot of the boats were falling over, but they moved better when the bottom was facing the fan. He's quite the engineer.

The girls also had really great boats, although not as elaborate as The Wild Child's. They had just as much fun, though. Pictures tomorrow!

The De-Mothing Continues...

2010-10-11T14:42:00.001-07:00

Since the discovery of the moth population making a home for itself in my pantry I've been pretty busy. The pantry is now completely bare, vacuumed out, and wiped down. DH, the little ones and I went on a shopping expedition yesterday and managed to find several air tight storage bins and containers of various sizes. The paper goods that passed inspection (mainly items I've purchased recently) are in one of the bins and ready to go back in the pantry. I bought several large glass storage jars so those are filling up with rice, pasta, and flour. After stirring them up by moving everything around, I've only seen a couple of moths today, which I vacuumed up, so I'm encouraged.

There's still a lot of work to do so I'm wrapping up the NaBloWriMo post for today; short and sweet so I can get back to the bugs. Shudder...