Three. 3. Trois. Tres. Part 3: The Third Part. Beginning of the End.

I wish I would have saved the little thumbnail pic that came with the listing of this house.  Sitting in the van, across the street from this house, alternately looking from the listing in my lap to the actual house across the street, trying to figure out where we made a wrong turn.  Cause this couldn't possibly be the place, because this... this was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

It was fall, sometime in October.  The leaves were changing, there was a chill in the air and that general festive feeling of anticipation that fall always brings.  The white farmhouse across the street had painted shutters and a front porch with white columns on brick pillars, a big red brick chimney on one side.  The yard was loaded with trees...the leaves of the maples were positively gold and they were falling like snow.  There was an older man in the yard raking these golden leaves into piles. Smoke billowed out of the chimney and the smell of wood fire was in the air.  Surreal.

The man notices us sitting in our minivan gaping, and immediately drops his rake and comes striding towards us.  One of us undoubtedly said 'oh shit let's get out of here, quick', but the man was already at the window, smiling and knocking and asking if we'd like to come and see the house.  Whaaaa?  Really?!  He was friendly and inviting to the point where I started to feel suspicious.  I know it's lame, but it must be some sort of conditioned response.  That's my only explanation. 

The man ushers in the back door, calling for his wife.  I am immediately struck by the charm and originality of this old house, the back porch, the laundry room with one of those white farmhouse sinks, flowers painted on the cabinets, and the smell of apple pie in the air.  Sunny, cozy, wonderful.  This cute little grey-haired woman appears in the doorway with an apron and oven mitts on and tells us to come on in, she just has to take a pie out of the oven and it will just take a minute, and would we like some cider?

A pie?  Cider?  For real? Who are these people?!

The couple gave us a tour and told us all about the house and their family and the area, and charming, charming, charming, blah blah blah.  Since the house turned out to be over a hundred years old, I (sort of) jokingly asked the woman if they had a resident ghost.  She quickly turned around to me, smile fading, and responded with 'Maybe. Why do you ask?'.  Whoa, ok.  Just making conversation, ma'am. 

We spent at least an hour with these kind people, drinking their cider and breathing their pie-scented air.  There was a big garden out back, a chicken coop, raspberry bushes and apple and pear trees.  I started thinking about a compost pile and canning vegetables, backyard chickens and organic eggs.  It was so idyllic, just absolutely picture perfect.  The antique furniture, hardwood floors, wood burning stove complete with shaggy dog laying in front.  The acre of land, underground spring and gigantic ancient trees.  The wallpaper and paint techniques and throw rugs and lacy curtains.  It was a Victorian farmhouse and it was perfect.  We wanted it.  The house and everything about it...we were in love.  Me, who insisted that anything across the state line was a waste of time and a joke...yep, I was sold. 

As soon as we got in the car we started talking about it.  There was a feeling the house had, and we both felt it immediately.  The house wanted us, too.  When we left there we continued looking around the area, pulling up in front of different houses I had listings for and I would immediately compare them in my head to this place.  There was never any comparison, none of the other houses could hold a candle to this one. 

On the way home we talked about everything we had seen, and Steve mentioned my question about ghosts, and the woman's reaction.  We both kind of WTF'd for a few minutes, then, with eyes all big and round, he very seriously suggested 'maybe they were the ghosts'.  Good lord.  We just spent an hour in the Twilight Zone.

And with that, we went home and started to formulate a plan.

When I'm Skinny, You Can Call Me Bitch.

When you go to a Tony Robbins seminar, part of what you learn is about nutrition and how different foods affect your body, mind, and overall well-being, and how important the acid/alkaline balance is.  At the end he asks you to commit to a 10-day cleanse.  I did the seminar, committed to the cleanse, and hung on full blast for almost two months. 

The cleanse is basically being vegan, but at the same time being very alkaline.  This really limits what you can eat.  (In a nutshell, all foods are either more acid or more alkaline, and you want to be more alkaline.  It has to do with the pH balance of your body and how your body holds onto fat and stuff and blah blah blah.  I lost 8 lbs in about 3 weeks.  Sign up for this website and download a list of foods here.  It's super-dee handy.)    

Basically, this cleanse entails:  no dairy, no meat, no animal products of any kind, nothing processed, no white sugar or flour, nothing fermented (so no vinegar or alcohol).  I know I'm missing something.  Oh, nothing canned.   No smoking, no stimulants of any kind including caffeine.  No fruit juices unless you squeeze those bitches yourself.  Sounds like goddam torture, doesn't it?!  Yaaaa, baby.

It's f*cking hard.  It's one of the most disciplined things I've ever done in my life.  But it's awesome.  You spend the first week drying out, which sucks, but after that it is almost addictive.  What's pulling me back right now is the weight loss, and it's healthy weight loss, not all stress your heart and your hair falls out weight loss.  Your skin - glowing.  Your period - practically nothing.  Your attitude (after the first week) - f*cking righteous!!  I've never felt better. 

Tony Robbins is a slick muthaf*cka. 

But naturally it was really hard to stick to 100%, so little by little I started re-incorporating foods back into my diet.  For a while I was straight vegan, and now I eat meat again.  I love coffee and I'm a bit of a boozer, but I still don't do much dairy.  I avoid the 'whites' and only use agave syrup or turbinado (or other natural) sugar.  Oh, and I try to avoid using the microwave, as it 'kills' your food.  Yes, it's true, shutup. 

Recent conversations and blogs I've read (I Want a Dumpster Baby) have gotten my wheels turning about this again.

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I used to workout like a fiend, then I sprained a couple things and it all went downhill.  It's so hard to go back to working out after you've been off it for so long, isn't it?  I felt so good when I worked out, and I know I would again, but it's just the pain and suffering of starting that is holding my lazy ass back.  And I'm suffering for it too, I'm carrying some extra weight that I am NOT proud of or happy about whatsoever. 

But starting a new workout plan and doing a vegan cleanse hold the same intimidation factor for me.  Once I get going I know I'll be fine, but it's just those first rotten steps that f*cking slay me.  I need to be held accountable.  I need Tony Robbins to come over here and light a fire under my ass.  I need to be bossed around.  I need to be held accountable. 

So, I'm calling in reinforcements. 
O'mayra, vacation is OVER and the chocolate fountain should be in (temporary) retirement. 
Sam, I know you're starting too.  But will you hold my hand and pee on me if I get stung by a jellyfish? 
Libby, get your bossy ass in gear and don't let me get away with shit!  
IT'S ON, BITCHES!! 

You want to join us?  Everyone needs at least one accountability partner.  I'll be yours, if you'll be mine too.  If you've got questions about acceptable foods or how Cinch products can help you keep your sanity, let me know.  Pick up Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin (it's in the Amazon bar at left) and check out the acid/alkaline site I posted above.  We all need support and someone to talk us down off the chocolate-coated ledge.  If you see me slacking, well, you know what to do.  This is an open invitation to kick my ass.  With the risk of sounding all lame and rah-rah-sis-boom-bah -  it's time to let go of what's comfortable.  If I can firewalk, I can do this.  You too.  Let's do it.

P.S.  I highly recommend the Tony Robbins UPW Seminar.  If you've ever had a single problem in your entire life, it's for you.  It's pricey, but if you wait long enough the tickets go on sale 2 for 1.  It's worth every penny.  Plus, you gotta love a guy who loves Shaklee. 

You read blog. Right meow!

My 10-year old hasn't been...performing...as well as he should be and we think we figured out that it's because he is sleep deprived.  He has so much trouble falling asleep at night and naturally gets in lot of trouble for it, but I think the worst thing is seeing what a zombie he is in the morning.  It is heart-wrenching to see this little boy so tired.

It's been going on since probably the beginning of last school year.  His grades have suffered, his sports performance has suffered, his concentration and behavior has suffered.  We've suffered. 

At the most recent parent-teacher conferences, his teacher suggested that if his concentration doesn't improve that our next conference will be a very different conversation.  He's never had attention issues before, and a lot of the issues he had last school year I attributed to his and his teacher's personalities not quite jiving.  But to hear that come out of the mouth of a professional, and that professional be talking about YOUR kid, well needless to say, it's alarming.

It was around the same time that I realized that his sleep situation could really be contributing to what is going on at school.  Yeah, sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake.  Whatever, nobody's perfect.  The pediatrician suggested I try giving him Melatonin about an hour before bedtime.  Good idea.  Shaklee has a product called Gentle Sleep Complex and I already owned it, so we gave it a try.  Instead of being straight-up Melatonin, which has possibility of side effects and can only be used short-term, it's a combination of herbs that is good and effective.  I've used it...no hangover.  It's been working ok so far, though I did just up the dose a little cause he was still having some trouble falling asleep. 

The other night I handed him the two tablets and went to get a glass of water.  In the time it took for me to get that water, apparently quite a bit of the scent of the tablets had rubbed off on his hand.  As soon as he took the tablets, he then proceeded to wipe his hand on his pants, down the length of his thigh.

You'd think somebody opened a can of crazy-ass cat wack-a-doo.  Our girly-cat, let's call her Black Betty for privacy reasons - she's shy with strangers, flipped out on the boy and started biting his pants and his hand that held the tablets.  She freaked out enough to scare the boy off the sofa to where he cowered by my side, laughing, and from there we watched Black Betty chase invisible flies, roll around, and finally fall off the couch head first.

At this point we were on the floor and in animal territory.  Black Betty's bro, Bam-a-lam-a-lam or Big 'un for short, came sauntering up all casual-like and took a couple sniffs.  Now, Big 'un isn't quite as theatrical as Black Betty is - he is a big, simple, giant, gentle clown and he's got a real fat ass.  No seriously, he weighed more than my daughter until last spring, and she's 6.  Big 'un also made a beeline for the boy's hand/leg area, which tipped us off to the fact that these Gentle Sleep tablets must have something in them the cats wig out over.  The boy ran for the bottle, opened it, and stuck it under the cat's nose.  This action was immediately rewarded by the cat trying to grab the bottle with his teeth and run off, and when he quickly realized that wasn't going to happen he got all sexy on us, rolling over onto his back and open-mouth purring.




Which was a little weird.

I've seen cats on catnip before, and the following is the closest behavior I've ever seen.  At our first apartment, hubby and I had two cats and a corked bottle of catnip.  During the night one night, these cats got the bottle down and chewed the cork to smithereens, spilling the catnip all over the damn place.  I found it in the morning, and having to rush out the door to work, I merely scooped up what I could of the catnip pile and threw it in the sink on my way out the door.  Most of this pile landed in a bowl of water, in the sink.  This bowl of catnippy goodness steeped and brewed all day long, with kitties 1 & 2 sipping from it at will for hours on end.  By the time I got home that night, they were wasted.  I've never seen cats act that way.  We've all heard the term 'bouncing off walls', but this was NUTS.  Running from the floor, up the wall, then back down onto the floor all Matrix-style, attacking each other and our feet, and anything else that seemed mildly threatening - or not threatening enough, basically freaking out in the most entertaining yet slightly disturbing way.

The Gentle Sleep/Valerian Root affected them so differently than your typical catnip high.  I guess the ingredient in it that cats wig out over is Valerian Root.  Some cats don't like it, some do, just like catnip.  And just like catnip, they kinda freak out over it.  Black Betty and Bam-a-lam-a-lam have had catnip before and they've gotten a little nutty and aggressive, but I think Gentle Sleep Complex is the new catnip over here.  The boy did us an accidental favor that night and lost the cap to the bottle (one of the cats grabbed it and ran off and is probably humping it as I type), so the tablets got all weird after being exposed to the air all night.  I'll be buying a new bottle soon, and the weird exposed tablets will be going into a sock for my friends to play with.  I mean, they are here to entertain us.  Have to earn their keep and all...

Good times ahead!!

Part Deux: The Beginning of the End

Ok so it's NOT the end.  The End: Part 2?  Yeah, not really, huh.   It was the first thing that popped in my head...picking names for blogs isn't always easy, you know. 

You ever have something really f*cking shitty happen and just blocked the whole damn thing out?  Its like the story of my life.  I don't like it - I get out my little brain eraser and ta da, it's gone.  That's pretty much what I've done regarding most of my reproductive history, among other things.  I'm hazy on the details, real hazy.  Family members or other people close to me probably have a better memory of the situations than I do.  I start confusing miscarriage #3 with #5, though I know for sure that 6 & 7 happened after we moved... blah blah blah.  So if anything comes across as a little confusing - details, timelines - just...ignore it and carry on.

After #5, as mentioned in part one of this blog, I was feeling a little...let's say...distraught.  Ok, if I'm going to be perfectly honest I might as well say that I turned into a basket case nutjob, among other things.  If you know me, or if you don't, feel free to throw some words out there.  They probably fit.

One thing that happened to me at that point was that I developed a desperate need to get the hell away from everyone and everything I knew, the BBrook house it happened in, the people who knew about it, etc etc.  It was really very hard to face my friends and neighbors who knew what happened.  Sometimes I was pregnant at the same time as one of them, and they went on to have their baby.  Sometimes all it took was 'that look', whether the person knew they were doing it or not.  Sometimes it was things that were said that were well-meaning, but to me were like nails on a chalkboard.  It was just too much.  Not to sound ungrateful for the support I got, because I certainly am, but sometimes you just have to step away.

So when my husband mentioned the possibility of finding a house closer to his job, I jumped on it.  That may be a bit of an understatement.  I got f*cking OBSESSED with it.  I was on realtor.com a couple hours every day.  Then one day the word 'Wisconsin' entered the conversations.  Co-workers of my husband's suggested it and I promptly I laughed it off.  Well, who's laughing now?

Just to humor him I checked out the area on my new favorite website, and couldn't believe the houses I found.  I've always loved old, quirky houses and there seemed to be quite the abundance in the area I searched!  Our house at the time was brand new, we built it, and it's in a neighborhood of all brand-new homes.  Beautiful, and big (oh GOD what a kitchen!), but like I said, I've always loved old houses.  Or anything old, for that matter.  So when I ran across this house and spied this horrendous little thumbnail and read the description of this ramshackle antique, I of course was intrigued.  The price!  The age!  The YARD!!  Oh, the taxes...after taxes in the Brook this was nothing short of stupendous! miraculous! staggering!  DY-no-MITE!!  I printed out the listing along with quite a few others and four passengers set sail that day...

Let me mention that at this point I was still 100% opposed to Wisconsin, and looking at listings and making plans to go for a drive up there was basically humoring good old Steve as far as I was concerned.  Plus, I was curious, I admit it.  I wanted to see what it looked like around here.  Yeah, so what?

Now, the description of the house absolutely rocked, but the pic was for shit.  Anyone who has ever looked at houses on the internet knows how that goes, realtors make a shack sound Disneyland, but those tell-all (I loathe that phrase, tell-all) pics can't lie.  So in my mind picking this particular listing was a tiny little joke I was playing on my husband.  I thought I would show him that the great shiny state of Wisconsin (say this to yourself like a sassy 6 year old girl would) didn't have CRAP. 

It was the first house on the list of drive-bys.  We drove the hour or so it took to get over the state line, spent another half hour locating the house (I never thought I'd get used to this numbered street/avenue system), saw the sign in the yard and pulled up in front.

THE END.

Kidding, kidding.  To be continued...

Armageddon Preparedness - Are YOU Ready?

This is really one part blog, two parts book review.  Or maybe it's two parts blog, one part book review....regardless...it's the product of a late night up reading and way too much coffee the next morning.

After this very mild and practically snowless winter, the news report finally came in...we're about to get some snow.  They project 4-6 inches for this area, which is an area been made snow-pro by 2' snowfalls each of the last couple years. No worries, we got this.  It's old hat.  This is the upper Midwest, muthaf*ckas!!

But amazingly, so many people really don't got this.  We all know how everyone just forgets how to drive when it snows a couple inches.  Right now I'm (supposed to be) getting ready to head to the grocery store to stock up on whatever so I don't have to go out tomorrow or the next day, I guess, and I have no doubt that everyone and their mother's uncle is going to be at the store doing the same.  It's not that the roads won't be plowed tomorrow or the next day, not that even if they weren't we couldn't hop on one of our 3 snowmobiles in an emergency, not that 4-6 inches of snow is cause for alarm, or we could probably get there just find if the roads weren't plowed at all.  It's just a completely natural, even if it is unwarranted, reaction in people.  People freak out.  Whatevs.  Carry on.  *shrug*

Ever heard of the book Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer?  My son got it in his stocking this Christmas, and as it goes I just happened to read the description and thought it sounded very interesting.  So the other night I started reading.  Now, this is a young-adult level book, an easy read for me.  I cracked it open at about 10pm and I swear I couldn't put the damn thing down until 3am when I closed the book on the last page.

I.  Was.  Riveted. 

I've read some of my 10-year old son's books before, and some of them have been f-reak-ing awesome (hello, Hunger Games!), but this...this stuck with me in the most disturbing way.  Basically, the premise of the story is that an asteroid hits the moon and pushes it closer to Earth, causing absolute chaos, destruction, and loss of life.  There's no power, no food, no running water.  The survivors have to live on their wits and what little food they get.  The innovation of people having never experienced a survival situation is another aspect that just fascinated me.  It really gets you thinking.  What the f*ck would we do if shit hit the fan? 

The story is told in a diary format, and the writer is a 16-year old girl, so everything that happens is from her point of view.  It would certainly be interesting enough in an adult-narrated version, but told from the perspective of someone with practically no experience in the real world is really a huge part of what makes this book as amazing as it is.  Kind of like Room by Emma Donoghue...the story would be great otherwise, but the fact that it is told from the perspective of a 5 year old child makes it amazing.

The morning after I read Life As We Knew It, the moon was very apparent in the sky.  Like some kind of freak, I couldn't take my eyes off it.  The wheels started turning... I start thinking about stockpiling food, water and vitamins, and what would we have to do in case there was no electricity or water, and OMG do we need to arm ourselves?!  I was having bonafied anxiety about how unprepared we are in case TheEndOfTheWorld happens!  We are so dependent on all our creature comforts...what would happen if we were suddenly without?  How would we all cope?!

I'm better now, really I am, and I don't really think the world is going to end or that the Mayan calendar is truly a prediction of any kind.  I'm not paranoid or a conspiracy theorist or a survivalist or any other kind of weirdo.  Well...not much anyway, and I sure do like their books and movies!  Though I suppose it might not hurt to stock up on some canned goods, and maybe some liquor for bartering...


But seriously I do have to recommend this book to everyone, even chose it for my local book club selection even though it's a little below our reading levels.  I mean, who cares?  A good story is a good story, and when you find one that leaves such an impression on you, you have to share it!

If you want to check out any of the books I've mentioned, I was so thoughtful as to put them in the cute little Amazon box down at the bottom.  Handy!

This blog has been brought to you by solar power and rainwater.  

And BPA-free canned food, I guess.

The Beginning of the End

'It' hasn't actually ended yet. What is 'it'?  My life, as it is now.  Read on.

It's been quite a few weeks since my last blog.  All the holiday frivolity and busyness takes up a lot of time, dontcha think?  Even if I wanted to blog (of course I wanted to blog) I was too occupied to hold on to, let alone nurture, a coherent thought that had nothing to do with wrapping paper or red and green sprinkles.

So now that I'm here, sitting in front of the Christmas tree I haven't taken down yet, I'm not really sure what to blog about.  I mean, there are a gazillion subjects I could easily write about, but trying to add that personal twist in is always a challenge.  I decided its finally time to come clean and describe how I came to be...well...me.  How did I get all chemical-paranoid and organically-freaky?  Inquiring minds want to know, right?  I'm hoping so.  This is the first part of an undetermined series of blogs, maybe 2 or 3.  We'll see.


Part I

This is essentially what we call in Shaklee 'My Two-Minute Story'.  When we do a presentation we start out with how we were introduced to healthy living and/or Shaklee products, etc etc.  This is more or less the story I tell.  It's true, by the way.  And it's probably not very funny.

A couple years ago, at about 15 weeks,  I had my 5th miscarriage.  When I came home from the hospital I was an absolute mess.  Besides being physically messed up, I was an emotional wreck.  I had the usual post-tragedy questions...why me?  Why again?  What is wrong with me?  Why can't anyone give me any answers?  WHAT the F*CK?

When you're in the state of mind that I was, you'll desperately search everywhere and anywhere for some closure.  So when your doctor doesn't know the answers, where do you turn?  The all-knowing internet, of course.   I did search after search, looking for information, looking for an answer, finding tons of information and answers that didn't apply to me.  Everyone else HAD an answer, but for me there was none.  I sat at my computer and cried.  Like...Every. Day.  I was told 'try not to think about it', or 'it was meant to be', and no matter how well meaning those words are, they don't help. At all.

One day one of my searches brought me to a website I still frequent - www.ewg.org.  It's the Environmental Working Group website, and it is just chock full of informational goodness about everything that has to do with health and environment and chemicals and their effects on your body and the planet and everything else you can possibly think of.  They even have a sister website - Skin Deep Cosmetics Database - where you can look up your existing products and find out just how bad they really are.  I read.  And I read.  I followed links, searched searches, keyed words.  And I learned SO MUCH.  I've blogged about a lot of what I learned, and am still learning every day, and if I talk to you in person there's no doubt that you've heard it from me over and over again.  I like to beat dead horses, okay?  If I was to start telling you the things that can happen to your body from the products that you use in your home and on your body, we would be here for DAYS.  The chemicals we are exposed to in our daily lives have such a huge impact on our health and our bodies in ways that may never even occur to us! 

Of course fertility is one of them. 

That first day I learned that one of the biggest offenders is household cleaning products.  We are in our homes more than anywhere else, and that is where the majority of our exposure comes from.  We breathe the air, wear the clothes, sleep on the sheets, eat off the dishes.  Within a day or two I had all of our toxic cleaners boxed up and stuffed in a corner of the garage.  I went to the store and replaced them with non-chlorine bleach, laundry detergent without certain ingredients, and $5 bottles of all-purpose cleaner.  It was all shiny and new, and I was ok with it for a while even though it wasn't the most effective stuff in the world. But I was dedicated, so I stuck with it.

Then I learned about body products, too.  Chemical-filled shampoos and soaps and lotions, oh my!  Our skin is the largest organ we have, and it's absorbent.  So when we slather it with chemicals (or sit in a bathtub that was cleaned with toxic chemicals!), those chemicals all get absorbed into us.   

WTF are they doing in there?  Nothing but trouble. 

I dumped all our Herbal Essences and Bath and Body Works and Zest and Lever into a bag and went shopping again and replaced all those items with 'all-natural' options.  I had been having a major skin issue around that time too, and every time I would shampoo my hair, the skin on my shoulders would absolutely be ON FIRE.  When I switched to the natural, non-perfumed, non-chemical stuff, the burning subsided.  Of course, that is a whole different blog you can look forward to about Candida.  (Just check out this list of symptoms!  Candida is horrendous.  Contact me for help on this one.)

Is chemical exposure responsible for my miscarriages?  Who knows.  I'm sure it could never be proven that that is specifically what caused them.  All the chlorine bleach, optical brighteners, preservatives, synthetic scents, and everything else I've been exposed to my whole life... could I have come out completely unscathed?  I doubt any of us have.  Maybe that's why today's cancer rate is 1 in 2.  Ya think? 

I can't say that de-chemicalizing our lives has made a huge difference for ME, but I'm hoping that by keeping their chemical exposure as minimal as is possible, that MY children don't have to go through what I have had to.  That MY daughter doesn't have to deal with the heartbreak of losing baby after baby.  That MY son doesn't get cancer or a brain tumor or Parkinson's disease.  Considering the rate of exposure we all deal with from every direction, the least I can do is make sure they get as little as possible at home.  We are CONSTANTLY inundated with toxins in every shape and form...(don't even get me started on food!)  And if we have the choice we shouldn't have to live with them too. 

This is MY choice, and it is this knowledge and these experiences that have made me who I am today.


To be continued...