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...

Total Buzz Kill

This year at the beginning of the summer I instituted a rule:  Nothing with a screen between noon and 8 pm.

No t.v., no computer, no video games, no ipod.  Strangely enough, I kind of think the kids were excited about it in the beginning, this new rule that would really mix everything up.  Only at first did I have a little trouble enforcing the rule, and that was mostly because I would forget about it!  And of course now that the season is winding down and the late-summer boredom has set in, it is harder yet.  Regardless, the rule worked really well all summer, and I'll definitely do it again next year.  The kids played outside so much...like we used to when we were kids!  You know, before all this fancy schmancy hand-held technology.  HA!  We're old!

Because of my no-screen rule, all summer I was supplying constant ideas of new things they could do outside, or suggesting something to draw, make out of dough, paint (including objects), or construct out of other things.  We also spent a pretty decent amount of time at the beach.  Nothing like an endless amount of sand and water to really make a bunch of happy shorties.

That's a great thing about this area - how close we are to so many beaches.  And (amazingly) they're clean.  And not crowded!  Of course Lake Michigan water is body-numbing frigid most of the summer but hey, you get hot, you jump in, you cool off....quickly. What more can you ask for?

Since we've lived here, our family has unofficially chosen one particular beach as our favorite, and we go there more than any of the other area beaches.  It's a Lake Michigan beach, and most of the summer it was fantastic.  There's a little 'pool' area that's warmer than the lake, a little stream from the pool into the lake, tons of cool rocks and fossils to collect, bigger rocks for climbing, lots of beach glass hunting for me, and the sand is pretty fine and light.  It's a great spot.

Except for the second half of August.  Oh Goodness.

We've visited this beach twice in the past two weeks, and ended up running out of there after only about a half an hour, chased out by those nasty little biting black flies.  I've experienced this quite a bit, in quite a few places around Wisconsin.  I'm sure it happens other places but I just don't know about it.  Is it the lake?  The sand?  Obviously they wait until the end of the summer to appear...but why?  And why do they have to follow you and bite you and make it so dang miserable that you have to leave?!  My friend told me yesterday that it hurts when they bite you because they are literally ripping off a chunk of your skin.  Awesome.

Where we live we also have big-time mosquito issues.  Wisconsin doesn't spray, so we have to take it into our own hands.  Luckily, Shaklee H2 works great as a natural repellent for your body, but we do go through our share of Off and have even stooped to spray the yard because it was just so hard to be outside without it.  Yes, I know.  Bad chemicals.  But what's the alternative?  Don't go outside?  I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Since I compost and we eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, I often have a lot of fruit flies in the kitchen.  Naturally there are ants, and once in a while some moth or other weird freaky bug comes wandering in to die a most hideous death at the hands (or paws) of my cats. 

What's an eco-friendly mom to do?  Spray the crap out of everything with chemicals and hope for the best?  Well, maybe. But not until I get so fed up there's no other choice!  Until then, I try to control it all as greenly and as safely as I can.

Here are just a few things I have found and used:
A little bowl of apple cider vinegar with a drop of dish soap mixed in lures those pesky fruit flies to a liquidy death.  Works great.
Repel mosquitoes safely with H2 wipes or all-purpose formula sprayed on.
You can even spray fruit flies right out of the air with the H2 all-purpose. It's kind of fun!
If you know where the ants are coming in, pour some cornmeal around and the greedy little bastards will snatch it up and take it back to the nest where all their greedy little bastard friends will eat it.  Unfortunately for them, they can't digest it, so it swells up inside their disgusting little bodies and the greedy little bastards burst.  Whoopee!
I've also heard that drawing a chalk line works cause the ants won't walk across it, and sprinkling baby powder around for the same reason.

These solutions are all fine and good, but I'm out of apple cider vinegar, and I don't know where my ants are coming in...they just appear in the middle of a blank wall, the little teleporting freaks!  This spring my super-efficient and green friend Libby gave me this awesome bug-zapping contraption.  Looks just like a tennis racket, but has a little electrical charge that zaps any of those rotten little fliers right out of the air.  WHAT FUN.  When we first got it, we would literally go seek out the bugs, like turn on the porch light and wait beneath it.  We sure are easily entertained, but in all seriousness this thing is awesome.  No chemicals!  I even got a couple ants with it even though they weren't flying.  Oh, and the crackle it makes when you get a bug is oh so satisfying...

Of course all good things must come to an end, and the good bug-zapping tennis racket unfortunately came to an end.  When something is that much fun, it is irresistible to the shorter people that are always hanging around, and you know how badly they treat their toys?  Ya, same story.  So now what?

Well...I have a spider.  He moved in over the kitchen sink the weekend we were out of town, and I've left him there for 2 weeks now.  He's caught ants and fruit flies and who knows what else...it's hard to tell what the little mummies might have started off as.  I am one of those people who really do NOT like spiders.  There are some crazies who catch them in their house and set them free outside.  Crazies!!  Not me.  I usually smash them, spray them, electrocute them, flush them, whatever.  Their demise is my comfort.

But not this time.  This little daddy long-legs is my friend and I like it.  I even put a chunk of overripe banana under his web to attract the fruit flies so he wouldn't move away!  Yep, I just keep getting nuttier and nuttier over here.

At any rate, my new friend certainly doesn't help with what's going on out in the yard or at the beach, but bugs are allowed to be outside, I suppose.  Next year I will get a new bug-zapping tennis racket to take everywhere with me!  In the meantime, just call me spider mom!

Enough with the Blind Eye!

For argument's sake, let's say that you read my last blog.  Let's say that you never buy food items from China because you were already aware of their many contaminations and other food issues.  Awesome!  Good for you, it's a step in the right direction.

Now let's say that you were at the grocery today and bought Ecuadorian bananas, mangoes from Costa Rica, and clementines from Chile.  Make yourself a mental picture of the workers who farm in those countries and harvested your newly acquired produce. Quaint, isn't it?  Straw hats, donkeys, Juan Valdez.

Now picture this:  thousands of Latin American families devastated by the pesticides and herbicides used to grow that pretty produce that now sits in your fruit bowl.  Atrocious sicknesses, infertility and sterility, cancer, paralysis, skin infections, headaches, lung damage, nose bleeds, and loss of sight to name a few.  Chemicals made by companies like Dow, Bayer and DuPont and used by companies like Dole and Monsanto.  Those companies then refuse to compensate the injured workers and their families and deny the existence of any problems.  American workers have also been affected by these chemicals and their injury claims denied!

No way can I sit back and eat my perfectly yellow banana and pretend this isn't going on.  Once you learn that the food you are eating has these chemicals on it, or that the people responsible for bringing it to you are dying for it, it's impossible to turn a blind eye to it. Twenty-five percent of the world's pesticides are used in third world countries and it this is where over 99% of pesticide related deaths occur.  Is this supposed to be ok?

 Today I read an article about this subject that came to me in a newsletter from a site called Natural News.  For the record - the article really pissed me off.  If you don't subscribe to the site already I highly recommend that you do so.  The headline caught my eye because of the blog I wrote the other day, and the subject has been on my mind.  The fact that this is going on all over the world and these American companies are taking such advantage of other countries well and truly offends me.  This isn't a case of another country poisoning their own soil because of their own lax policies.  This is American companies employing farmers and workers, producing food for export to Americans, and leaving their people sick and their homelands polluted for years to come.  It's so wrong.   

If we all needed another reason to buy organic and buy local (as if!), well there it is.  Read the article for yourself and look up the chemicals mentioned (try Wikipedia or EWG).  I did.  I also got the 'clementines from Chile' reference from my own fruit bowl.  I bought those clementines at my local Target, and let me tell you how I won't be doing that again.  

If you think that your government and governmental agencies are protecting you, wake up.  Open your eyes and watch what you're putting into your mouth.  Not sure why you should avoid pesticides and herbicides in the first place?  Explore here, and here.  Need more proof?  Find it here, here, here.  Support your local farmers, grow your own, and buy organic!  Support companies that are doing the right thing. You're making the world better for everyone by doing so!