MultiHyperFocus

Well, it's been a messy week. The day after my last post was spent almost entirely in bed, getting up only for bathroom trips and rarely, to do something child related. My kids are almost of an age where they can fend for themselves in dire straights. I warned them in the morning that I was sick and wasn't going to be doing much, and that I was going to have an instantaneous no tolerance policy on sibling fighting.

Consequently, Annika filled my water bottle for me, then they both came and massaged my hands and feet with their cool little hands. (Their idea, not mine.) I had a fever and I was just useless. Annika even made them both lunch, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pouring drinks, and putting crackers on the side. So cute. They also fought very little, and were industrious and found plenty to do, even though I forbade screen time.

Yesterday was a little better, and I only did some picking up, vacuuming and laundry.

Today I'm nearly normal, and have been painting the hallway again, and made an apple crisp, and next I think I'll do some laundry and bake something else. Or maybe a pudding from scratch. Mmm.

It was actually really nice having Annika home when she wasn't terribly ill. The kids played really well together. What happened once she went back to school -- and I KNEW this would happen -- is that Celyn is bored and all up in my face the entire day, and then all over her sister the minute she gets home. Problem is, her sister is a pissy little grump when she gets off the school bus, and the fighting and sniping commences.

I'm seriously re-entertaining homeschooling.

I know I've been away from the dojo too long, because I've been feeling the urge to hit things. While I was doing laundry, I walked by this old "heavy" training bag I had in the basement that I'd been ignoring for years, did a double take, grabbed it and brought it upstairs with me. I hung it on a hook in the mud room and started beating on it. See, the problem with this bag is that it's an "aerobic" boxing bag, meaning it's not very heavy at all, and it has a d-ring on the bottom, so that you can tether it down. Well, I have no tethers. So hanging it against the wall is the best I can do at this point. And the thing is pretty useless for kicking. But it's a start. And I need something, especially with Celyn up in my face all day whining because she's lonely without her sister. OMFG. Must! Punch!

Ahem. But with any luck, I can get back in there tonight for a weapons class at least, even though I have a love-hate relationship with weapons right now. At least it's not really strenuous. So there's that.

Now back to painting and cooking, not at the same time.

It's Not Pig Related

So after three days of 102-103 degree fever, I had to take Ani to the doctor to have them check her out. Clear lungs, clear ears, clear throat. Un-fun-swab up the nose for swine flu, negative. Today she's better, but due to the 24 hour fever rule, she's home with me again today.

And now Celyn has her own version, of course, because the concept of isolation in a house with two small children is absurd.

Celyn, unsurprisingly, is a different kind of patient. Her main annoying "sick" habit is her penchant for waking up all night long to have discussions.

I didn't catch their ick, but I do have a slight cough. So last night, during one of her wakeups, she felt it necessary to relate this to me:

"Hey mom? Know what my sister told me? She said that when you hafta cough or sneeze, you do it in your elbow, like dis," she demonstrated.

"She's absolutely right," I murmured sleepily.

After a few minutes, she piped up again.

"Mama? ... you didn't do dat."

"Thanks, Celyn. Go. To. Sleep."

She also woke up to use the bathroom, and that whole process took way longer for me to recover from, sleepwise, and I was awake for probably an hour on top of the numerous random wakings. So ... I'm slightly grumpy today. Celyn's not. She wanted to talk endlessly over breakfast, but her choice of breakfast conversation -- made up knock knock jokes -- while I tried to give myself a blood transfusion drink my coffee, and I started to crack a little.

"Please ... I can't talk anymore. I need to be quiet and drink coffee and stare at the ceiling. Thanks."

I know, I'm a bad mom. But this is what a three year old's knock knock joke is like:

"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
"What did the other chicken say to the other chicken?"
"What?"
"I SAID, 'What did the other...?"
"No, I heard you, I meant, what did the chicken say?"
"Cockadoodle doooo! ... Mom? Did you hear me? Wasn't that funny? I said, 'Cockadoodle doooo!' ... Knock knock!!"

So you see my dilemma. Ask for quiet to drink my coffee, or have a nervous breakdown.

Argh

I suck at blogging these days. I have no TIME for it anymore. I have no time to keep up with it. Apparently, I used to have way too much time on my hands, back in the day. Which is not to say that other bloggers have too much time on their hands, it's just that I am crap at time management.

This weekend has been a Stuck Around the House weekend, because the Big Kid is sick. She is not an easy patient, which is hardly surprising. She hates every form of medicine out there, which makes her totally hard to take care of. I can't give her much relief. If there is something she HAS to take, she makes a huge deal out of it, and throws up a lot when she has a fever or has to take something she finds objectionable. I was able to con her into eating yogurt laden with ibuprofen, which was an enormous and unprecedented victory. She still has a fever, though, so I suppose we're off to the doctor tomorrow.

I'm pretty much giving up on ever getting to yoga again, since I have had one week since school started where they have both managed to be in school at the same time on their regular schedule.

School is a drag. That's all I'm going to say about that right now.

I'm trying to ignore the tickle in my throat and the tightness in my lungs, because I refuse to get sick. I'm too busy and having too much fun to be sick, dammit.

So we stuck close to home this weekend, and I did a lot of cooking Friday and Sunday. Friday I made a chicken in the slow cooker, warm red cabbage salad with pecans, pumpkin pecan muffins, and pumpkin anadama rolls. Today I made hamburger soup (which is a pretty good soup with a pretty lame name), brussels sprouts with dijon/caraway butter, yeasted dinner rolls, and leftover cabbage salad. (I am in LOVE with this warm red cabbage salad, it's so bizarre.) Tomorrow I will probably be stuck close to home again, except for doctor's appointments, so I will probably be cooking my ass off again. I had planned to do more house painting this weekend, but that didn't pan out. Painting is something that's hard to stop and start and do little bits of at a time ... for me, anyway.

Another reason I don't want to get sick is that I'm learning so many cool new things at the dojo! I got my brown belt two weeks ago, and now I'm working on judo throws, a new kata, and bo staff. I don't want to take any time off for any reason. So there.

Stupid school and its stupid germs.

No Clever Title Required

I always feel compelled to make some excuse as to why I'm not posting more. In my blogging heyday, I posted every single day. Part of the reason why I don't is that I've voluntarily given up my niche. I don't consider myself a "mommy blogger" anymore and I don't want to talk about my kids all the time, for a variety of reasons.

Almost everything else going on at the moment is a bit repetitive, and not really worth extensive obsessive updating.

Anyway, we're all recovering from "Week from Hell, the Second" of this winter. Can't wait for the next one. We all still have coughs, and the grownups have lingering sore throats, but I'm blaming either the low humidity or the mold for that.

Speaking of mold! It's a long story, but we were finally able to prod our landlord into acknowledging our existence, and we have a mold remediation company coming out on Wednesday. It's not much, but it's something. Supposedly we are to hear from some chimney/flue companies as well, but that hasn't yet happened. Things are moving, though, and I think we have some leverage. Keep your fingers crossed, if you do that kind of thing.

I was only off my normal exercise routine for four or five days, but apparently the illness was pretty thorough because I wasn't able to charge right back like nothing had happened. The first class I went back to I had to take pretty slow, and I kept up with yesterday's okay, just a little slower and weaker than usual. I'm not sure if this was a good idea, or very stupid (and honestly, I can't bring myself to care) but I started a T-Tapp bootcamp (Google it, too lazy) on Thursday. It's only a measly 15 minutes of exercise in the morning, so I can't believe it's too much, you know? I don't know why T-Tapp feels so unbelievably corny and silly to me, but it's supposedly a pretty impressive workout, and again, takes up very little time, so what the hell. I'm on Day 4 of what I hope will be a 7 Day Bootcamp, but if it ends up being less, I don't care. Four consecutive days is supposed to be the important bit, and that's now done. Yay.

The children really need to go back to school because they are kind of driving me crazy. Baby C has this new atrocious habit of speaking continuously in a totally random way. It goes sort of like this:

"Daaaad?"
"What?"
...
"Daaaaaaaad?"
"What, Cel?"
...
"Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!"
"If you want to talk to me, come here. I don't want to keep shouting!"
"What?!"
...
...
"Daaaaaaad!"

Repeat every three minutes indefinitely. Side effects include irritation, unpredictable fits of rage, inexplicable helpless laughter and hair loss. And presumably, if left untreated, insanity and death.

Another part of her plan to drive us all mad is her curious refusal to take herself to the bathroom to pee. If she has to poop, no problem. We don't hear about it until she's ready to be cleaned up. If she has to pee, she begins an elaborate song and dance routine. She denies she has to go, then she starts to whine that she needs help, then she bursts into tears because OMFGSHEHASTOPEE! but will not make any attempt to bring herself to the bathroom. You know, that same bathroom she just used to take a crap all by herself a few hours previously.

Fortunately for her, she's very, very cute, what with the dimples and the curls and her natural inclinations toward ducking her chin and batting her eyelashes, so we haven't yet sold her off to a traveling carnival.

(Though to be fair, it's a slow season for traveling carnivals.)

Just Some Pointless Rambling

I was thinking yesterday that I'm shooting my blogging wad in other places lately. Blogging used to be my primary weapon against new-mom isolation, and then new-mom-who-just-moved-into-a-new-town isolation. Now, with the advent of Twitter, and my abuse of Facebook, all of those collected tidbits that would have formed into a blog entry just get shot out, piece by piece, into the cybersphere.

Oh well. If I refocused my blog's intent, maybe that would change. But then again, maybe it wouldn't.

This morning I'm totally tired, crabby, and sore. If I consider Friday the end of the week, then I took eight karate classes this week, while subsisting on between 1200-1400 calories each day. Since I feel tired and sloppy in class, I'm inclined to blame the calorie count for that. Yesterday was particularly bad, because I forgot lunch, and then forgot to eat dinner early enough to digest before the night classes. When I got home I realized I'd consumed around 700 calories for the day and worked out (at varying intensities) for around 200 minutes. Uh, whoops. So it's a small wonder now that I was exhausted and was forgetting my katas completely.

So today I'm going to eat well, be lazy, and only exercise 30 minutes here at home. Maybe I'll crank up the heat and lie on the living room floor with a jury-rigged tropical drink and pretend I'm taking a vacation somewhere that is not EIGHT FECKING DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

Ahem.

Honk!

I do not think it's a coincidence that I came down with a cold within hours of my Christmas guests leaving. Fortunately, this feels like "just" a cold, not anything like those horrid diseases we were infected with all fecking November long. I'm tired and stuffy and fuzzy-headed and taking advantage of my husband's good nature by lying around and ignoring my children. (Hey, it's not like I got to do this the other 47 times I've gotten sick since having children, so sue me.)

I hope this is mostly gone by tomorrow, though, because I'm getting bored. I don't have the energy to do much, but on the other hand, there are only so many OkCupid quizzes I can take, and I'm afraid at some point I will come crashing to the end of the internet. Online shopping is great, but if I have nothing to do but lie in wait for the UPS man (closer ... closer), the gratification delay is much more noticeable.

The period between Christmas and New Year's feels like a weird holding pattern, like lost time. The normal rules of time and space are suspended, people aren't working, some things are closed, the world is topsy-turvy. At the same time, the major holidays are over, so there isn't much to actually DO while waiting for New Year's. And New Year's is no big deal around here. I was never big into the NYE party scene even before kids, and that hasn't changed.

But I guess if I HAVE to be sick again, it may as well be during this lost time, when at least my husband is on vacation and I can lie around and paint my toenails while I sneeze and cough. Right?

Snow Day

Yeah, yeah. My Holidailies are really "HoliEveryOtherDailies." As long as I won't be arrested, I'm cool with that.

We have a snow day today. I don't remember ever having a snow day called before it actually started snowing before, but by the time I got out of the shower, it was snowing pretty hard and is still going. The kids are watching Curious George or something so I can get appropriately caffeinated to deal with the day.

Because this weekend is our big holiday celebration, y'know, so I have a lot to do. My deadline is a little shorter than most people's. This is what makes the timing of our year end bonus (the 24th this year) so frakkin' annoying. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a bonus, especially when the end of the year is always so tight (the FSA's run out, we had big bills from A's double emergency room visit + limo ride ambulance transfer in between the two hospitals, etc.), but would it kill them to give it to us at the beginning of the month?


This snowstorm is perfectly timed, as we don't have much scheduled on Fridays, so it's not interfering with anything. Yesterday A had board breaking class. She broke two boards, but on the second, thicker board, she got a splinter. OMG, the drama. I couldn't get it out last night, and she was nearly hysterical and ready to be sick, so I cleaned it and bandaged it and said we'd deal with it tomorrow. Which is now today. Blech.

Then I went to my own class. I took a lot of breaks this year, but I'm thoroughly re-addicted and having a lot of fun in the classes. Maybe that's because a lot of things are starting to "click" and feel a little more natural. My goal for the new year is to go four times a week to the best of my ability. I decided on that because I realized that I wasn't going often enough to really develop cardiovascularly, even though everything else was improving. I've discovered I pretty much hate to do cardio at home or on my own, and since I'm paying a monthly fee for unlimited classes, I may as well make the most of that.

I really would like to get my brown belt in 2009. If I can manage my purple by April, which I think is a decent estimate, that gives me eight months. I know it takes longer to move between the higher belt ranks, but don't know how much longer, and this is also assuming I don't have any or many more unintended breaks. I owe a ton to karate. I am in better shape (at least cardio- and muscle-wise) than I have ever been in my adult life, and have lost thirty pounds since I started. That wasn't all karate, I had to do some calorie cutting as well, but it didn't hurt.

Now the kids are bugging me to get started on the day's activities, which are cookie frosting and gingerbread house making. And for me, laundry! Because laundry is the gift that keeps on giving. And giving. And giving! And giving!

File Under "Duh"

This is going to be a new tag. Honestly.

NEW HAVEN - Children need more exercise and less medication to offset the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study of a local doctor's fitness program.

Seriously, does this come as a surprise to anyone? I have been bitching for years about the way schools keep kids in their seats and following directions and walking in the hallway, blah blah blah, while cutting recess down to the bare minimum or NONE. Does anyone really think it's normal and natural for (most) kids to be sedentary most of the day? Is anyone surprised when some kids just CAN'T?

I'm sure that more exercise (especially outdoors) during the day would also help regulate sleep, cut obesity, and fend off other childhood disorders.

I find it difficult, at this time of year, to get the kids enough outdoor time and exercise on my own. So I find it more than a little frustrating that the school, which keeps my oldest for most of the day, with the nice big gymnasium and playground, can't be bothered to give her recess on most days. "Free time" is not the same thing. It's nice and it's necessary too, but it's Not The Same Thing.

The amount of research out there on the benefits of recess and exercise is overwhelming and obvious. Why are the schools ignoring it? I really don't know: is there any research that indicates that standardized testing really improves educational outcomes or offers some long term benefits to the student? Dropping recess to spend more time prepping for the tests seems counterproductive.

I'm still working on addressing this at our school, but I have to admit not having much hope. There is a board member actively working for mandated recess, and it appears at the last meeting the board overall decided that it wasn't really necessary and should be managed at the building level (principal's discretion).

That is not a good sign.

Oops

So, I missed yesterday on Holidailies. I had a good excuse, though. Despite my copious applications of Lysol, Purell, and hot water and soap just about everywhere, C developed a nearly identical illness to what A had earlier in the week. She recovered faster, though, thank goodness. Today she seems back to her usual, crabby/sweet bipolar (almost) three year old self.

So yesterday was spent doing laundry and cleaning, and more laundry and cleaning, and today is cleaning and laundry, and more cleaning and laundry, and perhaps soon I'll set the furniture on fire. I'm just not sure yet.

I also spent a lot of time setting up every humidifier and vaporizer we own. Low humidity contributes to virus transmission, did you know? It's almost funny. We have mold in the attic and in the basement, and the rest of the house is bone dry. Hee hee hee hee. (You can't hear the Renfield-like cadence of my giggles.)

My mission today is washing all the blankets and scrubbing down the kitchen from top to bottom. I will be conspicuously consuming hot water and bleach and I don't even care. I also need to make muffins and soup and granola bars. But those are low priority. First is death to viruses. I'm wondering if giving A a bath as soon as she gets home from school would be overkill ...

I just can't get enough

Sickness, that is. Whoooowee. Somehow, I knew there was a very good reason I didn't get into the shower in a timely fashion this morning. Had I done that, I'd have still been upstairs primping, and not heard my cell phone's delicate ringtone, when the nurse told me to come get my vomiting kid.

I had been planning to go get lights (yes, I know) for the tree, maybe pick up a latte, and grab some groceries we were low on. Instead, I'm making chicken soup and homemade play dough. Which is okay; I'll be moving on to cookie doughs next, I think. I'll make chai to cover for the latte. Not the same amount of caffeine, alas, but the sugar ratio is about the same.

I am doing this annoying thing, that I do every single year, of putting on the local "All Christmas Music, All the Time, All Freakin' December" music station on for most of the day. Somehow, even though I am a crabby old crank, I don't mind overdosing on Christmas music. (With the notable exception of "Christmas Shoes," which I find so appallingly maudlin and saccharine and exploitative that it makes me want to shove knitting needles into my ears while retching. I mute the radio every time it comes on.) The kids eat it up, too. The playlist isn't that great, though, so I really need to assemble my own and get it on the Sansa so we can have some variety.

The Christmas music and the snow lightly falling outside, combined with the spottily lit tree and the Yankee candles burning makes it quite nice and toasty and cheery inside.

Vomit and all.

FTW!

I jumped on the scale yesterday after neglecting it for about, oh, four weeks to discover a five pound loss.

The downside to this is that none of my jeans fit anymore. They were already on the awkward side, now they require serious belt cinching to hold them up, which just looks ridiculous.

I'd still like to lose another ten pounds, though, so I'm not sure I should update the old wardrobe just yet.

The coolest part is that I wasn't making any special effort. Wow, imagine if I start drinking water again.

I also -- not sure if I wrote about this here, or just everywhere else -- got my blue belt this week. I had two official goals for this year: get my blue belt and paint the rest of the house. Well, I got the blue belt. I will probably not finish the painting. Jeez. I think I'll be okay, though.

In other news of total unimportance, I finally got an adapter so that I could play my Sansa in the car. This makes me unaccountably happy. I've discovered everything is much happier with music. If I could somehow program a soundtrack into my life, I think I would have a happiness aneurysm. (*I* would have to program it, though. If somehow The Carpenters or Van Halen got in there, things would get ugly.)

Boogie oogie oogie oogie.

A Purely Positive Post

We got to take a second scenic drive this morning up to beautiful Lockport, NY, to visit our pediatrician's NP. Celyn says, "Doctor Chad is kinda GREAT." Whatever she may have had before, she now has bacterial conjunctivitis. That's great, because we can knock it out with antibiotic eyedrops and by washing nearly everything in the house. Yeah, our washer is broken, but hey, what's wrong with boiling your laundry in a pot on the stove? It brings you closer to your roots. I'll get dual pots going: laundry in one, polenta in the other. This will solve the total lack of humidity in our house, to boot!

Tomorrow Annika has off from school for Veteran's Day. I'm so glad, because we really just can't ever get enough togetherness, and I know she'll enjoy helping me wash and mop.

I'm starting to feel much better, myself. One ear opened up sometime this morning, maybe when I was singing and yodeling happily at my fellow drivers as we did the twenty minute drive to Lockport. I really enjoy seeing the senior contingent out on the roads, independent, enjoying the right to drive and really savoring the experience by going as slowly as possible. That's what Zen is all about, right there.

I made some more pendants last night, and have been working on rings this morning. It's nice to be able to work again. I loaded the attic with spare toys, so that when I'm working, the kids are usually happy to just hang out in there with me, playing with stuff they haven't seen in a while. I set up my desk in the brightest corner, near all the windows, and as I was working this morning, leaning back in my chair, an icy cold splish dripped onto my chest from the skylight above. It wasn't "the leaky one" either. Now they match!

After I wrap this up, I'm going to go get Sickie McEyeball some apple juice, start some mopping, and get those pots a'boilin'. It'll be nice to have a clean, fresh-smelling house again soon.

(How'd I do on the positivity? Too much sarcasm?)

Was it YOU?

Ok, 'fess up. Who cursed me?

Two weeks of unremitting illness. An 8 hour ER visit. An abduction attempt. And now, my washing machine is broken. Broken. Aaaah!

On Thursday, when I was coming home from taking Cel to the doctor, my phone rang, and it was Annika's school. She tripped on the playground and fell across some chains and ended up in the nurse's office.

"I think she's okay to come home on the bus," the nurse said. "If you can just try to remember to have her return this ice pack."

I almost laughed.

Today, I feel slightly better, thanks to antibiotics. Celyn, though -- her eye just looks even worse, and I will probably have to keep her home from school another day, and take her back to the doctor's tomorrow. Since apparently Thursday's visit was useless. The poor kid.

So, seriously, once I get the house scrubbed down I'll apparently have to do some sort of banishing ritual to get all these funky vibes off. Sheesh.

August!

I love August. Not because it's my birthday month, but because it's the start of the harvest season. I mean, what could be better? It's still warm, still sunny, and so many awesome things are now ready to eat. We got our first corn from the CSA last week, and blueberries, and peaches, and these things make me happy. Once the tomatoes ripen, I will be out of my mind with agricultural glee.

Because of the whole CSA thing, and the whole "almost vegan" thing, I've had to be more scrupulous about meal planning. So I'll do Menu Monday!

Monday: Falafel with tahini sauce and mint salsa, tabbouleh
Tuesday: Enchilada Casserole, greens
Wednesday: Ethiopian Wat with Injera Bread
Thursday: Spinach Lasagne, salad
Friday: Takeout Night
Saturday (past): Barbequed Seitan Ribz, corn on the cob
Sunday (past): Green Thai Curried Vegetables, Jasmine Rice, Tofu Apple Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce

(I do my actual planning from Sat-Fri, so that's why it's listed like this.)

I wanted to like the seitan ribz, and I want to like seitan on principle, but so far, I haven't been able to. I don't know if it's my inexpertise in making it, or what, but the ones I've made just aren't ... al dente enough, if you can use that expression for a non-pasta. Hubby seems to like seitan, though. The kids weren't enthused, but they ate a ton of corn.

They ate the curry, if only because it had baby corn in it, and they'll eat anything if it has baby corn in it. I loved the spring rolls, and I think Hubby did, too.

The kids haven't liked the falafel I've made recently, but they were mixes and I thought they tasted a little like cardboard. Trying one last mix before I give up on boxed falafel.

Last but not least, though I planned for Injera bread, I couldn't find teff flour. I'm not sure I want to make a trip to the NHFS just for teff, so maybe I'll just make it with regular flour. Who cares.

I don't usually make this many baked casseroley type of dishes, especially in the summer, but I have an ulterior motive. We're going out of town next week, so I'm planning on doubling the recipes for the Enchilada Bake and the lasagne and freezing them to bring.

I've also made Chocolate Chip Cookies this week (recipe also from Vegan Lunch Box) that the kids loved, and I have a big baggie of shredded zucchini in the fridge, just waiting to be tucked into some quick bread.

Yum.

Almost Vegan; But Will Kill Deer for Tomatoes

No matter how much I feel the need to recoil from wasting time online, I shouldn't stop blogging. At least, for myself. I have tried paper journaling again, and while it might be good for some things too embarrassing to disclose publically -- like my superstitions, or whom I have a grugde against -- my paper journaling is awful. I don't know whether to blame my handwriting, or what, but things don't flow as well, and they can't be easily expunged and rewritten. Somehow, just writing in a paper journal, with my handwriting, makes me feel (and sound) a whiny angsty 13 years old.

(Don't say it.)

So, what has been going on with me? I'm almost vegan. I would say, "I'm vegan," except as a new vegan, there are plenty of slip ups and adjustments. I'm not forcing my family to go vegan; they're still having their organic dairy, though I keep introducing new foods to see if there are any substitutions we can all agree on. So far, Annika is not appeased by any dairy substitutes, but Celyn will happily eat soy or coconut milk ice cream (oh, Turtle Mountain, how I love thee) and coconut milk yogurt. I'm also trying to be quite conscientious with my substitutions or replacements, trying to avoid highly processed stuff and a ton of soy (except for the odd treat like the "non dairy frozen desserts") so it's been quite an adventure. I'm not being sarcastic there, by the way.

The change is helping me use up my CSA share creatively, as well. At the least, it's not more difficult. I'm not entirely happy with my CSA, but that's another post for another time.

My garden isn't faring very well, and I blame myself. I didn't amend the soil from last year, and didn't add fertilizer until it was very late in the season. My lettuce did well, as did my collards, but in the square foot box, that was IT. I planted four tomato plants in the SQG box, and three in my Earth Box, and the Earth Box tomatoes are huge and full of tomatoes, and my SFG box tomatoes are spindly and short and only one has a tomato on it. Lesson learned.

But! Once again, something is eating green tomatoes, whole and entire, off my Earth Box plants. This happened last year, too, and whatever it was managed to eat ALL my green tomatoes in one night. Then, in a horrible coincidence, all the plants died within the week. (Or maybe it wasn't a coincidence, maybe a blighting demon ate all my tomatoes.) Anyway, either it's a demon or it's a deer. Small difference. We're not allowed to shoot guns within the village or the town, so I've been thinking about investing in a crossbow and taking a few out. Maybe not now, but soon ... and ... for the rest of my life?

Seeing as that's not a terribly practical solution, I sprayed my plants liberally with Deer and Rabbit Repellent. Oh, my GOD, it's horrifically repellent. It smells like rotting eggs ... stuffed inside a corpse. Which has been peed on. I bought it ages ago, but was hesitant to actually spray such foul stuff on my beautiful tomato plants unless there was a clear need. Well, seeing as I lost four tomatoes last night, there is now a clear and present need.

There is some sort of crazy irony in the fact that we (not the Royal We) use so many resources producing beef and pork and chicken, when there are approximately 80 kajillion deer and Canada geese running amok, completely unchecked. Am I the only one who sees a paradox here?

So lately, I've been obsessed with vegan food blogs -- of which there are many with stupendous recipes -- Maine, and yurts. I know, I didn't say anything about Maine or yurts in this entry. Don't rush me!

De Feet, Cont.

The doctor wants me to abstain from weight bearing exercise and "cross-train" for 1-2 weeks. Unfortunately, the non-weight bearing cross training exercises he mentions, like biking or swimming, I don't have access to.

It is to cry. I have stripe testing on the 14th! I was really making progress on my kata!

Sob.

The Agony of De Feet

Oh, what have I done to my feet? Alas, alack. Five measly workouts of mostly walking, and a really tiny bit of running, in the Vibrams, and after nearly a week with none of that, my feet and ankles are still messed up. I only went to karate twice last week, to try to baby my left ankle, only to have it swell after Thursday's class, and swell again last night.

This really sucks. I should go to the doctor, but when? I have no car today, and tomorrow is the last day before we go out of town. I've been resting and icing and a little compressing, but it's not like I get much time to put it up and laze around. I have two kids and a house with six levels. You do the math.

I know it doesn't help anything to be annoyed, but I am Really Annoyed. It strikes me as unbelievably ironic. The running was supposed to be an extra, a little added fillip ... it wasn't supposed to completely derail me off ALL of my activity. And the barefoot thing was supposed to reduce the risk of injury. It's just ... hilarious. My frustration must be quite comic to the universe.

And a Good Time was Had by All

When I went to pick up the kids at preschool, I went to Cel's room first. I watched her do circle time and their goodbye song, and she participated but was mostly watching everyone closely. She looked tired.

So when I went in, and picked her up, she sort of looked glazed over and a little sad, and I wondered if I was going to get an unloading of pent up tension from her first morning away, but she just leaned into me and said, "I wish I could come back here ... " in a wistful tone. When I assured her she could come back, she said, "Oh! Dat's GREAT!"

All day yesterday, she carried around her little school bag, saying, "I'm goin' ta gul!" (That's exactly how she pronounces "school," and it's so cute to me I have to use that exact phonetic rendering.)

Today, she was the same. One of her teachers was raving about how well she was adapting, no problems, how well she talks, etc. When we got home, and I took her out of the carseat, I asked, "So, did you have fun today?"

She sighed and said, "Yeah, but sometime, I was a yittle bit yonely."

So we talked about things she could do when she was feeling lonely: go find Annika, go look at their "All About Me" books, or tell a teacher. And remember, of course, that I'd be there again soon to pick her up.

I just could not be more pleased, really. I hope this bodes well for fall.

No need to ask how Ani's adjusting. This is her 7th semester, and she is, as her teacher has dubbed her, "The queen of the playground." The girls didn't play together the whole time, but they did quite a bit, and Ani actually got upset when they split up for snacks inside their respective classrooms. She was worried, she says, "Some of the kids in Celyn's class are bigger, like three, and I'm afraid they might hurt her."

And I'm happy, because two acquaintances of mine are bringing their kids there this summer, and now I get to see them and chat and get to know them better without having to make any extraordinary effort. Not because I'm lazy, entirely, but because my schedule is kind of full lately. One of them proposed coffee while the kids are in school sometime and I'm All Over That.

In other news, I finished Day 2, Week 2 of Ct5K and my effing foot HURTS. Mostly, my left foot between the ankle and heel. Of course, that doesn't seem to be a common place to hurt that is referenced in ANY of my books or anything, so I don't really know what to do about it. I'm not sure if I should switch to my running shoes for a while, or what. It seems awfully early in the game to "take a break," when I'm hardly doing anything at all, you know? It started hurting on Sunday, and I've been icing and stretching and it's only gotten worse. What is it with me and my body balking at running? Cardiovascularly, it's so much easier this time!

I'm going to try a stretch for the petroneus muscles and see if that helps. Otherwise, I got nothin'.

Weekly Recap

Like I really need a recap, right; I've written every day! Well, I'm hoping it'll build my momentum.

First, a fitness recap:

Karate: I did five classes this week, two on Mon, two on Tues, and one last night. Though, that one is usually 75-90 minutes long and like a double in itself. Monday was all partner work on basics, Tuesday was a lot of self-defense, and yesterday was the conditioning class. On Tuesday, I got to do circle of self-defense for the first time. It was intimidating, but way more fun than I expected. (That's where you have a group of people (we had 8) in a circle, taking turns having one in the middle getting randomly attacked from all sides. Fun! No, really!

Bikram: Only one this week, on Monday. The only other time during the week they have a 6am is Wednesday, and I skipped it, because ...

Running: I finished Week 1 of Couch to 5K this morning. I had intended to do Day 2 on Tuesday, but was wiped that morning, so I did it Wednesday instead of Bikram. No problems; my ankles and feet are a little sore, muscle-wise. My toes feel like they are coming to life. I find myself wiggling them and stretching them an awful lot lately, as well as gripping things with them. Monkey toes.

I've been counting calories on SparkPeople, but am completely confused. It gave me a range of 1200-1550 to use as my target, and I've been trying to stay within that, but then, it's chiding me on my fitness tracker page that, "*You've gone over your weekly calories burned goal by a significant amount. This will not change your calories eaten goal automatically. If you'd like, you can change your fitness settings here." But, doing that still doesn't tell me how many calories I should be eating, and I don't trust their estimation of my calories burned anyway. I haven't had a scale in the house for weeks, so I'm getting no feedback there. I should pick one up, but I kind of worry if I get one, and see no change, it'll dampen my enthusiasm. And I've got a good momentum going at the moment.

In other news, I'm tired of it being chilly and rainy. It was supposed to do this in April and be done. My plants aren't doing great, and bunnies are eating all my stuff because the repellent keeps washing away. If only I knew how to skin and dress a rabbit ...

Now, I'm off to shower and start doing laundry (that I won't be able to hang out, mumble mumble curse mumble,) and cook up some of my CSA pickup for lunch. This week we got a bunch of turnips with greens, mustard greens, kale, two heads of lettuce, a pound of spinach, and 1.5 pints of strawberries. Mmmm. Strawberries. Also have to figure out what to do this weekend.

What are you doing this weekend?

I'm a Bore on These Subjects

Evolution. I adore it. I find it totally fascinating and I must be an incredible bore in my dogged investigation of it. Because whatever the question of the day is, I'm always wondering about it from an evolutionary standpoint.

So running has been the topic on my mind lately and so I dug, and here's just one of the write ups I found on where running fits into human evolution, from Discover mag. It's even more timely, because I am reading Children of the Ice Age: How a Global Catastrophe Allowed Humans to Evolve, and while that's not about running per se, one of its major points is that being forced out of the trees by climate change made us adapt to life on the ground, resulting in major changes to our normal locomotion.

It's all very fascinating, because I'm a dork. And I always think, if we evolved for a certain activity, then it's likely to be loaded with benefits for us, so why not Just Do It, as the ubiquitous shoe purveyor says?

Another prong of that evolutionary theory is that being out of the trees kept our arms free, which allowed us to have and care for much more helpless offspring, who then had the option of growing bigger brains and heads than they could on the inside. He says somewhere in the book that, essentially, humans are born purposely premature compared to other primates (and nearly every other animal.) And that made me wonder about the current and somewhat unexplained rise in real prematurity. If we have some mechanism (that almost always works, I might add) that triggers us to give birth before heads get too large, I wonder if our current diets, which are comparatively really high in calories and fat compared to anything our ancestors would have evolved with, added in with a much more sedentary lifestyle, is growing bigger babies and maybe, trying to get them out too early to compensate. It's just a half formed thought. (As you can tell by the terribly clumsy, convoluted sentence!) It obviously doesn't have to do directly with head size, but maybe a whole range of factors.

Our bodies are wicked clever and complex; I think we've only scratched the surface of understanding what we can do, how, and why. I don't believe things like AMOR-IPAT are ever going to work better than a healthy human body, because they are never going to have all the information, each individual process is never going to offer full transparency, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The FiveFingers Experiment

Well, it's been a few weeks, but I finally managed to get started. I did Day One, of Week One, of Couch to 5K on Saturday morning, wearing my fancy new FiveFingers.

I loved it! My form was -- as it had to be -- entirely different than it was in running shoes. And something about that was a lot of fun. Even walking in those forces you to concentrate to avoid using a heel strike, because hey, your heels don't have padding. So, especially when running, I had to change my posture a lot, leaning forward, and treading lightly on the balls of my feet. That just felt so much more fun than the way I have always run before, it felt light and lilting and gazelle-esque.

And I did a lot of running in the grass, across the park and in the medians between the sidewalk and the road, and that was fun, because my feet got wet with cool dew, and I got clover blossoms stuck in between my toes.

I am sore in strange places today. My lower calves, some muscles around my ankles and feet I didn't know existed, and my inner thighs. It really is different, running nearly barefoot. I admit, I felt very silly at first, wondering if everyone was going to be looking at my "naked" blue feet. I did see a lot of my neighbors, and I just waved and smiled and pretended like I was a perfectly normal person. Ha! I'm not very convincing.

I'm excited, and looking forward to adding this in to my exercise routine, well, routinely. If I was really brave, I'd just go barefoot, but I'm not there yet. And oddly, it's more because of the "being seen as a freak" thing, not the "I might step on something owie" thing. Which is kind of the same as the reason I don't enjoy sparring. It's not because I'm afraid I'll get hurt, it's because I hate looking So Damn Stupid and Clumsy and losing all the time. Petty, ain't it?

A girlfriend and I agreed to try to do a 5K together in September, and that gives me plenty of time to get through Ct5K, presuming no injuries. Wish me luck.

Sudden Infectious Death Syndrome?

"Two bacteria in the latter group -- Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli -- were found to be more common than expected in babies whose deaths could not be explained."

Not sure what to make of this one. They go on to say:

"Sixteen percent of samples from infants whose deaths remained unexplained after autopsy contained the staph bacteria, compared with 9% of infants whose deaths were explained but not related to infection. And 6% of samples from the former group contained E. coli, compared with just 1% of samples from the latter."

So, there were significantly more occurrences of the bacteria amongst unexplained infant deaths than unexplained. Still, looked at another way, that's an awful lot of unexplained deaths without either of those bacteria ... I'm not sure what that means.

They mention the relation to sleeping position, in that face down sleeping may encourage the bacterial growth in the nose. What they don't mention is where breastfeeding fits in. Breastfeeding is supposed to reduce the risk of SIDS; if bacterial infection is a component, then it makes sense that breastfed babies would be at less risk because of the immunological properties of breastmilk.

I don't know what it really means, but I'll be following this with interest.

Sick! Again! Or Still! (with Birds)

I had something earlier in the month already, with the sinus pain and crud and the tender gland thing. That lasted a little over two weeks.

Now it's back! It loved me so much, it just couldn't leave me. Or something. I went to the doctor, who can't find any actual reason I should have tender glands and a sore throat, chills and fatigue; aren't I lucky? So if I remain cruddy all weekend, I get to go for bloodwork on Tuesday. This is so typical. I get into a good routine, I add more exercise into my life, and I get sick.

I only did one karate class this week, and no Bikram, but I think I'll do Bikram tomorrow and just go really slow, and sip a lot. All that sweating has got to help. If I tell the instructor beforehand, then I won't worry that they'll be thinking, "Oh, what a slacker," if I skip a pose or five.

Oddly, on the doctor's office scale, I weighed ten pounds less than I did at my last visit in January. Now, my own scale asserts that I am heavier than the doctor's scale (even without the clothes and shoes I wore at the doc's) and that my weight has only fluctuated within the same five pound range for the last year, and that my body fat percentage hasn't changed at all. So that scale, which has tormented me lo these many months, is going in the farging trash can. Thanks for stealing my $60 with your heap of electronic crap, WeightWatchers.

And, in other unrelated news, we have birds. I told this story to Carrie, because at the time (earlier in the week), it was just mildly annoying, bordering on amusing, and has since taken a turn for the worse.

Our house has a stupid and useless vent running from the downstairs half bath to the outside wall. No fan, just a tube with a grate on the bathroom end, with an upturned pipe capped with a little hat coming out the side of the house. Last year, and this year, a bird nested in there in the spring. Babies hatched. They made cute little noises -- when you were outside. If you went into the half bath, the noises were much more jarring, and after the babies had grown a bit, the bathroom took on this unpleasant "birdy" odor.

We almost never use that bathroom anyway, it's off the mudroom, so we just closed the door and went on with our lives. Last year, the birds moved out when the babies were grown, and the smell went away.

Two days ago, I went down there for some reason or other, and thought it smelled particularly bad. And I thought, "We should do something ... " and closed it up again.

Last night, I opened our upstairs, main bathroom door, and went, "Oh my god ... that is not feathers and poop." I suspect at least one of the birds has ... argh ... died in there, and the noisome funk is starting to spread through the ductwork. We closed that bathroom, after opening the window and turning on the fan, and I expect my husband to start doing some dirty work in that outside pipe this afternoon, which I hope to not be any part of.

We are finding more and more reasons lately not to want to buy this house.

Avoidance

I'm way behind. It is to cry. I have a day and a half left before the moving truck comes with Tons o' Stuff, and I'm just not ready. On top of that, I'm behind on laundry, everything is messy, and just ... waaaah. The kids want my attention, and they generate so much mess ... I'd give up if I thought it would get me anywhere.

It's now been four weeks since I started Bikram. I'm both encouraged and discouraged. Some days it feels much harder than others. Today I struggled a bit more than I had been. I'm finding it hard to stay hydrated enough. I didn't go to class on Monday because I ran out of workout clothes. I know, it sounds absurd. But when I woke up at 5:00am, and realized that all two of my semi-appropriate ensembles were in the hamper, it just seemed too big a problem to conquer with limited morning brain function.

My final complaint is that, as of yesterday, I have not lost a single pound. Yes, adding three or four hours of grueling exercise a week has not brought any weight loss. Dude. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

On the other hand, my breakouts have cleared up. I do think that even if I haven't lost anything, my body composition has changed. My clothes fit differently. I have more stamina at karate and better balance. I think I feel more relaxed in general. All of those things make it worthwhile to continue, even if my scale is being recalcitrant. It EVEN claims that my body fat percentage and hydration levels are the same, and I cannot understand how that could possibly be true.

I has theories. But I will save them for another entry.

Better'n Barefoot

You walk wrong, says Adam Sternberg in his article in New York Magazine.

When the kids were babies and just starting to walk, I was all over the Robeez and the Pedoodles, understanding that bare was best for the developing foot. Thin clad leather was the next best thing when barefoot wasn't appropriate. I still try to keep them in very soft soled shoes and barefoot, although now that they have opinions on the matter, I don't always get my way.

It never really occurred to me, though, that adult shoes posed similar problems for adult feet. The more I think about it, the more it makes perfect sense. I love to go barefoot, and in my SAHMdom, bare feet are de rigeur. (Sorry, FlyLady.) I do like shoes, I certainly do -- I just scored a pair of Naughty Monkeys off eBay for $0.99 -- but I spend far more time barefoot than shod.

Last year, during a five week dalliance with the Couch to 5K program that ended ignominiously with knee pain despite my fancy-schmancy specially fit running shoes, I did stumble across an article about barefoot running. I thought it must feel fabulous -- under perfect circumstances. I imagined running the roads and sidewalks in bare feet, encountering glass and sticks and stones and garbage, during the six months it's not frigidly cold in this climate, stifled a piercing shriek of horror, and promptly repressed the whole concept.

Then I read Adam's article, and saw the Vibram FiveFingers shoes, pictured above. Aren't they intriguing? Almost ... entrancing? My toes wiggle expectantly at the very idea. I'm no runner, but I imagine even walking with these would be an adventure. Why, I'd even try rock climbing or any other previously inconceivable crazy sport with these super soles.

And yet another expensive frivolity hits my wishlist, to languish endlessly alongside Yoga Sandals and the Backnobber.

Okay, This is Becoming Ridiculous

I feel like a heap of cold dung this week. Monday's class was great, and I was able to do some postures I hadn't done before in class.

Now ... still breaking out. Monday afternoon, I started getting swollen glands under my neck and a sore throat. I had a dizzy headache, so I skipped karate that night.

Tuesday, I went about all day with the swollen glands, fuzzy head, and sinus pressure. Since it was all above the neck, I went to karate anyway. It was fun but totally kicked my ass.

This morning I woke up around 2:45am with facial sinus pressure so bad I had to get up and take some ibuprofen. Then I lay in bed, waiting for it to work, feeling like my teeth wanted to break off. Just around 4am, when I was starting to feel dozy, I started sneezing. And sneezing. And that led to ...

"Mommy? Mommy?"

"Shhhhhh, go to sleep."

...

"MOMMY!"

So I went up to the kids' room to resettle Cel, who did not want to be resettled. She decided to tell me her tale of woe.

"I woke up and I heard a snooze, and I said 'Mommy? Mommy?' but I just heard a shush! I t'ought maybe you was on Annika's side so I yook and I don't see you so I say, 'MOMMY!' again and you come from big bed." Here she paused.

"And dat's my story. Now, 'nuggle me!"

She kept me up another half hour, then I fell asleep in there and missed my subtle 5:30am alarm. So I missed class this morning. Fortunately, there are two classes this evening so I'll try to make up there, thanks to my gracious husband. Now, oddly, especially feeling so crappy, I am craving the sauna-like heat of the yoga studio. It makes all my muscles go loose, like Jell-O.

Normally, I'd assume I have a cold, but everything I have going is a textbook list of detoxification symptoms.

April has been a wild month for me. Let's review:

- Gave up dairy and red meat.
- Gave up coffee. (Coffee, can you effing believe it? I mean, come on!)
- Started Bikram.

And this is the list I console myself with when I feel slightly bitter that most of my class buddies graduated to green belt last weekend, and I didn't, because I missed one single stripe testing week waaay back in November. Now they're not in my classes anymore, they're in the intermediate classes. Hopefully, May will be my month for green belt.

I have some potentially interesting -- and not totally health and self oriented -- posts in my queue, if my brain ever clears enough to write them.

Tired of Toxins

I did my sixth Bikram class today. Remember when I said that my face was clearing up? Yeah, it is. On the other hand, I've now broken out on my left shoulder, underarm, and down my side. As Dixon Bainbridge says, "What the hell is that?" I have never broken out on my torso before. Ever.

All of my breaking out has been predominantly on my left side. I think that's so odd. Also, kind of interesting.

I also have IBS, as I've mentioned before. I have a lot of trouble with pain in my lower left abdomen. If I press down and in on that side, it's quite painful to the touch, all the time. Well, it has been. I've been massaging it after class, while in savasana, and that's getting noticeably better. (For what it's worth, I've had that pain and tenderness for ages, and it even prompted me to have an exploratory laparoscopy in 2002 for possible endometriosis.)

So, as hokey as it sounds, maybe there is something to it all. I'm curious to see how it continues to evolve. I felt definitely more competent in class today. I find it all very interesting. Verra, verra innnteresting.

Aren't you glad I do all this crazy experimenting, so you don't have to?

Stream of Consciousness

This is the first I've been on the computer all day. I hung out laundry, I baked two loaves of bread. I reorganized the kitchen, and cooked lunch. (Really, I cooked it: spaghetti with zucchini and mushrooms.)  Both children refused to nap at the usual time.

Yet, the moment I sit down with the laptop, at least one kid swarms me like they haven't seen me in months. Annika is pretending to be a dog, but she's got to be The Most Annoying Dog in the Universe. When she plays animals, she manages to make animal noises so much worse than they ever occur in nature. Her "dog" is trilling endlessly like a cat stuck inside an outboard motor, and I'm feeling the urge to tie her to a stake in the backyard.  (Which I certainly won't; I hope that's obvious.)

I also found a dead mouse in the garage this morning. Like the coward I am, I left it, and left the garage door open, hoping it will just disappear somehow.

I have been mouse-fearful all week, because I cleaned out the garage on Monday. The last time I brought in a box from the garage, I discovered a mouse in the house that evening. I suspected a connection, but was unsure. Now, I moved all my boxes of books from the garage to the basement, and sure enough, a mouse appears. I am not sure what caused this mouse to expire dramatically, flat on his back, in the middle of the garage floor (maybe he was that upset that I moved the Tolstoy,) but obviously, mice are finding my garage a cool place to hang out. That really freaks me out. I really hope that none hitched a ride into the basement with my books.

I had a kickass karate class last night. I feel like I made some sort of cardiovascular breakthrough this week, where working out hard no longer feels borderline scary. I have to attribute that to the Bikram. I can't wait to hit that class tomorrow morning. Annika is also testing for her green belt tomorrow. She just got her tiny, tiny sparring equipment and she is raring to start beating up on people. Srsly.

Now, I'm going to attempt to finish my kitchen job without attracting the attention of my pgymy marmosets children.  Wish me restraints and a tranquilizer gun luck.

The Toxic Avenger!

Today wraps up my ten day introductory special over at the Bikram studio. I managed to do four classes within that timeframe. I had hoped for five, but I fell asleep putting the kids to bed on Sunday and forgot to set my alarm for the 6am Monday class.

I love it. Love love love. I could do more this morning than I could last week, or even just on Saturday. I love the 6am classes because they're not jam packed. Saturday was crowded. So crowded that I had to really be aware of the people around me to avoid brushing them when extending my arms. Blah.

I can't believe how many guys take this class! This morning, there were only three women to seven guys. They struggle just as much as anyone else. There are people of all shapes and sizes, although you can tell the long-timers by the depth of their poses, and they tend to be lean and lithe.

I really enjoyed today's class, because it felt more like effort and less like torture, and I was able to do more poses, and hold them better, and felt pretty accomplished. Hey, I did a tree pose without falling down. Go me.

I have noticed some changes since starting. Karate feels easier, cardiovascularly and in terms of balance. My midsection feels different. My posture feels better. I'm also breaking out, though. I asked the instructors about this on Saturday, and they said it was a good thing, it was "toxins escaping." Okay, I guess, but you know, I do plenty of other excreting. Can my stupid toxins find a more convenient escape route? Like hitching a short ride on the 2L of water I'm trying to choke down a day? Why try to force their way up and out through my friggin' chin?

She said to wash with witch hazel. I haven't gotten any yet. It does seem to be tapering off, thankfully.

Notably, last week, I did a total of 7.5 hours of exercise. Three 90 min Bikram classes, one 90 min karate class, and two 45 minute karate classes. One day, I did one of each. And I didn't die! Not only did I fail to expire, I wasn't even horribly tired or sore. I did take a few naps last week, but they felt well deserved. Getting up at 5:15am is not my strong suit.

Now that my intro special is up, I have to buy either a membership or a class card to continue. I can't believe I'm going to spend so much money on exercise (since I already pay monthly for karate), of all things, but I've discovered I don't work out well on my own. I can either keep bashing my head against that particular wall, or I can just pay the money to continue to exercise regularly AND enjoy it to boot. Taking exercise classes feels a little bit like cheating, because I don't have to organize the time myself, or figure out what to do. The times are non-negotiable. I show up, they tell me what to do, I do it.

If only I could find a similar way to manage housework.

the best diet with the worst name

I ordered this book about three weeks ago, while coiled up on the couch in pain. I've had IBS since I was a teenager, got an official seal of approval diagnosis in 2003, and continued to have frequent and random difficulties ever since.

Seemingly random.

I found this book while surfing around for information on IBS, because I was getting desperate enough to make a doctor's appointment, and I knew that there was a high probability that it would be a useless waste of time. I thought I'd give the book and the eating plan a try before I went that route again.

The gist of the plan is as follows: avoidance of red meat, egg yolks, dairy, high-fat foods, caffeine, carbonation, and alcohol.

I know what you're thinking. But wait! I have more things to say!

The good -- nay, fabulous -- part is the list of things that are good, happy foods for your fussy digestive system. After years of indoctrination to the contrary, I was a little bit scared to start eating white bread, white rice, pasta (not whole wheat) and all these other delightful foods you're told are completely useless nutritionally and will make you fat. You are also told to eat lean proteins, like (white meat) chicken, fish, shellfish, and egg whites.

I immediately changed my diet. I dumped the coffee for teas, mostly herbal. I started baking bread several times a week: white, Italian, and sweet breads. I lowered the fat in all recipes as much as possible by using nonstick cookware and the oil sprays. I got a rice cooker and we've been having white rice with almost every meal, unless we're having pasta.

I switched to soy milk for drinking and recipes, and since my oldest is allergic to egg whites, all my baking is now vegan. I've been making banana bread, orange cranberry bread, chocolate applesauce bread, and this unbelievable lemon sticky bread -- all recipes from the book.

Almost immediately, I improved. Every day I stuck to the diet, I had no problems. Every time I weaseled in a bit of dairy, I felt it. I'm amazed at how much better behaved my system has been these past three weeks. I haven't had to make any unexpected changes in my day or schedule because of GI issues, and that's been a real problem lately.

And frankly, I'm in total bliss over being given the green light to eat white foods again. I haven't gained any weight yet on all these carby carbs (I'm crossing my fingers, though), and my next focus is to start carefully working in more insoluble fiber foods (raw veggies, pithy fruits, etc.) to see how much I can tolerate. I'll happily continue to eat within the diet's structure if it means I don't have to deal with pain and bloating and other unmentionables.

If you have IBS, I highly recommend the book. She's researched the hell out of IBS, and to this layman, the science behind her diet plan seems sound. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding.

The luscious, dreamy rice pudding.

hot yoga

I took the plunge and went to a 6am Bikram Yoga class at the new studio down the street.  I hydrated all weekend like a ... crazy water swilling person.  I chronically have issues with water drinking, and therefore I suspect I'm always flirting with dehydration.  It's a really long standing bad habit.

I fretted over my attire.  Everything I'd read, including the studio brochure, said to wear a sports bra or tank top and form fitting shorts.  Now, my wardrobe is woeful in every department, but those are things I don't own.  Well, I mean, I have several sports bras, but I'd never wear them as tops.  I ended up wearing some loose cotton shorts and a nursing tank I had from Target.  It wasn't an ideal outfit, but it was the best I could do.

I really will need to buy something more suitable if I keep doing this, though.

We were to bring a sticky mat, a bath towel, and a bottle of water.  The studio room was heated to 105°F.  I walked in and instantly began sweating.

I knew it would be tough; I was amazed at how tough it was.  Even the opening breathing exercise got my heart rate going and the sweat pouring.  The class was 90 minutes, and I had to stop four or five times to just sit and catch my breath.  At some points, I thought, "This is kind of awful; why I am doing this?"  One pose had us lean over our extended leg and touch our forehead to our knee.  Okay, let's be honest: with my forehead on my knee, I had about a fifty percent chance of smothering to death.  From what I can see, most practitioners of yoga do not have this problem: the self-smothering killer boobs of doom.  So they can be forgiven for not anticipating the potential lethality of the Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee Pose.

The pace felt fast to me, but I appreciated that the instructor kept tabs on people and corrected our posture when necessary.  She told me later I was flexible, but maybe she was being kind.

I got through it, and as soon as I started to cool down, I felt the afterglow hit.  I felt bathed in a giddy, silly state of bliss.  The bliss lasted a good couple of hours.  It might have lasted longer, were it not simultaneously a Monday (read: weekend chaos recovery efforts) and another damn day off from the regular preschool schedule (read: fiesty and bored four year old.)

I have a ten day introductory special, and she advised going as often as I could during those first ten days to really see the effects, but I can't sneak in much more than maybe three in the week.  Four would be pushing it.  Only two classes per week are at 6am, which is the most ideal time because it doesn't really interfere with the family or karate.  I have karate tonight, in fact, and stripe testing to boot, but I feel great.  The only thing that might interfere with my performance tonight is that I dropped a bedrail on my big toe this afternoon, moving furniture around.  *eyeroll*

I can't wait for the next class.  Whee!  I'm obviously insane!

Edited to fix numerous mistakes that are the result of SO MUCH EFFING NOISE AND BICKERING.