Once Upon a Fat Girl

Assessment

2008-11-30T20:42:00.000-08:00

When I get a new client, our first appointment is a through evaluation. An assessment. At the time, it seems like I'm asking questions that don't have anything to do with addiction. But in the end, it's pretty clear that when you have an addiction it touches every part of your life. I spent a good hour or so evaluating myself. Not only did I come up with an assessment to get me started here, but I gained a new appreciation for my clients and how hard it is to reveal yourself in this way. Tomorrow I'll post my first treatment plan.

Assessment

Medical

I am a 37-year-old woman living in rural Nevada. I am five foot nine and weigh 335 pounds.

Three years ago I had a full physical checkup. My cholesterol is 125, but the percentage of good vs. bad is a little out of balance toward the bad. At that time my thyroid tested in the healthy range. My blood pressure and sugar were good. I had my blood pressure tested again recently and it’s still good.

I have fairly severe back and leg pain at least once a week. It’s worse if I stand for a long time (for instance, Kevin and I went out of town last week and went Christmas shopping. I was nearly immobile that night and felt physically ill from the pain down the backs of my legs and in my lower back.)

I have IBS that is mainly triggered by stress, dairy, and foods very high in fat (such as deep fried.) At least once a week I have fairly severe stomach pain and either constipation or diarrhea (I know, I know…TMI…sorry.)

I get tired easily. I started a new job at the end of October that, while not particularly physically demanding, has a very high learning curve and is mentally and emotionally demanding. During the week, I often just work and then go to sleep within two hours of getting home. By the end of the week, I’m pretty drained and have little energy for doing more than hanging out at home.

Even before I started my new job, I barely had the energy to get through the day.

I am slightly anemic and rarely remember to take an iron supplement.

I was an athlete from childhood until I graduated from high school. Today, I almost never exercise. I find it painful and embarrassing and very uncomfortable. I miss being an athlete.

Legal

I don’t have any pending legal problems.

Mental Health

I don’t have any diagnosed mental health issues.

I do have some unresolved issues from my childhood that sometimes contribute to my overeating. (I may nor may not be going into these in the future on this blog. For now, its enough to know that I recognize the problem and will be dealing with it during the next year.)

I am the type to get excited about a new idea, but lose interest when there aren’t fast results. I’ll need to make sure that I remind myself that slow and steady is the only way to meet this goal.

Social and Family

I have been married twice and am currently married to my second husband. I have a good relationship with my ex-husband whom I’ve known since childhood. He is the father of my two older children. I have a solid relationship with my current husband. He’s the father of my youngest child.

I have three children. Adrienne is 16, Nick is 14, and Ruby is 3. Nick has autism, which causes a good bit of stress, although less now than when he was younger.

I have one very close friend. She lives in Las Vegas and I speak to her at least once per month and see her when I go to Las Vegas to visit.

I have many acquaintances, but have a difficult time letting people get close to me. I have never made friends easily, even though I normally get along well with everyone.

I don’t have any significant problems getting along with anyone in my immediate family or with any friends or acquaintances.

I have eight siblings and my dad as well. I have a pleasant but rather distant relationship with all of them. Most live in Las Vegas. One sister lives in Idaho and one brother lives in Hawaii. I have not talked to my step-sister in two years, and rarely talk to her mother who was married to my dad since I was a little girl (they divorced when I was an adult.)

My mother died of breast cancer when I was 24.

Several of my siblings and my father are alcoholics. One of my brothers is a heroin addict and struggling to get and stay clean. I am the only one in my family who doesn’t drink or do drugs. My step-mother was an alcoholic as well.

Substance Abuse

I do not drink at all.

I do not use illegal drugs, or abuse prescription drugs.

I don’t smoke.

My eating habits mimic the behaviors of a person with an addiction.

Plans and My Soup Recipe

2008-11-30T11:40:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about my plan this week.

In the past month, since starting my new job, I've been completely immersed in the world of addiction. I keep asking myself...is it possible to really be addicted to food? I mean--in a way, isn't everyone one addicted to it? It's a necessity for continued life. But I've been shocked to find that what some of my clients report feeling in their addictions, I feel to some degree about food.

Food lets me hide. Instead of dealing with life head on, I can eat to stave off emotions. Food has in some ways become my identity. I have spent (and do spend) a lot of time and energy finding food, preparing it, and then dealing with the after effects of overeating. I sometimes rearrange my life around food (for instance, not taking a client during a certain time because I want more time to eat at lunch.) I often eat more than I intended to, and for a longer period of time. I spend a lot of time planning to quit overeating.

The list goes on.

Clearly, I show the signs of addiction. Just as clearly, I can't quit cold turkey like the law requires my clients to.

I've decided to write myself a treatment plan, and maybe even complete an assessment, just like I do for my clients. For them, I write a new treatment plan every quarter and review it every month. So that's my plan. Look for that in the coming weeks (before January 1.)

I do feel firmly in the planning stage of change. I've ordered some books. I've told my husband that I plan to change and that I need his help. I've started posting here again.

Okay. On a different note, here's my after-thanksgiving soup. It's so amazingly yummy! The base is from the wonderful Bread and Soup cookbook by Crescent Dragonwood. (I think that's her name.)

Turkey and Brown Rice Soup

In a big soup pot pour:

4 cups vegetable broth (or other broth. Make some from your turkey carcass if you like, but I think veggie is the lowest in fat and calories.)
5 cups vegetable juice (like V8)
2 cups water
1 T Worcestershire sauce
Onion and Garlic powders as desired

Add:

Chopped up left-over turkey (I had about a cup and a half and it seemed just right.)
1/2 a cup of chopped onions
1 cup chopped Brussels sprouts (don't chop fine, just slice each into four or five slices. Chopped cabbage would work, too. I had left-over raw sprouts that I didn't roast with turkey day dinner. I bet if you had left over roasted ones they would be super yummy!)
1 cup of frozen chopped spinach (use maybe 2 cups if you're adding fresh chopped spinach.)
1 cup brown rice, uncooked

Bring it all to a boil. Reduced heat, cover, and let simmer about an hour or until the rice is done. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This reduced for me to a thick, lovely soup. The brown rice gave it a really hearty texture.

The Really Big Plan

2008-11-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

I have plans. Big ones. I know that I haven't posted here in forever, and regularly even longer than that. But I have big, big plans. And I want a place to keep them in order. And this place hit the big-plan lottery!

I've started working as a drug and alcohol counselor and I've learned something that's really eye-opening to me in my nearly constant (and failing) pursuit to lose weight. There are six stages of change. Precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination.

I've been stuck in a perpetual cycle of contemplation mixed with brief periods of preparation and hard shots of action. Followed by even harder relapse. So I'm giving myself a good long time in the preparation stage. From now until January.

I'm the only one who works in my building. I have a big group room with a TV where I can exercise during lunch hour. I also work directly across the street from a football field that will make a nice track when the weather warms up. I have a fridge and a microwave so there is no excuse for eating McDonald's for lunch.

My only goal is to feel good. To be healthy enough to have the energy to do more than work and sleep. It's a quarter to nine right now and I'm so tired. So bone tired. It's time to get my life back. Fat has had it long enough.

Day Three

2008-09-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

FIRST: Please go check out my new writing blog at my own little domain name :)

I had my first substitute teaching job of the year today. Fifth grade. It went well, I think.

I ate a decent breakfast and packed my snack and lunch according to my BLC plan. Yay me!

I have come of the conclusion that I can not have cookies in my house. Ever. I can't stop eating them. I bought some oatmeal cookies because they were called for on my plan (I swear!) and in three days I've eaten about the whole package.

I weighed myself at the school, because my scale needs a new battery. According to that scale, I lost two pounds this week. I'm calling it four though because I weighed myself after lunch and wearing my shoes and a ankle-length denim skirt instead of being nakies.

I feel good. I think that's the most important thing. I feel strong.

Except my arms. I did 150 wall-ups yesterday and my arms hurt so bad it's making me sick to my stomach.

Day Two

2008-09-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I did pretty well with my BLC menu plan. Until the evening. I ate several oatmeal cookies and some cheezits. Not because I was terribly hungry, but because--ugh, my brain is broke I swear. If I'm not super full I get this panicky, horrible feeling. It's the worst.

I don't know how to get rid of that feeling. Why do I sabatoge myself? I'm not beating myself up--today is another day, and my challenge doesn't really start until Sept. 16 when the show starts.

I decided to do a card deck exercise challenge I found on the BLC website.

Diamonds: Jumping jacks
Clubs: Crunches/bicep curls
Spades: Wall-ups
Hearts: squats/lunges

You pick a card and times the number on the card by 10 with jokers being 20, aces 15, kings 13, queens 12, jacks 11.

I decided on five cards a day, here are mine for today:

3 and 8 of hearts: 110 squats
ace and queen of spades: 270 wall-ups (!)
king of diamonds: 130 jumping jacks

So far I've done 50 wall-ups. LOL I'll be at this all day, which might be the point.

Day One

2008-09-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'll do a daily post about the BLC (Biggest Loser Club) from now until Christmas. But you know, you just never know!

Today was the first full day on the program. It's amazing how much 1900 calories is, when you're actually eating food and not Ding Dongs and Salt & Vinegar Lays. I mean really. I had three meals and a huge snack...and I can still eat another snack tonight if I want to.

Here's what my day one looked like. I followed the BLC meal plan pretty closely, making minor adjustments according to what I had at home or could afford to buy at the grocery store.

Breakfast:

Two slices of whole wheat toast
1 T of blackberry jam
1 egg
2 slices of thick bacon (I know! But it was on the menu, I swear!)
1/2 of a tomato

I could have had a snack here. But I went to the store, and by the time I got back it was lunch time.

Lunch:

A huge bowl of cabbage soup
1 cup of strawberry yogurt
1 ounce of yummy cherry-flavored prunes (Gross sounding...but scrumptious like candy)
.5 ounce of Cheezits

Snack:

I combined the morning and afternoon snacks and had 3/4 cottage cheese, pineapple, 1 ounce of walnuts and a little handful of raisins. Mmmmm...best snack ever!

Dinner:

Baked Tilapia with zuccini and tomatos
1 cup mashed potatoes

I also did ten minutes on my trampoline. My goal is to build up to at least 20 by the time Biggest Loser starts.

So one day down. Whoo!

Time to Take Control

2008-09-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

My life has been insane this summer.

I sold two books. Two manuscripts that I wrote, to publishers. I am an author.

I went to San Francisco to meet with agents and publishers at the huge and amazing Romance Writer's of America national conference. It was the most insanely wonderful experience.

Nicholas, my son who has Asperger's Syndrom, has started high school. Stress leading up to it, but so far so good as far as the actual experience goes. Both he and Adrienne are working their hearts out.

I'm finishing up a 9 month long class in advocacy for people with disabilities that required a once a month weekend away from home.

And I weigh 330 pounds today.

So something has to give.

I don't need to hide anymore. That's my mantra. I don't need to hide. I can give up the extra 150 or so pounds. They've done their job. I don't need the insulation against the world anymore. I'm ready to meet it head on.

So I've signed up for the Biggest Loser Club. I'm not sure how long term I'll do it. But I really need strong help cutting back my calories. I'm eating 3500 to 4000 a day. Those are such huge numbers, and I don't even feel like I'm eating that much. Biggest Loser Club, based on my weight, put me on about 1800 to 2000 a day. That's half. Or a defect of about 14000 a week...that's four pounds a week, just in uneaten calories.

The program recommends five days of cardio and three of strength training a week. I figure that's good for another two pounds a week. Kevin gave me a little trampoline for Christmas last year. I really like it, because it's freaking freezing up here a good part of the year, starting pretty darn soon. It gives the kids and me a chance to get some indoor exercise. I've been jumping on it everyday for the last week. I can go for about ten minutes right now (two songs.) I do it several times throughout the day. My goal is to be able to jump for an hour straight (twelve songs) by Christmas.

So I'm not holding my breath for six pounds lost a week. That's silly. But there are 17 weeks until Christmas. I think I can lose 30 pounds by then and go to my next major family gathering weighing less than 300 pounds. That's my goal.

So that's it. I'm a huge Biggest Loser fan. I'll be following along with them for the rest of this year. The show starts Sept. 16. I start today.

Today, I Do Not Care What I Weigh!

2008-06-15T17:20:00.001-07:00

This was in my email today:

Dear Ms. Alburger

Thank you so much for submitting DEVIL YOU DON'T. Both I, and another editor, have read it, and we would love to read the full manuscript. Please send it by email at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for thinking of Pink Petal Books!

XXX

Can you hear me squeeing? Can you?

Summer Resolution: Write

2008-06-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

How not to lose a pound a week: share a pint of Cherry Garcia with your toddler for breakfast.

Well, I can call it brunch. It was 9:30.

I bought a new scale yesterday. My old one started doing weird stuff, like weighing me 20 pounds lighter. Not that I wouldn't be happy with that, but it wasn't true. And I'm all about the truth, yo.

I've started a writing blog. Check it out. Please? Because I'm feeling all lonely over there.

I am the world's worst blogger

2008-05-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

I swear. I'm sorry. I get going and then life happens and I end up going too long between posts.

I've decided to weigh myself once a month instead of once a week, at least for publication. My weight is very fluxy and I don't want to get discouraged by that. Anyway, I weighed myself today and I weigh 311. I'm definitely more than on track for my one pound a week goal.

You know it's funny. In the movies or on TV when someone binges, it's an all at once, crazy minute of intense face stuffing followed by waking up surrounded by candy bar wrappers, Big Mac boxes, with a chocolate ice cream beard.

That isn't the way it works for me. When I binge, it's much more subtle. It isn't going to three different fast food restaurants for one meal, it's going to three different fast food restaurants through out the day, and filling in the niches with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and donughts. It's a constant quest to feel full. And it usually lasts a few days. When I come to, I'm not laying in a pile of my own debris. I'm just very, very full and slightly depressed.

So that's where I was for a few days earlier this week. I struggle with it every time I go to Las Vegas (which is one weekend a month.) You know what I mean. It's the "I don't get to eat this stuff very often, I DESERVE it" syndrome. IDI syndrome: I deserve it. Why do I go there?

I am on the other side of it though, so that's good. And I didn't derail myself.

Another weird thing happened in Vegas. It didn't stay there, either. I got so freaking bloated. I didn't even recognize my feet and ankles, and my whole body just felt incredibly, painfully swollen. Then about two days later I spent an entire day peeing like a racehorse and my weight went down TEN pounds. That's ten pounds of water retention, folks. Yikes. I Googled it, and apparently walking around in the heat can do that to you. It was 105 degrees that weekend in Vegas, so I guess that qualifies! I'm so glad I don't live there anymore.

Starting: 323.5
Today: 311
Lost: 12.5

Here are some pictures I took during my drive down to Vegas:

Week Two: Finale

2008-05-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

I lost 1.5 pounds this week. Perfect. I'm very pleased with who easily this is going so far.

The only issue I've had is that I can feel how easy it would be to use the Only One Pound thing as an excuse to eat even more than I might have. Because, I can double up my efforts and lose that one pound at the end of the week. Not what I was going for at all. I'm not there, but I can see where it would be easy for me to get there.

In other news, I've had to sneeze for the past three hours, and I feel like I'm losing my mind. Don't you hate that??

Starting: 323.5
Yesterday: 316.5

Week Two: Halfway there

2008-05-03T07:20:00.001-07:00

Dear Diary,

How can I get my husband to stop buying iced oatmeal cookies? I can not stop eating them. It's disgusting.

Yes, I'm trying not to use the word disgusting in regard to food/eating, but it's hard to think of another way to describe eating most of a box of cookies in one day. Even if that was pretty much all I ate.

I am no track to losing my one pound this week, oatmeal cookies an all.

How are you doing?

Week One: The Weigh In

2008-04-29T06:59:00.001-07:00

Proof that taking it slow and easy works: I love 5.5 pounds this week. I did a double take and stepped on the scale three times. I made Ruby get on the scale to make sure she still weighed the same. Yep. Five and a half pounds. Painless.

So, week two is under weigh. One pound. Just one.

I really think I'm on to something here. Embracing small goals, aiming for just a small amount of change each week instead of trying to go from 0 to 100 in the shortest possible time is working for me so far.

Start: 323.5 (I can't believe I'm admitting that I'd gone back up to my highest weight.)
Today: 318

Week One: Halfway there

2008-04-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

Have I made perfect choices this week? Nope.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store during my lunch break. I was hungry and I knew that if I just ate the small lunch that had seemed like enough that morning, I was going to be miserable all afternoon and that it would probably trigger a binge.

So I went to the store. And I wanted sugar. I picked up a donut. I can tell you with out hesitation that last week I would have bought it. And chips. And a soda probably. But I'm trying to make good choices, right? So I turned the package over. Hello, 460 calories. For one little donut. A plain glazed donut. Okay then. Now, I'd love to tell you that I made the best choice and put the donut down and walked away. But I didn't. What I did was pick up a couple of other sweet things and look at the back. Twinkies have less than 300 calories. Did you know that? Not an excellent choice, but I saved more than 160, and a lot of fat since they aren't fried.

Instead of chips I picked up some almonds and an apple.

I'm pretty sure I've said before that lunch is my downfall. I don't know why, but I am so hungry at noon and if I don't eat enough I'm anxious and binge-y all afternoon and into the night. If I eat enough to feel good and full at lunch, I can eat a small-ish dinner and be fine. Here's to trying to listen to bodily messages.

Halfway there. I'm a little excited about weighing in on Tuesday.

Week One: Good Choices

2008-04-24T09:23:00.001-07:00

So I keep thinking to myself: If I can only make one good choice a day that saves me 500 calories, I can easily lose just one pound a week. Just one, folks. That's my whole goal.

Yesterday I took Adrienne to school, and I came with in inches of stopping to get McDonald's. I'd already had some Special K for breakfast, so it wasn't a matter of being starved or anything. Just, I had some cash and I wanted an Egg McMuffin. Which, you know, comes with hash browns. That's 440 calories saved by just driving on by. Whoo!

According to this calculator I have been eating a whooping 4000 calories to lose weight. I've been keeping track that last few days on SparkPeople of what I'm eating and I've been shocked at how hard it is to stay under 3000 calories. Doesn't that seem like a huge number? Especially when there are so many 1200 calorie diets out there. No wonder in the past I have never been able to even stick with 2000 calories. I need to take this more like a turtle and less like a rabbit. I only need to stay under 3500 (for now) to meet my one pound a week goal. That, I can do. In fact, without too much trouble I can stick to 3000. By too much trouble, I mean without suddenly breaking out into dreams about Cherry Garcia.

I think we should make this a national movement. One pound a week. Not two. Not five. Certainly not 10 or 15, no matter what happens on the Biggest Loser. Just one. Who's with me? Just one. Any one can do that.

Later I'll post my recipe for Cabbage Soup, which sounds like diet food but is SO good that you'll eat it every chance you can just because...YUM!

One Pound at a Time

2008-04-22T15:43:00.001-07:00

Have you ever had an idea come to you so clearly that it seems outrageous that you've never thought of it before?

A few days ago I watched the season finale of Biggest Loser. I've watched every episode of five (I think) seasons, usually with a bowl of ice cream or a bag of popcorn in my lap. Because, what the hell is the point when no one could lose 10 pounds a week without living with Jillian Michaels and having her kicking butt for hours a day. Right? Right.

Then something came to me whole. I'm going to be 40 in three and a half years. If I lost just one pound a week between now and then, I could easily lose all the extra weight I've been hiding behind for the last twenty years. Just one pound a week.

How hard is that? One 500-calorie good choice a day. A ten minute walk every evening. I can do that. I know I can. The Biggest Loser people losing ten or even fifteen pounds in a week seems so far beyond my reach, that it's easy to say "why bother." But one pound? Just one.

So that's my goal. One pound a week. Nothing more. One. Pound. By Christmas I'll have lost 36 pounds. How nice.

Post Script

2008-01-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

I updated my ticker. I decided to use the pounds lost instead of the actual weight, because it's more hopeful. Seeing 306.5 up there is discouraging, but seeing that from my highest high I've lost 16.5 pounds is something else. It reminds me that I can do this.

An earnest resolution

2008-01-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

Since the first, I've been following the Superfoodsrx Diet. I started at 313.5 and today I weighed myself...306.5.

It's super easy to follow. You just eat the 14 super foods (blueberries, oats, yogurt, tomatoes, oranges, soy, tea, turkey, salmon, broccoli, beans, walnuts, pumpkin, spinach.) There's some in there about portion sizes as well, and exercising for 30 minutes a day. He doesn't really tell you what to eat when, but he does lay out meals that fit in the guidelines. Also...you only eat grains during lunch or dinner, not both.

That's the hardest part for me. A meal just isn't a meal without bread, or potatoes, or pasta. I could eat a salad every day for the rest of my life...but without crackers it just feels wrong! The reasoning behind not eating grains at both lunch and dinner is to keep calories down, of course. Once you've lost the weight, or if you don't mind losing more slowly, there's a program in the book for adding a grain to the other meal if you want to (or you could use the extra for chocolate...yum!)

I'm here to tell you that it is almost impossible for me to eat less than 2,000 calories in a day. Even eating 2,000 is a significant reduction for me. I figured out (my weight X 14) that I've been eating at least 4,000 calories to maintain my current weight. Cutting that by 1,500 a day is a three pound a week weight loss if we're going by a mathematics-only logic (3,500 calories in a pound, times three is the same as 1,500 times seven.) Of course the body probably doesn't give a shit about mathematical logic. But it's a start.

The Superfoodsrx Diet, if you follow it strictly, comes out to about 1300 calories a day. When I tried following it that strictly I was hungry to the point of growling at people and hyperfocused on my next meal.

So let's just say that I'm loosely following the Superfoodsrx Diet. I'm eating the right foods, I'm really watching my portions, and I'm not binging which is huge for me. But I'm not depriving myself either. I'm really trying to pay attention to what I really want, and not eating everything else that my brain says goes along with it. For instance, I really, really, really wanted french fries the other day. I wanted them so bad that I could actually feel them crunching between my teeth. So when I went to lunch, I looked at the menu. Normally I would have gotten a hamburger to go with my fries. Or maybe a nice chili cheese hotdog. This time I got a Garden Burger (veggie burger.) I was pleasantly surprised at how yummy it was, and I throughly enjoyed every bite of my fries. AND I still lost more than three pounds this week.

So...seven pounds down, a boatload to go.

Getting ready

2007-12-26T18:55:00.001-08:00

Kevin gave me a little rebounder trampoline and a George Foreman Grill for Christmas. The trampoline is WAY fun! It's great for me, and good for the kids too. It gives them some exercise when it's too cold to play outside.

Kevin and I are both weighing in on Tuesday and starting out Get Fit 2008 campaign. I'm really excited that Biggest Loser is starting again on the first. That's a genius bit of marketing right then. Who isn't thinking about weight loss on the first?

On Saturday we're cleaning out the kitchen of the foods that are killing us. On Sunday we're headed out of town to the big grocery store to stock up on the 14 Superfoods, plus some other good stuff.

I know I said I wasn't going to do this. But I can't stop thinking about what it will be like to go to Boise to visit my sister this summer weighing 60 or 70 pounds less than I do now. That's a good thought, even if it isn't.

Resolutions

2007-12-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

How many Decembers have I made resolutions to lose weight? How many times have I sat down with a calculator and figured out how much I would weigh next Christmas if I lost five pounds a month, ten pounds a month, two pounds a week? How often have I thought about what size my next holiday dress would be, and how it would feel to walk into Christmas dinner wearing it. The looks on the faces of people who haven't seen me for a year would be well worth the starvation and pain.

I can remember promising myself that I wouldn't be fat at 16, 18, 21, 30 and now here I am. I'll be forty in less than four years and the internal promises to not be fat and forty have already started. I've managed to keep off about fifteen of the pounds I lost last year. If I add fifteen a year for three years, that's sixty pounds. Not perfect, but 265 is much better than 325. Right? Right?

Maybe if I had some catastrophic health problem that required weight loss this would be easier and the whining and excuses would stop. If I was diabetic or had high blood pressure maybe. And how much more sick is it to wish that I was sick just so that I could be skinny.

This year is different. They all are. This year I will exercise. This year I will stop eating crap that doesn't serve me. This year... this year... this year. Maybe the under-the-breath comments from my students about my weight will be the catalyst this year. Or maybe it will be an ever failing world and the need to be fit to survive in it. Maybe this year I'll stop eating meat because the US feeds enough grain to livestock to feed all the hungry in the world and then some. Maybe I'll finally keep up with taking my vitamins, even though they make me gag, because I'm tired of being tired. Maybe I'll stop blaming stress and start blaming all those McValue Meals. Maybe this year my health will become a priority before those catastrophic illness do find me.

Maybe next year I'll finally have a December where my first resolution is not "lose 100 pounds."

New start

2007-10-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday, and as my gift to myself I've decided to find the time to blog again. I miss it. I miss you guys so much!

I've started a new blog. This one is so focused on my weight, and I have so much more I want to say! I hope you'll like it. Here it is. Post a comment and let me know what you think.

If you'd like a link on my new blog, shoot me a message and I'll get it up.

Love you all so much! Have some cake on me :)

Damn Mosquitos

2007-07-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

I had to go the emergency room yesterday. Apparently, I'm allergic to mosquitos. I had about elventy-billon bites starting at my toes and moving up my legs and a few on my arms. I got them at the pool while I was working, so I went to the clinic and used my worker's comp--they sent me to the ER because there weren't any appointments open at the clinic.

The doctor gave me a hydrocortisone shot and told me to take Benadryl every six hours. And try not to get bit anymore. Which means long pants at the pool when I'm not in the water. Ick. I feel better though. I actually was feeling like the little buggers had poisoned me or something. It was hard to swallow and my skin was crawling. And I had a monster headache.

On a brighter side, still no treatment effects from the Alli. I've been really vigilent about not eating too much fat at each meal. Tonight I still weighed 312...3.5 pounds down. But when I weighed 312 the other day it was in the morning, when I always weigh less. So I'll weigh again in the AM. My goal right now is just to break the 300 pound barrier. I'm trying not to get to freaked out about dieting. Just focusing a little harder on what I'm putting in my body.

I'm really loving our new house. It just feels really good to be in a place where I don't feel like I have four other people sitting on my lap 24/7. Not that I mind a little togetherness with my family, of course. But five people, a dog and two cats in 400 square feet is just too much. Surprisingly, we all fit 1000 square feet just beautifully.

Our Cingluar phones don't work at all in McGill, so we called Verizon to set up new service yesterday. Turns out that Verizon has a discount for government employees--and I was able to put our service in my name without a deposit, which was a real nice surprise. Shhh...we got Adrienne a mint chocolate phone for her 15th birthday in a month.

Did you hear that? My baby will be 15 in a month. In six months she can get her driver's permit. In a year she can drive herself to the tenth grade. In a few weeks she'll be in high school. In four years (four!) she'll be going off to college. Holy hell. She's visiting my sister in Boise for two weeks. I miss her so much, but she's having a ball.

I'm going to college this fall, taking four classes online. I'm really excited about it. I've decided to go for a degree in social work. Our little community college here has a 3/1 program with UNR--three years at Great Basin College and then the last year is University of Reno classes given here in Ely. I'll end up with a UNR degree. Our area has this program where if you work in rural Nevada for five years your student loans are forgiven, so I've decided to go ahead and apply for them. I feel a little anxious about going so far into debt, but I think it'll be okay. Hopefully, I'll end up with a grant or two as well.

I went back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) about whether to go for a degree in education or one in social work. I'm just not sure I want to be a teacher, even a special education teacher. By the time I graduate, Nick will have graduated as well and I think maybe I've had my fill. Also, I have some pretty strong oppositions to so much of public education that I think I'd maybe end up bitter about things like teaching to the high-stakes tests.

I don't have to decide today, of course. I'm just taking basic classes that will go for either degree. In the next year or so I'll have to make a choice, but not today.

Quickie

2007-07-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

Still no internet, so this is just a fast post. I'm still doing well on the Alli. I ate too much fat yesterday and I felt like crap, but didn't have any treatment effects (thank God for small favors.)

TMI Alert!

When I went to the bathroom this morning, the toilet was full of floating fat that really does look (like the website says) just like pizza grease. It wasn't painful or anything, but gross. And a serious wake up call. Because Alli only gets rid of 25% of the fat that you eat--which means that 3 times that was still in my body. On my belly.

I weighed 312 this morning. Down 3.5 pounds.

Moving

2007-07-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

We found a much nicer place to live and we moved over the holiday. It's a duplex with 1000 square feet that feels like a palace compared to what we came from. I'm so upside down, I can't remember if I've already told you all of this already.

The duplex is in McGill, which is so tiny that we don't even have high speed internet out here. I haven't gotten the disc for dial up yet, so updates will be sparce for a few days.

I've lost two pounds so far and I feel fine. I haven't had any "treatment effects" at all. I have been eating much better, because I'm not interested in experiencing anal leakage, even once. That was the whole point, afterall--for the Alli to help me learn better eating habits, not for it to make me able to eat horribly and still lose weight. I'm feeling fine!

Giving My Alli A Try

2007-07-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

So I decided to try the new Alli pills. It was sort of an agonizing decision, because I want to be able to do this on my own. But apparently, I can't. Or I won't. Or something. It's been a year and I'm only down about 10 pounds from my highest weight.

What finally made my decision for me was the psychological advantages to using Alli. You can't eat a really high fat meal or you'll have some pretty nasty side effects. So on top of making it so that you're body doesn't digest twenty five percent of the fat that you eat, it helps make it necessary for you to learn to eat healthfully.

Yesterday was my first day. I did something I haven't done in a long time, I wrote down everything that I ate. When you're taking Alli, to avoid the side effects, you're supposed to eat no more than 30 percent of fat with each meal. (They reccomend less than 15 fat grams. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there.) So what this did was make me think before I got ready to eat about where the fat in my meal was.

I don't know why I'm shocked that I'm fat. Even paying attention and really trying, I ate a little more than 2000 calories and 29 percent fat. If I'd eaten what I wanted to, what I would have just a day or two ago I would have:

1. Had peanut butter on my toast in the morning, instead of just jam and no butter.
2. Eaten a bunch of crakers with my tuna at lunch, and had some cheese, too.
3. We had McDonald's for dinner. I had the South West salad with grilled chicken (sort of nasty by the way. I hate McDonald's grilled chicken on a salad, it's sort of slimy.) My regular thing to eat at McDonald's is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a medium fries, and chocolate chip cookies.

If I had eaten normally, I would have doubled my calories and tripled my fat grams. Holy Crap. It's a wonder I don't weigh 500 pounds.

Anyway, I'll start posting and letting you guys know how the Alli is working for me. My starting weight is (sigh) 315.5.

A Tragic Comedy

2007-06-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

Reasons I have to get my family the hell out of this apartment:

1. The drunk behind me called the police two days ago because my baby was crying at bedtime and woke him up. The cop knocked on my door, asked if anyone was being spanked in here and then took my name when I said no. End of story, but how annoying and embarassing. Every neighbor I have sat on their porch and watched it happen. And every one asked what happened when I saw them the next day.

2. This guy lives two doors down from me and is the apartment maintence dude. Nice, eh? My only concession was that when I put in my former Las Vegas zip code I got this. Check out how many of those have a non-compliant status. There are six or seven total offenders in all of Ely, all are compliant. How lucky were we to find an apartment within 100 yards of one?

3. There appears to be a skunk in our neighborhood. A real one, as in little woodland creature. Two nights in a row I've smelled the lovely aroma. Someone's dog must have been sprayed. Not mine, thank God for small favors.

4. Turns out I need more than 100 square feet of perosonal space to be happy. Four hundred square feet just isn't enough for three kids, two adults, two kitties and a dog. Go figure.

5. Everyday, starting at about 10 a.m., every apartment but ours has at least one person sitting on the stoop drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. Apparently we are the only family where the husband actually has a job. I'm not joking. The rest of the men congregate and get drunk. The sex offender, the weird school bus driver (ok, he has a job. But should he really be drinking beer at 10 a.m.? I think not), the jackass who got mad when Nick knocked on their door and looked through the little window because "me and Tami were doin' stuff, ya'know?", the nasty drunk behind me who called the cops on Ruby--the list goes on. The booze it up while their wives work.

Who would have guessed that by far my best neighbor is the kid next door who has a zillion friends over everyday. He clears them out by ten because he knows my baby has to sleep, and he yells at them if they peel into the parking lot too fast. And he has a job. The older guys need to take notes.

We're looking at two places to rent this weekend. Both have 900 square feet and two bedrooms, but at this point that sounds like heaven. One has a basement that you have to go outside to get into, which has a bedroom in it. The rest of the basement is unfinished, but that gives us three bedrooms if Adrienne is brave enough to sleep down there.

Wish us luck.

Behold the Queen of Purple Prose (HA)

2007-06-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Shaunta,

Your submission to Ellora's Cave Publishing has been read by our initial editorial reviewer. She felt it showed potential and has placed it in queue for an acquiring editor to consider. An editor will contact you if interested in seeing more of the story.

So it's a 15,000-word short-story and not a novel, and the publisher is online and not in Borders. But...hello! My very first second look for fiction.

I saw on their website that they have this monthly series based around birthstones set for next year, and I thought--what a great way to get some fiction experience. I'll write a story for them every month and see how it goes. At the least, I'd end up with a good 180,000 fiction words under my belt. I've just finished story number two, and it was already easier to write (and read) than number one.

This was my first submission to them, so I guess my plan to take the erotica world by storm is right on track *wink*

Still in the apartment from hell

2007-06-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

The sellers of the house we're trying to buy decided not to give us the extra time we need to close the loan.

So we went and looked at some more houses and found one that we really like that costs $65,000 less. Of course, the minte we decided we loved it, the realtor called and said that the sellers of the first house changed their mind.

So no we have to decide by this morning which house to buy. The first one is more expensive, but so close to work and everything else. Plus it has a half acre. The second house is eleven miles away in the next town, which has nothing but houses and a grocery store.

Damn. I'm so tired of making decisions. I just want to buy a house and be done with it.

Summer Starts Tommorw

2007-06-17T22:37:00.001-07:00

I've spent the last two weeks planning a kick-ass summer for 100 rural Nevada chicklets. Our program starts tomorrow and I'm so excited!

The only public swimming pool within 100 miles of here is actually more of a swimming hole right out of Mayberry. It's a lake, fed by a hot springs so it's deliciously warm, with little guppies swimming in it. It has a diving board and two slides, and is only missing a rope for Tom Sawyer to swing in on to be perfect. It's surrounded by beautiful big trees.

So we'll swim every Monday and Wednesday, bowl on Tuesdays, have theme days on Thursdays (omg, we made a dozen fake swords out of pool noddles, dowels and duct tape for renaissance day...fun!)and field trips on Fridays. We're going to Garnet Hill this week, where you can just pick garnets right up off the ground.

I broke down and weighed myself yesterday. I've pretty much maintained my weight. If i'd stuck with my Super Foods plan and skipped the zillion Big Macs, I'm sure I would have lost--but I'm not complaining.

I think all the activity and sun and limited access to food will be good for me this summer.

I've decided to try to post more pictures, starting tomorrow. My blog is so boring to look at!

Night Drive

2007-06-15T08:02:00.001-07:00

It was about 85 degrees last night, and probably ten degrees hotter and STUFFY in our tiny apartment. So after dinner, Kevin and Ruby and I (the big kids are in Vegas with their dad this week) went on a drive.

There is a scenic loop here that goes through the Humbolt National forest. We'd never been on it before, so it seemed like a good idea. And it was. Absolutely stunning. There is a big stand of White Pines that you drive through, and I swear it's like a fairy tale. Huge, tall white trunks. Some of you are probably from a place that has more than sagebrush as the local vegetation, but seeing big tall trees is rare for us out here.

At one point we came around a corner and saw a SUV parked at the start of a sideroad leading up to a campground. Next to it, maybe two feet away from it, was the most perfect, huge buck. Seriously, like Bambi's daddy. It was just standing there and for a minute I thought it must be a statue marking the entrance to the campground. Then it moved a few feet from us, and just stopped and stared. It had gigantic antlers and I am sick that I didn't bring my camera. Just sick.

We also saw a baby deer and some rabbits and chipmunks. I saw a hawk, too. And many, many cows. Right on the side of the road, like a cow-country safari. Two baby cows ran along side us for a little bit.

I really do love living in Nevada. I was born a California girl, but I love the mountains and the wide sky. I love the fresh air and the cool breeze as soon as the sun goes down. I love that there are unadulterated places here. I imagined last night what it would be like to be a pioneer coming over a pass and finding those mountains and valleys. The road we drove was a dirt road with grooves, like a wagon train might make. Amazing.

Hard Habits to Break

2007-06-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

I have some really bad habits that have contributed to my weighing over 300 pounds.

1. Somewhere along the way, I stopped moving. I never walk anywhere, even short distances. I ask my kids to get up and do things so I don't have to. I'm not lazy, but it hurts to move too much so I avoid it.

2. I eat when I'm unhappy or under stress. Especially sweet foods.

3. I give up when I feel like being healthy is too much work.

So I figure I need some new habits, and I plan on adding on every week during this summer.

My first is taking my vitamins. Every. Single. Day. I need them, especially the B and iron pills. Without them I'm sluggish and tired, because I'm anemic. There is no excuse for me not taking them.

Some other habits I want to work on are:

Drinking fresh juice once a day
Taking a walk every night
Giving up fast food
Replacing soda with water
Eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day
Cutting out all refined grains
Cutting back on processed foods

I'm also going to stop weighing myself. I'm not even going to step on the scale now, to see my starting point. This is not about weight. It's about feeling good and being strong enough to handle my life.

Summertime!

2007-05-26T02:18:00.000-07:00

Summers coming, which for me is accentuated by the fact that I'm working as a teacher's aide, so I'm actually about to go on summer break.

Does anyone else have the urge every summer to make resolutions, just like for New Year's Eve? You know--this summer I will lose weight. I will work on my novel. I will...blah. Maybe it stems from my school days, when I always thought I would go back to the next grade thinner.

Why, oh why didn't I appreciate my body back then?

So this summer, I plan on losing weight. So that I can go back to work in the fall healthier and stronger. My biggest plan is to get a exercise plan together that I can stick with.

Ely is such a small town, only 9000 people in the whole county. We have a Curves, and every woman I have met goes there. I joined Curves once, in Vegas, and was disappointed by it because whenever I went it was just me and the person working there, who stared at me while I worked out. But here, the Curves is always packed. It's like the women's social club. I'm thinking of joining again, although at the moment I'm pretty obsessed with saving money.

Nothing like that can happen until Kevin gets here, so that I can have thirty kid-free minutes a few times a week to myself. I really didn't appreciate how much I like being married until this experience. I hate being away from my husband. Two more weeks!

Things have been so chaotic around here. Our apartment sucks SO BAD. I mean, SO SO bad. I have never experienced anything like this. I'm totally thrown by the whole thing. I really thought that I could live anywhere, that I wasn't the kind of person who had places she just "couldn't" live, or things she just "couldn't" do. But crap.

It isn't the size of the apartment, or the condition that it's in that's killing me. It isn't even the fact that everytime I give out my address I get an odd look from the person I'm talking to. It's the people here. They're so mean. With only one exception, they are totally intolerant of Nick. I think because he's so different from them, and because he is, it's easy to latch on to him for their drama.

I want my house and my husband so that we can start living a normal life again.

WTF

2007-05-24T22:41:00.001-07:00

Um...thanks to the incredibly weird and disturbing and very very long comment sent to my previous post, I've set my comments to moderated.

To the person who sent that comment--what the hell, man? Why are you spewing your weird stuff on my blog?

I can't figure out how to erase the comment--if anyone knows, could you share with the class? Thanks!

Has it been that long?

2007-05-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated!

Things are going pretty well. Our offer on the house was accepted. We ended up paying a little more than I would have liked, and a little less than they wanted us to pay. The house is so amazing! I'll try to get some pics up soon. It sort of feels like a jinx until we are actually moved in.

I love my job. Turns out I'm really good at being a special ed teacher's aide. Maybe the 13 years of experience with a special needs kiddo did the trick? Yah.

In fact, everything would be perfect except for two things.

One, Kevin isn't here. I miss him so much!

Two, I have some insane neighbors who are making life miserable right now. I started to tell the whole story, but frankly it's very sad and hard to tell without coming across as a snobby little bitch. Let's just say that ten minutes ago the man behind me was arrested. Likely having to do with his habit of hurting his family. That habit has led to the mom and 12-year-old daughter searching for someone to take their unhappiness out on. Unhappily, my son is an easy target.

On a happier note, Nick, Ruby and I went to Cave Lake with two students from school and their parents. We had SO much fun! Ruby and Nick swam and fished. Nick is a natural fisherman--who knew? The two kids we went with are two of my favorite kids at school. You know the kind of kid who is just so neat, you want to take them home with you? Yeah, that kind. It was a really awesome day.

I'm feeling a little at odds without Kevin. I'm sort of surprised, because I was a single mom for a long, long time and I didn't think it would be hard to fall back into it for a couple of months. I was so, so very wrong. Three more weeks!

Moved...finally!

2007-04-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

The kids and I moved to Ely two weeks ago. We're living in a tiny apartment--maybe 500 square feet--while Kevin continues to work in Las Vegas until the end of June. Talk about togetherness! This little place is SO little.

But it snowed on Thursday. Big fat flakes. And Ruby stood at the window all day saying "oh, beautiful!" over and over again. The air is so clean and so fresh. You can actually see huge stars, even in town. The night sky is like a collection of jewels, I swear. The kids love their school--which is a big deal when you consider the crappiness of the school they came from.

I got a job. I'm the full-time aide to a fifth grade boy, Luis, who has mild Down's Syndrome, is non-verbal and only understands Spanish. My six years studying the language is finally paying off! I'm not happy about leaving Ruby with a sitter, but it's only until Kevin gets here. The hours of my job are fantastic. I only work six and a half hours four days a week, and only four hours on Wednesday. Same breaks as my big kids. And the work is interesting. The school district is going to pay for me to take Spanish and sign language classes.

We're in the process of making an offer on a house. The appraisal should be done on Monday. It's the house that I love, and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I took some pictures that I'll post as soon as I can. The owners have agreed to sell for the appraised value--which should be considerably less then they were asking, considering that the house four down sold for $25,000 less than the asking price on my house.

Our house is amazing. The main part was built in 1907, with additions made in the 50s and in the 80s. It has the most amazing 1950s pink and turquoise Lucy kitchen. And a yard that is like a half-acre of fairy forest. There are dozens of raspberry bushes, and a barn in the backyard. I just love it.

Okay...I should be writing more regularly now! How have ya'll been?

You Know That Half-Laugh/Half-Cry Feeling?

2007-03-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

That's how I feel today.

We didn't get the house. Not only did we not get it, they were so offended by the offer that they put a big red X through it and wrote REJECTED in big letters. And yelled. And refused to make a counter offer, or sell us their house at any price.

Now the offer was significantly less than they were looking for--$120,000 when they want $189,900. But two years ago they wanted $80,000--and I think $40,000 increase in two years is generous. Especially when the house wasn't actually worth $80,000 back then--as evidenced by the fact that it didn't sell at that price.

Their reaction is ridiculous to me. Why take it personally? We took a shot and hoped for the best--we weren't taking aim at them or making a comment on them or their house.

Anywho.

We're looking at some more houses on Saturday next week, when we get to town. Who knows. Maybe the right house is still out there, not even on the market yet--and we were just saved by the universe from buying the wrong one. Anything is possible.

I'll find out Monday about the job. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Things are coming together

2007-03-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

I got on the scale this morning and I've lost almost six pounds since I went to the doctor about three weeks ago. Nice, eh?

It looks like I have a job in Ely. I'll find out for sure on Monday, but I think it's almost a sure thing. I'll be a special education aide at the elementary school in McGill, which is a teeny tiny little town next to Ely. They need an aide that can speak Spanish. I took a chance that my six years of middle school/high school Spanish and one summer in Costa Rica when I was 14 would be more than most of the applicant's in rural Nevada might have. Plus, I'd already taken the para-pro test they require and I've already interviewed with the assistant super intendant of schools. AND, as Nick's grandma told me the other day, I have a Master's Degree in special ed. Anyone who spends as much time at IEP meetings as I do would.

So the job rocks because it offers awesome health benefits without requiring me to work full-time. Every Wednesday is a half-day in this district, and I'll only be working six hours the other day. Plus summers and vacations off. Oh yeah.

My biggest worry is putting Ruby in daycare for the couple of month's until Kevin gets out there. It's tearing me apart. I think she'll actually enjoy it, she loves playing with other kids. And she's a super, super easy kid to take care of. Once Kevin gets to Ely, he can pick her up at noon, she can have lunch and a nap, and when she wakes up, Momma will be home.

I haven't had an outside-the-house job in four years, and it's been three before that since I had a job that wasn't working for my dad. I'm excited about it. I have a tendancy to keep to myself too much, and as a result I have exactly one friend, who I'm of course leaving here in Vegas. (She won't move with me, damn her!) Working will take me out of my shell, I think--and I'm looking forward to meeting people.

Second Home

2007-03-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a new blog as a place to put my obsession's regarding Peak Oil, Global Warming, moving out of Vegas, etc.

Hope you'll come by and say hey! I'll still be posting here, but I'll try to keep this more to health/weight etc. for now.

We Aren't Stupid

2007-03-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

Be forwarned...I'm about to sound like a cheesey Coke commercial.

When I read blogs and articles and posts and comments about Peak Oil/Global Warming/Climate Change/The Economy I find a common theme that I find seriously disturbing. The main idea from the author seems to be, a lot of the time: "I can see how screwed we are, but the rest of the world is too stupid/selfish/retarded to stop consuming/driving SUVs/buying houses they can't afford/emitting carbon to care."

It's a very holier than thou position that I, as Peak Oil/Climate Change aware as I am, find so off putting that I have to remind myself to look for the actual message the author is trying to get across. My one real pet peeve (shut up, Kevin) is pretension and this is pretension at it's worst.

It's ridiculous to say that people can't stop consuming. There is so much conflicting information out there, and the whole message is so fucking scary, that it isn't any wonder that some people stick their fingers in their ear and scream "charge it!" whilst flinging cheap Chinese plastic goods into their cart at Wal-Mart.

No one in power has sat us down and said, "Our energy source is about to get scarce, and we're heating up the world with our consumption. We have to make a change. It has to be done now. Technology won't get us out of this one. Here's what we can all do to get through this and adapt to a new America."

Until that happens, it isn't any wonder that so many of us are blindly living like nothing has changed. As long as they can say, "why would they be building more SUVs if Global Warming was real?" or, "the president says we'll just run our cars on corn," the organization needed for mass change isn't there.

One huge step in the right direction, IMO, would be for the bloggers and journalists and commenters to bloggers and journalists, to stop telling us that, while they're willing to make the sacrifice, the rest of us are too stupid or lazy or greedy to do anything different from what we're doing now. We here that enough, and it starts to feel like the truth. Then the people who might have changed can't figure out how to do it, because they honestly believe everyone else is too lazy/stupid/greedy to do it, too. And how much damage could their little SUV really be causing, in the face of so much mass idiocy?

If all the people who get it, who understand and believe, would put their energy into believing that the people around them care as much as they do (or would, given the chance and understanding) the shift would be amazing.

We are reaching a tipping point on several fronts. It's time to really start believing that it's possible to weather the changes, and learn to live a different way.

Forgive Me Abs

2007-03-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

I got a book called Escape Your Shape by Edward J. Jackowski from the thrift store the other day. It's very interesting--says that everyone is one of four shapes: Hourglass, Spoon, Cone or Ruler. Despite the fact that most rulers are thin, I am a ruler. My bust and hips have the same measurement, and my waist is less than six inches smaller. Rulers gain weight around their waist first, which is definitely me. They also have weak abdomin and back muscles, and lowish muscle tone in general, which is also me.

So I did the beginner workout today, which I'm supposed to do three times a week, with one or two "day off" routines as well. Holy Hell. It included doing 20 each of five different ab exercises. I was SO proud of myself for finishing them. I went on with the rest of the routine and what's there? Do 20 of each of the five ab exercises again. No way. I had to stop, which was fine because I'd been working out for 45 minutes already. I'm sure someday I'll be stronger and I'll be able to do the set twice. Today I'm trying not to think about doing them again tomorrow.

***

I love this website. Everytime I log on and see that she's posted, I get excited. If you have the time and interest, her entire site is worth reading. Right now she has 100 more things you can do to prepare for Peak Oil (or whatever comes down the pike. Severe weather? Global Warming? Unemployment?)

Increasingly, I'm finding myself thinking of getting healthy as a matter of survival. I can't remember if I already told you guys that I just had some blood work done. My cholesterol is shockingly low, only 126. But my HDL (good cholesterol) is only 29. It should be about 50, according to the doctor. The only real ways to raise your good cholesterol is to exercise and to lose someweight (thereby lowering your triglycerides. Mine aren't high, but they are on the high side of normal.) I'm not super worried about this, because my ratio of HDL to total cholesterol isn't too bad. But I don't want to have a heart attack. I'm shockingly out of shape--exercising for 45 minutes today was difficult enough to make me feel a little sick.

Whether or not anyone believes in Peak Oil or Global Warming--no one can deny that there is a health care crisis going on in our country. I don't want to get cancer during a time when it is becoming less and less easy to get treatment. I don't want to get cancer at all--and I think I can prevent it even though both of my mother and all my grandparents died of cancer and my dad is a survivor. Antioxidants are my friends.

I keep thinking I have to get over my obsession with food. It is conceivable that when things get really tight, American's will be forced to go back to eating what they can buy locally or grow themselves. We're growing food to be used as fuel, killing the honeybees with pesticides and screwing up the weather with our astonishing consumption. The only people alive who can remember really bad times in our country are old, and were children or at best very young adults during the Great Depression, so it's easy for us to start thinking that we deserve to eat whatever we want whenever we want it. Bananas from Peru, chocolate from Switzerland, Cherries from Chile. It's easy for us to believe that we are above getting our hands dirty in order to eat. But it's very likely that a time is coming soon when we won't have so many options. When food traveling 6000 miles ONE WAY to get to us is unacceptable. Where it costs so much even to truck our food from California that we have to be much more aware of what we are eating.

It's easier not to think about these things. It's much easier to believe Bush when he says that American Ingenuity and technology will save us. It's easier not close our eyes and our minds to the idea that paying attention to where our food comes from is important. Who wants to think about a time when it's too expensive to drive to work, much less import peaches? But if we don't start thinking about it, we can't prepare. And if we prepare, we can rise above the hard times. If we decide today that gardening is fun, that eating something we've pulled out of the ground ourselves is a really cool thing to do--how much easier to deal when it becomes necessary instead of a hobby?

Feeling good

2007-03-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

I wonder if having tooth decay can bring down your energy level? Or if maybe I had some other sort of low-level infection, and the antibiotics the dentist gave me are cleaning it up. Whatever the reason, my energy level is wonderful today. What a great thing, because I have a lot of stuff to do in the next three weeks for our move.

I stopped at a thrift store the other day and bought two Richard Simmons videos. I got through about half of one today, and was ready for more (shocking) when the tape started rolling and it was impossible to see what Richard was doing. Ruby totally loved it!

So here's what I'm doing right now, who knows which one (or combo thereof) is making me feel better?

1. Kevin bought me a Jack LaLaine juicer last week and I've been juicing six carrots, an apple and a handful of berries (blueberries and raspberries) midmorning this week.

2. I've been getting a little more exercise this week, mostly because I feel better so I don't feel like sitting like a lump on the couch watching whatever Netflix delivered that day.

3. I've been visualizing my metabolism like a fire in my blood, and every time I eat or move I think about my metabolism and how I'm stoking that fire. I know it sounds silly, but I think it works. I also visualized waking up after being at the dentist with absolutely no pain in my mouth--and it worked. No kidding. I didn't have to take any of my vicodin, even after two root canals, two crowns and three fillings.

4. I've been freaked out by how fast my teeth went down hill after my last round of root canals--so I listened to the dentist this time and I haven't been eating much sugar and no soda.

5. I'm being REALLY good about my vitamins. I think that I'm especially benefitting from the B-complex and the iron.

6. I got a copy of Bob Greene's new book at the thrift store. Normally I try not to buy into diet books, just because I get caught up too easily. But it was a buck, so what the heck, right? Anyway, Bob (and Oprah) say no eating after 7:30 p.m. and I've been sticking with that this week. Plus, my dentist told me that frequent eating is really bad for your teeth because it doesn't give your saliva enough time to do it's job (gross, I know.)

So, there you have it. I have no idea if I'm losing weight. To be perfectly honest, I don't even care. Really. Because I feel really good right this minute, and that's a step up right there.

Hey. Maybe it's the nearly 24-hours of sleep I got Monday, courtesy of my wonderful dentist's anethesia? Could be.

Observations

2007-03-02T23:10:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I'm experiencing a strange thing.

Aloneness.

Adrienne and Nick are at their dad's, Kevin is at work and Ruby is long asleep. My house is half-packed and it's 11:15 p.m. and I feel good. Very centered and sure of myself. I feel like I can conquer the world, if I have to. I also feel grateful that I don't have to.

I wanted to thank Laura for her comment about Nick. It's strange, you know. I sometimes (pretty often) get called on the carpet for my acceptance of him. You know: the kid needs more discipline, he needs a good whack, "if he were MY kid..." About the code-switching--my personal thought on it is that as he gets older it won't matter so much. Because an adult talking to a kid like an equal isn't quite the same in our society as a kid talking to an adult as one, right?

He took a personality test today as part of his extraordinarily long psycho-educational testing to get a medical diagnosis of autism (or whatever.) It had 450 questions. I talked them into letting me read them to him, because if he had to read them to himself, we'd still be there. Funny thing though--he skipped a spot in the bubble filling out and so from about halfway through the test, the answers didn't reflect his response to the question.

For instance: I smoke marijuana regularly was marked as "true" on accident. As was: I am obsessed with sexual thoughts and I hate everyone in my family. Hmm. Marked mistakenly as false: I like myself, I never tease animals and I am not fascinated with fire.

Thank God I caught the mistake. Can you imagine the response that would have come back? Administering the test was enlightening though. Nick is clearly okay with himself. He is cool with himself. He thinks people get mad at him without cause, which has apparently made him slightly paranoid.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to get a blood test (my thyroid again. We'll see.) and then pick up Adrienne and Nick from their dad's house. Then Adrienne is leaving for Ely with her grandparents. A whole month without my girl. How am I going to manage it? I seriously don't know. I've never spent so much time away from her. I'm going to miss her so much.

The other day I watched The Secret Movie. It was pretty--enlightening. All about the law of attraction and the impact that gratitude and visualization can have. I was a little disappointed in the materialistic bent of the movie (a ton of the movie was about using the secret to get things like a sports car--which is totally inappropriate in this time of dwindling resources IMO.) But the basic gist was really good. I'm going to spend some meditation time visualizing Adrienne making good friends and finding totally happiness at her new school.

On Monday I'm having some dental work. I'm choosing to be grateful that I can have the work done, and see myself having a healthy mouth. One step toward that is my decision to brush and floss every time I eat. Something has to give. Less than two years ago I had no cavities, now I have decay so bad I need two root canals and three filings? Plus, it'll help make me very aware of what I'm eating I guess. Nothing wrong with that. I do not want to be the 40-year-old toothless wonder, you know?

Gone too long

2007-02-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

Tons of stuff going on!

First, Nick and I went to Ely last weekend and we found a house to rent. I can hardly believe it. After two years of hoping and wishing--we're moving to Ely April first! The school is just behind the middle school, very close to my family there and is just a super cute great deal. We'll save $500 a month over our rent here!

On a much less happy note, I went to the dentist yesterday and found out that I have to have twice as much dental work done on Monday than I had two years ago. I need three fillings and two root canals, plus three crowns. UGH. The grand total: $9000--or a decent down payment on a house. We had to take out a loan, which just makes me sick. Apparently I have teeth that are prone to decay, mostly because I clench them in my sleep and have worn them down past the protective enamel.

Anyway--enough of that.

I've started taking a vitamin with lots of B vitamins. Especially B2--which I figured out I'm deficient in. Turns out that highly sensitive eyes and iron deficiency are signs of B2 deficiency--and I have both. My energy level skyrocketed from the first dose. I'm actually taking a huge amount of vitamins right now:

Flax seed oil
Calcium with Magnesium and Zinc
C
A multi
Selenium
A Candida cleanser that has some anti-fungal properties, which will just be for a few weeks to try to clean out any bad stuff in my system
A probiotic to replace the Candida yeast with healthy bacterias

Whew.

I am feeling better. I have more energy than I've had in a long time. I'm also noticing that I'm less obsessed about food. Maybe that obsession was my body's way of trying to get the vitamins it needs? Maybe.

Thinking about Nick

2007-02-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about Nick lately (how unusual, huh?) He said something to me the other day that was thought provoking.

You probably know that Nick has recently been diagnosed with mild autism. You may not know that there is an autism diet out there--no gluten, no casin. Essentially, no wheat and no dairy.

I talked to Nick about the diet. He's 13--old enough to have some say in his life, in my opinion. I asked if he wanted to try it. He said no. I said something along the lines of "what if going on this diet takes away the autism." His response was immediate and surprising.

"I don't want to take away autism, Mom. It's part of me."

My first instinct was to think this was Nick, who has a history of being fairly manipulative, trying to get out of going on a diet that would make him give up the carbs that he loves. Bread. Cookies. Crackers. Spaghetti. Ice Cream. Yogurt. But the more I think about it, the more the truth of his statement hits me.

Nick has never had a problem with himself, or the way he is. He has never, ever expressed a desire to be 'normal.' When he gets sad or upset about how other kids treat him, he never puts the blame on himself. He has the clearest idea of how he thinks the world should work and why it doesn't than anyone I've ever met. Because he struggles with the nuances of speech and social interaction, he is very straight forward and honest in his opinions and in what he believes to be right or wrong.

Nick is okay with being Nick. He always has been. Nick doesn't easily fit into the compartments we normally put children in. Like school. Or social situations. He has almost no capacity to follow rules he either doesn't understand or doesn't agree with. Most kids understand that kids are kids and adults are adults, and that there is a double standard as far as rules go (adults get away with a lot, from a kids point of view) and while they don't like it, they go along because they don't have a choice. Nick, on the other hand is incredibly vocal and hard-headed about generational differences. It's called 'code switching', behaving one way with peers and another way with someone in authority. Nick doesn't do it. His switch is broken.

But he doesn't care. He isn't looking to fix the switch.

He likes himself the way he is. And I'm stuck trying to decide if I have the right to force him to change his diet (for the few years left that I have any hope of controlling what he eats) in order to make him more normal. Do I decide that he is too young to know if he likes himself the way he is. Do I decide that he can't make the decision because he doesn't know what 'normal' feels like? Do I decide that he has to be more 'normal' if I can arrange it, so that he'll fit in better in the Real World?

Or do I try to figure out how to let Nick be Nick, try to give him the tools to control the parts of him that he doesn't like. Like his temper (he's expressed some distress about how he will be able to be a doctor if he can't control his anger.) Help him learn how to read other people and understand that he has to respect how different a lot of people are from him.

There is no doubt that the world would run smoother if everyone was the same. That's why schools are designed to crank out kids who don't think for themselves. And that's why a square-peg kid doesn't fit in a round-peg school setting. But maybe (hopefully) I can find a way to celebrate Nick just as he is, and not kill one of the most amazing parts of him--his ability to completely accept himself for who he is.

Sugar-free day 2

2007-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe for the first time ever, yesterday I didn't eat any refined sugar. Not even in pre-package prepared food.

It wasn't easy.

I went to Sunflower Market and picked up four supplements: A candida cleanse that has some natural anti-fungals (it has oregano oil in it...gross), probiotics to build the good bacteria, calcium with magnesium and zinc, and flax seed oil for the Omega 3s. I also take Vitamin C, a multi-vitamin and an iron supplement.

Whew.

So yesterday I took the anti-fungal candida cleanse supplement all day. By about seven p.m. I felt like crap. My eyes were especially bothering me--burning, itching and tearing. I also had some sinus congestion and general irritability. And a monster headache. I also woke up in the middle of the night with some stomach cramping. I've read that when the bad bacteria is dying off this reaction is not uncommon. I'm going to go ahead and continue the anti-fungal today and see how I feel. If I feel any worse than I did last night, I'm going to ease off and maybe build up to the full dose.

I've decided that I'll have a better chance of being successful with this candida cleanse thing if I'm less severe with the diet part. For a month my goal is to give up all dairy, simple carbs and yeast products. I'll also cut out the high sugar fruits (the tropical fruits) and eat fewer of the lower sugar fruits (like berries and melon and grapefruit.)

I'm still not sure where I went wrong with the Mediterranean/superfoods diet. I was eating four or five pieces of fruit a day, plus chocolate and bread (which has sugar to activate the yeast) and sugar in iced tea. Maybe it was the sugar.

Dr. Andrew Weil's website says that if you actually had yeast growing in your blood, you'd be very ill and in intensive care. I tend to believe him. But he says that it is possible for the candida that everyone has growing in their bodies to get out of whack, and cause problems. The treatment won't hurt, and definitely eating less sugar won't hurt.

I bought some Stevia yesterday. It's pretty good. Way way sweet--like Equal compared to sugar. You just need a touch to sweeten a cup of tea.

Gross. I just took the candida cleanse stuff. The oregano oil is so strong. Blech.

Yeast and stuff

2007-02-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

You know how you feel when you stay up until three a.m. watching Rock Hudson TCM or Three's Company reruns--that heavy exhaustion. That's what I've been feeling everyday, only at noon after eight or nine hours of sleep.

I talked to an old friend last night, who had a similar level of fatigue, and it turns out (after many unhelpful doctors and finally going to a naturopath and paying out of pocket) that she has candidas.

I googled the candidas symptoms and was shocked at how closely they mirror my own symptoms. Fatigue, digestive issues, sensitivity to the eyes (including styes, which I've been dealing with for the last month or so), brain fogginess (specifically forgetting words, which was shocking since I've been doing that for about a month as well), and most importantly thrush. Thrush is a yeast infection on the tongue, and I've had it since Ruby was an infant. Also an inability to lose weight. I've been eating about 1000 calories less per day for six weeks, and have not lost one pound.

So the treatment for candidas starts with a candida cleanse diet, which is EXTREME. The first three months are basically non-sweet and non-starchy vegetables, some limited amounts of grains, eggs and chicken. No dairy, no sugar, no fruit, no fermented foods (vinegars and yeast included.) Then two more three month periods, each increasing the amount of starches and sweet vegetables. Finally, after nine-months you can start adding back in dairy and fruit and fermented foods to see if you tolerate them. Which means adding them back one at a time.

In addition to the diet, there are herbal supplements and probiotics that add to and support the good bacterias in your body while you're killing off the extra yeast and bad bacterias.

I'm going to give it a shot. I'm nervous, because it's so extreme. But if it makes me feel better, it will be worth it. I have a feeling that I'm having a thyroid issue on top of the candidas. We'll see. If the first phase of the diet doesn't make me feel better after a month or so, I'll rethink the whole thing.

And if eating only vegetables and chicken and quinoah for a month doesn't kick start some weight loss I'm going to really be concerned.

In other news, our housing situation is reaching critical mass. The plumbing in the house we rent has finally given up the ghost. The washing machine backed up, so we called the landlady who first tried to make us call and pay for a plumber (I don't think so miss my-house-has-gained-$150,000-while-my-renters-are-paying-my-mortgage.) She finally sent one out, and it turns out that the simple snake job is going to be more like a thousands of dollars, jack-hammer up the living room floor type of job. The guys snake hit something that it wouldn't break through. He said it was likely that the old iron pipes had clogged up with erosion. On top of that, he tried to fix a leaky bathtub faucet and that job is going to run $1000 because the faucet is so ancient that there are no replacement parts for it.

The landlady was so bitchy to the plumber that he was actually smiling when he gave her the news.

She of course is being crappy to us. I can't stand her, there is something about her that really bothers me. I'm not sure what, but she makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

So we're thinking about renting an apartment for the rest of the time that we'll be in Las Vegas. Which sadly (very, very sadly) might be as much as another year. That makes me sick. But we talked to a mortgage guy this morning and it looks like we need to do some more work on our credit before we can get the sort of mortgage we want.

Sigh.

Baking Fool

2007-02-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made a triple recipe of the best mixed-berry muffins ever. And they were totally Superfoods-filled, too! The recipe has three cups of yogurt, four cups of antioxidant-rich berries, heart-healthy canola oil and organic whole-wheat flour. I was halfway through making the batter when I realized that I didn't have enough sugar, so I used mostly brown sugar and reduced the yogurt by a touch to make up for the moisture. They turned out perfect.

A few months ago I found a huge restaurant muffin pan (it's so big, it just barely fits in my oven) that makes gorgeous muffins with big tops, just like the ones at Coco's. My triple recipe actually made two dozen muffins in this tin.

I also made some lentil soup. Not only was this the first time I've made lentil soup, it was the first time I've ever eaten lentils. I think I'm going to have to experiment some more. Maybe buy a can of Amy's lentil soup so I can see what it's supposed to taste like. Even though I cooked the lentils for twice as long as the recipe called for, they were sort of--crunchy. Like beans that aren't quite soft enough, if you know what I mean. It was a weird texture in my mouth, and the lentils, to me, had a sort of raw flavor that wasn't what I had been anticipating. The flavor of the soup was good, and we ate it, but it wasn't something I'd add to my weekly menu.

I want to give bulk cooking a try this week. Here's my plan:

1. Boil two whole chickens, pull the meat and make some broth.
2. Make a double batch of navy bean soup.
3. Make some more muffins to freeze.
4. Make a double batch of granola.
5. Prepare and freeze (before baking) a tray of enchiladas and a tray of eggplant parmesan.
6. Bake some more oat bread and some rolls.
7. Prepare salad base for the week.

Besides ending up with a freezer full of ready-to-go organic, healthy food, We'll have the added benefit of heating the house with the oven all day and cutting back on furnace use.

In other news, Adrienne is auditioning for the Las Vegas Academy this morning, which is a local arts and languages high school. The goal is to be moved to Ely well before the next school year starts, but just in case (considering we've tried to move for the past year and here we sit) she's covering her bases. She's going to Ely on March 2nd to spend the rest of the school year with her grandparents, finishing out junior high. She wants to start high school in Ely already knowing some kids. My girl--a hedge better.

Oh god. How am I going to manage four months without my baby? I know it will be good for her. An adventure, that her overly-careful spirit really needs. When I was her age I spent the summer in Costa Rica visiting my best friend's family. Ely isn't Costa Rica, but the world is a different place now than it was in 1984. And Adrienne doesn't have a friend with family in an exotic location. (Is it totally screwed up that I'm incredibly relieved that she doesn't?)

My Homestead

2007-02-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last several weeks reading and researching and dreaming about moving to Ely, to my little farm.

It occurred to me today that there isn't a reason why I can't have my homestead where ever I am. There is plenty I can do right here, in the next few months, that will help prepare me (and all of us) for Ely.

Prepare me, especially, physically. I hate doing pointless exercise (treadmills, walking around the block, etc.) But today I gave myself a hell of a workout in my own backyard. I spent 20 minutes raking and picking up leaves, while my baby played with her Little Tyke's slide, and helped put little handfuls of leaves in a bag.

I got a good upper body workout in as well, kneading dough. I used this amazing recipe. It turned out perfect. For dinner I cut some slices, brushed on some olive oil, sprinkled garlic bread topping and dried parsley and toasted it up to go with Amy's Tuscan Black Bean and Rice soup and it was perfect.

Amy's makes the best soup ever. I love the butternut squash, too.

Here are some things I'd like to do in this spring, before we move in June:

1. Finish cleaning up the backyard.

2. Clean and disinfect all my pots and get them ready for the move.

3. Grow some herbs and veggies in pots. This is possible here, since Vegas has a spring growing season that ends in June or July. I'm not going to go overboard, but there isn't any reason for me not to grow some greens and radishes and herbs at least.

4. Make bread three times a week (that's a good 15 minutes of heavy upper body workout!)

5. Walk to the grocery store at least twice a week, instead of driving.

6. Refinish two dressers, two desks and two bookshelves.

7. Throughly declutter my house.

8. Put up whatever left over or extra produce from the CSA that I can.

I feel better today than I have in a while. Not as tired, not as cranky. I started taking vitamins at the same time as the Thyroid Support (iron, C and a multi) so I'm not sure what's helping, but something is. I think it might be the iron, since I do have a tendency toward anemia.

The Icks

2007-02-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm losing my mind lately. I'm so damn...absentminded.

I went to the grocery store on Saturday, got the baby out of the car, walked my cart inside--then realized I was wearing my slippers. I forgot to put on shoes, for christsake. Oh, and a couple of weeks ago I left my car keys on the roof of the van--they are now somewhere in the vast desert between our house and my dad's in Logandale. (I think. I can't even really remember if that's what I did with them. Regardless, they are gone.)

And I keep losing words. A word that I should know is just gone for a few mintues. It's freaky.

I'm also freezing, and a little crabby (think mild to medium PMS) and I am so tired. So incredibly tired. I took a two hour nap today, sitting straight up on the couch. I sat down to watch the news at one and woke up two hours later.

So I think it's my thyroid. I've been to the doctor once before for similar symptoms, right after I had Ruby. My thyroid test came back normal--even a little high. So I think maybe I have some sort of weird thyroid that overworks or normalizes during pregnancy (hence at least 40 pounds lost during each pregnancy) and then plummets after I give birth (hence at least 60 pounds gained after each pregnancy.) Then things settle down, I lose a few pounds and my weight stabilizes for the most part. I weighed about the same from six months after I had Adrienne until I got pregnant with Nick, and the same between Nick and Ruby. Now I've lost twenty pounds and everything has come to a screeching halt.

Anyway. I'm due for my annual exam at the GYN anyway (ugh) and I'm going to ask him about my thyroid. I think I may have kicked it up again by eating a lot of spinach, broccoli and cabbage (nearly everyday for the last two months) which Dr. Andrew Weil says are a no-no for people with low thyroid.

Foods that depress thyroid activity are broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, spinach, turnips, soy, beans, and mustard greens. These foods should be included in the diet for hyperthyroid conditions and avoided for hypothyroid conditions.

Anywho. I started taking Thyroid Support by Natrabio, which I picked up at Sunflower Market on Saturday (in my slippers. Damn.) And after three days, I am feeling a little better. Still tired, obviously, considering my two hour nap. But I'm less scatterbrained and I'm not feeling as crappy.

Why I Don't Join In

2007-02-03T22:18:00.000-08:00

It all started with this this blog I read that posts articles pertaining to the housing bubble. Normally, I'm not really a joiner when it comes to these things. But they posted an article about Las Vegas, and someone posted a comment that prompted a response from me.

Someone posted saying that people move to Vegas for the low taxes (no state tax) and that people moving in from California would likely mess that up.

I said that I would be happy to pay a state tax if it meant that Nevada might not be 49th in the nation for funding per student, and 47th in educational standard in the nation.

And I was attacked.

People told me to go back to California with my leftist, liberal self.

Now I'm a proud liberal. A proud leftist. I eat organic granola for breakfast most mornings, for Christ sake. But jeez, I haven't lived in California for twenty-five years.

Someone else said something about how if I didn't like where I lived, I should move, because even though where they live has problems at least isn't Iraq. God Bless America.

WTF? I'm not even sure what to say to that. Since when does being an American mean that I'm not allowed to voice a dissatisfaction with my local governments policies? What this person suggesting that I move to Iraq if I'm not happy with Vegas? Would Iraq even let me in? What utter nonsense.

The kicker was the dude who said that the schools in Vegas are fine. It's the bad kids that are the problem, and the kids are bad because they have bad parents.

I think all Internet users should have to take a crash course in manners. "Do unto others" is a basic rule of common decency shared by pretty much ever major religion. The basic Internet rule, IMO should be: "If you wouldn't say something to someone's face, don't say it online either."

Because "all kids, and parents, in Las Vegas are bad" is a sweeping generalization that is hurtful and ignorant. And I have a good idea that if the guy who typed it had to look me in the face, he wouldn't have said it.

Someone else said that he was single, so he shouldn't have to pay for my kids to go to school. We should all put our kids in private school and shut up. I pointed out the obvious. There are no where near enough private schools for all the children in Las Vegas (or for all the children anywhere.) I guess the rich kids, in this idiots perfect world, get an education. The rest of them don't matter anyway?

My only response to that was the obvious. Giving every child a decent education (at school, public or private, or at home) is in the best interests of EVERYONE. Because, hello asshat, these kids will be ruling the world someday.

What do you want to bet these people are Baby Boomers?

So I posted most of this as a response to the attacks and ended with "this thread has made me officially sick, I'm out."

I got a response along the lines of "Shaunta's greed for other people's money is outrageous."

Sigh.

P.S. HAHAHA...so I just went back and read again, to make sure I had everything right. The idiot who said my greed for other people's money is ... whatever he said...also said (at a different point) "Global warming is just a religion for the gullible." So he really is an idiot. I feel much better now.

How I Made Al Gore Happy...and Got Some Exercise

2007-02-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

Today I walked to the grocery store.

It's maybe half a mile away (maybe less,) on the other side of a huge mall, then across a wide, busy street, and at the far side of a big shopping center.

I pulled one of these with me. Only mine is a $2.00-garage-sale-bought granny cart and it doesn't have wheels on the front. I didn't notice that it would be a problem on the way there. Empty and folded up, it was a breeze to pull the cart. It was just the right height.

Opened and filled with $80 worth of groceries, it's about six inches shorter and much, much heavier and harder to steer. I had to walk home hitched to one side, trying to keep the cart from dumping my $3.50 organic, cage-free brown eggs.

Speaking of organic. I bought all organic food. My local store is Vons, which is owned by Safeway, which distributes O Organic foods. I was able to buy three...yes THREE items of fresh produce at Vons (spinach and carrots from O and apples.)

In retrospect, I think I'm going to go back to shopping at Sunflower Market for all my food. I like the idea of supporting smaller manufacturers. I especially like Seeds of Change. They make their food from produce they grow themselves, organically, in New Mexico.

I wish I could eat locally. It's impossible. I can do my best to eat more locally though. Like eating food that's produced in the West, instead of the East. (No New York salsa for this girl!) I'm lucky to be so near to California, where so much food is grown. I'm trying to talk my sister into eating locally, because she's near Boise and tons of food is produced in Idaho. She says that in the summer lots of houses just had signs in front advertising what they had for sale (tomatoes, eggs, etc.)

New Mexico is 650 miles away or so from Las Vegas. I'll be happy when the CSA starts up in March. I have a personal goal to not supplement the veggies with store bought. She doesn't sell much fruit (only melons, and apples and pomegranates in the fall.)

So I think I want to buy one of these soon. That granny cart is the pits!

Another step

2007-01-30T22:41:00.000-08:00

We paid off another credit card today. What a fabulous feeling! And it looks like we'll (if we get our tax return and don't spend anything extra) be able to pay off another one in February. That just leaves one, and we only need to get that one down to where we've only used 75% of the balance before we can start looking for a pre-approval for a house.

Now if only the housing market would cooperate.

I get so frustrated and angry when I hear the idiots on the news talk about how the housing market has hit bottom and will start "recovering" soon. Recovering from a place where rents are still half a mortgage payment? Recovering from a place where most Americans couldn't buy the houses they live in today. Where most Americans can't afford to buy a house, even with a median income.

I just saw on the news the other day where for the first time most people in the 24 to 35 age group can't afford to be homeowners.

And this is the bottom? We need to recover from the slight (very slight) return to sanity that we've seen so far?

My hope is that our house will come on the market this spring, and that when it doesn't sell by the summer, the owners will be ready to sell for less.

Four bedrooms, a basement, a fireplace, at least three acres.

The Food: Jan. 26, 2007

2007-01-27T22:17:00.000-08:00

I shop at Sunflower Market. It's a sort of Whole Foods/corner grocery hybrid that takes some pride in offering organic options. The organic produce bin is like a beautiful surprise every week.

If I go early in the morning, I have the best choices. This time of year there are plenty of juicy pears and gorgeous apples. Squash and potatoes, too. If I'm lucky there are some California tomatoes. Greens, cabbage and broccoli are abundant in the fall.

The other, non-organic bins have green beans and plenty of tomatoes, bananas, oranges, mangos, peppers, plums and peaches. All the crops that love the sun and grow well all year in Peru, Mexico and Chile.

Seeing them is sort of like teasing myself with little shakes at my Christmas gifts.

Because I've made a commitment to feed my family organic foods grown as close to us as I can manage.

So beans and oranges and peppers will have to weight until the summer. Buying seasonally is a byproduct of buying organic and local. If California isn't getting berries, neither am I.

I'm surprised to find myself feeling a sort of joy at going to the organic bin every Saturday and seeing what it has to offer me. If there are California tomatoes, I carefully choose half a dozen and feel grateful for them.

This week, for the first time, I bit the bullet and bought organic milk. It costs more than twice what a gallon of regular milk costs. And for a while I've been using the fact that I can buy a local dairy's milk as an excuse not to buy organic. But my baby gets at least half her calories from milk still and I can't keep feeding her hormones and antibiotics and god-only-knows what else in an effort to save $5 or $6 a week.

I can't find organic crackers that don't cost the Earth, so I skip them. I like to buy Paul Newman's stuff because I can count on it to cost good and not cost too much, plus it goes on sale fairly often and he donates his proceeds to good causes. And everyone always said my mother had Paul Newman eyes--bright blue and intelligent--so when I buy his stuff I think of her.

In the month since I've been shopping this way, I've noticed a few things. I don't feel as entitled to oranges in January as I used to. I don't waste food, the good stuff is too expensive. I feel much more connected to what I'm eating, mainly because I'm paying attention to where it came from and what went into making it.

My little farm is so perfectly framed in my mind. I can see my orchard and my big vegetable garden. And the chicken coop and my little goat barn. And my beautiful greenhouse attached to the south side of the house. My herb garden and a big patch of cut flowers.

Every time I buy the kind of food I want to grow, and offer, myself someday, I feel like I'm taking a step toward my dream.

Gaia's Garden

2007-01-27T11:58:00.000-08:00

My ex-husband's mother (who lives in Ely and whom I've been close to since I was 15) called today to tell me that her neighbor got all excited about my CSA and wants to join!

Okay, so I don't have a CSA (yet) and I don't know how to grow enough food to feed us, much less anyone else (yet)...but still, how exciting is that? The woman whose CSA we're joining this spring told me her children live in Ely and would join as well.

Here's my dream:

A nice big farm house, about five acres of land (I'd say more if we lived somewhere where the extra acres might be wooded or a pond or something, but in Nevada it's all wide-open rangeland. Even in the mountains.) I want to build a big chicken coop, a small barn and a greenhouse.

Because I love to make the gods laugh, here's my Big Plan:

Between now and the end of April pay off $8000 of debt. Our tax return will help.

Between May and August save as much money as possible.

Find our perfect place just in time for the kids to start school in Ely. I go back and forth on this one, because I believe the housing market is going to come down some this fall, so it's tempting to wait a bit longer to buy.

I have to do some research about when we can plant fruit trees. If possible, I'd love to get an orchard in this late summer/early fall. And build a chicken coop before it gets cold so we can get chicks next spring. And maybe till up a big garden and get a cover crop planted on it.

I'm tempted to want to have a barn built this fall as well so we can get goats in the spring, but I'm thinking one barnyard animal at a time might be wiser.

And a greenhouse. Oh, how I want a greenhouse.

I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my little farm. About a beehive in the orchard, my kids picking berries right off our vines. About my neighbors coming by to pick up their weekly produce and eggs. I dream about little pygmy goats that get excited to see me, and a hutch of rabbits for my baby girl to feed and pet. I even dream about spreading all that organic fertilizer over my beautiful garden. Oh, and a basement pantry filled with lovely jewel-like jars of put-up tomatoes and beans and ocra and carrots.

So we're taking our first steps toward the first thing that has to happen--debt paid off. This month we've paid off our two smallish debts, leaving two large ones that (I can hear the gods laughing now) we should be able to pay off, with the help of our tax return, in three months. Paying off these four debts will open up an extra $400 a month, which will really help when it comes time to get approved for a loan.

An Embarassment of Riches

2007-01-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

I spent a lot of time and energy today trying to figure out a way to move my family to Ely, into a house with enough land for a little farm, in the next eight or nine months. During that time we'll be able to pay off all of our debt and save about $10,000.

And then I turned on my television tonight and caught a 20/20 about kids living in Camden, New Jersey. Did anyone else see this show. Camden is the poorest city in America (average annual income of $18,000) and the most dangerous. It looks like a war zone. Fucking heartbreaking.

How is it possible that in this country there are kindergarteners that people eat three meals a day? Or that there are children living without heat. People who have to choose between shoes or food for their babies. Homeless five-year-olds or middle school kids who are so poor they don't even know what to wish for.

I had a fairly privileged childhood--I grew up in a nice house in Southern California where I went to good schools and had more than enough of everything. We moved to Las Vegas when I was 15 and for a while things were still pretty good.

Then my dad went to jail. My teenage years were spent trying to figure out a way to graduate from high school while working full-time to supplement my step-mother's appallingly low teacher's salary and taking care of six brothers and a sister while the same step-mother was drinking her troubles away.

I got pregnant when I was twenty, again when I was twenty-two, and two years after that my husband left. I spent the next five years as a single mom.

Now I'm married to a man who works and works and works...then works some more...so that the end of this summer I can have a farm in Ely.

So I've been on both ends. So poor that I was opening cans of corn to feed my baby brothers because that's all we had in the house. And so rich that watching a show about poor kids makes me feel a little queasy.

I've been thinking a lot about the class structure in this country. And how much easier it is to pretend it doesn't exist. How much simpler it is to say "those parents need to get a job." Anyone can succeed in America, right?

Capitalism breeds contempt for the poor, I think. Our president proposed a plan during his State of the Union address to give a tax break to those who buy their own health insurance, and never mentions the millions and millions of Americans--people he is charged with leading and protecting--who will not be helped (and likely will be hurt) by his plan. They are too poor for his tax break to matter. He wages war without raising taxes, insuring a huge burden for the next generation. Probably the one after that, too. A fraction of the cost of his war could give health insurance and food to every American. He wants billions to rehabilitate Afghanistan when there are places like Camden right here?

My family makes about 150% of the national median family income. We don't come close to being able to afford the median house (not just for our town, but for the nation.) The national median house costs about $225,000--our income qualifies us for about $180,000 using the three-times-annual-income rule of thumb.

And yet on the news everyday I hear some idiot or the other saying that the market has stabilized, prices will start to go up again now. Like that's a good thing? It's a good thing for prices to go up when the average American family can't afford to own a decent home? When so many of those who do own homes have loans that are so screwy they aren't likely to hold on when they reset this year.

Even if you work hard, go to college, get a decent job--owning an average American home is out of the picture unless you make two or three times the median family income.

Don't get me started about the Senate tossing out the minimum wage hike because tax breaks weren't included. Or the chick on MSNBC who said families earning more than $80,000 are the middle class.

WTF. Seriously. Just WTF is going on? There is a huge disconnect in our country, and it scares me to see how little the people in charge care.

You know what? I'm pissed off. And I'm sad. And I'm scared for us.

The Food: Jan. 24, 2007

2007-01-24T19:08:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to incorporate new grains (and other foods) into my family's diet. I'm also noticing a sort of trend toward vegetarianism. Not a cold-turkey thing--just a preference to not eat meat more than once a day. Even to skip it all together some days. Part of that is my recent awareness of what I'm eating. I don't want to eat the cheap meat from my local grocery store. (Have you read Diet for a New America by John Robbins? Yeah. Read it.) Organic, natural meat that isn't full of hormones and where the animal actually got to be an animal during its life is EXPENSIVE.

So the point of all that is to let ya'll know I made quinoa.

Quinoa is a tiny little seed-like grain that is full of protein. It's very healthful and excellent for vegetarians because of the protein. You make it like rice--2 to 1 liquid to grain, steamed.

Here's how I did it:

Mediterranean Quinoa Goodness

1 cup quinoa
2 cups vegetarian stock
1 each yellow, red and green bell pepper
3 cloves garlic
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup tiny grape tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes
1 small white onion (or half a larger one)
salt
olive oil
1/3 cup pepitas (shelled, roasted pumpkin seeds)

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Chop the peppers, garlic and onion fairly small. Add the chopped veggies, cranberries and tomatoes to the pan. The tomatoes will split and sort of break down in the pan. When that happens, add the broth and bring to a boil. When the broth is boiling, carefully add the quinoa. Cover and let cook for twenty minutes over low heat.

The quinoa will be translucent with a white ring of hull around it when it's done. It won't soak up all the water like rice, but it should soak up most. The grain will be translucent with a white-ish ring of hull around it when it's done. Toss in the pepitas.

I added some chicken and apple sausage and blue cheese. Next time I'm going to skip the cheese. There were so many flavors going on, it wasn't needed and barely even tasted. The sausage went perfect, but the dish would have been filling without it and just as tasty. I think a little red wine with the broth would have been good.

Enjoy!

The Food: Jan. 23, 2007

2007-01-23T22:45:00.000-08:00

I'm 35 years old, and today I ate my first eggplant. And it was good. Very good.

I made Eggplant Parmesan (except that I just realized I didn't put any Parmesan cheese in it. Maybe it's named after a region?) It was completely organic and very healthy. And delish.

Eggplant Parmesan

Two eggplants
One can tomato sauce
One can diced tomatoes
Italian seasonings (I used basil, oregano, garlic and crushed red pepper)
Shredded mozzarella (I used about a cup)
Two eggs
Italian Breadcrumbs
Olive oil

Two things. One, you can use a jar of spaghetti sauce instead of the cans of tomatoes and tomato sauce and Italian spices. Two, I tried making this with Pam instead of olive oil and I didn't like the results, so I went ahead and used oil. Don't use too much, because eggplant is like a sponge and will soak up as much as you use.

Okay.

Peel the eggplants and salt both sides, put on a plate with paper towels on top and bottom, topped with another plate. The salt will release a lot of liquid from the eggplant, which is a good thing. It takes like five minutes.

Beat the eggs in a bowl and put the breadcrumbs on a plate. Rinse the eggplant VERY well, pat dry. Dip each piece in the egg then the breadcrumbs.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Add a quarter of the eggplant and cook until golden brown on both sides. The eggplant will suck up all the oil, so really watch that you just use enough. Let the eggplant drain on some paper towels while you repeat this process with the rest of the eggplant.

Mix the tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and Italian spices.

Spray Pam in a casserole dish. Put some of the tomato mix on the bottom. Be a little stingy with the sauce, because eggplant is a very juicy vegetable and you don't want to end up with a soggy mix. I only used about 1/3 of the mix on my whole dish.

layer 1/3 of the eggplant, a handful of cheese, drizzle with sauce. Repeat three times, then top with the a little more cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes until bubbly and scrumptious!

Mmmm mmm mmm...SO good and heart healthy and really yummy.

***

I've decided to only weigh myself once a month. You know I have a love-hate thing with my scale. I'm finding myself slipping slightly into a diet mentality and I don't like it. I keep thinking to myself "I have XXX calories left, so I can eat this." Which isn't what I want. I just want to eat enough healthy food, not stuff myself, and that's that.

So watch for my next weigh in on Feb. 1. I'm going to start with my Jan. 1 weigh in...311.5 pounds, and go from there.

Outback...ugh

2007-01-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

Kevin got a gift certificate to The Outback for dinner from work for Christmas and the babysitting-stars aligned tonight so that we could go. Good god.

For the first time in three weeks I overate. It all started with that damn blooming onion (I ate about 1/4 of one). Then I thought--what the hell--and had a baked potato with the works. And that yummy pumpernickle they serve. With BUTTER. I was good and had Ahi Tuna. It was spectacular. I also had the equally spectacular chopped blue cheese salad.

If I'd just ordered the fish and ate it with the steamed veggies it came with it, everything would have been fine.

Instead I gorged and I feel like C-R-A-P. My face broke out, I have big dark circles under my eyes. I've been eating so CLEAN for the last several weeks. My body is rejecting the Blooming Onion. I want to curl up and cry, my stomach hurts and I feel this weird anxiousness.

That might be the soda. I haven't had any in three weeks, and in the last two days have had about six cans.

I don't want to feel like this. Ever.

I went to the grocery store today and stocked up on some nice organic yumminess. I'm not doing this. I'm just not.

I'm going to skip my weigh in tomorrow, because I refuse to let myself be messed up by an artificially inflated number on the scale.

CSA--Yum Yum!

2007-01-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

I found out today about this CSA farm near my dad's house in Logandale (an hour outside of Vegas.)

CSA stands for Community-supported Agriculture. We'll buy a share in the farm and every week get locally-grown, organic, in-season produce, eggs and fresh flowers.

In Southern Nevada our growing season is 10 months long. So for $700 we'll get fresh produce, eggs and flowers from March through December. Actually, we'll pay $350 for the Spring season and $350 for the fall.

I spend about $50 a week to buy organic produce and eggs for my family right now. So we'll pay off the spring season share with six weeks of savings at the grocery store. The spring season lasts from March to mid-July. That's a huge savings.

Of course, it's a risk as well, since we're paying in advance for the share and taking the risk along with the farmer that one or more of his crops will fail.

I'm in love with this idea.

What's Going On?

2007-01-19T20:35:00.000-08:00

I have a few blogs I like to read that deal with homesteading. They give me hope. This woman believes that our country will need 100,000 small farmers to survive what's coming. Small farmers like this. That's a tenth of an acre, a California city plot, and they are growing enough food to mostly feed themselves and to make a profit as well.

I'm still so shocked at how unconcerned most people are. No one, not even Saudi Arabian big wigs believe that we aren't on the verge of running out of oil. Those guys say they can only keep up with oil needs for 30 years. Even if that is true, in 30 years my baby will be younger than I am now.

Many, many smart people say Peak Oil has hit, or will hit very very soon. Not in thirty years, but within five years. Add to that the real threats of Global Warming, and war, and an economy that bears striking resemblence to the economy just barely post-1929 and it's a scary situation.

How sustainable is your life? How dependant are you on foreign oil? Could you walk or ride your bike to work if you had to? Do you have work that is dependant on oil? Could you find food that isn't trucked thousand's of miles to your nearest grocery store (the problem in the future won't be getting to the store, but getting food in the store)? How about keeping warm? Ask the hundreds of thousands of people left without power during ice storms in our country's midsection if this is a legitimate question. Ask the Californians who got snow last week.

If we end up in Las Vegas through the summer I'm very concerned about the possibility of some crazy weather (or crazy something else that I can't even imagine right now)knocking out electricity in my area and leaving us without air conditioning in what could be the worst summer in history if this year proceeds as it has been. Even if we have a normal summer, having no air conditioning in Las Vegas in August could be a deadly situation.

Preparation is smart, and it's important. Being aware, and not falling into the trap of believing that there is nothing you can do, so it's easier not to think about it, could be life saving.

Supersize Me

2007-01-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

Adrienne and I watched Supersize Me tonight. You know...a guy named Morgan (incredibly healthy, fit, normal) eats McDonald's for every meal for thirty days and gains twenty-five pounds, has liver problems, cholesterol problems, pressure in his chest, can't walk up his stairs without huffing and puffing.

I've seen bits and pieces of this show before, and I really loved his series last year. Really sitting down and watching it this time (followed by an ABC Medical Mysteries about people who weigh more than 1000 pounds) had an impact.

The nutritionist said that he was eating about 5000 calories a day, or twice what he needed to maintain his 185 pounds. That brought home to me the correlation between what I eat and what is hanging off my body. It takes 3500 calories to gain a pound, he was eating nearly that and gained 25 pounds in 30 days.

It also really made me think about what the fuck I've been doing to not only myself, but my children, too. Because you know, I don't eat a McMeal and then come home and feed my children a Superfoods meal.

I haven't eaten fast food for seventeen days. I guess a few more, I'm not sure of the date of the last fast food I ate. Strangely, I don't want it. In the past, even just when I first started this blog and was making an attempt to lose weight, I would dream about Big Macs. I'd have to physically stop myself from going out and getting one.

So far I've avoided that the last few weeks. I think part of it is that I've finally really made the connection between what I put in my body, and my health. Both of my parents had cancer. My mother died of breast cancer. Both of my grandmother's died from cancer. My grandfather died of cancer. I do NOT want cancer.

Beyond anything else, I have an obligation to my baby to stay healthy. It just isn't right to decide to have a baby at 33 and then not take care of myself. If I die as young as my mother was when she died, Ruby will only be 15. Fifteen.

I have always had a thing about pretension. I hate it. It's my biggest pet peeve. But maybe it's okay to be a foodie, a kitchen snob. You know--only organic food, only free-range eggs, only $3 loaves of whole wheat bread. Maybe it's okay to be too good for Big Macs.

I'm feeling really good. It's surprising that only two and a half weeks of diet changes could make a difference, but it's true. I feel lighter, less bogged down. My skin is clearer, much softer and no more excema. Surprisingly, my back doesn't hurt. I've had this weird nerve-y pain in my left shoulder/upper back going down my left arm for ever, and it's gone. Maybe it would have gone away right now anyway, but I don't think so. I have more energy lasting longer into the day. I had started noticing a drop in my energy at about three p.m. and now I'm not feelng that until seven or eight. Still not perfect, but getting better everyday.

I know that part of why I feel so strongly right now about figuring out a way to preserve my health is because I believe being healthy will help me be able to take care of my family in whatever weird peak oil/global warming/war times are coming up. I'm not sure that the medical care we take for granted now (well, those of us lucky enough to have access to it)will be as readily available in the future. How's that for a Pollyanna end to this post? LOL

Weigh in

2007-01-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

Weigh in day...307 pounds. I've lost four and a half pounds since January 1. Not bad, not bad at all. More importantly, I'm feeling really good. Very energetic and not deprived or like I'm on a diet at all.

The Food: Jan. 15, 2007

2007-01-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

Dinner tonight was good old Campbell's chicken noodle. It's freaking COLD here tonight. Brrrrr. (I know, I know...if you're from the midwest, it's actually scary cold...but my poor cold nose and fingers don't think that logically!)

I have a new favorite breakfast. A half cup of low-fat granola and a cup of Brown Cow lemon yogurt. Mmmmm...it's really filling and scrumptious. And with the oats, nuts and yogurt, gets three superfoods in. Nice. If I add an orange...that's four.

Lunch was a salad with grilled chicken.

Here's my favorite salad blend. Super easy, healthful and delish.

Equal parts romaine or other dark green lettuce and baby spinach
A cup or two of chopped fresh broccoli
Half a head of shredded red cabbage

Mix it all up and eat away. If you have the patience to grate carrots, then that would be an excellent addition.

I keep my salad mix in one of those old school rectangular Tupperware veggie keepers. They're green and have a little grate thing that sits in the bottom. If you can find one at a thrift or garage sale, snap it up. It's worth it's weight in gold. I've had salad last ten days in one and stay just as fresh as the first day I bought it. I had some broccoli in mine that had been in there since the first, and it was still crunchy and fresh. I added it to my salad.

I went to Sunflower Market last night and for the first time bought only organic foods. It wasn't easy. I think because I went so late in the day. I'm going to try for a morning trip next week. The funny thing about organic is that it doesn't look as perfect--without the waxes and whatever they have on them--but the taste is unbelievable. I think they have to sell them faster, because they don't have any perservatives on them. Maybe?

No more sowing Wild Oats for me

2007-01-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Today is shopping day. Yesterday I thought I'd get a jump on things and go to Wild Oats. Let's just say that today I'm going back to my beloved Sunflower Market. The prices at Wild Oats were outrageous. And just like Sunflower Market, the produce was a mix or organic and non-organic. Not only that, but as soon as I walked in the store I was hit in the face with this strong perfume-y scent. I thought it was the candle display right by the door. But I noticed a guy giving massages by the produce and the smell was coming from his area. Some sort of oil probably. I'm not usually so sensitive to environmental stuff, even though I have allergies, but whatever he was using made my throat feel like it was closing up and my eyes tear and sting.

Kevin bought me some cherries this morning on his way home from work. Isn't he sweet? He really is. As I was making myself a bowl for breakfast, I noticed that the bag said "product of Chile." The distance between Las Vegas, Nevada and Santiago, Chile is an incredible 5589 miles.

How much oil did it take for me to eat cherries for breakfast in January? Not to mention the petrolium that was certainly used in the pesticides that kept the Chilean bugs off my cherries. And the gasoline necessary to harvest the fruit and truck it from whatever port it was shipped to in the US to my desert grocery store. How about the petrolum used to make the plastic bag they came in?

I have a new goal for my family. I don't believe it's possible to eat entirely locally in Las Vegas. I truely believe that when eating locally becomes a life-or-death thing, Las Vegas will be a ghost town. But I can eat food that is grown in the western U.S. I found a farm in Ogden, Utah that will deliver local produce to customers in Las Vegas. It isn't really local--Ogden is more than 500 miles away. But 500 is a vast improvement over 5000, no?

It might mean no more cherries in winter, but maybe eating more responsibly will mean an easier transition later, when it counts.

I'm not sure if I believe that my eating locally, or even a bunch of people eating locally, will make a big difference in the global warming/peak oil crisis. But I do believe what Margaret Mead said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

We've been a one-car family for about a month. It's working out really well. I have no doubt we could make this permanent. Beyond being better for the environment, we're saving $80 on our insurance bill every month, plus at least that much in gasoline. Plus the maintance required to keep a 15-year-old car with 200,000 miles on it running. More money for our "buy a house in Ely" fund.

Eyes Wide Open

2007-01-12T19:10:00.000-08:00

I feel so strongly that the world is on the verge of massive change. There are all these things in the wings, like animals barely held back by their handlers. That's all the media/government/corporate bigwigs are, don't you think? Their job is to keep each other happy.

It's shocking to me that in the past several month's I've talked to just about everyone I know, and NONE of them had even heard about Peak Oil. Not my dad (I'm so disillusioned! I thought he knew EVERYTHING.) Not my ex-step-mother the science teacher. (She'd barely heard about it, but I still had to explain it to her.) Not Kevin, or his parents, or my best friend. Not my ex-husband who when we married was a diehard survivalist. Not his parents. Not anyone. It wasn't that they decided it was a bunch of nonsense. They'd never even heard of it.

Even the most Pollyanna-ish experts say that Peak Oil will hit by 2025. That's 18 years from. Eighteen years ago was 1989, the year I graduated from high school. I'm here to tell you, eighteen years is a blink of the eye. It's nothing.

And a lot of incredibly smart, educated people believe that Peak Oil has already hit, or will in the next year or two.

And everyone that I know (and I know people who SHOULD know) has never heard of it.

I'd like to ask all of you to read this. Just the essay on the front page. I promise you, it's so incredibly eyeopening, you'll never be the same.

Peak Oil would be enough. Add to it an economy about to collapse on itself, lead by a housing market already in recession. And Global Warming. And the threat of diseases like Avian Flu. And a war lead by a president who seems intent on escalating it to Biblical proportions. And we, folks, are teetering on the edge of the American life that Dick Cheney said not too long ago was non-negotiable.

The Food: Jan. 11, 2007

2007-01-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, that Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese stuff? It so is. I really like it. Damn those transfats.

I didn't cook tonight. The kids ate left overs and I had: Whole wheat toast brushed with 1 teaspoon or so olive oil and topped with avocado. I also had baked lays and an orange and a banana. It was delicious, superfood-y and satisfying.

I've noticed something odd the last two days or so. I'm not hungry. This is a big deal for me. It isn't just that I'm controlling cravings or having will-power. In between meals, there is no hunger. I really attribute this to eating about twice as much fat and fiber. I don't need as much food to feel full, and I'm staying full much longer.

In the past ten days, 100 percent of the added fat I've eaten has been from olive oil. (Meaning that any fat I've added to something has been olive oil, instead of butter or margerine or some other sort of oil.) My skin looks lovely.

Oh, ooh! Also since we've stopped buying soda for the house, I've been drinking a lot more water. It took some getting used to. I really think that at least some of my ickiness last week was my body adjusting to the lack of caffine.

So, ten days in I'm really happy with the switch to looking at food as a path to health. I went out to lunch with my dad yesterday, and I was able to keep with my program. Not because it's a program, or because I'm on a diet and need to have willpower, but because I feel so good right now and I didn't want to feel sick.

I read an article last week about how to prepare for Peak Oil, and one of the suggestions was getting healthy. It just makes sense, if you believe that our world is in a time of change, to be as physically well-prepared for it as you can be. And even if by some stroke of miraculous luck Cheney was right when he said that the American Way of Life was non-negotiable, I'm still not willing to be continue to be left behind because I weigh twice what is healthy for me. I'm not willing to continue sacrificing bike riding, sitting comfortably in a restaurant booth, my chances of being a healthy Nana, or being around to see what changes really are in store for the world.

EXERCISE:

Nick and I walked to his doctor's appointment today. Coming home was uphill and against heavy winds, so that's gotta be extra points! I've walked 90 minutes out of 150 that is my goal for this week (ending Tuesday.)

Nicky Update

2007-01-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

I took Nick to see his psychiatrist for the first time in six months. What a disaster. She couldn't find his file (!) and so I had to tell her everything she knew about him. First thing she said was...so he has ADHD.

No. Six months again she said he didn't, and the school psych said he doesn't as well.

Okay, then he's bipolar.

Sigh.

She said six months ago he's not. He had a severely not-good reaction to the bipolar (and ADHD for that matter) meds. He's not cycling.

What he is doing is hitting himself in the head when he gets frustrated or angry. The whole reason I took him back to see her. She said that is a sign of bipolar disorder. I feel like we're on some sort of horrible merry-go-round.

She gave him a RX for Seroquel. I haven't decided to give it to him. I like it better than some other meds because 1) it will help him sleep. He only gets maybe six hours of sleep a night, which is not enough for his age and I think that might be adding to his behavior issues and 2) I can have some control over the dosage. It isn't like some other meds where the dosage has to be protected to keep him stable.

His doctor also referred him for neuropsychiatry testing so that he can get a medical diagnosis of autism. I'm going to hold off on meds until after that assessment (not the testing) on Monday.

In the meantime, I want to try some behavior modification techniques to try to help Nick learn to control the insomnia and self-injury without meds. He really doesn't want to be medicated again, so right now the motivation for behavior modification is high for him.

I think a new night time schedule is called for. Right now we don't really have one. Part of the problem has always been that he needs so much less sleep than I do. And that's been aggravated lately by my need to wake up at six or so with Ruby.

Here's my plan: A family walk at five, dinner, an hour of some sort of family activity (this brings us to about 8 p.m.) Then shower, an hour of free time and lights out by 10. I'm not going to hold my breath, but we'll see. The thing with Nick, like any insomniac, is that if I force the lights out thing and he can't fall asleep, just laying there actually makes it worse. I think I'm going to try music, instead of Gameboy/TV.

Ely...for sure this time (I think)

2007-01-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Kevin and I sat down over the weekend and came up with a concrete six-month plan for getting the hell out of dodge. And now that my initial shock over Nick being "officially" autistic has warn off, I'm not as keen on moving to Denver, ten hours away from family.

I think.

Yes. Definitely, I know I want to be in Ely. I love the place. Everytime we're there, it makes me feel clean and happy. It's so pretty and peaceful. I'm slightly worried about being so isolated from the rest of the world. For 100 miles in any direction is a big old bunch of nothing but high desert. Most things are shipped in. But then I started thinking. A hundred years ago, before the real advent of the oil age, Northern Nevada thrived. THRIVED. All the quirky little towns were rockin' back then. And Vegas? Vegas was a few very hardy souls living in cabins and trying to survive.

Ely and all the other little towns up there were originally railroad towns. I think it's likely that, with the advent of Global Warming/Peak Oil/Energy Crisis, train travel will come back into vogue. Might not hurt to live in a town that's already set up for that.

I found this blog today and loved it. Check out her essay on life five years after Peak Oil. Fascinating stuff. This family is doing what we (okay, mostly I) want to do. Preparing, but still living.

One thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt. If summer 2007 is really going to be worse than summer 2006, which was worse than any other summer on record...I do NOT want to be in Vegas for it. No way. I want to try very hard to move by June.

The Food: Jan. 10, 2007

2007-01-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

Mmmmmmm....Good!

Tonight Nick helped me make rissoto with marinated shrimp and green beans with almonds and cranberries.

To make the rissoto I just made up a pot of chicken stock and kept it hot on a burner. I put about a cup of rice in a pot, toasted it for a couple of minutes, then added about half a cup of broth. Then Nick stirred, stirred, stirred until it was absorbed. Add half a cup of broth, and repeat until the rice is soft and creamy. About half an hour, and roughly two to two and a half cups of broth. I squeezed a lemon in the pot halfway through.

Marinated Shrimp

A pound of peeled and deveined shrimp

three garlic cloves minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tomato sauce
3 T cocktail sauce
cayenne pepper, salt to taste

Mix everything but the shrimp together. Dump in the shrimp and let it marinate for at least an hour. I meant to kabob the shrimp, but the sticks wouldn't fit in my biggest pan. It worked out well just stir-fried in a pan, too.

Green Beans with Almonds and Cranberries

Toss fresh, clean, trimmed green beans with enough olive oil to coat (about 2 Tablespoons.) Put them in a pan and bake at 425 degrees until softened and starting to brown. (I cooked them for fifteen minutes and it wasn't quite enough. I'll go twenty next time.) In a little bowl combine 1/4 cup sliced almonds and 1/4 cup dried cranberries with the zest of a lemon. Top the hot beans with the berry/almond/lemon mixture.

I based the beans on a recipe I caught on Bobby Flay's show on the Food Network today. Not exactly the same (who the hell has hazelnuts on hand?) and the berries were my own addition (super, super, superfood.)

If you're used to dieting, this meal might seem heavy on the olive oil to you. In reality, you end up with about a tablespoon of oil all together. Maybe less. Most of the marinade is left in the bowl, after all. Olive oil is a healthy, monounsaturated fat that gives you pretty skin and adds something that I think is very important to your meal: Satisfaction.

Product review: Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese

2007-01-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

I was all set to write a glowing review of this product. It's a soy-based cream cheese. Soy is a superfood, and one that I have a hard time getting enough of since I haven't mastered the art of tofu yet.

What the heck...I'll give the good news first.

The product is marvelous. It's thick and creamy with a real cream-cheese flavor. And at only 60 calories for two tablespoons (about the same as light regular cream cheese), it eats up less of the daily allotment than full-fat Philly's 100 calories for the same amount. It also has two less grams of fat. If you're trying, like me, to cut down on the animal fats, this is a really good substitute. The flavor is rich and cheesey and it doesn't feel like a fake at all. If you've been using fat free cream cheese, try Tofutti. The extra 30 calories are WELL worth the fabulous texture and taste. It's also a vegetarian product, and gluten-free.

Now for the bad news. This product contains partially-hydrogenated soybean oil. It has 2 grams of transfat per 2-tablespoon serving. Unfortunately, that makes this an occassional treat instead of a staple. I'm going to be on the lookout for a similar product made with healthier fats.

Also, I first saw this product at a regular chain grocery store and it was something like $4.50 a tub. I got it on sale at Sunflower Market for $1.99 and the regular price is only $2.79 there. So, you know, price it out.

The Food: Jan. 9, 2007

2007-01-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

Since I grocery shop on Sunday, Mondays and Tuesdays are always "good dinner" nights because all the fresh stuff is still--well--good and fresh. Tonight was no exception.

We had couscous with dried cranberries and slivered almonds topped with sauted tomatoes, portabello mushrooms and fresh spinach. Nick and I also had the most scrumptious chicken and apple sausage from Sunflower Market. If you are lucky enough to have one of these stores near you, try it out. It's mild and very lean (made with ground skinless chicken breast.) Adrienne is still on her vegetarian kick (and looking fabulous. Who ever heard of a fourteen old with perfectly clear skin? I'm not kidding...totally gorgeous skin. And she looks like she's thinned out some. She hasn't lost any weight, but maybe it's redistributed or something? I'm not making a big deal about it, because I refuse to give my kid a complex. And she wasn't overweigt to begin with. She just looks fab. I'll try to get a picture, if she'll let me.)

Studded coucous with veggies

one cup couscous (whole wheat and organic if you can)
one and a half cups water
one boullion cube
1/3 cup each dried cranberries and slivered almonds

Two portabella caps
Two tomatoes
Two cups fresh baby spinach
olive oil
Salt, pepper, cinnamon, white wine vinegar

bring water and boullion to boil, add cranberries and let it cook for a minute or so. Add nuts and couscous, cover pot and turn off heat. In five minutes it will be cooked perfectly.

Heat about two tablespoons olive oil in a pan. Add the mushrooms and cook until they start to get soft. Add the tomatoes and cook until they and the mushrooms are cooked through and there is some liquid in the pan. Add the spinach and stir around until it wilts. Season with salt, pepper, cinnamon and a splash of vinegar.

If you'd like to add a lean meat to this dish, cook it with the veggies.

We ate it with oranges. Super good and way healthy. Nearly every ingredient is a Superfood, except for the boullion.

Kevin and I took the baby for a walk to the park this afternoon, too. I was right. I really DO need to get off my ass. I felt so energized afterward. I still do. Ruby is the best medicine for don't-want-to-move-itis. She's such a blast.

Superfoods, Week One

2007-01-09T14:09:00.000-08:00

I've completed a full week of my health kick. I ate I'd say 90 percent Superfoods this week. I did eat Pizza with Kevin and the kids on Saturday night, but what the hell. I'm not on a diet and I refuse to feel guilty. Power to the fat chicks!

I feel really good. Lighter. Which, you know, I should since I've lost 2.5 pounds this week. (309.5 if you're keeping track. I'm not changing my ticker until I get lower than my low so far.) But I feel like I'm digesting my food better, using it better. I have some energy, which is always a good thing.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that I don't have that desperate "I have to be full-full right now" thing going on that I did last May when I started this. I was sure, since I'd gone back to letting myself be full-full all the time that I'd struggle getting back to a place where I was comfortable with "full-enough."

I think having an ounce of Dove dark chocolate at night helps. It definitely keeps me from feeling deprived, but since it's not the super-sweet milk creamy chocolate, I'm not tempted to eat the whole bag in a sitting. It's good, but best in small doses.

I'm reading the Mediterranian Diet right now, and it's so interesting. It doesn't preach super low-fat, which is what I'm used to. I spent many, many years as a devout Susan Powter follower. But the research about having a diet that's 30% monounsaturated fat and the health benefits thereof is really fascinating to me. I want Kevin and I, and our kids, to break our family histories of cancer and alcoholism (my side) and heart disease (his side.)

It's amazing, truly, how much more satisfying food is if it has some fat. Take a salad. I like vinegar as dressing. I don't need the oil to make it eatable. But add just a teaspoon of olive oil and a few bites of avocado or a tablespoon of bluecheese (the cheese, not the dressing) and suddenly I'm not on a diet, I'm eating something that will keep me satisfied for a few hours.

Here's what I had for lunch today. It was absolutely scrumptious!

Avocado Tomato Yumminess

Two slices whole wheat bread
One teaspoon olive oil
Half an avocado
One tomato sliced thin
Baby spinach leaves
salt, pepper and garlic bread seasonig (this is so good...garlic and a little romano cheese and really low in calories.)

Brush the oil on the bread, sprinkle with garlic bread seasoning. Slice the avocado and tomato. Arrange avocado on bread and sort of smoosh it in, spreading it. Top with tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and then top with spinach.

I ate this with some grapes and orange wedges.

I TOLD you I'm not on a diet!

I need to start exercising. This last week, not having a car, I pretty much sat on my ass most of the time. Enough of that already.

My goals this week are:

1. Tomorrow I'm having lunch with my dad at a restaurant that I will walk to instead of having him pick me up.

2. Thursday Nick and I are walking to his doctor's appointment and home again.

3. At least twice this week I want to walk with Ruby to the park.

That's four walks. Not a marathon, but it's something. I love that it's exercise for life's sake, not exercise for exercise's sake.

First weigh in of 2007...a new starting point

2007-01-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

I'm finally starting to feel better. I've wondered this week whether at least some of my yuckiness came from changing my diet. Specifically, giving up soda. I went to the movies yesterday and had a Diet Pepsi. That's the first soda I've had in...a week at least. Normal for me would be maybe a liter a day. Also, I've been eating more whole foods and much less processed foods...so maybe the toxins were making their way out via my sinuses? Who knows.

Today is the first Tuesday of the New Year, so I weighed myself for the first time in about a month. 311.5. Yes, that makes me feel sick. No, it's not discouraging me. I'm still down more than ten pounds from last May, and every year for the past say ten years I've been up year-over-year. So...I can handle this.

Has anyone else read SuperFoods RX by Steven G. Pratt, MD? It's fascinating stuff. He doesn't advocate a big cut in calories or fat. In fact, he doesn't even discuss it. He just tells you why these fourteen SuperFoods are the heros of the nutritional world, and is so convincing that you want to get yourself to the grocery store immediately.

I went last night, as a matter of fact. The last week or so I've been sort of, kind of trying to do the SuperFoods thing, but I hadn't been to the store so it was hard to follow it exactly. I spent $200 at Albertsons. That obviously can't go on. Some stuff was stocking-up type food that I won't need every week. I'm going to have to stretch the food that I bought over ten days, maybe two weeks. Although I think I'll have to buy some produce before then.

I have a New Year's Resolution to use Calorie King to track what I'm eating this year. It isn't that I'm trying to diet, more that I'm trying to be very aware of what is going into my body. When I planned today's meals around SuperFoods, it came to just at 2000 calories, which is what Calorie King reccomends for me to lose down to my goal of 150 and maintain there. I know that 2000 may seem a lot to chronic dieters who are used to plans that put you on 1200 or 1400 or even less calories. But 2000 is a good deal less than I've eaten to get to where I am. And it's enough to keep me from binging.

Besides the SuperFoods (beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats (really, all whole grains), oranges, pumpkin, wild salmon, soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts, yogurt), I'm also cutting out partially-hydrogenated oils and transfats.

I feel lighter and healthier today. Maybe the toxins have left the building? I don't know. But I do know that I feel a little more energetic, and a little less sluggish.

Last night I made turkey burgers on whole wheat buns and baked potato wedges and cherries (a blueberry 'sidekick' or substitute.) We had romaine lettuce (a spinach sidekick) and tomatoes on the burgers.

Here's my recipe for turkey burgers. They turn out PERFECT everytime. I get the Honeysuckle White ground turkey breast.

Perfect Turkey Burgers

one to one and a half pounds ground turkey
one onion
garlic powder, dried parsley, Montreal Chicken Seasoning, salt, pepper
Italian bread crumbs
Olive Oil

Put the turkey in a big bowl. Grate the onion over the meat. Sprinkle seasonings to taste over the meat to taste.

Put the breadcrumbs on a plate. Make the turkey into patties. Remember that turkey does NOT shrink the way that ground beef does. So if you're going to eat these on a bun, make them the right size and thickness. I like to make sort of smallish, thick burgers to eat without a bun, but with loads of cranberry sauce. Coat each burger in bread crumbs.

Heat the oil, maybe 1 or 2 tablespoons (turkey does not have a lot of natural fat that is going to come out into your pan, so use enough olive oil), and place the burgers in the pan. Cook, turning halfway through, until a meat thermometer shows the inside temperature is 180 degrees.

Nick and Kevin like these as regular burgers. They're really good that way. I like them best without the bun, topped with cranberry sauce (another blueberry sidekick!) Grating the onion in is the secret. It keeps the burgers super juicy despite their low low fat content. Don't skip this part! They don't end up with a strong onion flavor.

These boots were made for walkin'...

2006-12-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

So my ancient Saturn is now parked, perhaps permanently, in our driveway. It won't pass smog. And considering it's 15 years old and has something like 200,000 miles on it...we aren't going to put any moola into it. For now we are a one car family--my choice. We could afford another car, but Kevin is working so many hours to bust us out of debt and build up our savings. I'd rather put the $300 or so in payments and insurance and maintence toward the bills.

I'm seriously concerned about the plight of the enviornment right now, especially Global Warming and Peak Oil. (If you know anything about me, know that I have this tendancy to hyperfocus. Right now, I'm especially pleasant to live with because I'm focused on the End-of-the-World-as-We-Know-it. Specifically, the end of cheap oil and the effects of the over-consumption that got us there.) Okay. So I'm feeling okay about having one car. I'd feel much better if that one car was some sort of a hybrid or something, instead of a mommy-mobile van that gets 20 miles to the gallon.

I started to write here "the only problem is...", but I changed my mind. It isn't really a problem. It's a challenge. Kevin is working two jobs right now, so Wednesday through Saturday I have no car at all. In an emergency, I could have one, but I'd have to get up at 3 a.m. and pick Kevin up from work and well...I like to sleep.

We live in the city center-ish area of town. Not on the outskirts. Directly across the street from my house is a shopping mall, across the street from that is a grocery store, catty corner is a good bookstore. The city bus picks up ten steps from my front door. Nick's psychiatrist's office is less than a mile away (we're walking there on the 8th.) There is a major hospital across the street from the psychiatrist's office.

When Adrienne and Nick were babies and I was first divorced from their dad I didn't have a car for five years. I walked everywhere. We used to go out on Saturday's and walk the neighborhood looking for good garage sales. We walked to the grocery store with one of those granny pushcarts. We took the bus to McDonald's and a movie with my best friend and her girls every Friday.

I think it's significant to mention that I weighed roughly 100 pounds less then than I do now. I gained about 50 pounds in the two years after I got a car.

It is beyond time for me to get off my ass and move some. And that doesn't mean the gym.

2007: a year in resolutions

2006-12-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

The offical list of 2007 resolutions:

1. Be more health concious. Eat Superfoods, go to the doctor for a checkup (Kevin, too), get a baseline mamogram and my thyroid checked, walk everyday, get enough sleep (at least seven hours a night), take vitamins, eat organic in-season food, FEEL GOOD.

2. Write the first draft of my second novel. Two thousand words a day, just like Stephen King. (I'd say everyday except the Fourth of July, my birthday and Christmas, but 2000 words a day from January 1 to July 4 is like 800 pages.)

3. Rework the query letter for my first novel and send it out one more time.

4. Publish my first piece of fiction, probably a short story.

5. Completely declutter* our house so that I don't have to spend so much time cleaning, or feeling guilty for not cleaning. Flylady, here I come. *Declutter=get rid of half of everything. And forgodsake stop bringing in more.

6. Get the kids new mattresses.

7. Pay off debt.

8. Save 15 percent of income.

9. Work hard on being happy where I am, even if I want to be somewhere else.

10. Travel somewhere I've never been.

11. Take the kids to the Grand Canyon.

12. Find appropriate schools for Adrienne and Nicholas.

13. Take more pictures, and actually develop them.

14. Complete the New York Institute of Photography program with Adrienne. This is the last year to do it, before it expires.

Here's my biggest goal for 2007. Get through the fall-to-winter transition without getting sick. I have the mother of all sinus infections right now. You know that awful feeling that your head weighs too much and might just go rolling off your shoulders? And the off-kilter experience of being congested but not having a runny nose to blow and clear it up. And pressure on your teeth that makes you want to take pliers to them and yank them all out. And a red, raw throat from all the unspeakable stuff that has to drain SOMEWHERE if your head isn't going to explode. Ick.

I'm reading the Superfoods book I linked to above. It's pretty fascinating stuff. By the time you eat all the healthy stuff, there isn't room for junk. It's definitely not a diet. I put the daily reccomendations into Calorie King and came up with about 2000 calories, which happens to be just what I should be eating. This year isn't about losing weight. It's about feeling better.

Gearing up for the new year

2006-12-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

As happens this time every year, I can feel myself gearing up for a good old-fashioned health-food kick. It occurred to me last week, on my husband's 38th birthday, that we aren't getting any younger. And that three of our four parents had serious health issues when they weren't all that much older than us.

My mom died from breast cancer when she was 48. That's only thirteen years older than I am no, and only ten older than Kevin.

My dad just finished treatment for prostate cancer. He's 59.

Kevin's dad had a heart attack about ten years ago, in his early 50s. He is the only man in his family to have survived past the age of 56, thanks to heart disease.

I'm making appointments for both of us to have general health check-ups in January. Kevin doesn't like it, but too bad for him. He doesn't get to have a baby in his mid-thirties and then forget to take care of his health.

We both weigh in the area of 300 pounds, even with our family histories of health issues that can be exacerbated by obesity. We eat so much junk food, it's ridiculous. My dad's doctor told him that his prostrate problem can be directly attributed to eating a diet high in transfats. Breast cancer is harder to detect early in women who are obese. I don't think anything needs to be said about a man with a family history of heart disease weighing close to 300 pounds. Over Christmas his mother said something to me about Kevin being at less risk because he doesn't smoke, like his father did when he had his heart attack. The fact is though, he's been exposed heavily to second-hand smoke since she smoked her way through her pregnancy with him. He grew up with two smokers smoking in the house and for seventeen years he's worked in casinos where people blow smoke in his face all day long.

So my goal for the next year is not to diet, but to eat healthier. Organic produce, transfat- and hydrogenated-oil-free foods, free range, hormone-free meat (and less of it.) Fresher, cleaner food in, I think, means a healthier body. Also some exercise. Not a gym, or anything organized...just getting off our asses and moving everyday. Going to the park, taking a walk.

This year is about feeling good, and trying to lessen our chances of following in our parents' footsteps.

I'm still having issues with food obsession. I've noticed it helps if I don't let myself graze. I know that a lot of people think it's healthier to graze, and they are probably right. But when I do--when I just eat more frequent small meals, or just snack when the mood hits--it always leads to binging. If I eat regular meals--breakfast, lunch and dinner--and eat enough to be full--I feel much more in control.

Round up

2006-12-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

Well...the December rush of birthdays is over. Ruby turned two on December 8, Nick turned 13 (!) on the 12th and Kevin's birthday was yesterday.

Things have been a little nuts. We spent five days in Ely visiting Adrienne and Nick's grandparents. That town is like Christmas central...it's a living postcard. All the snowy little cottages lit up, snow capped mountains everywhere. Amazing.

As soon as we got back I went to Panama City for my dad's wedding. It's funny--I never think of Florida as being in the south. Maybe the north...I'm not sure. But the pan handle is most definitely Deep South.

I've never seen so many trees. It's like they hacked back the rain forest to build houses. And the food was out of this world.

After Christmas I'll post some pictures. Kevin's parents are coming for dinner tonight and I just don't have the time to get them up until then.

I have totally neglected this blog the past six months. One of my resolutions is to post more often. I'm huge on resolutions and have been having a blast the past few days organizing mine. (good intentions and all that!) Here's what I have so far:

1. Lose 50 pounds. I know this sounds suspiciously like "go on a diet", but I swear it's an improvement. Usually I resolve to lose 10 pounds a month, which is 120 pounds in a year. Fifty pounds is a nice very slow pace--doable just by not binging.

2. Write the first draft of my new novel. In his writing book Stephen King says when he's writing he writes 2000 words a day. Who wants to argue with the master? So 2000 words a day it is. I really can do this.

3. Move away from Las Vegas. Another one that has been a constant for the past couple of years. This year I think I might really manage it, too.

We're thinking about moving to Denver. There is a casino center not too far away, and the university there has an autism research center which means that they must have a better selection of doctors for Nick than there is in Las Vegas. The schools are good, the weather isn't too bad. I know, I know...lots of snow. Big Blizzard this week (everyone I've told I want to move to Denver has called to tell me about the blizzard!) But generally, even in the winter, they don't get bitter cold. It's semi-arid so the kids and I won't be knocked on our asses by humidity. And hello...the Rocky Mountains. Who wouldn't benefit by being surrounded by that kind of beauty? So anyone from Denver? I'd love to pick your brain.

P.S. Nick is officially listed with the school district as autistic. They wouldn't take off the Emotionally Disturbed label--that pissed me off. Who the hell wouldn't be emotionally disturbed by being misdiagnosed and having tons of invasive treatments and therapies (drugs, hospitialization...) for diseases and disorders that are totally misdiagnosed? Never mind the untreated learning disabilities and spending half of his life in classroom placements that were completely inappropriate--even harmful.

Scott went with me to the meeting--total shock. He actually thanked me for fighting so hard for Nick when almost everyone else, including him, believed Nick's problems stemmed from everything from too much sugar to a lack of spanking.

Nick's going to his doctor (psychiatrist) in two weeks. The school thing isn't a medical diagnosis. We'll see what Dr. Baig has to say. I'm still not totally clear about what treatments are available for autism. I know they can medicate for some of the symptoms. Like Nick's obsessive tendancies. He doesn't wash his hands too much or have rituals--but he gets stuck in a train of thought. He'll ask the same question over and over--or tell the same story over and over. Or he'll get stuck on wanting to do something, say call his uncle, and then spend hours obsessing on it if his uncle is at work or it's midnight and he can't call right away.

Also over the last year, since he went off his meds, I've noticed that he is way more anxious than he ever has been in his life. He needs approval for everything--even what he eats for lunch or whether or not he should play a certain game on his Playstation. I think his head hitting stems from this.

I'm reading this amazing book by Temple Grandin. She's an autistic woman who wrote a book about her childhood called Emergence. I'm reading Thinking in Pictures, which is more indepth. Both are incredible. She talks about how her brain works, how things feel and look to her. She says that many autistic children are helped by a tiny (very tiny) dose of Paxil. I'm really glad I read that book, because Nick had such a terrible reaction, culminating with arrest and hospitalization, when he was on a large dose of Paxil mixed with Concerta (like Ritalin) that I would never ever have let him try it again if Dr. Baig suggests it.

Okay....enough already! More later. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!!!

The loop I was thrown for

2006-12-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

For the past six weeks or so Nick has been doing a series of psychoeducational testing at the middle school across the street. Yesterday I found out the results. It turns out that he has PDD NOS, which is a form of Autism. The psychologist who performed the tests said that she also believes he has a thought disorder. When I asked her what that meant, she said that it means he should be watched because it could turn in to Schizophrenia. Have you ever really freaked out? I mean, just felt like you were falling apart? Having a doctor use that particular "s" word in connection to your son will do it to you, take my word for it.

She said that it seemed to her that Nick wasn't always in touch with reality. Also he answered some of the questions in such a way that it seemed like he was paranoid and heard voices. For instance...do you think people are out to get you? His answer was often. And he said he heard voices.

Personally, now that I'm calmed down some, I think that Nick may sometimes be out of touch with reality. But he isn't paranoid, and he doesn't hear voices. I asked him about those answers. He said that he said 'yes' to 'are people out to get you' because the day before a couple of boys had chased him home from the park and scared him. And when they asked about voices he said 'yes' because when he was in the hospital for the bipolar disorder that he doesn't even have, he was hearing voices--induced by the ADHD and antidepressant meds that he was on at the time. He doesn't hear voices now.

Part of PDD NOS is that Nick takes things very literally. So if you asked "do you hear voices" and he sometimes hears his own voice in his head when he's thinking he would say "yes."

So the school district is going to change Nick's classification from Severely Emotionally Disturbed to Autistic. This is a HUGE victory. I've been trying to remove that classification since the third grade. Because the kid isn't emotionally disturbed, and as long as he had that classification the school only focused on his behavior. He'll be eligible for many more resources now. That's a good thing.

I found a few things online last night and today. One is something called MCDD--Multiple Complex Developmental Disorder--which is basically PDD NOS with a thought disorder thrown in. Very much what the doctor said about Nick. MCDD is a fledgling thing and there isn't a lot of information out there. For me it is enough to know that there are enough other kids like my son out there that someone coined a term in the first place.

The other thing was information about how a Gluten and Casein free diet can help autistic kids, especially with their behavior. Nick and I are going to go on that one together after Christmas--see how it goes. It won't be easy. No wheat or dairy. But if it helps it will be worth it.

If anyone has any experience with a GFCF diet, please let me know. I'd love to pick your brains.

The testing also showed that Nick is likely depressed, and that he has a reading and writing learning disability. I knew he was depressed, somewhere deep down I knew and I was putting off calling the doctor because I'm scared she'll put him on meds. Nick has only had bad experiences with meds. He's hypersensitive to them, and so far he's only been medicated for problems he doesn't really have. ADHD and Bipolar.

I'm not against meds. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they save lives. The problem wasn't the meds themselves, but that Nick didn't need them.

In other news my baby is two today. Look for a birthday post tonight :)

Introspection

2006-12-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

Well I didn't weigh myself today because SOMEONE (Kevin) put the scale away somewhere and I can't find it. I'm fairly confident that I did what I meant to do and maintained.

I got my hair cut today (it feels five pounds lighter, so who knows, maybe I did lose! HAHAHA) The lady that cut it wasn't my regular girl, but she said the same thing my regular girl says to me every time. Why did I wait so long to come back? I have really long hair, to the middle of my back or so. It's curly, so it's pretty dry. I usually don't even consider getting it cut until the layers are so grown out and the ends are so fried, I'm looking like a stoner. Until I have no choice but to keep my hair in a sort of messy bun thing all the time because there is nothing else I can do with it. Then I think...Oh, yeah, I should probably get my hair cut this weekend.

She also said that I'm shedding, which is true. I have been since I had Ruby. That's two years and I'm not sure how I'm not completely bald. We're talking handfuls of hair every time I take a shower or put a brush through my hair (which isn't often.)

She recommended that I get my thyroid checked.

So I realized something today. I hate confronting myself. I don't really mind confrontation with other people (except for a few very close relatives and friends that I can't stand the thought of being mad at me, which is an entirely different post.) I'm a Scorpio through and through, I have the habit of being overly blunt.

Anyway, I realized today that the reason I not only don't get my hair cut regularly (I go maybe twice a year), but actually block the idea of it out of my mind, is that I really really really had looking at myself in the mirror for a prolonged period of time. I sit there and really notice how fat I am, how horrible I look. I pick out faults.

The only other thing that I utterly block out of my mind is the dentist. I am petrified of the dentist beyond anything I've ever seen in anyone else. I actually have panic attacks. I finally found a dentist who will put you to sleep and had like fifteen years of dental work (including two root canals) done in one fell swoop. He gave me a tranqualizer to take before I was put to sleep. Yes, it's that bad. And now? I broke my damn tooth. And what do I do? Think about calling the dentist like clock work, at 5:30 p.m. every night. Unreal.

Anyway. I also realized that I haven't been back to a doctor to have my thyroid checked since the last disastrous time when Ruby was 6 months old because I don't want to be lectured about my weight. Because that's what happened the first time. The doctor told me to stop trying to self-diagnose on Google and get some exercise. It was humiliating and I haven't been to a doctor since. Even though I have everyone of the symptoms of Hypothyroid, even the thinning eyebrows.

When I went back then my blood tests came back normal. I think that it was too close to my being pregnant with Ruby. I have this thing where when I'm pregnant I lose bunches of weight. Like 40 to 50 pounds. And then a few months later it piles back on plus about 40 pounds at an alarming rate despite no change in my diet. So I did some research (yah on Google, doc) and turns out that sometimes during pregnancy your thyroid can be overactive, then go underactive afterward.

Anyway, after Christmas I'm going. Maybe before, because my ear hurts today and if I have an ear infection I'll just bring it up at the same time.

P.S. Thanks for the advice on organizing my writing. It's coming along :)

P.S.S. Has anyone read the book Beyond Oil by Kenneth Deffeyres (or something like that)? It's insanely freaky. I saw the paperback edition at Barnes and Nobel and read the updated prologue. In the hardback he estimates Thanksgiving 2005 as the date Peak Oil will happen. In the paperback prologue, which was written in 2006, he says that his (incredibly mathematical) equations show that we actually did reach peak oil in mid-December 2005. Wondering how it could pass and not make much of an impact? Well, it wasn't officially recognized that the US reached peak oil in 1971 until 1973. Check out the movie End of Suburbia if you can, the guy that wrote the book is in it.

Writing and Weight...are you suprised??

2006-11-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

So I have the best idea ever for my next novel. I mean, it's a really good BIG idea. A blockbuster idea, I think. And it's scary as shit to have one of those, let me tell you. Why? I'll tell you.

1. I'm not sure I can actually write my big idea.

2. I may never have an idea this good again. It's really THAT good.

It's such a big story that I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts and deciding what exactly it is I want to say. This story is so far removed from my little romantic suspense that it's like jumping from the seventh grade directly to graduate school. So if anyone has any advice about organizing a Really Big Story, I'm open to suggestions.

***

My weight is holding steady. I've decided that until after the New Year I'm just going to be happy with that. I've lost twenty pounds this year. If I do that every year for five more years I'll be one sexy 40-year-old mama. So what the hell. I am so clearly not cut out for dieting. Even considering it makes me want to bury my face in a tub of Cherry Garcia. I'm also not exercising. I should. I know I should. Every morning I say to myself "Self, you should move your ass today." And every day I just...don't.

I'm traveling a lot this next month. We're going for four days to Ely and I'm spending a weekend in Florida with my dad for his wedding. Ok, that may not sound like a lot to you, but it is to me! I'm not going to beat myself up about not losing more. I'm just gonna hang tight until New Year's and then let my natural need to set resolutions kick in.

No diets though. Just--healthier choices. Making better use of the three months I'll have left on my Athletic Club membership (and then, who knows if I'm sticking with it maybe going month to month.) Remembering that I can eat some Cherry Garcia without eating the entire thing everytime.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy December, keep an eye on the scale just so I'm not shocked in a few weeks, and be happy with the twenty pounds I'm not carrying around with me anymore.

The One Wherein I Say Yummy a Zillion Times

2006-11-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

I went up half a pound this week to 304. Not sure what that's about, but I think it might be bloating, because I snuck a peak at the scale the night before and was at 301.5. So...next Tuesday will tell.

I'm cooking all day today, getting ready for Thanksgiving. I'm going to give you the recipe for my absolute favorite holiday sidedish.

Red Cabbage, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad

1/2 head red cabbage, cut in strips
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
1 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 T salt
1 T Dijon mustard
1 t prepared horseradish
pinch each of cinnamon and allspice
1/3 to 2/3 cup crumbled blue cheese (depending on how much you like blue cheese)
1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts

Prepare the vegetables and put them in a big pot with the rest of the ingredients, except for cheese and nuts. Bring to a boil, stirring often. Reduce to a simmer, cover and leave it alone for an hour. Make sure the cabbage is tender, but not mushy. Cool thourghly. Mix together cheese and nuts. When the cabbage is cooled, mix in cheese and nuts.

Seriously yummy stuff. And good for you, too!

I'm also making Mexican bean salad today, because it's a thousand times better the next day. It's pretty damn good the same day, so you can imagine how delicsious it is when the flavors have time to mingle.

I watched Paula Dean on the Food Network the other day making Sweet Potato Balls. Funny name, but they looked fun, so I'm giving them a try. For some reason the picture on the website is less than appetizing, on the show they looked really good. It's just baked sweet potatoes mixed with the yummy sweet potato things, then wrapped in a ball around a big marshmallow, rolled in coconut and baked. I'm making the balls (giggle) tonight, then rolling and baking tomorrow.

Lastly, being the gourmet that I am...I'm brining my turkey this year. It's sitting in a cooler filled with vegetable broth, spices and brown sugar as we speak. I was worried about the kinds of things a mama worries about when considering leaving poultry out of the fridge for two days...but the bird is defrosting beautifully and the ice I dumped over it still hasn't fully melted, so I think it's fine.

Oooooooh...I love Thanksgiving!

My dad is getting married on December 16. His wife-to-be lives in Panama City, Florida. I'm flying with him the day before, for the wedding. I haven't been in a plane for ten years. Sad, but true. Not only do I get to fly somewhere...I get three ENTIRE DAYS with no kids. I'm going to try to hit some thrift stores on Sunday before I come home. Maybe I can find some neat vintage that will end up paying for my trip.

P.S. I just made the Sweet Potato Balls. They look weird on the internet because sweet potatoes are white, not orange. I swear, I had no idea. I've eaten sweet potato pie before, and it was orange. Strange. Anyway, they look yummy, the potato part is scrumptious. I can only imagine that rolling them in coconut and baking them will make them better!

One more time...

2006-11-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

This week the idea for my next novel came to me. It's a big one. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. But, it's mine. And I'm glad to have it. I was scared I maybe only had one in me. Now I know I have another one.

Writing is a funny thing. I do it commpulsively. I'm actually physically uncomfortable if I find myself with unstructured time and no pen in my hand. When I was first a single mom and worked for my dad as a receptionist, it drove him insane. I'd cover every available surface with ink without even noticing it. But I'm sitting here with this idea, and no idea where to start. No real proof that I'm capable of a book bigger (I'm not talking word count, either) than an almost catagory-romance. No real faith that if I devote another year or more of my life to writing another book, I'll actually find an agent this time. And truth be told, I'm a little afraid to start. When I choose a starting point, I'm leaving behind five or six. What if one of them is better? That's my first hurdle.

Today my critique partner read through the last major changes I'll make to novel number one. She agrees, I finally hit on the right starting point. It only took a year, and cutting--count them--five chapters, and then the first third of the chapter I finally hit on as the true start. But I have it now. So I'm thinking if I don't get a positive resonse from my last round of queries to agents, or from Ellora's Cave, I'm going to give it one last shot with my changes and a new query (to different agents.) I think I might toss it out to a few more contests.

I keep thinking one day I'll have an agent, I'll be published. My books will be in your local Barnes and Nobel or Borders. And then this part--the fear that I'm not good enough, that my one major life goal will never be realized--will be over.

2006-11-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

I'm down 1.5 pounds this week to 303.5. Not bad :)

Calorie King sent me the beta version of their massive updates the other day, and I loved them. Check out their site, it's well worth the $40 or so for the year. Their updates rock, too.

***

I took the kids to the park for this drive-thru Christmas light show. Yesterday was a free community day, otherwise it's $12 per car to drive through like a mile and a half of Christmas lights. I've never been, even though I've lived in Vegas since I was 16, mostly because I never heard of a free night before, and I'm too cheap to pay $12 to look at Christmas lights.

Kevin called yesterday and the chick said free night was TONIGHT, not last night. I was going to turn around and go home since I didn't bring any cash with me, but they let us through. I'm really glad we didn't pay. It wasn't worth $12. At least half the lights were things like "Sunny 101.5" and "Vons" and "U.S. Bank" all lit up in Christmas lights. The rest were...blah. Not worth $12.

And then we got a light show that's free here every night. Because I got lost coming home. Yes, I got lost coming home from a park that's literally a straight shot down ONE street from my house. And I mean really, really lost. I had to call someone for directions to get out of where I'd gotten us lost to. The only time I've ever been this lost was when I missed my exit on the 215 and ended up in Jean. Another town for God's sake. I shouldn't be allowed to drive. My sense of direction is legendarily bad.

***

I sent my book to an e-publisher this morning. Yes, I sent my book to a publisher of "romantica." That's a cross between romance and erotica.

I heard they were looking for submissions for a series of books next year, each based on a tarot card. The eight of cups was left on their list--and my book fit so perfectly that I figured, what the hell and sent it off. The worst they can say is no. I didn't write romantica on purpose, but my book does have some fairly graphic scenes. Especially the opening, which is an attempted rape. I've entered three contests so far. Each contest has two judges that do the preliminary round judging. I won first prize in the one. The other two, in the preliminary round one judge gave me a near perfect score and loved the opening, and the other judge scored me badly and said the opening was far too graphic for them. That's what made me decide to send it in.

I'm using a pen name if they buy my book. I've pretty much settled on mine and Kevin's middle names, because I read that one of my favorite author's did that when she needed a pen name. Maria Michael. What do you think?

The fact is I think I've written a decent book. I read a couple novellas on Ellora's Cave--research you know--and it's at least that good. I spent the last three days re-reading it and giving it one last polishing. I still really like it. I haven't had any luck finding an agent, and I think if I can place this book with an e-publisher like Ellora's Cave (which is respected, and picky...not like a vanity press where you pay to publish whatever you want)and it gets good sales, I'll have an easier time finding an agent for my next novel.

So there you have it. The resident fat girl may soon be a published author of chick porn. HAHAHA!

Here we go again...

2006-11-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

I've gone back to recording everything I eat at www.calorieking.com. It isn't that I restrict, or even diet. It's just that I have this habit of mindless eating--hungry or not--and writing down what I eat helps with that. I got away from it, and my weight has been completely stagnant, bouncing between 295 and 305 for months. That seems like quite a bounce doesn't it? To me, too. I'm not sure what that's about.

Anyway, I decided that I'm ready to make a small effort to move away from that number. For some reason I'm mentally stuck there. If I can lose another twenty pounds, the combonation of being 50 pounds down AND having a cushion outside my bounce range from 300 pounds, will be a huge lift.

I weigh 304 pounds right now. I lost one pound last week. I'm weighing in on Tuesday's again. One happy thing. I seem to have broken my weighing habit. In the beginning I was weighing every time I went into the bathroom. I had to have Kevin hide the scale for a while, because it was getting to the point of scary OCD-ness. Now it's in the laundry room, and I'm not having any problem at all with only weighing on Tuesdays.

I broke down the other day and did a one-week free trial of weightwatchers.com. I canceled it today. I wasn't impressed. And I was given a nice graphic reminder of how my particular brain reacts to diets. Or even the perception of a diet. Even the idea that in seven days I may be charged $65 for three months of a diet. I binge. Apparently, I binge on Halloween candy. Hence the 305 starting weight this time around, and not 298. Sigh.

What seems to work for me is planning three meals--eating whatever I want for those meals, but with an eye toward a serving size that will leave me full but not stuffed. I almost always eat frosted mini-wheats with milk for breakfast. That along with lunch and dinner usually comes to about 1400 calories. I try to keep my calories at about 2000. It helps me curb my mindless eating. I have those 600 or so calories in mind when I'm hungry. It's plenty for two good snacks.

Okay. I feel very...back. It's time to take the next step down.

And only three days late...

2006-11-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

Halloween 2006 a la the Alburger Family:

First the kids. Nick was the grim reaper in Kevin's Gene Simmons wig. Yes, my husband really does own a Gene Simmons wig. He's a fan.

Adrienne's fairy costume ended looking a little like Tinkerbelle goes to Wall Street.

And Ruby was the sweetest little cheetah kittie you ever saw. I kept finding different pieces and parts of her costume here and there (the ears and tail at Party City, the tights on eBay, the leotard, a pair of shoe covers and a skirt at a thrift store) so none of the spots match. Which only added to the serious adorableness of my baby.

Kevin has a serious talent for pumpkin carving. We can always hear the kids coming up our walk saying "Wow...look at those!" Adrienne's learning, too, and showing a lot of promise.

Kevins pumpkins:

Adrienne's pumpkins:

Nick's pumpkin:

I have about the same level of patience for intricate squash art as Nick does. I'm the official cheerleader of Halloween. And the pumpkin seed maker.

They Say it's Your Birthday...

2006-10-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday, too--yeah.

All year my mind has been rebelling against the idea of turning 35. Kevin has to keep reminding me that I am (was) 34, not 33. I said "I'm 33...no 34..." so many times in the past year that it got more than a little embarassing.

Yesterday I ran into a girl I know at a thrift store. I got to snoogle her newborn baby. Her third baby. This girl? She was the flower girl in my first wedding. How's that for something to make you feel elderly?

I'm not sure what my mental block about 35 is. I'm not really upset about it (really.) Thirty-five doesn't feel half as old as it did ten years ago. Thirty-five isn't even middle aged, right? I've been reading a lot lately about generational sociology, and those pretty smart people list 35 as still a young adult for Christ's sake. I'm not old.

I am, however, going to my very favorite Mexican restuarant tonight. Alone with my husband. no kids. And they're all sleeping somewhere else tonight, even the baby, so I'm sleeping in tomorrow. I'm sleeping until I wake up on my own. No baby will wake me up tomorrow morning screeching for her Frosted Mini-wheats. No almost-teenager will wake me up wondering if he can go ride his scooter--at six a.m. The teenager never wakes me up, because she hardly gets her own bootie out of bed before nine.

Sweet sleep--the best birthday present in the world!

In other news, I did get my ass in gear this week and get my book out there on it's quest to find an agent. Anyone know an agent? Anyone?

I won!

2006-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

So I opened this package that came in the mail today, and out spills a check for $25.00 and two packets of paper, each with a binder clip.

My first thought was to wrack my brain trying to remember if one of my paralegal clients owed me work and money. And then...THEN...I noticed it.

A Certificate of Merit to Shaunta Grimes for winning first prize in the Red River Romance Writers Ticket to Write contest.

I won! I freaking won first prize! My heart pounded, I jumped out of my seat and screamed and danced and shouted "I won! I won!!!" (Funny story...I can't type that without thinking about the time I was at sixth grade Girl Scout camp and, as I still do in unfamiliar beds, exhibited my amazing ability to yell inappropriate things in my sleep. This time it was "I won! I won! I won a donkey!" If you don't think that's inappropriate, try going back to age 12, being chubby and unpopular, and then shouting it in a cabin filled with girls who will bring it up over and over again until you're 16 and finally leave town. I can laugh about it now...)

So now tomorrow I get to rewrite my query letter with the words "My novel won first prize in the..." and the agents who get my letter will know that a publisher read my first thirty pages and thought they were the best. (The publisher that did the final round of judging was from Harlequin and I wasn't expecting a request for my novel, since it's not a Harlequin-type category romance.)

So now I'm officially a professional novelist right? I've been paid $25 for nine months worth of blood, sweat, tears, lack of sleep and shower Ah HA! moments. I am a novelist, damnit. An AWARD WINNING NOVELIST.

Right this minute, I feel like there isn't anything I can't do. What perfect timing too, since the next NaNoWriMo starts next Wednesday. Is anyone else participating?

Seeds of Change

2006-10-22T12:21:00.000-07:00

Kevin said something to me yesterday morning that I can't shake. He lifted Ruby out of her crib just before he left for work and said, "I haven't picked her up in three days."

What the hell are we doing? Really. Kevin is working himself ragged at one full time and one three quarters time job. Wednesday through Saturday we see him for about ten minutes on his way out the door. When the big kids were in school, they didn't see him at all on those days. He leaves for work at 10 a.m. and comes home the next morning at 3 a.m., sleeps six hours and does it all again. He's so tired by his days off that he has to sleep most of the day. And he can't throw off his schedule, so he's awake while we're sleeping.

He's doing this so that we can get out of debt. But I just feel...it's such an enormous sacrifice...it has to mean something. It can't be just to get out of debt so that we can jump right back into it. If he were to do this until we were entirely out of debt, this would go on for at least another year. Until Ruby is three.

And then what?

I saw this piece on Nightline (I think...it was one of those primetime news shows) about families who sell everything and spend all their time traveling around the country in RVs, campers, converted buses, whatever. The family I saw calls themselves the Barenaked Family. They have stripped their lives down to the barenaked essentials.

Anyway, I watched this and I was jealous. That dad doesn't work 70 hour weeks. That family doesn't go days without eating together or seeing each other. They aren't all so exhausted and overwhelmed that they are at each other's throats every spare minute.

I want to do this. Maybe not long term, like this family. They've been doing it five years. But the idea of getting entirely out of debt and then, before we buy a house, spending a year traveling the country in an RV with Kevin and the kids is so hugely appealing. What an adventure! Besides, that way we could really decide where we want to live. The whole country would open up to us.

I remember when I was a reporter in Battle Mountain this family came through that was doing some sort of covered wagon pilgrimage. I loved the idea. I love thinking about meeting up with other traveling families and making friends all over the country. I love LOVE the idea of actually seeing Mount Rushmore, New York City, China Town, Vermont in the fall, the Kansas plains. The whole country.

The first thing I'd want to do is something that's been percolating in my brain for a while. My very favorite ride at Disneyland is Soaring Over California. I love that thing! I'm a native Californian, so it makes me feel a little nostalgic I guess. But mostly it's amazement at the diversity of California. Anyway--I'd LOVE to start in Southern California and go to all the places Soaring Over California shows. There's Yosemite, Napa Valley, San Francisco, Malibu, Palm Springs and a bunch of other places that I can't remember right now.

I'm all excited right now. Kevin is starting a two week vacation and I'm going to plant this seed with him. (um...hi Kevin...is the seed growing yet? LMAO)

Mom...Hey Mom...What Kind of Scientist...

2006-10-19T17:15:00.000-07:00

Nick had his first round of psycho-educational testing at the middle school Monday. He goes back this coming Monday. It went well, he did well. It's funny, but I don't think they are going to get an accurate idea of him and his behavior this way. There were half a dozen adults completely 100% focused on him. He ate it up, was the charming guy he is when there is no competition for attention. Throw one other kid in there and it would have been a totally different situation.

I've decided that I'm completely done with public school in Las Vegas. I might (or really, might not) try it in Ely. If my kids want to. I got a call from Adrienne's charter school, letting me know that she's failing. Everything. Why? Because she's supposed to log 1600 minutes, and it only takes her half that long to finish the work. Sigh. I'm just not willing to deal with this bullshit anymore.

I've been reading a lot about Charlotte Mason and her educational philosophy. She was a 19th century educator who was well beyond her time. She believed in gentle learning, nurturing the child's natural love and need to learn. She was a religious woman and a lot of what I've found reccomends scripture memorization and using the Bible and hymns for copywork, but that's nothing I can't work around for my secular family.

I've also been reading about unschooling. I love the principle. I'm scared to death of doing it. Adrienne wants to go to college. She has since kindergarten. What if I screw up her chances by taking this stand right now? Apparently, this is a common fear among new unschoolers. That's comforting. What's even more comforting is that most families who do this are shocked by the direction and passion of their children's self-driven education.

A passion for learning. What a concept, eh? Yesterday Nick spent three hours with a little tool kit and an old 3" screen TV, taking it apart. He didn't finish, so he carefully packed it away and told me that this was a big job and would probably take him an hour. This project prompted the following comments from him:

1. Mom, what kind of scientist designs things like TVs and robots?

2. Mom, I want to be a mechanical engineer when I grow up.

3. Mom, can you find me a class about electronics, this is so interesting!

It's almost impossible to explain all the things that Nick got out of taking that broken TV apart. He learned to use the tools, he cared about something enough to not leave it laying around, he asked questions (more than those three) about how TVs and other mechanical things work, he looked up the answers to some of his questions, he's developed a little passion for electronics, he was totally focused on one project for three whole hours. He felt pride in sticking with it, in not losing his cool when he had a problem reaching a diffcult screw, in carefully organizing and saving every minute screw and wire.

(He's wearing his grim reaper Halloween costume in this picture. In the history of Halloween, no one has ever gotten more use out of their costumes than Nick. He wears his for weeks, sleeps in them even, if they are soft and jama like.)

So, I have all these ideas. I'm really going to try to step back and not direct my kids so much that we end up with school at home. But...oooh, my ideas are so good!

1. I found this math program that lets the kids start a book store. It's really involved, takes at least four months to finish, and is really fun. It's supposed to be a virtual book store, like playing Monopoly makes you a virtual Donald Trump. But...BUT! Adrienne and Nick are going to open a REAL eBay/Amazon bookstore. I loaned them $20 for seed money and yesterday they stocked up on some educational books and toys/games to stock their store. After we're done with the lessons, they're going to open for business. How fun is that??

2. Adrienne and I are both doing NaNoWriMo! That's going to take nearly all her time next month, but the end result will be so worth it. Finishing a novel, I just know, will give her this feeling of accomplishment that will follow her the rest of her life. Like...if she can do this, she can do anything. I know, because that's how I felt last year when I did it. The novel sucked and it took me a year to edit into something worth reading (and...tooting my horn...award winning.) So, I figure this will give us a solid year's worth of writing/editing/grammar/spelling/reading.

3. I found this electronics program for Nick. It's slightly pricey for my taste, but I think he's going to love it. I might try to encourage Adrienne to participate, just to get my money's worth. It's an engineer who developed it. It's based on an electronics kit from Radio Shack that comes with 150 experiments. The guy developed a two year program where he goes into each experiment, one at a time, explains the science and expands on the instruction. Fun!

It's funny, when you think about it...how much your kid learns in a day. Yesterday Nick bought a thrift store set of walkie talkies. This morning he walked around the block with one, while me and Ruby stayed home with the other, testing how far the frequency would reach. He got PE, some math (he was estimating how far he'd gone, counting houses, etc.), when he came home he found a list of CB jargon and the 10-codes and read them and worked with them for a good hour. He also baked a cake (living skills, math, science.) We watched the movie, 8 Below, and he asked about animals that live in the Antartic, he learned some about working dogs, about what kind of scientists would work in the Antartic.

Adrienne mostly read today. Nearly an entire book. Doesn't seem like much, on the surface, but today is a monumental day. It is the very first time I have ever seen my daughter read for pleasure. AND she told me she wants to read every book in the "Charmed" series. Maybe not classical novels, but the pleasure, that means something, too. She seems a little dazed, that for the first time in nearly a decade she doesn't have compulsory school work.

By far the best part of this entire homeschool deal is that Nick's behavior at home has improved immeasurably. As a result of that, the fighting between my big kids has calmed down considerably. Without the stress of school, Nick is a different kid.

Disturbing

2006-10-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

I watched an interesting show on PBS last night. It was about illegal immigrants from the perspective of the women who get left behind in Mexico. The poverty in Mexico is crushing. How anyone can see something like that and wonder why Mexicans go where the jobs are is beyond me. Wouldn't anyone do whatever had to be done to feed their children?

Anyway. The most interesting part was just at the end. Printed across the screen was the information that 1.3 million Mexican farmers have been put out of work by the export into Mexico of American corn.

It isn't that American's can grow the corn cheaper (we pay our workers more, right?), it's that our government subsidizes our farmers in effect encouraging them to export very very cheaply. This is a good article.

What disturbs me is that our government actively encourages the distruction of Mexican jobs, farm land, even marine life by exporting corn to a corn-based society. And then we have the nerve to be up in arms and consider building a Great Wall of China-type wall around our borders because the Mexican ex-farmers want to come here to pick our corn?

Think about that a minute.

Testing Testing

2006-10-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

I had a meeting at the middle school today. They are going to test Nick to see if he is somewhere on the 'Autism Spectrum.' It was like old home week up in there--the Autism specialist is a doctor who was the first special education person I ever spoke to about Nick, in kindergarten.

I was able to tell her about my frustrations. Especially about following her advice and taking Nick to the ADHD Clinic, where Nick, who turns out does NOT have ADHD, was put on medication that eventually contributed to him being arrested and hospitalized and medicated for ANOTHER illness that he doesn't have (Bipolar Disorder.) And about how if Nick had been tested and treated for Sensory Integration Dysfunction and learning disabilities and dyspraxia when he was six, his whole life would be different.

Dr. Silverstein listened, seemed to understand my frustration. She did try to defend herself and say that she would never insist that I medicate Nick. Whatever. Then she asked if I would be more comfortable with another doctor. I thought about it, but decided no. She's familiar with Nick, even if the last time she saw him, he was in the first grade. And she's the best. And I think she's motivated not to drop the ball with him.

I had to answer this crazy long questionairre about Nick and his behavior at home, his development, etc. Next Monday he will go in and start the testing. I'm very anxious to find out what the testing indicates.

I also arranged for Nick to go to school one period (about 45 minutes) a day. For social skills class, sixth period. It'll be good for him. You know--one of those times when you have to tell your kid that they'll thank you for it later.

Me and my over active imagination

2006-10-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

On the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the main chick said something about having a great imagination and being paid well for it. Well, I don't get paid for it...but my imagination is in top notch condition. Yikes.

In the summer of 2005, we were approved for a home loan, but didn't buy a house because we couldn't find one that we could afford. I bawled in the realtor's car. It was the saddest, most horrible time. We did make an offer on a house, mostly out of fear that if we didn't buy SOMETHING now, we'd be forever priced out of the market. The owner accepted our offer, after countering with a price HIGHER than their asking, and then pulled out at the last minute breaking our agreement.

The flood of relief was incredible. The house was a piece of shit. The accepted offer was $235,000. The owners bought it a year before for $135,000. The people who sold it to them bought it two years prior for $110,000. It really was disgusting. The entire house had linoleum floors. Thirty year old linoleum that was worn through to the concrete. There were fake bricks stapled all over the walls. These people were making a $100,000 off us without putting one dime into their house.

Bitter much? Yeah. I am. But, the housing market is coming down. And now? Now we don't even want to buy here any more. But I've kind of got a little obsession with this website. It's a collection of news articles about the housing bubble.

That website led me to this one. That's some scary shit right there. I swear, I read the site with my hand over my mouth and my eyes as big as saucers. Peak Oil? How have I never heard of this before? I can barely get my mind around what the world will be like without oil. Don't look at that site if your squeamish. It's really frightening to think about.

Check out this video. It's mindblowing that up until the Monday before Black Tuesday, there wre American's who thought the stock market would never come down. If we could go back to the 30s and ask around for what people wish they'd done before that day to prepare for the coming depression what would they say?

Gah. I'm sorry this is a downer post. I don't mean for it to be. But my mind is just boggled by this stuff. I'm considering starting to prepare bankruptcies again. I'm getting calls, even though I haven't advertised in two years. Bankruptcies and foreclosures in my city are up a whooping 250 percent. It's depressing work, but someone has to do it. And the money will help my family finally FINALLY buy a house.

It feels like the American Dream was stolen from my family by people who exploited it for their own gain. It makes me sick. Really sick. I can't even bring myself to feel sorry for the investors who are now stuck with houses that they can't sell.

What are you thoughts on preparing for a possible recession/depression/Peak Oil...whatever?

This little light of mine...

2006-10-04T22:33:00.000-07:00

I need to get back to basics. Stop eating when I'm full. That's all--the only rule. It's so fucking hard. Why do I feel this need to stuff myself?

Ruby is attached to her things. Her bottle (don't tell her doctor...she was supposed to be off it six months ago!), her blanket and pillow. And her kitty. A little stuffed leopard that she carries with her everywhere. In fact, she lugs the whole load around with her everywhere. It's something to see, let me tell you. She can barely stand, this tiny little thing carrying around twice her bulk. She's into "shower"s right now. She means a bath, and she likes to give her kitty one in the real live kitty's water bowl. When she loses her security net, she freaks out like the true diva that she is. "Oh no...what'd I do?" Over and over and over, standing at the laundry room door wilting like Scarlett O'Hara until finally, finally her kitty is dry and fluffy and all is right with the world again.

I feel like that sometimes. Like my fat is my lovey. I need it. It insulates me and protects me. It's the bulk I carry around, and when I lose any of it, I feel lost and afraid. As long as I'm fat, no one pays much attention to me, and they don't really expect a lot of me unless I want them to. I know you know what I mean. I disappear, just a pair of feet balancing twice my natural bulk. Sometimes I want attention, and when I do, I have to really shine to be seen through my layers. My light is pretty well buried, and I'm honestly afraid to let it shine. So, I lose 30 pounds and panic. Getting under 300 pounds takes away the panic, and suddenly eating a pint of Ben and Jerry's doesn't seem so bad. Sure, it's a days calories...but what the hell. I DESERVE it. I have to live, right?

I am done hiding. I'm afraid I'm going to have to go through the two weeks of hell again, to get my eating back under control. Damn.

What we learned to day...Olmec Civilization

2006-10-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the Olmec civilization was the first known civilization in Northern and Central America, taking root in Southern Mexico? Me either, but I do now.

The Olmecs are famous for great big stone "Colossal Heads." Like this:

(Am I alone in finding it a little sad that apparently a Mexican strip mall has sprouted up around this ancient piece of art?)

Anywho...Nick whipped us up some salt clay:

and we made our own Olmec art sculptures. The originals are made of basalt stone.

Adrienne's reminds me of Bug Out Bob:

Nick's cracks me up. He's wearing glasses and has his tongue sticking out. I wonder if the Olmecs even knew what a penguin was???

All in all...big fun, but I think we can all be glad that Adrienne, Nick and I aren't the ones responsible for the survival of modern art.

Some people collect stamps...

2006-09-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

Nick has a friend named Darian. Darian makes me want to pull my hair out on a very regular basis. Gah. He's so annoying. He has this voice that is completely monotone, totally lacking in inflection, and so nasal that I want to shake him sometimes and tell him to just STOP IT. He just drones on and on in this completely nasal, monotone whine. And he's a total know-it-all. I just heard this conversation in Nick's room.

"Nick you'd better let me play the Playstation now because now because if you don't you muscles will start to exude lactic acid and that hurts and you won't like it at all so you'd better let me play know because if your muscles start to exude lactic acid you'll really hate it..."

The boy actually speaks without punctuation. And at twelve says "exude lactic acid." And his nasal tone is so pronounced...think of Lily Tomlin pretending to be a telephone operator. That bad. Bad enough that it's hard to believe it's his normal tone.

The worst though, the very worst, is that the kid says "ooooooooowwwwwwwwww" without inflection or punctuation...just this drawn out whine...if Nick looks at him funny. I know for experience that the kid is looking for my attention, and is trying to find it by being passive aggressive. (If I don't acknowledge his oooooooowwwww he says it again, a little louder.) You'll find out below why he needs attention.

I think maybe he has Asperger's Syndrom. The very mild form of autism that the school is testing Nick for. I don't think Nick is this annoying, but what do I know? Some other kid's mom might be writing in her blog right now that she knows this boy that makes her insane with annoyance.

So here's the thing. Darian is Nick's first real friend. He spends every weekend at our house from after school Friday until I kick him out to go reintroduce himself to his dad on Sunday afternoon. He's smart as a whip, too. I took him and Nick shopping at a thrift store with me today and told them they could each spend a buck. He only spent a quarter. On a Tom Clancy novel.

Somehow the two of them don't get on each other's nerves. Which is a good thing, because as much as Darian drives me nuts, Nick needs a buddy.

This morning Darian came by our house at 7:45 a.m. I told him Nick was still asleep, and that I'd send Nick over when he woke up. Later that morning, I asked Darian why he came by so early and he said that his dad kicked him out of the house and wouldn't let him back in. Apparently the kid spent all morning sitting by the door of his apartment waiting for Nick to come get him at about 9:30 a.m.

What the fuck is up with that? The kid annoys me, he's not mine...and even I wouldn't leave him sitting on the stoop. If he'd told me he couldn't go home, I would have let him stay. I made sure he knew that. His parents are so messed up. Both drug addicts. Normally, Darian only lives with his dad who, last I knew, was recovering. His mom, who is not recovering, is 'staying' with them for a bit. Sounds bad to me. Darian told me today that his dad is trying hard to kick his mom out, because when they all live together it's bad news.

Just stop a minute and imagine a twelve year old saying something like that with no inflection in his voice, no emotion...just this whiny monotone...heartbreaking.

I'm a bleeding heart liberal and proud of it. When I think about these people, I think...what happened to make them this way? What causes drug addiction? What causes a chain of events that leads to locking your kid out before 8 a.m. in an iffy neighborhood? How did two such fucked up people come together and make a child? Why would the universe stick a child like Darian, with these idiots who clearly can't care for him properly? What will happen to Darian if no one steps up to give him some attention?

So, I adopt another crazy boy and add him to my collection.

2006-09-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

I did not eat ANY Ben and Jerry's today. Because...I'm out. I ate it all yesterday. BUT also because I just didn't need it today. I'm feeling far less stressed out.

I carry my stress in my back and shoulders. Especially my shoulders. And today and yesterday my right shoulder feels like I'm carrying a hundred pound chip on it. You know what I mean? Like a heavy pressure type pain. Ugh. I was at CVS today and bought a one-pack of this thing that you put on a sore muscle and it heats up. It worked like a charm, but the thing looks exactly EXACTLY like a huge maxi pad. I came --><-- this close to accidently wearing that thing with a tank top to Office Depot tonight. Seriously. That would have been embarassing. I spent a good part of today getting to know the program I want to use for Nick's homeschooling. Turns out it's the same program, Compass Learning. After looking it over, I'm starting Nick with 5th grade math and social studies and 6th grade language arts and science. I'm not sure about the science, because Nick has never had much in the way of that subject. We'll just have to jump in and see how it goes. I wanted to start him on sixth grade social science...it was about Hebrew history, but when I started to read it, it seemed like the reading was too advanced for him. Lots of big words that he hasn't been exposed to yet, because he's spent so many years in a program that focuses only on his behavior and not at all on his academics. The fifth grade social studies starts with a unit on Olmec Civilization, and has easier reading assignments.

If I can get him up to grade level (seventh grade) in a year, that would be so fantastic. I'd love for him to start school in Ely at grade level. He's so happy right now that I've agreed to let him be homeschooled. I think I need to do some research about teaching special needs children social skills.

I try hard not to wonder "why me? Why my kid?" It doesn't do any good, and it feels pretty awful to wish that your kid was different or someone else. I believe in karma and that everything happens for a reason. Nick is a difficult, complicated person. I'm his mother because the universe or God or whatever, whoever decides these things, thought I'd be the best mom for him. And that he'd be the best son for me. It's hard not to get sucked into a cycle of wishing things were different, wishing that I had one of those kids that never made a ripple in life. Instead, I have one who does a cannonball-belly flop every time he makes a move. And you know what? Cannonballs can be fun, if you don't fight against them.

Time to start celebrating the kid he is, instead of mourning the kid he's not.

Time to stop trying to fit my cannonball kid into a non-ripple-making mold.

Decisions

2006-09-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I'm definitely going to give homeschooling Nick a try. It occurred to me last night that his behavior at home during the summer is so much better than it is during the school year. School is such a stressor for him and stress causes his behavior to breakdown.

I found this website and since it has a two week free trial, I signed up. It's similar to Adrienne's charter school, in that everyday there are things to do. It isn't super rigid though, which is a good thing. It's only math, language arts and science. I think Nick will enjoy it. In my heart I want to unschool him, just let him totally lead his education (Adrienne, too.) But, I'm afraid. What if I screw them up by not teaching them what the regular school kids know? What if they turn out to be lazy kids who only want to paint their nails and play video games all day long??? What if....well, you get the picture.

So, we'll start here and see how it goes. I think I'm going to try to buy a family annual pass to the local children's museum. They have an exhibit right now call Dragons and Fairies about Viet Nam that sounds interesting. It'll cost $70 for the five of us. An added bonus is that there's a library attached, so we can catch two birds in one net.

Yesterday I ate three Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream cones. Something has to give, my stress level is too high. I can feel it in my back and shoulders, like big knots of "this is just too much." What has to give is the expectation that we can move this fall, and Nick's school. It's not what I want, but maybe it's what I need. I have to take better care of myself. Why is that so hard? I'm going to take a walk with my kids today. To the park I think. Maybe we'll have a picnic dinner. How fun does that sound? The weather in late September in Las Vegas almost makes up for three months of temperatures the devil would feel at home in. Almost.

Anti-Stagnation Is a Good Thing

2006-09-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

We made a difficult decision today. So difficult that, despite feeling better for having made it, I'm so sad that I just want to cry.

We're going to put off moving to Ely until next summer. *Sob*

Waiting will give us the chance to save up a down payment for a house, and pay off a few bills to raise our credit score. Waiting will mean not moving directly into real winter, which the kids and I have never experienced and Kevin has been away from for twenty or so years.

Waiting is right. It feels right, even though...holy Christ, it feels so wrong. I don't want to be here. I don't want to send Nick to the stupid school that he hates for another year. Not for another day. Watching the news tonight, there was a story about a sixth grader who stabbed two classmates on the way home from school. And then another one about the trial of a guy who police had to shoot at a store literally directly across the street from my house. They shot him after he ran after a clerk who escaped. Ran after her, toward my house.

I don't live in a bad neighborhood. Just a pretty basic, middle-class, fairly diverse area. An older part of town (no cookie-cutter, gated-community, Home-owner's-association hell for me, thanks), but still. I don't live in an innercity. This is just Las Vegas. Nice, eh?

I feel better. Less depressed. I can't stand limbo. My solution to a problem is to...well, find a solution. The last month or six weeks have been solution free. Just a jumble of boxes, wondering where we're going to live, boxes, going to duke it out with Nick's school AGAIN, boxes...did I mention the boxes? Everywhere. A sea of cardboard.

I feel better, because we have a plan. I'm the kinda chick that needs a plan. It isn't the plan that I wanted, but it will do. I still get stuck in this mindset that waiting will price us out of the Ely market, too. So, to keep myself balanced on that front I read this blog everyday. The market is correcting. When I look at the listings on my Ely realtor's website, every week more houses are added, and more of the old ones are reduced in price.

Let's have a moment of silence, shall we, for the idea that regular non-investor types like us might again one day have the chance to be homeowners without exotic loans and lying about our income.

Oh...I'm also about 90 percent sure that I'm going to homeschool Nick this year. He said this to me tonight: "Mom, please don't make me go to school tomorrow. I'm going to have a terrible day, and I just can't handle it." It's doubley hard on him, because Adrienne is homeschooled (sort of...she goes to a charter school where she does all her work at home and only goes to school half a day a week.) Ninty percent sure.

Thank you for all the kind emails. I'm okay. I'm better than that, because I'm not stagnant anymore. Whoo!

Bringing it on home

2006-09-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Nick's school. For the third time in a week. He isn't doing well. He's just not...functioning. I'm so fucking frustrated, I want to pull my hair out. Seriously. It's that bad.

Last year was maybe the ONLY decent school year Nick has ever had. It was the only year that I didn't pull Nick out of school to homeschool him for at least part of the year, since the third grade. He spent half his day in the autism class, and that worked. He didn't go to PE, and that worked. He was allowed to bring his Gameboy to school and it was used as a reward for doing work, good behavior, etc. That worked.

This year, nothing is working. No more autism class. No more Gameboy. He's in regular PE (I will NEVER understand how they can justify sending a kid who can't function in a regular, calm class to PE with 90 students and one teacher. Gah.) He has a new teacher, no aide at all, new admistration. In other words, he has no continuity. At all.

Did I mention wanting to pull my hair out?

I had what turned into an IEP meeting last Friday, with the dean, Nick's teacher, the special education facilitator, and the school psychologist and her boss. They're going to test Nick to see if he's autistic.

Fantastic.

The kid is in the seventh grade. Does someone want to explain to me why WHY WHY he wasn't tested previously? Why someone didn't say, "Hey, let's test him" when he was thriving in the autism classroom last year?

"Well, Mrs. Lamare, who knows. But we're testing him now. We have to look forward, looking back doesn't accomplish anything."

"My name is Mrs. Alburger."

Sigh.

So, I'm back to the homeschool drawing board. He's miserable there. And when I try to explain that to the teacher or the dean or whoever, they say "No he's not."

What the fuck? They're arguing with me? I'm the one who has to force Nick to go to school everyday. I'm the one who has to stop everything to go to the school or talk Nick down on the phone two or three times a week. The kid hates school. He hates being there. He doesn't understand the social rules and he processes information so differently from other people that not only does he not know how to fit in, he doesn't even see the need to.

Any homeschool mom's out there?

A Sad, Sad Story

2006-09-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

For some reason this story makes me want to cry. What kind of person would buy a house near a pig farm, and then insist that the pig farmer, who has been there 43 years, move? What's wrong with our world when the only important thing is slapping up five houses an acre and selling it for three times as much as the person buying it can afford--and trying to force out a guy who is actually trying to make a difference in the community?

Do you see why I want out of Las Vegas. It has no soul.