DIY - Why it's Weird...and Awesome.

A funny thing happened to me while shopping last week:
I was looking for vanilla beans so I asked the woman stocking the bulk section because I figured that's where they would be.  She lead me over to the honey station and picked up a stick in a plastic tube.  I asked if they had anything different, like actual beans (because I didn't know the beans were inside of the stick, I thought it was like a cinnamon stick) and she took me over to the section that had actual extract in it where there were two more employees doing odd stocking jobs.  One of them explained to me that the beans were actually inside of the stick and the other helped us look for another vanilla bean option - we found one, but it was a lot more expensive.  The one helping us look asked me why I was looking for vanilla beans and I said, "to make my own vanilla extract."
When we had finished and I was walking away with my plastic tube of vanilla beans he turned to the woman and said, "don't we sell vanilla extract?"
I was too busy laughing to myself to hear what she said in response.

We live in a society that embraces consumerism.  Why make it, when you can buy it?  I mean, buying it is just so much easier.
A lot of people tell themselves they don't have time for making things, which is a cute excuse for laziness in my experience.  I was one of those people and as it happens I have plenty of time to make my own stuff.  The trick is prioritizing.  Sure, I'd rather be sitting on my bum playing World of Warcraft a lot of the time, but there are just more important things to be doing.  Like making nut milk.

The most recent thing I learned I could make myself is farina hot cereals, specifically rice farina.  Why should I do this?  Because a 26 ounce bag of organic rice farina costs upwards of $6.99 (Bob's Red Mill).  A pound of organic short grain brown rice costs around $1.29 at Sprouts.  That means my breakfast costs me $1.08, give or take, when buying it pre-made.  It costs me $.32 to $.64 if I make it myself.  That's a savings of $.44 to $.75 a meal.  I haven't actually done it, so I'm not sure what 8 ounces of rice would come to once ground; probably a bit less than 8 ounces, maybe even half.  I eat this almost daily for breakfast, so the savings add up pretty quickly.

Nut milk (specifically almond) comes out $.64 cheaper than the cheapest brand of almond milk, and that's if you're buying almonds at $5.99 a pound - which is the regular price for almonds.  The best thing about this one is that you have a bit more control over what goes into the milk.  This cost comparison isn't for organic though.

Home-made shampoo is my new favorite thing.  It's just rosemary infused water, castile soap, jojoba oil and lavender essential oil.   I have a rosemary plant, so it actually saves me a marginal amount of money, but if my calculations including rosemary are correct, it costs about the same unless you're buying conditioner in which case it makes it that much cheaper.  I do it more for the ingredient control than anything else, really.  Plus my hair looks nicer now, in my opinion.

I also make my own dishwasher detergent, which saves me a bit of money.  I'm still working out the most effective recipe, so I'm not sure what the savings are quite yet.

My next pet project is laundry soap.  I found a recipe here that I'm going to try.

What do you guys make?

Separation Anxiety...

I just finished reading a book called Good News About Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions About Catholic Teaching by Christopher West.  Mine was not the revised edition the link goes to.

As a convert this book was helpful.  It went into greater depth on many subjects than hubby could, and it answered my questions - some of which I didn't even know I had.  More than that, the book solidified my theory that there is a great divide between society and Christian morals.  I know that's like pointing to the sky and saying, "look! It's blue!" but the separation is more noticeable to me now.

Before I had even thought about converting, in 2006(ish), I was living with my first boyfriend.  I had been neglecting my religious life except to attend a church camp during high school ('06 was my graduation year) but I still held firm to waiting until marriage...until pushover me happened.  I was devastated, and I should have known right then and there to leave and put myself back together, but the stubborn me decided I could make things right if only I married this boy.  I was 18, and being 18 I was pretty dumb.  Maybe not dumb, but certainly clueless. 
At any rate, I would come across the Christian teaching of sex and marriage in various ways and I would willfully ignore it.  I chose not to acknowledge it because it made me uncomfortable.  I wouldn't even take the time to really think about why it made me uncomfortable, I'd just forget about it and go about my merry way.  Because if I didn't pretend it didn't exist (via making fun of it with all of my other liberal friends) I had to look my mistake square in the eyes and completely reorder my life.  I knew I was wrong, and I knew I wasn't happy, but I wasn't willing to face the amount of change that needed to happen to make things right.  It wasn't until I was completely miserable that I decided to make a change, but even then it was a pathetic change, and I didn't learn anything. 
I didn't learn anything because according to society I had nothing to learn, I just had to find myself a better boy.
So I went on toeing around the Christian teaching, making absurd excuses like, "everybody else does it," to bandage the wound I had so covertly inflicted upon myself.  I say covertly because I didn't even realize what I was doing when it happened, all I knew was that I was hurting.  I spent a few years playing the blame game and pointing fingers to things that had nothing to do with my pain.  But it always came back, and each time it was a little more acute.  I was bandaging the wound, but not cleaning it so that it could truly heal.

Then I met my husband.

We had a lot of conversations while riding around the city in his car.  A very large portion of them was me posing theoretical situations to him regarding Christian teaching.  Eventually I decided to go to midnight mass, and then I made the commitment to convert.  It took me a long time to level with my past decisions, and I still haven't found peace from them, but I'm getting there: it's hard to say, "yeah, I messed up," instead of making excuses.

But now I understand the way things are meant to be.  I understand that society has degraded and is degrading sex in such a way that is laying the foundation for social turmoil.  The separation that has occurred regarding sexuality is quietly destructive.  Women complain that they can't find a decent man, but they don't understand that a huge part of the reason for this is because of what society is teaching.  A lot of people seem to miss the real importance of the contraceptive debate for this reason.  More is at stake here than people realize, and those that don't see are (more often than not) blinded by the intentional divorce of sex and children.

Gender Neutral.

Feminism has been in the OPED section of the Post a lot this past week.  The original article that prompted me to write this is in the recycle basket, and I don't feel like digging through papers to retrieve it.  Mostly because I can't remember which paper featured it.  Anyway, I don't remember the author's name is the point I'm trying to make.

The whole article was written bemoaning the fact that little girls (of age 3 or so) are inclined to choose dolls as toys and love the color pink.  In the same paragraph the author says little girls should be more interested in race cars and less frilly things while little boys shouldn't touch dolls lest they be gay.  She does give statistics on boys who choose "feminine" toys growing up to be gay men, but it seemed that her opinion was little boys who play with dolls are going to be gay (which is bad).

First off, discouraging a little boy from playing with dolls will most likely do nothing to "alleviate" the chances of him being gay.  This idea strikes me as ridiculous.

Second, what is wrong with little girls playing with girly toys?  Or liking pink, for that matter?  There was one sentence in the article stating that if your little girl happens to continue liking pink as an adult, that's okay.  It sort of felt like throwing a dog a bone, though.

It's articles like this that make me think feminism should actually be called masculism.  The basic idea here is that women should strive to be like men, from the age of 3.  Because playing with dolls and liking pink is detrimental to women's rights? 

And what's with the double standard here?
What does it say about society that women dressing like men is touted, but men dressing like women is considered wrong?

I'm not buying the feminist movement.  If it were worth anything there would be feminists pushing for office jobs allowing babies in the workplace or something similar.  Since when did fighting for women's rights include shunning the differences of the sexes?

There was another article in today's OPED by Kathleen Parker.  The second to last paragraph put it very nicely.  Friednan's movement has reached full adulthood and, one hopes, is seeing a shrink.  While women have the same need as men to lead meaningful lives, the feminist mystique's great failing was in advancing the notion that caring for children posed an obstacle to self-realization.

As my dad said (hilariously after a glass of wine):
You can run faster with your skirt up than your pants down.  But that doesn't work anymore because everyone's wearing damn pants!

Huffery-snuffery Heathen Chinese.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a language barrier present between pro-life and pro-choice people.  I think that this is intentional: when someone says that abortion is killing babies - which when you come right down to it, that's what it actually is - someone else is very quick to respond that abortion is, in fact, only killing fetuses.  Why?  Because if abortion kills fetuses rather than babies it's okay.  It's a form of denial that a lot of people (including myself) sort of cling to; if you use a different word, somehow the act has become less brutal.

I'm not going to bother explaining exactly how an abortion works.  Mainly because I don't particularly feel like upsetting myself right this second.  Lets just say that it makes calling our society "civilized" a stretch.

To say that you are pro-choice because a woman shouldn't have to experience the "negative" consequences of her actions (barring incest and rape, as those are not the fault of the woman) is to say that murder is an acceptable response to the normal product of sex.
Maybe that was harsh, but I can't think of a better way to phrase it.

Here is where the language barrier springs up again: sex.
Society has taken sex and removed children from it.  What was largely stressed during sex ed when I was in school was to wear protection to avoid sexually transmitted infections.  There wasn't much about children or abstinence.  Sure, it was mentioned, but with the assumption that we were going to engage in sexual activity anyway so we should be taught how to do it safely.  There's nothing wrong with that because people do need that information, however, I think it would benefit everyone involved if it was stressed that the main byproduct of being sexually active is the chance of creating life.
We have created a dichotomy where there should be unison.

So when you say to someone who is pro-choice that instead of abortion being legal people should be more responsible with their bodies the point is missed.  Not only is it not very fun to be more responsible with your body, it's somehow become an attack on women's rights.  Because we have stripped the meaning from sex.  Now, I'm not saying that sex is limited to the production of children.  Far from it; sex is a wonderful bonding experience, not to mention it's lots of fun.  What I am saying is the idea of sexual responsibility is lost because we've removed part of the meaning of sex.

I suppose another thing this issue broaches is our society's view (fear) of childbirth and being pregnant in general.  Maybe not society as a whole but media for sure, which I think says something about society.
If birth was not demonized the way mainstream media tends to demonize it, maybe being pregnant wouldn't seem so terrible as to warrant killing the growing baby.  But it's not viewed as killing the growing baby because most women are not informed about exactly how a baby grows.  Abortion terminology is very clinical and removed; I would argue intentionally.  We don't want to know the truth.

~~~

Here's a point to ponder, though: if the pro-choice slogan is, "my body, my choice" are all pro-choice people then against circumcision or piercing a baby girl's ears?
If the answer to that question is "no," I wonder if they're aware of exactly how much doublethink is happening in their mind.

Image found here.

A Note on Language.

My midwife said something that struck me at one of our visits.  She said that she felt bad whenever someone called a baby a "good" baby because the use of the word "good" to describe an easy baby implied that all other babies were bad babies.
She has a point, and now, whenever someone asks me if our little one is a "good" baby I tell them that he is an easy baby.  Because now I feel sad for the more difficult babies that are being labeled as "bad" by default.  I know that this isn't what people are saying when they ask if he's a "good" baby, but I can't get it out of my head.

This line of thought was provocative; I started thinking about the words we use and how it affects our perception of people, places, and objects.  To use another baby example, hubby referred to the little one as pathetic one night while we were driving home and he was crying in his car-seat.  I got defensive because I associate "pathetic" with negative connotations.  Hubby was using the word for it's actual definition, and he had to explain that to me.
But, how many times have you heard someone use the word "pathetic" to paint another person or thing in a bad light?  How many times have you used it in that way?

Another thing this makes me think about is the way words can lose their meaning a little over time and use.  The word "awesome" has been sort of dulled over the years for me because of how frequently it's used.  Awesome is supposed to mean that something leaves you in awe, like mouth gaping, speechless, awe.  I hardly ever hear it used this way and so it has sort of lost the potency of its meaning.

And then I start thinking about my own language.  I can sometimes have strange diction, or sentence structure when I'm speaking (or writing for that matter).  This leads to bad impressions, or that face-tingling embarrassed me that can't do anything but say the wrong thing - occasionally it leads to hilarity and good times.  For this reason, I don't mix well with people who offend easily.  I generally spend most of my time with them backtracking, trying - in vain - to explain what it was I meant to say when I said whatever asinine thing that actually came out of my mouth.

So the station at which my train of thought arrives is this: my language use is something that I should pay more attention to, but I like the weird things that I say sometimes.  Even if they get me into trouble, which they do. 
I guess it makes for good stories later?

"Hindsight is 20/20"

One of the most interesting things about converting to Catholicism (and thus gaining a new perspective of the world) is looking back on the weird things I used to do. 
 For instance, when I lived by myself, I would bake in my bikini top during the summer.  This made perfect sense to me at the time since I was doing a lot of baking for work and it was so hot.  There was one time while I had roommates - and there were people visiting - that I did this without thinking twice about it.  This caused some trouble that I wasn't made aware of until later; it hadn't even occurred to me that others would find this offensive, but I should have known better.

I used to think that hanging out with guys was okay, even if I wasn't single.  Now I understand why it's not.  What's more, I understand that the reason I felt this way was because I tend to not get along with other women very well.  The main reason is that I'm kinda nerdy and most girls my age are not.  I'm not interested in The Bachelor, or anything on television, really.  I prefer Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, and Sherlock.  I don't find very many girls that share this set of interests, so I rationalized being friends with boys.
I had a friend that would come over and do chain mail at my apartment.  He taught me how to weave, actually.  The idea was he needed someone to help him produce enough chain mail dice bags to put in a nerd shop for sale.  I did not see anything wrong with this for the longest time; long after I stopped doing it because it made my boyfriend (now hubby) uncomfortable.  It just hit me one day while we were having lunch with the priest who was my instructor.
Being married has driven the point further.

Being on birth control is a whole other can of worms.  Part of it was being uneducated and the other part was laziness.  Now I refuse to go back on the pill, or any other form of synthetic contraceptive for two reasons: I don't believe that messing with your body's natural hormones is healthy, and intentionally removing children from the equation completely strips sex of it's sacred and emotional values.
Besides, I really am a huge fan of knowing my cycles the way symtpo-thermal charting allows me to.  Sure, I'll end up with a kid every now and then, but that's not so bad, and I don't yet perceive that to be the fault of the method as much as the fault of the practitioner(s).


I guess my whole point is that, having found the wonderful world of Christ, I look back and wonder why I did the things I did.  I was seeking happiness, but I wandered down the wrong path.
Something about being sort of gullible.

Nipplephobia

Potentially offensive content ahead.

 Definition: irrational fear, fascination, attraction, repulsion, guilt, and confusion provoked by seeing an adult female nipple (or even the illusion that one is seeing one).  (266)

I'll be the first to say that I love the female figure.  We're so curvy and that makes us pleasant to look at (for me).  An essential part of the female figure is breasts, big or small.  They are an important part of being a woman and raising a child.

I've always seen breasts in a sexual way; they're fun to look at, to touch.  For this reason breastfeeding raises awkward feelings.  Here is this part of me that I've been practically trained to view as a sexual thing, and I'm supposed to use it to nurture my baby.  I don't know about you, but I don't view feeding a child as sexual, and I sometimes have trouble imagining exactly how breastfeeding is going to make me feel.
I am the product of what Ina May Gaskin calls American Puritanism.  I tend to agree with her terminology (though I couldn't find on which page of the book she states this) and I continue to be amazed at people who react in such a volatile way to mothers who breastfeed their children outside of the home, or at all.  On some level I can understand: breastfeeding is a rare thing to see in our society.  We've been trained to view it as indecent, something you should only do in private.  I had an emotional reaction to it myself when I first saw a friend feed her baby.  I can't recall having seen it prior to that, although I feel like I must have come across it somewhere and just forgotten.  The point is, seeing it made me feel awkward, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.  If it produced this (pretty strong) reaction in me, I can only imagine what someone else would think/feel given similar circumstances.
Now I see breastfeeding on a regular basis and my emotional weirdness is falling away.  A lot of this is because I'm very soon going to be doing the same thing so my awkwardness is replaced with curiosity.  Even so, some of the stigma around breasts remains in me and I'm left to wonder if my open fondness of them is a subconscious cover-up of a deeper discomfort surrounding breasts as a food source.  It makes sense I suppose.

Image found on page 259, or here.

I think that this kind of view is rather ridiculous.  To be put on edge, or even angered, by such a vital natural function can only be a product of some kind of conditioning.  I might argue that the infant formula industry started it (because I'm on a huge anti-corporation kick right now) but that would be false, unless infant formula dates back to the Civil War period (258). 
In 1910 the pictured device was patented which, frankly, looks to be stupidly uncomfortable not to mention unsanitary.  Apparently we'll go to an awful lot of trouble to make sure we aren't being "indecent." 
According to Wikipedia the first commercial infant formula was introduced in 1912, so I can't blame aggressive marketing for the breastfeeding stigma that exists so prevalently in our society.  The pictured product says that it existed long before commercial industry started manufacturing formula.

This stigma is so ingrained in us that we were the only country to vote against the WHO/UNICEF Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes which recommended that member governments restrict the advertising and sales promotions of breast-milk substitutes as a "minimum requirement" to protecting infant health. (249)  Effectively we decided that infant formula companies are more important to us than the health of our children and, one might argue, the self-esteem of our women.

The whole reason Nipplephobia irritates me so much is because it promotes the view that our bodies are not good enough.  We, as women, are flawed and we need the help of corporations and the medical industry to even function.


All citations are from Chapter 15 of Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding by Ina May Gaskin.

Always Wear Protection.

Life lesson 2491: Wear gloves when preparing something containing Capsaicin.
On Wednesday I made green chile.  I did not wear gloves while cutting the jalapeño peppers the recipe called for.  All was fine, I washed my hands and got ready for bed.  Before bed I put lotion on my feet.  Thursday my hands were on fire, Friday my feet were on fire.  Today is okay pain wise, but my feet are still recovering.  I literally could not walk like a normal person yesterday (or today, although I'm better now).  I was a cripple.
I never, ever want to be sprayed with pepper spray.
So that is why I am posting a day late: pain.

Anywho.

I realized the other day that the opinions I held before becoming Catholic (or pregnant for that matter) were things I had heard from others, or came across in some form of media.  These are usually not reliable ways to form opinions.
Some examples of this are as follows:

I used to be pro-choice.  I had never looked into exactly how an abortion is done or how a baby develops in the womb.  After finding those things out my opinion was changed.

My old roommate purchase infant ibuprofen for my cat when he was injured (by her cat).  It turns out that it could have killed him if I had given him any more than I felt slightly comfortable giving him.  I will now always ask a veterinarian first.
She also told me that cod liver oil is something you shouldn't take during pregnancy.  This is very similar to people who tell you not to drink chamomile tea or have a foot rub while you're pregnant.

I am now way more distrustful of the medical industry.

What I came to find was that the opinions that had no research behind them were easy to change.  Those opinions formed from sensationalized news stories that I was too blind to identify as hyped, and those that I just heard from a friend and took to be true.  Those are the ones that are most often altered.
Sometimes, though, I thought things that were wrong but still hard to change.  Generally I had formed some sort of attachment to these because for some of them, changing my opinion meant that I had spent X amount of time doing something that I now viewed in a negative way.  These opinions were the slowest to change for the reason that I had a sort of inner battle with myself.  It usually took me realizing that I wasn't happy while doing those things to get past the hurdle.

I'm still changing.
Expecting a baby changes you.  As our baby has grown, so have I.  In an effort to make the best decision for this child and myself I have discovered a lot of new things, my priorities have shifted, and I've learned some valuable skills (like learning how to not care about frivolous things).
I'm still me, but a new me...if that makes any sense.

"Your Body is Incapable."

So I've been thinking (uh-oh).  All of this reading about pregnancy, babies, birth, and a woman's right to choose (elective cesarean) sort of makes me wonder where the feminist movement stands on this issue.  How do women like Erica Jong feel about birth?  I'd venture a guess and say she's all for medicated birth and whatnot (pain/suffering is bad and should be avoided at all costs).  But she doesn't make up the entirety of the feminist movement.  As this article states, there are women on both sides of the fence.

Because of my difference of opinion with Erica Jong (and my heated response to her article) I've lost a progressive friend, so having a conversation about this with someone who is on that particular side of the fence with other things is a little less feasible for me.  I don't have a lot of friends who seem so decidedly on one side or the other, and talking about this to someone who is undecided isn't helpful in figuring out how one side thinks of something.
The questions this raises are a whole other bag of tricks.

I wouldn't call myself regressive per se, but some of the staunchly progressive ideas out there raise more concern in me than hope.  It is my opinion that the mechanization of birth is terrible in several ways.  Yes, hospital technology and medicine in general are great, for those who need it.  But the obstetric model of care - that a woman's body is inherently flawed and cannot handle childbirth (something it was designed to do) without the aide of technology - is something I have issues with.  This makes me think of a certain gentleman's opinion that Catholicism taught the very thing obstetrics teaches to it's practitioners.  How, then, do you explain a backwards view of women seeming to be present in our forward-moving medical society?
I suggest that if we were as progressive as pro-choice people want, we would not have women writing about how home birth is something only narcissistic power-hungry women do - because everyone knows that medicine is God and there is no way that an informed woman can safely birth her baby without obstetric intervention (pitocin, epidural, etc).
What I would love to know is how pro-choice people feel about women having the right to choose where they have children.  Given that pro-choice is obliviously medical, I'd wager that they are against assisted home birth, free-standing birth centers and midwifery in general.  But I could be wrong.

As a small side note, the woman behind the above link (Skeptical OB) is getting her information from somewhere that is completely different from everything I've read, and studies I have looked at for myself (also what I've read about the history of obstetrics taking over birthing).  I haven't found any citations on her entries, but I also haven't read a terribly large amount of her blog.  It gets tiring to be told over and over that I need technological intervention, that I cannot survive without it, and that attempting to do so (even if I am informed) makes me nothing short of an idiot.  These aren't her exact words, but the tone I get from her articles gives me that impression.  It's all very fear-based, and I don't trust fear-based information.

So those are my musings, regurgitated because I sat down to stare at the blank new entry box and wondered for a good amount of time what in the world I was going to write about.

I do want to say that I am not against hospital birth.  I am against pressuring mothers into procedures they do not need (episiotomy) for the sake of obstetric convenience.
Hospital birth is a great thing for those mothers who do need it.

A Shift in the Tide.

On being pregnant:

I used to say things like, "by the time I'm pregnant, birth will be pain-free!"  I was definitely a fan of medicine's version of childbirth.  But that was before I really gave it any thought, or looked into it at all.
Medicine is fantastic for the women who really need it; women are saved pretty regularly by hospital staff for various reasons.  However, the interventions these women need are not the interventions all women need.  There should not be a standard of care where you receive the one thing that has been proven to work regardless of your actually needing it.
Hey, hospitals need to cover their ass.  They could get sued.

I digress.

My original intent is to write about what I thought before and what I think now, because what you think before you live something is not necessarily what you think after or during.
As with my opinion on abortion, my opinion of birth is much different now.
I believe that birth can (and should) be a positive experience for mother and baby.  There are risks to the birth I am choosing to try to have, but there are also risks in choosing a hospital birth.  Birth is not risk free, no matter what you choose.
I will be the first to admit that birth terrifies me somewhat.  I think it's mostly the unknown that scares me.  Every birth is different, someone's story about when they gave birth will be different than what I have to say, so the question remains: what will it be like?  I am intimidated by not knowing what to expect (other than pain).  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in feeling this way among first-time mothers, which is why hospital birth is so appealing to women - there's a certain sense of safety associated with being in a hospital at a time of potential medical crisis.  And yes, there are benefits to being in a hospital if something does go wrong.

People tend to assume that I have just up and decided to have my baby at home.  With this assumption comes the inevitable, "don't you know that birth is dangerous!?"
Yes, I do know this.  I have made this decision based on the information I have acquired and I really believe it to be the best choice for me.  It is by no means the best choice for everyone, and I have neither said this nor meant to imply it.  It is, I believe, the best choice for me.
In talking to these same people I often find that they base their opinions on an article they read in a magazine, or some form of media coverage of something.  And they are adamant that what they think is the only right way to think.
Some of them have never had children.
Some of them will never have children.
These two latter groups I try to take in stride, as they are usually the most vehement backers of hospital birth.  There is nothing to be done but smile and nod at them, because they will never listen to why I made this decision (and continue to research it).  They only want to tell me how stupid and selfish I am for making it.  One blogger (who happens to be an O.B.) called the home birth "movement" narcissistic.  The people I talk to in person are generally of a similar mindset.
As I said earlier: there is no middle ground.

The above is what bothers me most.  I shall call it "the great divide."  People must have their opinions and your opinion is only okay if it matches their own.  Never-mind being open minded about things, or at the very least receptive.
I understand why people are shocked when I say I'm going to try to have my baby at home.  I know that it's not how the majority would do it.  And I know there is a lot of media available against it.  And of course I know the risks involved with it (they are not as terrible as one is led to believe, but they are still present).  I feel, sometimes, that my understanding is like banging my head against a brick wall.  It doesn't matter that I understand these things, all that matters is that I see the error in my own judgement and the terrible mistake I'm about to make.
Dealing with it is even more difficult when it's coming from people who aren't pregnant and potentially never will be.  I'm glad they are concerned for my well-being, but I would appreciate if they gave me credit for the information I've gathered.  I'm doing my best to make an educated decision, and that does include looking at the situation from all of the angles I can perceive.  So in a way these people are helping me, just not in the manner they had in mind.  Still, I'm not really a fan of being given a rather loud version of the cold shoulder.

When I speak with someone who has a different opinion I try to figure out where the opinion came from.  What information led them here?  I tend to work under the assumption that they had some sort of logical thought process behind it (which is not always the case).
I was one such person in my days of, "just give me pain killers," and my pro-choice opinions.  I now understand what I had to overlook to hold those opinions.  For me, it's a damned lot to overlook.

Being pregnant is a life-altering journey.  It certainly has changed my mind about a number of things and solidified my pro-life stance quite a bit just from what I've learned about Baby's development.  It has also opened my mind to things I'd never thought of, and would never have thought of if I was not pregnant.

I suppose what I'm driving at here is that opinions are all well and good, until you're actually living the situation you've formed your opinion about.
Experience can change a lot about a person, not the least of which being their worldview.

Breastfeeding.

 I'm nervous about actually breastfeeding.  Questions like, "what does it feel like?" pop up in my head a lot.  Or, "won't it be awkward?"
Then I start doubting myself.  Maybe I won't be able to do it right.  What if there are serious problems?  What if I just can't handle it?

So I picked up a book my coworker recommended to me:
I'm currently reading The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.  This is a great book, and I think I'm going to recommend it to everyone who asks.  It's full of helpful tips and advice.  I'm only about halfway through, but I'd still recommend you pick it up if only to read the first half of it.  It really has eased some of my odd discomfort surrounding the whole topic (there's that stigma popping up).

I do all my reading at work, so a lot more people know I'm preggers now.  They see the book and they ask, "so, is there a reason you're reading that?"  One woman told me to read What to Expect When You're Expecting.
Okay...
Our midwife actually told me not to bother with that book because it was fear-based (like the majority of super public pregnancy/birth stuff).  This lady told me to read it if I was into the "whole natural parenting...thing."  So now I might meander through Barnes and Noble to flip through the book to see what it actually is.
I'm leaning more towards the midwife's opinion about it, though.  Mostly because the woman who recommended the book works for Health One.

At any rate, I just finished a section of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding about returning to work after Baby is born.  You can totally breastfeed while you're working.  It apparently makes for a much happier baby and momma.
All the people who poo-poo the idea of breastfeeding while working should read this section.

What I'm gathering from the book is that breastfeeding is truly easier than formula feeding.  Especially if you like to travel.

The main message is "Breast is Best."
I tend to agree.

But I also understand that there are circumstances in which a woman can truly not breastfeed.  This doesn't make her any less of a mother.
Life happens, things go wrong.

~~~

I'm going to try my very best to give this baby everything she/he needs and deserves.  I don't know what that is yet, but I'm determined to try my hardest.

More Parenting Redundancy.

I am far from perfect.

I make the same mistakes everyone else makes, and I am about to embark on the great experiment that is parenting.  I don't know what I'm doing, or how to avoid the landmines that are surely embedded in the safest looking parts of the road, but I can guess.  That's really all life is; a series of educated guesses.
I can employ my logic and my intuition - though the two seem to fight more often than not - or I can use the great power of Ignorance: choosing to believe whatever I read first.

The latter option is easiest.

So, for a totally ungraceful transition: I read the Times article everyone is so frenzied over.

"Have you seen the Times cover picture!?"

GASP!  It's so dirty!

I heard about the cover from the security guard at work, and from a few others.  Generally they said something very close to the above statement and expressed their shock over the inappropriate nature of the image.

Here's my problem with it: that lady is very smug.
It's like she's looking at you and saying, "look what I can do.  And I'm better than you for it."

The actual article was well-rounded in my opinion.  Towards the end it turned into a short biography of Dr. Sears, the man who wrote the book about attachment parenting that gets so much praise and hatred.
I laughed, and I was genuinely interested in what it had to say.  Nothing in it was really bias as far as I gathered; the author did a fairly good job of presenting the piece from a neutral angle.  I enjoyed it mostly for this because it's hard to find in a magazine.

What I really gathered from the article is that Attachment Parenting is certainly synonymous with Natural Parenting, and in my view, Logical Parenting.  I will one day read the book Dr. Sears wrote (when I get my hands on it) to see what all the hubbub is about because, right now, I just don't see it.

It serves as a sort of looking glass into the polarization of the parenting/birth debate.  There is one side or the other, I have met no middle ground.  And I cannot seem to have a conversation with someone opposed to home birth or natural parenting (things like co-sleeping, breast-feeding, and baby-carrying) without leaving it frustrated.
Why are these things bad?  I just don't get it.
I'm not saying that anyone is to blame for these unsatisfactory conversations - surely the blame is equally distributed if we must play the game - but it would be nice to understand why people consider these things wrong.
Drinking breast milk is no stranger than drinking cow's milk, or goat's milk.  In fact, it's probably less strange to have a gallon of breast milk in your fridge, if you really think about it.  There's a stigma here, and it's very strong.  I write about it being less strange to pour breast milk on your cereal (a friend of mine's ex-husband used to do this) but the honest truth is that I do think it's kinda weird.  The question is why is cow's breast milk any less weird?

I digress.

The point here is that it's kind of silly to not have a middle ground.  We could probably learn something from each-other if we could communicate more effectively.

As a side note.
If you're not easily offended, watch this.  It's hilarious.

~~~

Sorry for the small hiatus.  I caught a cold/sinus infection last week and subsequently had the motivation to do nothing but sleep and stay on the couch.
Being pregnant and sick is only conducive to apathy.

Also, it sucks.

The Benefits of Home Birth...and such.

So, I'm still discovering new things about the different kinds of birth you can have, but here's what I've got so far:

Hospitals tend to end up in cascading interventions that usually benefit the doctor, not the mother.  They will tell you all sorts of things to manipulate you into doing what they want, and you don't know whether these things they say are true. 
When they take your baby away "to run tests" the nurses could very well just be bottle feeding him/her regardless of your consent: you don't know what's happening once your baby is removed.
I'm of the opinion that they take your baby far too quickly, and most of the time they cut the chord too soon.
As a side note: everything the OB/GYN office gives me to take home has some advertisement for chord blood banking.  This seems like an expensive bonfire to me, although I could see the possible benefits.

I don't know anything about birthing centers as of yet.

Home birth seems to be the way to go if you are low-risk.  Natural birth is ideal, regardless of location, but at home you can at least be more comfortable with your surroundings, and you won't have a bunch of medical staff pressuring you about pitosin.
Additionally, your baby is not removed immediately so you can nurse as soon as baby is ready.
Home birth also opens up options for things like lotus birth (where you don't cut/tie the chord until the placenta falls off on it's own) and water birth.
It really just seems like being at home is the best way to go, if you can.

According to The Business of Being Born America has the highest infant/mother mortality rate during childbirth of all the industrialized countries.  Why?  Because midwives didn't integrate into hospitals.  In fact, the hospitals launched an intensive smear campaign against midwives claiming the method of birth was unsafe.  In reality, it was safer than the hospital.

Yes, things do go wrong during childbirth.  But things go wrong in every day life as well.

Hubby raises a good point when I complain about all the unsolicited advice/admonishments I receive at work:
Most of these people are likely to be pro-choice.  This translates to the saying, "it's my body," so what do they care what I do with my body?

That brings me to what people have said to me.

• A friend of mine sent me a URL to a site all about how dangerous home birth is.  I appreciate the concern; I'll take it with all the stories I read/hear about hospital shenanigans.
• The first thing that was said to me was, "I gotta fatten you up!" followed a bit later by, "oh, you're pregnant you can eat crap now."
• I shouldn't be lifting anything, regardless of weight.
• I shouldn't eat/drink unpasteurized stuff, or anything raw for that matter.
• Don't touch the litter box.
•  "You painted!?  You can't be painting!"  Sure I can, I have an enormous window in the room that needed paint on a total of two walls.  It's not like I shut myself into an unventilated room and sat in there with wet paint for five hours.
• Sit down, lay down, or otherwise be inactive.
• No alcohol, even just a sip is terrible for the baby.
• Co-sleeping is dangerous.  You could suffocate/crush your baby.  Your baby could fall off the bed and die.
• Home birth is dangerous.  You could die.
• "I have so many baby clothes!  Let me know what you're having."  We're not finding out, sorry.
• Dangle your wedding band over your belly: if it goes in circles, your baby is a girl; side to side, your baby is a boy.
  I did this out of sheer amusement.  The ring did nothing, so does that mean our baby is undecided?

I think that's it.


In regards to my last post:
It's interesting to see the great divide between modern mothers and natural mothers.  There is little to no middle ground and there's no possible way of having a decent discussion about it with a lot of people.  It's an emotional topic, so people tend to react emotionally which generally shuts down rational thinking.
I see this a lot, working in the HCA corporate building.  There are a few people into living naturally, but most of them are convinced that hospital birth is the only way to go because home birth is apparently for heathens who don't value life.  I call these people hypocrites because it's very likely they're fine with abortion.

Natural Parenting.

Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It's a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women's freedom as the right-to-life movement.

-Erica Jong 

Okay, let me first say that I am very well aware that there are circumstances in which you cannot raise a child naturally.  I am in no way trying to degrade the women in these circumstances.  Very often (if not always) they are loving, caring, wonderful parents; something is just preventing them from doing what they might otherwise want to do.  I am responding to this particular woman's rather long-winded article against natural parenting.

This quote is more than a little irritating.  This woman has just railed against everything I consider to be logical in being a good mother.

Ever-present is not a good idea, but being with your child and actually taking a large part in his or her life is very important to raising him or her.  In fact, I might say that part of being a mother is sacrificing your own life to raise the child (or children) you have brought into this world.  That being said, I'm not really sure it seems like sacrifice for the woman who loves her child.  If it does, it is a good kind of sacrifice.

Oh. Wait. Sacrifice is bad.

I forgot where I was living for a moment.

The remainder of this quote is plain ridiculous.

Formula feeding should be your absolute last result.  Unless you like chemicals then, by all means, formula feed.  We wonder where all this hyperactivity is coming from in our children.  Would it not be logical to connect their diet to their behavior?  No?  Is it it too radical to think that processed foods (that are largely made of practically synthetic things) may actually be bad for you?

Early in the shift to hospital birth women were routinely X-rayed to make sure they had a big enough pelvis.  Oops, the babies got cancer.  Later, women were given a drug to help morning sickenss that caused severe (by my standards) birth defects.  Who is to say that in another few years there won't be widely publicized information linking formula to colic and other digestive problems?

Oh, and forget microwaving your formula: it can cause the formula to become toxic.  Not fatally so, I assume, but how many toxins are you okay with your baby ingesting?  They do label formulas with a warning against nuking them these days, but it took a bit for anyone to admit something was wrong.

It should follow that I am pro breast-feeding.  I am a formula baby myself and I'm just fine now, but it is something I would like to avoid if I can with my children.  And my reasoning seems logical to me, the same way eating a healthy, natural diet is logical to me.

Disposable diapers is a choice.  I'm going to try cloth, because I'd like to minimize my household's waste output.

As for the last bit:

I'm terribly sorry that having children also comes with responsibility.  If you'd like to be a completely free person don't have a child.  Children are not pets; they are a lifetime commitment.  As with any lifetime commitment (such as marriage) there are things that need to be sacrificed, there are compromises to be made, there are responsibilities to adhere to.

This is the line of thinking that leads to the concept of painless child birth.
What is that doing to us and our babies?

~~~

I am a woman.

I was created to be nurturing, loving, and strong.

I'm not imprisoning myself when I choose to raise my child in a healthy way.

Women have been raising children this way for ages, what is wrong with it now?

I am a woman.

And I find it ridiculous that others would unabashedly decline the logic of natural parenting because it's difficult.  Life is difficult.

Get over it.

Honey Bees and Projection Screens.

Bee Love (redbud tree)

Hubby and I went to Grand Junction for Easter weekend and it was pretty awesome to be out of town.  The weather was beautiful (it was also beautiful in Denver) and we spent some time driving around doing various things.  On Saturday the honey bees found the tree in the front of my parents yard.  Their tree is very similar to the one pictured, but has slightly darker blossoms.  The honey bees love it; they were working from late morning to early evening collecting goodies to take back to their hive.  There were so many of them!  Almost the entire top of the tree was covered in honey bees with about three to four blossoms between each of them.  And the sound.  The sound they made was amazing.  All of those bees working on a single tree created a fantastic hum.  You could hear it form inside the screen door, but if you walked outside it was much louder, and much cooler.  It was an experience, to say the least.

At any rate, today I'm writing about projecting yourself onto others: what I was supposed to write about yesterday, had I not been up at three in the morning.

How many times have you caught yourself expecting others to behave the way you behave?  If you're a parent, your answer is most likely higher than those of us without children.
I catch myself doing this a lot.  I mean, a lot.  I slip into the foolish expectation that someone else will treat me the way I would treat them, or have habits similar to mine.  This is easy to do with a lot of things.  I forget that world view is different for everyone.  Sometimes I think, "well it was easy for me, it'll be easy for you."
I feel like this is an error that a lot of people make.  And I do try to correct myself, though sometimes it's quite a long time after the fact that I realize that's what I was doing.
The mistake of projecting something onto another person is simple to make, and it's hard to understand that this is what's happening in a multitude of situations.  The problem is the difficulty level of thinking like someone else.  Thinking like someone else is next to impossible for most people because you can't turn off the you in your brain (at least I can't).  It's extremely difficult not to perceive something with your own special bias (I'm not using this word negatively here).  Because of this we come upon the fallacy of Relativism. In some respects this theory is true, and in some respects it is false; like anything else, it cannot be blanketed over everything the way people seem to want to use it.

People also project onto animals.
This is why you see dogs that are ill-trained, or animal hoarders.  Someone has projected their emotional distress in some form onto the animal present, and the result is sometimes disastrous.  This is true of projecting onto other people as well.

I'm not saying projecting yourself onto someone else is particularly a terrible thing; what I'm saying is that it can cause problems.

The most frequent example I have of this in myself is my lack of understanding for others misunderstanding.  It is so clear to me why I joined Catholicism and why I'm preparing to embark upon the journey into WAPF, it should also be clear to you, the person I am speaking with.
But it is not always so clear to everyone else.  And in my limitations I get frustrated with those who refuse to even acknowledge that perhaps my choices are right, though different from theirs (I am also guilty of not understanding someone's choice, but I try to be nice about it).  In my frustration I find my articulation suffers and I become somewhat stubborn, sometimes very stubborn.  In the end (if the discussion is particularly irritating) I wonder, "why can't they just see my side of things?"  But who's to say they're not thinking the exact same thing about me?
I have my reasons and I try to explain them, but I rely a lot on the assumption that since they were logical to me, they will be logical to someone else.
The common error of projecting my logic process onto the person I'm speaking with.

It's also irritating to realize that someone else has been making assumptions about you based on their own emotional baggage.  The kind of assumptions that are totally out of left field and really don't make any sense if they actually knew you (or were actually observant).
The "up" side is called rose colored glasses and is a term applied to people who are blindly in love with someone, or just intentionally ignoring their faults.  The "down" side doesn't have a name to the best of my knowledge - I might call it seeing red or something similar - and is the opposite end of the spectrum where someone refuses to see any good qualities in someone.

~~~

I'm sorry for the lack of activity last week.  I'm trying to write when possible, but this eye strain is really kicking my ass.  I should make an eye appointment but I can't do that until after September, when I'm not a pregnant lady any more.  At least that's what they tell me.
Until then I'm going to make my best effort to obtain Hubby's glasses so I can sit and stare at the screen for a while.  The difficult part is he doesn't get home from work until around 7:30 p.m., then we eat dinner, then I'm tired and I want to go to bed so I can get up at 5:30 a.m. the next day to work for 9 hours.  It's a viscous cycle, but I don't think I'd change it.  I'll just have to try and work around it.
And try I shall!
I apologize for the potentially sporadic updates that may follow.

~~~

I leave you with this.  Enjoy.

Basic Rules of Avoidance, and Good News.

Good news first:
As my husband puts it, my eggo is preggo!

Growing a baby is making me even more serious about avoiding certain things in food, and certain appliances.  So here is what I consider to be a beginner's guide to eating healthier.

Avoid processed foods as much as possible.  When shopping always read the labels on anything packaged you are about to buy.  I will put it back if it has:

• Soy.  In moderation this is OK, but this "good source of protein" messes with your hormone levels (as a woman)
• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or corn syrup.
• Modified anything.
• Hydrogenated oils.  These are trans-fats and thus bad for you.  Partially hydrogenated is worse than fully hydrogenated.  They do this to extend shelf life.
• Artificial coloring of any kind.  Particularly caramel color, or anything with a number (yellow 5, etc.)
• An ingredient list more than five items long for no good reason (generally there is not a good reason for this)
• An ingredient I cannot pronounce.  Usually I put the product on hold and research the offending ingredient because there are some things that aren't bad for you, but are still big long science-y words.

I don't think I missed anything there.
I'm still starting out, but I can tell you that cutting all of this stuff from my diet has really made a difference.  Even before I was buying mostly organic produce I felt better.  I don't miss it, either.  Occasionally I'll get a craving for Pepsi, but that's pretty easy to fix with one of the glass-bottled ones (I call them Mexican Pepsi; they come from Mexico, as do the glass bottled Cokes).  The sodas in glass generally don't have HFCS in them.  They do, however have caramel color, so I only rarely indulge myself.

Another thing I try to do is avoid plastic packaging.  Who knows how hot the warehouse was (depending on what you're buying) or the stockroom at the grocery is.  Acidic things are something I will not make exceptions for if I'm buying them for cooking/eating.
For example: I buy white vinegar.  I use it to cook and to clean, but I buy the big plastic jug to clean with and the glass bottle to cook with.


Household cleaners:
I went biodegradable with my dish soap and my laundry detergent so far.  The products are more expensive, but with the dish soap I use much less of it because it is more effective than the cheap-o store brand stuff I used to buy.  I can't say about the laundry detergent, as I purchased it prematurely (it was on sale) and still have some regular detergent left.
The next thing I'll be looking for is biodegradable dish detergent for the dishwasher.  We use a lot of dishes, so the washer gets run quite a bit.  I run it once a day on average, sometimes less.  I like my machine because it has air dry and low energy options, so it's generally efficient.  Particularly because I'm a bit lazy when it comes to dishes.  And we don't have a drying rack right now.

I use vinegar water to mop with, and to clean off walls/counters.  Depending on what I'm cleaning I'll do a mix of half vinegar to half water, or a quarter vinegar to three-quarters water.  The latter formula I use mainly on counters and appliances while I use the former on floors and almost everything in the bathroom.  If I'm feeling extra cheap I'll use the quarter to three-quarters on the floor as well.

I do have 409, Windex, Comet, and generic Drain-O in my cabinets in various places around the house.  These I use rarely and they're mostly surplus from before I started switching.  I have Bona for my wood floors because the mop I bought happened to come with a bottle of cleaner (bonus!) but I will be switching to really diluted vinegar when that runs out.
The only thing (and I don't know where it came from, it just magically appeared under my kitchen sink one day - and I'm not joking about that, I have a thing against this stuff) I am actively pouring out is an aerosol can of disinfectant.  This is taking a while because it's full and I can't throw away a full can per trash collection rules.  So I spray as much as I can without backlash into the dumpster when I think about it.

~~~

I talked earlier about avoiding microwaves.  I guess I should also be avoiding my laptop and other electronic devices.  I have been avoiding the laptop (sans today) for the reason of eye strain, but now I have extra reason to not bring it with me to work.  At work the laptop goes on my lap, so that's probably not good.

~~~

There you have it; a small guide to how I got started.
And I do recommend taking this slowly as the price differences can be daunting.  Not to mention how overwhelming it is to overhaul your entire diet and some of your lifestyle.

I May Have Gone off the Cliff.

I was at Ross yesterday with the specific intention of buying new sheets for our bed.  Any time I'm upstairs in the particular Ross I go to I have to look around and see what's on the clearance racks, or on the baking/cooking aisle.  A lot of times I leave with cutesy cupcake pans featuring shapes such as Easter eggs or hearts.  This time I managed to avoid the baking/cooking paraphernalia and headed straight to the clearance rack.  On the way there I was side-tracked by a shelf of journals; I've been looking for a new journal for a while now.  These journals happened to have religious quotes on them, and I happened to leave the store with one that said, "Nature is the art or God," or something along those lines.  I also acquired the specific sheets I was looking for and a pizza pan/serving stand set.  All for around $65.  The journal accounted for $4 of that.
I was excited to bring the journal home, intending it to be a prayer journal my husband and I could use together.

I haven't written in it yet.
Or told hubby what it is for.

In an interesting series of non-events my mood changed (pretty rapidly) from chipper to sulky.  And then to angry.  And then I cried.  And then I was back to angry because nothing had happened to provoke any of it.
So after trying to calm myself down with my nightly yoga - which worked until I was finished with the yoga - I went to bed and fell asleep.
That is why I didn't tell hubby what the journal is for; I'm apparently losing control of my emotions.  It turns out that that is quite distracting.

I do like the idea of the prayer journal.  Although sometimes I think I'll feel weird when I'm writing in it, but I won't be able to tell until I actually make an entry.

~~~

I read a book about intuitive communication at work: the security guard produces books for me to read when I tell her I'm bored.  These books are always books that I would never pick up myself, so it's interesting to read them.
At any rate.
This book was about intuitively communicating with animals.  Or, being an animal whisperer.  I started off really skeptical, wavering pretty sharply between the idea that it was possible and totally dismissing it.  Then I read more, and more.  And by the last quarter of the book I was convinced of most of it.  There are still things that I doubt, but through curiously trying the exercises outlined in the book (it was sort of an instructional work) and actually having a fairly high success rate, I'm pretty convinced this is real.
Actually doing this is a lot like praying, except it feels different.  I realized around page 85 that intuitive communication with animals is almost synonymous with praying to God.
The basic idea is you talk to the animal as if you know they can understand you and respond themselves.  When you pray, you talk to God as if you know he is listening and will respond in a way he sees fit.  The difference here is you don't pray to the animals, you have a two-way conversation with them (once you've gotten good at receiving information).
I tried this with my cat Vincent before the convention at the beginning of March.  My roommate had been gone all day and her cats had been locked up for that time in her room, with no litter box.  Vincent usually follows me downstairs if I go - especially if I open her door to let the cats out for any reason - and the three of them don't get along.  If he was going to follow me, there would be no litter-boxing for Caspian or Sphynx.  So I stopped and patted Vincent for a second, then told him that I would appreciate it if he stayed upstairs while I let the other two out to use their litter box.  I went downstairs and Leeloo followed me, so there was no litter-boxing anyway, but Vincent stayed at the top of the stairs like I had asked.
I have several stories similar to this, and I know that to an outside perspective it sounds like coincidence, but it's interesting to see the change in behavior if you just speak to your animal the way you would speak to a person.

I got a little off topic there.  Ahem..
I meant to say that the book made me sad when I finished it.  We're so disconnected from nature now, and I think it causes more problems than we realize.  Nature really is God's art, and we should really take more time to appreciate it in my opinion.
Which is why the article in the Post about the Lorax made me want to laugh, cry, and punch someone simultaneously.  The article was about how the movie the Lorax was creating "Occu-babies."  By teaching children to appreciate nature it was somehow anti-progressive.  I haven't seen it myself, and I didn't read the whole article - just enough to figure out what "Occu-babies" meant - but I'm pretty sure some appreciation for nature couldn't hurt.

Why People Think I'm Crazy.

Because I'm crazy.

By society's standards I am, anyway.

I have always wanted to be a stay at home mom (SaHM) - since I can remember anyway.  The idea of the traditional family structure appeals to me.
Recently (within the past few years) I have lost faith in the public school system, deciding to home-school.  Homeschooling is a very much misunderstood endeavor, and I think I could be justified in looking to the government for the reason why.  The same reason I can look at the government for the reason people have a stigma about home births.
I want to avoid a hospital birth if I can.  I don't want the pressures of vaccinations, epidurals, pitocin, or which birthing position.  Lying down while you have a baby is the worst position you could probably be in.  Work with gravity, not against it.
I became Catholic: I joined an organization that appears to be against everything society is for.

Now, I'm pursuing healthy food.
People think I'm crazy for not using microwaves.  I've somehow gained a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on who you are) mistrust of microwaves over the last four years or so.  There was not one in my old apartment and there is not one on the counters of my current kitchen.  I have kept the microwave my old roommates left and stored it under the stairs for visiting guests who stay a while and absolutely cannot live without it.  I do understand why people think I'm odd for refusing to have a microwave.
People think I'm crazy for turning down fast food.  A friend of mine brings me things from out and about occasionally.  Last week she brought me Del Taco and Arby's.  I ate them, because I always feel guilty when people give me food and I will eat it rather than waste their money.  But dayumn.  I broke out like nothing else and felt pretty miserable the rest of the week after the fish sandwich.  This week she offered me a hot fudge sundae from McDonald's.  I declined and she got fussy saying it was only frozen yogurt (I'd like to know exactly what's in their "vanilla reduced fat ice cream").  A lot of the time people get angry with me for saying I prefer real food to fast food.  I'm sorry, but if eating better food makes me feel better, I'm going to do it.  Whether or not you think I'm being "too healthy."

The point is that some people just don't believe that eating better makes you feel better.  They say things like, "I feel fine now, so there must not be anything wrong with it," but if you've ever tried an organic chicken over a "regular" one you know the difference.
On a similar note; tomatoes are proof that agribusiness fails.  I hate tomatoes, at least I thought I did.  But organic or home-grown tomatoes are sweet and juicy and generally delicious.
Eating healthy is not only better for you, but you end up with food that has a richer, more satisfying flavor.  The chemical shortcuts they take to mass-produce food (which is a necessary evil at this point) cut from the quality of the product.  Not to mention what they do to the earth itself.

But the price!
Oh, how do I budget for organic food?  How, with so little money!?
It's not easy; there are sacrifices that need to be made (like that jar of Nutella that looks so delicious sitting in the baking aisle).  In the end you have to make the commitment to your body before you start comparing prices.
Actually, it's just better not to compare prices and be a sale shark.  If you compare prices, you will always second-guess your purchase.  At least if you're a cheap-skate like me.


So, here is some advice from one crazy to another potential crazy:
Make the commitment to yourself first.  If you're going to embark on the journey into the whole food diet, you'll need that extra willpower of, "this will be worth it in the end."

Like the Jamba Juice cup says:
Your body is a temple...

I want Jamba Juice now.....curse me!

Shopping Logistics

So today I thought I would write about where I shop for my food as the beginning of the whole food saga.

I haunt two places; King Soopers (Kings) and Sprouts.
I frequent Sunflower, but it's not a regular part of my weekly shopping journey.
I also go to Natural Grocers (Vitamin Cottage) when they have sales on things I want/need.

At King Soopers I get the majority of my paper products, some produce, and cereal.  I generally buy Cascadian Farms cereals because they are the lesser of the evils.  In fact, they have hardly anything bad in them, just the occasional soy lecithin.  We love cereal (particularly hubby).  The store right by my house doubles as a liquor store, and also has a very decent selection of organic produce/cleaners.  Plus the gas discount comes in handy.

At Sprouts I get Almond milk for the roommate, and the rest of my produce.  Sprouts is where I go for meat because the exact same chicken is at least $4-$5 cheaper at Sprouts than Sunflower.  I also get honey here ($1 cheaper than Vitamin Cottage and much cheaper than Kings).  I tend to get my cooking oils here too; olive, coconut, etc..  And sometimes they have great prices on wild caught Atlantic Salmon.
I'm a sucker for some fish.
Also, being Catholic, I usually have some in the freezer for Fridays.

Sunflower is a supplementary store.  This means that if I find some crazy good deal in the sale paper that either Kings or Sprouts does not match, I will go there.  And while I'm there I'll pick up bulk things like nuts and dried fruits.  Or toothpaste.

Vitamin Cottage is similar to Sunflower excepting Good Belly (a pro-biotic juice drink of deliciousness).  Good Belly is always cheaper here than at Sprouts.  Also vitamins.  Lots and lots of vitamins.

Places I will not shop:
Wal-Mart or Sam's Club.  Basically anywhere in the Walton empire.
My reasoning here should be obvious, but I will explain because I know a lot of people don't run with he same crowd as I do.  I was even a Wal-Mart shopper before I knew better.
Wal-Mart is not cheaper for the majority of it's goods.  Not only that, but the company started out shady.  This mega-store had it's beginnings in cheating distributors and driving out the little guy - even when it was a little guy.  The reason this bothers me is the intention was to drive out the little guy, not to be successful and just take the casualties as they happened.  If my information is correct.
They still cheat distributors, but parts of the company are palatable for me now.  Even still, I feel like I'm supporting evil when I buy things from there.  I will exhaust every other option before setting foot in a Wal-Mart.
The bottom line here is I don't trust their produce, or their business practices.

Whole Foods.
Otherwise known as Whole Paycheck, here is where you will find the trendy organic foods.  The foods that are labeled "organic" but are not necessarily organic.
Everything here is generally marked up a couple bucks also.

 ~~~

On an unrelated note, a link to a video was shared with me.  It's a Penn and Teller bit about organic farming.  I haven't watched it all on account of eye strain and hubby not arriving home with glasses for me to use until 7 or so (which is an hour before I like to be in bed).  But the bit I did watch struck me as intentionally polarized.  It seems like a comedy bit.  Please watch and let me know what you think!

FAQ and Miscellanious Musings.

Random story:
This morning, while opening the shop, I grabbed the airpot full of warm water to brew coffee and set it in the sink as usual - I brew a pot of water before leaving to keep the pot warm, thus keeping the coffee hotter for longer during the day.  I measured the grounds into the filter, loading them into the brewer and proceeded to empty the airpot into the sink.  Today there was some sort of spider, about the size of a dollar coin, in the sink.  I watched him as he struggled to avoid the flood, which he did successfully all the way up until the very end when he seemed to just give up.  He curled into a ball and followed the last trickling stream down the drain.
I wanted to save him, but I'm afraid of spiders.
I was so sad that he went down the drain.  I even said, "I'm sorry spider."  I felt bad that I had potentially killed him for almost an hour, and even recounting the story just now I still feel bad.
And that's my random story.

Some of these questions are off topic; I just decided I wanted to write about what it is I get asked the most as a blogger and as a barista.