Okay, quick post before I go home to Three Lakes for the weekend! It is strange to have only been back here two days before going back. But, yay. I don't have to drive because I'm freeloading on the 'rents so I can work. I have a lot to work on!
-Making a new logo for my father-in-law's "new" business. Long story. But it's fun.
-Making a map/ad page for my MNSS boss's LAX tournament.
-Writing more, of course. I have several stories that I want to work on, and a few articles that I NEED to work on.
-Plus I have a bunch of books to read!
Highlights/lowlights of the week:
Went to the Twins game on Wednesday. I won't say it was horrible because we seriously thought we were going to win. Until about the 8th inning. Speaking of the Twins, was so sad to hear about Harmon Killebrew this morning. I really thought he was doing OK from the last reports. I pray he will pass peacefully.
The weather has been...interesting. As usual. It's Minnesota/Wisconsin.
I think I might be gluten intolerant. Went of the diet a bit and had some bread. Still recovering from that. It was not pretty.
This weekend I am hopefully going to learn to build a deck. Yay, construction!
Well I need to pack, ASAP. I need to get on the road in the next 15 minutes. I sure hope I don't forget anything...
Friday, May 13, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Do you remember 6th grade?
When was the last time you looked at your sixth grade yearbook? I'm looking at mine right now.
Wow. I can't believe how young we look--but most of us haven't changed much. That's the beauty of Facebook. The class of 2001 doesn't have to wait for our upcoming reunion this summer. Anytime we want to do a "Where Are They Now?" we just get online. I'd say 90% of the people I wonder about are on there.
As a Kid Who Moved Alot and attended two different high schools, I have the pleasure (?) of having not one, but two class reunions (actually 3 if you count my husband who is also a '01 grad). And both my classes are planning them through Facebook. It gives us the unique pleasure of giving feedback to our peers who are doing the planning--dates, locations, music, etc. Whereas my parents (whose graduate years I won't reveal but we'll say it was around Woodstock) just get a piece of paper in the mail with a date, time and location.
I ramble. My point is this--it's really strange to look back at people through adult eyes. Sometimes you wonder why you weren't friends with certain people--or why you were. Sometimes you wonder why you never got to know people who looked nice. Or why you never knew that the boy you had a crush on clearly *ahem* batted for the other team. Looking back, I wonder about that as I look at the teacher page as well. There was one teacher in particular (and I know all of you who went to SMS in the mid-90s know exactly who I mean) who we all KNEW something was wrong (she was a very masculine woman) but we didn't exactly know what that meant. That world wasn't really talked about until high school, and even then, it was Wisconsin. People didn't really go around bragging about it.
Wow, off track again. Who would have thought? Anyway, most people probably try to forget 6th grade, and all of middle/junior/senior high school. I'm not saying it was always a pleasant experience, but there are still fond memories. I've written about some of them on this blog. And they won't leave me alone.
I guess I'm stuck somewhere between ages 12 and 18. At least, that's what I keep writing about. One of my latest projects is about a boy in the sixth grade, at SMS in 1994. Hmm, wonder where that came from? It isn't really based on anyone I knew at SMS, in fact it's a little bit written if I had been a boy. He's definitely got some traits of my husband, too. It's a little bit hard to write from a boy's perspective, because even though I was always friends with the boys, I was still a girly girl. Sometimes I don't get how they think. For instance I asked my husband if my character thought about sex too much. His answer was "not enough."
Wow. I always knew guys thought about sex a lot, but at 12 I didn't think they thought about it that much. That was an eye opener.
One of my favorite authors, Sarah Dessen, said awhile back that if you like to write, then you should read what you write so you can see what your peers are doing. Which means every time I got to the library I'm in the Young Adult section. I'm only a little embarrassed, but I love to read that stuff. I guess I wouldn't write it if I didn't. But I didn't get to go to the library recently, so I was reading the things in my collection. What I have in my collection is from the late 80s and early 90s, but the boys are the right age. And the books are hilarious. I don't know if anyone has ever read Barbra Park, but she is probably the funniest author I've ever read. "Almost Starring Skinnybones" is one of the few books ever that has made me laugh out loud. If you haven't read it, I would suggest that you do. Even if you're an adult. Pretend it's for your kids even if you don't have any. You might someday.
So my dilemma is that a lot of books written for this age group are funny and not too much about what kids are really thinking about. I like to write about what they're really thinking and feeling. But when kids are really thinking about sex, how do you do that? Or do you just ignore it?
I haven't figured out what the balance is yet. I need more research.
So here's to the class of 2001, all the way back in 1994. Fist bump to those of us who had really, really big bangs.
Wow. I can't believe how young we look--but most of us haven't changed much. That's the beauty of Facebook. The class of 2001 doesn't have to wait for our upcoming reunion this summer. Anytime we want to do a "Where Are They Now?" we just get online. I'd say 90% of the people I wonder about are on there.
As a Kid Who Moved Alot and attended two different high schools, I have the pleasure (?) of having not one, but two class reunions (actually 3 if you count my husband who is also a '01 grad). And both my classes are planning them through Facebook. It gives us the unique pleasure of giving feedback to our peers who are doing the planning--dates, locations, music, etc. Whereas my parents (whose graduate years I won't reveal but we'll say it was around Woodstock) just get a piece of paper in the mail with a date, time and location.
I ramble. My point is this--it's really strange to look back at people through adult eyes. Sometimes you wonder why you weren't friends with certain people--or why you were. Sometimes you wonder why you never got to know people who looked nice. Or why you never knew that the boy you had a crush on clearly *ahem* batted for the other team. Looking back, I wonder about that as I look at the teacher page as well. There was one teacher in particular (and I know all of you who went to SMS in the mid-90s know exactly who I mean) who we all KNEW something was wrong (she was a very masculine woman) but we didn't exactly know what that meant. That world wasn't really talked about until high school, and even then, it was Wisconsin. People didn't really go around bragging about it.
Wow, off track again. Who would have thought? Anyway, most people probably try to forget 6th grade, and all of middle/junior/senior high school. I'm not saying it was always a pleasant experience, but there are still fond memories. I've written about some of them on this blog. And they won't leave me alone.
I guess I'm stuck somewhere between ages 12 and 18. At least, that's what I keep writing about. One of my latest projects is about a boy in the sixth grade, at SMS in 1994. Hmm, wonder where that came from? It isn't really based on anyone I knew at SMS, in fact it's a little bit written if I had been a boy. He's definitely got some traits of my husband, too. It's a little bit hard to write from a boy's perspective, because even though I was always friends with the boys, I was still a girly girl. Sometimes I don't get how they think. For instance I asked my husband if my character thought about sex too much. His answer was "not enough."
Wow. I always knew guys thought about sex a lot, but at 12 I didn't think they thought about it that much. That was an eye opener.
One of my favorite authors, Sarah Dessen, said awhile back that if you like to write, then you should read what you write so you can see what your peers are doing. Which means every time I got to the library I'm in the Young Adult section. I'm only a little embarrassed, but I love to read that stuff. I guess I wouldn't write it if I didn't. But I didn't get to go to the library recently, so I was reading the things in my collection. What I have in my collection is from the late 80s and early 90s, but the boys are the right age. And the books are hilarious. I don't know if anyone has ever read Barbra Park, but she is probably the funniest author I've ever read. "Almost Starring Skinnybones" is one of the few books ever that has made me laugh out loud. If you haven't read it, I would suggest that you do. Even if you're an adult. Pretend it's for your kids even if you don't have any. You might someday.
So my dilemma is that a lot of books written for this age group are funny and not too much about what kids are really thinking about. I like to write about what they're really thinking and feeling. But when kids are really thinking about sex, how do you do that? Or do you just ignore it?
I haven't figured out what the balance is yet. I need more research.
So here's to the class of 2001, all the way back in 1994. Fist bump to those of us who had really, really big bangs.
This pretty much needed it's own post
I forgot to mention in my previous "Where have I been?" post, I've been on a raw diet. This is a recent thing, only 7 days old. I also forgot to mention that I've been sick since...pretty much last fall. It's been varying degrees, but a few days after Valentine's this year it turned into a mysterious stomach problem and never left. Life pretty much was miserable. And then I learned about fungus. Candida yeast. Parasites. Things that cause inflammation in your body and cause a whole host of problems. When the worst of the problems started, all I could pin point any changes I had made to were getting off birth control (don't even get me started on that).
It's led me to so many other things. I went to doctors, they were all baffled. They all wanted to put me on drugs. One of them did. But they didn't really help. The drugs helped me sleep, actually, which wasn't what they were supposed to do but it was a nice side effect.
And all the while, I still felt like crap. On one of the last days before I cemented that I was going to go on a cleanse, I got in a fight with my husband which ended in me screaming at him "I feel like s*&! all the time!" in tears. Something had to change.
So I got a bottle of pills that would assist me in a parasite cleanse. I'd been watching a lot of natural health shows, who were talking about so many symptoms I had and said "Here is your problem--fungus."
Serious? I always had a feeling that some of what I was experiencing was related. But now I was finding out that pretty much EVERY health problem I've had through my life is related to one thing--my diet.
I'm a junk food addict. Proudly. Is it fried? Is it fake? Is it bread? Is it SUGAR? Gimmie. I want. I LOVE. As a child, I subsisted only on bologna, boxed mac n cheese and hot dogs. I was super fussy and also super skinny--my mom felt she had no choice. If I wouldn't eat it, she didn't make me. Sounds like a great start for a lifetime of bad habits, right? It was. Eventually I turned into a person who only ate chips, cheese, processed meats like bacon or salami, white bread and candy bars. Every meal was ended with dessert. Lots of it. Vegetables? Gross. Fruit, eh no thanks.
Needless to say, my digestive system was a mess. I suffered from IBS and Hypoglycemia, but it was manageable. Until I got off birth control. The sudden lack of synthetic hormones in my body threw it into a tailspin. It was the perfect storm for my bad eating habits to truly show what I had been doing to my body. But modern medicine had no answers. At one point, doctors questioned if I had thyroid disease. It was awful. Everyone was guessing and no one could help. One doctor wanted to do a scope because he wanted to know if I had celiac disease. But that cost $8,000 (or 20% of that for me--still outrageous). And then it started getting more disturbing--it started affecting my mind. I could forget things in seconds. I would stand in front of the fridge or in the middle of rooms for several minutes unable to remember why I was there. And memorizing dance routines? Forget it. Not to mention in the weakened, undernourished state my body was in it was impossible for me to keep up physically.
The doctors did have one answer for me, however. So this started when you got off birth control? Then get back on it.
Uh, what? Get back on the synthetic hormones that getting on and off started all this crap in the first place? No thanks!!! Not to mention the fact that we'd like to start a family. Taking birth control gets in the way of that, eh?
Traditional medicine, obviously, could not help me. So I turned to natural medicine. And a whole new world was opened to me that I never realized existed. A world in which, everything is connected. And you don't fix it with drugs from pharmaceutical companies.
In the last month, I've learned about olive leaf. Black walnut husk. Activated charcoal. And fungus, Candida yeast and parasites. I learned that when you eat products with yeast in them, well-what does yeast do? It expands. It expands in your body and causes inflammation and that in turn causes damage. And what feeds that yeast once it gets started? Sugar. Alcohol. Processed food. And what causes that yeast to just go gang busters, reeking havoc on your body? Oh...hormonal changes like getting off birth control.
Holy crap. Other symptoms of yeast due to bad diet? Excema. IBS. Hypoglycemia. Mental issues. Acne. Pretty much everything else I had. All this time, it was all connected.
At first I was very angry at doctors for not saying anything about this. Here I was, having digestive and endocrine issues and no one ever asked what my diet was!! (It was chocolate cake). But then I realized if I was going to fix it, I was going to have to treat myself.
Enter the cleanse. At first, it was scary, looking at that list. Pretty much the first thing on the list was NO SUGAR. Not even fruit. Nothing. Not one drop. Also, no processed food (chips, salami, deli meat), no alcohol, no bread, no yeast, no vinegar, no molds or fungus (cheese, mushrooms, most dairy), no fats that were solid at room temperature (ham, bacon, butter)--no to everything I lived on! My only food options were vegetables, legumes and lean meats like fish, chicken and beef.
It's amazing how many vegetables you can eat when the choice is eat vegetables or be sick. It's amazing how fast you can develop a taste for healthy food. I'm not saying it was easy. By the middle of the first day I wanted to break. I didn't know what I was doing. Not eat any of the food I loved? ANY of it? No chocolate? I can't do this. I can't. But I had to. Whenever I felt weak I thought of how sick I had been. That usually got me thinking healthy pretty quick.
It's now been 7 days. My stomach is better--not like it was before I got sick but I can tell that it's actually absorbing nutrients now and for 3 months it just flushed everything right out. I expect that if I did have a scope a doctor would say I was celiac. But in natural medicine, they don't call it that. And in natural medicine if you cleanse and let your body heal from the damage, then you can eat gluten again in moderation. It might be six months. But you can have it again.
Pretty much all of my other symptoms are gone too. I haven't had hypoglycemia issues--now I'm just hungry, not close to death. My skin has cleared up. It's stopped itching. I don't get exhausted after lunch. I'm not depressed. My lung issues aren't bothering me. I have more energy. I've lost seven pounds--and that's not from being sick. I knew something was wrong when I was so sick, and I didn't lose ANY weight. Now I'm feeling better and not eating junk and I'm losing weight without trying. Slowly, my brain is coming back to me. And my taste for bad food is pretty much gone. I tried to eat some cheese this weekend. It tasted like straight up mold. I had to eat vegetables to get the taste out of my mouth. Last night I made stir fry and it was delicious. A month ago if you had told me I would enjoy stir fry with only veggies, brown rice and beef, I would have told you where you could stuff those veggies.
I have also learned the joy of ethnic food--I've dined at Afghani and Ethiopian restaurants and they were wonderful. Most of the things they serve on their menus are things that are right in line with my diet and-surprise-they are delicious. Six months ago I wouldn't have touched an ethnic restaurant--I wouldn't even have drunk their water. I thought Applebee's was a safe place to eat. Now I know better.
Okay. One of my new blog resolutions was to make things shorter. Ooops. What I am saying is that if traditional doctors can't help you, don't think you're sunk. Keep searching yourself. Natural medicine is amazing. Your diet is affecting you more than you know. Go on a sugar fast. It's amazing how much better you will feel even after a short time. I can't wait to see how much better I feel in a month. Also, spend time praying to The Great Physician.
Good luck from a former sugar addict!
It's led me to so many other things. I went to doctors, they were all baffled. They all wanted to put me on drugs. One of them did. But they didn't really help. The drugs helped me sleep, actually, which wasn't what they were supposed to do but it was a nice side effect.
And all the while, I still felt like crap. On one of the last days before I cemented that I was going to go on a cleanse, I got in a fight with my husband which ended in me screaming at him "I feel like s*&! all the time!" in tears. Something had to change.
So I got a bottle of pills that would assist me in a parasite cleanse. I'd been watching a lot of natural health shows, who were talking about so many symptoms I had and said "Here is your problem--fungus."
Serious? I always had a feeling that some of what I was experiencing was related. But now I was finding out that pretty much EVERY health problem I've had through my life is related to one thing--my diet.
I'm a junk food addict. Proudly. Is it fried? Is it fake? Is it bread? Is it SUGAR? Gimmie. I want. I LOVE. As a child, I subsisted only on bologna, boxed mac n cheese and hot dogs. I was super fussy and also super skinny--my mom felt she had no choice. If I wouldn't eat it, she didn't make me. Sounds like a great start for a lifetime of bad habits, right? It was. Eventually I turned into a person who only ate chips, cheese, processed meats like bacon or salami, white bread and candy bars. Every meal was ended with dessert. Lots of it. Vegetables? Gross. Fruit, eh no thanks.
Needless to say, my digestive system was a mess. I suffered from IBS and Hypoglycemia, but it was manageable. Until I got off birth control. The sudden lack of synthetic hormones in my body threw it into a tailspin. It was the perfect storm for my bad eating habits to truly show what I had been doing to my body. But modern medicine had no answers. At one point, doctors questioned if I had thyroid disease. It was awful. Everyone was guessing and no one could help. One doctor wanted to do a scope because he wanted to know if I had celiac disease. But that cost $8,000 (or 20% of that for me--still outrageous). And then it started getting more disturbing--it started affecting my mind. I could forget things in seconds. I would stand in front of the fridge or in the middle of rooms for several minutes unable to remember why I was there. And memorizing dance routines? Forget it. Not to mention in the weakened, undernourished state my body was in it was impossible for me to keep up physically.
The doctors did have one answer for me, however. So this started when you got off birth control? Then get back on it.
Uh, what? Get back on the synthetic hormones that getting on and off started all this crap in the first place? No thanks!!! Not to mention the fact that we'd like to start a family. Taking birth control gets in the way of that, eh?
Traditional medicine, obviously, could not help me. So I turned to natural medicine. And a whole new world was opened to me that I never realized existed. A world in which, everything is connected. And you don't fix it with drugs from pharmaceutical companies.
In the last month, I've learned about olive leaf. Black walnut husk. Activated charcoal. And fungus, Candida yeast and parasites. I learned that when you eat products with yeast in them, well-what does yeast do? It expands. It expands in your body and causes inflammation and that in turn causes damage. And what feeds that yeast once it gets started? Sugar. Alcohol. Processed food. And what causes that yeast to just go gang busters, reeking havoc on your body? Oh...hormonal changes like getting off birth control.
Holy crap. Other symptoms of yeast due to bad diet? Excema. IBS. Hypoglycemia. Mental issues. Acne. Pretty much everything else I had. All this time, it was all connected.
At first I was very angry at doctors for not saying anything about this. Here I was, having digestive and endocrine issues and no one ever asked what my diet was!! (It was chocolate cake). But then I realized if I was going to fix it, I was going to have to treat myself.
Enter the cleanse. At first, it was scary, looking at that list. Pretty much the first thing on the list was NO SUGAR. Not even fruit. Nothing. Not one drop. Also, no processed food (chips, salami, deli meat), no alcohol, no bread, no yeast, no vinegar, no molds or fungus (cheese, mushrooms, most dairy), no fats that were solid at room temperature (ham, bacon, butter)--no to everything I lived on! My only food options were vegetables, legumes and lean meats like fish, chicken and beef.
It's amazing how many vegetables you can eat when the choice is eat vegetables or be sick. It's amazing how fast you can develop a taste for healthy food. I'm not saying it was easy. By the middle of the first day I wanted to break. I didn't know what I was doing. Not eat any of the food I loved? ANY of it? No chocolate? I can't do this. I can't. But I had to. Whenever I felt weak I thought of how sick I had been. That usually got me thinking healthy pretty quick.
It's now been 7 days. My stomach is better--not like it was before I got sick but I can tell that it's actually absorbing nutrients now and for 3 months it just flushed everything right out. I expect that if I did have a scope a doctor would say I was celiac. But in natural medicine, they don't call it that. And in natural medicine if you cleanse and let your body heal from the damage, then you can eat gluten again in moderation. It might be six months. But you can have it again.
Pretty much all of my other symptoms are gone too. I haven't had hypoglycemia issues--now I'm just hungry, not close to death. My skin has cleared up. It's stopped itching. I don't get exhausted after lunch. I'm not depressed. My lung issues aren't bothering me. I have more energy. I've lost seven pounds--and that's not from being sick. I knew something was wrong when I was so sick, and I didn't lose ANY weight. Now I'm feeling better and not eating junk and I'm losing weight without trying. Slowly, my brain is coming back to me. And my taste for bad food is pretty much gone. I tried to eat some cheese this weekend. It tasted like straight up mold. I had to eat vegetables to get the taste out of my mouth. Last night I made stir fry and it was delicious. A month ago if you had told me I would enjoy stir fry with only veggies, brown rice and beef, I would have told you where you could stuff those veggies.
I have also learned the joy of ethnic food--I've dined at Afghani and Ethiopian restaurants and they were wonderful. Most of the things they serve on their menus are things that are right in line with my diet and-surprise-they are delicious. Six months ago I wouldn't have touched an ethnic restaurant--I wouldn't even have drunk their water. I thought Applebee's was a safe place to eat. Now I know better.
Okay. One of my new blog resolutions was to make things shorter. Ooops. What I am saying is that if traditional doctors can't help you, don't think you're sunk. Keep searching yourself. Natural medicine is amazing. Your diet is affecting you more than you know. Go on a sugar fast. It's amazing how much better you will feel even after a short time. I can't wait to see how much better I feel in a month. Also, spend time praying to The Great Physician.
Good luck from a former sugar addict!
Hi! I haven't touched this blog in a year!
Eeek. It's been a year since I posted on here. There was all this me being unemployed and serious family emergencies keeping me otherwise occupied. So where have I been? Oh, around.
Last summer I wrote a few blogs about the Twins for my friend and former co-worker who started a website dedicated to Minnesota sports. I still do that, however lately just when I think I've got an article idea down--well--you may have been watching the Twins recently. You understand my inability to begin anything that doesn't start with "*!@$#@%^!!!!" or "wwhhhhaaaaaaa"
At the end of last summer we moved back to my honorary hometown in Minnesota, the suburb in St. Paul where I graduated from high school. For the first time I feel like I have a place that actually belongs to me!!! A place I am FROM!!! Probably only kids with missionary or military parents will understand what I mean. But it's been so great. Except when I want to go to the grocery store with no makeup and know that I will probably run into hundreds of people I know.
Then we got a puppy. 'Nuff said. If you want to know about her, read the about me section. I already talk about her too much. I will probably spend hours talking about her on here. I already talk about her constantly on my Facebook and Twitter. Right now she's even looking at me because she knows I'm typing about her. She's in my head.
Last fall, I got a job, the only job I could find in this horrible economy, as a hostess at a new restaurant. I won't say it was a mistake, because I met some cool friends and made pitiful money that did help us out of a few jams, but that place was awful. I was spoiled when I used to work in the restaurant business--I worked in a place where we all loved each other for the most part (usually too much, it was like an incestuous family, we'd all hooked up) so I figured this place would be similar. Well, not exactly. On the surface people liked each other pretty well, but under the surface most of them hated each other. The drama was enough to make your head spin. Worst of all, it's not doing well and will probably shut down soon. So the owner hated us. You can deal with a lot of people making you miserable and hating you, but when it's the owner? Well then you bail. I learned that lesson at my newspaper job where I stayed being miserable for 3.5 years. So I bailed on the hostess thing after six months.
So currently I'm a deadbeat again and looking forward to another summer of living in Three Lakes with the puppy. But this is different then last summer of being a deadbeat because this time I know about self-publishing for the Kindle, Nook, etc. This time, I don't have to worry about rejection from publishing houses (also dying like newspapers). This time, I write it, I publish it, and if you like it, buy it. If you don't, then don't. I will probably spend a lot of time on here whining about my writing issues. You were warned.
Last summer I wrote a few blogs about the Twins for my friend and former co-worker who started a website dedicated to Minnesota sports. I still do that, however lately just when I think I've got an article idea down--well--you may have been watching the Twins recently. You understand my inability to begin anything that doesn't start with "*!@$#@%^!!!!" or "wwhhhhaaaaaaa"
At the end of last summer we moved back to my honorary hometown in Minnesota, the suburb in St. Paul where I graduated from high school. For the first time I feel like I have a place that actually belongs to me!!! A place I am FROM!!! Probably only kids with missionary or military parents will understand what I mean. But it's been so great. Except when I want to go to the grocery store with no makeup and know that I will probably run into hundreds of people I know.
Then we got a puppy. 'Nuff said. If you want to know about her, read the about me section. I already talk about her too much. I will probably spend hours talking about her on here. I already talk about her constantly on my Facebook and Twitter. Right now she's even looking at me because she knows I'm typing about her. She's in my head.
Last fall, I got a job, the only job I could find in this horrible economy, as a hostess at a new restaurant. I won't say it was a mistake, because I met some cool friends and made pitiful money that did help us out of a few jams, but that place was awful. I was spoiled when I used to work in the restaurant business--I worked in a place where we all loved each other for the most part (usually too much, it was like an incestuous family, we'd all hooked up) so I figured this place would be similar. Well, not exactly. On the surface people liked each other pretty well, but under the surface most of them hated each other. The drama was enough to make your head spin. Worst of all, it's not doing well and will probably shut down soon. So the owner hated us. You can deal with a lot of people making you miserable and hating you, but when it's the owner? Well then you bail. I learned that lesson at my newspaper job where I stayed being miserable for 3.5 years. So I bailed on the hostess thing after six months.
So currently I'm a deadbeat again and looking forward to another summer of living in Three Lakes with the puppy. But this is different then last summer of being a deadbeat because this time I know about self-publishing for the Kindle, Nook, etc. This time, I don't have to worry about rejection from publishing houses (also dying like newspapers). This time, I write it, I publish it, and if you like it, buy it. If you don't, then don't. I will probably spend a lot of time on here whining about my writing issues. You were warned.
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