Have you ever noticed... truly noticed how weird the modern world is? I don't say that under the delusion that I am not just as weird as everyone else. I'm simply stating an observation. People walk through public places having incredibly personal and private conversations... on cell phones. That's weird! And we don't even really notice it any more, unless we happen to hear, like I did, way too much about some stranger's cervix. It is like technology has fried all of society's couth. It makes me want to sport a hippie shirt amending the "kill your tv" slogan. "Kill your mobile device," just doesn't have the same ring, though, do it?
Friday, July 22, 2011
Friday, July 08, 2011
Rumination of the Month
I have had ********** (censored) years to figure out how my body handles food and food additives. For example, I know that for me, coffee is like a shot of crank. It produces creativity, undeniable (read sarcasm) brilliance, boundless energy... and an abysmal bottom out a few hours later. I love coffee, so, frankly, that sucks, but I avoid coffee all the same. I'm pretty sure aspartame and MSG give me wicked headaches, not to mention being just plain evil, so I avoid those too. Yet, even knowing myself, I still occasionally like to do something really stupid. Like eat ice cream. At lunch time. I know what ice cream does to me. It puts me in a coma, that's what. Milk doesn't have the same effect, but ice cream = instant coma. I don't know what it is; perhaps the combination of lactose and other sugars with tryptophan that makes my hypoglycemic alter-ego come out to... well, nap... So, on a rainy day at work, when I was feeling somnolent anyway, I thought, "Hey, I'll eat some ice cream and make it really impossible to stay awake! Yay!" Sometimes, I just like to do something really illogical to remind myself I'm not a robot.
This brings me to my current "rumination of the month:" Food: moral issue or nonissue? I was driving home from work with my kids in the car. For some reason, they were really quiet. Either they were content, or someone had drugged them. I don't know. Anyway, I had some peaceful moments to think, and what I was thinking was this, "Why does food feel like a moral issue?" See previous post. It does, though. You hear people say, "I just ate this huge *whatever* and I feel guilty now." I never understood that one, personally. Where I get hit is with things like food additives and health effects. Obviously, since I was just ranting about it not long ago, things like aspartame and sucralose bother me. But so does McDonald's mystery food, which my kids are just as addicted to as most American kids. Then there's the fact that I couldn't get my kids to touch a green vegetable with a fifteen foot stick. And the fact that simply everything, and I mean every-flippin'-thing, is full of sugar. Even if you skip desert, you still run into sugar sugar sugar.
A tiny bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I'm pretty sure somebody or other with clout said that. It's true. You see, I know what eating too much sugar does: obesity, diabetes, mood disorders, hyperactivity, hypothyroidism, and/or hypo-immunity. I know what eating too much fat does: heart disease, stroke, liver disease, aneurysm, and/or obesity. I know what eating weird chemicals does: Alzheimer's, mood disorders, headaches, hyperactivity, dementia, and/or cancer. All of it, simply all of it, makes me freak out and feel guilty about the kind of poison I'm feeding my kids. Then I try to correct it with things like honey instead of sugar, and banning soda from my house, and eschewing McDonald's, no matter how much whining happens. I buy "natural" peanut butter, which is just ground peanuts, and "natural" apple sauce with theoretically has no added sugar, and bread made with actual sugar instead of high fructose whatever... I'm doing the best I can, but it gets to the point where I don't want to eat anything at all, and every bite that goes into my kids' mouths makes me cringe. Then, of course, there's the battle with my husband who reminds me when I refuse to buy pop that, "I still have a sweet tooth, you know, " and who would rather take the kids to McDonald's on Monday night than boil spaghetti and dump canned sauce on it for them. ARG! I'm trying to cure the $@%* sweet tooth, thank you! And having an adult whine about my antisugar campaign just makes it harder with my kids. "Do what I say and not what I do. " Swing your partner, do-si-do, where the headache stops, nobody knows!
Still, I had an epiphany the other day, and it was this: what is the point of health, if not to make life more enjoyable? And how can life be enjoyable if one is constantly wigging out about whether or not some foodstuff is going to effect your health? So I take a deep breath, and I decide... Natural peanut butter with sugar-loaded jelly on wheat or rye bread is okay. Ovaltine chocolate milk is okay. Decaf tea with a little sugar is okay. Cheese and dairy are okay a bit at a time. Bacon is probably not okay most of the time. My kids eat fish, so there I'm doing good (except for the mercury... no, wait! Don't get sidetracked!). Charlie eats fruit. Good. Charlie and Abe, with much brow-beating, will eat corn, peas, green beans. Okay. It's a start. We're not macrobiotic or super-food or organic, but we're taking baby steps. Breathe. Institute moderation policy. Breathe. Model good habits. Breathe. And hit husband with a rolling pin when he asks for pop...
This brings me to my current "rumination of the month:" Food: moral issue or nonissue? I was driving home from work with my kids in the car. For some reason, they were really quiet. Either they were content, or someone had drugged them. I don't know. Anyway, I had some peaceful moments to think, and what I was thinking was this, "Why does food feel like a moral issue?" See previous post. It does, though. You hear people say, "I just ate this huge *whatever* and I feel guilty now." I never understood that one, personally. Where I get hit is with things like food additives and health effects. Obviously, since I was just ranting about it not long ago, things like aspartame and sucralose bother me. But so does McDonald's mystery food, which my kids are just as addicted to as most American kids. Then there's the fact that I couldn't get my kids to touch a green vegetable with a fifteen foot stick. And the fact that simply everything, and I mean every-flippin'-thing, is full of sugar. Even if you skip desert, you still run into sugar sugar sugar.
A tiny bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I'm pretty sure somebody or other with clout said that. It's true. You see, I know what eating too much sugar does: obesity, diabetes, mood disorders, hyperactivity, hypothyroidism, and/or hypo-immunity. I know what eating too much fat does: heart disease, stroke, liver disease, aneurysm, and/or obesity. I know what eating weird chemicals does: Alzheimer's, mood disorders, headaches, hyperactivity, dementia, and/or cancer. All of it, simply all of it, makes me freak out and feel guilty about the kind of poison I'm feeding my kids. Then I try to correct it with things like honey instead of sugar, and banning soda from my house, and eschewing McDonald's, no matter how much whining happens. I buy "natural" peanut butter, which is just ground peanuts, and "natural" apple sauce with theoretically has no added sugar, and bread made with actual sugar instead of high fructose whatever... I'm doing the best I can, but it gets to the point where I don't want to eat anything at all, and every bite that goes into my kids' mouths makes me cringe. Then, of course, there's the battle with my husband who reminds me when I refuse to buy pop that, "I still have a sweet tooth, you know, " and who would rather take the kids to McDonald's on Monday night than boil spaghetti and dump canned sauce on it for them. ARG! I'm trying to cure the $@%* sweet tooth, thank you! And having an adult whine about my antisugar campaign just makes it harder with my kids. "Do what I say and not what I do. " Swing your partner, do-si-do, where the headache stops, nobody knows!
Still, I had an epiphany the other day, and it was this: what is the point of health, if not to make life more enjoyable? And how can life be enjoyable if one is constantly wigging out about whether or not some foodstuff is going to effect your health? So I take a deep breath, and I decide... Natural peanut butter with sugar-loaded jelly on wheat or rye bread is okay. Ovaltine chocolate milk is okay. Decaf tea with a little sugar is okay. Cheese and dairy are okay a bit at a time. Bacon is probably not okay most of the time. My kids eat fish, so there I'm doing good (except for the mercury... no, wait! Don't get sidetracked!). Charlie eats fruit. Good. Charlie and Abe, with much brow-beating, will eat corn, peas, green beans. Okay. It's a start. We're not macrobiotic or super-food or organic, but we're taking baby steps. Breathe. Institute moderation policy. Breathe. Model good habits. Breathe. And hit husband with a rolling pin when he asks for pop...
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Pictorial Thpbbt!
Hummingbirds love me.
Red Milkweed Beetle - Tetraopes tetrophthalmus, field behind my house
For you Hunger Games trilogy fans, an official picture of Katniss, also called Arrowhead, pond behind my house
Slate blue damselfly by the pond
Milkweed Leaf Beetle on my leg
Frog that laid eggs in our kiddie pool. Oops.
Bunny-beetle (see prior post) in my Holly Hocks
Lancet Clubtail Dragonfly (?) taking a nap or posing on the tall grass behind my garage
Excellent specimen of Tall Bellflower, McKinneysburg Rd
Little orangey damselfly on the baby cattails in the pond behind my house
Yet unknown white flower, late June, Richland Rd.
Above and below, Charlie build the little guy a fancy house.
Brazillian butterfly of some sort and ferny things at the Krohn's Conservatory
Zigzag Spiderwort (?), Mark Haley Rd
Abraham is in jail, but he doesn't mind.
Abraham loves Garage Toad.
Abraham participates in Operation Froggy Freedom.
Charlie participates in Operation Froggy Freedom.
Loosestrife flower of some sort.
Starry Campion (?)
Dogbane Leaf Beetle
Rainbow in the sky over Mark Haley
My neighbor's Lebollia
Garlic bloom
Funky funky garlic flowers
I'm stumped. Terrestrial Alga?
Yet unknown white flower, late June, Richland Rd.
Yet unidentified pink flower, late June, Richland Rd
Pale Jewelweed, Colvin's Bend Rd
Erect Dayflower, behind the library, FalmouthDear Blogger,
I hate your new jpeg up-loader. It keeps putting the pictures where I didn't tell it to. These are all out of order and I got tired of messing with them. Also, what the heck is with only letting me upload five at a time? Just saying.
Hannah P
Just An American Road
No offense to my urbanite readers-- it takes all kinds of people to fill a world, after all-- but I don't ever want to live in the city again. It's not that the city has nothing to offer. Not at all. I can eat sushi and Indian food with the best of them. I like theater, opera, and even ballet. And I do miss the smooth pavement under my Rollerblades. (Rollerblades + chip-n-seal road = stitches.) Yet even with all of those inducements, I wouldn't trade trees, creeks, flowers, insects, reptiles, birds, and most importantly, the freedom and the neighbors.
Freedom. It is what we are hopefully all contemplating this time of year. Before the blowing $#!% up and drinking Bud Lite, the 4th was about declaring our independence as a nation from tyranny and voicelessness. The freedom of the country is different. There are no neighborhood associations to tell me I can't grow a vegetable garden or make noise or sunbathe naked... Just kidding. I don't do that either. The freedom of the country is being able to swim in the creek and photograph bugs and all around be non-cosmopolitan, unfashionable, not politically correct, and also chubby. I'm just not cool enough for the city, and I'm okay with that.When I started writing this blog, I called myself a 'Tucky Misfit, but it is a misnomer. On this road, just a fairly average American country road, I've stumbled upon a place and people who are a perfect fit. These are people who take pride in their flower and vegetable gardens. They open their homes to their neighbors with doors thrown wide and enough food for fifty. They don't mock each other's idiosyncrasies. Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm awkward in a crowd and bad at making friends, but these people have swept me up and made me take part with such good will that I didn't even have a chance to feel strange and reclusive. These are people with whom you cannot help being friends.
I've talked about some of them in the past: the neighbor who babysits my kids with firm love and won't hear of taking a cent for it; the one whose porch is always open for beer and conversation; the one who will bush hog a hill or permanently loan a trailer. What do they ask in return? Nothing but friendship.
Last night, my "next door" neighbors decided on the fly to entertain all of us with fireworks and food. There aren't a lot of kids on this road. Mine are the youngest, and I guess I'm high strung. I'm always worried that they'll shred somebody's flower bed or break something in someone's house. Certainly they make messes, and noise, and skid marks on the driveway with their bikes. But this road is my village: the people care about each other like family. My neighbor did her best to make me comfortable while my kids terrorized her house. She made me sit and take a break while her teenage son chased the kids for a few minutes. Her husband talked mushroom hunting with me, and knowing my ridiculous love of all things antennaed took me to see the moths
that gather around their tree-surrounded barn lights at night. Hospitality has not been forgotten here, and I'm so grateful to be part of it. I'm grateful to be drawn out of my shell, welcomed as I am, and not allowed to feel awkward in my own skin for a while.
I'm getting choked up, and maybe my audience is getting a little nauseated. After my food rant, I should eschew such saccharine musings, but I couldn't help it. These people are inspiring in their openness, their faithfulness, and their acceptance. No praise is too great. Happy Independence Day.
Rob and Dawn's flowers
And bombs bursting in air...
And, of course, a random beetle.
I've talked about some of them in the past: the neighbor who babysits my kids with firm love and won't hear of taking a cent for it; the one whose porch is always open for beer and conversation; the one who will bush hog a hill or permanently loan a trailer. What do they ask in return? Nothing but friendship.
Last night, my "next door" neighbors decided on the fly to entertain all of us with fireworks and food. There aren't a lot of kids on this road. Mine are the youngest, and I guess I'm high strung. I'm always worried that they'll shred somebody's flower bed or break something in someone's house. Certainly they make messes, and noise, and skid marks on the driveway with their bikes. But this road is my village: the people care about each other like family. My neighbor did her best to make me comfortable while my kids terrorized her house. She made me sit and take a break while her teenage son chased the kids for a few minutes. Her husband talked mushroom hunting with me, and knowing my ridiculous love of all things antennaed took me to see the moths
that gather around their tree-surrounded barn lights at night. Hospitality has not been forgotten here, and I'm so grateful to be part of it. I'm grateful to be drawn out of my shell, welcomed as I am, and not allowed to feel awkward in my own skin for a while.
I'm getting choked up, and maybe my audience is getting a little nauseated. After my food rant, I should eschew such saccharine musings, but I couldn't help it. These people are inspiring in their openness, their faithfulness, and their acceptance. No praise is too great. Happy Independence Day.
Rob and Dawn's flowers
And bombs bursting in air...
And, of course, a random beetle.
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