My Daily Consumption Routine

          I had a couple of people request that I blog about what I eat and the products I use on a daily basis as a healthy example to model their schedules after, so I thought I would give that a whirl. Please keep in mind that all the products I use are things I have settled on using only because of my own extensive research on health, and not based on any doctors suggestions.
          If you have not read any of my past posts about health, I recommend you do that first to fully understand why I have chosen the diet, schedule and products I have chosen for my life. Then I Guess I'm A Quack, The Con-Artist Named Cancer Treatment, and  Big Pharma: A Wolf In Sheeps Clothing will give you enough of my research to get a thorough understanding of my consumption choices.
          For starters, I am a stay home mother, so I have 2 small children that I must cater to in addition to myself. My choices take them into consideration, however, I feel pretty confident that even if it was just me that I was catering to, my schedule and consumption choices would be the same, or at least very similar.
          We are not on the 3 meal a day plan. Instead, we eat several small snacky meals a day and one larger meal at dinner time usually. There are exceptions, of course, like on days when I know we are going to be out and about for several hours or be somewhere where we can't snack. In that case, I will usually make a larger, more filling breakfast. On weekends, when Sean is home during the day, if we ate at a restaurant and had a large lunch, we will usually have a smaller dinner. So as you can tell, we are flexible, but the schedule I share with you is the routine we follow the majority of the time.
         
          When Sean leaves for work at 5:30 a.m., I get up and drink my 8 oz. glass of  water (not tap) with 2 drops of Lugol's iodine solution mixed in before returning back to bed. Between 8 and 9 a.m. the kids wake up and we all sit down to our breakfast. This usually consists of a small bowl of organic whole grain cereal (Cascadian Farm's Honey Nut O's or Kashi Cinnamon Harvest ) with Almond Breeze milk alternative, which you can also get in vanilla and chocolate, and Riceplex SRB powder sprinkled on top, followed by a whole organic banana and about 4 oz. of Bolthouse Farm's Green Goodness.
          Right after breakfast, we brush our teeth with Kiss My Face organic aloe vera toothpaste. It is free of sodium laurel and laureth sulfate and fluoride.
          For the rest of the day until about 4:30 p.m. we snack and drink water. 4:30 is the cut off time for snacks so that they will be hungry for dinner at 6:30. They are only allowed to drink water between their last snack and dinner time. Snacks are as follows:

• Half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (whole wheat whole grain bread with NO high fructose corn syrup, Cascadian Farms Fruit Spread, and MaraNatha Organic Peanut Butter)
• Half of an avocado, lightly salted
• Organic apple or pear slices
• Raw organic baby carrots
• Organic peach or strawberry slices in probiotic organic yogurt.
• Back to Nature Organic Stoneground Wheat Crackers with organic cream cheese spread.
• Raw organic cucumber slices
• Whole raw peanuts, lightly salted

          Usually around noon, right after eating a snack, I drink a 16 oz. glass of water with 3 drops of Cellfood and take my herbal supplements. These consist of Olive Leaf and a probiotic such as Acidophilus. At that time, I will usually brew some herbal tea for the kids. I choose to give them Traditional Medicinals Organic Cold Care PM Tea because the ingredients are good for the whole immune system, and although it is a PM tea, it does not make them drowsy. Right after boiling the water, I add one drop of Cellfood to the water and mix, then I pour about 3 oz. of water over each tea bag in a cup and let steep for 5 minutes. Lastly I mix a teaspoon of Organic Raw Honey into each cup of tea to sweeten, and serve.
          At dinner time, our meals typically consist of:

• 1 starch, such as organic wheat pasta, organic rice, or organic potatoes.
• A combination of at least 2 lightly steamed organic vegetables. We ALWAYS have at least 1 green vegetable such as asparagus, broccoli, or raw salad.
• Beans 2 to 3 days out the week.
• We include cooked organic vegetables periodically to our meals such as fresh sweet potatoes, corn, or green beans.
• Meat only 1 day a week, and is usually organic lean chicken or fish that is baked, grilled or pan seared, never fried. Once every few months we will eat a beef steak, roast, or organic hamburgers. We never ever eat pork.
• We use fresh organic herbs for seasoning, organic butter, raw sea salt, organic cheeses, and organic extra virgin olive oil for select meals and salads.

          Right before bedtime, everyone gets bathed. We stick to using products that have as little ingredients as possible and as many organic ingredients as possible. We wash and condition our hair with John Master's Organics and wash our bodies with Zum Bar Goat's Milk Soap in oatmeal-lavender. After baths, we moisturize our skin with Organic Unrefined Virgin Coconut Oil.  Before teeth get brushed, the kids each get a half teaspoon of Sambucus Elderberry Syrup to aid in immune system defense. If they are experiencing cold symptoms or a fever, they get a half teaspoon 3 times a day.
          You may not think of your bath and skin products as being used for consumption, but believe it or not, what you put on your skin is also being absorbed into your body and blood stream. Granted, it is small amounts being absorbed gradually, but over time, toxic chemicals can cause all kinds of health problems, so what you put ON is almost as important as what you put IN.
          Well, I guess that about does it. That's a typical day of consumption habits in my household. It may sound difficult to some of you, but for us, it is second nature because we are accustomed to this lifestyle, and we are happy and healthy. Food truly is our medicine around here. Hopefully others will make the effort to get healthier and be more conciencious about what they are putting in their bodies as well. It would definately make for a higher quality of life and longer life expectancy over all.

Stay tuned for a blog post that will be healthy breakfast combinations, vegetarian meals and salad recipes that we eat in OUR home, complete with pictures!

Life is a closet

          A few days ago, Sean and I decided that it was finally time to clean out our closet. We figured it to be a grueling task since there were still unpacked boxes from the move into our house 3 years ago in there, as well as an accumulation of additional crap over that time span. When we needed to store stuff or had something that we didn't know what to do with it, we just shoved it into any available nook and cranny we could find in the closet, and it began to just pile up. I wasn't looking forward to the task initially. I mean, our closet isn't exactly small. It's a deep walk in closet with lots of shelves at the back that were chocked full and weren't even visible due to the piles of other junk in front of them. But I was excited to some degree that we had decided once and for all to just do it and be done with it. It was long overdue, and I knew the feeling of accomplishment once it was done would feel like a burden lifted.

          So we put on some good music, rolled up our sleeves at about 8:45 that evening and started attacking it. An hour into cleaning, it seemed like we hadn't even made a dent in the mess. In fact, it appeared to be growing. The disaster that once lived in the closet, was gradually becoming the disaster of our bedroom. But we had some good laughs. We came across some funny pictures, hillarious birthday cards, and even our old disassembled sex chair in its carry bag. We had some hysterical memories with that thing. "Remember this?!..." Sean blurted out. We both started giggling.

          We focused most of our attention on going through boxes of old photos, keepsakes, mementos, and high school memories... things that we hadn't touched since we got married 6 1/2 years ago. As I was sorting old greeting cards, Sean chimed in, "Hey take a look at these..." He had found a shoe box full of hand written notes and greeting cards from me to him from high school and college. I started going through them. Most of them were sappy, but as I was reading one, tears began to well up in my eyes. It took me back to when I was so in love with Sean, yet didn't know him nearly as well as I know him now. It was so surreal to recall how I felt about us back then. I was so innocent, needy and thrived off of attention and affection from him. Thinking about it was like remembering a movie I had watched in the past. It felt like those kids weren't us.

          I laid the note down on the bed in front of Sean, and he began reading it. He sniffled and then turned his head to look at me. We stared at each other in amazement for a moment, then he leaned in and gently kissed me.

          "I love you one hundred times more now than I did then," I said. "I know. I feel the same about you, baby," he replied. I broke focus and looked around at the massive mess that was around us. It was getting late. Boxes, trash and piles of items filled our bedroom. It felt a little overwhelming to see how much we still had left to do, and yet the reminiscing made it enjoyable. I shared with Sean how happy I was to be there with him going through memories of our past. Despite the task at hand, we were on cloud 9. Just seeing visuals of our growth and the stages we have gone through to get where we are now was remarkable.

          Sean went in the closet and brought out another box that was sealed. I cut it open and immediately broke down in tears. I pulled out the crib quilt that I sewed by hand for our first born while I was pregnant with her.  We felt at the time like she would never arrive, and now my baby is 5 years old. And my youngest already 3. Neither of them are much of babies any more. We looked at pictures of my oldest when she was new born. There is no feeling that compares to bringing home your first baby with the person you are madly in love with. Looking at the child and knowing the two of you made that in love is just mind boggling and gives you chills. We were so clueless at the time, but we figured it out together. That moment was so pure, and it is gone from us now. It is but a memory. We are at a new place, and everything that has occurred between then and now has grown us up as individuals and as a couple.

          Sean walked over to the computer and changed the music over to a James Taylor album, a favorite of both of ours. He suggested we take a little break and I agreed. Our bedroom light is on a dimmer switch, so I dimmed it for some mood lighting and we came together in an embrace. There we began to dance.

           One slow song played. Then another. And another. And another. We didn't exchange one word. Rather we just soaked up that tender moment right there in the midst of the chaotic clutter. We read each others thoughts and anticipated each others moves. He led and I followed in silence, and there in that moment nothing else mattered, no one else existed, and time just stopped for us. As we were finishing up our last dance, we kissed. Then we turned up the light to finish cleaning and organizing. The rest of it seemed to go rather quickly. We hauled the bulging bags of trash out, returned the newly organized containers back to the closet, looked over the closet with approval, and quickly settled into bed.
          It was 1:30 in the morning when we finished up, and we were exhausted. It felt good to have accomplished all that with Sean, and I actually felt like I would sleep better. By the time I crawled into bed and cuddled my body up to his, he was fast sleep. I pulled his arm over me and laid there, thinking about the evening... and then it dawned on me how our closet is exactly like life.
          Life gets cluttered and even dirty sometimes because we don't care enough in the moment to be wise about what we do with our stuff, and before you know it, you have one huge overwhelming load to have to deal with. Life in general is overwhelming. Whether you like it or not, you have to deal with it because it doesn't just go away. Messes don't clean up themselves, and if you aren't making a point of keeping things in order and filtering through things daily, it will certainly pile up on you and make sorting through it an even harder task when you do finally get to it.  But when you have someone helping you stay focused and encouraging you, it makes dealing with it a lot easier. Along the way, there will be a lot of garbage you encounter, but a lot of truly amazing things as well. If you focus on the good points and keep a happy way about you inspite of the difficulty that is life, it makes the journey worth while. You will seem to not mind the difficulties because you realize without having to sift through the trash, you would have never found the treasures. It may have taken longer than you were anticipating to get it to your liking, but when you finally do, you find that the things you kept were the things that truly mattered the most to you. You can move around much better in life and find the answers nearly effortlessly IF you do a good thorough job. You will stand back and look at your work, and before the light goes out, you will evaluate the job you have done. Maybe you can sigh a sigh of relief that it is finished and you are pleased with what you have created, thus allowing you to rest peacefully. But maybe you cannot. I suppose it would be a rather dissappointing feeling to not be pleased with the job you did... to have the light go out knowing there was still more work that needed to be done. I imagine there wouldn't be much sense of accomplishment or rest that would follow. You would be likely to feel like all the hard work was in vain which would be rather depressing.
          The moral... You only have so long before the light goes out and you have to be laid to rest. Don't wait too late before you start cleaning up your closet. And remember, if you focus on the treasures and not the garbage, it makes the journey easier and worth all the hard work.
     

What are YOUR beliefs? Take the poll.

          For the next couple of weeks I am conducting a poll on my blog. Three different polls to be exact, and as different as the topics seem to be from each other, they are actually all connected. I will be using them for an article that I am in the process of putting together for December. I'm going to need your help getting it out there so I can get as many votes on the polls as possible, so feel free to share this link with others that you think will participate. The more people that participate the more accurate the results will be. Even if you don't follow my blog and plan to never read it again, I would still like to hear your opinion on these topics, so please take part in the polls. The poll questions are in the right hand side bar of my blog. Just scan down a little ways and you will find them. Thank you so much! Have a wonderful day!

Heavenly minded?... or head in the clouds?

     

          As of lately, I have noticed that a few people I know have been preaching a turn or burn message that promotes and encourages others to not concern themselves with ANYTHING of this world, and by anything I mean career and monetary success, establishing and reaching personal goals, working on relationships, etc.  It seems to be a trend among certain religious groups. Mainly the 18 to 23 crowd or the one's that hold firm beliefs that the rapture will be occurring very soon. These same people teach that nothing but serving the lord matters, and usually use this belief as provision from God for them to not have to work a lot (or at all), to not have to be their own sole monetary support, or to not have to spend a lot of time catering to their spouses and children. (I know a guy that actually neglects being home to work at his church and spend time with his worship band buddies playing music, and uses Deuteronomy 33:9 and Matthew 10:37 as justification for it.) Needless to say, the people in this group more times than not have mainly things that others have donated to them out of charity or have given to them on loan, and have fairly shallow or dysfuctional relationships with others.
          I might also point out that they usually do not encourage this way of living to the people they depend on the most. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that even those that claim their way of life is due to the fact that Jesus is returning soon, are merely using religion as an excuse to be lazy because they know that many people would feel guilty to refute something that is supposedly what God told them to do. I, however, have no problem not catering to people like that. After all, didn't David Koresh engage in polygamy and statutory rape and Jim Jones lead a mass suicide of 909 church members all in the name of God? As insane as those men were, they had followers who whole heartedly supported them in their fanaticism.

There Were Two Roads...

          The low road. We have all found ourselves traveling on it at least once in our lives. You know the one I'm talking about... the one filled with nagging, nitpicking and faultfinding. The road laden with sadness, jealousy, and resentment. Packed to the hilt with spite and negativity. Where backstabbing your supposed friends is a regular occurrence, and maliciously soiling the reputation of your enemies is something you strive for. It's a place where trashing those we hardly even know is widely accepted. It is a miserable, wretched, pot-hole riddled road.
        When was the last time you found yourself walking down that low road? Or are you traveling down that road right now? You're out there judging and condemning all kinds of people, mostly for things you know very little about. You're insulting your teachers and college professors to other classmates, tearing down coworkers behind their backs, even slandering and belittling your own family members just to make yourself look better. You're overflowing with pride and arrogance, criticizing practically everyone in sight just to prove a point.
          And I don't think you really want to be there, do you? You honestly don't like what you're doing, but you're doing it nonetheless. It seems easier to let it perpetuate than to stop it. Stopping it takes will power and restraint, and that is just too much work for you. But you are absolutely, positively 100% MISERABLE.  And since misery just adores company, the cycle continues. The mess just keeps rolling down hill and the problem snowballs.
          Hey, it's easy to find fault in others. Very easy. It's easy to continually point out flaws and criticize the weaknesses of others in a demeaning way. But it's wrong and will never get you anywhere but alone. Let's face it, trashing and tearing down others is no way to make progress in your life. It's certainly no way to keep or make friends. And it definitely isn't the way to make yourself happy. It doesn't bring one iota of value to anyone.

Miracle Tree

          About 3 o'clock this morning I was woken up by a loud sound. I sat up in bed and thought, "What the heck WAS that?" But since it didn't appear to have woken anyone else in the house, I assumed it was only in a dream, so I laid down and went back to sleep.
          5:15 rolled around and Sean's alarm went off. He hit the snooze a couple of times before jumping out of bed in a panic. While Sean got ready for work, I rode the line between sleep and awake until he came in the bedroom to kiss me goodbye. Typical morning so far.
         And then a shift. Just as I was drifting back into sleep, Sean walked back into the bedroom, woke me up, and VERY calmly said, "Babe, I need you to get up and get dressed. Don't freak out when I tell you this, ok?... ya know that tree in the front yard that we thought was dead?... it fell on the car."
          Despite his efforts to make sure I didn't freak out, I inicially jumped out of bed with, "You've got to be kidding me?!"
          Honestly, I wasn't upset about our new car being damaged really. I was just pissed off that I had fun plans today with the kids and my mom that would now have to go on hold because I was going to spend the whole day dealing with phone calls to our insurance company, cleaning up the huge mess, getting the car to the dealership for repairs (if they can even fix it) and getting a rental.
         We knew Sean couldn't afford to miss a day at work, but he assured me that he would make the phone calls to our insurance company as soon as he got to work. He also said to just have my mom pick us up and go on and have fun today, and he would let me know when I needed to get the rental. That lightened my load and I admitted he was right. No sense in letting this mess up my plans.
         So now I am just waiting for Sean to call me in a couple of hours to tell me what to do first, and as I sit here and think about the whole situation, it really is amusing.
          I'm actually kinda happy and excited and part of me just wants to laugh. Not because this has driven me to insanity, but because in the past, every time something seemingly bad has happened (that is, it appeared on the surface to be unfortunate), it actually benefited us in the long run and we ended up coming out way ahead.
          It isn't a total shocker. Obviously, we knew the tree was on it's last leg. Every time the wind has blown hard over the last year, small limbs have broken off that tree. You can look at it and tell it's dead, but we just hadn't gotten out there and chopped it down yet. Usually when a dead tree comes down, it's because it breaks in half or splits down the middle. We weren't ever worried about that with this tree though because it isn't top heavy, it isn't very tall, and the trunk itself looked pretty solid. Main thing we were concerned with was a limb falling off and landing on someone, but considering we rarely do anything in that part of the yard, we didn't make an issue of it.
          Here's the funny part. We have been hoping and praying for rain in our area for some time, and we were finally blessed with 2 days of constant showers, which seemed to saturate our yard pretty decently. Apparently the ground was so soft where that dead tree was standing that it was actually uprooted and the ENTIRE tree (yes, roots and all) toppled over. What are the chances of that happening? Any normal dead tree that looks like that one, wouldn't have fallen over until chopped down. As I said, it wasn't tall and wasn't top heavy because hurricane Ike had already wiped out all of the large branches and most of the small ones. We never ever suspected that the ground wouldn't hold the large roots of the tree, but there it was clear as day when we woke up this morning.
          The tree could have fallen in any direction. In fact, based on the shape of the tree, it would have made more sense for it to fall a different way, but instead, it came right down on top of our new car, smashing in the back part of the roof and shattering the rear windshield. So there is glass all over my driveway and yard, as well as thousands of splintered tree parts and a massive rut in the ground where the tree roots use to be. And can't miss the tree itself laying across my front yard. That should be fun to clean up. But hey, a little work never killed anyone. In fact, this is just what i need to get my butt in gear doing the landscaping I've been wanting to do.
          Anyway, it's just too perfect how it happened. As if someone or something purposefully made it happen. And quite frankly, I believe that whole heartedly. I believe we needed this to happen. I don't know why yet, but I believe something awesome is going to come out of all this.
          No, this is not wishful thinking because I'm just trying to be positive when I really want to get my panties in a twist. I mean, I truly do KNOW that this is going to benefit us. I just can't look at this situation as something negative because I know it's not. The past has proven to me that my faith in our security, well being and blessings ensures that we will always be benefited from everything that happens in our life. So while other people are going, "Man, that sucks. I'm so sorry," I'm thinking the whole time, "I'm not!" I'm just anxious to see how this pans out for us.
          I can deal with a little inconvenience of having to clean up and remove the tree and get a rental car while our car is being fixed. Or who knows, maybe they can't fix it, and our gap insurance will pay it off, leaving us the opportunity to get an even better car. It wouldn't surprise me one bit.
         I have come to expect all the best things out of life. Things that most people view as road blocks are always detour signs for us that lead us down the shorter, more scenic route. I'm really beginning to enjoy it. It may seem coincidental to others, but I don't believe in coincidence and I don't believe in luck. I believe in knowing without a doubt that your life holds blessings and greatness and your faith manifests what you believe. I guess you could say the powers that be in the universe knows what we need and want and did what was necessary to bring it into our life in the quickest way possible.
        A tree falling on our new car a bad thing? Please... I bet we just hit the jackpot.