Thrifty Mom in a Consumer World

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2010-03-04T13:59:00.001-05:00

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Note to self: stop laughing and write!

2010-02-17T03:00:00.001-05:00

Just posting this cuz it made me LOL and I need the ~~kick in the pants~~ motivation:

see more Lol Celebs

Overweight is a disadvantage our kids don;t need.

2010-02-16T03:00:00.002-05:00

Kudos to the writers of this article on the psychological effects of overweight and obesity in children!

"While some responded to (Michelle Obama during an interview) the First Lady's divulging of her kids' weight problems as insensitive, psychologists say pretending the issue isn't there doesn't help anyone involved."

I agree 100%! I have said before that the first step in battling obesity is to stop acting as if it is some random act of happenstance. Overweight does not need to be embraced. Nor do the overweight need to be treated as victims. Like smokers and drinkers, drug addicts and gamblers, they chose this condition and embraced it. They need help shaking it, not pity.

Childhood obesity in particular. Unlike overweight adults, our kids don't choose to be fat. Our small children aren't picking up cigs or getting into the liquor cabinet, they aren't into crack or casinos. But our wee children - even in infancy - are being indoctrinated into the Way OF The Fat. And who is doing it? Us. Mommy and dada. Would you give your toddler a snort of cocaine? Then why do you let her drink soda?

To feed your child crap foods, and too much of them, deny that he's overweight, then turn around and tell him that his excess flab is "just who he is" or that it "runs in the family" and send him to school to be picked on and bullied is obscene.

""Overweight kids are more likely to have depression and low self-esteem, to be teased or bullied, and to bully other children," said Catherine Davis, associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia. "These can be serious problems for these children." "

Are we setting our own kids up for not only physical illness and infirmity but mental strife as well? Are we authoring their future misery just because it's sooooo much easier to stop for fast food, let them get the school lunch, or cave in and buy the cold cereal and the soda?

I say, shamefully; yes.

Two diet myths bite the dust

2010-02-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

If you've read this blog for any amount of time you are aware of my firm belief that most of the crap preached by 'fitness experts', registered dieticians, and doctors regarding diet and fitness is horseshit.

I think that the FDA food pyramid is the illustration of death, disease, and misery. I think that the food served in school lunch cafeterias and given out on WIC the opposite of intended: not healthy but poisonous to our children. I find people who engage in chronic cardio for weight loss really kind of sad.*

So I was pretty chuffed to find a few articles on two of the more pervasive myths: exercise and 'grazing'.

Here is a really nice essay by Frank over at Exuberant Animal on why we shouldn't exercise.

He says that exercise, defined as: "doing abstracted movements in a stereotyped, repetitive pattern." is unnatural and boring (among other things) and I agree entirely. Walking miles on a treadmill or riding an exercise bike all the while zoned out listening to your iPod, or worse, staring at the idiot Box on the wall is NOT how we evolved to move.

"Exercise is commonly promoted as a cure for everything that ails our bodies and our spirits: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression and all the rest. “Just do more exercise” is the common prescription offered by both professionals and lay persons alike.

But if exercise was actually the solution to our public health crisis, wouldn’t we be seeing better results? After all, experts and celebrities have been promoting exercise for decades and the state of the human body continues to deteriorate. In fact, if we looked at the trajectories of lifestyle disease and exercise promotion, we would find that they track pretty closely with one another. If we looked strictly at correlation, we might even come to the conclusion that exercise promotion causes atrophy, obesity and poor health.

{snip}

In short, exercise has been a spectacular public health failure and an immense waste of human potential. The biggest consequence of exercise promotion is that we have managed to make millions of people feel guilty about their failure to do something that is inherently unpleasant.

How true! Every single person I know online who does cardio for weight loss / fitness has gotten on Facebook or Twitter and typed one of these lines:

"Man, I don't want to go to the gym, today"

"*sigh* I need to do my workout, but can't make myself"

"I guess I'll go do my cardio now. Ugh"

Or some version thereof. People who do cardio for weight loss / fitness frequently HATE doing it. So why are they? I do no purposeful cardio: I don't 'exercise' at all. Furthermore, I've lost 155lbs NOT doing it.

-----

I also found this wee snippet by Dr. Steve Parker over on the Advanced Mediterranean Diet Blog on the concept of eating several times a day. How many of us have heard the tonnes of folks insist that eating 6 times a day is a MUST? More horseshit.

"One of the currently popular dieting gimmicks is to eat every 3-4 hours while awake. The rationale is, “you need the energy.” "

"As long as you’re eating a fair amount of carbohydrates, you can store plenty of energy as glucose in glycogen - in your liver and muscles - to easily live without eating for at least 8-12 hours. So, there’s no “need” to eat every 3-4 hours. If there were, we would have gone extinct years ago. At rest, you’re getting about 60% of your energy supplied by metabolism of fats, not carbohydrates. Most people can live without all food, but not water, for about two months."

(emphasis mine just because it's a cool fact.)

So those dieters who say they just can't last for more than a few hours without eating ("I get so hungry" oh boo-hoo, honey, suck it up. If you'd eat the right foods you wouldn't get hungry every two hours!) are full of it.

Incidentally, I personally eat under 30g carbs per day - most from vegetables - and often eat less than 10g / day for days on end. I can easily go 6-8 hours without being hungry at all AND I'm hypoglycemic!

*Note: I am amused by the folks who do chronic cardio for 'pleasure' but I'm willing to keep my opinions on it to myself (*ahem* for the most part). My father, and several of the readers of this blog either run or bicycle and that's cool so long as they never try to sell me on how 'healthy' it is. Repeatedly overtaxing ones body physically, in a way it was not evolved to be abused, whilst racking up injury after injury ... well, seems a bit disingenius.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! TV commercials and obesity.

2010-02-11T03:00:00.001-05:00

So according to a new study, commercials are the reason for the TV / childhood obesity link.

Horseshit!

Here it is again: the overweight as victims. As if they have absolutely no control over themselves. As if what we need is more flaccid and useless government involvement to save us from ourselves.

ALSO, the whole thing just misses the bloody point:

"television commercials for sweetened cereals, junk food and fast food chains probably had an insidious influence over a child’s food preferences. The more television commercials a child is exposed to, the more likely he or she will be to try those foods and want to continue eating them, which then increases risk for weight gain."

Can you say Epic Parenting FAIL?

None of these children is breaking open his piggy bank and sneaking down to the Piggly Wiggly to buy a box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs behind mum's back. The children's PARENTS are buying this crap for them.

The bottom line is this: if you are so slack-twisted as to cave in to your kid's whingey demands for the latest sugary cereal or fast food meal to the detriment of his health, then you aught to be ashamed of yourself. Period.

Dear US Government: stop throwing money at this problem everywhere but where it counts. The only way to combat childhood obesity is to cut the legs out from under the huge money-making scams of Industrial Agriculture and Big Pharma and target the root of the problem: MOTHERS.

From the moment she concieves, mom has the ultimate influence on her child. She pours HFCS into his veins inutero, she makes only a feeble attempt at breastfeeding and instead shoves a bottle of fake chemical crap into his wee mouth, she lets him stay up too late, watch too much telly, eat what he wants, rather than toeing the line and laying down the rules for his own good.

We need, all of us; bloggers, writers, pediatricians, hospital staff, DHEC, etc, to EDUCATE mothers on their influence and make them see how their decisions can be good ones. Right now no one knows. Breastfeeding, for example, should be encouraged and flaunted, a joyous triumph of bonding and health rather than a "Oh, I guess I might try it ..." sort of thing.

We all need to aggressively talk about REAL good nutrition on blogs and Twitter, on bulletin boards and Facebook. Mothers unite! We could bring about real change.

Immune system re-boot?

2010-02-10T09:32:00.000-05:00

So I'm sick. Bleh.

This culminates a fortnight in which Boy was puking and had diarrhea for two days, then, Daddy had ditto. Bitty and Bulk and Fiver have been caughing, snotting, and snorking all over, then, as a grand finale, my bub with the best immune system, THCTD fell ill yesterday.

Now I'm sick.

It used to be that this was not a remarkable occurance. Now it is. And that's why I feel compelled to blog about it.

See, I used to be ill all the time. From a small child I had asthma and fell ill with any little respiratory bug that so much as stuck it's germy wee tongue out at me.

As an adult, as recently as two years ago, I would be guaranteed to get very sick three or four times a year. And I mean the works: stuffed head, sore throat, clogged lungs, coughing, no voice, miserable!

And ... now I don't. What changed? Was it dropping out of the outside-the-home workforce? Nope, did that 5 years ago. Was it losing a tonne of weight? I'm sure that helped, but two years ago I had already dropped 100lbs (I've only lost 55 since then).

So what happened?

I gave up grains and sugar, fruit and starches. I started eating simple, whole foods consisting of animal fat, meat, fish, eggs, real butter, aged cheese, heavy cream, and fresh cruciferous and root vegetables.

It took me about 8 months to realise that I had not been ill in a while. Now, over year later I've noticed that even if I do get a sniffle, I get over it quickly. Used to be that even if I didn't get desperately sick with a cold, it would hang on and hang on for weeks.

So for what it's anecdotally (is that a word?) worth, there it is.

I talk all the time about how much I enjoy how I eat now. How wonderful it is to never be hungry, to never crave anything, to look at the bank of candybars at every Wal Mart checkout with bored eyes. I adore eating huge steaks, fatty pork chops, big fresh brown eggs, steamed cauliflower drenched in butter, jumbo shrimp, and cabbage fried down in bacon grease in the traditional *drool* Southern manner.

I look forward to eating but don't obsess over eating any more. I am free of calorie counting and feeling horrible and guilty. And best of all, I anticipate living like this to a ripe, crabby, old age!

Is my new good health an indicator that I'll get to see 80 years old as a lucid, active, guarrelous old dame?

I think so!

What do YOU think? Has your health improved on a Paleo / Primal / Whole foods diet? Or any other? Dish it!

Portion sizes

2010-02-09T12:49:00.000-05:00

I ran accross this blog post today by Amy Alkon over at Advice Goddess about how the FDA and serving sizes and it made me laugh out loud in several places.

(William Neuman in the NY Times) "Consider the humble chip: most potato or corn chip bags today show a one-ounce serving size, containing a tolerable 150 calories, or thereabouts. But only the most disciplined snacker will stop at an ounce. For some brands, like Tostitos Hint of Lime, that can be just six chips."

(Amy Alkon) "Here's a little assistance: If it says "Tostitos" anywhere on the package, it's bad for you."

So the FDA wants to, apparently, put the nutritional information on the package for the sized portion that the average American eats.

Holy fat cells Batman! The average American fatty eats 1/3 of a BAG of crisps at a time, she cuts a 12 serving cake into only eight pieces (and sometimes eats two), he has three or four breadsticks at lunch, she eats half of the basket of nachos at the Mexican restaurant.

Sound like I'm just being mean? Nope. I know. I'm a former Professional Fat Person, remember? We know how to eat. The Professional Fat Person's goal is to eat herself to death and we do it just as hard as we can.

I used to buy candybars (two servings of death, each?) two and three at a time. I could eat an entire bag of Sweet Sixteen powdered sugar doughnuts - easily - in 15 minutes.

I think that the FDA's idea of adjusting the portion sizes is well-meant but will it do any good? If Fatzilla sees that she just ate over half of the calories that she needs for an entire day out of a Cheezy Poof bag will it deter her? Nope, IMHO. She'll rationalize it. "I deserve it after the day I had." or "Oh, one day off the wagon won't hurt. I'll do better tomorrow." or "I didn't eat that much, I only ate half a serving".

Overeating is like alcoholism in many ways. Trust me. You tell yourself anything. You cry and rage and moan go on diet after diet and hate yourself and then keep eating. You blame your sex, your age, your genetics. You tell yourself that you "deserve" a treat, that you don't want to be "deprived" of bread and sugar cuz "life is short" and you want to live it! Here's the one I hate the most: "I don't want to skip desert just so I can live a few more years an addled old fart in a rest home!"

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Number one, I don't need dessert. I don't have to derive my pleasure from sugar and bread. I get pleasure from newborn lambs and the early snow drops around my post box. I get pleasure from my children's drawings sent home from school. I get pleasure from the pinks and oranges in the clouds at sunset, from zoning out listening to my iPod while I sort clothes, and from, yes, eating. Eating an inch-thick steak, a slab of wild caught salmon, a new vegetable (just today I tried parsnips - nom!) steamed and doused in real butter.

Number two, skipping dessert will, I'm confident, help keep me OUT OF an old folks home! I bloody well plan to be 80 years old and out hoeing my garden and gathering eggs. The sugar addicts who will end up sick, weak, obese, diabetic, and riddled with heart disease can have my bed. Not this kid. I plan on enjoying my grandkids and teaching them a thing or two.

So, overeating is like alcoholism. You lie to yourself, dodge the truth from friends, and keep destroying your health for your own pleasure. The only way to overcome it is to make up your mind and just give the bad stuff up. Portion size adjustments, nutritional info on menues, etc is going to have very little impact. We need to be going after the big boys: industrial agriculture; we need to be waging ad wars like they did with cigarettes (show the horrible effects of sugar on the body), and so on.

Most of all we need to STOP treating the overweight as victims. When we acknowledge that fat babies and toddlers are made fat by their mothers, that obese adults are not just people to whom some random misfortune has befallen but authors of their own fates, then we can help them help themselves.

Will we totally eleminate obesity? Nope. There will always be Pro Fatties, just like there are still plenty of smokers. People can really be blind. But it would help, IMHO.

Loving this new Paleo blog

2010-02-05T08:39:00.000-05:00

I am totally loving this blogger whose post was featured here yesterday! That'd be Doug over at Health Habits.

He is actually a personal trainer who endorses the Paleo style diet(!) He has written a brilliant post called What Kind Of Paleo Are You? that is a much better version of my Paleo Page (and I'm thinking of just linking to his on my page).

I was impressed that he sussed out most of the permutations of Paleo and I'm really glad to see someone point out that the Paleolithic / primal / neanderthal / caveman / whatever you wanna call it diet can be modified to suit everyone's needs and still be GOOD for you. You don't HAVE to crouch in the corner of your kitchen and eat raw meat with your hands (have you ever noticed how superior some of those strict paleo folks are? They love to sneer at the rest of us on forums, have ye noticed? Yeah, I've noticed, too.)

So, let's see, I'm a Paleo, plus dairy, minus nightshades, fruit, and new world veg. Woot! Subcategory FTW!

LOL!

PS: check out the obesity by state graph.

Thrifty Cave Mom feel good about food choices! Ugh!

2010-02-04T13:30:00.000-05:00

I'm so damned busy (which is no damned excuse, I know, I know) but it occured to me yesterday (or was that Monday? Was day before yesterday Monday?)

ANYway, it occured to me, erm ... this week, that I DO get to quickly read many many great articles and blog posts via my Twitter Tweeps in the corse of a week and the LEAST I could do was just re-post 'em here. That way, any actual readers who wandered by (heh. as if) would have content and my Tweeps would get some linky love and perhaps the cobwebs wouldn't build up around here so.

So here's today's:

Caveman diet GOOD. (via the Helath Habits blog and @Mark_Sisson)

Check out this cool graph which shows the (shocking) difference in carb intake in 10,000 years:

(Ugh ... is that blurry? Wanted you to be able to read it)

Anyway, WOW! 59% refined grains?! 18% sugars!

And to think I was feeling a teensy bit wicked about my noon meal of jumbo shrimp, steak, and mashed rutabegas all drenched in real butter.

*burp*

Worrying about what others think, again

2010-01-27T09:46:00.000-05:00

Jeez. A blog post a month? OK ... that's just shite.

ANYway, sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry I'm not one of those Twitter Moms who put up a blog post every single day (and Tweet it several times! *simper*) plus finish a crafty project to put up on Etsy every week (and Tweet it! With pics!).

SO not me.

I'm on the tired, harried, bedraggled, mom end of the spectrum. Just this week: husband sick, oldest son's foot impaled by nail in the barnyard, more illness, truck still not fixed, and I straggled in to the elemtary school today - hair awry, and grubbily clothed - to retrieve the sick child's homework after spending the afternoon rolling 1200lb round bales of hay off the trailer in the cold and the wet. I was (as I Tweeted!) muddy and crabby and bloody well ready for happy hour to begin.

I wondered then: do I envy those moms who always look so put-together, peering archly out at me through designer sunglasses and the side window glass of an expensive, late model SUV? Those women who have never had to roll pennies to put petrol in their cars, who have never had to drag a sick goat into the barn and out of the freezing rain, who put their pre-schoolers in daycare - even though they are at home - just so they have some "me time" to hit the gym and the Starbucks?

Nah.

(OK, OK, I do envy those lovely newer Suburbans (which seat eight) that so many of the mothers-of-two seem to drive (carefully edging around even the teensiest pothole lest they cause the slightest mud splatter!)
and have adorned with the wee stick-figure family and, their own monogram - in pink! *squee!*)

*hack*hack*gag*

Sorry. Anyway, so ... yeah, (as Eddie Izzard would say.)

I sincerely don't envy those people. Folks can live and parent as they see fit (or are able). It would be nice if they didn't look down their noses at me and had a bit of comprehension of how really busy I am, but hey, what can you expect from people who have never suffered adversity or wanted for anything in their lives?

The worst thing that has ever happened to these ladies was not getting asked to the junior prom by the person they wanted, not getting to have that particular shade of persimmon for their bridesmaids dresses, not getting the matching stroller/carseat/diaper bag combo that was on their massive baby shower registry.

Aw, poo. Life sucks sometimes doesn't it?

I try to cut 'em some slack when they don't understand that I just don't have the time or the means to donate money or my own presence for the myriad little "things" - parties, fundraisers, appreciation gifts, holiday celebrations - that they feel are so very important. I swear I'm not either 1) a stuck up bitch or 2) a moronic White Trash ho who has no concept of society and who only gets up from in front of the telly to wipe the Cheesy Poof dust off my boobs and come get my kids from school.
My children are there to learn. I have a huge amount of appreciation for their teachers (and support them by sending my child to school well fed, well rested, appropriately dressed, and with all library books, supplies, and homework.) If these other moms feel the need to celebrate, raise funds, or throw parties, then I'm all for it. Just understand that not all of us can do that.

Hey, somebody's gotta drag sick goats.

PS: well, my week's just getting worse. *sigh* Sad day. :(

New decade Quickie!

2010-01-02T07:32:00.000-05:00

Good morning!

How can it be 2010 already?! It was just 1982 a few years ago and I was graduating from Blacksburg high school (Blacksburg VA, home of Virginia Tech, Go HOKIES!) with absolutely NO idea what I was going to do with my life!

Oh, wait ... not much has changed.

LOL!

Sorry for the long absense. As is common in my life, everything fell down and went boom all at once.

Not only did I have to endure repeated exposure to crowds of people in social situations, which makes me crazy anxious, and put up with the Christian Consumer Holiday crap, but everything else went balls up.

At one point - mid holiday - all three of our working automobiles were, erm ... NOT working, which is a teensy problem since we live way out in the backwater have no family nearby who can ferry us about.

To make the problem worse, both vans had multiple problems and we ran out of hay (which we need the truck to transport).

Add to all of this that my cheque for December (from my business - my 'paycheque') got LOST ...

Well, you get the picture.

Anyway, we're getting it back together, one van is fixed (yay!), and the other is in the shop awaiting mechanical love. The truck is in the fixing queue and one of my fulfillment companies (CafePress, the one whose cheque got lost) did an incredible job of scrambling me a new cheque (cut same day and overnighted - Cafe Press WIN!), so we're just fine.

The children had a wonderful holiday, got gobs and gobs of great toys, plus we're all warm, safe, and healthy, which is, really, all that matters. :D

Happy 2010, everybody!

Just had to share this with you:

see more dog and puppy pictures

ai can haz as my permanent avatar?

ROTFL!

Writer, me

2009-12-01T07:42:00.000-05:00

So NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month is over. I'm vastly relieved and also sad. What am I going to do with myself now?

Not only did I finish and make my 50,000 words in 30 days but Bodog did as well AND my oldest son, Boy, finished 3000 words in the Young Writer's Program. It was exhilirating, frustrating, and a huge learning experience (for me anyway).

So, if you say "well, I can't write a novel! I have a job! I have a kid! I have laundry and dishes and dogs to walk and meals to cook!" well, suck it up, sister. I have all of that, plus a farm full of animals and I managed to do it. I may even have retained some vestiges of sanity. *twitch*

Now excuse me, I gotta go write.

Musings on diet and the holidays

2009-11-25T06:29:00.000-05:00

So, I've lost about 5 more pounds, bringing me to a total weight loss of 155lbs. I'm still 20 lbs away from my goal, but that's OK.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, though. Now, I've gotten several comments and questions personally and seen the sameTweeted and blogged and whatever-you-call-posting-on FarceBook'd. The question?

"Oh, so how do you handle the holidays?"

Uhh, what? What do you mean 'handle' the holidays?

Well, it turns out that during Thanksgiving and xmas, apparently, like Halloween, people (mostly women) have some sort of mental breakdown that causes them to gorge themselves. They know that they are going to do this in advance (which is, frankly, scary). They psych themselves up, work out more, diet more, fret and worry all the way up to the holiday in question.

Then they gorge themselves anyway.

THEN they flog themselves on twitter and blogs and farcebook about eating too much. Then the next holiday arrives. Lather, rinse, repeat.

They all want to know how *I* handle these holidays, how it is that *I* won't gain weight. Well, the answer is simple and here it is:

I'm not dieting. period.

I can't 'fall off the wagon' or 'cheat' because I'm not on a diet.

Diets don't work. They are a powerful, pervasive, MYTH. If you are on a diet or dieting right now, then you are just treading water.

Sugar and grains are bad for you. They will kill you. They cause obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. I want to be a fit and healthy 80 year old, not a fat, sick, and tired one*. Indulging myself now on sweets and 'comfort foods' just because I want to is not worth ending my life unable to walk or breathe.

So I don't eat them, end of story. I'd no more eat "just one tiny piece" of Halloween candy than I would take "just one tiny" drag off of a cigarrette. I'd not eat a slice of pecan pie any more than I would snort a line of cocaine. I adore pecan pie and I'm pretty sure cocaine is fun but neither one is good for me.

I enacted a lifestyle change 2 years ago that I'll be sticking with for the rest of my life. My poison of choice is alcohol which, I'm proud to say, I have cut back quite a bit and only drink in moderation. The rest of that stuff is gone out of my life. I love the foods I eat and can eat up to 3000 calories a day and not gain weight. It's a perfect lifestyle for me.

So how do I handle the holidays? You nom all you want at the dessert table; get seconds, if you like. Pass me the turkey!

*Yes, yes, I know, everyone has the anecdotal relative who drank, smoked, and ate a loaf of white bread a day and lived to be 90 and felt like a teenager. Genetics and lifestyle do play a role. But I don't know how well my genetics are going to protect me and I've spent half a lifetime abusing my body with sugar and grains, so I'm gonna err on the side of caution, LOL.

Double rant, and it's a doozy! Lotsa CAPS

2009-11-23T12:56:00.000-05:00

So, I need to be writing on NaNoWriMo, I'm behind on my word count, I just spent the morning over at my childrens's school to be with Bitty whilst they gave the H1N1 (she did swimmingly), but I just HAD to share these two articles with you.

First this article on the mind boggling number of hours the average american kid spends in front of the television.

They (finally) thought to look at the amount of telly viewed at daycares and were stunned (!!) to find that *gasp* daycares sit the wee tykes down in front of the telly up to a whopping 2 hours a day. Home daycares were the worst with kids watching telly an average of 2.5 hours a day.

Am I the only one who is not shocked by this? It's just too easy. I know many many moms who say "Oh I just put them in front of it so I can grab a shower" or "So I can fix dinner" or my favourite: "I have it on a lot but he/she never watches it. It's just for background noise."

Oh, horseshit.

You know damn good and well that those kids are in front of that idiot box for hours a day and mom is either in denial or just doesn't grasp the actual numbers. Most folks run their telly most of the time that they are home. Wee Eva Raven or Braighdyn is actually raptly quiet when they watch the boob tube, aren't they? Giving you a break from the mommy mommy MOMMY lookit me play with me entetain ME that you put up with all day because you never taught your child to entertain his or herself.

I cannot ABIDE women who say "well it's the only way I can get a shower or cook dinner". Well, whose fault is that? (That's right up there with "well he'll only eat goldfish crackers and kraft mac n cheese so that's all I serve!") Then they proceed to tell me how they have an 12 month old and a 3 year old and no one knows what it's like, weep, weep.

Get over yourself, Emo Mom. YOU made this bed and YOU get to lie in it. I HAVE had an 12 month old and a 3 year old. Except I also had a 2 year old and was pregnant at the time. I have had every permutation of closely spaced small babies that's possible (I think) and yet I still bathed when I wanted and cooked three meals a day, unmolested.

And we have NEVER watched television in our home.

Conclusion: I don't give a flying fark at the moon if you let your kid watch telly 5 hours a day. Serisoulsy, that's your choice. But ADMIT IT. Don't try to tell me that they only watch a few minutes a day. That's just a lie. Or that you only do it to entertain them for a second while you catch up on household chores. It takes me a good hour to prepare supper and I'd no more let my kids watch a hour of commercial television than I'd let them spend time with a smoker.

----

Gem of an article number two: Doctor may get license revoked for telling patient the truth.

Yep, apparently, doctors are now obliged to LIE to be politically correct. We wouldn't want to hurt anyone's wee feelings now would we?

Dr. Earl Sunderhaus (an eye doctor) "admitted he told the patient that her thick thighs and diabetes could cause her to go blind."

So poor baby patient is fat, diabetic, on welfare, and pregnant (all things that she has control over, all things she can/could have change(d)/prevented.) but no one is allowed to TELL her that?

Oh suck it up you blubbering Very Bad Word! Her diabetes and obesity are her own doing and they can indeed cause her to go blind. I think it was awfully nice of the doctor to TELL her that. Seems like sound medical advice to me.

Obesity is hazardous to your health and it's preventable, people! Type 2 diabetes (with it's blindness, poor circulation, heart disease, etc) is preventable. If you feel bad about yourself because you are overweight then, LOSE WEIGHT. Don't expect the world to pussyfoot around you, being careful not to damage your fragile ego for something you did to yourself.

Should we not tell smokers to quit smoking because they already feel so bad about their nicotine stained fingers, smelly hair and clothes, ashtray breath, and yellow teeth, poor dears?

How far downhill have we come as a people that mollycoddling to the point of endangering our health is preferable to the TRUTH from a doctor? WTF?!

NaNoWriMo day 11

2009-11-11T05:42:00.000-05:00

"NaNoWriMo ate my soul!"

There's a forum post over at the National Novel Writing Month website with that title. How appropriate.

Over here at the Evil Genius secret hidden lair, it's been 11 days of crazy.

It's not just NaNoWriMo of course. Our lives are hectic as it is and for us to decide to take on writing a bloody novel in a month - EACH - was crazyness.

I just caught up with my daily word count quota on day 8 and Bodog hasn't quite caught up yet. He's a pretty competative guy, but he's nowhere near my Type A, snarling, OCD, self. My anxiety level was sky high those first 8 days and nothing else got done: no laundry, no cleaning (Oh except when I obsessively cleaned the entire kitchen at 4 a.m. because I had writers block.), no work, nothing.

So, yeah, now that I've caught up, I'm better. I promise I am.

Now I'm trying to ease back into doing all those things, plus spend a wee bit of time with my husband and my children!

It's not NaNoWriMo, of course. It could be a broken car or a hole in the fence. It's just a grain of sand in the cogs of our lives. Trying to cope with another obligation in already busy lives.

"So why are you doing it, Blue? You don't win a prize for completing 50,000 words by November 30th, you're not making any money. Why put yourself through the stress?"

Two reasons:

The sense of accomplishment. The ability to say: "I did this", to say "I CAN write a novel."
My lifelong dream has been to be a writer. A large number of WriMos go into this with no intention of ever rewriting and polishing, finding an agent, and submitting their novel for publication. They are doing it for the experience or just for fun or just for practice. Many more intend to publish but will never go through all the hard steps it takes to do so.

Not me. I fully intend to try to publish a book one day. Perhaps not this book (or the next 3 I write) but A book. Now I will know that I can write that book.

Right. Back to the insanity. I actually got some work work done yesterday (ok, about 10 minutes worth, but still), made my daily word goal by noon and wrote a bit more. yay, me!

Now if a plot would just appear, I'd be set ...

Warning: long post, last one for a bit!

2009-11-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry, but this is gonna be a long one and may be one of my few posts in the whole month of November. No rants are included today, though! :D

Not only am I behind in my posting of Gratuitus Baby Pics, but I also have taken the plunge this year and am participating in NaNoWriMo!

Yep, I have officially lost my mind! I have wanted to do NaNoWriMo every year since it's inception and I've always talked myself out of it. No time, no talent, no story; I'll quit, I'll fail, I'll fold; it'll suck, it'll never get published; and on and on. I had every excuse in the book.

Well, not this year.

This year we'll see if a self-employed, work-at-home, mother of 5 under age 8, who farms livestock, can write a 50,000 novel in 30 days.

Plus both Bodog AND Boy are on board, writing their own novels. If my 7-year-old can do it*, then I bloody well can.

Uh ... right?

My user name is MrsEvil Genius if you want to ~~deride my pathetic word count~~ cheer me on! Bodog is there as BodogSivana if you'd like to track him as well.

-----

OK, on to the pics!

South Carolina State Fair 2009:

First year that Fiver (left) got to ride unaccompanied by an adult. He and Bulk, of course, just HAD to go on the cars.

Just prior to the obligatory sit-down-and-gorge-on-fair-food portion. (L-R) Bodog and Bitty Girl make weird faces and THCTD just looks lovely. Foreground is Bulk, Boy, and Fiver.

Fiver, Boy, and Bulk awaiting corn dogs, Fiske fries, and $5-apiece diet Pepsi (*gag*).

Most popular ride this year! L-R Bulk, Boy, THCTD, and Bitty.

Bonus pic, Halloween 2009! Unfortunately, since we drive somewhere to trick or treat (this year it was Dr. SIL's neighbourhood), we have to finish donning costumes after we arrive and by then it's usually dark, so I snapped this pic before we left. The batteries died in my camera after this (of course!) but Bodog's sister took some. I'll post those when I get 'em.

They were (after costume completion) L-R, a devil, a ghost, a witch, a skeleton, and a wee pig.

OK, that's it. No more posts from me, maybe, until December. Take care, all of you, and please think some literary thoughts in my direction!

* Boy is signed up with the Young Writers thingy over at NaNoWriMo. His goal is 3000 words by Nov 30th which is the midway point of the suggested word count for a 2nd grader. I think he finished 800+ words yesterday (day 4).

I'm ready for the floor show.

2009-10-14T09:02:00.001-04:00

I'm having a crap-assed day.

My back hurts.

I haven't slept hardly at all in 3 days.

My Bulk has swine flu, feels like crap, and now Fiver is sick.

But THIS made me smile:

see more Lol Celebs

Thanks LOLs. :)

A rant in which far too many quotation marks appear.

2009-10-13T14:24:00.000-04:00

I came accross two interesting articles this morning on one of my fave pet subjects: childhood obesity and how to stop it before we raise a generation of people so fat and sick that they don't outlive their parents.

The first one was about targeting daycares to battle childhood obesity by regulating the foods they serve.

I had never thought about daycares since mine have never been in anyone elses care. Turns out that few states regulate what daycares serve to the kids. My own brief experience working at one recalls memories of cheap sugary soda, generic cookies, popcorn, and other absolute crap so it was an interesting, sobering read.

My only probelm with the article was this line: ""Everybody is always pointing fingers at us parents saying, 'You should do better.' A lot of other people are feeding our kids," "

Well, y'know, whose fault is that? If you absolutely must put your kid in daycare, then it's up to you to ask what they'll be eating. Also, how you fed your child from birth and at home has molded her taste. If you are one of those "she'll only eat chicken nuggets and mac and cheese so that's what I feed her" people, then you made that bed for yourself.

Sorry, but that irritates the CRAP out of me. I have an insanely picky 7 year old, but y' know what? He gets exactly what the rest of the family gets. Some nights he will, quite literally, eat nothing at all save for the one bite I require that everyone take from everything on his or her plate.

But I know he will not starve himself. No child will.

Going without a meal or even two won't harm any normal healthy child one bit. There're kids in this world, right here in America, too, who eat once a day or less. A well fed, normal, white, middle-class, child missing a couple of meals of his own free will is NOTHING.

The whiners need to buck up and acknowledge that THEY are creating the monster who will only eat 3 foods, not the languishing victims of an unfortunate twist of parental fate.

ANYway ... The second article this morning made me want to tear my hair out for a similar reason; the parent-as-victim attitude. The gist? I quote: ""Parents might be contributing to the overweight epidemic," "

No, really?! YA THINK?!

This stunner was delivered by Dr. Elsie Taveras, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Harvard Medical School. She went on to say that parents "do this unwittingly".

I believe that some do.

After all we have a broken government health recommendation that says that in order to be fit one should cut out healthy fat and meat - what we evolved over 2 million years to eat - and instead load up on sugars in the form of grains.

We have a common belief that chronic cardio will "burn calories" so we eat like pigs then go run, bike, treadmill, spin, etc ad nauseum to punish ourselves and "work it off".

We also have a society that has taught us that we should get dessert and sweet treats all day, every day (60 years ago, we would get something sweet - a slice of pie, for example - once a WEEK. Now we nom sugar on our breakfast cereal and in our coffee, eat candies cakes and cookies at work, have dessert at the restaurant after supper, and end the night with a 'comforting' bowl of ice cream. All because we "deserve it" and would feel "deprived" if we didn't.)

(and so many of us wonder why we're overweight!)

But here was the kicker, the phrase that made me want to tear my hair: "the point is not to make parents feel guilty about contributing to their children's weight problems" .

Uhh ... why not? Is guilt for doing something wrong not an appropriate reaction? If I scream at my kids for something they didn't do I am immediately contrite and apologise. Furthermore, I try very hard to correct myself so that I don't do it again.

If something I was doing made my children ill, I would never forgive myself. If Dr. Clemson, our pediatritcian, told me I was making my kids unhealthy by doing something, I would immediately 1) feel guilty and 2) stop farkin' doing it.

Parents bear almost all of the responsibility for obesity in young children (Older kids who have their own money and are mobile are a whole 'nother story.) Parents hold the key IMHO to ending this epidemic, but they must be blamed. They must be made aware of what they are doing, not sheltered from the truth. This is not about saving anybody's feelings. These are adults. They'll just have to cope. This is their kid's health we're talking about. We must point the finger (and help, of course).

But the sad truth is that most of these parents are unhealthy themselves, walking carboholic heart attacks waiting to happen. Their "comfort foods" mean more to them than their health. They're feeding their babies what they eat: over processed, chemical laden, sugar, carb, and high fructose corn syrup filled CRAP, frozen food, and fast food, and not moving out in front of the television any more than it takes to wee and get another soda.

Illness at the secret hidden lab

2009-10-13T07:40:00.000-04:00

Forgive me if I'm posting even less than usual, my 4 year old middle boy, Bulk, has a very very bad case of croup and was diagnosed yesterday with swine flu.

We're hanging on over here on pins and needles. Will keep you updated.

Hit and run

2009-10-04T06:36:00.000-04:00

So I decided I'd better post about my goat fiasco last night as some of you ~~fortunate~~ people have not-so-many farm animal encounters in your experience and livestock / human collisions might seem a bit ...odd.

It's not so unusual, actually. All livestock has a flight instinct and throw them in a confined area with a puny human; with no hooves, horns, claws, or effective teeth, and it can be a melee.

Last night we had a goat out who was too stupid to figure out how to get back in and it was getting dark. Bodog and I had run her into a smallish area hoping that she would see the huge gaping hole in the fence and mearly go through. Nope, not Jean. She's a half-grown Sannen dairy goat cross kid with a brain the size of a field pea.

Well, after we all ran about a bit; Jean getting more and more hysterical, us getting crosser and crosser, and Jean's daft mom, Jo, screaming like an air-raid siren on the other side of the fence, I decided to just grab her.

Bad idea, in retrospect.

Number one, I couldn't move fast or crouch down because my bad knee gave out last week and I fell on the steps. Said knee is currently stiff, swollen, sore as a bastard, and a lovely rainbow of colours.

So, Jean crashed past me, into the barrier fence (was dark by then), turned, and ricocheted off the wire right at me. I spread out like a hocky goalie (wish I'd had all the padding), intending to catch her in mid leap. Her intention, I think, was to go over my left shoulder. She wasn't nearly high enough, though, and at the last moment she tucked her chin and the top of her head hit me squarely in my left pectoral between my arm joint and my boob. Her horns hit my collarbone and jaw.

Jean weighs 45lbs and was going like a freight train so, far from catching her, I was knocked backwards, winded, and almost fell on me arse whilst she galloped off.

Not one of my more wise or graceful moments.

So now I'm sat here, painfully cradling my left arm (which is pretty much useless), and trying not to move much.

And Jean? She's sleeping in the woods, the little brat. I can only assume that being separated from her mum by one fence won't kill her (she's long since weaned). She probably sussed out how to get through the hole as soon as we left!

Writing, bread, and t-shirts? Yeah ... those go together.

2009-09-22T11:49:00.000-04:00

Craptastic! I had half of a post written and it dissappeared! *sob!*

Oh, well. I'm sure I can rewrite it. I'm an aspiring writer after all (been wanting to participate in NaNoWriMo for YEARS but haven't had the time/dedication/talent/guts/insert-lame-arse-excuse-here. Now some of my mates are goading me to do it this year *waves at Rebecca and Barb* and I'm trying to firm my resolve.)

(which totally sounds like a naughty euphemism.)

(Heh. Heheheheh.)

So, where was I? Oh, the post. Here we go:

Bread!

"Wait, what?!" you ask, aghast, "Ms bread-is-the-toejam-of-the-devil is going to blog about bread?!"

Yup. I am.

See, whilst *I* am Paleo and eschew all grains (except for, erm, bourbon), my family is mearly low carb. So I do buy bread, and being The Thrifty Mom, I buy in bulk when I find a good price (I also have a few resources for free bread).

Of course the really tightwad thing would be to get rid of bread entirely. I have saved oodles of dough (heh, get it? dough? OK, ok, sorry) by simply weaning my family as much as possible off of all sugars: bread, pasta, table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc. (Table sugar, carbohydrates, fructose, and high fructose corn syrup (of which 99% of commercial bread is FULL), are all the same poison. They fark with your blood sugar, make you fat, cause hideous inflammation which opens the door for diabetes, and heart disease - just to name two.)

But if you must buy bread, *big theatrical sigh* here are some tips on doing it frugally, LOL. ;)

First of all, I only buy 100% whole wheat bread. I never could abide that nasty, sticky, white crap bread, even when I was a kid. So I have no idea how well or poorly it stores, sorry. I've only ever tried this with whole grain breads.

Second of all, of course, keep your eyes peeled for deals. Many stores will put their store brand on sale during the big eating holidays (which in America is EVERY freakin' holiday. Off work? 3 day week-end? Let's invite some friends and family over and inflame their arteries and jack their blood sugar up by serving huge troughs of Carbo Death Bombs, yeah! But make sure that ground beef is xtra lean! Don't wanna get fat!)

When my sources of free bread run dry, I seek out the Aldi. If you have one, they rawk for bread prices. Nothing here beats them (by over 20c per loaf). Don't bother with Sam's Club, BTW. Their bread prices (like all of their fresh food and meat) is, in my experience, MORE per lb/package than the WalMart next door.

Day old bread stores or bakery thrift stores are also pretty good but, alas, fewer than way back in the way back time. :(

Like with milk, grab loaves from the very back of the display (look for the change in twist-tie colours) as the shelves are 'fronted' by the bread blokes and the older ones brought forward.

Anyway, when you have scored your largesse of bread (I buy 6-9 loaves at a time), as soon as you get home, make sure all of the excess air is out of the bag (don't squish your bread!) and be sure the twist tie is nice and tight. Then get out all of your old bread bags (What? You don't save all your old bread bags and plastic containers?! Start doing it now! Those things come in really handy. Remember, if you go out and buy 2 gallon ZipLok bags to put your bread in, you have just defeated the Thrifty purpose.)

Anyway, take each loaf, drop it twisty side down into another bread bag, press out the air, and twist-tie it up tight - I double the excess over and twist the ends of the tie over it a second time - and stack in the freezer.

If you don't have a chest freezer, get one. Go right now to Craigslist and Freecycle and just ask nicely if anyone has one they're not using and/or scour around for great deals / freebies. Tell all your friends and family about how much you need one and ask them to let you know if they hear of anything. Stress your abject poverty. Don't be proud. Be up front that you don't have much dosh to spend.

I have a huge chest freezer, a refrigerator, a washer, and a dryer, ALL for free from different folks who were aware of my need. Again, don't be proud. No shame in needing to save some bucks! (The "I really need a fill-in-the-blank! Mine has gone tits-up. If you hear of anyone ..." thing works for lawn mowers and used cars, too!)

When you need the bread, just take the whole loaf out of the freezer and toss it onto the table as-is (both bags on). In a few hours it will be thawed and ready to eat! If you need a few slices in an emergency, just carefully unstick them from the loaf and lay them out. They'll thaw in a few minutes.

I've kept loaves for 6 weeks with no discernable changes. If you leave them too long, they get slightly hard - usually along one side - but are still fine for things like French toast, grilled cheese, egg-in-the-basket, etc, or anything requiring them toasted. Air is the guilty party, not freezing, for this hardening, so wrap 'em up tight!

Well, I hope this helps some of you save some money! If you have any thrifty bread tips, whether buying or storing, please share them in the comments.

PS: I am totally going to make a t-shirt that says "Bread is the toejam of the devil"! ROTFLMAO!

Homework, artwork; when is it THEIR work?

2009-09-19T08:09:00.001-04:00

So, Bodog and I have a slight difference of opinion when it comes to our kids' homework.

First of all, we do agree that all homework should be done at the dining room table and that we need to sit down immediately after school and do it.

Structure and routine are our watchwords, as you know, so everyone changes into play clothes and we chat about their day. I do a pot of tea and we have some noms - a small mid-afternoon meal any British will recognise as "tea" - but we go ahead and knock out all the homework while the 'school' mode is still on.

So far, so good.

The rot sets in after the homework is done, you see.

Bodog, Mr public school teacher, corrects the homework.

This drives me mad!

See, I help my children, when asked, (but never give answers), and I encourage my kids to look over their work and double check for mistakes, but I do NOT correct work. I will go so far as to look over the work and if I see a fair number of mistakes, suggest they take another peek, but that's it.

Bodog feels that correcting work gives him a chance to teach the child the correct way of doing something. Fair, enough; makes sense.

I feel that it's the child's teacher's job to teach him. I want to give her the opportunity to teach my child. In addition, I think it's wrong to send nearly perfect work back every time. This might lead the teacher to think that my child is not making mistakes and so doesn't need to be taught (fill in the blank whatever).

Does that make sense?

Also, I have a thing about my children's work being their work. I want my kids to own their own efforts, y'know? I gently guide and instruct all day every day. With homework, I also help (when asked), make suggestions, point out things the may have missed, ask questions to nudge them into finding out the answers on their own - in a way, 'teaching' on the fly - but I want them to learn that their work is THEIR work and that they are wholly responsible for it, good or bad.

Take artwork. Would you 'correct' artwork? I'm the artistic parent but I would never alter my child's artwork or even suggest that they change it. As a matter of fact, I recently read on someone's blog about a mom who, deciding her child had drawn something inappropriate for school, had actually changed her child's artwork herself.

I was gobsmacked. I would never never do that! What my kid creates is his and I have no right to touch it. If I thought something was so offensive, I'd simply explain that to my child and give him a clean piece of paper to start over.

This brings up horrible memories of the whole "building gingerbread houses" fiasco in Boy's class where many of the mommies were actively building the gingerbread houses for their child or altering what their kid had done.

What do you think? How do you handle your child's homework? If you are a teacher or former teacher, do you feel differently about it?

Is artwork different from homework? Have you ever altered your own child's artwork? If you are an artist do you feel that it was justified because you were 'teaching' your child something?

Let me know in the comments!

PS: when you get done commenting please take our Homework Style poll over at Thrifty Mom Dot Com home! :)

Rock On, Sergeant Major Teresa King!

2009-09-19T05:58:00.000-04:00

First female to command the US army drill sergeant school (at Fort Jackson in Columbia SC, my home town.)

You GO grrl!

Warning: construction!

2009-09-17T08:36:00.000-04:00

I've had a revelation.

An awakening of sorts about my life and my job. How cool is that?

So, to be brief, in the intrest of further trimming down and cutting back, I will be combining three of my blogs; this one, the dieting blog, and my farm blog.

Truth is that I just don't have time to update all of them and rather than leaving the two to languish (the farm blog hasn't been touched in ages) and fretting about it, I'm going to just post all the stuff over here.
After all, my life is interwoven with elements of the farming / gardening / repair, the dieting / health / fitness, and, of course the snarky parenting.

None of these things is my whole life (by itself) and none of these things is my job, so they don't really need separate blogs, do they? They're all me. All who I am.

This way I'll be able to not worry about which blog my post belongs one and just farkin' post. :)

I just ask you guys to be patient with me if I go off on a ramble about the livestock sale or an angry rant about some stupid diet article, OK? I promise to mix it up.

Working on changing the look a bit, also, so don't be startled. *grin* Y'all know I have to tart stuffs up.

Oh, and the posts from the other blogs will suddenly appear over here (the past posts), so don't let that throw you!

Ta for being patient!

Cuckoo

2009-09-13T07:18:00.000-04:00

I was just reading a news story about a woman who took home the wrong baby and got to thinking that this must be a common maternal ~~nightmare~~ fear. Luckily, the error was corrected within an hour and this lady and her bub were reunited quickly.

But, fess up, y'all all had the same fear didn't you? That you'd take the wrong baby home.

But MY concern was always that they had switched mine at birth not that the one I took home was wrong. I mean, by day two, when the drugs wore off, I could recognise my own baby. When each of them first nursed I memorised their faces.

Is that just me? Is it a breastfeeding thing? Was it just because I'm an artist and am very visually oriented? Or am I speaking from over-confidence, and in actuality, couldn't have told for sure which baby was mine?*

At any rate, I'm fascinated that this might be a nearly universal misgiving in mothers. I wish I had the time and means to do a study.

Everyone tells me that my children all look alike. I find them entirely dissimilar ... as if they had all come from different families. Heck, I don't think they even look like me and Bodog!

I'm not suggesting, of course, that my kids aren't my kids, I can just see, now, how these sorts of thoughts could creep into any person's head. Up till now I just figured it was my own paranoia, LOL!

The response must have a bioligical origin, it must be an instinct to be sure that we were nurturing our OWN genetic carriers. Since our particular branch of the primate tree has lost the ability to identify our newborns by smell - as our dog would her puppies, or my sheep their lambs - we must do so only by sight; and a random, blonde, caucasian, newborn human, squashy and screaming, looks pretty much like another.

It's not hard to see how the mix-ups of yesteryear (when it did happen every now and then), where the wrong child was actually raised by another family, could happen. We are at the mercy of our own instincts and visual memories and the hospital staff and proceedures!

So, come on, give over. Have you ever looked at your child and had the fleeting, serious, doubt that she was really yours? Were you anxious in the hospital that you had the right baby? Or were you one of those lucky ones whose mom had flaming red curly hair and whose baby daughter popped out her spitting image, hair and all? Leave your story in the comments!

Identical enthusiasm for consuming sugary Icees! That proves it! ... yeah, they're Bodog's spawn.

*of course since my smallest babies weighed in at 9lbs and 9lbs 1oz (Bitty Girl and THCTD) and my largest at 10lbs 8oz (Boy) and the other two (Bulk and Fiver) at just under 10lbs, I could always identify mine by size alone. *rolls eyes* "No, no, he's that BIG wriggly grub at the back! Yep, that's mine! Pass him over here, wouldja?"