intellectual properties

generally regarded as safe

i was at the Target human ant farm (TM) the other day and walking by the laundry soap/fabric softener aisle the smell was overwhelming.

how many chemicals do we cover ourselves in every day?

those automatic plug-in air fresheners are completely horrendous to me. constantly spraying chemicals into your breathing air? are you insane?

this would be funny except the scary thing is that acid from strangers is probably more reliable and less toxic than millions of things you might buy boxed, shelved, or frozen and sold as food or found in the cosmetics/bath/cleaning product aisles that you cover yourself, your home and your family with every day (at least 515?!).

who is more ridiculous? the hippie girl above, or the parents dosing their kids’ baths, food and clothing with unknown GMOs, chemicals, and petroleum byproducts?

tday pilaf

tday pilaf, originally uploaded by amyleblancdotcom.

(or, what i just came up with from ingredients i had in my house)

1.5 cups pearled barley
3 cups veg broth
+
1 cup fresh cranberries, diced (not frozen, not dried, not sweetened, not canned, not refrigerated: fresh, whole and TART)
1 diced honeycrisp apple
+
1 cup raw almonds, smashed, sauteed
1/2 lb broccoli spigarello, sauteed
1 cup veg broth
sesame seeds, white and black
1 spoonful chopped garlic
1/2 white onion
1 tbsp earth balance margarine
1 tbsp olive oil
salt/pepper to taste

mixed together. warm in oven.

vegan and all organic except for the cranberries, olive oil and seeds

changes are afoot

ooops….i missed blogging yesterday, and i know i should not make excuses, as the whole point of National Blog Posting Month is to post every day without excuses.  but i was so busy yesterday!  first a baby shower then a birthday party (i bowled a perfect 100) then dinner with an old friend visiting from out of town!  so tired at the end i went right to sleep.

.::.

updates:

my November austerity program: i successfully went 19.5 days without drinking alcohol, but then last night at dinner i had some wine, so not quite to Thanksgiving. a good experiment in habits.  as for the rest:  i have kept an 85-90% vegan diet (compared to my usual 50-60%?), and my digestive system thanks me, as does my skin.  i have done no extraneous shopping, which has been good for my bank account.  in curbing my media habits, however, i have not been so successful. i have so many things i should be reading instead of the internet. maybe December will be better for that, when i am not at a computer all the time.

also, my friend visiting from New Orleans added an event to the 2012 wishlist: French Quarter Festival, April 12-15, 2012. woo!

and, i can’t say too much about this here yet, but i am in fact pursuing the last item on that wishlist, and i am so heartwarmed by everyone i’ve talked to about it who has encouraged me. <3

yoga mind

i don’t kow why i am always amazed at mental revelations i have when practicting yoga.  i mean, that’s what it promises, right? yoga for the body AND MIND. yet somehow i am always surprised when it actually happens.

last night there was a substitute for my vinyasa class (at the Y) who teaches mainly hatha yoga, which i don’t usually practice, as honestly, i get bored. i am not struggling to be flexible.  my hip joints are hella open. but in doing the yin stretches (slow, deep stretches focused on releasing joints) the teacher commented that yin yoga is important (as opposed to yang, which focuses on strength/the muscles) because through repeated action, adhesions are formed that restrict movement. and i was like: yeah yeah, i know all about adhesions.  that’s what happened to my neck/shoulder. that is why i am in this gym working out all the time.

and not that i haven’t considered it before and obviously this is what psychotherapy is all about, but i was suddenly struck by the how true this was for the mind. mental adhesions. patterns. apron strings. malformed connections that need to be undone.

there are a lot of signs pointing me in directions right now.  i think this was one of them. i haven’t quite figured out where they are all directing me to, but it is somewhere else, forward.  movement is needed. new pathways.

also, it always becomes very apparent when i get back in to regular practice that while i definitely get the physical benefits of yoga, the thing about my yoga practice that is best for me is just the act of going.  the commitment to going even when i don’t want to. the feeling of achievement that even though i was tired and kind of sick and not in a good mood, i still went.  i think this is big for me because i am otherwise kind of a slacker.  if i don’t feel like doing something, i generally don’t.  but through these many years (10?) of yoga practice, i have learned that for me, a commitment to going is the most important part.

fitbit replacement

my fitbit fell off while i was changing and hit a cement floor yesterday and smashed open. little robot guts everywhere – i gasped! and then figured out how to put it back together. it still works but i don’t think it’s recording steps properly – the gyroscope must be out of whack. i’ve had this thing since august and even through burning man i haven’t gone a day without wearing it. i’m attached to it as much as it is attached to me. i use it to see how active i’ve been (only 2000 steps today?? better take a walk….) but i also track my food to make sure i’m getting a good balance of carbs/fat/protein and not eating too much. i don’t track my food every single day, but i know that when i don’t use the online dashboard to track my food, i DEFINITELY eat more. it’s a super helpful tool. or maybe i’m just obsessed.

anyway, i thought about getting a different pedometer/calorie burn counter (like the one they use on Biggest Loser- bodybugg®), but looking online i don’t really see one i like better (mostly i don’t want to wear an armband – the tiny fitbit clip is soooo much better – everyone thinks it’s a flashdrive ), so i’m definitely ordering another one. the good news is that you can now order fitbit through amazon, and there’s no longer a wait!

$3.99/lb

there was a commercial on the radio this morning for ground chuck or some other beef product from Safeway “for only $3.99/lb!”

and all i could think was:

how would you feel, as a sentient being, if you were valued at only $3.99/lb?

i’d be worth less than $500.

what are you worth, per pound?

non sequitur: fasting

for reasons i won’t go into right now, on certain days i have an inordinate amount of time on my hands, and i often just start reading wikipedia entries on things that i’ve recently heard talk of or seen referenced that i realize i don’t actually know much about.  like Lent.

reading about Lent led me to reading about fasting, which i was also thinking about because some friends of ours are restricting their diets of starches, not because they have any malady, but as yet another nutritional experiment (possibly related to the recent phenomenon of the 4-Hour Body.)  it’s one of the quirky things that always amuses me about the bay area: all the fasting and dietary experimentation that goes on amongst the hippies and hipsters. it’s like a hobby around here, depriving oneself of things and proclaiming certain foods “bad”.  since when are carrots bad for you?  i always think of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer becomes a minimalist and declares “You know what I discovered? I really like depriving myself of things. It’s fun.”

disclosure: for a couple of years i did attempt to fast on Thanksgiving day as a way to express my gratitude for food, but it turns out i am prone to hypoglycemia and so any attempt at fasting – even juice fasting – has always failed for me. also: this is not cynical. i find the practice of self-imposed restrictions interesting and a worthwhile endeavor in this land of excess and plenty; i am not begrudging it. i am amused.

anyway, the wikipedia article on fasting omits mentions of it being a pastime for the hippie-bourgeois-foodie contingent on the West Coast of the United States. it focuses on the intersection of religion and fasting, which i found quite enthralling, particularly when i got to the orthodox Christan section:

For Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Christians, fasting is an important spiritual discipline, found in both the Old Testament and the New, and is tied to the principle in Orthodox theology of the synergybody (Greek: between the soma) and the soul (pnevma). That is to say, Orthodox Christians do not see a dichotomy between the body and the soul but rather consider them as a united whole, and they believe that what happens to one affects the other (this is known as the psychosomatic union between the body and the soul).

well that definitely jibes with all the yogi-fasting-tribal-ritualistic-hippie talk i hear around here, but although i grew up in a very Christian town -protestants and catholics alike – no one i knew ever fasted a full day in their lives that i was aware of, and this reverence for body-mind connection was never discussed in my church that i recall (outside of some being teetotalers). yet it seems if you read the bible closely enough and take its instructions literally, as many followers do, you should be fasting (or preparing to fast) MOST OF THE TIME.

i guess the nugget that stuck with me is that for a supposedly “christian nation”, most have managed to ignore the biblical bits about mindful and grateful eating and the body as a temple for the soul, and instead we have a land of processed fast food and an obesity epidemic.

oh, and this: “Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights, twice back-to-back, without food or water; the first, immediately before he received the tablets on the mountain with God. And the second, after coming down, seeing the Israelites practicing idolatry, and breaking the tablets in anger.”

well, isn’t that some interesting context.  i might see/talk to God after climbing to a mountaintop if i hadn’t eaten for 40 days too.

sweat it out

i got on my bike monday for the first time since valentine’s day, as it had rained the whole week after that (and by rain i mean MONSOON) and then i went to michigan.

it felt so amazing. my body rejoiced. have i mentioned recently about how much i love riding my bicycle?

some mornings i float.  effortlessly. the sun is shining.  the air is still. it feels glorious. i sail.

other times i have to fight  it’s raining. there’s a headwind.  it feels like work. i push.

but no matter – i am into it.

i don’t know if bicycling is saving me much money (with only a 9 mile RT commute i wasn’t driving much before) but it sure does make life more fun. and my sanity: if i didn’t have that half hour of fresh air+exercise before and after work i would most certainly be losing my mind right now.

.::.

an optimistic update on the ongoing shoulder/neck pain management:

after a year and half, the other physical therapies and whatnot recommended by my chiros, MDs, et.al. (alignment exercises, deep massage, heat/cold, etc) weren’t doing much but temporarily alleviating the tension/pain only to have it return. then i read somewhere not too long ago in some online article by some personal trainer who i don’t think was a physician that a large majority of neck/shoulder/back pain is the result of uneven muscles pulling your body out of alignment and that only weight training would resolve that problem, not muscle relaxers or the kind of light PT often prescribed. a study released in 2008 confirms:

“The higher percentage of pain reduction was due to the special effort made by the Danish researchers to follow exercise guidelines as set forth by the American College of Sports Medicine. This meant not babying the painful area, but instead, treating it the same as any other muscle group during a strength training session.

The people who just rode the stationary bike also reduced pain, but only slightly. The researchers felt theirs was not enough pain reduction to indicate the stationary bike would make for good therapy for neck problems.

The upshot of the study is that for people with trapezius myalgia, a good treatment would be doing high intensity strength training 3 times per week for 20 minutes under the supervision of a professional.”

so even though i was scared to do more advanced weights, especially free weights, because i had hurt myself doing those in the past, i said wtf and started going to the body sculpting class at the Y again for the first time since 2009. body sculpting is more or less basic calisthenics (push ups, situps, squats, lunges, etc), but with free weights/kettlebells or resistance tools (bosu ball, resistance bands). i do this 1-2x a week for an hour and it’s TOUGH. i am often sore for a couple of days afterward, sometimes in muscles i didn’t remember having. and i have to say (crosses fingers) — i think it’s working. i haven’t had a significant bout of pain since NYE and i stopped downing handfulls of pain relievers a couple of weeks ago. SO: YAY!

fingers crossed though because it’s not 100% resolved. i can still feel it there, that muscle knot below my shoulder blade, that tightness behind my right ear, there, lurking. and i am still on tenterhooks sometimes when i attempt something that i’m afraid will result in a pain snap. like yoga, with all it’s downward-dogging. but i have even started going back to yoga! which i was really missing from my life.

because of this i’ve become a bit (more?) evangelical about how much i believe physical exercise is important to sanity and well-being. i know this seems DUH, but it’s amazing how often people forget this (or willfully ignore it in favor of sedentary activities), and how RARELY doctors enforce physical exercise as a wellness tool. but watch The Biggest Loser! lives are changed by treadmills. if you have body aches, pains, moods, demons: sitting on the couch is most likely not only hindering recovery but part of the problem. get up and move.

sage advice

(for those of you reading via RSS or facebook: please note: this item from February is being reposted as it was accidentally deleted during a server backup).

United States Food Administration poster, 1914-1918

dinner

(for those of you reading via RSS or facebook: please note: this item from February is being reposted as it was accidentally deleted during a server backup).

red chard, sweet potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, green onions, chicken eggs. all organic. chopped into pieces and lightly stir fried with garlic, salt, pepper, sesame and chia seeds. sriracha hot sauce added for spicy. simple. yum.