Paleo


As soon as I found out about Paleo Kits, I knew I had to order one. If it had been called a jerky-nut-berry-bag I wouldn’t have been as interested in buying it. But..paleo.

It arrived today. I had ordered the Steve’s Club Sampler pack, the Chicken Jerky, and the Original Paleostix. I haven’t tried anything yet but the PaleoKrunch Cereal. OMG. All that’s in it is coconut, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and honey but I love the stuff. I didn’t expect it to be so good.

Another thing I found out I like recently is coconut milk. I usually hate anything coconut. It is the Silk Vanilla kind, and I’ll need to transition to the unsweetened kind, but it didn’t taste like I expected. For breakfast the past two days I’ve had scrambled eggs and coconut milk, banana, and strawberry smoothies. I’ve been making recipes from Everyday Paleo for the past couple days and I have Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat on it’s way.

I can’t give a really accurate account of how I’m feeling since I came down with a cold on Saturday. All I can say is that except for cold symptoms, I haven’t felt too bad.

January 10th, 2012 - Posted in Health | No Comments »

A Few Days into 2012

I’ve been pretty good about things these first few days (well…not the exercising).

I’ve lost 4 lbs since a week ago. I’m not trying to limit calories or anything, it’s just happening. I’ve been avoiding eating bread items. I think that’s made a big difference. I’m still eating things I don’t want to be eating, to use them rather than throwing them out. Well, I shouldn’t say don’t want to eat because I do really want to eat the marshmallows. And the chocolate soy milk. But things like that I’m not going to buying again once they’re gone.

I’ve written two paper journal entries and here I am writing an online one. So far this week I’ve cleaned off the kitchen table, washed the table cloth, and unloaded and loaded the dishwasher. We also went through and threw out expired food items.

I’m going to try to follow this 2012 decluttering calendar. Today is throw out old spices day.

January 5th, 2012 - Posted in Life | No Comments »

2012

Last year, I had posted that I wanted to:

This year I will lose the rest of the weight that I need to. I want to use the Wii to exercise regularly. We really need to keep the house clean. I will spend time working on my novel. I always want to spend more time working on my websites. We also need to pay off a lot of our debt.

Let’s see..didn’t do..didn’t do…didn’t do…didn’t do..didn’t do…didn’t do.

I weigh probably 5-10 lbs more. I don’t think I’ve used the Wii since last January. Our house is a dirty mess, as always. The only time I spent on my novel was rereading it. I only worked on one my sites and a little at that. We acquired a good amount more debt.

2011 wasn’t a good year for me. I had a lot of health problems. Nothing bad really happened…no deaths…still have my job…and so on. I just wasn’t happy or felt well most of it. Usually was unhappy because I didn’t feel well and the brain fog made it impossible to do anything. I had a couple weeks maybe of good brain function…but out of 52 weeks that isn’t very much.

I want this year to be a lot better. I want to be healthier and I want to be happier.

I will be healthier and happier.

I can’t control my illnesses but I can control my diet and exercise. Often my foot hurts and I use that as an excuse not to exercise. Not anymore. There’s plenty of exercise I can do without standing. I’m going to eat gluten-free and low-carb. Ideally, I want to follow the Paleo diet. Eat only foods our hunter and gatherer ancestors would have. I’m already trying to avoid grains. But I also need to not eat potatoes, corn, peanut butter, and dairy. Dairy is hard for me to give up. I like cheese. I also like Coke. But there’s no sugar allowed. Or honey. But I don’t know if I’m going to give up honey in my tea. You’re allowed to eat most meats (except bacon and such), but I can’t eat pork due to my allergy of it. Lamb too but I’d never eat lamb. I also am not going to eat deer, bison, rabbits, etc. And especially not ducks. So my meats are basically beef, chicken, and fish.

I’d come across the Paleo diet several times over the past few years. I was always interested in it because of the name: paleo. How could I not be interested? But I didn’t want to give up cheese. Or potatoes. Or Coke. But I need to get over that. So what if I can’t eat some of the foods I want to eat? If I’ll feel better it’ll be worth it.

And cleaning the house. It’s exercise, so I just gotta do it no matter how much I don’t want to.

We already plan not to spend as much this year and to budget our money better. We waste so much of our money.

I don’t know if I’ll write fiction much this year. I’ve been more in a coding/design/web site mood for awhile. And that’s okay with me. When I feel like writing again, I’ll write.

But one thing I will write is journal entries. On here, in my paper journal(s), in my journal software. Wherever. But somewhere…and frequently. I bought yet another paper journal. This one is big and leather bound and has a dragon on the cover. It wasn’t cheap. But I’m going to make sure I use it.

I’m also going to keep track of what I eat and how I feel. I have a little pink Moleskine day planner that I’m going to use for that.

And, of course, I want to spend more time working on my websites.

Happy New Year!

January 1st, 2012 - Posted in Health, Life | 2 Comments »

I’m still around

I don’t post or comment or tweet much, and I hardly ever use facebook (ugh). But I do still read everything that everyone posts various places (except facebook). I still like knowing what is going on in other people’s lives.

What’s been going on in mine? Well, there was the ear issue back in March, and I’ve been having bad pain in my right foot on and off since summer. I do still have ringing in my ears but it’s mostly ignorable and I just avoid complete silence. I’ve also had more than a few cavities filled. The dentist thinks it’s from medications causing dry mouth. I now use Biotene toothpaste and mouthwash.

This past year I completed three O’Reilly courses through a grant at work. PHP 2 and 3 and JavaScript 2. Then this past summer I was kept busy rebuilding my WordPress to-do list plugin (still working on that). I’ve also completed some puzzles this year. My hobbies this year seems to be WordPress-related coding, puzzles, and reading. I haven’t cross-stitched that much or done anything art related (except buy a new Intuous tablet because one of the cat knocked over my water bottle on it). I’ve been reading coding related books this year (I bought a Nook Color to read all the ebooks I’ve acquired and never read), but I’ve discovered it’s worthless to even read them if I don’t take notes since I remember nothing after reading them. I like taking notes so it’s okay.

Every four years or so I seem to buy a new digital camera. I don’t plan to buy them on that interval, it just happens. I never used my previous camera much. I just never clicked with it despite how cute and pink it was. Maybe because it was a Sony instead of a Canon. So this time, I went back to Canon. I did not get an Elph like my first two Canons. I got the PowerShot SX230 HS. The color is listed as red even though it’s clearly pink. It just arrived today (it’s a birthday/Christmas present) and I’m waiting for the battery to charge so I can start taking pictures.

One of my first pictures will be…
of our new cat!
Yes, a fifth cat. We weren’t planning on adopting any more, but he showed up in our yard and needed a home.

We thought at first he was someone’s pet that had gotten out. He was so friendly. So we walked around the neighborhood asking people. We learned that people had seen him hanging around our place for several weeks. We hadn’t seen him till the day we took him in. One neighbor said that another neighbor had tried keeping him, but he batted at her dog so she put him back outside. We were pretty sure by that point that he did not have any owners, but I made the sad, depressing rounds of the lost pet websites, craigslist, and classifieds to be sure. No one was looking for him.

We think he’s under a year old. He looks like a cinnamony-brown Spencer. He annoys the hell out of the other cats because he wants to play with them. They don’t want to play with him. We named him Jake.

And despite my last entry, I have not been writing journal entries.

November 19th, 2011 - Posted in Creativity, Life, Pets | 1 Comment »

The New Diary and The Journal

I finished reading the The New Diary yesterday. I bought it back in 1999 but never read it. It was published in 1978 but the only place you realize it in the lack of mention of computers. I did see that the updated edition does mention computers and the internet. The introduction is by Anais Nin and the author, who was friends with her, references her frequently. I had to go and order the 4-volume set of her first 4 diaries.
 
The book was so incredibly enlightening. I have not been currently keeping a diary, but reading this made me wish I had never stopped. I’m exciting to try out all the techniques she described.
 
A couple weeks ago I bought The Journal. I downloaded and tried the free trials of pretty much all the available journaling software. Maybe 15 of them. I narrowed it down to three and then after playing around with each decided this was the best one. One thing I thought was neat was that you could publish to a blog from within the software. I’m not going to keep my whole journal online, but I’m sure there will be things I’d like to share. You can have different notebooks. There’s calendar based and loose-leaf ones. You can pretty much use this software for anything. I also bought the memory grabber add-on.
 
After reading the new Diary, I began to reconsider not writing in a paper journal. But it’s really hard to write while laying down on the couch. My netbook is perfect for that however. And what with the wrist and thumb pain I often have, typing is less tiring. Even just writing a page of notes at work is painful. I still have several blank journals around, some empty, some with only a page or two written. If I do feel I need to write long-hand, I can do so. I can type it into the software or not. One advantage putting it into the software is being able to search it. I could also just take a photo of the page or scan it. Maybe transcribe it later or not.
 
I have been so out of touch with myself. I spent most of my day trying not to think of anything but superficial things. This is probably the cause of my lack of creativity and happiness. I need to get to know me again.

 

September 2nd, 2011 - Posted in Books, Life | Comments Off

This hasn’t been a good year so far.

The week before last I ended up in the ER twice, once by ambulance. In the past two months I’ve had an MRI of my neck and brain and a CT of my brain. I’ve seen a neurologist due to symptoms normally related to MS. I missed a week of work plus several other days.

The cause of all this? Turned out to be a frayed tv cable line outside our house.

I’m not completely recovered. I still have some ringing in my ears and some hearing loss. When I was at the ENT the other week, they said that my hearing was that of a 70 year old. I think it has improved since then.

I’m not sure when it all started. I know things really went bad about three or four weeks ago, but things had been building up for at least a month before that. The frequencies or whatever they were coming from the cable were damaging my inner ear. Joe was fine, although he did say he felt a pressure increase in his ears.

I had terrible ringing in my ears. There was a low rumbly sound in my right ear and a terrible high pitched squeal in my left ear. I was losing my short term memory. At the worst, I was doing things and couldn’t remember having done them. I also couldn’t remember words and had trouble speaking and writing. It’s hard to describe how bad things were. There was also a number of other things going wrong with me.

I could hear other people’s radios and TVs, from other houses. I was picking up local radio stations. I thought I must have an ear infection, but the doctor(s) said my ears looked normal. All I could do for days was watch TV with the volume up very loud. I watched the entire series of Greek (for the first time) and loved it. It really helped get me through the days. So did my iPhone and some white noise apps. I found oscillating fan mixed with cat purring very soothing.

It took awhile to figure out about the cable, but once I did, we had the Comcast guy come out and he replaced all the cables.

It had also been stressful for several weeks at work. Several rush jobs and I had to work one weekend because one of the servers was hacked.

I guess the one good thing to come out of this is that I know my brain is normal. No tumors or lesions or anything. That’s always good to know. And it’s good to know that I don’t have MS and aren’t losing my mind, with the forgetting and the hearing radio stations.

April 3rd, 2011 - Posted in Health | 3 Comments »

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