Mornings, Vitamins and Unfiltered Camels...

I wake up every morning terrified. I sit here alone and ponder over the obvious even though I'm not sure what the obvious even is. My belief system has been shaken. Not in my belief in God so much, but in my belief in what to eat or what vitamins and supplements to take. Frankly, I'm afraid to take anything because maybe the little cancerous blood suckers will get stronger from the vitamins. I'm now afraid of healthy food and unhealthy food. I'm afraid of my house. I'm afraid of the air I breathe and chemicals I can't taste on my veggies. I thought I was doing everything right, and short of some crackers and wine, I was quite sure of my understanding and obsession of good nutrition.

I guess in life we just want answers, and this time there may not be one. Is it like Christmas? Have I been naughty? I thought I had been really nice, and this is one lump of coal short of hell - but cancer doesn't particularly care so much about "nice."

So, I stare at my fridge and don't know what to eat. Does cancer like fish oil? Will it give the dreadly cells more sustenance to destroy my body? Does it like vitamin D? Now I'm afraid to be in the sun and afraid not be in the sun. Frankly this ice box trepidation sucks. Yes. I said "ice box." I also watched Lassie, Dobie Gillis and the Beav. Hey Lassie, is Sally in the well?

Before my dad died of cancer, he said he was gonna smoke any time he wanted and enjoy his life. I used to bury his unfiltered Camels in the back yard with a garden shovel. I can hear it now "Nim, did you bury my cigarettes again"? Yup.

He called me "Nimrod." Two years ago I looked that word up and it meant "slow-witted person." It made me laugh because my son Judd has always given nicknames to all of us too and (although he never met my dad) calls me "Nut." I'm beginnjng to see a pattern to my nicknames. He refers to his daughter Gwen as "Gwenola," Bruce is "Z," Rachel is "Gerkie" - and so on and so on. These names have no real meaning, but I definitely see a correlation between Nim and Nut. In high school, my yearbook refers to me as "Silly Sally." I have also always been a little "off" on following rules. I do the Ten Commandments but could always talk my way out of a garden hose with my tap dance and my soft shoe. I seem to be able to manipulate everything except speeding tickets, and if i get any more of those, I will be going to driving school by the Fall - maybe the bald head and the ashen-looking face will give me the sympathy vote for the state police. I'm trying to see the glass half full of chemo-drip.

I remember thinking that at one time in my life, I would never (ever) find friends who could be as silly but as serious a person as I am. I am beyond sensitive and people don't get me sometimes. They aren't sure where the silly begins and the serious ends. It is an ultimate mystery why Bruce fits into my life. We have nothing at all in common. He is not silly. He remembers to put the trash out on Wednesday. it wouldn't occur to me - ever. He changes oil in the car - I would ignore that blinking red light until the car exploded. He leaves early from parties because of inclement weather. I stay at the party and sleep on couches until the weather breaks. He pays bills - I get charged for forgetting to pay bills. The list goes on and on, but Bruce is both mommy and daddy to me and thinks of the details - I'm the one who decorates the details. He makes the dinners and I put the A in ambiance, light candles, break out the pretty china, pipe in the jazz and wrap perfect packages. Bruce doesn't put bows on things. I AM the bow. With Bruce, it takes nothing to make him happy but a nice spatula, but with Sally it takes a freaking village. He knows this, and so my husband has become my village. Lucky me.

Along with the medical marijuana, I am wondering whether a smoking habit (I've avoided for life) would be tempting at this point. Would it have changed any of this? I would certainly be putting a filter on my Camels. I have no idea how daddy ever smoked those. I'm sure glad he enjoyed them until the end and even though i won't be smoking, I won't be nearly as obsessed with cancer-causing things. I am sure that most of this advice is written by the LADIES HOME JOURNAL because doctors and the FDA seem to think we can eat just about anything. No more worries for me like exhaust fumes, talking on cell phones, eating bacon or charred meat, doing saccharin, worries over hair-color chemicals, chemicals in manicures, tanning at the beach or any other carcinogens. I may spend the rest of my life doing whatever the hell I want.

Hey Ben! Hey Jerry! Let's get it on. I have two more days of waiting for results, and I may book a trip in September to Cancun for my outrageous sunburn and my radioactive airplane ride. I'll be drinking diet Margaritas laced with bad Mexican water. I am free.

Re-sluts on Friday morning. Heart pounding, bated breath and throat-choking stress is putting it mildly.

Jesus and drugs rock the big one.

(this was reposted from February 2011)

Pump it...

thump, thump, thump

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”
― Hippocrates

Paleo

Lost a jean size. This is the way to live.

Barometer Soup

2007

I never considered myself a musician until after I played with other musicians. You bounce off each other and learn your craft by being on the edge (the brink?) and falling on your face a lot. It's a special brand of delirious pressure.

I do NOT miss being my own roadie, but I miss the music.

Opinionator

Schooling Santorum

By DICK CAVETT

Truth be told, I’d planned on a lighthearted topic for today.

But in line with last time’s subject — the deleterious effect the news can have on your health — those threats to the blood pressure continue with no shortage of headache and stomach-acid-stirring topics to jostle our wellness, if not our actuarial tables. A few minutes of CNN this morning did it.

Just about any pair of random news items are enough to make you reach for the Bisodol. Today’s two: the stupidity of the Koran burning by American military personnel and our baffling, cowering impotence in the face of Bashar al-Assad’s bloody slaughter, in Syria, of man, woman and child — victims apparently not as worthy of our caring, or of life, as their counterparts were in Libya. You can get ill from this.

And there’s still Rick Santorum, alas. As Joan Rivers might say, “Please!!”

We learn from him that contraception is a sin. Giving birth (sorry) to the possibly rude question of how the Santori as a couple and as obedient Catholics managed to have only eight children over all those years if they didn’t … well, never mind.

Remember the “rhythm” method, humorously called “Vatican Roulette”? A friend of mine says he knows full well that he and his sister “owe our existence to it.” An apt name, roulette being the worst-odds sucker game in the casino: Let’s do it, dear. The odds are only 37 to 1 against us.

Maybe they cheated now and then. The thought might not have arisen were I not typing this shortly after one of the most soundly defeated incumbent senators in recent history spent part of his time at the — one dearly hopes — final “debate” reeling off the number of times he was forced to vote contrary to his beliefs!

We’re taught in early school days by our wise teachers and kindly parents that it is not nice to comment on or make fun of people’s appearance. But does Santorum look like a president?

Not that you have to be of majestic aspect, I suppose, but he’s really pushing it. When you think of Lincoln or F.D.R., to name but two, Santorum in comparison looks like someone who’d play a character called “Ricky” in a mildly amusing sitcom.

Try to picture Rick’s countenance Photoshopped into that famous picture from World War II, sitting in Roosevelt’s place, side by side with Stalin and Churchill in Yalta. It would look like two redwoods and a spirea bush. Is that bland Santorum visage suitable for Mount Rushmore? That would look like The Great Four and Pee-wee Herman.

The sweater vests don’t help.

My soul similarly rolls over and groans whenever Santorum uses the phrase “home-schooling.” I first heard about it in the dim days when the John Birch Society was a going thing. (Young folks, I don’t blame you for not believing that this organization held that President Dwight Eisenhower was a “conscious, dedicated agent” of the Soviet Union.) Some benighted McCarthy-admiring parents decided to pluck their children from the clutches of “commies” teaching our kiddies their godless doctrine.

I have lost track of distant relatives of mine, parents who also snatched their young kids from school and, for their remaining school years, stuffed them mainly with the Bible. (I’d love to know how they did on their SATs.)

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they’re qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training. Where did the idea come from that anybody can do it? How many parents can intuit how to do it? (Pardon unconscious rhyme there.) My parents were teachers and the thought of home-schooling sent them rolling before they were in their graves. Especially when parents, complaining of their kids’ schooling, wrote in report card responses things like “I am loathe to critacize…”; “my childs consantration”; “normalicy”; “my daughter’s abillaties”; “her examatian grades”; “she should of done better”; “greater supervizion,” etc., into the night.

To deny kids the adventure and socialization of going to school, thereby missing out on the activities, gossip, projects, dances, teams, friendships and social skills developed — to deny kids this is shortsighted and cruel. I think of the mournful home-school kid watching his friends board the school bus, laughing, gossiping and enjoying all that vital socialization we call schooldays.

Besides, aren’t you arguably a better person for having gone to school rather than having it funneled into you by dreary old Ma or Pa in their faded bathrobes at home?

And what is the argument for it? For some, is it to protect their innocent ones from hearing words like, oh, “sex” and “contraception”? From forced association with those less desirable ethnically? Maybe it’s to keep them safe from radical notions like the idea that fossils and carbon-dating aren’t put there by the Devil to fool the scientists, but prove the world has billions, not thousands, of years on it.

Surely, there are parents caught in mediocre school districts with little choice but to give their kids the best shot at a rounded exposure to arts, letters, the sciences, and so on, and are admirably able to do so at home — thereby sparing them the teachers who can’t spell and who tell the kids, as in one friend’s case, that the band around the center of the earth on the globe is called “the equation.”

Who knows what sorts of fears haunt the minds of home-schooling parents? I guess it’s always possible, when Sally or Billy is walking to school, that a dark figure might leap out of the shrubbery, maniacally shrieking, “There’s climate change!”

Again, teaching takes skill and education and dedication. Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry.

- New York Times

(brilliant)

taadaaaaaa...

Glad I took this road

Kale - the big dog

I can't stand this antioxidant vegetable but (brilliant, creative me) made this bitter fair into something orgasmic.

Ingredients

kale (2 big bunches)

garlic (I like too many cloves)

fresh ginger ( a chunk about the size of a walnut)

cashews (handful)

olive oil (2/3 cup)

rice wine vinegar (1/3 cup)

juice of one lemon

lemon zest

liquid lemon stevia to taste (Whole Foods)

sriracha sauce (to taste)

Directions

Devein the kale.

Chiffonade and wash.

Cuisinart the garlic and ginger (amount to your taste)

Add all remaining ingredients

Pour over kale and add some whole cashews over the top before serving.

This is the best darn thing I've ever invented. I do not give massages after eating this unless I don't like you.

Church?

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

~~~Mahatma Gandhi~~~~

Food glorious food...

Sugar feeds cancer. Meat eating is linked to cancer. Yadda Yadda. I'm trying to make this connection with nutrition, but I'm beginning to panic. I gave up booze, flour, sugar, trans fats, dairy, soy and all processed foods. I am a stinkin' food nun and eat to live so I don't faint. I've read and listened to hundreds of articles on cancer and lifestyle choices, but other than the things I can't control (like the Benzene on which my house rests), this is so, so different. Eating is such a pleasurable thing.

It's just sad.

I found out that I am the most creative cook ever with vegetables but... what is homemade baba ghanoush without a pita? What is lox without a bagel? Sushi without sticky rice? My blood sugar is so damn level that I wouldn't want Godiva if you paid me in massages. I'm not hungry. I'm just bored to tears.

I cried today.

Help

You is what you think you is.

Maizie

Naughty dog

Junkie...

I like keeping it real. That is, of course, except with cancer and then I like keeping it behind my refrigerator. I thought I liked attention. You know… come over to my house. We can drink, hang out at the pool, and Bruce can cook you something fattening while we discuss my cancer. Let me tell you all about my week; my chemo; the burning sensation in my mouth, my constipation, the heartbreak of my oncoming death.

Cancer attention is not pretty. Everyone looks at you differently. They come over and sit around. They bring stuff to your house as if you are sick. Oh shit. I guess I am sick.

I forgot.

I feel just fine. Cancer doesn’t make me feel sick, after all – it’s the damn drugs that make me want to stick needles in my eyeballs. The less I think about it the better I feel, but every time I turned on the TV…

*BAM*

More cancer commercials. They even have one where some lady talks about her Lymphoma and how it came back stronger and almost killed her twice. Oh for godsakes, I am just sitting and having a nice vanilla latte and…

*BAM BAM*

This was sounding like the Cancer with Emeril array of advertisements. I may puke. I mean… puke… some… more.

Then there were the support groups. I’m sorry. I am just not a support group person. I put out an FYI to all of my born-again neighbors that they could bring me wine and drugs. If they had any extra bottles of Valium or Xanax, I would be just fine even if the expiration date was a little off. No problemo. I was thinking of my future. I didn’t want their prayer chains, their bad casseroles with mushroom soup, noodles and a promise. I wanted to hoard wine and drugs for later. I figured with this kind of sensatitonal attention, I could end up with a decent wine cellar. There would be a later, right? I had a future. Didn’t I?

I can dream.

I love research. I love to read, write and get on the net; look things up. Everyone knows - I have an entire life of online best friends. Okay, I’ve never met most of them, but… well never mind. If you are one of them, you know what I mean. In this particular cancer scenario, I did no research. I had a wonderful tactic of complete and utter denial. This would work. I told the doctor: “I don’t want to know much. When you put that horse needle in my hip to get that bone marrow tomorrow, I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want to know how far it is going in. I want drugs… the maximum amount possible, and I want you to smile as if this walk-in-the-park is happening to some other chick.” Bite the bullet and think of some sandy beach in Fiji, Sally. I can do it… I would just drug up now and detox my liver later.

GOD was totally into the drugs. I am worse than an Apache on a reservation with drugs and alcohol. Face it, with drugs, I have no reservations. I will get through this like a champion. I’ll listen to Queen; that’s right. “We arrrrre the chaaaampions, my friend…” There would be theme songs. There would be signature drinks with swizzle sticks and chemo parties. I wasn’t going to let this get to me like some normal person. After all, I had drugs from everyone.

I will do this my way- with GOD, Rhianna, Marvin Gaye, my family, my friends, an appetizer of ignorance, an entrée of denial, a sleeping pill salad and a delicious sweet, creamy dessert of…

MORE… DRUGS.

Gotta love Freddie Mercury in his tighty-whities.

Green Juice

Other than the fact that this life regenerating hippie from 1969 gets on my last nerve, this is some good info.

Gnarly dude.

Waistline...

No one tells you about the importance of watching yours.

It began when I was around forty-eight. The waistline started creeping up. I've had a difficult time getting dressed for years but my waist is about the only thing that DID creep. Most of the rest of me stayed the same. But I blamed myself, my diet, my husband, my ankle, my knee, my mother... okay the list was long, but I never considered cancer.

What I did know is that I haven't zipped a pair of pants in ten years. I'm around a size 10 in the butt but (last year) a sixteen in the waist. Okay, folks.. that is downright pregnant, but I never thought of it being a health problem ---> just a fatness issue. So, I did what everyone else did. I exercised my bloody brains out even to the point of permanently ruining my ankle. I now have chronic tendonitis there, which is swollen twice its size most days. My waist was around 33",then 35", 36", then 38", 39", and last January at 40" I panicked. My belly no longer felt fat but "wrong." It was impossible to tie my shoes as if there was something in there. I was the last person to jump up to grab a grandchild because it was very difficult for me to hop out of a chair. I had horrible heartburn, but I figured that I was fat, so fat people probably get heartburn, right?

Denial.

Then I had two friends tell me to go to another doctor. I balked. My doctor was fine, I thought. He said that I had a lipoma (a fatty tumor) inside my belly that was nothing. He had felt such things before. Then, I saw a photo of myself on my annual trip to Sonoma and I was horrified. Somehow, my mind wanted to think it was nothing... but that wasn't true. There was a reason my waistline was huge and the only thing that could get rid of it was six rounds of the strongest chemotherapy they had available.

Non-Hodgkins is a very slow growing cancer. It took years to develop into a football-size, and I - all the while - insisted that I was just fat. As it lowered my self-esteem further and further I found myself becoming isolated knowing that even wearing a simple pair of jeans was impossible. I found myself at Target at the maternity section passing it off as a gift for a daughter-in-law who wasn't yet pregnant. I was desperate. I did so many planks that my arms and abs are like guns, but nothing was stopping this bloodsucker inside me from taking over. I couldn't even paint my own toenails.

My NHL beast completely surrounded my abdominal aorta, was headed toward my spleen/liver/bone and I could have died easily with the amount of cardio I was doing. It scares me now just thinking about it. The good news is that my heart is strong from years of being at the gym. One of the biggest fears of chemo is the destruction of heart valves and BAM, you drop dead afterwards of a heart attack. That is common. I've always worked out - even when I was in the depths of despair of my belly-besity. After I began chemo in February 2011, my waist ballooned up to a 46.

46" of pure unadulterated hell.

Put a bald head and skinny legs on a 46" waist and you have a nice stork. I was horrified.

Since then I have lost 8" in my waist... which is still large but the inflammation (oncologist said) would take a while. The chemo gives it to you... and I get chemo again on April 25th. My petscan is April 17th and all I can do is hope for the best. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't watch for my waist growing again. It used to be for vanity. Now it is for my life.

My cancer does not go into remission. I will have it forever, but they can keep it at bay by profylactic chemo drugs for several years. I do not feel the terror of dying anymore. I know in my heart that I'm not in charge here on this Earth, and that in itself gives me peace. The cancer is going to do what the cancer is going to do... one way or the other.

FYI: If your waistline is over 35" it is one of the biggest signs for Ovarian cancer and Lymphoma, so watch it monthly. If it grows... ask for a CT scan. No. I change my mind on that...

Demand it.

The greatest choice...

I have cancer. Boy, I never thought I would say that one. Me. A regular person with a regular life, a great husband, four great kids - I even have five grandchildren. Though I'm not a negative person...a few years back I thought to myself, "you better enjoy all this perfection because one day something really bad is going to happen, sweetheart." Life just doesn't go on without some kind of strife, right? Some type of pain, yearning, tragedy or illness has to be in my path. As a mother I knew that the best case scenario would be if the awful thing happened to me. I prayed every day that my kids would be spared of being that child who gets killed in a car crash in the high school. There is always one kid that you hear about in every single school. "Please, God... don't make it be one of my kids. Please?" I wanted the hit. I wanted to be the target; GIVE THE CRAP TO ME.

My husband and I have been together for more years than I can count. It has been forty-two years actually. And just like many couples, we didn't know what to do with ourselves when our wonderful children left for college; off to find their own lives. It was devastating for both of us and we didn't know what to make of the silence. We didn't talk about it and so we drifted apart a bit. I've learned to get my feelings out on paper and so I wrote a story. Fictional as it may be, there was a lot of truth to my angst and anger in our distance and there it was on paper. A novel. What the novel doesn't tell you is how I handled my relationship in prayer. I am not a religious person at all but my spiritual side is very deep, and I have an abiding faith that never leaves me. So, as I tend to do in uncomfortable situations - I prayed... I stood at the kitchen sink one day and asked God...

"Please make me understand what a decent person my husband is and make me appreciate him. Please, God... put it in my lap"

I used those very words. God does not mess around, and I should have been very careful for what I wished for because I had the answer (literally) in my "lap" in three days. I went in for a physical and they found that I needed a CT scan because something wasn't right. I had a football-size tumor in my belly. I had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Me. Healthy, vegetable eating, exercising, non-smoking happy-go-lucky ME. How could this be true?

It was. So over the next few weeks I will talk to you about this journey. I will share some of the good things about this cancer and some of the horrifying things as well, and also ways that I've empowered myself - at least in my own mind. There was even some humor and perspective last year. I got that more than I ever could have imagined. My family is different with me now. I wake up and look at the sunshine and blue sky in a way that I couldn't have seen before. God answered my prayers. I had some horrible bloody football put right in my lap. But God listened to me. He didn't give it to one of my precious babies, but gave it to me instead. So I am beyond thankful. Ironically, I am very grateful for this gift of the right choice.

A little help...

My children teach me so much. My greatest step towards my own personal evolution was some advice my son, Jake, gave me in 2010. It was in regard to the people in my life. He said,

"Lower your expectations, Mom. You'll be happier."

Child genius. I take no credit for his amazing, centered and brilliant personality.

If you want the best laugh of your week, listen all the way through...

Sadness...

You are probably the reason why you are sad. I'm not talking about mourning a death or a romantic break-up, but a general sadness. It may come from your past or a concern about your future. Sadness can come from something said to you as a child or something that someone did to you. It is your choice to stay sad and isolated. I understand clinical depression, but some of it may be self-driven and the more misery you indulge in the more miserable you feel.

You sail your own ship. Prozac, Valium and booze mask only the symptoms. If you are angry, figure out why. If you are lonely and bored - shame on you. There is an entire world of people, learning, exploring, and (yes) even falling on your face trying to do something new. Don't be one of those people who gets to seventy-five years old and wonders why they didn't play in a band, or plant a vegetable garden, or paint a picture, or take a class, or volunteer for a cause.

Oops, your life just passed and you forgot to do anything at all.

Many people are depressed because they have made their entire lives about dwelling on themselves and their negativity. They can't figure out why they are down all the time and yet they sit and watch mindless TV while talking about their neighbors and contemplating why life sucks so badly. If you haven't found the creativity or the joy... just listen to the giggle of a child. If you don't have one, go play with someone else's.

Life is about choices. If you insist on waking up every morning and being cranky with everyone around you.... know that it is driven by YOU. Let go of the past because the past isn't driving your damn bus now. YOU are. Quit worrying about the future because the future may never happen - you may die of a heart attack in one hour and fifteen minutes from now.

Think VERY carefully: how do you want to be remembered in this life of yours? Are you bringing joy and kindness to people or bringing them down? Do you make everyone feel sorry for you? Are you that needy for attention? Ask yourself why? You have the choice to THRIVE or to NOSEDIVE.

Thriving takes practice. It takes making a complete and utter fool of yourself to try something new. "No pain, no gain" is putting it mildly if you want to thrive in your life. CSI and Jersey Housewives on TV will not build your confidence or strengthen you mentally. It will not stimulate your brain and make you think.

Me? if I am not looking up at least three new words daily in my dictionary, I have had a bad day.

If nothing else, try the gym over Prozac... the endorphins will heal your depression and give you a purpose towards a goal. The other alternative to happiness is MUSIC. Listen to all types of music daily and (better yet) learn to play an instrument yourself.

(I am tired of excuses that you aren't coordinated... what a bunch of horse shit.) You learned to drive a car didn't you? Take guitar, flute, piano or violin lessons. Music enriches your soul and makes you a whole person.

Without it, you are missing one of the great healers.

Um Ba Ba be... Eh Day Da... Da Day De... Ee Da De Da de Da De Da Mmmmmmmmmm

S.W. Feldman, Tai Chi master (2013)

Oriah

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dreams for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn\'t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. ~Oriah~

Eat Organic!

Too expensive? Think $130,000 for chemotherapy!

grasslandbeef.com

Gluten

11 reasons why gluten and wheat should be avoided

Gluten

1. Gluten causes gut inflammation in at least 80% of the population and another 30% of the population develops antibodies against gluten proteins in the gut. Furthermore, 99% of the population has the genetic potential to develop antibodies against gluten. Antibodies acting in the gut can actually be good news, because when the body doesn’t react against gluten right away, gluten proteins can enter the blood stream more easily, especially if the gut is already leaky, and trigger immune reaction elsewhere in the body.
2. Since gliadin, the main problem causing gluten protein, can be similar in structure to other proteins found in tissues of such organs as the thyroid or the pancreas, antibodies against gliadin can end up attacking those organs and ultimately cause autoimmune diseases like hypothyroidism and type 1 diabetes.
3. Gluten’s inflammatory effect in the gut causes intestinal cells to die prematurely and causes oxidation on those cells. This effect creates a leaky gut and a leaky gut can allow bacterial proteins and other toxic compounds to get in the blood stream, which can also lead to autoimmune attacks on the body. A leaky gut also means that food as not digested properly and nutrients are not absorbed fully, which can lead to nutrient deficiencies.
4. Antibodies against gluten have also been shown to attack heart tissues and cause heart disease.
5. Gluten has been strongly associated with cancer. It is potentially cancer causing, but at least cancer promoting.

Paleo antioxidant soup

Sweet potato lime soup recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks;
• 4 cups chicken stock;
• 3 thin slices fresh ginger;
• 2 lime leaves;
• ¾ cup coconut milk;
• ½ cup water;
• 2 tbsp lime juice;
• 2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped;
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste;

Preparation

1. In a large sauce pan over a medium-high heat, combine the sweet potatoes, chicken stock, ginger and lime leaves. Allow the contents to come o a boil and then turn the heat down to medium-low and continue to simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender to the touch.
2. Remove the lime leaves and maybe even the ginger if you prefer. I kept the ginger in, as I love the taste; however, if you are not a huge fan, you will find that leaving it in makes it very strong.
3. Remove the soup from the heat and use a hand-mixer or a blender to blend the soup until completely smooth. Return the soup to a low heat and mix in the coconut milk, water and lime juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir well. You will know everything is mixed correctly once the coconut milk is completely blended in.
4. You can remove the pot from the heat at this point and sprinkle the chopped cilantro on top prior to serving.

I added cashews!

Hi ya ya ya....

Listen very carefully. This (very) young woman cleverly took a Native American beat and spinned it into a golden moment for us all. Everyone likes it because it is different than anything else, and so soulful sounding and heartfelt. I've asked everyone I know and they think I'm crazy, but if you listen to the driving Apache beat at the beginning and the progression..all you need is lyrics like Hi yayaya, Hi yayaya, hiyahiya, hiyayaya to put you on the reservation... not to mention the minor key (sounds like Bm), the second verse and thennnn the bridge. Holy schneikes... I'm right, dammit.

Or better yet, sing this Adele song to this beat and you'll get it.

Okay, maybe I'm in my own little world here. Going to have a glass of wine at the PowWow with Tonto tonight.

Take Me Back To The Sixties

Take Me Back To The Sixties

I'm not sure if I like this or it makes me feel sad and uncomfortable. Parents gone, and no segue whatsoever from my childhood, and so the songs (especially those of the Beatles) feel painful. I left at eighteen and never looked back.

Weird.

Cancer and coconut oil...

my Friday night...

"I need a drink"

"I'm still thirsty"

"I need my cozy blankie"

"You forgot my Rapunzel doll and my cozy blankie"

"I need my doll... pleeeeease"

"I want cinnamon toast"

"I don't like your cinnamon toast"

"I have a tummy ache"

"Can you rub my tummy?

"I want a story"

"I want another story"

"Now I need a book"

"Lily is kicking me"

"She kicked me first"

"Can you play chess with me"?

"Now let's play Candyland"

"no, chess"

"no, Candyland"

"Can you paint my toenails"?

"Nevermind, I want to do it myself"

"No"

"pleeease"?

"No"

"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease"?

How all parents aren't medicated is beyond me completely.

Meds for children at 5:55AM: TV

Paleo

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
― Alan Watts

Life is not your past. Life is not your future. Life is right NOW. Relish in each moment and devour ordinary things like laughter, walking your dog, taking a hot shower, making breakfast for dinner, friendship, playing baseball with your kids or sitting and doing absolutely nothing.

I will refrain from posting pictures of frolicking children, buttercups, rainbows and pink ponies.

Pretend that you are going to get hit by a dump truck next Tuesday and contemplate how damn good that hot shower feels knowing that little tidbit. Be in the moment. If it doesn't come naturally, make the effort towards this goal. If nothing else, stop making everything about you and give away the kindest side of yourself every day. Believe in someone else for your religion. Sing. Sing a song. Make it simple to last the whole night long.

Lighten the hell up, you downer you.

Hot Nana and the suburban hooligan...

I was asked to pick up Reese for preschool yesterday, and am ready to be on task for her mama most days of the week now that I am home.

I get to the school early so I take a walk around the church feeling like I usually do in a church lately... *out of touch* as though the memory is there but something is missing. I'm thinking that it might be that guilty feeling I used to get that Jesus was watching me and that I was screwing up morally in some way. I took two rounds circling the vestibule and then back through the school having promised myself to start moving more often than sitting on my tush. I passed many young mothers and wonder where the years had gone knowing I look like one of the Nanas.

I stand there at the door to the classroom next to the other Nana who happened to have shown up for the same reason. I begin to notice that amidst these young mothers that I am now the "hot Nana" since the other "grandma" is underneath something that looked like an outerwear housecoat from The Vermont Country Store with practical Sketchers that I wouldn't be caught wearing to retrieve my morning mail. No makeup. We glance at one another which makes me feel even hotter because she is gazing at me with suspicious eyeballs underneath half-closed lids. As she removes her old lady gloves, her hands look ancient as though she had been in the garden for days at a time without sunscreen. I find myself reevaluating my face in the reflection of some Christian wall poster of Jesus to make sure that I wasn't delusional in contemplating my hotness. Though my comparison to the farmer Nana was pathetic in nature it kind of made me have a little hop in my step as I stood there in my skinny jeans and funky-ass earrings. I am, without a doubt, in this particular circumstance; juxtaposed as it may be... hot.

The teacher comes to the door asking if anyone is here for Reese. I raise my hand sheepishly still channeling the Jesus guilt I had felt only moments before. Apparently, Reese had had a little "skirmish" with another girl. My sweet baby had been popped in the nose on the playground by a little "suburban hooligan" named Katie. Teacher says Reese is devastated but is holding it in emotionally and that I should be "prepared." I walk to the door covered with Turtle preschool names like Tate, Truman, Mikah, Maude, and Penelopea. Whatever.

"Reese, your grandma is here." I hate that damn word, which says a lot about my fear of this stage in my life.

My baby bolts towards me and her cry is visceral, almost animal-like in her horror and subsequent release. "It was awwwwwwful, Non."

My initial reaction was to find the little bitch and pop her one back, only to realize that she was (uh) four-years-old as well and so it would be (just) wrong. Reese asked me to carry her back to the car and, feeling strong still from years of weight training, I was up to the challenge. Yes, hot Nana may have a pot-belly and recovering from chemo but, damn it, she is strong as a bull shark on amphetamines. Reese and I were laughing as we got to the car since I still have it in the silly dept. A little bribery of some cocoa from Starbucks and a visit to Best Buy for Barbie Musketeers makes her forget about the shiner that was beginning to form in her left eye socket. Reese is not so big on the cocoa and didn't drink it (at all) but chatters for at least twenty minutes about the "real" mini Starbucks coffee cup with the "real" little hole in the top of the lid.

Immmpressive.

After spoiling her twice I have created a stinkin' monster and she is asking now for everything that isn't tied down. "After we buy the movie, let's go to the movie theatre for a 3D movie, Non, and thennnn we can go to Chic-fil-a for nuggets, and thennn we can go for Dunkin' Donuts, and thennnn I can spend the night."

After two hours of this I realize that I have been had and we try very hard to get back to any remote form of normalcy... that is, (uh) after eating the Chick-fil-a, planning the 3D movie... and buying the donuts for the morning since she is now spending the night at my house. This, of course is apres the Barbie film (if you choose to consider it a 'film' at all).

How can I turn down this face?

Reese (attorney at large)

Artifucks of California

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Indy anymore...