I Was Going To...

...take a picture of my two feet to show you that I'm wearing (drum roll) two shoes again, but it's really hot and we're in the basement and I don't want to go all the way upstairs to get the camera. So.

I DON'T HAVE TO WEAR THE BOOT ANYMORE!

This is what the Quebecois doctor told me today, although he sternly forbade me running any marathons for the next two weeks.

(!!!!)

It's just lucky I have self-restraint, that's all.

Anyhoo, for the first time in 7 weeks I'm wearing two shoes instead of a shoe and a boot, and my shin is positively basking in the amount of air it suddenly gets.

So yippee, hallelujah, and all other variations on Praise the Lord.

Cheers,

Breanna

Pics & The Ninja Threat

No, not the same ninjas that broke my foot. Different ninjas. I'll tell you about them later.

It's been too hot here this week. I know, you people in hotter climates snicker at us wimping out at 90 F, but c'mon, give us a break. The only places here that have air conditioning are restaurants, movie theaters, and grocery stores. There's only so much walking up and down the ice cream aisle at Albertson's you can do without attracting attention.

So Brother enjoyed his floor time last night on the "mankie" (Boovian for "blankie") that Grandma made him...

And Miss Boo got into the action...

And the Husband had to break up some intense hug action.

Meanwhile, back to the ninjas.

Do you have a death wish but are too chicken to go the suicide route? If so, move to my neighborhood. Buy fireworks. Not the sparkly, pretty kind--the kind that only pop and shriek annoyingly. Start shooting them off in the afternoon, right around the time children go down for their naps, and continue to shoot them off until about midnight. I promise you, that given TWO WHOLE WEEKS of this, the mothers of the neighborhood will hire ninjas to come and kick you in the face until you die from it. Heck, if it doesn't stop after Independence Day, I'LL go to ninja school and come kick you to death myself.

Really, I love America, but I do think that ONE weekend of blowing things to patriotic bits should be enough, don't you?

Cheers,

Breanna

We're Plugged Up

No, not that way.

The "baby sleeps too long at night and mama needs him to wake up and eat" kind of way. I have a plugged duct that I am praying (you can pray too!) doesn't turn into mastitis. So today we are pumping and recovering. I'll get you some more pictures soon.

Cheers,

Breanna

Random Pictures From Our Day

Someone's (someone who managed to gain 2 whole pounds and 1/2 an inch last month) big boy toes...

Why I never thought to use this on carpet spots before I don't know. And it doesn't even leave a distressingly clean spot where the stain was, showing the world how long it's been since you shampooed your carpet. :D (With two little ones and a dog and a husband who works in a cement plant, the poor carpet needs a lot of TLC.)

Miss Boo's first completely original piece of art. It is, predictably enough, "Mama and Baby." I think I'm the purple one.

The beautiful princess and her "scaf" and her "pin-pin" (scarf and clothespin, respectively.

Pin-pins are awesome.

Cheers,

Breanna

It's Been a Celeb-Deadly June

As if you hadn't heard:

And, lastly, with a drum roll and a cymbal and bright flashy lights and sparkle gloves:

So, um, wow. Bad month to be famous.

(Can't really say 'cheers', can I?)

Breanna

I'll Get You a Picture Later

...but I've got a wiggly little boy on my lap that I'm trying to keep from being so noisy he wakes up his sister. It takes Brother a while to get riled, but when he does get riled he lets you know about it. I wonder if this bodes well for his two-year-old time?

Anyway, I was going to start this post with a picture of dinner last night, except I didn't take one, but since I owe you a Lose the Baby Weight update I thought I'd tell you about it anyway, and you can imagine that it was served beautifully on prettier plates than I actually have.

I've exercised every day since I started (last Wednesday) except for Saturday and Sunday, which I'm giving myself off both as a reward and because I don't want to exercise in front of the Husband until my technique is better because I take direction worse than a bad actor trying to play Hamlet. (Because I have a problem with the deadly sin of Pride, I guess.)

For dinner we had:

Cube steak with pan sauce and mushrooms
Leftover bow-tie pasta and white sauce (under the pan sauce; the white sauce was pretty much all gone as this was the pasta from the bottom of the bowl)
Steamed carrots
Mixed green salad

And for dessert....
Mystery Church Lady Jello

No, that last wasn't the title of a recipie, though it should be; and no, I don't think the jello met my qualifications for "real food" but there was a reason I said "mostly" real food in that other post. I've been thinking about it, and I think it's something important that I need to be aware of during my healthy-eating quest.

The jello was given to us by a church lady, bless her heart, who felt we needed help what with my broken foot and the new baby and all. It is very sweet and it took me three tries of eating it before I could figure out what was in it. (I think it's tapioca pudding mix, peach jello, and canned peaches.) But the point is that it's food that won't harm me, as long as I don't eat the whole bowlful by myself, and it was provided by God, so I shouldn't toss it out just because it's full of sugar.

This is a point that I don't think most diet books recognize. There is generally a passage that recommends going through your cupboards and fridge and throwing out everything "unhealthy", so you can't possibly mess up and eat the whole bag of Cheese Doodles. Aside from the fact that I know I'm perfectly capable of driving to the store to buy another bag of Cheese Doodles if I want them that bad, there are bigger problems with this strategy.

Not to sound too much like a mother, but there are starving people all over the world, and throwing food out is just plain wasteful. These foods aren't going to go away from your world, so I suggest instead of throwing them out, you 1) stop buying more of them and 2) practice learning to eat them moderately. In other words, eat up the 15 pounds of white pasta (slowly) before you go buy some fancy whole-wheat pasta. (Which I recommend against--tastes like glue--but just eat your regular pasta in sensible amounts.) It's not going to hurt you, if you eat "bad" foods in moderation and replace them slowly with "good" foods.

Secondly, I think it's easy for us to despise what we've already got and think that something that the Lord hasn't given us would make us happy/thin/pretty/good-natured. The Israelites in the desert were given manna, but they whined because they didn't have leeks and cucumbers like in Egypt, and wanted meat. God gives them quails and judges them with a terrible plague, to show them how serious it is to despise a gift from Him. They still whine. And so forth. It's easy to feel superior to the Israelites, because we think we're not nearly so centered on getting what we want as they were. But that is, I'm afraid, merely because we want different things.

It's not right for me to despise what I have--be it clothes, fabric, food, or whatever--and waste or overspend to get something else. The Lord has seen fit to put me where I am and give me the budget I've got. This means that I'm not going to be able to afford fancy organic milk.* To despise the milk I can afford, when God has given me the incredible gift of being in a country with a cheap, safe supply of milk and other foods that have historically been expensive, is simply the sin of covetousness. To despise the Cheese Doodles God has seen fit to bring to my pantry, instead of enjoying them slowly and then not buying them again, is also covetousness. If I'm faithful in what God has asked me to do (eat and exercise for His glory, not mine), then I'll get thinner at the rate He wants me to get thinner. Until then, I've got no business wasting resources He might want me to use someplace else just because I think I need to get thin in a certain way.** There are a scary lot of things this way of thinking can be applied to, aren't there?

And anyway, I couldn't hurt the Church Lady's feelings about her Mystery Jello. And Miss Boo likes to squish the tapioca pearls.

Cheers,

Breanna

*I don't actually think organic milk is any better than regular milk, but while wheeling around Costco last weekend I happened to be at eye-level with the milk price sticker and was staggered that organic milk is THREE TIMES the price of regular milk. Dang.

**And, to those who think I'm overly cheap (you know who you are) may I point out we do ourselves well in beds and recliners and beer at this house. :) We know what's important.

The Goose-girl

I was thinking about why it is, exactly, that I don't think humans can wreck the earth. It isn't solely that the people who think we can tend to try to manipulate science, or that they claim to put humans in a class with all the other animals but don't want to allow humans to do what they do (in other words, beavers build dams, men build houses, if they are each animals, how can you say the dam is okay but not the house?). It isn't even the Jurassic Park catchphrase "Life finds a way."

I think the reason that I'm skeptical about man's apocalyptic abilities is how well everything works. From the water cycle to the human pancreas, nature really works remarkably well. Of course, it sometimes gets screwed up--that's our fault--but things are designed to work perfectly, absent sin and its whole rotten inheritance.

Which is what you'd expect from a perfect Designer, after all. God looked at His creation and said it was good. And so mighty was this goodness that even after the people God had put in charge of nature decided to wreck themselves, nature followed her human masters but kept hints of her former character, like the princess who is forced to be a goose girl temporarily.

I don't think man has the power, or for that matter the time, to tilt things so far that the world becomes uninhabitable.

We can be foolish, of course, and waste and wreck and damage her, or obsess over and worship and fear her, but the world is older than we are. She has seen us swing back and forth between treating her like a goddess and like a whore--we're in a goddess phase at the moment--when in actuality she's neither. We've been given dominion over her in the same way that a good man has dominion over a dog or indeed, that Christ has dominion over us: not to exploit us, but as C.S. Lewis puts it, to make us "more ourselves than ever".

In other words our proper occupation is to garden the world, which means neither leaving huge slag heaps nor fencing off large portions of the outdoors lest any human footstep soil the virgin forest. Being sinners we want to do one or the other. If we're redeemed, we know we must repent of both and set about gardening.

So Nature, in her goose-girl rags at the moment, waits like the rest of us for Christ to come and make all things new. I think she'll last until then. God has seen to it that she will.

Cheers,

Breanna

A Few Pics On Laundry Day

Hooray! I get to actually HAVE a laundry day.
Eating eggs with a hammer and enamel cup...

Brother is a pea in a striped pod...

A flower on my Austrian Copper rosebush.

Cheers,

Breanna

I Couldn't Remember

The whole of this poem the other day, just half of one verse, which drove me crazy, so now you get to read Kipling because I finally found it:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,

I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.

Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn

That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:

But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,

So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,

Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,

But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come

That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,

They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;

They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;

So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew

And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true

That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!


Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.
Here is my other favorite Kipling poem-- scroll down to "Tommy".

Book Review: A Cookbook

So this is the cookbook, "Feeding the Whole Family", by Cynthia Lair, which I was promising to do a book review on. Let me first give a disclaimer in that this book is designed for families with babies and littles, so some of the things that made me go "that's so cool!" might not row your boat.

The premise of the book is fairly simple--cooking "whole foods" for your family in tasty, doable ways. Lair defines a whole food as, among other things, "fresh, local, and organic". I pretty much ignore all three of those requirements and hone in on the "can I picture where this food came from" criteria--did it have a mother or did it grow somewhere, or was it manufactured? If manufactured, natch, probably not a whole food. This is almost the only beef I have with her--she tends to take the "whole food" thing a bit far. Pretty much I just figure a carrot is always better than a Twinkie, whether it's organic or not. So just take this attitude with a grain of salt; even so, Lair is much less pushy about it than many food authors I've read.

The other thing I ignore in this cookbook is her avoidance of white sugar. Her recipies usually call for maple syrup, honey, or a number of other "natural" sweetners which, while I'm sure they're delicious, are generally fairly expensive. I've used white sugar in her recipies with good sucess.

Those caveats aside, I've found the recipies in this book very tasty and fairly easy to fix, even when they call for strange ingredients like nori (sheets of dried seaweed used in making sushi). Hands-on time is limited, although often things might need to soak/bake etc. for several hours. Lair, who is a vegetarian, includes many animal protien recipies and manages to avoid the condescending or downright hostile attitude many vegetarians have to those of us who eat meat. The vegetarian recipies are equally tasty and many of them could be easily converted into animal-protien recipies by adding a little chicken or shrimp.

Lastly, of course, everything in this book is good for you, which is handy for me just now in my "Lose the Baby Weight Without Making Toxic Breastmilk" quest.

Lair teaches nutrition at a university and helpfully includes her meal planning strategy, which I will detail here (the animal protein version--I don't think any of you are vegetarians):

1. First you choose a whole grain (like brown rice or whole wheat bread) or a startchy vegetable (like a potato) depending on what you have in mind for step 2. (Potatoes go better with steak than brown rice would, but brown rice might go better with a delicate fish--get it?)

2. You choose your animal protein--meat, fish, eggs, cheese, whatever.

3. You choose a green vegetable.

4. You choose another vegetable.

5. You choose a "digestive"--something pickled, raw, fermented, or cultured (yogurt, buttermilk, sauerkraut, salsa, salad, pickles...etc.)

It seems like a lot of food until you realize that the digestive is usually combined with one of the vegetables (i.e., a green salad) or is a sauce on things, and that these don't have to be separate dishes--you can fit them all in a beef stew.

I've been trying to plan meals this way lately. The digestive is the hardest part, but it does boost your veggie consumption and the inclusion of the whole grain makes you stay full longer.

There you have it-- my first book review. The next one will be a lot different since it'll be fiction and I know something about writing fiction. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

How it Turned Out

Kinda pretty, I thought, though my plates aren't particularly fancy. The other modifications I made on the cabbage recipie, turning it pretty much into nothing resembling the original, were that instead of using lime juice I used lemon juice, because it's what I had, and half a red onion instead of the scallions, because ditto, and toasted pumpkin seeds instead of the almonds, because... yeah, you get it. Also I added cumin and cayenne to the dressing. It was really good, a very "bright" tasting salad.

Bueno, Mama. But the cabbage tastes funny...

I just want to get out of this thing sometime this year. Mama is always cooking these days.

Cheers,

Breanna

Dinner Tonight

But Kenny can't have any:



...because of the chocolate. This is from Cynthia Lair's website with the embarassing name of which I will have more to say in a future book review post. The conceit of the cooking videos is that her family just wanders around doing average, mildly funny stuff in the background and her grandson runs tearing through like the six-year-old he is occasionally--one continues cooking in spite of interruptions, get it? Might I just say that all the recipies of hers that I've made have turned out fabulous.

Anyway I'm making this with the Napa Cabbage Slaw (only with mexican seasonings and regular cabbage) and the Mexican Brown Rice. Yum.

Cheers,

Breanna

You All Will Help Me

Because now... Brother is sleeping in his bed...

Miss Boo is no longer at my eye level when eating...

...and I am on my foot. So.

I no longer have an excuse about this whole baby-weight thing. I can't start exercising seriously for another couple of weeks at least; but I'm going to put My Plan out here in cyberspace and you all are instructed to turn into Mean Jillian From The Biggest Loser if you catch me slacking. So here's what I'm going to do:

1. Eat Mostly Real Food

My definition of real food is real food, as opposed to sugar substitutes, meat substitutes, weird oils that were invented in a lab in 1974... you get my drift. I am not saying that any foods are off limits, but it seems to me that if I eat real normal meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, and fats that I can probably trust my hunger more and just eat until I feel satisfied. For instance, high fructose corn syrup (e.g., Coke) contains calories, but your body doesn't recognize it as a sugar and so you still feel hungry even though you've taken in calories and are getting used to things tasting extra-sweet. You can see how this would be detrimental to losing baby weight.

Likewise, margarine just doesn't taste as good to me as butter--I tend to want to use more of it. So I use the real stuff, in moderation, and bask in the knowledge that I'm getting fat-soluable vitamins as well.

I don't consider it safe to really "diet" since I'm breastfeeding, and need about 2000 calories a day just to break even (as opposed to an "average" woman's need of about 1800 calories). So my plan is to eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm full, and drink lots of water, with an occasional cup of coffee or glass of wine.

2. I Hate Exercise

...but I'm going to do it anyway. I have always wanted to read a book about losing weight that didn't include a chapter that said something like, "I used to hate exercise but now I love it!" I'm pretty sure I'll always hate the process of exercise; I don't like sweating, I don't like pain, and I don't like the boredom of consistency. I'm not an athletic person and I'm not overburdened with physical coordination, and I don't have the personality to enjoy working my body hard, AND THAT'S OKAY. Not everybody has to have the same hobbies. You couldn't really pay me enough to train for and run a marathon, but I will knit something on microscopic needles, so I figure I have stick-to-it-ivness.

The way I see it is this: nobody likes to have their teeth cleaned or get a mole removed either. But we do it anyway because the alternatives--rotten teeth or skin cancer--are significantly worse. So my plan is to admit that I don't have to like exercise but also not make it optional. The "Bouncing Back from Baby" DVD I have says "see results in three weeks" so I'm giving it three weeks, working out five days a week.

Right now I'm using the caveat that the three weeks don't start until I get out of the boot, so I'm only doing the floor exercises portion of the DVD. We'll see if it whittles my middle or not. :)

I'm also giving myself the out that if, after three weeks of doing the whole program, I don't like it or don't like the results I see, I can change to doing something else. But I must do something, to be strong enough in the heart and limbs to chase children.

3. Just Keep Going

Pretty much this requires no elaboration. Once my body hits its Point Where It Wants To Be, the exercise and eating will maintain it at that point and I'll stop losing weight. So I'll just keep going.

Sound simple? Good. Yell at me if I start guzzling Cokes or (more likely) say that going up and down stairs to do laundry counts as exercise.

Cheers,

Breanna

Hooray! Huzzah! And Otherwise Yipee!

I'm allowed to walk on my foot.

IN THE BOOT, the doc emphasized, and ONLY AS LONG AS THE PAIN ISN'T SEVERE, and many like cautions.

Sorry about no picture of the absent wheelchair or the hopefully-getting-dusty crutches-- there are things I have been itching to get at in my house for five weeks. I got me a refrigerator to clean.

Or at least, a Miss Boo to get down for a nap. I'll write you a proper blog again soon.

Cheers,

Breanna

Cousins

We were at Grammy and Baba's house while the Husband was at Various Points East for a business trip. Miss Boo promptly named all her Cousins and the little boy Grammy babysits. For instance:
Here is Miss Boo with the cousin she named Eddie. This cousin was not, oddly enough, named Eddie by her parents, she has a much more euphonious name, but anyhow, aren't they cute reading together in their little dresses? (Eddie's little brother was named "Baby" and the boy Grammy sits for was named "Mas", as in Uno Mas Taco. Oh well, they were decent approximations, except for "Baby", who does have his own name.)

Here is an exchange of babies and books.

The two girl cousins sitting with Grammy and eating cheerios. Looks very sweet and all; it was actually a temporary detente in a custody battle over some of the dollies. It's very hard to share when you're not quite two and don't quite believe that anybody else exists; next time, Mama will be smarter and bring enough identical dollies for everybody.

Great-grandparents, holding the boy cousins. The boys were not as obliging about posing together as their sisters, for some reason--as if the fact that their necks are too weak to hold their heads up is any excuse. That's Brother on the right. :)

Custody disputes resolved, the cousins decide to take apart a book in the interest of sharing it. (Luckily, it was a book of unfunny cartoons.) Hey, at least they got the concept, right?

All in all, we had an awesome time, and the cousins played remarkably well together, for a group of two-year-olds and babies who didn't have sychronized nap schedules. Commendations to Eddie's Mother. (Ha! That was a sort-of Welcome Back Kotter reference.)

More later,

Cheers,

Breanna

What We Were Doing....

...but we're not anymore. Now we're at Grammy & Baba's house, but here's what we were doing before we left:
Daring Paddy to eat Froggie (or "Woggie" as he's known in Boovian).

Striking a solemn fashion-face for our lovely hat picture.

Feeting Lambie (aka "Mammie") grapes, which the animal stubbornly wouldn't eat.

I shall try to get and post some more pictures later, but our first day here we are pretty thrilled with the cousins and don't want to sit still long enough to have a picture taken.

Cheers,

Breanna

Still No Picture

Sorry. Camera across the room thing again. But I HAVE figured out how to embed Youtube videos (see below), so expect a funner blog from now on. Just not today, because I can't think of any movie clips that highlight "Stop Using Disposable Stuff Unless You Have Dysentery", which is the topic of today's post.

Now I'm not as anti-disposable as some, because I'm against disposables not because they're wrecking the planet but because they are so darn expensive and they make you walk to the dumpster more. For instance: did you know that 5% of the nation's waste is disposable diapers? Eeeeeeeeew. Add to that all the paper plates, napkins, cups, plastic flatware (can't really call it "silverware", can you?), paper towels, disposable wipes, disposable baby washcloths (these exist, I got a package as a free sample), disposable "face wash" dealies, kleenex, grocery bags, plastic wrap/ziploc bags and that's a lot of money that one can throw in the garbage, folks.

(Conspicuously absent from this list: toilet paper. There are people who do without it--I know how but please don't ask me to explain because it's gross--but remember the thing about dysentery up top? Yeah. We won't be going TP-free anytime short of the apocalypse here.)

So what does one use instead of disposables, you might ask? At my house, we use:

• Cloth diapers (when I'm two-footed; we are being expensive right now)
• Cloth diaper wipes (or "little scraps of flannel" as we call them in the business)
• Real washcloths (duh) - takes care of a whole host of the above
• Cloth napkins with napkin rings to avoid cross-mouth contamination
• Real plates & silverware (also duh)
• Cleaning cloths (or "rags" as we call them in the business)
• Handkerchiefs, when I can remember to do so
• Those Ziploc containers with lids - which are supposed to be disposable, but which last a long time before you must dispose of them, a lot longer than the bags which seem to be built to disintigrate after 1-2 washings. Yes, I wash them.

How much money does this save us? Well, I've never really priced out the other stuff, but I know that not buying disposable diapers saves us about $150 per month. I know this because that is what buying disposable diapers during this broken-footed time has cost us. And I know that using rags instead of paper towels not only works a lot better, but saves us the price of the Big Costco Package of paper towels every 2-3 months. (With a dog and two kids, you spill a lot.) And while I suppose the cost of laundry might be a factor if you live in Vegas where water is expensive and rare, where I live we aren't even metered, so laundry is very cheap for me, just the cost of electricity and the soap. It makes much better sense to wash things and use them again.

The other advantage to cloth is that it's much more comfortable than paper in a variety of applications. This is why disposable underwear hasn't really caught on, except when they make you wear it in labor and delivery. Would fancy-dancy restaurants continue to give you cloth napkins if the paper ones felt just as nice? No, because at least two-thirds of what they charge you for is "atmosphere". I have also handled a cloth vs. a paper diaper and thought about the comfort factor--I know I'd want the cloth one.

Now, all that said, while I'm incapacitated we've been using disposable everything (well, not the washcloths), except I put my (one good) foot down when we finished the package of paper plates and said no more! It was ridiculous how much garbage we were making, between the plates and the diapers. We went from having to take the garbage out every 2-3 days to having to take it out every day without fail. Yikes.

Even in normal life I keep some disposables on hand--a few paper diapers for babysitters/overnight, a few paper towels for messes that I want to sequester in the trash or draining bacon on (though I want to get a rack for that), and kleenex for the Husband. But more and more as I think about where our money goes and what we get for it, I just don't see paying any more than we have to each month for stuff we use once and throw away. At least with cloth options, at the end of the item's useful life, it can become a rag.

So, want to see another post about switching?

Happy cloth-ing,

Breanna

This Scene Always Makes Me Feel Better

Because I'm a geek:




*Sigh*. Some days you just need to shoot a dinosaur with a shotgun and then play music really, really loud in your jeep.

Cheers,

Breanna

It's Finally Juning Up

That is, it's finally getting warmer. Hooray! May around here was a wild swing between heat we weren't ready for and then, just when you start wondering if you have a pair of shorts that still fit you, WHAM! The old blizzard-in-the-night trick.

(By the way, sorry no picture. Things are complicated when you have to move children and haul your sorry postpartum broken-footed self into a wheelchair and roll across the room to get the camera. I'll get you a picture after I've had to be in the vicinity of the camera anyway.)

The garden continues to come up well, and we haven't had a hail/wind storm to damage the fruit trees like we did last year, so it may be I'll be even busier in August and September this year than I was last year. Also hooray.

In very weird news, David Carradine has died under mysterious circumstances. I know someone (see? I'm not mentioning your name) who keeps a list of which celebrities die in a given year. In alphabetical order. I bet some of my readers can guess who I'm talking about. (It's not the Husband-- if he did such a thing, he'd keep an Excel spreadsheet with a graph to enable you to track which month is most celeb-deadly.) The odd thing is that it rubs off; a bunch of us now watch the celebrity-death news to make sure he doesn't miss anyone.

In even weirder news, PBO gave a speech in Cairo today which contained the very silly line:

"There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples."

While that truth does transcend nations and peoples, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not at the heart of every religion. What about Kali worship, Druidism, or Baal worship, for instance, which involve sacrifice of a particular group of humans? Just on a hunch, I'm betting that the priests of Baal did not want to be burned alive on a metal statue, and the Druids did not want to be strangled and thrown into a bog.

(Note: I know posers claiming to be Christians, such as the Crusaders, have done things that nobody in their senses would want done to them. You'll note I called them posers? As well, I'm talking about what is accepted and recommended in the doctrines of the religion, not what the followers actually do. See the difference?)

But perhaps PBO meant all modern religions. Or perhaps, which is most likely, he just meant Islam. Well, what are the Five Pillars of Islam?

1. There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.
2. Pray 5 times per day facing Mecca.
3. Give alms.
4. Fast during Ramadan.
5. Go to Mecca.

Do you see Do As You Would Be Done By in there anywhere? No?

(No, alms doesn't count. It's a specific action, not a guiding principle--you can give alms while doing all sorts of things that you wouldn't want done to you.)

It's not respectful in any case to be vague about religions that do have deep and fundamental differences. Putting the Golden Rule, which is a Christian doctrine, onto Islam is disrespectful both to Christianity and to Islam, and people who take either religion seriously are bothered by it.

We won't even go into the other modern religions--the Golden Rule doesn't enter Hinduism either, because karma is not the same thing--because it would take too long.

Religions make competing claims. To take only two of them: Islam says there is no god but Allah, and Christianity says there is no God but the triune Jehovah. Islam says Jesus Christ was a great prophet (though not the greatest), but nothing more, and Christianity says He was the second Person of the Trinity and therefore God. (Please don't make me explain the Trinity at the tail of a blog post.) In each case, both claims cannot be true at the same time. If we are interested in understanding the religions, it serves no purpose to pretend they are the same. 2+2 is not 7, and acting like it is only makes us misbalance our checkbooks.

So next time someone asks you if you think all religions are basically the same and just tell people to be good and love others, you may say NO--that's sloppy, condescending thinking, and only people who don't think religion matters can accept it. I'm not, at this moment, arguing for the truth of Christianity--you'll note that the fact religions are different holds true whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or a Wiccan. I am saying that telling a devout Wiccan that she holds basically the same doctrines as a devout Muslim is ignorant at best, and insulting at worst.

After which little diatribe, I shall leave you and try to go to the bathroom while both babies are asleep.

Cheers,

Breanna

Inspiration

So if this guy can lose 80+ pounds in 19 weeks, why haven't I lost any baby weight, already?

(Oh yeah. The foot thing. And the curse of estrogen--my body figures I might need to nurse a dozen babies in a famine, and then how would I feel about having lost those pounds it worked so hard to put on? Hmm?)

Anyway, when I join the two-footed world, I intend to keep looking at his blog, to make myself keep with the Denise Austin DVDs. Check out his Progress Chart and recent entries for inspiration.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S. Dang his being so sensible. Magic bullets are funner.

Miss Boo Montage

I just want to look at it, not really untie it, per se...

Just looking...

What do you mean, we don't chew on shoelaces? Why not?

What do you mean, we don't climb on the coffee table? Why not?

Thank the Lord, He starts them out on the "Easy" setting.

Cheers,

Breanna

For the Ladies

I suppose the gents might be interested, too, if they have lots of zits or worry about "fine lines and wrinkles", as the commercials always say.

The Oil Cleansing Method, here, is my new favorite way to get my face to quit breaking out. Might I add that I don't even have the castor oil yet, as I think it would make the Husband a bit cranky to be sent to buy castor oil out in public and all, and have just basically been slathering olive oil on my face and being okay with the fact that I briefly smell like salad. The website recommends sunflower oil, but I don't even know where you buy that 'round these parts except the hippie-dippie health food store where the Husband refuses to venture alone. So, I had olive oil, and olive oil is what I've been using.

You'd think cleaning your face with oil would make your face oily, but on the contrary it feels quite good. I run a washcloth under hot, hot water and then lay it on my face until the washcloth starts to cool off, then I do the aforementioned slathering with about a tablespoon of olive oil, rubbing it into my face, and then I re-wet the washcloth with hot water and steam my face again, and when it starts to cool off I gently wipe the oil off my face. That's it--no soap, no scrubbing, no "toning", no extra moisturizer, nada. Feels wonderful. You only have to do it at night, not in the morning. Takes makeup off, even eye makeup. My skin looks awesome and the two zits I had when I started have cleared up almost instantaneously. Amazing.

Did I mention it costs $16 for a great big bottle of olive oil (you can use the cheaper kind and save the extra virgin kind for eating), vs. $10-$15 for a teensy bottle of Facial Care Product?

I love it when things work out like that.

Happy Facialing,

Breanna

Working Out

Brother, not me-- my workouts consist of getting one leg really toned and the other leg getting really flabby.
When your head is 1/3 of your body weight, it's really hard to hold it up on a pencil neck.

Something surprising must have been happening in the vicinity of my nose.

Can't tell if he was fascinated with me, here, or with the shiny camera, or with the ceiling. After all, it was probably the first time he could really see the ceiling. It's hard to focus your eyes on something that far away, you know.

While watching me navigate a particularly challenging diaper change in my wheelchair the other day, the Husband asked "Do you ever almost fall out of that thing?"

To which I replied no, I didn't, because I didn't pop wheelies backward. I only lean forward precariously toward the changing surface and catch myself with my good foot. Luckily it is impossible to catch myself with my bad foot, as it is up on an annoying pedal dealie that bangs into everything as you try to turn around. It's just fortunate that my foot doesn't particularly hurt, even if you bang it against the garbage can.

We were watching a vintage Looney Tunes cartoon yesterday that came in the special features of my DVD of Bringing Up Baby, in which one chicken slapped another chicken in true Looney Tunes fashion. Miss Boo was heartbroken that the chickens could be so cruel, and it took fully five minutes and some adept invention on my part about how the chickens were being silly, and not real, and then I had to make up a story about them going to bed before tears stopped. An empathetic soul, that one.

The only other news I have is that my potatoes are up (reportedly), my tomatoes are still alive (reportedly), and my herb garden is doing well (I can verify this visually through the bedroom window if I stand on the tiptoes of my good foot and mash my nose against the screen). There have been light skirmishes all morning between the robins nesting in front of my window and a magpie who seemed to think he could muscle into the neighborhood. The chickadees allied with the robins and the magpie has been beat back twice now.

And that's all the home news. I have a few social/theological/(boring?) posts brewing in my head, but never fear, I won't subject you to them for a little while. They need to gel.

(Jell?)

Anyway, Cheers,

Breanna

In Other News

Donkey: "Shrek says he thinks the Prince is compensating for something. I don't know what that means, but what I think it means
is--"

Shrek: "Donkey!"

--Shrek

A missle called the Taep-o-dong was launched today in North Korea.

(Really! That's what it's called!)

Hum.

Breanna

P.S. Suddenly want a pantry?

You Know You're a Mom of Littles When...

5. You can recite 5 Dr. Seuss books and Goodnight Moon flawlessly, but have to stop and think to remember your own phone number.

4. You constantly walk around in damp clothes and it's not your fault.

3. You talk about yourself in the third person ("Mama doesn't want you to...") all the time.

2. You start saying things like, "You know, that Hannah Montana is just too grownup-looking for a girl her age."

1. You look down at a yellow stain on your trousers and think, "I hope that's mustard."

Cheers,

Breanna