We hosted our first White Elephant gift exchange at our house last night. I dare say it was a rousing success!
I've had many different experiences with white elephant gift exchanges over the years ... it seems that often times my first experiences end up being bad/traumatic ones, so let's get the first story out of the way.
At my first white elephant gift exchange, I received a bag of pencil shavings. I still remember the girl who brought the present. At my first non-school white elephant party, I had to leave early, but instead of keeping the gift I had at the time (some DVD that looked mildly interesting) they kept trading and my husband ended up coming home with the gift he brought to the exchange, and DVD of a truly HORRIBLE 1943 film. I think I was mostly disappointed my husband came home with his own gift and didn't say anything.
Then it was followed by a few hilarious and awesome White Elephant/Ugly Sweater parties, and it restored my faith in white elephant exchanges. Yes, Virginia, there CAN be hilarious white elephant gift exchanges that don't end in bitterness and tears!
When Carmen was a baby, some friends hosted a white elephant gift exchange and we brought a HUGE 2 gallon jar of pickled jalapenos. We brought home a Barbie, and one of the most interesting gifts there was some warming massage lotion from the dollar store. Hmmm ... highly suspect ... we would all know what happened when, late some night, our neighbor busts out the front door screaming, "IT BURNS, IT BURNS! OH MY ... BACK!! MY LEGS!"
So we wanted to host a party where, generally, everyone could go home with something they didn't hate. I'm sure it helped that our friends were more familiar with what kinds of things were appropriate white elephant gifts (ie. NOT pencil shavings) ... and we invited kids, who I think can be excited about ANYTHING if you say it's a gift. ;)
I decided we should pack some extra presents so that either people could go home with a gift if they didn't bring one, or they could take home an un-lame present along with a lame one, or whatever.
So we packed a present I've been wanting to do for YEARS - a goofy autographed self-portrait. I had an 8x10 photo I printed of Mark earlier this year. There is a long backstory behind this ... in short, I have a friend whose little brother went on a mission, so they made this huge blanket of his face and had the blanket with them when they took family photos of major events while he was gone. Imagine something like, there's a wedding, and one of the wedding photos would have his face in it, or he's at a baby blessing, or whatever. I thought it was hilarious so I copied it. Mark was unable to come to a family reunion because he had very little vacation time from work. I ended up never using his photograph in a real picture, but hey! It was a funny thought!!
~~~AAAAAAANNNNYYYWAAAAAYYYYY. I had Mark autograph the photo and wrapped it up. My friend Kirsten opened it and was a very good sport and jealously hugged the photo all night long. She was even upset when her stepson stole the picture from her, and after they brought it home she told me her husband wanted to display it in the bathroom. That is probably the BEST place to display Mark's photo.
We figured if whoever took it didn't like it, they could always take out the photo and have a nice black picture frame!! Mark would never know. ;)
Carmen also has way too many bottles of nail polish. So I took a handful of the brightest neon-colored nail polishes and put them in a bag. SOME little girl would LOVE to have bright neon nail polish, right?
Last Christmas, we got TWO copies of the movie "17 Miracles". So the unopened one got wrapped up in pretty paper.
Several years ago, we went to DI and bought a whole bunch of Living Scriptures movies on VHS. We still don't have a VHS player, and ordered DVD sets of the Living Scriptures. As much as Mark makes fun of the movies, I LOOOOOOOOOVED the Living Scriptures movies as a kid!!! They made me the smartest kid in my Primary class because I knew all the stories!!!
When I was in high school, I had a weird obsession with scented candles. I have a ton of half-used scented candles stored in Carmen's closet ... so when I was at the dollar store, I saw a Skittles Cherry-scented candle and thought, "I HAVE to get one of these! Because I always think scented candles are nice, then I take them home and go WHAT WAS I THINKING?!" And since it was only a few dollars, I decided I had to include some kind of crazy fruity candy with it, so I found one of those fruit-flavored Twizzlers licorice things that is that nasty bright yellow color.
So that was our 5 weird presents we contributed to the gift exchange. Here are some of the things that got passed around:
~A metal combat helmet that looked like it was from WWII.
~A 4000 piece puzzle. It measures 98 cm x 138 cm. It probably weighs 5 pounds.
~A multi-purpose grater (it grates cheese and stuff). There were 5 or 6 of them all together in the bag. LOL!!!
~A set of 4 pretty sake glasses
~An abacus
~A corkscrew
~A set of pink measuring cups/spoons
~A Winnie-The-Pooh puzzle
~A checkers board
We ended up with a puzzle, the checkers board, and the Skittles candle/Twizzlers. Carmen wanted the candle and candy SO BADLY that she hid them under a pillow on the couch and sat on them. When one of the little boys came over and tried to steal it from her, she started crying until he decided to change his mind and take something else. ... Oh, three-year-olds, you are so funny ... At the end of the night, we traded the abacus for a 500-piece Kodak puzzle, because he would probably make better use of the abacus RIGHT NOW than we would.
I figured it would be fun to teach Carmen how to play Checkers. And the Checkers board is perfect - all of the pieces are plastic and cheap and the board will probably disintegrate in a year or two because it looks like it just laminated card board. Whoever brought that gift is a genius. Actually, ALL of the gifts at the exchange were genius! I'm so thankful for all of my friends who made this party AWESOME!!!!
Another great memory from last night is that we invited our next-door neighbors and they were gracious enough to come. When it came time for Richard to open his present, he opened the "17 Miracles" DVD and it was kind of hilarious to watch him read the back of the DVD, which proclaimed, "THE BEST FILM YET FROM MORMON CINEMA!"
"Oh, great," our friend Jonathan chimed in, "We are setting the bar pretty low here!!"
Ultimately, some Mormon who didn't own the movie went home with it. Phew. Glad it's found a new home!!
And our friend Tyler opened up the nail polish. He painted one of his nails neon green. His girlfriend, Gretchen, took home the measuring cups. Everyone was such good sports. I AM SO HAPPY. HAVE I TOLD YOU ENOUGH TIMES THAT I AM SO HAPPY OUR PARTY DIDN'T SUCK?!
But today I have a cold. I am staying home and hoping to rest and drink enough water that I can get better soon. Mark's sitting in with my Primary class (the other teacher is teaching today!) and I'm at home with the baby. Mace always cries during church because he usually takes a long nap after breakfast and wakes up around 10. (This year, church is from 8:30 to 11:30. It was good until Mace developed a sleeping schedule that involved a nap from 9ish to 10ish.) He just woke up from his nap and is happily playing on the floor, so I'm feeling pretty good despite my hot, scratchy throat and general exhausted-feeling-ness.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Making your own baby food
I'm a cheap frugal person. If I can (easily) do something for way cheaper, I will do it. Since my whole adult life I've either been a student or a stay-at-home parent, so after studying and chores are done, finding ways to produce stuff for less is a good economic use of my time. I'm not a couponer or anything, but I generally cook my own food and shop sales.
That's part of the reason why I nurse (it's so much healthier, and formula makes poop smell gross, and formula costs money, and bottles are equipment I'll have to wash, and I'm just lazy like that!) and that's why I don't buy baby food.
I was at the grocery store the other day, and I happened to walk by the baby food aisle. Now that Mace is eating solids (and boy, is he eating!!) I buy rice cereal to mix in with stuff, but that's it. I figure a couple dollars for a big box of ... powdered rice/oats (whatever!) ... is an okay thing to spend money on. I can't make it myself. But then I look at the baby food, and think, "75 cents for a baby's-fist's-sized jar of ... peas? I can buy a whole POUND of frozen peas for a buck!!" How hard is it to boil some peas and stick 'em in a blender?
I guess then the question is, "If you make your own baby food ... do you have to make it in small batches or something so it doesn't go bad before your baby gets around to eating it? Jars of baby food are preserved." Simple solution: Freeze it! When Carmen was a baby, I read that you can put your homemade baby food into ice cube trays and freeze them. Then when it's time to eat, you just thaw the food cubes in the microwave and feed them to your baby. Voila! I fill ice cube trays with pureed food, then when they're frozen I transfer them into a big plastic Ziploc bag so I can make another batch of baby food. Easy peasy.
This is the website I use as my guide for feeding my baby. I love it, and it gives me ideas of the new foods I can introduce to my baby and when.
Mace started eating food at the beginning of November (he was about 6.5 months old). We started with rice cereal mixed with milk, then introduced applesauce and bananas and zucchini and whatnot. Applesauce is easy because you can buy it in BIG jars. Just be sure to buy applesauce that's just apples and not sugar.
Sometimes Mace wasn't a big fan of the new food I'd introduce to him. So I'd put the new food into a bowl of applesauce-rice and feed him mostly applesauce and a little bit of the new food, then increase the amount of the new food in each spoonful until he was eating the new food without complaint. Other times, I'll take one thawed cube of food (carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, whatever) and mix it into a big bowl of applesauce. I figure the flavors are mild enough that he won't notice the difference, and most of his nutrition comes from milk anyway. Supposedly. That kid eats so much it makes me wonder how he packs it all down (but he refuses to nurse more ... he wants food and squawks for it!). :p
I love how communicative Mace is about food. When he wakes up in the morning, I nurse him, and about 20 minutes later we all have breakfast together. Usually Mark makes bacon and eggs (sometimes I do) and I put Mace in his high chair. He bounces around and kicks his legs and smiles and grunts at us, and when I *finally* have his food ready, he LUNGES at the spoon and gobbles up whatever I'm feeding him. And when he's still hungry, he grunts at me and cries. If we're out somewhere and he's hungry and he sees us eating, he cries and reaches towards the food and growls "Rawwwrr, aaarrrgggghhhh!!! Um-um-um-um!!" until I let him have a little taste of whatever I'm eating that is OK for him to eat (if I'm eating out, I always try to order something that contains something Mace-friendly, or I stick a banana and a spoon in my diaper bag.) and then he lets out this really cute content noise, like, "Aaaahhh, mmmm-nom."
And it kind of makes my heart burst with love for him.
One of my favorite foods to feed him is banana, because we cut the banana in half and scoop the fruit out with a spoon. It's very self-contained and easy to do. Some people like giving their babies solid foods in little pieces to play with in their hands and feed themselves ... but I think that's very messy, so I'd rather be a clean control freak and spoon-feed them myself. When Mace gets teeth, I'll give him little bits of food he can chew on (like red bell peppers) that won't get all mushy and messy and gross.
Our schedule goes something like this:
Morning - nurse, breakfast
Then I try to go to the gym after he takes a brief nap
Noonish - nurse, lunch
Afternoon nurse
He takes a short nap at some point in the afternoon, either before or after the afternoon nursing, depending on when he gets cranky
Evening - nurse, dinner, bed.
Most of the time, the food is some kind of combination of vegetable cube mixed with applesauce, and half a banana. Mace eats 1-2 bananas a day. O.o And yet he still poops (bananas and applesauce can constipate.)
Random fact of the day: applesauce constipates (you lose a lot of the fiber when you peel apples) but apple juice helps loosen things up (because of the liquids and sugar). Both are made of apples, but have different effects. But if you REALLY need to help your kid empty their bowels, PRUNE JUICE. You can either give it to them in a bottle, or mix it with baby cereal. Rice cereal will also contribute to constipation, so you might want to switch to oat cereal.
Okay, enough about poop.
My kid sleeps from 7 to 7. Sometimes even later. HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?! And he started sleeping through the night in September, after we moved into our house and gave him his own room (instead of, you know, our closet.)
I used to wake Mace up to nurse him around 10 or 11 before I went to bed (you know how cows love to be milked in the morning and feel uncomfortable? I HAVE SO MUCH EMPATHY FOR COWS. YOU MEN HAVE NO IDEA.) but then there were a few nights where Mace was not interested in nursing and seemed cranky that I would wake him up in the middle of the night. Your body adjusts to your nursing times, so now I no longer get SO uncomfortable at night right before I get to bed.
I love having a 7-month-old. They are so much fun, and expressive, and playful, and AWESOME. Sometimes I wish he wasn't so clingy, but the nice thing is that since he has an older sister and two cats, there are bunch of other people around to entertain him. I just can't leave him in the same room as Carmen for a long time, because eventually she leaves and he gets lonely and upset. He can craw, but he hasn't yet figured out how to switch ROOMS. He'll just beeline towards a toy and stuff it in his mouth.
Well, it's either a toy or it's cat food. NOM NOM NOM.
That's part of the reason why I nurse (it's so much healthier, and formula makes poop smell gross, and formula costs money, and bottles are equipment I'll have to wash, and I'm just lazy like that!) and that's why I don't buy baby food.
I was at the grocery store the other day, and I happened to walk by the baby food aisle. Now that Mace is eating solids (and boy, is he eating!!) I buy rice cereal to mix in with stuff, but that's it. I figure a couple dollars for a big box of ... powdered rice/oats (whatever!) ... is an okay thing to spend money on. I can't make it myself. But then I look at the baby food, and think, "75 cents for a baby's-fist's-sized jar of ... peas? I can buy a whole POUND of frozen peas for a buck!!" How hard is it to boil some peas and stick 'em in a blender?
I guess then the question is, "If you make your own baby food ... do you have to make it in small batches or something so it doesn't go bad before your baby gets around to eating it? Jars of baby food are preserved." Simple solution: Freeze it! When Carmen was a baby, I read that you can put your homemade baby food into ice cube trays and freeze them. Then when it's time to eat, you just thaw the food cubes in the microwave and feed them to your baby. Voila! I fill ice cube trays with pureed food, then when they're frozen I transfer them into a big plastic Ziploc bag so I can make another batch of baby food. Easy peasy.
This is the website I use as my guide for feeding my baby. I love it, and it gives me ideas of the new foods I can introduce to my baby and when.
Mace started eating food at the beginning of November (he was about 6.5 months old). We started with rice cereal mixed with milk, then introduced applesauce and bananas and zucchini and whatnot. Applesauce is easy because you can buy it in BIG jars. Just be sure to buy applesauce that's just apples and not sugar.
Sometimes Mace wasn't a big fan of the new food I'd introduce to him. So I'd put the new food into a bowl of applesauce-rice and feed him mostly applesauce and a little bit of the new food, then increase the amount of the new food in each spoonful until he was eating the new food without complaint. Other times, I'll take one thawed cube of food (carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, whatever) and mix it into a big bowl of applesauce. I figure the flavors are mild enough that he won't notice the difference, and most of his nutrition comes from milk anyway. Supposedly. That kid eats so much it makes me wonder how he packs it all down (but he refuses to nurse more ... he wants food and squawks for it!). :p
I love how communicative Mace is about food. When he wakes up in the morning, I nurse him, and about 20 minutes later we all have breakfast together. Usually Mark makes bacon and eggs (sometimes I do) and I put Mace in his high chair. He bounces around and kicks his legs and smiles and grunts at us, and when I *finally* have his food ready, he LUNGES at the spoon and gobbles up whatever I'm feeding him. And when he's still hungry, he grunts at me and cries. If we're out somewhere and he's hungry and he sees us eating, he cries and reaches towards the food and growls "Rawwwrr, aaarrrgggghhhh!!! Um-um-um-um!!" until I let him have a little taste of whatever I'm eating that is OK for him to eat (if I'm eating out, I always try to order something that contains something Mace-friendly, or I stick a banana and a spoon in my diaper bag.) and then he lets out this really cute content noise, like, "Aaaahhh, mmmm-nom."
And it kind of makes my heart burst with love for him.
One of my favorite foods to feed him is banana, because we cut the banana in half and scoop the fruit out with a spoon. It's very self-contained and easy to do. Some people like giving their babies solid foods in little pieces to play with in their hands and feed themselves ... but I think that's very messy, so I'd rather be a clean control freak and spoon-feed them myself. When Mace gets teeth, I'll give him little bits of food he can chew on (like red bell peppers) that won't get all mushy and messy and gross.
Our schedule goes something like this:
Morning - nurse, breakfast
Then I try to go to the gym after he takes a brief nap
Noonish - nurse, lunch
Afternoon nurse
He takes a short nap at some point in the afternoon, either before or after the afternoon nursing, depending on when he gets cranky
Evening - nurse, dinner, bed.
Most of the time, the food is some kind of combination of vegetable cube mixed with applesauce, and half a banana. Mace eats 1-2 bananas a day. O.o And yet he still poops (bananas and applesauce can constipate.)
Random fact of the day: applesauce constipates (you lose a lot of the fiber when you peel apples) but apple juice helps loosen things up (because of the liquids and sugar). Both are made of apples, but have different effects. But if you REALLY need to help your kid empty their bowels, PRUNE JUICE. You can either give it to them in a bottle, or mix it with baby cereal. Rice cereal will also contribute to constipation, so you might want to switch to oat cereal.
Okay, enough about poop.
My kid sleeps from 7 to 7. Sometimes even later. HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?! And he started sleeping through the night in September, after we moved into our house and gave him his own room (instead of, you know, our closet.)
I used to wake Mace up to nurse him around 10 or 11 before I went to bed (you know how cows love to be milked in the morning and feel uncomfortable? I HAVE SO MUCH EMPATHY FOR COWS. YOU MEN HAVE NO IDEA.) but then there were a few nights where Mace was not interested in nursing and seemed cranky that I would wake him up in the middle of the night. Your body adjusts to your nursing times, so now I no longer get SO uncomfortable at night right before I get to bed.
I love having a 7-month-old. They are so much fun, and expressive, and playful, and AWESOME. Sometimes I wish he wasn't so clingy, but the nice thing is that since he has an older sister and two cats, there are bunch of other people around to entertain him. I just can't leave him in the same room as Carmen for a long time, because eventually she leaves and he gets lonely and upset. He can craw, but he hasn't yet figured out how to switch ROOMS. He'll just beeline towards a toy and stuff it in his mouth.
Well, it's either a toy or it's cat food. NOM NOM NOM.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Summing up the year, part 1
Summary of the year:
January - March: Spent most of the time being pregnant. Funny how that takes over your life - you spend a lot of time just trying to keep everything together and it's exhausting! I tried to keep myself busy with crafting, play group, book club, going to the Children's Museum with Carmen, etc.
April - Mace was born! The first few months after having a baby are a blur - you're up feeding every 3 hours and hormones are a wreck. Also, Mace was tongue-tied: that's where the frenulum, the thing under your tongue that holds it down, is connected all the way to the tip and you can't stick your tongue out. It makes nursing really hard and painful until the doctor clips it.
May - Carmen's birthday, Mark's birthday, Big Carmen's wedding, Jocelyn and Andrew's wedding.
"Big Carmen" is the girl whom my Carmen is named after. We became friends in 6th grade, and she ... well, I can't really put into words how special she is and how much she means to me.
Unfortunately, both Carmen and Mace were miserable throughout the whole ceremony so I ended up being the only one to attend while Mark went out in the hall and drove the kids around. O.o; But it was lovely, the cake was delicious, and I thought it was incredibly sweet Carmen's mom remembers I don't drink and let me drink sparkling white grape juice with the little kids while everyone else toasted with champagne. LOL. I LOVE BEING MORMON SO MUCH.
Also, a few weeks ago, she texted me and told me she's pregnant! She's so excited!! I'm excited, too! And I'm sure you're NOT wondering, but I doubt she'll name her kid "Kamis" to reciprocate my naming a child after her. ;)
A few days after returning from Carmen's wedding in Dallas, my friend Jocelyn married Andrew. Jocelyn's daughter, Zoe, is friends with Carmen. We met Jocelyn when we first moved here, and it was about the same time she and Andrew started dating.
The ceremony was lovely, and my favorite part was when Andrew read the vows he wrote for Zoe.
He gave her a necklace with a ring on it.
And since I'm talking about babies ... Jocelyn is expecting a little girl any day now. (Gosh, now it's going to be embarrassing if I find out she had her baby over Thanksgiving and I never found out about it. If it's not on Facebook, it didn't happen, right??!)
May was the time when Mark started looking for a new job in earnest, because two things happened: there was a meeting with the higher-ups where he presented his ideas and they said it sounded interesting, then his immediate supervisors came to him after they left and were basically like, "By the way, so you know, it totally ain't happenin'. Go back to your cubicle and give up your dreams." and then he got his annual review where they essentially said, "We have no idea what he's actually doing, but other people say he's good at it, so we think he's doing okay." No matter how much you love your office manager and a few of your coworkers, when your job gives you such miserable feedback and makes you so depressed, it is time to look for a new job if you can.
(Carmen with Diane, the office manager, at the work BBQ. I miss that lady!)
At the end of the summer, Mark's work had a BBQ (this was before he found this other job). Of course, it was the ONE weekend it rained all summer and the activity was outdoors. Luckily it stopped raining for a little while and we had a lovely time. :) Also, we played Bingo and I won the final prize - an iPod nano! ... if anyone wants an iPod nano, let me know. We have a bajillion iPods and need to get rid of them.
Story: Once upon a time, I wanted an iPod. I asked for one for YEARS, and finally after 6 years, my dad gave me one for my birthday! (By this point, I had given up on the iPod thing.) So I put music on it and at Thanksgiving, I somehow managed to lose it at the Coast house (where we go almost every summer with Mark's family - Mark's dad's siblings got together and bought a house on the Oregon coast). Mark got an iPod Touch for Christmas one year, and we thought we lost it driving home so we bought another one. The day after the new iPod Touch arrived, I found it between the front seats of the car (I swear it was invisible before!! It had been almost a MONTH since it disappeared!) ... A year or so later, I got a phone call from Mark's aunt, saying they were at the Coast house and found a lump in the recliner and discovered my iPod. WHAT. SERIOUSLY. .... So then we had two iPod touches and my old iPod back. Then I won an iPod nano. And then this summer I needed to get a new phone (it was about 3 years old and if it shook too hard the battery would disconnect and turn off my phone ... so my phone would be off for hours at a time and I wouldn't notice.) so I upgraded to a free smart phone. So now I REALLY don't need my iPod touch, much less 3 other iPods. O.o;
Er, anyway. So yes. iPod. Want one? Everyone's already got one. Sigh!
January - March: Spent most of the time being pregnant. Funny how that takes over your life - you spend a lot of time just trying to keep everything together and it's exhausting! I tried to keep myself busy with crafting, play group, book club, going to the Children's Museum with Carmen, etc.
April - Mace was born! The first few months after having a baby are a blur - you're up feeding every 3 hours and hormones are a wreck. Also, Mace was tongue-tied: that's where the frenulum, the thing under your tongue that holds it down, is connected all the way to the tip and you can't stick your tongue out. It makes nursing really hard and painful until the doctor clips it.
May - Carmen's birthday, Mark's birthday, Big Carmen's wedding, Jocelyn and Andrew's wedding.
"Big Carmen" is the girl whom my Carmen is named after. We became friends in 6th grade, and she ... well, I can't really put into words how special she is and how much she means to me.
Also, a few weeks ago, she texted me and told me she's pregnant! She's so excited!! I'm excited, too! And I'm sure you're NOT wondering, but I doubt she'll name her kid "Kamis" to reciprocate my naming a child after her. ;)
A few days after returning from Carmen's wedding in Dallas, my friend Jocelyn married Andrew. Jocelyn's daughter, Zoe, is friends with Carmen. We met Jocelyn when we first moved here, and it was about the same time she and Andrew started dating.
The ceremony was lovely, and my favorite part was when Andrew read the vows he wrote for Zoe.
He gave her a necklace with a ring on it.
And since I'm talking about babies ... Jocelyn is expecting a little girl any day now. (Gosh, now it's going to be embarrassing if I find out she had her baby over Thanksgiving and I never found out about it. If it's not on Facebook, it didn't happen, right??!)
May was the time when Mark started looking for a new job in earnest, because two things happened: there was a meeting with the higher-ups where he presented his ideas and they said it sounded interesting, then his immediate supervisors came to him after they left and were basically like, "By the way, so you know, it totally ain't happenin'. Go back to your cubicle and give up your dreams." and then he got his annual review where they essentially said, "We have no idea what he's actually doing, but other people say he's good at it, so we think he's doing okay." No matter how much you love your office manager and a few of your coworkers, when your job gives you such miserable feedback and makes you so depressed, it is time to look for a new job if you can.
At the end of the summer, Mark's work had a BBQ (this was before he found this other job). Of course, it was the ONE weekend it rained all summer and the activity was outdoors. Luckily it stopped raining for a little while and we had a lovely time. :) Also, we played Bingo and I won the final prize - an iPod nano! ... if anyone wants an iPod nano, let me know. We have a bajillion iPods and need to get rid of them.
Story: Once upon a time, I wanted an iPod. I asked for one for YEARS, and finally after 6 years, my dad gave me one for my birthday! (By this point, I had given up on the iPod thing.) So I put music on it and at Thanksgiving, I somehow managed to lose it at the Coast house (where we go almost every summer with Mark's family - Mark's dad's siblings got together and bought a house on the Oregon coast). Mark got an iPod Touch for Christmas one year, and we thought we lost it driving home so we bought another one. The day after the new iPod Touch arrived, I found it between the front seats of the car (I swear it was invisible before!! It had been almost a MONTH since it disappeared!) ... A year or so later, I got a phone call from Mark's aunt, saying they were at the Coast house and found a lump in the recliner and discovered my iPod. WHAT. SERIOUSLY. .... So then we had two iPod touches and my old iPod back. Then I won an iPod nano. And then this summer I needed to get a new phone (it was about 3 years old and if it shook too hard the battery would disconnect and turn off my phone ... so my phone would be off for hours at a time and I wouldn't notice.) so I upgraded to a free smart phone. So now I REALLY don't need my iPod touch, much less 3 other iPods. O.o;
Er, anyway. So yes. iPod. Want one? Everyone's already got one. Sigh!
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Apparently this is a post about hats
Okay, so now I really ought to start writing again. Recording the memorable/everyday events of our family. So I'm starting today. Here goes!!
Yesterday was my mom's birthday. I used to always tell people she was turning 21 again, but now that I'm 25, it's getting harder and harder to convince people of that. ;)
The important thing isn't that yesterday was Mom's birthday - it was that she flew to Austin to come visit us!! She was going to come on Halloween and stay for a week, but at the last minute she decided she'd rather come later in the month. It actually turned out really well, because Mace started crawling a few weeks ago. :) I'm pretty sure that makes Mom's trip so much more exciting and fun, to have a crawling grandbaby. <3
We picked up Mom from the airport, then went to Mark's new job downtown, then ate dinner at the taco food truck by Mark's work (SO SO GOOD), then went over to 6th Street to look at hats at The Hat Box. Mark has been asking me for weeks about getting a new hat from that place. He has a coworker who, apparently, wears *amazing hats* and he got them all from The Hat Box. Mark had a famous hat for a few years, but then we last it at Disneyland last year. Funny coincidence: It was a hat we bought from the Indiana Jones store, and we lost it 3 years later on the Indiana Jones ride. :(
Old hat:
New hat:
We actually bought two new hats for Mark, but I only have a picture of this one. The other one looks a bit more like the old hat. Now I'm going to go on a hat tangent ... hats are big in Mark's family. Sort of. His brother, James, tends to wear hats and looks good in them. We might get him a hat for Christmas (I doubt James will read this. phew.) Mark's dad tends to wear fisherman hats. But I don't have a picture of it. Maybe some day!
I guess Mark looks really good in hats. I'm just ... not used to them. I don't wear hats. Dang. He's right. He looks good in hats. I should stop encouraging him to dress like a bum. I'm such a boring t-shirt and jeans-type girl.
Okay, maybe he doesn't always look great in hats. But that doesn't stop him from always trying them on.
Hm, somehow this turned into an entry about hats! Okay! So anyway, Mark got some nice new expensive hats last night as his Christmas present.
Today, I went to the gym in the morning to let Mom have some quiet time to get ready for the day. All week long, Mace has been clingy and has cried (loudly!) the whole time I've been gone ... Usually the people in the gym day care try to let me work out for at least an hour if my baby is fussy, but this week has been so bad they've called me back after 20 minutes. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. I had an appointment with a personal trainer last week who gave me a list of things to do, and this week I learned to immediately hit the machines fast and hard, because I'd probably only have 20 minutes to work out. Hah! But then today, he was pretty cheerful and I got a whole hour in! I was able to do all of the lifting I wanted to do, and I even got some time on the elliptical to read my Book Club book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). When I came back to the day care to pick my kids up (I wanted to go home and keep my mom company), Mace had just fallen asleep in the swing. Aww~ <3
Mace took a ridiculously long nap in the afternoon, and when he finally woke up we went shopping with Mom on a Christmas quest to find an elf to do the "elf on a shelf" thing. I hadn't really heard of this until a few years ago, when a friend of a friend posted pictures on her Livejournal of this weird cute little Christmas elf. Apparently it's like a little gnome you hide around the house at Christmas time, and the kids get excited trying to figure out where the elf is hiding. We couldn't find an elf, so Carmen picked out a Christmas puppy. Close enough. ;)
Then we went to the mall to ride on the carousel and walk around. There's a little kids' play area by the carousel and Carmen likes to go play with the little kids. Since Mace is crawling, I set him out on the floor and let him watch the bigger kids play. He is kind of a road block, and other moms are constantly telling their kids to watch out for the baby and be careful. I'm not sure if I'm being helpful (now they are more aware of other people when they are playing!) or if I'm being annoying (why the eff is that weirdo mom letting her baby potentially get run over by packs of 3-year-olds?!) but I don't care if a little kid runs over Mace. It will make up for the fact that he doesn't have a whole bunch of older siblings to maul him! He only has Carmen!
It was really funny to watch the kids play at the mall. They ran around in circles screaming, "AAAAUUUGGGHH IT'S THE BABY MONSTER! HE IS GOING TO GET US!" and they would run away, as Mace smiled at them and got up on his hands and knees and rocked back and forth. He didn't really want to go anywhere, so he just spun around in circles, watching kids and smiling, then occasionally coming over to Mom or me to gnaw on our shoes. Oh, baby Mace, how I love you.
So .... that was our day.
And here's a picture of my mom ... she and Mace were matching today! It was not intentional!
Wow. Writing this was fun. I think I'll do this more often.
Yesterday was my mom's birthday. I used to always tell people she was turning 21 again, but now that I'm 25, it's getting harder and harder to convince people of that. ;)
The important thing isn't that yesterday was Mom's birthday - it was that she flew to Austin to come visit us!! She was going to come on Halloween and stay for a week, but at the last minute she decided she'd rather come later in the month. It actually turned out really well, because Mace started crawling a few weeks ago. :) I'm pretty sure that makes Mom's trip so much more exciting and fun, to have a crawling grandbaby. <3
We picked up Mom from the airport, then went to Mark's new job downtown, then ate dinner at the taco food truck by Mark's work (SO SO GOOD), then went over to 6th Street to look at hats at The Hat Box. Mark has been asking me for weeks about getting a new hat from that place. He has a coworker who, apparently, wears *amazing hats* and he got them all from The Hat Box. Mark had a famous hat for a few years, but then we last it at Disneyland last year. Funny coincidence: It was a hat we bought from the Indiana Jones store, and we lost it 3 years later on the Indiana Jones ride. :(
Old hat:
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| Carmen wearing Mark's hat! |
 |
| Mace wearing Mark's hat! ... why do I not have any pictures of Mark in his own hats?! |
I guess Mark looks really good in hats. I'm just ... not used to them. I don't wear hats. Dang. He's right. He looks good in hats. I should stop encouraging him to dress like a bum. I'm such a boring t-shirt and jeans-type girl.
 |
| Jorgen's wedding, February 2011 |
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| From our Mexico cruise in February 2010. He tried on my cousin Emery's hat. |
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| Taken some time in ... 2007? One of our poor newlywed dates to DI where we bought a $35 couch. |
Today, I went to the gym in the morning to let Mom have some quiet time to get ready for the day. All week long, Mace has been clingy and has cried (loudly!) the whole time I've been gone ... Usually the people in the gym day care try to let me work out for at least an hour if my baby is fussy, but this week has been so bad they've called me back after 20 minutes. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. I had an appointment with a personal trainer last week who gave me a list of things to do, and this week I learned to immediately hit the machines fast and hard, because I'd probably only have 20 minutes to work out. Hah! But then today, he was pretty cheerful and I got a whole hour in! I was able to do all of the lifting I wanted to do, and I even got some time on the elliptical to read my Book Club book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). When I came back to the day care to pick my kids up (I wanted to go home and keep my mom company), Mace had just fallen asleep in the swing. Aww~ <3
Mace took a ridiculously long nap in the afternoon, and when he finally woke up we went shopping with Mom on a Christmas quest to find an elf to do the "elf on a shelf" thing. I hadn't really heard of this until a few years ago, when a friend of a friend posted pictures on her Livejournal of this weird cute little Christmas elf. Apparently it's like a little gnome you hide around the house at Christmas time, and the kids get excited trying to figure out where the elf is hiding. We couldn't find an elf, so Carmen picked out a Christmas puppy. Close enough. ;)
Then we went to the mall to ride on the carousel and walk around. There's a little kids' play area by the carousel and Carmen likes to go play with the little kids. Since Mace is crawling, I set him out on the floor and let him watch the bigger kids play. He is kind of a road block, and other moms are constantly telling their kids to watch out for the baby and be careful. I'm not sure if I'm being helpful (now they are more aware of other people when they are playing!) or if I'm being annoying (why the eff is that weirdo mom letting her baby potentially get run over by packs of 3-year-olds?!) but I don't care if a little kid runs over Mace. It will make up for the fact that he doesn't have a whole bunch of older siblings to maul him! He only has Carmen!
It was really funny to watch the kids play at the mall. They ran around in circles screaming, "AAAAUUUGGGHH IT'S THE BABY MONSTER! HE IS GOING TO GET US!" and they would run away, as Mace smiled at them and got up on his hands and knees and rocked back and forth. He didn't really want to go anywhere, so he just spun around in circles, watching kids and smiling, then occasionally coming over to Mom or me to gnaw on our shoes. Oh, baby Mace, how I love you.
So .... that was our day.
And here's a picture of my mom ... she and Mace were matching today! It was not intentional!
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| Don't you think she looks 21? |
Wow. Writing this was fun. I think I'll do this more often.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Facebook as a Pseudo-Journal
I have been such a slacker as far as blogging goes for the past few years. In high school, I kept a LiveJournal (friends-only) and updated several times a week. I'd come home from school and write. My friends would read it and we'd interact online. Then I went to college and I still wrote, but not as much. Then I got married and I wrote sometimes. Then I had kids and basically stopped writing. I think I need to start writing again, but I don't really know where to start. Ha ha! Isn't that life! =p
Also, Facebook has kind of ruined my journal-writing. I can just post something about Carmen or my life and I feel like, "Oh, that's the recording of my life for the day!" .... So I think I end up updating Facebook too much (some people post a million times a day, some people only check Facebook a few times a year, I generally post something daily and put pictures up for my family ... so I'm sure I drive the less-active Facebook people crazy) and never write in a journal/blog. It's probably because I feel like it's easier to spend a few seconds updating Facebook than it is to spend several minutes writing up a blog post, constantly being interrupted by small children. I have a hard time stringing coherent thoughts together these days. It seemed to get better after Carmen was a year or two old.
ANYWAY, LIFE!
So we moved into a house in September. It's amazing how much breathing room we have now that we've doubled our living space! Mace is no longer sleeping in the closet, the piano is no longer behind the dining room table and I actually sit down and randomly play it for fun, etc. ;)
Upstairs, there's a loft. We've dubbed it "Carmen's playroom" and have put all of our games and the kids' toys up there. We also set up a bed in the back of the play room. The mattresses we bought for the bunk bed way back when came with box springs, which we've kept for the last 3 years, so when we moved into the house we bought a third mattress and set it up on top of the box springs. Sweet!!
The nice thing about Carmen having her own play area is that now we can keep the main living areas clean. Or at least cleaner ... unless I'm doing laundry. Then it sits all over the floor.
We also now have a two-car garage and two cars! But only my car fits in the garage because Mark bought a big weight set and set it up in the garage so he can work out in the mornings and give up his gym membership. I won't give up my membership because I love going to the gym and being able to drop my kids off at the day care. I go to this super-fancy-schmancy gym (LifeTime Fitness) and if I'm too tired to work out, I can nap/read books/etc on the couch in the fancy-schmancy locker room. Most gyms are kind of grimy and sweaty and you just go there for a class or whatever and can't wait to leave. The day care might be kind of sketchy. But LifeTime's day care is awesome - they have several different sections for the kids (there's a baby area, a place for toddlers and young kids, a computer lab, a covered outdoor play area, a playland-type area with a slide, tables for coloring and crafts, and a basketball court-type place in back with those multicolored padded walls for playing) and I loooooooove all the people in the day care. It is so worth paying 2-3x what I would pay for a Gold's Gym membership. I just feel good every time I go, and I WANT to go.
Another thing that has happened since we've moved is Mark has a new job! He was kind of unhappy with his old job ... he was kind of isolated from his coworkers with the projects he was working on, and his managers didn't communicate with him often and basically had no idea what he was doing. Mark discovered his values were different from his company's values ... to me, it sounds like he didn't like updating/debugging/working with super-crappy code that was thrown together just to "work" but was impossible to work with/update/add functionality/etc. Better coding practices would be good in the long term, and if they *didn't* implement good coding practices, they'd be ahead in the field now but far behind in the future because another company could easily enter the market and catch up to and overtake them. ... but ... you know ... I'm not an expert on the software-aided engineering market. ;)
Anyway. Mark found a job with a small company called DataStax and ended up on a Quality Assurance team ... which ... well ... basically sounds like Mark to a T. ;) He'd do a better job describing his job than I would. He gets to work from home, since most of his associations with his coworkers are done through chat. He goes in to work on Wednesdays because they get free lunch (apparently) and the office is downtown, near 6th street, so the food options are pretty awesome. ;) He also adores his coworkers because they are nerdy in all the same ways he is. While he was interviewing, I believe they talked about Dungeons and Dragons characters/campaigns they've done in the past. OH YES THEY DID. And they get together and have game nights every so often at the office.
PS. Austin is awesome. Great food, great music, great people, great culture ... I love it here!!
We spent Thanksgiving in Austin this year, and we are going to spend Christmas alone here, too. We are kind of remote from our families (my family's in Seattle; Mark's parents moved to Orem last year) but you know what's great about here? We don't have to deal with the misery of snow! We'll go to Utah and Washington in the summer when the weather is nicer there, but I think we are going to spend every year trying to pressure our families into coming down here for the holidays. ;)
Also, Facebook has kind of ruined my journal-writing. I can just post something about Carmen or my life and I feel like, "Oh, that's the recording of my life for the day!" .... So I think I end up updating Facebook too much (some people post a million times a day, some people only check Facebook a few times a year, I generally post something daily and put pictures up for my family ... so I'm sure I drive the less-active Facebook people crazy) and never write in a journal/blog. It's probably because I feel like it's easier to spend a few seconds updating Facebook than it is to spend several minutes writing up a blog post, constantly being interrupted by small children. I have a hard time stringing coherent thoughts together these days. It seemed to get better after Carmen was a year or two old.
ANYWAY, LIFE!
So we moved into a house in September. It's amazing how much breathing room we have now that we've doubled our living space! Mace is no longer sleeping in the closet, the piano is no longer behind the dining room table and I actually sit down and randomly play it for fun, etc. ;)
The nice thing about Carmen having her own play area is that now we can keep the main living areas clean. Or at least cleaner ... unless I'm doing laundry. Then it sits all over the floor.
We also now have a two-car garage and two cars! But only my car fits in the garage because Mark bought a big weight set and set it up in the garage so he can work out in the mornings and give up his gym membership. I won't give up my membership because I love going to the gym and being able to drop my kids off at the day care. I go to this super-fancy-schmancy gym (LifeTime Fitness) and if I'm too tired to work out, I can nap/read books/etc on the couch in the fancy-schmancy locker room. Most gyms are kind of grimy and sweaty and you just go there for a class or whatever and can't wait to leave. The day care might be kind of sketchy. But LifeTime's day care is awesome - they have several different sections for the kids (there's a baby area, a place for toddlers and young kids, a computer lab, a covered outdoor play area, a playland-type area with a slide, tables for coloring and crafts, and a basketball court-type place in back with those multicolored padded walls for playing) and I loooooooove all the people in the day care. It is so worth paying 2-3x what I would pay for a Gold's Gym membership. I just feel good every time I go, and I WANT to go.
Another thing that has happened since we've moved is Mark has a new job! He was kind of unhappy with his old job ... he was kind of isolated from his coworkers with the projects he was working on, and his managers didn't communicate with him often and basically had no idea what he was doing. Mark discovered his values were different from his company's values ... to me, it sounds like he didn't like updating/debugging/working with super-crappy code that was thrown together just to "work" but was impossible to work with/update/add functionality/etc. Better coding practices would be good in the long term, and if they *didn't* implement good coding practices, they'd be ahead in the field now but far behind in the future because another company could easily enter the market and catch up to and overtake them. ... but ... you know ... I'm not an expert on the software-aided engineering market. ;)
Anyway. Mark found a job with a small company called DataStax and ended up on a Quality Assurance team ... which ... well ... basically sounds like Mark to a T. ;) He'd do a better job describing his job than I would. He gets to work from home, since most of his associations with his coworkers are done through chat. He goes in to work on Wednesdays because they get free lunch (apparently) and the office is downtown, near 6th street, so the food options are pretty awesome. ;) He also adores his coworkers because they are nerdy in all the same ways he is. While he was interviewing, I believe they talked about Dungeons and Dragons characters/campaigns they've done in the past. OH YES THEY DID. And they get together and have game nights every so often at the office.
PS. Austin is awesome. Great food, great music, great people, great culture ... I love it here!!
We spent Thanksgiving in Austin this year, and we are going to spend Christmas alone here, too. We are kind of remote from our families (my family's in Seattle; Mark's parents moved to Orem last year) but you know what's great about here? We don't have to deal with the misery of snow! We'll go to Utah and Washington in the summer when the weather is nicer there, but I think we are going to spend every year trying to pressure our families into coming down here for the holidays. ;)
Friday, October 26, 2012
Why I'm obsessed with political stuff
Everyone on Facebook has been complaining this year about how everyone else seems to be posting political stuff, and they can't wait for November 6 to pass so everyone will just shut up and go home. It's not going to happen with me. I'm political ALL the time.
Why?
A few years ago, one of my best friends came to me in tears because she couldn't get a job. She was doing okay health-wise on her medication (she has epilepsy and bipolar, which cause her to be disabled when she doesn't have her meds) but here's the kicker - she could only afford her meds if she was on MEDICAID. If she got a job (she wanted to be a phlebotomist) it would pay her just enough to lose her Medicaid benefits, but she wouldn't get good enough health insurance benefits for her to be able to afford her own medication.
Um, so I pretty much hate the Democratic party for this. (And don't get me started on why I hate the Republican party, too!) Keep everyone dependent on the government and spend lots of money so you can keep your power and control over the people? It seems to me that this follows that the goal of the Democratic party would be to make everyone poor and make everyone slaves to the party/government. YES, I understand the actual goal is social liberalism and to make sure everyone has equal rights and life is "fair" ... but ... reality? You tend to make people poor, sick, and dependent on the government. And you don't treat people equally - you pick and choose favorites. Your favorites are the poor and disadvantaged and people who make bad decisions and you want everyone else to pay for it. Great. Thanks for forcing charity on me because obviously without your mandates I wouldn't be charitable.
It makes me see how vital a role religion and charity play in society, and why although regimes fall, religion carries on. There is a sense of choice with charity, and you understand why you have the desire to help those who are struggling. When you start attaching numbers to things, that sense of charity and personal responsibility and intrinsic motivation disappears.
Ugh.
Why?
A few years ago, one of my best friends came to me in tears because she couldn't get a job. She was doing okay health-wise on her medication (she has epilepsy and bipolar, which cause her to be disabled when she doesn't have her meds) but here's the kicker - she could only afford her meds if she was on MEDICAID. If she got a job (she wanted to be a phlebotomist) it would pay her just enough to lose her Medicaid benefits, but she wouldn't get good enough health insurance benefits for her to be able to afford her own medication.
Um, so I pretty much hate the Democratic party for this. (And don't get me started on why I hate the Republican party, too!) Keep everyone dependent on the government and spend lots of money so you can keep your power and control over the people? It seems to me that this follows that the goal of the Democratic party would be to make everyone poor and make everyone slaves to the party/government. YES, I understand the actual goal is social liberalism and to make sure everyone has equal rights and life is "fair" ... but ... reality? You tend to make people poor, sick, and dependent on the government. And you don't treat people equally - you pick and choose favorites. Your favorites are the poor and disadvantaged and people who make bad decisions and you want everyone else to pay for it. Great. Thanks for forcing charity on me because obviously without your mandates I wouldn't be charitable.
It makes me see how vital a role religion and charity play in society, and why although regimes fall, religion carries on. There is a sense of choice with charity, and you understand why you have the desire to help those who are struggling. When you start attaching numbers to things, that sense of charity and personal responsibility and intrinsic motivation disappears.
Ugh.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Health Insurance
So Mace had his 6-month well-check at the doctor's office this morning, and as I walked into the clinic, I thought about the other patients there.
I thought about how some people who have the most expensive medical needs are those least able to pay for it. Medical conditions can be debilitating and expensive. It made me think about how ... I don't know ... if we want our country to thrive, if we want healthy, productive people in our society, we really need to find a way to make health care affordable and accessible for all.
How could we do that? I hate Obamacare. It looks like it's set to make costs skyrocket, while attempting to get everyone equal access to health care. The free market WOULD do a great job with health care if they didn't discirminate against sick people (which they should, if they want to minimize costs and maximize profits.) But how does it make sense to PUNISH the sick people by making them pay higher premiums?
This isn't like life insurance, where they are weighing out your probability of death in the next X number of years. If you are a smoker or if your sister is bipolar or if your father died of a heart attack at 40, you DO have some kind of risk of dying. But as far as health is concerned, we're ALL at risk of SOMETHING expensive catastrophic happening to us (ie. Mace's $20k fever in May. He just had a virus, but we spent 3 days in the hospital as they pumped him full of antibiotics to make sure he didn't have meningitis or something. That sort of thing, you know, KILLS 1-month-olds.)
And with auto insurance, which everyone has to have because car accidents are EXPENSIVE (just like medical issues!), people can CHOOSE whether or not they have a car, and whether or not they drive. With health insurance, it's like, "Hm, do I want to be alive, or not?"
I've always had really good health insurance. Mark and I got married right after my freshman year at BYU and we had BYU health insurance, which was WAY WAY CHEAP (I thought it was expensive because we had no money.)
After Mark graduated and got a job, we had pretty decent health insurance through his employer. His employer's health insurance was REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE, though, because the company was small and I think someone had cancer and his daughter had some other medical issue. So the insurance companies saw that, and saw that the company was small enough that they could charge an arm and a leg for the group's health insurance. Or something.
Then we moved to Austin, and Mark had *amazing* health insurance. Like, we-had-no-deductible health insurance. I had Mace in a hospital with an epidural and it cost us $500, but if I had done it in a birthing center it would have been FREE.
Then last month, Mark got a new job (and we moved into a house, thus I haven't written in this blog AT ALL) and I had a new experience. I got to pick out MY OWN INSURANCE PLAN. First of all, it kind of made my brain explode ... but at the same time, it was kind of neat.
Our employer would pay up to a certain amount (say, $400) of the premium, and if the plan we chose cost more than that, we'd pay the difference and it would come out of our paycheck (before taxes, woohoo!) I had about a dozen options to choose from, and then I found three plans that were similar but had different copays, deductibles, and %-after-deductible paid by the insurance companies.
I chose the one I thought would fit best for our family for the next year. Next summer, we get to pick out a health insurance plan again for the next year. Let's just say I hope not to get pregnant and have a baby this year. ;)
It got me thinking, wouldn't it be great if everyone had the opportunity to do the same thing with THEIR health insurance plans? Wouldn't it be great if everyone could be a part of some kind of "group" plan (that, as far as I know, can't really discriminate against individuals) and everyone could choose what's right for them?
It kind of sounds like a voucher system. EVERYONE would have the government pay the first $X00 of people's insurance policies (would it have to be a little more for families than for individuals?) and then we go out and pick an insurance plan we like.
The insurance companies have to charge everyone the same price for the same plan, so they better figure out how to balance their budgets and quick!!! That way, everyone has access to health insurance and health care just like Mark has through his work, only it's through the government, but the government is still letting the free market take care of individuals. Then, NOBODY needs Medicare/Medicaid because everyone has their basic insurance through the government. The very basic plan (the plan that is completely paid for by the government's subsidy) would cover basic wellness/preventative and emergency/catastrophic and prescriptions. But, seriously, let the insurance companies design the plans themselves and offer them to people. They'll find a way to do it effectively. The people will make sure of that (by not buying the crappy plans and switching the next year when they get to pick a new plan!)
This plan is about 1000x smaller than the behemoth they pushed through Congress, and encroaches on WAY fewer rights. Because people need health care to be healthy and productive, and frankly, not everyone can afford it, although our nation can afford it for them. The key is that everyone is treated equally, though ... rich and poor receive the same subsidy, but the rich can buy the fancy insurance if they want and pay the extra $1000 for it.
I thought about how some people who have the most expensive medical needs are those least able to pay for it. Medical conditions can be debilitating and expensive. It made me think about how ... I don't know ... if we want our country to thrive, if we want healthy, productive people in our society, we really need to find a way to make health care affordable and accessible for all.
How could we do that? I hate Obamacare. It looks like it's set to make costs skyrocket, while attempting to get everyone equal access to health care. The free market WOULD do a great job with health care if they didn't discirminate against sick people (which they should, if they want to minimize costs and maximize profits.) But how does it make sense to PUNISH the sick people by making them pay higher premiums?
This isn't like life insurance, where they are weighing out your probability of death in the next X number of years. If you are a smoker or if your sister is bipolar or if your father died of a heart attack at 40, you DO have some kind of risk of dying. But as far as health is concerned, we're ALL at risk of SOMETHING expensive catastrophic happening to us (ie. Mace's $20k fever in May. He just had a virus, but we spent 3 days in the hospital as they pumped him full of antibiotics to make sure he didn't have meningitis or something. That sort of thing, you know, KILLS 1-month-olds.)
And with auto insurance, which everyone has to have because car accidents are EXPENSIVE (just like medical issues!), people can CHOOSE whether or not they have a car, and whether or not they drive. With health insurance, it's like, "Hm, do I want to be alive, or not?"
I've always had really good health insurance. Mark and I got married right after my freshman year at BYU and we had BYU health insurance, which was WAY WAY CHEAP (I thought it was expensive because we had no money.)
After Mark graduated and got a job, we had pretty decent health insurance through his employer. His employer's health insurance was REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE, though, because the company was small and I think someone had cancer and his daughter had some other medical issue. So the insurance companies saw that, and saw that the company was small enough that they could charge an arm and a leg for the group's health insurance. Or something.
Then we moved to Austin, and Mark had *amazing* health insurance. Like, we-had-no-deductible health insurance. I had Mace in a hospital with an epidural and it cost us $500, but if I had done it in a birthing center it would have been FREE.
Then last month, Mark got a new job (and we moved into a house, thus I haven't written in this blog AT ALL) and I had a new experience. I got to pick out MY OWN INSURANCE PLAN. First of all, it kind of made my brain explode ... but at the same time, it was kind of neat.
Our employer would pay up to a certain amount (say, $400) of the premium, and if the plan we chose cost more than that, we'd pay the difference and it would come out of our paycheck (before taxes, woohoo!) I had about a dozen options to choose from, and then I found three plans that were similar but had different copays, deductibles, and %-after-deductible paid by the insurance companies.
I chose the one I thought would fit best for our family for the next year. Next summer, we get to pick out a health insurance plan again for the next year. Let's just say I hope not to get pregnant and have a baby this year. ;)
It got me thinking, wouldn't it be great if everyone had the opportunity to do the same thing with THEIR health insurance plans? Wouldn't it be great if everyone could be a part of some kind of "group" plan (that, as far as I know, can't really discriminate against individuals) and everyone could choose what's right for them?
It kind of sounds like a voucher system. EVERYONE would have the government pay the first $X00 of people's insurance policies (would it have to be a little more for families than for individuals?) and then we go out and pick an insurance plan we like.
The insurance companies have to charge everyone the same price for the same plan, so they better figure out how to balance their budgets and quick!!! That way, everyone has access to health insurance and health care just like Mark has through his work, only it's through the government, but the government is still letting the free market take care of individuals. Then, NOBODY needs Medicare/Medicaid because everyone has their basic insurance through the government. The very basic plan (the plan that is completely paid for by the government's subsidy) would cover basic wellness/preventative and emergency/catastrophic and prescriptions. But, seriously, let the insurance companies design the plans themselves and offer them to people. They'll find a way to do it effectively. The people will make sure of that (by not buying the crappy plans and switching the next year when they get to pick a new plan!)
This plan is about 1000x smaller than the behemoth they pushed through Congress, and encroaches on WAY fewer rights. Because people need health care to be healthy and productive, and frankly, not everyone can afford it, although our nation can afford it for them. The key is that everyone is treated equally, though ... rich and poor receive the same subsidy, but the rich can buy the fancy insurance if they want and pay the extra $1000 for it.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
I love Canda!
Okay, I don't know everything about Canada or how their government works, or how their taxes work, or how their healthcare system works, but there are a few things I think I really like about them.
There are people on both sides of the fence when it comes to Canada's healthcare system. I admit I'm not familiar enough with it to feel strongly one way or another ("Obviously Natasha Richardson died because her skiing accident was in Canada!" ... um, sure?) But I think I personally would prefer a universal healthcare system (a single-payer system) to this behemoth Obamacare we've recently passed. It's full of great ideas, but dang, it's messy and complicated and inefficient and looks like it just sells us all out to the insurance companies who have always been able to do whatever they want with us, and will continue to be able to do so. O_o BUT THAT IS A DISCUSSION FOR ANOTHER DAY.
BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND: WHAT I LIKE ABOUT CANADA.
Parental leave.
It's not maternity leave, which is a special cool luxury American working moms have that makes me jealous. Granted, not all Americans get paid maternity leave, but dang. Sometimes I wish I had waited a bit longer to have kids so I could have a job, take some paid maternity leave, then quit. (Yes, my selfish inner desires are why employers hate pregnant women and are suspicious of them.) But the idea is that in Canada, you get a year off with 55% pay. Then you get to go back to your job. A year, people. Paid. And either parent could take it off. So if both spouses are working, each could take 6 months off, or Mom could take a full year off, or whatever. But if one spouse is working, then the working spouse could take the whole year off. That seems a lot less discriminatory than saying we want to give working moms all these benefits to make their lives easier. Hey, look over here, I've made sacrifices, too! Whatever happened to "all men are created equal" - why do they get special treatment and protection?
Canada's version of the "Child Tax Credit"
In the United States, we get something like a $1000 tax credit for each child. That's great and all, but Canadians get a $100 check every month for each child they have (something like that.) That adds up to $1200, by the way. ;) Anyway, like I said, I don't know how their tax system works, but that seems more straightforward than our "$1000 tax credit plus a bunch of random deductions like the child care tax credit that ONLY WORKS FOR CHILD CARE AND NOT PRESCHOOL." Again, one of those things that discriminates against stay-at-home parents. Why is it that working parents need all this help? If they need all this help, isn't that a sign that there's something wrong with what they're doing? If *parents* need help, help *all* *parents* and not just a certain subset of them that exhibit certain behaviors the government wants. It seems they want to pressure everybody into working and only having a few children. Isn't Europe kind of having a problem with its aging population...? How are MY kids supposed to support the Social Security needs of all the aging people if you're trying to stop middle-class people from having kids?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301108/empty-playground-and-welfare-state-ramesh-ponnuru << a great blog entry
Universal healthcare.
I could never write enough about this in a single entry. I don't think I could get it out in a bunch of entries. But here's the quick version: we already practically have "free" universal health care. Hospitals and doctors are required to treat their patients regardless of their ability to pay. A friend of a friend said, "Health care is totally free, as long as you don't need a good credit score and don't mind dodging a few phone calls!" Seriously, it's awful! My aunt works (worked?) for a hospital's billing department! It sounds like a nightmare job!
We have the ability to treat people and morally we should (something to do with the Hippocratic oath? or something?) and we DO and we bill people for it even if they can't afford it. It makes no sense. I got my hospital bill from having Mace and the bill made no sense. They charged the insurance company some amount, the insurance company paid them some other amount (like, 1/5 of what the hospital billed them), I paid my teensy hospital copay (I love my health insurance ... they cover 100% and I have no deductible!), and somehow we all called it good? Someone explain to me how this has ANYTHING to do with the free market. And when I came in, they asked me if I was insured or if I was paying out of pocket. Do they bill us differently? I bet they do. This makes NO SENSE.
The fact is, we don't understand anything about what healthcare costs. And there are emergencies. That's why we all have insurance, I think. And we all have copays because the insurance companies don't want us going to the doctor for FREE because then we'd go to the doctor for every little thing and A) the doctors would be overwhelmed and B) it would be freaking expensive. But it makes sense for preventative visits to be free (because insurance companies would probably rather catch something earlier than later because it would be cheaper to treat) and blah blah blah I don't think you find this interesting.
I think healthcare should be a common good because education is a common good. We want our society to be educated because that makes them more productive. We ALSO want our society to be HEALTHY because that will ALSO make us more productive. I have a friend who was "disabled" because she has bipolar and epilepsy - and without medication she is unable to function. But if she got a job, Medicaid would no longer be able to help her with her medical costs, but her job wouldn't be good enough to either A) provide medical benefits or B) pay her enough that she can care for her own health issues. THAT IS JUST WRONG.
I could go more in-depth about this, but that would probably best be left to someone who is actually an expert in the field and knows about healthcare and knows about insurance. Me? I just read stuff.
PS. I'm in love with this woman and her blog. Apparently she wrote about most of my issues years ago.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/category/women/
And gosh dang I wish I kept links to all of the blog entries that made me think about everything I wrote about in this entry. Oh, well. I will find more later, but the point is I need to get my thoughts out, y'know?
Coming up some day: if I ruled the world, what would it be like?
There are people on both sides of the fence when it comes to Canada's healthcare system. I admit I'm not familiar enough with it to feel strongly one way or another ("Obviously Natasha Richardson died because her skiing accident was in Canada!" ... um, sure?) But I think I personally would prefer a universal healthcare system (a single-payer system) to this behemoth Obamacare we've recently passed. It's full of great ideas, but dang, it's messy and complicated and inefficient and looks like it just sells us all out to the insurance companies who have always been able to do whatever they want with us, and will continue to be able to do so. O_o BUT THAT IS A DISCUSSION FOR ANOTHER DAY.
BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND: WHAT I LIKE ABOUT CANADA.
Parental leave.
It's not maternity leave, which is a special cool luxury American working moms have that makes me jealous. Granted, not all Americans get paid maternity leave, but dang. Sometimes I wish I had waited a bit longer to have kids so I could have a job, take some paid maternity leave, then quit. (Yes, my selfish inner desires are why employers hate pregnant women and are suspicious of them.) But the idea is that in Canada, you get a year off with 55% pay. Then you get to go back to your job. A year, people. Paid. And either parent could take it off. So if both spouses are working, each could take 6 months off, or Mom could take a full year off, or whatever. But if one spouse is working, then the working spouse could take the whole year off. That seems a lot less discriminatory than saying we want to give working moms all these benefits to make their lives easier. Hey, look over here, I've made sacrifices, too! Whatever happened to "all men are created equal" - why do they get special treatment and protection?
Canada's version of the "Child Tax Credit"
In the United States, we get something like a $1000 tax credit for each child. That's great and all, but Canadians get a $100 check every month for each child they have (something like that.) That adds up to $1200, by the way. ;) Anyway, like I said, I don't know how their tax system works, but that seems more straightforward than our "$1000 tax credit plus a bunch of random deductions like the child care tax credit that ONLY WORKS FOR CHILD CARE AND NOT PRESCHOOL." Again, one of those things that discriminates against stay-at-home parents. Why is it that working parents need all this help? If they need all this help, isn't that a sign that there's something wrong with what they're doing? If *parents* need help, help *all* *parents* and not just a certain subset of them that exhibit certain behaviors the government wants. It seems they want to pressure everybody into working and only having a few children. Isn't Europe kind of having a problem with its aging population...? How are MY kids supposed to support the Social Security needs of all the aging people if you're trying to stop middle-class people from having kids?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301108/empty-playground-and-welfare-state-ramesh-ponnuru << a great blog entry
Universal healthcare.
I could never write enough about this in a single entry. I don't think I could get it out in a bunch of entries. But here's the quick version: we already practically have "free" universal health care. Hospitals and doctors are required to treat their patients regardless of their ability to pay. A friend of a friend said, "Health care is totally free, as long as you don't need a good credit score and don't mind dodging a few phone calls!" Seriously, it's awful! My aunt works (worked?) for a hospital's billing department! It sounds like a nightmare job!
We have the ability to treat people and morally we should (something to do with the Hippocratic oath? or something?) and we DO and we bill people for it even if they can't afford it. It makes no sense. I got my hospital bill from having Mace and the bill made no sense. They charged the insurance company some amount, the insurance company paid them some other amount (like, 1/5 of what the hospital billed them), I paid my teensy hospital copay (I love my health insurance ... they cover 100% and I have no deductible!), and somehow we all called it good? Someone explain to me how this has ANYTHING to do with the free market. And when I came in, they asked me if I was insured or if I was paying out of pocket. Do they bill us differently? I bet they do. This makes NO SENSE.
The fact is, we don't understand anything about what healthcare costs. And there are emergencies. That's why we all have insurance, I think. And we all have copays because the insurance companies don't want us going to the doctor for FREE because then we'd go to the doctor for every little thing and A) the doctors would be overwhelmed and B) it would be freaking expensive. But it makes sense for preventative visits to be free (because insurance companies would probably rather catch something earlier than later because it would be cheaper to treat) and blah blah blah I don't think you find this interesting.
I think healthcare should be a common good because education is a common good. We want our society to be educated because that makes them more productive. We ALSO want our society to be HEALTHY because that will ALSO make us more productive. I have a friend who was "disabled" because she has bipolar and epilepsy - and without medication she is unable to function. But if she got a job, Medicaid would no longer be able to help her with her medical costs, but her job wouldn't be good enough to either A) provide medical benefits or B) pay her enough that she can care for her own health issues. THAT IS JUST WRONG.
I could go more in-depth about this, but that would probably best be left to someone who is actually an expert in the field and knows about healthcare and knows about insurance. Me? I just read stuff.
PS. I'm in love with this woman and her blog. Apparently she wrote about most of my issues years ago.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/category/women/
And gosh dang I wish I kept links to all of the blog entries that made me think about everything I wrote about in this entry. Oh, well. I will find more later, but the point is I need to get my thoughts out, y'know?
Coming up some day: if I ruled the world, what would it be like?
Monday, September 3, 2012
Personal family things
Now I'd like to take the opportunity to share a few things that have been going on in my life lately.
Mace is 4 months old. I love him so much!
Carmen Dewey: Dinosaur Hunter
I want to write more in here about family happenings. I've been distracting myself too much for the past year or so to write, but I really need to do it!! (Facebook status updates are enough, right? Right???)
In other news ... we are moving into a house next Saturday (yaaaaayyyyyy!!!!) so this week should be crazy full of packing and whatnot. Being OCD and all, I started packing boxes last week to take downstairs to the garage (I don't want to ask my friends to carry all of our stuff down two flights of stairs) ... then Carmen decided she wanted to help and she put all of her ponies and other favorite toys into her backpack. Ahahaha. I love her.
Mace is 4 months old. I love him so much!
- He's a super-huge flirt who loves to talk. He loves attention, and I love looking into his eyes. He looks back at me, as if searching for some kind of reassurance, and when I smile, he beams at me.
- He loves it when people sing to him - one of the ladies at the gym day care even told me about it. :)
- He loves sucking on his Binky, and when it's not around, he sticks his entire hand into his mouth and sucks on it madly. It's hilarious. And for a kid who loves his Binky so much, he sure stinks at keeping it in his mouth!
- He loves to grab and pull at his toys.
- He understands when I'm promising him milk. If he's fussing and I say, "Wait just a minute, I'll get you some milk, let me sit down..." he stops and looks at me for a while. And if I get distracted and do something other than start nursing him, he furrows his brow and starts crying at me again. ;)
- He started rolling over about a week ago, and now he can roll from front to back and back to front! But I think he only rolls over in one direction - when he's on his back, he'll roll over his left arm onto his stomach, then he'll roll over again and be farther away from where he started.
- He loves his big sister. She is very good at comforting him, and when she got him to stop crying at the end of her swimming lessons a few weeks ago, one of the other parents was like, "Wow, she is the baby whisperer!!"
- Carmen loves him to death, too. She helps stick his Binky in, she plays with him, she helps him roll over, she brings him toys, she talks to him in the high-pitched loving Mommy voice adults use with babies (apparently it's a natural thing for parents to do - babies are better at picking up the high-pitched sounds and we recognize that they respond to it. We're not just being super-annoying with our baby talk.) I love walking into a room and hearing her singing to him, or going, "Baby Mace, you're a cutie, you're a cutie! Let's keep you forever! I love you! You are the cutest and sweetest baby!" And when he's crying, she caresses his face and goes, "Shh, shh, shh, oh, sweetheart, you're okay, shh~"
- For some reason, I like to call Mace "Stinkerfish." Sometimes Carmen gets upset when I call him that, and she goes, "He's not a stinkerfish! He's a sweetheart!"
Carmen Dewey: Dinosaur Hunter
- For some reason, she is obsessed with death. I've probably been watching too much Burn Notice with her. ;) I hear her playing in her room, and she's like, "Hey, everypony, Pinkie Pie is dead." And a few weeks ago in Nursery, she told her Nursery leaders that one of her friends died, and they were a bit worried about that ... I asked her about it in the hall, and she told me that it was one of her pretend friends that died. "Yeah, she went out into the street without looking and got hit by a car and she DIED." O.o; I don't teach her that she'll die if she gets hit by a car. I say she needs to be careful because the car might not see her, and if it hit her she'd get "big ouchies". Apparently big ouchies = death.
- The best part of my day is when Carmen comes up to me and gives me a big hug and says, "Mommy, I just love you!"
- Sometimes, she says, "Ugh, Mommy, if you [do thing I don't like], I will not love you any more!" (What?! I don't threaten her with taking away love! Where does she get this from?!) and other times, when we get frustrated with each other, she glares at me and goes, "But Mommy, I still love you!!" Hehehe.
- I haven't quite figured out what this means, but sometimes she says, "I am the MADDEST Carmen!" Usually this is when she's going to go out and kill dinosaurs or something. I think she also says it when she's recently been scared by a bug (usually a spider/ant/fly).
- We're kind of working on our fear of bugs. When bugs are inside, it's okay to freak out and get Mommy and Daddy to kill them. When we're outside, I try to tell her, "This is their home; they're not scary and I won't kill them for you."
- Carmen is very thoughtful and obedient. While we were on vacation in Utah, my dad and I were both taking naps downstairs on the couch. I heard Carmen come down the stairs, calling out, "Mommy? Grandpa Brad??" and when she saw both of us asleep, she sighed exasperatedly (it sounded a bit like Napoleon Dynamite) ... then turned around and went back upstairs, instead of waking us up and bothering us. Seriously? Seriously!! I was so happy!!!!
- My favorite made-up word by Carmen? "Yestertime."
- She is super-upbeat and optimistic and sweet. "That sounds super-delicious!" "That is WONDERFUL, mommy!" "Mom, everything in this grocery store is SO PERFECT!" and our favorite descriptor for tasty fruit is, "It's super-juicy!" Super-juicy strawberries, super-juicy apples, super-juicy pears ... Also, whenever we go to a place that will have kids there she can play with, she calls them, "All of my very best friends!" (I think she gets it from the My Little Pony theme song?)
- Everything exciting that she is looking forward to doing is happening TOMORROW. I can't wait to go to my swim lessons TOMORROW. I can't wait to start my dance lessons TOMORROW and wear my tap-tap-tap shoes. I want to move into our new big house RIGHT NOW. (or tomorrow. ;) )
- Carmen reminds me of the little girl from Toy Story 3. She runs around with her toys and everything that happens to them is SO DRAMATIC. I love it!!
I want to write more in here about family happenings. I've been distracting myself too much for the past year or so to write, but I really need to do it!! (Facebook status updates are enough, right? Right???)
In other news ... we are moving into a house next Saturday (yaaaaayyyyyy!!!!) so this week should be crazy full of packing and whatnot. Being OCD and all, I started packing boxes last week to take downstairs to the garage (I don't want to ask my friends to carry all of our stuff down two flights of stairs) ... then Carmen decided she wanted to help and she put all of her ponies and other favorite toys into her backpack. Ahahaha. I love her.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Spoilers!!
A few days ago, Mark came home from work super-giddy and told me what he weighed when he got on the scale when he got to the gym that morning. I really wish I could remember how much he weighed when we got married ... I think he's close! So far (in just a month) he has lost 20 pounds. That's even more than our cats!! (Our cats are fat.) I want to take a picture of Mark holding Tiber, with the caption of, "This is how much Mark weighed a month ago!"
I, on the other hand, lost 7 pounds in a week (how is it possible? I don't know. Going off carbs is crazy!) and then realized I shouldn't be losing weight that fast because I'm nursing. I was supposed to be eating fruit, too. And if you've got sugar in your body, it has energy it can access before your body starts shedding fat so even eating fruit will slow your weight loss. At least that's what I suspect. So now I'm down just over 10 pounds. So between the two of us, we've almost lost a Carmen. In a month.
I've been pretty bad the past few days, though. I've been craving chocolate so I had several pieces of chocolate cake at a friend's house last night, and today I've been sneaking a bunch of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. I promise I'll get back on track tomorrow!
One thing that was really fun about that first week was stepping on the scale in the evening and weighing less than I weighed in the morning, even though I had been eating all day long and never felt hungry. Gee, funny, you eat foods that keep you full and you don't get hungry as often. Hm!!
It makes me think that maybe that, instead of simply writing up how many calories are in a food item, if they wrote it in something like calories per hour. You digest carbs faster than whole grains/proteins/fats, so although fat has more calories per weight, I bet if you ate more fat during the day you'd eat fewer calories overall. Carbs last, like, three hours, then you're hungry again. They also spike your blood sugar and make you even hungrier. I noticed I could be not-very-hungry, then I'll have something with sugar in it, and suddenly my body will start craving more sugar.
Yup, here's a little something describing cravings vs. hunger. This is why you have to do Phase I of the South Beach Diet. It's what kicks the carb cravings. The first 3 days are the hardest.
http://www.southbeachdiet.com/diet/hunger-versus-cravings
I've decided I also need to come up with some sort of official "goal" for my weight loss, instead of, "The doctor told Mark he needs to lose weight, so what the heck I'll do it with him because I'm fat."
Here goes, once it's public and people know they've got something to hold you to ... right?
Starting weight: 179
Current weight: 169
Pre-Mace weight: 165
Pre-Carmen weight: 160
In my wildest, wildest dreams I'd like to be down to 140 lbs (how much I weighed when I was 16) and have a 30-inch waist or smaller. Actually, I'd just like to have a 30-inch waist, period. (I'm already one inch down!) Realistically, I'd like to get down to 150 lbs, which is what I weighed when I graduated from high school. I have clothes I've been holding onto since I got married, hoping I'll be able to fit into them comfortably again. (Problem is, many of them aren't nursing-friendly so I've hardly worn them since 2008. BUT I LOVE THOSE SHIRTS SO MUCH I CAN NOT GET RID OF THEM BECAUSE I SWEAR I WILL WEAR THEM AGAIN SOME DAY! **stubborn**)
It's kind of embarrassing thinking those are my weight goals, because I have friends who are like 140 or 145 and want to get down to 120 and I'm thinking, "How is that even POSSIBLE?! I haven't weighed that I was 13! And I was not fat then!" (Back then, I'm pretty sure was pure muscle, and I could probably beat the crap out of you, and I rode my bike everywhere.)
And there's your way too much personal information about Kamis for the day. Now I will be super-embarrassed if Christmas comes around and I'm still 160something. "You did so great in August, then you gave up?!"
I, on the other hand, lost 7 pounds in a week (how is it possible? I don't know. Going off carbs is crazy!) and then realized I shouldn't be losing weight that fast because I'm nursing. I was supposed to be eating fruit, too. And if you've got sugar in your body, it has energy it can access before your body starts shedding fat so even eating fruit will slow your weight loss. At least that's what I suspect. So now I'm down just over 10 pounds. So between the two of us, we've almost lost a Carmen. In a month.
I've been pretty bad the past few days, though. I've been craving chocolate so I had several pieces of chocolate cake at a friend's house last night, and today I've been sneaking a bunch of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. I promise I'll get back on track tomorrow!
One thing that was really fun about that first week was stepping on the scale in the evening and weighing less than I weighed in the morning, even though I had been eating all day long and never felt hungry. Gee, funny, you eat foods that keep you full and you don't get hungry as often. Hm!!
It makes me think that maybe that, instead of simply writing up how many calories are in a food item, if they wrote it in something like calories per hour. You digest carbs faster than whole grains/proteins/fats, so although fat has more calories per weight, I bet if you ate more fat during the day you'd eat fewer calories overall. Carbs last, like, three hours, then you're hungry again. They also spike your blood sugar and make you even hungrier. I noticed I could be not-very-hungry, then I'll have something with sugar in it, and suddenly my body will start craving more sugar.
Yup, here's a little something describing cravings vs. hunger. This is why you have to do Phase I of the South Beach Diet. It's what kicks the carb cravings. The first 3 days are the hardest.
http://www.southbeachdiet.com/diet/hunger-versus-cravings
I've decided I also need to come up with some sort of official "goal" for my weight loss, instead of, "The doctor told Mark he needs to lose weight, so what the heck I'll do it with him because I'm fat."
Here goes, once it's public and people know they've got something to hold you to ... right?
Starting weight: 179
Current weight: 169
Pre-Mace weight: 165
Pre-Carmen weight: 160
In my wildest, wildest dreams I'd like to be down to 140 lbs (how much I weighed when I was 16) and have a 30-inch waist or smaller. Actually, I'd just like to have a 30-inch waist, period. (I'm already one inch down!) Realistically, I'd like to get down to 150 lbs, which is what I weighed when I graduated from high school. I have clothes I've been holding onto since I got married, hoping I'll be able to fit into them comfortably again. (Problem is, many of them aren't nursing-friendly so I've hardly worn them since 2008. BUT I LOVE THOSE SHIRTS SO MUCH I CAN NOT GET RID OF THEM BECAUSE I SWEAR I WILL WEAR THEM AGAIN SOME DAY! **stubborn**)
It's kind of embarrassing thinking those are my weight goals, because I have friends who are like 140 or 145 and want to get down to 120 and I'm thinking, "How is that even POSSIBLE?! I haven't weighed that I was 13! And I was not fat then!" (Back then, I'm pretty sure was pure muscle, and I could probably beat the crap out of you, and I rode my bike everywhere.)
And there's your way too much personal information about Kamis for the day. Now I will be super-embarrassed if Christmas comes around and I'm still 160something. "You did so great in August, then you gave up?!"
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Crazy life and health and stuff ...
So this past month has been crazy (crazy fun?) I went to Utah for a week with the kids to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. I was able to meet up with a few of my friends and have a lot of fun. It was nice having extra help with the kids ... Mom doesn't get much sleep when she's sleeping in the same room as both of her kids. Anyway. Hopefully some day I'll be able to see the nice family photos we took.
Since Mark got a new job last year, we've been thinking about buying additional life insurance. Someone came by with an interesting investment thing where it's like part of it is life insurance and part of it is an investment with a guaranteed 2% return and a 12% cap, and it's got some kind of tax shelter associated with it because of the kind of investment it is. (Fair Tax, FAIR TAX, why can people make up stuff like this??!!!)
Anyway, in case you don't know, when you sign up for life insurance they come and weigh you and take your blood and test it for stuff to make sure you're not about to die from cancer. When Mark got his blood work back, his levels came back high for stuff that could be related to his liver. The life insurance company wasn't worried about that at all (but they were concerned about his Factor V Leiden, a blood clotting disorder we already know about which is not a big deal but whatever) but they couldn't give us a better deal than we already have on Mark's life insurance (yay, BYU alumni stuff!!) so we decided we'll get healthier and try again later for additional term life insurance.
Looking at the liver stuff, though, we decided to go see a doctor to figure out what's going on and what we can do. After a few doctor's visits and ultrasounds and whatnot, the doctor suggested Mark is developing a fatty liver and told him the best way to treat it would be to lose weight and go on a low-carb diet, "such as Atkins or South Beach."
So I'd heard of Atkins before, but not South Beach, and I was kind of excited that now we HAVE to get healthy because a doctor told Mark to lose weight. We've been half-heartedly "eating healthy" and working out, but we haven't really bothered to lose much weight because, heck, it's not like we've had to buy bigger clothes lately. And being pregnant gave me an excuse to not fit into anything anyway. ;)
I have a hard time figuring out what to cook (we love stir fry with lots of rice) because neither Mark nor I particularly like vegetables (stir-fry is the only way we're eating any) and Mark is allergic to half the fruits under the sun (apples, pears, peaches, cherries, pretty much anything with a pit...) So ... whatever.
Anyway, at the beginning of the month, Mark decided to cut down on carbs. Carmen wanted me to bake a birthday cake for her ponies (why not?) and Mark only ate a piece or two of it. I would make stir fry, and he would skip the rice. Stuff like that. I checked out a bunch of South Beach Diet books from the library and told him to skim through the recipes and find stuff he wanted to try (turns out he doesn't want any of it. All of the recipes are kind of specific and use weird ingredients we wouldn't use otherwise. Plus, they advocate the use of sugar substitutes. Blech, frankenfoods!)
We decided we would "officially" start our diet after I got back from vacation. I mean, there's no way I'm going to NOT eat the tortilla from my Cafe Rio salad, and I AM going to go to JCW's!! Neither of those places exist in Texas! A few days before I left (my vacation started on a Tuesday) Mark decided he was "officially" starting the South Beach Diet.
The way the SBD works is at the beginning, for 2 weeks, you cut all carbs out of your diet. No bread, no potatoes, no pasta, no sugar, NO FRUIT. They have some other guidelines, too, like you're supposed to only have reduced-fat milk and cheese and you're supposed to have a limit on the number of pistachios/cashews/etc you can eat, and I *think* they recommend Canadian bacon over regular bacon (Mark hates Canadian bacon) ... and Mark pretty much ignored that and went with the parts of the diet he agreed with that sounded ... well ... more sound. There is some diet/nutrition stuff we don't necessarily buy into. I'm not about to go below 2% milk because of the stuff they do to milk when you get down to 1% and skim. Mark is not convinced normal bacon is worse for you than frankenfooded bacon.
Supposedly, the goal of Phase 1 of the South Beach diet is to not spike your blood sugar, and hopefully get your blood chemistry back to normal. It will also kick your sugar/carb cravings. Carbs are easy energy and not very filling. Processed carbs are practically predigested for you, so you get lots of energy for little effort and maybe it helps you gain weight in your belly. Come to think of it, the skinny people I knew eat very few refined carbs and have lots of fiber ... so they might be onto something there.
So, now it's the end of August and we've had a little bit of a taste of a change of lifestyle ... Want to know how it went? Stay tuned!
Since Mark got a new job last year, we've been thinking about buying additional life insurance. Someone came by with an interesting investment thing where it's like part of it is life insurance and part of it is an investment with a guaranteed 2% return and a 12% cap, and it's got some kind of tax shelter associated with it because of the kind of investment it is. (Fair Tax, FAIR TAX, why can people make up stuff like this??!!!)
Anyway, in case you don't know, when you sign up for life insurance they come and weigh you and take your blood and test it for stuff to make sure you're not about to die from cancer. When Mark got his blood work back, his levels came back high for stuff that could be related to his liver. The life insurance company wasn't worried about that at all (but they were concerned about his Factor V Leiden, a blood clotting disorder we already know about which is not a big deal but whatever) but they couldn't give us a better deal than we already have on Mark's life insurance (yay, BYU alumni stuff!!) so we decided we'll get healthier and try again later for additional term life insurance.
Looking at the liver stuff, though, we decided to go see a doctor to figure out what's going on and what we can do. After a few doctor's visits and ultrasounds and whatnot, the doctor suggested Mark is developing a fatty liver and told him the best way to treat it would be to lose weight and go on a low-carb diet, "such as Atkins or South Beach."
So I'd heard of Atkins before, but not South Beach, and I was kind of excited that now we HAVE to get healthy because a doctor told Mark to lose weight. We've been half-heartedly "eating healthy" and working out, but we haven't really bothered to lose much weight because, heck, it's not like we've had to buy bigger clothes lately. And being pregnant gave me an excuse to not fit into anything anyway. ;)
I have a hard time figuring out what to cook (we love stir fry with lots of rice) because neither Mark nor I particularly like vegetables (stir-fry is the only way we're eating any) and Mark is allergic to half the fruits under the sun (apples, pears, peaches, cherries, pretty much anything with a pit...) So ... whatever.
Anyway, at the beginning of the month, Mark decided to cut down on carbs. Carmen wanted me to bake a birthday cake for her ponies (why not?) and Mark only ate a piece or two of it. I would make stir fry, and he would skip the rice. Stuff like that. I checked out a bunch of South Beach Diet books from the library and told him to skim through the recipes and find stuff he wanted to try (turns out he doesn't want any of it. All of the recipes are kind of specific and use weird ingredients we wouldn't use otherwise. Plus, they advocate the use of sugar substitutes. Blech, frankenfoods!)
We decided we would "officially" start our diet after I got back from vacation. I mean, there's no way I'm going to NOT eat the tortilla from my Cafe Rio salad, and I AM going to go to JCW's!! Neither of those places exist in Texas! A few days before I left (my vacation started on a Tuesday) Mark decided he was "officially" starting the South Beach Diet.
The way the SBD works is at the beginning, for 2 weeks, you cut all carbs out of your diet. No bread, no potatoes, no pasta, no sugar, NO FRUIT. They have some other guidelines, too, like you're supposed to only have reduced-fat milk and cheese and you're supposed to have a limit on the number of pistachios/cashews/etc you can eat, and I *think* they recommend Canadian bacon over regular bacon (Mark hates Canadian bacon) ... and Mark pretty much ignored that and went with the parts of the diet he agreed with that sounded ... well ... more sound. There is some diet/nutrition stuff we don't necessarily buy into. I'm not about to go below 2% milk because of the stuff they do to milk when you get down to 1% and skim. Mark is not convinced normal bacon is worse for you than frankenfooded bacon.
Supposedly, the goal of Phase 1 of the South Beach diet is to not spike your blood sugar, and hopefully get your blood chemistry back to normal. It will also kick your sugar/carb cravings. Carbs are easy energy and not very filling. Processed carbs are practically predigested for you, so you get lots of energy for little effort and maybe it helps you gain weight in your belly. Come to think of it, the skinny people I knew eat very few refined carbs and have lots of fiber ... so they might be onto something there.
So, now it's the end of August and we've had a little bit of a taste of a change of lifestyle ... Want to know how it went? Stay tuned!
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Reservations about the Fair Tax
Oh snap! This was supposed to post weeks ago but somehow it never made it out of my drafts!! (August 27, 2012)
Okay, quick revert back to the Fair Tax.
I have a few reservations about it, because of the sorts of things that would be taxed. The whole deal about the Fair Tax is that "everything" is taxed ... except for education. One of the FAQ's asks, "Why not just exempt necessities, like food and medicine?" The problem is, that would open the floodgates for lobbyists and special interests to come in and be like, "Give me special treatment!" ... and isn't that what the whole problem is with our current tax system anyway?
(When I rule the world, all lobbyists will be fired. and if they don't go home, I will line them up and shoot them. I hate lobbyists and special interests. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-stocks-or-bonds-invest-in-a-lobbyist)
I mean, check it out:
It will make you crazy!
Random thought I just had: What qualifies as "education"? Would preschool count, or is it just like public kindergarten through college (or trade school, or whatever post-secondary training you want)?
Anyway. The Fair Tax also taxes RENT and HEALTH CARE. So ... you'd be paying tax on that $30,000 surgery. And then with the way insurance companies currently are, are you paying tax on what the hospital bills you, or what the insurance companies pay, or what? More about that in a second, I promise.
No, just kidding. I just wanted to say this wouldn't work because in my world, the bulk of health care would be a public good, not a private one. So maybe just the privately-run health care businesses would need to tax. I figure the basic government health care wouldn't be the best, so people can pay for fancier health care just like we pay for fancier private schools.
Back to rent.
It seems kind of crazy to tax rent because it would tack on $300 to a $1000 rent. (A 23% inclusive tax comes out to a 30% exclusive tax. I wasn't 100% positive of that when I wrote my previous entry because I couldn't remember the source I got it from so I didn't write the 30% number.) And I am renting our house in American Fork out to our friends, and it's confusing enough filling out the income tax forms on it. No, wait, scratch that, I think it's probably more complicated NOW calculating income and expenses and doing my income tax returns than it would be to figure out how to pay the sales tax to the government. But how would they even keep track of ME renting out MY place to my friends because we can't afford to sell our house ...? Fair Tax talks about how it gets rid of tax evasion problems (and oh yes it does, oh Fair Tax, how I love you and your simplicity) ... but ... like ... I don't know.
I guess I feel more comfortable about them taxing rent because you DO get to take your entire paycheck home. Your. Entire. Paycheck. Can you imagine?!?! And you get the prebate every month, so as your family gets bigger and you need a bigger place, you get a bigger prebate that covers more of your housing costs.
The Fair Tax also charges tax on interest. Currently, so much of our economy is based on borrowing (which, in case you don't remember, is a really bad idea, according to the prophets.) So a lot of people will be irritated that they're paying taxes on interest. But again - at the end of the day, is that such a bad idea? Maybe people will learn how to live within their means again!
Some people also complain that the FairTax isn't progressive enough, because the top 1% derive most of their income from capital gains, and that money is reinvested into the economy and isn't spent on new goods and services. But ... why are we taxing people for making money they're not spending anyway ...? A friend once asked me, "If the money's ultimately going to be spent somewhere anyway, does it really matter when it's taxed?" I think the answer is yes, and the two words I think that best describe it are: compound interest.
Also, this is a problem I have with both the Fair Tax our current income tax system: Cost of living is different from city to city. So for someone in New York City to have the same prebate as someone with the same size family in Mississippi ... the money just wouldn't go as far. So I would think that local governments would have to determine poverty levels or prebate levels for families of different sizes, and NOT have it be a blanket federal number applied to the whole nation.
I believe more local(ized?) governments are more effective than the federal government. If only our government was set up a bit more like our Church leadership, huh?
Anyway, all in all, I think the Fair Tax is a pretty good idea, and a pretty fair idea (even though it "doesn't tax the rich enough"). I don't like lobbyists in Washington and I don't like how the government works so hard to influence people's personal decisions. Both the Democrats and Republicans do it in different facets of our lives ... and that's why I'm a Libertarian.
Have you heard of the great Libertarian conspiracy? They want to take over the government, then leave you alone.
Okay, quick revert back to the Fair Tax.
I have a few reservations about it, because of the sorts of things that would be taxed. The whole deal about the Fair Tax is that "everything" is taxed ... except for education. One of the FAQ's asks, "Why not just exempt necessities, like food and medicine?" The problem is, that would open the floodgates for lobbyists and special interests to come in and be like, "Give me special treatment!" ... and isn't that what the whole problem is with our current tax system anyway?
(When I rule the world, all lobbyists will be fired. and if they don't go home, I will line them up and shoot them. I hate lobbyists and special interests. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-stocks-or-bonds-invest-in-a-lobbyist)
I mean, check it out:
Random thought I just had: What qualifies as "education"? Would preschool count, or is it just like public kindergarten through college (or trade school, or whatever post-secondary training you want)?
Anyway. The Fair Tax also taxes RENT and HEALTH CARE. So ... you'd be paying tax on that $30,000 surgery. And then with the way insurance companies currently are, are you paying tax on what the hospital bills you, or what the insurance companies pay, or what? More about that in a second, I promise.
No, just kidding. I just wanted to say this wouldn't work because in my world, the bulk of health care would be a public good, not a private one. So maybe just the privately-run health care businesses would need to tax. I figure the basic government health care wouldn't be the best, so people can pay for fancier health care just like we pay for fancier private schools.
Back to rent.
It seems kind of crazy to tax rent because it would tack on $300 to a $1000 rent. (A 23% inclusive tax comes out to a 30% exclusive tax. I wasn't 100% positive of that when I wrote my previous entry because I couldn't remember the source I got it from so I didn't write the 30% number.) And I am renting our house in American Fork out to our friends, and it's confusing enough filling out the income tax forms on it. No, wait, scratch that, I think it's probably more complicated NOW calculating income and expenses and doing my income tax returns than it would be to figure out how to pay the sales tax to the government. But how would they even keep track of ME renting out MY place to my friends because we can't afford to sell our house ...? Fair Tax talks about how it gets rid of tax evasion problems (and oh yes it does, oh Fair Tax, how I love you and your simplicity) ... but ... like ... I don't know.
I guess I feel more comfortable about them taxing rent because you DO get to take your entire paycheck home. Your. Entire. Paycheck. Can you imagine?!?! And you get the prebate every month, so as your family gets bigger and you need a bigger place, you get a bigger prebate that covers more of your housing costs.
The Fair Tax also charges tax on interest. Currently, so much of our economy is based on borrowing (which, in case you don't remember, is a really bad idea, according to the prophets.) So a lot of people will be irritated that they're paying taxes on interest. But again - at the end of the day, is that such a bad idea? Maybe people will learn how to live within their means again!
Some people also complain that the FairTax isn't progressive enough, because the top 1% derive most of their income from capital gains, and that money is reinvested into the economy and isn't spent on new goods and services. But ... why are we taxing people for making money they're not spending anyway ...? A friend once asked me, "If the money's ultimately going to be spent somewhere anyway, does it really matter when it's taxed?" I think the answer is yes, and the two words I think that best describe it are: compound interest.
Also, this is a problem I have with both the Fair Tax our current income tax system: Cost of living is different from city to city. So for someone in New York City to have the same prebate as someone with the same size family in Mississippi ... the money just wouldn't go as far. So I would think that local governments would have to determine poverty levels or prebate levels for families of different sizes, and NOT have it be a blanket federal number applied to the whole nation.
I believe more local(ized?) governments are more effective than the federal government. If only our government was set up a bit more like our Church leadership, huh?
Anyway, all in all, I think the Fair Tax is a pretty good idea, and a pretty fair idea (even though it "doesn't tax the rich enough"). I don't like lobbyists in Washington and I don't like how the government works so hard to influence people's personal decisions. Both the Democrats and Republicans do it in different facets of our lives ... and that's why I'm a Libertarian.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
I love the Fair Tax!
Okay, so there's this thing I love. It's called the FairTax. Basically, imagine this:
There's no income tax. There's no corporate income tax. There's no IRS. There's no April 15.
What there IS, is a 23% federal sales tax on consumption of new goods. That means, you go to the store and buy something, you pay 23% tax. You get a haircut, you pay 23% tax. You buy a new car (or a new house!), you pay 23% tax. You buy something from a consignment shop. No tax. You buy a used car. No tax. (Well, no federal sales tax.) But guess what? You get to take your WHOLE PAYCHECK HOME.
But our current tax system is "progressive," you say! I put "progressive" in quotes, because now that I think about it, the 15% investment income tax rate makes it so that people who make most of their money from investments (ie. those super-rich investors the 99% are complaining about) end up paying at a lower income tax rate than those who make their money doing physical work. And most people who have so much money to invest hire someone else to do the investing so it's not like they're doing much work to earn those dividends, right? Investing IS valuable and important to the economy (when people want to start up a business they need capital) but is it really worth giving these people special income tax treatment?
Oh boy, sorry, I really don't actually want to get into that conversation right now. Ahem.
Progressive taxes ... the idea that those who have less pay less in taxes because they need more of their income, and those who have more can afford to give more in taxes because they can provide for their own basic needs and then some. So supposedly there are people below the poverty level who pay no tax (or negative tax), and then there are people in varying tax brackets who pay the same percent in tax up to a certain level of income, then a higher percent of tax for the next level of income, then when you make a ton of money you're supposed to give up even MORE of that in taxes ... So the marginal returns you get as you make more money get smaller because more of it gets eaten up in taxes. Something like that. In theory. And if you are married and have to provide for your family (spouse, kids, etc) then you get to claim these exemptions and stuff so you get to keep more of your money. Because, let's face it, if you earn the same amount of money as another guy but you have 2 more kids, if you both pay the same amount in taxes, you're going to have less disposable income because you have to feed, clothe, and house your kids.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=HowFairTaxWorks
The FairTax works out being "progressive" because it looks at a whole household and estimates the amount of money they'll need to provide for the basics (ie. what's the poverty level for a given household size?) Then every household gets a "prebate" check from the government to cover their basic expenses. So if you spend money at the poverty level, your prebate check equals your sales tax. If you spend more than that, it's like you pay a little bit of "income tax" (spending/consumption tax) ... up to a limit of 23%. So if you're a millionaire and you spend a million bucks on new goods, the amount of sales tax you pay is gonna be WAAAAY over that little prebate you got and your effective tax rate will be 22.9999999%.
Your household is determined by the number of people who live in your house with valid social security numbers. THAT'S IT.
The nice thing about this is that it taxes everybody so it makes it hard for people to evade taxes. You know, illegals getting paid cash under the table don't pay income taxes. But here, if they don't have a valid social security number, not only do they NOT get a prebate, they also have to pay federal sales tax on the new stuff they buy! Booya! That would encourage people to gain citizenship, wouldn't it? This also solves one of the same-sex marriage problems. It doesn't discriminate according to marital status. It gets the government out of married, so homosexual couples can have the same tax benefits as heterosexual couples ... and, hey, polygamists too and people who just want to live together. Why not? It's just taxes.
Anyway. You might want to check it out.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FAQs
Chew on it for a while. It sounds totally weird at first, but it might just grow on you.
Gary Johnson 2012!
I can no longer deny that I am a libertarian.
(There will be a future post about some of my reservations about the fair tax ... but that would be too overwhelming in one post. This post is too long already.)
There's no income tax. There's no corporate income tax. There's no IRS. There's no April 15.
What there IS, is a 23% federal sales tax on consumption of new goods. That means, you go to the store and buy something, you pay 23% tax. You get a haircut, you pay 23% tax. You buy a new car (or a new house!), you pay 23% tax. You buy something from a consignment shop. No tax. You buy a used car. No tax. (Well, no federal sales tax.) But guess what? You get to take your WHOLE PAYCHECK HOME.
But our current tax system is "progressive," you say! I put "progressive" in quotes, because now that I think about it, the 15% investment income tax rate makes it so that people who make most of their money from investments (ie. those super-rich investors the 99% are complaining about) end up paying at a lower income tax rate than those who make their money doing physical work. And most people who have so much money to invest hire someone else to do the investing so it's not like they're doing much work to earn those dividends, right? Investing IS valuable and important to the economy (when people want to start up a business they need capital) but is it really worth giving these people special income tax treatment?
Oh boy, sorry, I really don't actually want to get into that conversation right now. Ahem.
Progressive taxes ... the idea that those who have less pay less in taxes because they need more of their income, and those who have more can afford to give more in taxes because they can provide for their own basic needs and then some. So supposedly there are people below the poverty level who pay no tax (or negative tax), and then there are people in varying tax brackets who pay the same percent in tax up to a certain level of income, then a higher percent of tax for the next level of income, then when you make a ton of money you're supposed to give up even MORE of that in taxes ... So the marginal returns you get as you make more money get smaller because more of it gets eaten up in taxes. Something like that. In theory. And if you are married and have to provide for your family (spouse, kids, etc) then you get to claim these exemptions and stuff so you get to keep more of your money. Because, let's face it, if you earn the same amount of money as another guy but you have 2 more kids, if you both pay the same amount in taxes, you're going to have less disposable income because you have to feed, clothe, and house your kids.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=HowFairTaxWorks
The FairTax works out being "progressive" because it looks at a whole household and estimates the amount of money they'll need to provide for the basics (ie. what's the poverty level for a given household size?) Then every household gets a "prebate" check from the government to cover their basic expenses. So if you spend money at the poverty level, your prebate check equals your sales tax. If you spend more than that, it's like you pay a little bit of "income tax" (spending/consumption tax) ... up to a limit of 23%. So if you're a millionaire and you spend a million bucks on new goods, the amount of sales tax you pay is gonna be WAAAAY over that little prebate you got and your effective tax rate will be 22.9999999%.
Your household is determined by the number of people who live in your house with valid social security numbers. THAT'S IT.
The nice thing about this is that it taxes everybody so it makes it hard for people to evade taxes. You know, illegals getting paid cash under the table don't pay income taxes. But here, if they don't have a valid social security number, not only do they NOT get a prebate, they also have to pay federal sales tax on the new stuff they buy! Booya! That would encourage people to gain citizenship, wouldn't it? This also solves one of the same-sex marriage problems. It doesn't discriminate according to marital status. It gets the government out of married, so homosexual couples can have the same tax benefits as heterosexual couples ... and, hey, polygamists too and people who just want to live together. Why not? It's just taxes.
Anyway. You might want to check it out.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FAQs
Chew on it for a while. It sounds totally weird at first, but it might just grow on you.
Gary Johnson 2012!
I can no longer deny that I am a libertarian.
(There will be a future post about some of my reservations about the fair tax ... but that would be too overwhelming in one post. This post is too long already.)
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Feeling hormonal >:( (probably from breastfeeding)
I want to complain for a few minutes.
I haven't been blogging lately because I'm too tired and don't have the brainpower to write something coherent. I haven't even written in my own personal journal. I'm exhausted. The baby keeps me up a lot at night, and I keep getting sick with colds. Blech! All I want to do is catch a nap.
Nursing hormones are not so much fun. Especially not in the summer. Did you know you can get hot flashes from nursing? I don't remember getting hot flashes when nursing Carmen! That's it; I'm having my next kid in October. I don't care if I spend the summer being pregnant. Maybe I'll change my mind if I spend a summer being pregnant. ;) But, dang it, Texas, why do you have to be so hot?! Heat rash is not fun.
I also discovered where the huge bruises on my thighs came from ... while I was lugging Mace's car seat up the two flights of stairs to get to our apartment. The car seat goes bonk, bonk, bonk on my leg on each step as I lug a car seat, diaper bag, and multiple bags of groceries up to our apartment. Ugh, and I wonder why I don't try to get out more?
Our lease is up September 30, so in a few weeks I can start looking for a house to rent! Mark wants to stay within the ward boundaries. I can't start looking yet because they won't let you turn in an application until 30 days before your desired move-in date. I don't want to pay double rent ... but rent and a half would be okay with me. It kind of gives me heartburn to think about the fact that we have to turn in a 60-day move-out notice, but can't give a 60-day move-IN notice! Augh, moving is such a pain!
BUT THIS APARTMENT IS SO SMALL AND CLAUSTROPHOBIC AND ON THE THIRD FLOOR AUGH I WANT OUT. How have I survived here for the past year?! Some day (soon!) I will be able to live in a house ... with a yard ... and possibly trees ... and Carmen can play outside while I am inside with the baby ... you can't exactly send your kid outside to play when you live in an apartment complex. The porch is not the same. Waaah. *melts into puddle of not-wanting-to-do-anythingness*
I bet it's just the hormones driving me crazy now. ;)
Mace, I love you, but I am so looking forward to when you stop eating every 3 hours. I hate how guilty the breastfeeding advocates make me feel when they talk about exclusive breastfeeding. I am so jealous of the other people in my Bradley class who DO do the whole feed-your-kid-formula-and-even-put-rice-cereal-in-their-bottle-so-they'll-sleep-longer thing. Oh my heck I wish I could get more than 4 hours of sleep at a time. But I can't get over that mental block of, "It's so selfish to feed your kid formula just so you can get some sleep."
But let's see ... do I want to be a breastfeeding HOMICIDAL MANIAC because I don't get enough sleep, or a major disappointment to the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics because I'm one of the 80-someodd-percent of non-exclusively breastfeeding moms?
It's a bit like saying, "Oh, man, we are SO DISAPPOINTED because so few people are on 100% whole-foods diets." Like, dang, I had a bowl of cereal and blew it.
I mean, like ... this New York breastfeeding thing really ticks me off. The whole Baby Friendly initiative thing ticks me off. Locking away formula and pacifiers? Seriously? Lecturing moms about bottle feeding and pacifier use? (Men, if you don't know what breastfeeding feels like, have someone pinch and twist your nipples then rub them with sandpaper then attach a vacuum to them. And do that for about 20 minutes at a time. When your nipples are bleeding, keep doing it for a while. Then imagine what it would feel like having someone lecture you about how if you don't let someone continue to sandpaper and vacuum-suck your twisted nipples, you will have all of these problems.)
And did you know that pacifier use can actually enhance breastfeeding? When your nipples are sore in those early days of breastfeeding, you really wish your baby would only use your boobs for food and not for comfort.
You know an easier way to get women to successfully breastfeed? DON'T SEND THEM HOME WITH FORMULA AND COUPONS FOR FORMULA. Problem solved. Send them home with 20 bucks. Then they can use that money to either buy formula or lactation tea. Freedom of choice, ain't it great?! Or if you're going to send them home with presents and not cash, give 'em a fruit basket (oh, wait, you're telling me hospitals don't send women home with free formula just 'cause they're nice???)
Also, next time I have a baby, I'm sneaking in my own pacifiers. When the nurse came in to lecture me on pacifier use and breastfeeding, I wanted to tell her to can it and just give me the d*mn pacifier. My boobs hurt and I'm not suddenly going to give my baby formula. And if I did, IT'S MY CHOICE.
I haven't been blogging lately because I'm too tired and don't have the brainpower to write something coherent. I haven't even written in my own personal journal. I'm exhausted. The baby keeps me up a lot at night, and I keep getting sick with colds. Blech! All I want to do is catch a nap.
Nursing hormones are not so much fun. Especially not in the summer. Did you know you can get hot flashes from nursing? I don't remember getting hot flashes when nursing Carmen! That's it; I'm having my next kid in October. I don't care if I spend the summer being pregnant. Maybe I'll change my mind if I spend a summer being pregnant. ;) But, dang it, Texas, why do you have to be so hot?! Heat rash is not fun.
I also discovered where the huge bruises on my thighs came from ... while I was lugging Mace's car seat up the two flights of stairs to get to our apartment. The car seat goes bonk, bonk, bonk on my leg on each step as I lug a car seat, diaper bag, and multiple bags of groceries up to our apartment. Ugh, and I wonder why I don't try to get out more?
Our lease is up September 30, so in a few weeks I can start looking for a house to rent! Mark wants to stay within the ward boundaries. I can't start looking yet because they won't let you turn in an application until 30 days before your desired move-in date. I don't want to pay double rent ... but rent and a half would be okay with me. It kind of gives me heartburn to think about the fact that we have to turn in a 60-day move-out notice, but can't give a 60-day move-IN notice! Augh, moving is such a pain!
BUT THIS APARTMENT IS SO SMALL AND CLAUSTROPHOBIC AND ON THE THIRD FLOOR AUGH I WANT OUT. How have I survived here for the past year?! Some day (soon!) I will be able to live in a house ... with a yard ... and possibly trees ... and Carmen can play outside while I am inside with the baby ... you can't exactly send your kid outside to play when you live in an apartment complex. The porch is not the same. Waaah. *melts into puddle of not-wanting-to-do-anythingness*
I bet it's just the hormones driving me crazy now. ;)
Mace, I love you, but I am so looking forward to when you stop eating every 3 hours. I hate how guilty the breastfeeding advocates make me feel when they talk about exclusive breastfeeding. I am so jealous of the other people in my Bradley class who DO do the whole feed-your-kid-formula-and-even-put-rice-cereal-in-their-bottle-so-they'll-sleep-longer thing. Oh my heck I wish I could get more than 4 hours of sleep at a time. But I can't get over that mental block of, "It's so selfish to feed your kid formula just so you can get some sleep."
But let's see ... do I want to be a breastfeeding HOMICIDAL MANIAC because I don't get enough sleep, or a major disappointment to the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics because I'm one of the 80-someodd-percent of non-exclusively breastfeeding moms?
It's a bit like saying, "Oh, man, we are SO DISAPPOINTED because so few people are on 100% whole-foods diets." Like, dang, I had a bowl of cereal and blew it.
I mean, like ... this New York breastfeeding thing really ticks me off. The whole Baby Friendly initiative thing ticks me off. Locking away formula and pacifiers? Seriously? Lecturing moms about bottle feeding and pacifier use? (Men, if you don't know what breastfeeding feels like, have someone pinch and twist your nipples then rub them with sandpaper then attach a vacuum to them. And do that for about 20 minutes at a time. When your nipples are bleeding, keep doing it for a while. Then imagine what it would feel like having someone lecture you about how if you don't let someone continue to sandpaper and vacuum-suck your twisted nipples, you will have all of these problems.)
And did you know that pacifier use can actually enhance breastfeeding? When your nipples are sore in those early days of breastfeeding, you really wish your baby would only use your boobs for food and not for comfort.
You know an easier way to get women to successfully breastfeed? DON'T SEND THEM HOME WITH FORMULA AND COUPONS FOR FORMULA. Problem solved. Send them home with 20 bucks. Then they can use that money to either buy formula or lactation tea. Freedom of choice, ain't it great?! Or if you're going to send them home with presents and not cash, give 'em a fruit basket (oh, wait, you're telling me hospitals don't send women home with free formula just 'cause they're nice???)
Also, next time I have a baby, I'm sneaking in my own pacifiers. When the nurse came in to lecture me on pacifier use and breastfeeding, I wanted to tell her to can it and just give me the d*mn pacifier. My boobs hurt and I'm not suddenly going to give my baby formula. And if I did, IT'S MY CHOICE.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Bread!!!
We have a bread machine at home, and we went through this awesome phase where we made our own bread and pizza dough. We still make our own pizza dough, but we gave up on baking bread.
Why?
The loaves are too tall, yet short (length-wise). You can't make a sandwich and fit it in a sandwich bag. We tried cutting the pieces of bread in half and stuff, but it just looks lame and is kind of obnoxious and the bread is all crumbly and ... frankly, I felt too lazy to figure out how to work it. Maybe I could just put the bread machine on a "dough" setting, then bake the bread in the oven in a longer pan, so the loaves could be shaped a bit more like what you get at the grocery store.
When we lived in American Fork, there was a Sarah Lee bakery outlet down the street (you can buy older loaves of bread at a huuuuge discount) and it didn't seem worth it to me to bake my own bread when it was still really cheap to buy it at the outlet.
Then there's also Costco, where you can get tasty bread cheaper than the grocery store. And we weren't students any more, so I didn't feel the need to scrimp on bread.
Then one day, something happened. My brother introduced me to Dave's Amazing Bread (or something along those lines) at Costco. It was like this super-heavy loaf of bread full of nuts and seeds and what have you and IT TASTED AMAZING. When I wanted to feel really special, I would go out and buy that bread and eat a sandwich and feel like I was in heaven. Then we moved to Austin and they didn't sell Dave's bread (or pepperoni. It was a sad day in the Dewey household.)
Anyway, I had to find a *new* kind of bread to eat. I had been watching my food documentaries and whatnot and decided I wasn't going to buy white bread any more (it's a start.) I bought some Orowheat, then decided that Costco's whole grain wheat bread was good enough. One day, I noticed this organic-natural-sprouted-wheat-something bread and decided to try it. It was soft and tasty and the best bread I've ever eaten (as far as non-artisan bakery-type bread goes, anyway). But it was $7 for two loaves, and the loaves weren't as big as the Kirkland (Costco) brand bread, so I didn't buy it very often.
In my church, I'm an "Activity Days Leader". That means that twice a month, I do an activity with the 10- and 11-year-old girls in our ward (congregation.) Last month, a woman in our ward did a bread baking activity with our girls at her house. It was fun, and I made pizza rolls with the dough I brought home. We used regular flour and ground our own flour with her wheat grinder and she even let me use some of her flax seed meal ... and it just seemed so healthy. And we had fun kneading our bread and letting it rise. (Thanks, Katharine, you'll probably never read this but I love you.)
After thinking about all of the weird preservatives and additives in today's food, I decided to compare the ingredient labels of the bread I buy and the bread I like. The $3.50/loaf bread had ingredients like, "Flour, wheat flour, sunflower seeds, oil." and I thought YES THAT IS WHAT BREAD SHOULD BE MADE FROM. Then I pulled out my Costco bread and had my heart ripped in pieces. Luckily, all of the difficult-to-identify ingredients were after a "contains less than 2% of the following..." label. Where would I even find "cultured corn syrup solids" if I wanted to put it into my bread?
I felt torn. I want to be frugal, I want to be healthy, I felt like I was being pretty healthy buying whole grain bread from Costco. None of the regular grocery store bread looked appetizing, anyway, and it wasn't any cheaper. But am I seriously going to be one of those people who buys organic $3.50-a-loaf bread? Next thing I know I'm going to be buying $8 watermelons at Whole Foods! So, what, am I frugal or cheap or am I turning into some kind of organics-obsessed hippy? (By the way, my father-in-law's granola is very tasty.)
Maybe I should be baking my own bread again. Maybe I should suck it up and put forth the extra effort to bake bread in a pan shaped the way I want it (because it's so hard to press the "dough" button on the bread machine, then transfer it to a different bread pan and bake it in the oven.) But, oh, it's going to be so hard to perfect a recipe I like.
At any rate, I went to Sprouts (the equivalent of Utah's Sunflower Markets ... now they're owned by the same company!) and bought a bunch of bags of seeds and nuts from the bulk section (why don't more grocery stores have bulk sections? We need Winco in Texas!!) and a bag of flax seed meal. Some day, when I feel brave, I am going to attempt to make my own version of that natural organic whole grain bread. I might let you know how it goes. ;)
There's my inner monologue for the day.
Why?
The loaves are too tall, yet short (length-wise). You can't make a sandwich and fit it in a sandwich bag. We tried cutting the pieces of bread in half and stuff, but it just looks lame and is kind of obnoxious and the bread is all crumbly and ... frankly, I felt too lazy to figure out how to work it. Maybe I could just put the bread machine on a "dough" setting, then bake the bread in the oven in a longer pan, so the loaves could be shaped a bit more like what you get at the grocery store.
When we lived in American Fork, there was a Sarah Lee bakery outlet down the street (you can buy older loaves of bread at a huuuuge discount) and it didn't seem worth it to me to bake my own bread when it was still really cheap to buy it at the outlet.
Then there's also Costco, where you can get tasty bread cheaper than the grocery store. And we weren't students any more, so I didn't feel the need to scrimp on bread.
Then one day, something happened. My brother introduced me to Dave's Amazing Bread (or something along those lines) at Costco. It was like this super-heavy loaf of bread full of nuts and seeds and what have you and IT TASTED AMAZING. When I wanted to feel really special, I would go out and buy that bread and eat a sandwich and feel like I was in heaven. Then we moved to Austin and they didn't sell Dave's bread (or pepperoni. It was a sad day in the Dewey household.)
Anyway, I had to find a *new* kind of bread to eat. I had been watching my food documentaries and whatnot and decided I wasn't going to buy white bread any more (it's a start.) I bought some Orowheat, then decided that Costco's whole grain wheat bread was good enough. One day, I noticed this organic-natural-sprouted-wheat-something bread and decided to try it. It was soft and tasty and the best bread I've ever eaten (as far as non-artisan bakery-type bread goes, anyway). But it was $7 for two loaves, and the loaves weren't as big as the Kirkland (Costco) brand bread, so I didn't buy it very often.
In my church, I'm an "Activity Days Leader". That means that twice a month, I do an activity with the 10- and 11-year-old girls in our ward (congregation.) Last month, a woman in our ward did a bread baking activity with our girls at her house. It was fun, and I made pizza rolls with the dough I brought home. We used regular flour and ground our own flour with her wheat grinder and she even let me use some of her flax seed meal ... and it just seemed so healthy. And we had fun kneading our bread and letting it rise. (Thanks, Katharine, you'll probably never read this but I love you.)
After thinking about all of the weird preservatives and additives in today's food, I decided to compare the ingredient labels of the bread I buy and the bread I like. The $3.50/loaf bread had ingredients like, "Flour, wheat flour, sunflower seeds, oil." and I thought YES THAT IS WHAT BREAD SHOULD BE MADE FROM. Then I pulled out my Costco bread and had my heart ripped in pieces. Luckily, all of the difficult-to-identify ingredients were after a "contains less than 2% of the following..." label. Where would I even find "cultured corn syrup solids" if I wanted to put it into my bread?
I felt torn. I want to be frugal, I want to be healthy, I felt like I was being pretty healthy buying whole grain bread from Costco. None of the regular grocery store bread looked appetizing, anyway, and it wasn't any cheaper. But am I seriously going to be one of those people who buys organic $3.50-a-loaf bread? Next thing I know I'm going to be buying $8 watermelons at Whole Foods! So, what, am I frugal or cheap or am I turning into some kind of organics-obsessed hippy? (By the way, my father-in-law's granola is very tasty.)
Maybe I should be baking my own bread again. Maybe I should suck it up and put forth the extra effort to bake bread in a pan shaped the way I want it (because it's so hard to press the "dough" button on the bread machine, then transfer it to a different bread pan and bake it in the oven.) But, oh, it's going to be so hard to perfect a recipe I like.
At any rate, I went to Sprouts (the equivalent of Utah's Sunflower Markets ... now they're owned by the same company!) and bought a bunch of bags of seeds and nuts from the bulk section (why don't more grocery stores have bulk sections? We need Winco in Texas!!) and a bag of flax seed meal. Some day, when I feel brave, I am going to attempt to make my own version of that natural organic whole grain bread. I might let you know how it goes. ;)
There's my inner monologue for the day.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Food Entry #5: Weird stuff about dairy products
I can accept that yogurt is probably going to contain high fructose corn syrup. I don't eat enough yogurt to care. Yet. ;)
But my friend Jeannie told me about all the weird stuff they do to milk. I'm not talking about the hormones, I'm talking about the stuff they do to process your milk and make it whole, 2%, 1%, or skim. Whole milk is just homogenized milk from the cow. With 2%, they take out some of the cream. But when you get to 1% or skim milk, they do a whole bunch of weird processing crap to the milk and you end up with something that is almost a Frankenfood. You might be able to Google it?
Sure, skim milk is fat free, but honestly, is the fat in your milk the devil? the culprit of obesity? I doubt it. Kids need fat in their diets to grow their brains, and things like fat and protein keep us sated. So I will keep eating my avocados because I believe that over time they will keep me more full than fat-free crackers. When I eat fat-free stuff I get hungry and want to eat more of it.
Anyway, apparently when they make skim/1% milk, they have to add stuff to the milk to make it whiter. That sounds a lot like sawdust in my food to me. I can't quite bring myself to drink a lot of whole milk because I've been drinking a LOT of milk lately and don't feel comfortable drinking that much fat personally, but I've switched from skim to 2%. Maybe that's why I drink so much more milk now than I used to - it actually tastes good!!! Skim milk tastes like cardboard!
Last November, I was shopping for something like sour cream at the grocery store. Since I had made my discoveries about peanut butter and ketchup, I decided to check the ingredient labels for the national and store brands. I don't even REMEMBER what was on the ingredient list for the store brand sour cream, but it was like twice as long as the more expensive natural brand, so I ponied up the extra 20 cents or whatever to buy the sour cream that had the ingredients "cream" and "enzymes" and not a bunch of other things I think they labeled "fillers" or "stabilizers" or something.
Part of me wonders if I can even trust ingredient labels anymore. Wasn't there a time where the HFCS producers wanted their product labeled just "sugar" because there's such a huge stigma associated with the name "high fructose corn syrup"? Well, yes, because high-fructose corn syrup is not C6H12O6. In fact, I'm not even sure "sugar" is still essentially C6H12O6. I can only hope. O.o Does anyone know?
Long story short? Check the ingredient labels again. When I buy Sugar Blasted Cocoa Bombs from the grocery store, I know what I'm getting. I know the chocolate syrup I buy for Carmen contains HFCS. But I was surprised when I found it in most of the ketchup at the store, and most of the applesauce, and ... and ... and. I was also surprised to see a long ingredient list for one brand of sour cream and not another. So get yourself informed and be mindful of what you're buying and eating, because all brands of types of food products are not necessarily similar. Sometimes they are food-like substances instead of food, even when you're not looking at something that is obviously processed.
One last thing: Use butter, not margarine, even though margarine is so cheap and tempting. ;)
But my friend Jeannie told me about all the weird stuff they do to milk. I'm not talking about the hormones, I'm talking about the stuff they do to process your milk and make it whole, 2%, 1%, or skim. Whole milk is just homogenized milk from the cow. With 2%, they take out some of the cream. But when you get to 1% or skim milk, they do a whole bunch of weird processing crap to the milk and you end up with something that is almost a Frankenfood. You might be able to Google it?
Sure, skim milk is fat free, but honestly, is the fat in your milk the devil? the culprit of obesity? I doubt it. Kids need fat in their diets to grow their brains, and things like fat and protein keep us sated. So I will keep eating my avocados because I believe that over time they will keep me more full than fat-free crackers. When I eat fat-free stuff I get hungry and want to eat more of it.
Anyway, apparently when they make skim/1% milk, they have to add stuff to the milk to make it whiter. That sounds a lot like sawdust in my food to me. I can't quite bring myself to drink a lot of whole milk because I've been drinking a LOT of milk lately and don't feel comfortable drinking that much fat personally, but I've switched from skim to 2%. Maybe that's why I drink so much more milk now than I used to - it actually tastes good!!! Skim milk tastes like cardboard!
Last November, I was shopping for something like sour cream at the grocery store. Since I had made my discoveries about peanut butter and ketchup, I decided to check the ingredient labels for the national and store brands. I don't even REMEMBER what was on the ingredient list for the store brand sour cream, but it was like twice as long as the more expensive natural brand, so I ponied up the extra 20 cents or whatever to buy the sour cream that had the ingredients "cream" and "enzymes" and not a bunch of other things I think they labeled "fillers" or "stabilizers" or something.
Part of me wonders if I can even trust ingredient labels anymore. Wasn't there a time where the HFCS producers wanted their product labeled just "sugar" because there's such a huge stigma associated with the name "high fructose corn syrup"? Well, yes, because high-fructose corn syrup is not C6H12O6. In fact, I'm not even sure "sugar" is still essentially C6H12O6. I can only hope. O.o Does anyone know?
Long story short? Check the ingredient labels again. When I buy Sugar Blasted Cocoa Bombs from the grocery store, I know what I'm getting. I know the chocolate syrup I buy for Carmen contains HFCS. But I was surprised when I found it in most of the ketchup at the store, and most of the applesauce, and ... and ... and. I was also surprised to see a long ingredient list for one brand of sour cream and not another. So get yourself informed and be mindful of what you're buying and eating, because all brands of types of food products are not necessarily similar. Sometimes they are food-like substances instead of food, even when you're not looking at something that is obviously processed.
One last thing: Use butter, not margarine, even though margarine is so cheap and tempting. ;)
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Food entry #4: Looking at more ingredients
Back to the original topic.
It's not just peanut butter that's weird. I can only find one brand of ketchup that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. Maybe I should call these Frankeningredients, if I've got Frankenfoods. Did you know they didn't introduce HFCS into foods until the 90's? And when did the obesity epidemic start? Could that correlation possibly mean anything ...? I don't know, but I have a really hard time believing most of the population of the United States suddenly became gluttons and lost control of their appetites. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the foods we're eating aren't the same foods we were eating as recently as the 80's. Now we've got wussy tomatoes and laboratory-produced sugar and oils. Oh joy, I know this can only end well!
A friend recommended the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I bet this book will talk about a lot of the issues I'm kind of skimming over. This is part of how she described it: This new one is about nutritional science and how it has driven our food choices for decades and brought us to the point where the grocery stores are full of "food like substances" instead of real food, and when we use vitamin and mineral supplements to get what we need instead of food. Remember when the nutritionalists told us to eat oat bran, then not so much oat bran, then no carbs, then more carbs, then no meat, then more meat, then wheat, then no wheat, blah, blah blah. The whole history of that is in this book, told in a fascinating way. I've got it on hold at the library, and I. Can't. Wait.
By the way, the ketchup brand is Hunt's. The grocery store still hasn't figured out how to make non-HFCS ketchup.
Edit: I had to buy more ketchup earlier this week, and it looks like the grocery store has started carrying plain ol' ketchup, too!! Woohoo, way to respond to consumer demand!!
On Saturday, Mark and I decided we wanted to buy some applesauce to get more fruit in our diets. Mark is allergic to a TON of fruits (we think it's like all pitted fruits with arsenic in the seeds ... apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, plums, apricots, etc. but not strawberries, other berries, citrus, bananas, etc.) but not when they're cooked or canned (? why are canned peaches, dried cherries, and apple pies okay?) so I figured applesauce is a good fruity thing we can all eat. We were trying to decide between brands of applesauce when we thought, hey, we should look at the ingredient labels! And guess what? HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. EVERYWHERE. Except in the "no sugar added" applesauce, which is .5 cents more per ounce, but only contains apples, water, and ascorbic acid. Luckily the grocery store HAS figured out how to make applesauce out of apples, so we don't have to pay a brand-name premium for it.
Another thing you wouldn't expect to contain HFCS? Soy Sauce. I think Kikkoman's is the only brand we know of that doesn't contain it. Costco carries Kikkoman soy sauce. You can make stir-fry every day! And teriyaki sauce is just made of soy sauce and other ingredients. Save money and make your own teriyaki sauce.
Did you know that just about every brand of ranch dressing contains MSG? Even the ranch spice packets have MSG in them. I think Newman's Own ranch dressing doesn't contain MSG, but I have a hard time finding it at the grocery store and I think it's kind of gross. So I haven't had ranch dressing in a long time (good for dipping carrots and celery ... it's been a while since I've had those plain, too.) I've switched to vinaigrette dressings, because salad dressing (or dip) is the ONLY way I will eat lettuce. And celery. And carrots. I used to get depressed reading stuff online about how lots of salad dressing ruins the low-calorie thing about vegetables. Then I realized, you know what? Who cares about how may calories are in the salad dressing? IT'S GOT YOU EATING VEGETABLES. Because, you know, if I'm not eating a salad, I'm going to be eating Oreos. True story.
It's not just peanut butter that's weird. I can only find one brand of ketchup that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. Maybe I should call these Frankeningredients, if I've got Frankenfoods. Did you know they didn't introduce HFCS into foods until the 90's? And when did the obesity epidemic start? Could that correlation possibly mean anything ...? I don't know, but I have a really hard time believing most of the population of the United States suddenly became gluttons and lost control of their appetites. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the foods we're eating aren't the same foods we were eating as recently as the 80's. Now we've got wussy tomatoes and laboratory-produced sugar and oils. Oh joy, I know this can only end well!
A friend recommended the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I bet this book will talk about a lot of the issues I'm kind of skimming over. This is part of how she described it: This new one is about nutritional science and how it has driven our food choices for decades and brought us to the point where the grocery stores are full of "food like substances" instead of real food, and when we use vitamin and mineral supplements to get what we need instead of food. Remember when the nutritionalists told us to eat oat bran, then not so much oat bran, then no carbs, then more carbs, then no meat, then more meat, then wheat, then no wheat, blah, blah blah. The whole history of that is in this book, told in a fascinating way. I've got it on hold at the library, and I. Can't. Wait.
By the way, the ketchup brand is Hunt's. The grocery store still hasn't figured out how to make non-HFCS ketchup.
Edit: I had to buy more ketchup earlier this week, and it looks like the grocery store has started carrying plain ol' ketchup, too!! Woohoo, way to respond to consumer demand!!
On Saturday, Mark and I decided we wanted to buy some applesauce to get more fruit in our diets. Mark is allergic to a TON of fruits (we think it's like all pitted fruits with arsenic in the seeds ... apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, plums, apricots, etc. but not strawberries, other berries, citrus, bananas, etc.) but not when they're cooked or canned (? why are canned peaches, dried cherries, and apple pies okay?) so I figured applesauce is a good fruity thing we can all eat. We were trying to decide between brands of applesauce when we thought, hey, we should look at the ingredient labels! And guess what? HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. EVERYWHERE. Except in the "no sugar added" applesauce, which is .5 cents more per ounce, but only contains apples, water, and ascorbic acid. Luckily the grocery store HAS figured out how to make applesauce out of apples, so we don't have to pay a brand-name premium for it.
Another thing you wouldn't expect to contain HFCS? Soy Sauce. I think Kikkoman's is the only brand we know of that doesn't contain it. Costco carries Kikkoman soy sauce. You can make stir-fry every day! And teriyaki sauce is just made of soy sauce and other ingredients. Save money and make your own teriyaki sauce.
Did you know that just about every brand of ranch dressing contains MSG? Even the ranch spice packets have MSG in them. I think Newman's Own ranch dressing doesn't contain MSG, but I have a hard time finding it at the grocery store and I think it's kind of gross. So I haven't had ranch dressing in a long time (good for dipping carrots and celery ... it's been a while since I've had those plain, too.) I've switched to vinaigrette dressings, because salad dressing (or dip) is the ONLY way I will eat lettuce. And celery. And carrots. I used to get depressed reading stuff online about how lots of salad dressing ruins the low-calorie thing about vegetables. Then I realized, you know what? Who cares about how may calories are in the salad dressing? IT'S GOT YOU EATING VEGETABLES. Because, you know, if I'm not eating a salad, I'm going to be eating Oreos. True story.
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