Author Archives: GAHCindy

Can You Stay at Home Too Much?

Posted on by

A friend on social media asked how often she should be getting her children out of the house, and I remembered this post from my younger days, when I had things all figured out. My answer is simply this: You do not have to be out all the time to be busy. You do not have to be outside the home to be productive and engaged and happy. In fact, being outside of the home for play and education too often can really hamper your family’s peace. Small children are happiest in a quiet home with family for 90% of their waking hours.

Having lived eleven more years in the same way, and with a couple of older teens to show for it now, I can affirm the truth that your children will be well-adjusted and socially normal people (unlike public schooled kids, alas) on a diet of just one or two contacts a week with non-family members, and sometimes a whole lot less than that. We didn’t really even have that many playdates. Social contacts have been natural relationships– family, neighbors, church friends, etc.–for the most part, not groups that we cobbled together out of fear of not having enough “socialization”.

Staying Home (Originally posted October 11, 2011)

I mentioned once in a different post that my first reason for homeschooling, chronologically speaking, was a desire to avoid the typical American “real life is everywhere but home” attitude. A lifestyle different from the one I grew up with just sounded good to me, so I did it.

A commenter, as people on the internet frequently do, thought that from that single post she had learned everything she needed to know about me, and accused me of “projecting” my introversion (some people seem to think introversion is a mental illness instead of a personality trait) on my kids instead of letting them live real lives like other kids do. You know, full, active lives spent behind desks, on school buses, and standing in line.

The problem with blogging is that a single post is all some people ever read. I have many good reasons for homeschooling my kids, but even if that were my only reason, it would be good enough. You see, I have a right to live my life the best way I know how, and to provide for my children whatever lifestyle I think is best. I think it’s best if we live quieter lives at a less hectic pace than most Americans seem comfortable with. If anyone doesn’t like that, then that person is free to live some other way!
While I don’t think my preferences are necessarily the best for everybody, they are wonderful for my family–a realization that asserts itself anew every time I spend more than a few days in a row doing something “out”. We’ve been on the go for the last week, without a single day just being at home, and my life has gotten away from me! My schedule is still doing its job, getting us back on track as soon as we get home, but I’m so tired I could cry. Not just tired, though. Tired, I can deal with.

It’s the lack of time for thought that’s killing me.

I used to wonder why people don’t seem to apply much thought to, well, anything that they do, really. Well, I’ve figured it out. The average American lifestyle (and homeschoolers, this goes for a lot of us, too) leaves absolutely no time for reflection. We’re busy, and we like it that way. Busyness means never having to think uncomfortable thoughts. It means scurrying past the little, but important things to do the urgent, less important things. Even if we accidentally end up with some time on our hands somehow, there’s always the mindless entertainment offered by the idiot box to help us in our quest to avoid introspection.

One of the frequent defenses I hear from homeschooling moms and stay-at-home moms is “We don’t stay home at all! We go everywhere, all the time!” May I gently suggest that we concede too much in giving such an answer to those who think we’re not “working” or “socializing” enough? As if there were something wrong with staying home all day!

Having spent the last several days with an outside-the-home obligation at least once every day, I’m more convinced than ever that the typical American lifestyle is extremely unhealthy in its pace. There’s no need for me to join in the madness.
Repeat after me, homeschoolers:

Home is a good place to be, and I’m not missing anything if I stay there four or five days a week. 

Trust an old mama on this, ok?

That’s Some Lousy Parenting, Right There

Posted on by

And I’m not even talking about the kale. 

Watch this:

Let’s get the obvious point out of the way first: Children should not be made to consume large quantities of raw kale. There’s nothing in that “superfood” that is actually going to benefit their bodies, and harm can be done. We can argue about that some other time, though, veggie lovers, because what I’m really appalled by is the “manifestation of goals” this mother engages in, also known as “bribery”.

Now, tell me this, Mom: When your kids grow up and drink a raw kale smoothie, will that then “manifest” as a reward at Target without your intervention? I’m going to insert here an old post I wrote way back in November of 2010, because everything old is new again eventually:

Taking my six year-old to Pizza Hut last night to collect his very first–and very last—Book-It reward for reading, I asked him if he was looking forward to reading his next book.

“Why would I want to do that?” was his reply.

With those words, uttered in complete innocence, the fine mood I’d been in came crashing down to the ground. Suddenly, I was angry. Great. I have de-motivated my son instead of motivating him. Since I hadn’t told him I have 6 vouchers for free pizza, he thought this was all there was. So why try?

I relieved my frustration by envisioning my wildly-chuckling self ripping the vouchers to shreds and burning them. I may have even thought up an incantation to recite while lighting up that offensive booklet. Then I got my son the pizza I’d promised him, came home, and completely forgot to rip those suckers up. Oh, well. They can rot, for all I care. They’ve done me no good whatsoever. Before, I had a boy who read books just to be reading. Now I have a boy who thinks reading is such a miserable chore that you have to bribe him to do it.

Parenting 101: Our kids’ attitudes are formed by our expectations. In implementing this reward system I signaled to my son that reading is something disagreeable, and not worth doing for its own sake. Here’s the thing, though: I knew that. I do not reward my children for doing what they ought to be doing anyway. I’ve never used candy or stickers to bribe my kids during potty-training or for anything else I want them to learn. I do give gifts to celebrate milestones sometimes,  but not as rewards the child is working toward. For us the finished product is the prize. So what happened to those high-falutin’ ideals this time?

Instead of sticking to my usual methods, when I learned about the Book-It program for homeschoolers, I went for the freebie. Free is good, right? Try as I may, I can not resist a freebie. I just wanted to get some of that sweet pizza action for my kid.

I hearkened back to my memories of the program when I was in school. I loved to read, so the pizza was just a neat thing to me, a poor kid who didn’t get restaurant food very often. I do remember feeling like my teachers were being rather patronizing, thinking I’d never read if they didn’t trick me into it. I wasn’t deterred from reading after the program ended because I didn’t care very much what the pizza was for. If they’d offered rewards for something I hated doing, like public speaking, I wouldn’t have been getting that pie. The fact that I can remember feeling that way–slightly embarrassed to even be accepting the reward–really ought to have deterred me from “encouraging” my own kids this way. Ah, but everybody says it works!

In public schools, kids expect their teachers to be condescending, handing out a certificate every time a student remembers to cover his mouth when he sneezes. Our system pretty much demands it, lest some slow child be left behind, or worse, feel inferior. The children recover from those slights and do what they’re going to do anyway, incentives or no incentives. A good learner will learn. A poor learner won’t, no matter how high the cheesy, saucy stakes.

Kids do not expect that kind of horse-trading from their parents, however. At least, mine don’t. I don’t work that way, and they know it, so it must have thrown my son for quite a loop when I explained this program to him. He must have gotten the idea that that reading isn’t to be done for its own sake. Now I’m going to have to undo my bad work.
Hopefully, the memory of this whole thing will fade and

the child will rediscover the joy of reading just because he can.

 

I have no doubt he will, since I’m just going to expect it and he’s just going to have to. I’m trying not to kick myself too hard for this ridiculous mistake. It’s really just a hiccup for us…

So why would those kids drink the kale in the future? (Perhaps we should be relieved to think that they probably won’t.) Why would my son read a book?  When he reads a book, that does not “manifest” as a pizza anymore. If I didn’t like reading, I either wouldn’t read now, or if I did read simply because I was taught that I should, would I then hie me to the kitchen for a brownie to reward myself? Probably. This goes for allowances, too. Is your allowance based on whether children get their daily chores finished? The chores that they should be doing because the reward is a clean home and a happy family?

Are they learning that working around the home, for your family, is a cash transaction?

What are you really teaching your children when you tie an unrelated reward to the action?  Let’s pretend for a moment that drinking kale (God help us) actually is a healthy thing to do. Only if the children’s goal was “get healthy” is that “manifestation” going to happen for them outside of your parental intervention. What that child has learned is that if he does something unpleasant, he now deserves something pleasant that is completely unrelated to the unpleasant thing.

You’re setting up an addictive and self-destructive cycle in your child! Every “good” thing he does is now an excuse for self-indulgence. 

Do you know somebody who has a piece of cake or a glass of alcohol (or more) at the end of a hard day (or hour) because he “deserves” it? If so, you’re looking at someone who never learned to do the Thing for the sake of the Thing itself. It’s not a bad thing to have a piece of cake or a glass of wine, provided that you’re healthy enough to take the temporary hit to your biological state, but it is a very bad thing if the only reason you stayed on your job after the boss yelled at you was so you could justify your indulgence afterwards.

Mom, if kale is good for him, then he should be drinking these hideous smoothies because the health effects are manifest. If he’s not far-sighted and self-controlled enough to do that yet, you simply expect him to drink it, and model that behavior for him, until he’s old enough to make that decision for himself. Good luck with that, though. Kale is so far from healthful that small children instinctively avoid it. But if the health effects are real, he will see them, first in you, and then in himself. That is the true manifestation of the true goal.

I’m sure that none of my readers would ever do this. You are obviously of a discerning mind, or you wouldn’t be here, right? But I have fallen into that trap, lacking discernment myself at times. Any parent who is desperate to get a struggling child onto the straight and narrow has at least been tempted to use these tactics. Don’t fall for it, moms and dads. As you can see from my own experience, it is counterproductive in the long run.

 

Testimony, Replayed

Posted on by

A social media friend posted this today:And I agree. Depression, while it involves chemicals being all out of whack, is not caused by the chemicals being all out of whack. Western medicine does in regards to mental perturbances exactly as it does in physical ones: it blames the illness on the body/mind itself instead of finding the root cause, then gives it a pill to “correct” the body’s perfectly reasonable reaction to that root cause. The root cause is either spiritual or environmental, or both.

Anyway, this post reminded me of an old post I’d written on GAH 1.0, and since I don’t have a lot of time to post today, I thought I’d copy and paste that in here. There’s a lot more I can say, and will, after the chicken run is repaired and the drainage ditch out back is re-dug. (Anybody want to help me learn to drive a little backhoe so I don’t have to use a shovel? Is that what those things are called?)

Anyway, here you go. This post was originally published May 23, 2011:

Testimony, Delayed

Yesterday, on my way out the door of the last gas station on earth that doesn’t have pay-at-the-pump equipment, I walked past a young woman in a pretty orange-flowered dress. I’m very distractible, so the colors caught my eye—so much so that I didn’t see the face of the woman wearing the dress. My mother later informed me that if I had lifted my eyes a few inches further, I’d have beheld the face of a cousin of mine, who was accompanied by her sister and mother. I was disappointed to have missed a chance to speak to them. Despite my social anxiety, I really am a people person. I love to see and speak to absolutely everybody once I get past the initial “Oh, God, please make the ground open up and swallow me before I make a fool of myself” part of social encounters.

It occurred to me later that, if they saw me, they must certainly have recognized my face (and thought me all kinds of stuck up, but honest, I’m just that absent-minded),  but my heart and mind would be utterly foreign to them…and so would my faith, my lifestyle, and this blog. Especially this blog.

I haven’t had occasion to speak to these particular relatives of mine in about 8 years, several of which were spent in a sort of spiritual convalescence where I didn’t speak to or see practically anybody besides my immediate family. Few people would understand it, probably, but I was a very weak person, and God had to put me in a very lonely place for a long time so that I could learn to hear His voice over the voices of those around me. In those years, I changed so much that I can barely comprehend it myself. I hesitate to even try to explain such a transformation. Words can’t do it justice.

If this blog didn’t have my name and picture plastered all over it, my aunt and her daughters would never in a million years guess who was writing it (in the event they found themselves reading blogs by homeschooling social media addicts, which seems unlikely). (Editor’s note, 7/8/22: This aunt has now received Christ and transformed amazingly herself!)

And you, my friends, would never guess what I was like before, given the content of my blog. I haven’t given you very many clues about my past. I have hinted in previous posts that I made a lot of mistakes, but I have mostly left my personal history out of things. This is partly because I prefer to focus on ideas rather than myself when I write, and it is partly because I don’t spend very much time thinking about a past that has been gloriously defeated.

I have to admit, though, that my reticence is also in part because I am a coward. My past could easily be used against me, and I’m exposing the softest part of my very soft underbelly in writing about it. But my weakness is His strength.

If someone from my past were to read this blog, the word “hypocrite” might easily pass their lips, and not entirely unjustly, because there is barely a word here that suggests the kind of human refuse they knew me to be. Who, by reading this blog, would ever guess that this writer, who believes so strongly in the sanctity of marriage, has been divorced? Or that this mother of four (and, God willing, more to come) was once barren? Or that this apparently sane person more than once spent several weeks in locked-down psychiatric care, unable to form a coherent thought due to mental and spiritual illness?

I don’t like to brag, but I was as thorough an example of human fallenness and brokenness as you’re ever likely to come across. When I screw up, I do it completely. I have no sense of self-preservation at all. A crude flowchart of my adult life, starting at age 16 (believe me, I could write a book, but it wouldn’t be edifying at this point) goes like this:

depression—>drugs—>confused teenage love affair—>suicide attempt—>depression—>promiscuity—>marriage—>adultery—>alcohol—>divorce—>mental illness—>drugs—>depression—>suicide attempt—>psychiatric drugs—>remarriage—>depression—>suicide attempt—>drugs—>prophecy (which I will tell you about sometime!)—>depression—>drugs—>Christ—>recovery—>motherhood—>depression—>drugs—>recovery—>victory—>?

You’ll notice that even after Christ turned my life around and confirmed my faith with the gift of a son, I slipped up and had yet another bout of depression and drug use. I wish my story included a nice clean break between past and present, but redemption is as much a process as it is a crisis point of salvation. Some of us start out from a weaker place than others. God never left me through my struggles, and He brought me out the other side victorious!

There is nothing hypocritical in my keeping silence about these things. But there is such a huge disconnect between my present and past that anyone who used to know me might read my words and wonder why I’m hiding so much. Rest assured, I’m not intentionally hiding anything, nor am I ashamed anymore, though I will always regret all the harm I’ve done. I just haven’t gotten to writing about that stuff yet. It’s not as easy to write about as, say, feminism.

I knew I’d have to explain these things eventually, of course, and I’ve sat down to write it out many times. My chance almost-encounter at the gas station opened up a flood of memories for me and made the writing of this confessional post seem a little less scary. If I had seen the faces of the people who were right in front of me (something I apparently need to work on),  I might have had opportunity to tell them just how much God is able to do for even the most pathetic loser.

If it were my story, it wouldn’t be worth telling, but it’s God’s story. He deserves the praise for it. I hope the next time I pass by a person who knew me back then, I won’t be so blind to the opportunity to introduce them to the God of the here-and-now.

Isn’t It Funny?

Posted on by

How in the midst of an energy crisis, “scientists” can still find enough energy to crank up their hadron collider/demon-summoner?

They can afford nice idols, too:

And while you’re paying $5 at the pump and 1/3 more for every item at the grocery store, they’re sending YOUR oil reserves overseas?

And the people telling you to get ready to enjoy insects as the protein percentage of your kibble are eating an awful lot of meat?

You’ll never get a headline on this, but the people who want you to get your booster every 9 months didn’t even get their first shot.

Funny, all that, ain’t it?

Update: Somebody pointed this out on SG. Whether the author meant to induce some sense of guilt or absurdity in his globalist audience, or whether he was unironically stating facts as he sees them is beyond me. It’s really on the UN website. The Babylon Bee couldn’t have done any better. Update: It really was on the UN website. I’ll take the fact that they’ve yanked it down to mean that they finally understood that the linked article went too far in showing what they really think of the cattle…er…people of the world. These people have zero self-awareness.

Friday Mess-o-links

Posted on by

Let’s dig right in with some stuff I’ve collected this week.

If you’re seeing all these scary stories about the cattle dying from heat stress, please know that it’s not quite the big deal it sounds like. It’s not great, but it’s pretty normal, according to Ann Barnhardt. Bill Gates would still like to starve you into submission, though. You want to keep an eye on his kind.

Farming isn’t looking too good right now. Pray, plant as much as you can, and pray some more:

The Price of Gas and Friend/Enemy Distinction. Read that whole thing. Jesus said to love your enemies. That means that you are going to have some. You’d better be able to discern who they are. Fortunately, these days they make themselves obvious.

Consumer Groups Step Up Pressure on Lowe’s, Home Depot to Stop Selling Cancer-Causing Weedkiller I think it would be a good idea for everybody reading this to call their local Lowes or Home Depot, and all other sellers of Round-up, and tell them you won’t shop with them until they remove the poison from their shelves. We might also politely remind them that they could be sued along with the manufacturers for selling environmental toxins. I do plan to make that phone call myself.

Equal protection under the law is a thing of the past. Know your enemies, and know what power they hold, and where they hold that power. I wouldn’t set foot on federal property for the world right now. Simone Gold to be sentenced for walking into the Capitol building and reading a prepared speech on January 6th.

Along the same lines, this will not be used even-handedly or in a measured way:

Words from Jefferson Smith, Confederate Soldier, North Carolinian, prophet:

And finally, some good advice for women facing c-sections from SG moms with c-section experience. I’ll just grab some of my own thoughts from GAH 1.0, back in the c-section-having days to go along with that.

We’re back into the swing of things after a few weeks of having and then getting to know our new baby:

She’s in good health, and so am I. My doctor said she has me down in her book as the “fastest c-section recovery ever”. Guess that makes me some kind of winner. Where’s the prize for that? I’ve been told it’s because I “must be one tough lady”, and maybe that’s part of it, but it’s even more because I’m too restless and distracted to lie around and recover in a more leisurely, sedate fashion. Never did know how to behave myself. (Added 6/17/22: Also, every surgery is a little bit easier to recover from because the incision area becomes numb, though still itchy. That’s not super. It’s irritating and a little bit scary.)

C-section tip: Try getting up and moving around, sitting in a chair instead of the bed to eat those abysmal hospital meals, showering, changing the baby’s diapers, etc., as soon as you recover feeling in your legs. You get better faster if you just face the pain and get it over with. Besides, the morphine they give with the spinal wears off after 24 hours, and if you wait that long to get up, it will hurt more the first time you move, not less. Don’t overdo it, though. Rest as much as you can between all the self- and baby-care.
The surgery itself: I don’t want to scare anybody, so I’ll say the reassuring part first: Most c-sections are completely painless, just weird, so don’t be afraid! My first three were textbook, perfect, no pain. But! Did you know that sometimes the spinal doesn’t numb you as far up your body as necessary? I was sure they were trying to stuff the baby into my chest toward the end there. Perhaps they were using my spleen as a stress-ball. Sure felt like it. I would have preferred any amount of labor pain over that experience.

The baby was well worth it, of course. Her siblings are over the moon for her, and Get Along Husband and I have to fight the kids for our turn to hold her.

Speaking of childbirth, it has been very hard for me to let go of that phase of my life. After the fifth c-section, there just wasn’t a lot of uterus left to hold any more babies, and I’ve mourned my inability to have any more children the way a warrior might mourn his glory days on the battlefield. While I was searching for that old post, I found this post that I’d written to a woman who questioned the wisdom of my multiple c-sections. Still worth sharing, I think:

While I’m extremely uncomfortable with the idea that children are a choice to be made, rather than a gift to be received, I am equally uncomfortable with the idea that women’s lives are fully expendable in the service of procreation. Not every risk we can take is an honorable one. Sometimes it may be foolhardy or even heartless, depending on the circumstances.

In speaking with my husband about it last week, I likened the situation to that of a soldier. A woman’s valor in childbirth is certainly comparable to that of a soldier in battle, and her necessity to the survival of her people is just as clear. The potential for grief is great. Childbirth is scary, painful, messy, smelly, bloody and dangerous. There is often cursing and violence involved. It is also good and necessary. We’d think very poorly indeed of an able-bodied young man who was needed to defend his nation from an enemy, but who refused to do so.

…

At some point, depending on the health and circumstances of the woman, she can certainly become wounded and unable to return to the battlefield, just as a wounded soldier can. Sure, even a crippled soldier could probably hobble back out there with just half of one leg and one eye, and many would be glad to do so if they could. But not only would our wounded soldier be unlikely to do any good for his cause, he’d be a liability to the other men who’d have to cover and care for him. So we salute his valor, honor his sacrifice, and keep him out of the fighting from now on. We revere him as a hero, despite his inability to continue. This is true whether he was wounded in his first battle or his twentieth.

…
Likewise, I could (and want to!) get right back into the “battle” and try making a new baby. But if my uterus is extremely thin (or some other complication arises), trying to have more children would probably result not only in my or the baby’s death or disability, but in the rest of the family suffering for it, too. I trust God in all things, including pregnancy. I also trust my doctor and the understanding God gave him to help me figure out when my body is failing.

 

As for my own impending c-section, I still have no idea how things are going to turn out. I am praying and preparing for a good birth, good news about the condition of my uterus, and the all-clear to go back into battle if the Lord sees fit. Given the risk of hysterectomy, thinning, and placenta problems with each subsequent c-section, I am also trying (with limited success) to emotionally prepare myself for the bad news that my child-bearing days are over.

Fortunately, the Lord saw fit to give us one more child even after that one, and then in the last c-section, my doctor said to me “Cindy, your uterus has just lost all its integrity! I can’t make this safe for another baby.” And so we had my tubes tied, and I’ve cried about it every month since. It is not easy to be discharged from service, even honorably.

Anyhow, deep breath. That’s all I’ve got right now. What’s interesting in your neck of the woods? Links to your own blog posts or social media finds in the comments, please!

 

 

 

Food, Food Everywhere

Posted on by

And not a bite to eat.

We’ve been attending a new church lately, and we’re really feeling like we’ve finally found a home. One thing I’ve found about Christians is that they’re pretty lovable, so it’s not too hard to jump right in and get to know them. There is a little bit of awkwardness because of the differences in how we live out our faith as compared to the vast majority of Christians. Nobody condemns us, of course. Quite the contrary: while they don’t join us in our convictions, they often (claim to) admire them. I feel like if they really admired the differences, they’d adopt them. But at least they’re willing to step inside our worldview long enough to relate to it. I can content myself with that.

But explanations must occasionally be made. Where many are content, or feel they are forced by circumstance, to send their children to public schools, we think that Christians are called to protect their children from Godless indoctrination, whatever the cost. While I cover my head in worship (but never my face), most regard that act as outdated and legalistic. Unlike practically every evangelical Christian in the South, we don’t believe that it is a sin, or even unwise, to drink wine at appropriate times. These last few years, I’ve had to add one more thing to the ever-growing pile of differences to be navigated in a group setting: food.

Y’all know what church food is like. It’s the Standard American Diet, but with more of everything that is wrong with it. More sugar, more flour, more seed oil, more “love” in every bite. Also, more heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in every body. I know this can’t please God, and I can’t get comfortable with it.

Of course, most churches don’t meet for a meal every single day, or even every week, so excepting my own very restricted diet and a few serious allergens that must be avoided, a meal once in a while that includes a lot of refined carbohydrates or seed oils should be something the kids can just skate past with little difficulty. But I don’t want them to learn to take poor nutrition as a fact of religious life. It just rubs me the wrong way to make egregious exceptions for the sake of fellowship. I try my best to guide the children in eating what is advantageous to their bodies, and politely declining the rest, while hopefully managing not to take ourselves too far outside the group’s comfort zone. We often don’t even have to mention it, but can just pick and choose from the available items.

But sometimes we do appear extreme. We have a gluten problem for one of my children that makes any amount of wheat beyond that found in a communion cracker a health and behavioral nightmare. I trust that eating that will not harm the child because of the nature of the Sacrament. I don’t honestly think any human digests wheat or any other grain as well as they think they do, so I keep it out of all of our diets. I very much appreciate when there are gluten-free options at the table for our family. This church has gone above and beyond to try to make our family comfortable in this and other ways.

Our family’s food culture is so different that we can’t impose our needs on the whole group. It’s funny to me. The way we eat is much simpler, from buying, to cooking, to clean-up. It’s basically a lot of meat and some fruit, with a few of what I think of as the gentler vegetables for variety. Plain fare like this should be less of a logistical problem than all of these complicated casseroles and desserts, but people just don’t want to eat that way. They want bread. They want the kinds of hyper-palatable messes I used to make in the kitchen. I can’t blame them for wanting to eat what they’ve always eaten. That stuff tastes like love, doesn’t it? But it’s not love. It’s not even food, half the time.

I can’t blame them. Nor can I join them in it on anything like a regular basis. To keep our food healthful, while still enjoying the fellowship of others, here’s what we’ve become accustomed to doing for any church or family function that includes a meal:

Eat before you go. How much you eat beforehand depends very much on the menu where you’re going. I can eat the main things at a cookout, but there’s never an acceptable dish at a covered-dish dinner. I don’t want to eat more than my expected share of the real food, either, so I still need to be not-too-hungry even when there are meat-only options. Real food does cost more. That’s part of why is it so hard to make inroads into the way people think about food. Most of the Christians I know, including myself, don’t have a lot of money to throw around. The best way around this discomfort is to be no hungrier when you go than you need to be to enjoy a little bit of the repast. I often make these protein shakes for the kids before we go so they don’t feel deprived with a lighter plate later.

Bring a dish to share. Even if it’s fully catered, nobody is going to mind if you plop down a dish or two of whatever you’re having.

Bring your own snack stuff. If I’m not able to make a dish for everyone to share, I will as discretely as possible pull my stash of meat sticks and cheese out of my purse to dole out to the kids when they find their plates a little light.

Fast and enjoy the company. You don’t have to eat, you know. Just grab a cup of coffee or water and sit down to chat. People will notice you’re not eating and ask if you want to get a plate. Practically nothing embarrasses me, so I’m taking other people’s word for it that this is uncomfortable. I just say “No thanks, I already ate.” or something like that. You don’t have to explain your crazy diet to everybody, and they’d probably rather not hear about it anyway.

Here’s what’s hard about all this, and it causes me to compromise occasionally: it makes people feel inadequate when they can’t feed you. They want to share, and you won’t let them. It’s alienating. I don’t ever want people to feel that way! So I do sometimes bend the rules and allow the kids to eat gluten-free breads and pastas where I wouldn’t dream of doing so in our home. They sometimes get to eat some candy I wouldn’t allow as a rule. As we get to know people better, they do get more comfortable with our weirdness, so the compromises aren’t habitual or permanent. Sometimes we just have to take the hit for the sake of fellowship.

We don’t eat this way to be separate or to keep ourselves above the cultural milieu, but because I truly believe it results in the very best health a person can achieve in this sick world. Ultimately, I’d like our family’s healthy way of eating to rub off on the community around us. I’d like to see everybody in my community as vigorously healthy as possible, so that they may serve the Lord even more effectively than they already do. I can’t help them with that while indulging in cake and spaghetti, so I do believe that any compromises should be strategic and short-term.

Thus far, people seem happy to allow for our quirks, but hardly anyone ever joins us in them. I’m not by nature a patient person, but I know it’s a long game we’re playing. You can’t change a culture before it’s ready to change. All you can really do is be a light to those can be made to see, while trying not to mind that the darkness doesn’t comprehend. This is as true of nutrition as it is of any other aspect of culture.

How about you? Do you have any tips for navigating a dangerous dietary landscape without making a fuss?

(None of my links are affiliate links unless otherwise noted. I usually just link to products because I like them.)

Friday Randomness

Posted on by

Or should that be “Random Mess”? It’s been a whole month since I wrote anything! I’m very sorry, and I feel sure that the summer vacation will be better. Three days left in our school year. Grinding it out!

I love my toes.

I’ve been wearing the Vibram five-finger shoes for a few weeks. At first I just walked around the house in them. Then when I felt good about my foot-strength I started working out in them. They’re really fun to wear. It’s not a hard transition if you go around barefoot most of the time, as I do at home. While doing some one-arm, one-leg planks, I noticed that my balance is much better when my toesies can wiggle. They were just waving around having a fine old time, rediscovering themselves, and it made my core steadier than ever! I really had no idea how useful my toes were until I let them express their individuality. Now to upgrade my running shoes.

Truth Social

What’s the first thing President Donald J. Trump does when I finally decide to sign up for his lame-o social media platform? Why, try and make me love him again, of course!:

Yeah, I’m not falling for the Elon thing. I also hate Republicans. But I’m not falling for you again, either, Mr. President. Fail me once, shame on you. Fail me twice? Yeah. No.

You can follow me there, but I don’t know if I’ll use it. I just thought it was a good idea to squat on my username so nobody else can impersonate me. Who knows? I might find a use for it. It’s very Twitter-esque in its design, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. UPDATE: Never mind. I deleted it. It was lame, alright.

Ready to submit to the World Health Organization, global citizen?

Dozens of governments, including our own, are poised to sign a “treaty” that gives power within their nations to the WHO, primarily funded by Bill Gates, to declare and manage pandemics. This does not, of course, give legitimate authority to the WHO, but they’ll be behaving as if it did. So will some of your NPC pastors who say things like “Christians obey! It’s who we are!”

Hope you’re ready to make a very costly stand, because the forced vaccinations and masks and all of it will be back.

Oh, look! Here’s 13 million plandemic-ready monkeypox vaccines for a heretofore unheard-of and apparently nonlife-threatening disease that’s suddenly popping up among…um…gay men. Probably triple-vaxxed and boosted gay men. Those are the most heavily compromised immune systems in the universe. Relax, normie. You will not get monkeypox. I know you, though. You’re going to put on the mask anyway to show how much you care, aren’t you?

And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. –Revelation 16:2

Thomas Insel (not incel) makes the case for abolishing psychiatry. Having had some brushes with the trade myself in my life before Jesus, I can only say:

They’ll make voters out of every “refugee”. But don’t you dare object to the undermining of your nation. That’s not neighborly.

10 states report severe hepatitis in children as researchers investigate mysterious outbreak.

It’s happening everywhere. One of my children had a mystery hepatitis after a round of routine childhood vaccinations. Doctors wouldn’t say it was the vaccines. They probably really believed it couldn’t be the vaccines. But it was the vaccines. How often does a vaccine of any kind wreak this kind of havoc in a child, but people are only now linking the disparate cases? It’s untellin‘, as the old folks liked to say (and I do, too).

I’m currently reading:

Fully covid!vaxxed gorilla dies of multiple organ failure. Happened to some giraffes, too, if I recall correctly. Of course, that’s all debunked by mockingbird media, so roll up your sleeves, little kids! The FDA says it’s fine!

Steve Kirsch, who stands to lose everything for saying so, says otherwise:

…the government has not provided you with the key data you need to make a proper risk-benefit assessment. They have assumed that the vaccines haven’t caused a single death. That simply isn’t true and you can now prove that yourself, just like I did recently using adult death data which included vaccination status. The result is highly statistically significant and has not been disputed. I’ve made the data publicly available.

As somebody who likes to lift weights, and run, and just generally crush everything in sight, this post by some soyboy made me laugh. As if all those lines memorized from The Princess Bride were of any use to anybody. Think I’ll keep grunting, lifting, eating meat, and being brilliant.

I admit, though, that for a couple of hours after a really intense workout, I seem to temporarily lose a few IQ points. Maybe 20. I think it’s the muscles hogging all the glucose. Even in that condition, I’m still smarter than this guy.

That about clears my tabs for the day. Hope you have a very happy Friday and a restful weekend, friends!

Comments should be open, if you want to talk back. I love it when people talk back.

Friday Link-About

Posted on by

All health and fitness stuff today, because those are the tabs I have open. Links are not affiliate links.

Plastic-hunting. I’ve been reading Estrogeneration, by Anthony Jay. It is the stuff of nightmares, what has happened to our society because of the plasticization of everything. I had (mostly thanks to this guy) been aware of the problems of birth control, plastics, and estrogenic agricultural chemicals for some time, so I’d already eliminated the obvious food culprits: soy and flax, food that isn’t organically grown (to the extent possible), and plastic storage and cooking utensils, including anything with a so-called non-stick surface. I’ve also been super-careful about our cosmetics and personal care products. Anthony G. Jay also does DNA analysis and has a wealth of information at his website, A. J. Consulting. I find his list of clean products particularly helpful.

I have seriously been slacking in the area of drinks, though. We drink water out of plastic bottles when we’re on the go, and I still make coffee in the most common of electric coffee-makers with plastic tubing and parts. I felt yucky about this, but hadn’t gotten motivated to fix it yet. Today, I finally bit the bullet and took a couple of extra steps to get the plastics out of our drinks. I’ve ordered a stainless steel percolator for coffee. The first one I looked at turned out to have an aluminum nut in contact with the coffee. I’m not going to exchange plastic for aluminum, so I finally found this one, which might possibly be actually SS. I hope so, because I don’t want to have to return it. (Update, it was an aluminum nut on the bottom, so I returned it. Glass pour-over it is. My lazy self will just have to add the water manually from now on. First-world problems, indeed!)

And I also picked up some glass water bottles. I’ve already done the glass water bottles in the past, and they worked pretty well, but…well, they break. I’m hoping we can be more careful this time around. Might have been better to go with stainless steel, since we’re prone to breaking things, but I feel like water tastes better in glass.

Healthy doggie. I’ve also ordered some much healthier dog food for my pupper. He eats mostly meat, and mostly right from our table, but sometimes there’s not enough meat left over, so I supplement him with the least unhealthy dog food I can find. That means I try to keep beans and legumes, as well as grains, out of his diet. Yumwoof is so far the best dog food I’ve found that isn’t straight up raw meat, which my dog hates. Expensive, but we don’t give our dog that much kibble, so it should last a while. You and I can both get $20 off our next orders if you hit that link.

And another Mother’s Day gift idea, if you’re still shopping, and the mother in your life is into fitness. (Are you reading this, Get Along Fam?) Egg Weights is offering a limited “Active All Spring” bundle with weights, bag, and a massage tool for $59.99. Very good deal. I love the egg weights I have for running.

That’s all I have in the share-tabs. What are you into these days? I think I’ve got comments open on this post. If not, you can chat with me on Gab, MeWe, and SG, instead.

 

Some Food Discoveries

Posted on by

Happy food, sad food.

We had a birthday in the family last week, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a piece of my Cake Simulator, this time as a spice cake with peach butter cream frosting (recipes to follow shortly). I veered off my happy carnivore trail for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to make sure it tastes good, because I haven’t had this version of the Simulation.

Secondly, I accidently bought another round of Nutrisense CGM monitoring, so I had a chance to make absolutely sure this cake doesn’t spike the glucose. I did it for you. I did it for science. I did it because I’m an idiot. Don’t forget to pause your subscription, guys. It auto-renews. Since I didn’t get to do any experimenting at all during the weeks I was intending to, due to an illness, I’m not terribly sorry I have another month to play around with my sugars, though I can’t say I feel good about the expense.

And thirdly, I wanted to see if the oxalate content of tiger-nut flour is enough to trigger my bladder problems. I hadn’t had any in a while, so I couldn’t remember if that was an effect I thought I’d observed or not.

Well, the results are in.

Taste: The thing you’re most concerned with, I’m sure, since that was what I was most concerned with, is how does it taste? I’m pleased to report that it was very, very tasty. A little bit of a bitterness in the mouth afterwards due to the stevia, but while eating it, it’s the best thing ever. Just don’t drink coffee with it, because it increases that aftertaste to a disgusting degree. I can’t understand how anybody “sweetens” coffee with stevia. Blech.

Glucose acceptability:

The farthest red dot to the left is the point at which I ate the cake. I’d been fasting until that point. You can see no spike from this, so I’m pretty confident in saying you can probably have at least one (1/16 of the cake) serving without losing your keto badge for the day. The little “spike” after it was exercise-induced. Your mileage may vary, of course. I’ve seen my glucose spike from “low-carb” foods that didn’t affect Get Along Husband in the slightest, so you want to do your own testing to be sure.

And thirdly, the oxalates. Because I have a lot of scar-tissue around my bladder after all the c-sections (I think this is why, anyway), foods high in oxalate cause me to have a hard time emptying my bladder, usually first thing in the morning. I can’t drink teas or eat spinach (like anybody would want to eat spinach anyway), and many other things cause these problems. And, sadly, tiger-nut flour must have enough oxalate to trigger this dysfunction for me. I was very uncomfortable when I woke up this morning, and took a few hours to finally be back to normal. If you have oxalate troubles, skip this food.

Better be laying in them beans and rice, ammiright? Besides the cake discovery, I’ve also found a very unexpected problem for my children. Over the last few years, I’ve heavily restricted grains and seeds from my children’s diets. We will very occasionally allow organic corn products. I believe grains are detrimental when taken with any regularity. But, because prepping has been on my mind, and rice is shelf-stable for a long time, I thought I’d try re-introducing some rice to my children’s diets, to see if they tolerate it. They enjoyed it, to be sure. Very tasty stuff.

But there was a detriment. Three times I gave them rice, each time a couple of weeks to a month apart. Three times, two of my smaller children got nosebleeds that same night. Nosebleeds? Rice?

So I guess we’ll be relying on some other starchy food for calories in the event we can’t get enough animal-based foods.

One final discovery that I’m sure you’ll be interested in:

Berries are keto food, right? And apple sauce is a no-no, right? Isn’t that what the gurus all say? Well, here you go:

There are a couple of things going on here that confounded this result that you ought to be aware of before you just write off blueberries forever and start eating apple sauce. First of all, obviously, apple sauce is not conducive to ketosis. But it is a 7 on the nutrisense scale, which is better than the blueberries’ 4. These were not particularly sweet blueberries, either. Some of them were still faintly green, and I didn’t enjoy them very much. I hadn’t fasted for very long before either of these tests, but I did throw some protein in with the apple sauce, and I’m sure that blunted the spike quite a bit. I’d have probably gotten closer to the blueberries’ score without the meat sticks. (I love Nick’s Sticks, btw. Not an affiliate link. Just wanted to share.)

The point is, blueberries might not be a great keto food after all. Of course, if you’re not primarily a fat-burner for the last several years, you’re likely going to have different results. Better or worse, I cannot say.

Again, test for yourself. You can get $25 off your first month by using my referral link. I’m not giving you any medical advice, ever. I’m just showing you what happens to a 5-year keto/carnivore when she does this stuff. I’ll have a bunch of exercise-related graphs to show you soon. I may even try a few more plant foods, but the longer I’m carnivore, the less I really care to even find out. I might not bother.

And now, I have a date with my butcher to pick up another whole beef. I can’t believe how much meat these children go through, and if there are going to be food shortages, rice is clearly not an option.

Can I feed this rice to the chickens? Will they explode?

Want to discuss? Meet me on MeWe, Gab, or SG.

 

 

Are You Ready? It’s Time!

Posted on by

I know you were expecting a Rapture, but you’re probably going to have to go through some stuff, American.

I was talking to a guy on Gab (follow me) yesterday, just in passing, and he was poo-pooing the idea that there could be food shortages in the U.S. It’s just fear porn, he says. This is the post where the exchange took place:

 

It’s hard for me to believe this level of denial exists. People are running out of infant formula, prices are going through the roof, and yet this guy thinks it’s fine. Yeah. It’s fine.

I know things have been very steady–downright luxurious, in fact–in the United States for the entire life of my generation. Even as a “poor” Appalachian girl, I always had enough, if not the finest, food to eat. If you’re a Boomer who was raised dirt-poor, the way my parents and in-laws were, you know that people can, in fact, get very hungry in this country, like any other. But it’s been a long, long time. Even my Boomer family can’t quite process the fact that we’re probably heading back into that level of poverty. Unfortunately, the hard times are coming, and we as a nation (if you can call this God-forsaken place a nation at this point) have earned them.

Get Along Husband and I haven’t been the most diligent of preppers, mostly because we have had to put most of our resources into the raising of our eight children. We’re not wealthy, and they eat a lot, you know. You would certainly want to look to some other blogger for advice on how to do all the prepping and homesteading kinds of things. But we do what we can to be smart about saving not just money, but food and supplies, for just in case things get tight. We didn’t run out of toilet paper during the great panic of 2020, for instance, so we passed that small test, anyway.

It’s about to get a lot harder than just a tp panic.

This nation has been cruising on borrowed, and often stolen, resources for a lot of years. We’re about to find out what life is like when you have to provide for yourself, instead of taking it from whomever you please just because you’re the bigger military or borrowing it from people who must know that you’ll never be able to pay it back.

I won’t rant on how we got here, though it is a temptation. I’ll just say this. Now’s the time. To do what? Well, first, you need to be repenting, America. Not just saying “Sorry I got caught.” (and oh, my, we are busted) but truly falling on your face and begging God to forgive us, and then accepting that there are going to be consequences for our national sins.

After that, if you haven’t already, you might want to lay in some extra non-perishable food, start raising some backyard chickens, put in a little  (or big, if you have the space) garden. Basically, start living like you can’t trust the system to provide, because you can’t. I know, a lot of us didn’t even know we were relying on the system. We thought we were doing things for ourselves. But look at egg prices. They’re slaughtering millions of chickens because of bird flu, prices are going up. Can you even get your own eggs?

It’s probably too late to materially prepare, but this might be a good quick-start guide for anybody who’s been sleeping until today. Honestly, you can only be so prepared for big disruptions. After the initial shock of SHTF, you have to be able to rely on your community to figure out how to proceed in the new conditions. So it’s our minds that really need to be prepared. Praying and fasting are in order.

As I said on SG (where you can also follow me, if you subscribe):

Christians, we are not promised an easy time of it. We are not promised a rapture (sorry) to make sure we never suffer a day in our cushy American lives. But we are promised that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us. As we go into whatever is coming next, I will thank Him for sorting out the wrongs that have been done, for bringing us to our knees so that we may repent as a nation.

Turn to Him. Trust Him. Praise Him.

He’s got our ultimate good, and His own glory in mind.

Want to talk about it? We can discuss on SG, Gab, or MeWe.