The Saturday Clean

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It’s Saturday. We might as well talk about housekeeping.

I was talking with another mom not long ago, and, as moms are wont to do, we got onto the subject of housekeeping. So many busy families struggle with keeping the house restfully tidy, especially when they homeschool. I’ve seen some truly scandalous messes. It’s hard to blame anybody, though, when life is so full inside a live-at-home household. These are not lazy families, and in fact are more on-the-ball than ours is in most ways. There being only 24 hours in anybody’s day, it’s not surprising that the cleaning might go by the wayside.

I cannot personally live that way, though, and I don’t think my children should have to, even if I could. I once knew a family whose child was twice seriously injured because of messes. Their shelves were too full of junk, and something fell on a child’s head. Stairs with litter and toys on them caused a broken ankle. It’s not just about looks, is it? I’m sure very few of my readers will be messy to that extent. It was a bad home situation in more ways than that, as I’m sure you already intuited.

But if you do desire a cleaner home, and especially if you’re a homeschooling family, maybe I can help you think about how to obtain that worthy goal. I struggled for a while myself! While most families are leaving their houses empty to go out and do everything in a dedicated space, and while that is what most of us public-schooled kids have been accustomed to, nearly every day in a homeschooling house sees three meals served (sometimes even cooked), messes made with papers, books, science experiments, and, of course, play. Our work and play make quite a mess! It can get out of hand quickly.

Company-ready? 

We have a routine that keeps the house basically livable–lovable, even–all day long. I once heard a lady call the condition for which we aim “company-ready”, but I think that’s short-changing the family. Why does only company get to see us at our best? Don’t we all deserve a nice home to live in? We don’t want to panic-clean when a friend decides to visit in the middle of the week, no! But so much more important than what others will think of us is having a place where the family can rest their minds and bodies, where they can concentrate or let their minds wander as needed, and where they can walk to the bathroom in the dark with a fair chance of getting there with unbruised shins and unstubbed toes.

Our home is for us, not company. Loving my home is loving my people.

My friend mentioned that her mother always had their family clean the house up on Saturday mornings. Well, phooey. I had thought I was so original, coming up with that idea. I came up with it independently, anyway. I sure didn’t learn it during my upbringing! Saturday cleaning is probably the ideal way to housekeep when a family is absent for the bulk of their useful days, but it’s not quite enough when you live at home all day, nearly every day.

So our daily routine, very simple and straightforward, is to eat, work, play. Three times a day, we have the meal, then do our chores and zones, and play, ideally, comes only after all the work is done. Our schoolwork falls into the morning workload, and then I try to fit in one more thing after lunch. (Do visit that link for more great homeschooling tips than I’ll ever come up with.)

Everybody has their own assigned zone to pay particular attention to.

Blackboard with room assignments

There used to be eight names here. They grow up too fast!

I don’t have any need to remind people to eat or to play, so we only really have one rule: We do not leave the table to play.

Pray, Eat, Work, Play

Our house wasn’t particularly messy when I was a child, but I don’t really recall having set times to do any cleaning. My mother apparently just did what needed doing so quietly that I didn’t notice it happening. She’s sneaky like that. But we also didn’t live in the home all day long, nor did we have a lot of company we’d like to be ready for at a moment’s notice. We didn’t have so much stuff, either. Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful for stuff. I’m not a minimalist at all. Don’t @ me about that. Look how many words and italics I use! I’m hardwired for maximalism.

Children don’t learn to write and draw and read and build without plenty of materials to go through. And they don’t just naturally want to clean up before moving on to the next play, so the mess can get out of hand no matter how hard we try. Even though we do the clean-up and chores after every meal, by the time Saturday arrives, we still have a lot of work to do. The daily routine is insufficient, so we spend some time cleaning toilets, floors, behind furniture, etc. on Saturdays. When Mom yells “Saturday Clean!”, everybody hops to and starts whistling while they work. It’s a very pleasant time for all of us.

OK, that’s enough daydreaming. When Mom yells “Saturday clean!”, with only a little grumbling and bargaining about who will do what, and arguing about whether we should have to deal with other people’s Legos, and the occasional fisticuffs, the children manage to work out a pretty quick way of appeasing the household tyrant so they can get back to making messes again. We’ve got the motions down, but we’re still working on the attitudes.

Now, my house isn’t as clean as it used to be, mostly because it’s fuller and fuller of life every year. I also became much more relaxed (in a good way) after I’d been on a carnivore diet for a while. Things still get taken care of, but I’m not stressing myself out about it all the time anymore. I know it seems like the simplest, almost condescending advice (as it did to me, the first time I was told), but just build a routine. It doesn’t have to be just like mine, but I know so many young wives who feel like they’re drowning in all the little stuff while they try to pay attention to the interesting parts of life. For us, paying attention to our surroundings after every meal, just for five or ten minutes, has saved us a world of irritation. The Saturday part doesn’t even feel so big after that!

Now, I am going to go clean my basement, which isn’t part of anyone’s daily chores, and looks like it! Please feel free to comment below with your own cleaning and attitude tips.

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Looks Like a Vegan

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Just getting my prediction in there before they catch him, if they do. This is a vegan.

UPDATE: I see the guy they are accusing. He does not look like the same guy. The “revealing” of who he is sounds like a complete fabrication. Though the vegan thing is both a joke and a warning to those who might be tempted to eat this way, this fellow is not the guy they are now blaming. I think we’ll never know who the real killer is killers are. (Actually, I kinda know. You kinda know, too.)

Friday Links and Thinks

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Our household has been strongly affected by what was done to Charlie Kirk. I expect the effects on our nation’s future to be far more tangible than the mere emotions we’re feeling right now, as we begin to wake up to the enormity of it. My oldest son has called him a hero of his, and looked up to him. I’ve heard very little from him, and wouldn’t recognize his voice if I heard a recording, so it might seem strange that I feel so badly about the death myself. I don’t cry easily, but this made me cry. It made me angry.

It’s not strange, though. An innocent man being gunned down for speaking and representing the truth is infuriating. But it’s more than that. Kirk (fittingly, the Scottish word for “church”) was probably not much on my radar because he connected more with my children’s generation. But I knew about him, who he was, and what he represented. He is a member of the body of Christ. That shot was a shot at the Church. He was murdered for Christ’s sake, as a truth-teller.

No matter what political messages others heard, Charlie was always working from and toward that message: Serve the risen Christ. I trust that he is rejoicing in Heaven as a martyr for his Savior. Our prayers are very much with his family. These posts by others surpass anything I could possibly say:

Peace Has Been Murdered, and Dialogue Was Shot in the Throat

A Tale of Two Fates

Since this is a linking kind of post, and not supposed to be about just one thing, I’m not going to stay on that dreadful topic any longer. I confess I’m having a hard time thinking about anything else. Some links to my own things:

Air Fryer Pork Belly Burnt Ends

Rattling the Cup for My Shoe Fund

I’ve also set up a Buy Me A Coffee page, so if you just like something I say, you can tip me $5 or more! Money is fungible, so this really just ends up as more shoes. The amount of coffee I drink is the same no matter how much you pitch in. Shoes, though!

Also, if you want coaching or just to chat because you’ve missed me on social media, we can zoom call, too! Just set it up at the link! Time is limited, of course, but we’ll work something out.

And then to some other, better things:

Young Gospel Minister (who gets two links in this post!) has been doing a fine series on Revelation. Babylon as Apostate Israel in Revelation is the latest offering.

Francis Bacon is in our 8th grade curriculum quite a lot, so I appreciate this lecture by Hans G. Shantz. We’ll be using that soon.

TACO again, this time it’s the drug ads he said he wanted to ban. Not good enough, Trump. Not by a longshot.

And finally, I found this sister’s story to be uplifting. One of the kids was mentioning a problem the other day, and I asked “You know what my advice is going to be, right?” “Yeah, Mom. Either Jesus or meat.” This dear lady found the same path: Surviving Anorexia, Sepsis, and Amputation 

That’s it for this week because I didn’t think of it in time to collect a lot. Next week I should have more!

Please send memes!

What thinks have you been thinking lately? Drop interesting memes and links in the comments to your own posts or others’, please! You can even email them to me at cindy at getalonghome.com They may take a while to post, but I’ll get them up!

 

 

Air Fryer Pork Belly Burnt Ends

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Only they’re not burnt, and they’re not ends.

Print Recipe

Pork Belly Burnt Ends

Pork Belly with a lot of strict or less strict options for carnivores
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time21 minutes
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: American, Carnivore
Keyword: carnivore, keto

Equipment

  • Air Fryer
  • Sharp knife
  • food prep gloves optional
  • cutting board

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs pork belly strips cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 2 tsp salt (all other additions are optional)
  • 1 tsp pepper white pepper if avoiding oxalates
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tbsp molasses
  • anything else you might like!

Instructions

  • Preheat air fryer to 390℉
  • Slice pork belly strips into 1-inch pieces
  • Season with all desired seasonings listed, or anything you can imagine you'd like. These are kind of BBQ flavored.
  • Using food service gloves (or bare hands, if you're into that kind of mess), massage the ingredients onto the meat for even seasoning.
  • Fry pork belly in air fryer for 5-7 minutes at a time, stirring them between turns for even cooking. I do mine 7 minutes at a time, 3 times. You may prefer them more or less burnt.
  • Serve!

I love these things so much! The amount given in this recipe recipe just barely feeds me and my family as a side. Sometimes I make half that just for myself. I usually have these on my higher-fat days, with scrambled eggs (2 whole+4 yolks) or fried duck eggs.

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It’s a Dopamine Thing

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The Brain is going to brain.

I guess it’s been about six weeks since I deleted my account with SG, which has been for me a place where I could meet minds that were running along the same track as mine. We in the GAH household are not living much in tune with most of the people around us. IRL, I have to bite my tongue a lot. People, as wonderful as I find them, often cannot understand or relate to the thinks I’m thinking. It was very nice to find a place to be blunt and straightforward, to be able to trust the folks I was interacting with to be the same with me, and to know that most of us were on the same page regarding lifestyles, current events, and most importantly, recognizing that Christ is Lord.

Also, the memes. If you have any good ones to drop on me, please do. I’ve found no better place for memes than SG.

I can’t go any further in this post without expressing my appreciation to Vox Day for rolling up the community and doing so much intellectual heavy-lifting that I’ve marveled over for the last 20-odd years. He and his core group of commenters have really changed the conversation and kept the Enemy on his toes, and I know they’ll continue to do so. I’m digressing a little, and I’ll not go the whole fan-girl route, but thank you, SDL. It’s been cool. I’m still reading.

I had some small issues with SG for some time before I logged off for the last time. I found the community to be heading off in a direction that, frankly, bored me. A few new folks (I’m sorry) dragged down the average IQ. I decided to boost it back up by removing mine. In addition to that, a lot of the people I’d met there and become real-life friends with had either left the platform or communicated more with me in other ways.

I had plenty of reasons to continue to be a member of that community–good folks are still there, there’s still a lot of great, new thinking going on, and it’s stinking fun to have social media with that much honest engagement–but one very compelling reason to leave:

My brain can’t handle the scroll.

At the same time that I left SG, I also deleted my FB account. That was a completely peaceful and pleasant change to my life. Meta is of Satan, and  you need to find a different platform if you’re on it. On both platforms, I daily, hourly even, found myself scrolling down, even through feelings of extreme boredom. I noticed long ago that I had a pattern. I’d sit down to do a thing I really needed to do–the budget, perhaps–and the loop would start. I’d open that legitimately needful page up, do it, check my email, check SG, flip to FB, clear my notifications, respond, realize I needed to be doing something else, do something else in a most distracted and rueful manner, and then just a minute later I HAVE TO CHECK MY NOTIFICATIONS AGAIN!

You’d think I could just tell myself to put that stuff down until a better time; that I could have used a stopwatch, apps that limit screen time, punishments, rewards, anything at all to control my own behavior. I did try those things! They’d work for a day or a week. But I would always drift back into that pattern. I’d lose five minutes here, ten there, just a minute sometimes, and it didn’t seem to add up to that much. My housework still got done, things I’m responsible for still look kinda ok on the outside, but on the inside, I feel awful. I’m foggy. My attention is not where it needs to be. My kids are getting a very distracted version of me. My husband is getting a very distracted version of me. There’s a physical toll to it, as well, since it’s very hard to be as active as one should be while staring down at a phone or at a computer screen.

So when the time came to re-subscribe to the private social media, I went to the page to give my credit card number, and a still, small voice said to me “This is your exit.” So I ripped off the bandaid and abandoned my friends (I do consider SG to be real friends, most of FB not so much) without so much as an explanation. I hate that I left people scratching their heads, but I absolutely can’t handle social media. I don’t think some of you can, either. Not if you find just the right media and right kind of people.

It is impossible to dopamine fast.

Dopamine, of course, is one of the popular buzzwords right now, with people taking “dopamine fasts” with zero internet or entertainment to calm down their fevered brains. I feel sorry for people who need social media to do their work, because it would be very hard to limit it when you have to be there. It might even require a job change to become happy and peaceful.

The thing about dopamine is, it’s not the reward-receiving chemical. It’s the reward-seeking chemical. People aren’t really fasting from dopamine, which would involve not making any dopamine, voluntarily. Your brain is always dopamine-ing, ok? (Dopamine has so many functions beyond this one. Here’s a quick nerdy video on the chemical.) Dopamine “fasters” are simply giving themselves a chance to seek some other, more salutary result. You will always have dopamine. It’s the thing that makes you seek food, sex, friends, and fun. You can’t fast from it. You can only change what you do in response to it.

What I’ve found is that, if I don’t have access to that quick, low-cost social reward, when dopamine revs mind and body up to look for something to satisfy, I end up doing things like improving on a Sunday School lesson, taking the kids for a walk, experimenting with a carnivore-ish oatmeal cookie simulation (recipe and proper apology for even attempting such a thing will be posted sometime soon), coming up with better school plans, reading a book, sitting down at the drums or piano, calling a friend or my mom. You know, living. All that stuff I had to remind myself to do before, I’m just doing. I used to use cigarettes the same way! I know this feeling.

It’s not just a habit. It’s an addiction.

Now, when my dopamine rises, it causes me to do something I ought to be doing. My brain becomes satisfied and calm in the doing. Somebody in my physical social sphere benefits. Instead of “influencing” or placating people who probably wouldn’t even like me if they knew me in real life, I’m getting a real smile and hug and pheromone hit.

I wasn’t even completely wasting my time on social media! That’s what made it so easy to keep doing. Unlike smoking, which benefits no one, I could justify my presence on these platforms. I do think of myself as someone with a way of saying things that can help people sort themselves out. I was learning stuff from people who know more than me about pretty much everything. It kept me in the loop for events. Finding runs is going to get a lot harder.

I think that feeling of success I got from interacting positively with a bunch of people isn’t entirely untoward. I have helped some folks in carnivore and running and Christian groups. But it’s not the way I should be influencing the world right now. Maybe when the kids are grown, or something else changes in my obligations, I’ll go back to the scroll. I shudder to think of it right now, though. I’ll put my useful stuff on this blog from now on, as it does not play the same tricks on my mind. It won’t have the same reach, but it’ll have to do.

I think I’ve admitted all of this before, but addictions being what they are, I’ve fallen right back into the same pattern, time and time again. I cannot be the kind of wife, mother, friend, and neighbor I should be when I have access to some forms of social media. I still have an X account, because I don’t even care enough about the site to go delete it. You might be more into Tik-Tok, or something else, but the result is going to be the same.

Anybody who doesn’t feel this happening in their lives is, of course, free to disregard all of what I am saying. Anybody who can get social media (or other kinds of media) to fit into a manageable chunk of his day, is welcome to enjoy the world any way he sees fit. Just ignore me. But I think many, many of you–especially some of us moms who don’t meet with a lot of adults every day, introverted types, high IQ folks with little intellectual interaction IRL, and people who connect well with others through written media–have the same problem I do, and need to hear a little tough love. You don’t have to admit it right now if you don’t want to, and I am not calling any particular person out. How could I?

The next time you feel that bored, irritable feeling welling up in your chest, turn the media off, but somehow just five minutes later you’re scrolling the same page that made you feel that way in the first place, remember my story.

Kill it. You don’t need it, and it’s hurting you.

If you like this post, you can buy me a coffee in appreciation!

Where’s Get Along Home?

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Oh, Dear. It’s September.

I haven’t posted since February, I see. And really it was January, as that was just a repost. A good one, I think. Feel free to keep scrolling when you finish reading this one. I suppose I could offer excuses, apologize, promise better in the future, but I’m not sure any of the words would be valid or sincere. I just didn’t care to, honestly. I’m going to roll out some blog posts, since the mood seems to hit me more often lately than it had before. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on, and a lot of thoughts that I want to share.

I’ve logged off of most social media for the foreseeable future, and I’ll probably want to blog about that. I very much miss my SG frens, so if you’re reading this from over there, please know that I have a list of your handles and I pray for you! I made a really sudden decision to delete all of my social media accounts. I felt a very strong tug at my heart that I was wasting too much headspace on things outside my sphere of influence, and doing my real-life people a disservice.

Here’s a picture of a doggie, probably not waiting for me to write him a blog post.

I have a lot of child-rearing and homeschooling thoughts that need to go somewhere, though, so I’m going to return to the old ways and just blog all my random stuff and things I want to share instead of putting them on Facebook or anything else. I may even turn comments back on. I know nobody knows how to use those anymore, but I can always hope.

Right now, I’m going to go make pizza for the family and have a pleasant Friday night. Just wanted to update the blog so everybody (all four of you who are still checking!) knows I am still alive and not abandoning the blog entirely. I’m well and healthy and I’m going to be re-running the Black Bear race in October, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise! Pray for that race to go well, and feel free to pitch in on the old fundraiser for that so I can keep my shoe habit going.

 

Permission to Be Ordinary

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This is a re-post from a post published first on May 11, 2014. Since homeschooling has become the thing to do, even with families who are not academically inclined at all, I think it bears repeating: Homeschooling is not justified by its academic or career results. Those things are nice, but they are not the point.

Homeschooling is going mainstream, and we’re about to lose one of our favorite arguments for it. 

Homeschooling is kind of an extraordinary thing to do, isn’t it? Even with the rapidly rising numbers of homeschooling families each year, we’re still in the minority (for now). Nearly every weekday outing I take with my kids requires me to explain to someone why my older children aren’t in school. People still don’t think of children staying with their mothers all day as a very normal thing. Parents just aren’t qualified to raise kids, you know.

When we think of homeschooling, we still think of violin-playing spelling bee champions with 140 IQ’s who were just too smart for normal school. And you know what? There really are a lot of home educated kids like that! It isn’t at all surprising that homeschoolers like to promote as much good press as we can for ourselves.

Stories in the news like this family with seven kids in college, all by the time they were twelve years old, and blog posts asserting that homeschooled kids are 120% more smarter than public schooled kids are constantly circulating the web, not because those are our best reasons for homeschooling, but because associating ourselves with such an outstanding group of people easily, if fallaciously, counters the arguments of which we grow so weary.

“You’re not qualified.”
“They’ll never get into college.”
“Homeschoolers are bad at math.”

Just a few weeks ago I had to listen to my neighbor explain to me that I can’t possibly teach my children math in the higher grades, so I’d better be ready to send them to school by eighth grade. (I’ve learned to just nod my head and pretend that I’m going to take that brand-new, brilliant idea into consideration. I really don’t care what the neighbors think.)

We homeschoolers love this kind of evidence that homeschooling “works” because pointing to other people’s results is a lot easier than explaining our core reasons for keeping our children at home. Our motives are good and wholesome and altogether defensible, but because we live in a society that scarcely even understands what education is for, those points also take longer to explain and upset people more often than the academic argument.

I have to wonder, though, if we’re not accidentally making the task of defending our choice harder by using these kinds of things to bolster our case. You see, our stellar statistics and outliers like the “Brainy Bunch” family set some unrealistic expectations for normal kids. The first generation of homeschoolers was almost certainly an unusual group of people. It seems to me that they required a unique set of characteristics–qualities that usually go hand-in-hand with high intelligence and academic achievement–to be able to boost the homeschooling movement from the gravitational pull of traditional education. That first generation had, at the very least, enough imagination to dream it up, confidence to follow through, ingenuity to figure out how, resourcefulness to keep it going under pressure, and courage to fight the courts and social stigma.

As homeschooling becomes more mainstream, though, we are going to see some regression to the mean (though I doubt that we could ever regress to the abysmal performance of public schools). Because homeschooling really is a viable and superior alternative, and for reasons that have little to do with math, more and more parents who would never have considered such a thing before are going to jump on the bandwagon.

Those stellar statistics are going to level out, homeschoolers.  At some point, our neighbors are probably going to notice that some of us are pretty awful at math and science, and most of our children are going to trade schools or straight to the workforce instead of to Harvard. For that reason, it would be good if we kept our debating skills sharp, so that we can explain why homeschooling is well within our rights, regardless of our outcomes. If our best defense of home education is that other homeschoolers are really smart, we are sunk, because most of us are going to be graduating children who become ordinary people.

And that’s OK. Cashiers and plumbers, homemakers and factory workers are every bit as necessary to the functioning of society as engineers and political leaders. Homeschoolers, as much as we cheer for greatness and excellence, and hope to see our children attain the absolute pinnacle of their personal capabilities, we need to give ourselves permission to be ordinary. The rightness of our choice to raise our own children isn’t predicated on our academic results or our children’s future earnings. It is based solely in our right and responsibility to raise our own children for the Glory of God. (Yes, I am aware that many people homeschool without any religious purpose, but they still have that right and responsibility, whether they know it or not.)

If we don’t keep our focus on that first principle, we’re going to make life mighty hard for our kids who are better at bricklaying than calculus. Not only that, but we might find our right to raise our own children, so hard won by the first generation of homeschoolers, diminished by our own focus on the wrong point. We need to speak the language of liberty when we defend our choices, rather than flashing the gaudy plumage of worldly success.

Test scores may temporarily dazzle our opponents into silence, but they will not stand the test of time like the simple truths of God-given rights and individual responsibility.

Why Would a Carnivore Use a Collagen Supplement?

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I thought this diet was perfect!

I recently gave a list of the foods of which my diet consists, and it included collagen powder. Carnivore purists would scoff at a number of things on my list, including that one, even if it is an animal-based food. Why? Because you can get collagen from meat! Why are you wasting your money?  Just include the gristle and chewy parts and have lots of bone broth instead of an expensive powder, they’d say. And they’d be right. You can certainly get plenty of collagen that way.

But you also might not get enough collagen that way. Or you might not be able to eat that way consistently. Or you might just want to be very sure of the minimum amount of collagen you’re getting, and that amount will always vary in foods.

I don’t like to drink a lot of bone broth. I don’t need a lot of extra liquid in my day, and I really just don’t enjoy a cup of bone broth unless I’m cold or have a sore throat. More importantly, because of my histamine sensitivities, long-cooked foods tend to make me itch in unmentionable places, so I don’t want to drink bone broth every day. And the chewy, slimy, gristly bits are–I’m sorry, I can’t grow up about this–gross. So is chicken skin, unless it’s very, very crispy. I’ll eat that, but it’s not happening every day. I’m mostly a beef girl.

Stronger skin, hair and nails. My hair and nails seem to me to be stronger when I include collagen, and it promotes wound healing, so I’m keeping it.

I’m getting older, just like everybody else. 

If only he’d been taking collagen all these years…

As we age, our bodies have a harder and harder time utilizing the protein we eat. We need more protein, not less, as our bodies become less efficient. (That’s a good YT video in the link.)

At the same time, our appetites decrease. In my case, I don’t seem to have reached that stage yet. I eat like a very hungry bear (I almost said “horse”, but no grains here). But I do want to maintain my current fat percentage, and I’m still hoping against hope to recompose away this last bit of floppy mommy-belly, so simply eating more isn’t going to work for my needs. It stands to reason that, if I can get an extra serving or two of collagen in some way that is easy for my body to absorb, but doesn’t add another 6 ounces of meat to my already-full plate, I can benefit from that.

I haven’t gotten too far into that senior category yet, but I am at the age where we start seeing the fine lines and wrinkles. Well, you see the fine lines and wrinkles. I can’t see me at all without a magnifying mirror because now I need glasses, too. Even carnivores are going to age and die. I’m on my way to that fair land!

I do credit my meat-heavy diet for my younger-than-my-age looks, though. Unless everybody I know is lying to me, I don’t look my age, nor do I look like I’ve had and nursed eight babies. When I look in the mirror, I see a forty-five year old woman. But I’ve been told many times, almost every time I go out, that I look ten years younger. I didn’t always use collagen, so it’s probably more the general healthy lifestyle I’m living, but…well, I’m vain. I want to hold onto that for as long as I can, and if a supplement of collagen might help with that, I’m doing it!

Now, if you see me out sometime and think I look my age or more, I understand. I think so, too. But be nice. Let me keep this dream going, ok?

Are there contraindications? Well, you can exacerbate kidney stones and other oxalate problems in some cases. Collagen can turn to oxalate in the body, and some individuals are more prone to overproduce their own oxalate already. And, as with so many other things, insulin resistance makes oxalate problems far more likely, so if you’re on a carnivore diet, a higher collagen intake is probably (in my fairly educated opinion) far less risky than if you’re dumping it on top of a high-carb diet. Nonetheless, if you are doing a carnivore way of eating to reduce kidney stones or other oxalate-related health problems, I wouldn’t advise taking extra collagen. Just eat the gristly bits and skin, like the carnivores say.

Now, why isn’t this diet perfect without supplements? For some people, I do think it is! If somebody is young enough when they get started, or if they had been fairly healthy beforehand, and if they’ve got every other health factor, like sunshine, exercise, sleep, etc., nailed down, or if they’re just lucky and haven’t suffered much impact from their standard diet yet, everything they need, and nothing they don’t need, should be found in meat. But some of us–probably most of us–do have farther to go to get to optimal health, and carry a bigger burden from our years of plant food, and can use a little extra help.

Collagen is one of those supplements that I find more likely to be useful than not.

Are You Scared of Failing?

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Or maybe even succeeding?

I write a blog post just about every time I run. But I only actually publish a post occasionally, those few times I think there might be a thought in there that would benefit or entertain somebody besides myself. I think maybe I’ve got one for somebody today!

 

Me “failing”

Thank goodness the sun came out today! I was getting tired of the treadmill, as it gives me a stiff knee. (By the way, if you know anybody who bought a treadmill to fulfill their New Year’s resolution, and then decided they don’t want it, I’d be happy to take that thing off their hands.) I did a base run of 4 miles this afternoon. I did about a 12:43 average pace, finishing in 51 minutes, and I found it an easy thing to do. My top speed was 8:54, and I hated to slow down when my watch beeped at me to knock it off. I love running faster than I should. This is a character problem, most likely.

Anyhow, while I was running, I was thinking about how, when I first decided to put on some shoes and stop moving so slowly through the world, this speed was very hard for me to maintain for more than a few minutes. Now? I can maintain a 9 min/mile speed for the same length of time that I used to sustain only 13. I expect someday, I don’t know when, to maintain a 10 minute pace with the same amount of effort I put in this afternoon. My heart rate was still a little higher than I like, but I’m making good progress with my Zone 2 workouts, too!

I do know that I’m getting older and I’m going to top out somewhere, but I don’t know where, nor when. I’m just enjoying the journey.

I’ve seen a wonderful improvement in both running and weight lifting in the last few years. I am proud of that, and I’m looking forward to being even more proud of myself in the future! I love this stuff! Many people, maybe even most, do not value what I’m doing in the slightest. That’s fine by me.

I got a really ugly comment a while back (on this Run Dump), from someone who apparently does not love this stuff. Nor does this person like me. The gist of the comment, without the profanity, was that I should give up…something. I couldn’t tell if the person wanted me to give up blogging, carnivore, running, or something else. But it was clear that she wants me to quit something I’m doing, right now! Because she thinks I’m stupid. I felt kinda sorry for her, because the only way you get this way is if you are, yourself, terrified of what other people might say about you. I don’t know who hurt this person, but it wasn’t me, and I am sorry to see a soul that stunted. Say a prayer for “notanidiot”, if you have time. There’s a lot of pain in there.

Now, I’m not saying all that so we can pile on notanidiot. This post ain’t for her. I’m saying it because I wonder how many people out there who might come across this post are afraid to try something hard, afraid to tell people what their goals are, afraid to let others know where they’ve failed, or worse, succeeded, because there are voices like this in their lives. If there’s one like this, there are a million, right? Good Lord, they might all come comment here! What then?

You might have a parent or sibling who talks to you like that, or a boss, or a “friend”. If so, I want to encourage you to do what you want to do, regardless of somebody else’s broken way of looking at you. And it is broken, I promise.

Projection is a funny thing.

If a stranger said something like this to you, would it hurt? Forget about the people who know you for a moment. What about a stranger on the internet, or in a grocery store, or at a race? I’ve made a lot of weird choices with my life, and I am fully aware of the criticism, and subsequent mental anguish, that comes with getting out of step with the rest of the herd. But the farther from the center of your life a person is, the less these kinds of statements should hurt, if you’re in a healthy mental state yourself.

Sadly, for many, it hurts just as much coming from random people as it would from their own mothers! We might even think that “random” equals “objective”, so randos must be more right than people who know us. This is faulty thinking, and I hope you’ll learn to recognize it when you fall into that trap.

The only reason this person even bothered to leave the comment was because she wanted to hurt me as much as something I said must have hurt her. You don’t waste time reading a very long blog post to which you can’t relate at all. There was something in that post that triggered her bad feelings about herself. She couldn’t have those feelings about me, because I don’t really exist. I’m just pixels on a page, until she realizes me through reading my thoughts. I was her random stranger, and she couldn’t bear what I must think of her!

But what she said couldn’t hurt me. It certainly couldn’t cause me to give up!

I realize, though, that I’ve known a lot of people who would give up at the slightest criticism. Sometimes they might give up before they even get started because they’re afraid of being laughed at or despised by people like this commenter. I haven’t experienced that feeling since I was fairly young–maybe my early twenties–because, thank God, I’ve been surrounded by encouraging and loving people who wouldn’t dream of trying to tear me down like that. Even that one person in my life who did try to tear me down wasn’t successful at it, because I was too well-loved by others to realize that I was even a target. I’m grateful for that. Some people never have that kind of love and stability in their families.

I just want to encourage those of you who might have a voice like that in your head–the voice that says “You aren’t as good as that other person.” or “Give up, you look stupid (or selfish, or ugly, or whatever).” or “Nobody’s ever going to care about this, why do you?” That other person is broken. Don’t let them break you, too.

Just go do the thing, whatever it is, that calls out to your spirit. It doesn’t have to please or impress anybody else. It especially doesn’t have to please or impress random people who don’t even know you. Strangely, that is often the person you fear the most! The young person lapping you at the half marathon might be a sweetheart with a kind word to encourage you (I’ve had that happen), or a bystander might laugh at you for being at the back of the pack and losing ground rapidly (I’ve had that happen, too). While my heart went out to each of those people in a different way, it did not affect me. It doesn’t have to make me slow down or stop, or even speed up! I admit I do sometimes have an “I’ll show you” attitude that lights a little fire under me sometimes, but it doesn’t go to my heart as something about me. I know it’s about them, and what’s in their heads, and it ultimately means nothing to me–unless I want to use it for a blog post or something.

If I had given up running, I could never have improved my running times or my health to this extent. I’d have missed out on a lot of fun and a lot of challenges, some of which I have very publicly failed. If I had given up blogging, I would never have known several readers who have become my friends over the years. There would be fewer people in the world understanding some of the things I think I have a grasp on and wish to share. And, what I am most proud of, there would be several fewer Christian babies in the world, because my blogging, stupid as it makes me look sometimes, has encouraged many young families to grow. You can’t take that away from me with ugly words.

If I had given up any of the things for which I’ve been criticized over the years, I’d be a completely different person right now. And I don’t think I’d like myself very much.

Conversely, if I had given up…whatever…I never would have had to hear such unflattering words about myself. I never would have had a stronger, faster person sneer at me. Never would have heard anybody tell me anything I didn’t want to hear about my looks or my health. I could go through my life like that, always keeping my head down, hiding, putting on the best face so nobody could see the flaws, giving up if others don’t see the value in what I’m doing.

But those flaws would still be there, and I’d be no better than I was in the beginning. I would just be fooling myself, basing my self-image on a mere idea that is named “Cindy” in other people’s minds. Why would you let yourself live like that? Yet, I can see that many do.

Maybe you’re scared to do something: carnivore, a new career, a different sport, a new musical instrument, dance lessons. Don’t let external voices–positive or negative–mean anything to your behavior. You don’t want to get into the habit of chasing praise any more than you want to avoid criticism! You just want to do The Thing, whatever it is.

It might sting a little at first to encounter the unpleasantness that will surely come your way from others, but as you see your goals coming nearer, even that little pain will be gone. This isn’t about other people’s idea of who you are. It’s about who you want to be, and who God wants you to be. He cares about these little things, even if nobody else does.

Carnivore Breakfast Waffles II

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This is an updated version of Carnivore Waffles, made with pork panko instead of sausage. I prefer the fluffiness of these, but the kids prefer the original version. The allulose sweetener is optional. It doesn’t do much to sweeten the waffle, but I’ve found it to be a great browning agent!

Print Recipe

Carnivore Waffles

Animal-based waffles
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: Carnivore
Keyword: carnivore, keto, low carb
Servings: 8

Equipment

  • waffle maker

Ingredients

  • 11 eggs
  • 10.5 oz pork panko or crushed bagged pork rinds
  • 2 tsp beef gelatin optional. Improves texture
  • 1/2 cup water optional, do not use if skipping gelatin
  • 1/4 cup liquid allulose optional, promotes browning
  • 1 tsp butter flavor optional
  • 1 tsp other extracts maple, vanilla, apple, etc.
  • 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda

Instructions

  • Sprinkle gelatin over water and let sit to "bloom".
  • Mix panko, baking powder (if desired), and salt.
  • Whisk together eggs, gelatin, and allulose.
  • Add the dry mixture to the wet and mix well.
  • Cook, 1/2 cup at a time, in a waffle maker on its highest setting.
  • Remove finished waffles to an oven on 200˚ F to keep warm until ready to serve.

Notes

This recipe easily doubles and triples to feed a crowd.
1 tsp of baking powder can be used instead of cream of tartar and baking soda.

Enjoy!