On the Mat With My Kale

Early; I arrive early for once to my yoga class last night.  The room is dark and full already.  I can't see too well in the dark with both eyes.  So I close one eye and find a corner nearest the emergency exit.  There is a draft.  Sort of weird when the room is 95 degrees and the draft is a balmy negative 5.  There is an icicle dripping from the door hinge overhead so I scoot over an inch.  I crack my ankles, they sound like popcorn, and find a seated position on my knees.  Back straight, inhale, exhale everything, empty, pause, inhale.  My goes to kale.  Yepper, kale.  I am thinking about steaming it, sauteing it, and how groovy it is that it stays green and strong and not soggy like spinach.  I just bought another head of it today.  How am I going to prepare it tonight....
    In walks Ms. Yogi and up pops my bum in the air in down dog.  Kale...  So I have been trying, and my sis too, to eat more raw.  I have to give major accolades for Sis as she is eating only raw foods, no sugar nor oils.  Way to go!  I am still more in the 60/40 zone.  But, what I am working on is a sustainable diet everyday-type-a-thing.  Then, I will try a one week raw juice fast program from the Crazy Sexy Diet book by Kris Carr. Right now, I am working on the whole family buy-in thing.  Okay, Husband is alright with it, I am pretty sure.  Certainly he misses his meat, but we did have some turkey thighs the other night...yum.  He isn't big on pasta so I am sure he is rolling his eyes when seeing last nights dinner plate...half full of spinach salad with pears and blueberries and the other half penne pasta with a kale and pine nut topping. (I say topping because it wasn't really a sauce as I roasted the pine nuts and garlic in olive oil and then sauteed the kale and asparagus lightly on top until slightly limp.)   And, I see evidence of snacking this morning.  Now, of course, he is a bigger guy then me and will need more calories.  So I will leave him to grabbing a steak for lunch from time to time. 
   Now, the kiddos are a hard nut to crack.  Jack is a carbo hog.  But, he is also the one who loves to cook and make up smoothie ideas.  He loves avacado and has been trying tomatoes, spinach, artichokes and a few other green things as long as they aren't asparagus.  Julia has always been a good eater of veggies.  Sharing a pizza with her is awesome as she can pretty much forgo the traditional sauce and cheese as long as you pile on artichokes, olives, mushrooms, and sun dried tomato...yummy.  Neither really like meats except ham and those turkey legs.  So the goal with them is to get them to eat salad...without dressing.  Oh, did I tell you that my salads usually don't have dressings on them.  Who needs that when you have yummy stuff like avocado and blueberries on top. 
   So there I am coming into my final resting pose on my mat.  My body is very sore as I had just had a Herceptin treatment on Monday and the drugs still lay heavy on my veins and my left arm and ankles are swollen.  I am still thinking about kale and what to make tomorrow night for dinner.  Hey, I can do this...I wasn't thinking about chocolate.  AND!  I skipped my nightly tea; I will have it in the morning.  I went right to sleep once I crawled in my warm toasty bed.
  PS  Housewife Tip of the Day:  I moved my orchid near the heating vent, and she is much happier.  She looked so sad up by the window that is more like Alaska the Brazil.  Most houseplants are natives of the tropics.  When it is drafty cold, you might need to move them to a warmer location and water them.  Being watered, not soggy, help them keep their toes warm...if not in a drafty window.

Juicing and Good Grass

   So the rumors are true, I am finally taking grass for my ailment of cancer.  No, I am not going to smoke it, but I might bake it in some brownies.  I have even taken a shot of it.  I most prefer it in a juice.  Wheat grass; liquid sunshine.  In the search to keep myself alive, I entered the world of dietary prescription to create the best inner body environment to shut down hungry cancer cells.  This requires and alkiline blood free of sugars and carbs.  ARG!  Luckily, I have a great wellness warrior on my side, Kris Carr, author and creator of Crazy Sexy Cancer.  I have been following her vlogs and newsletters since I watched her video memoir as I was recovering from my second round of chemotherapy.  I remember the night.  My mom and I actually went into a Blockbuster video rental store, remember those?  We actually looked thought the shelves of documentaries and rented Crazy Sexy Cancer and Living Proof (Lifetime Movie Network movie about the creation of Herceptin.)  We watched the movie as I lay my tired head in my mother's lap and she stroked my hair as if I was ten years old.  We cried as Kris faced her incurable, very rare, cancer diagnoses and sent herself on a journey to kick cancer in the big fat A-S-S.
   What came of her seven year journey since diagnoses is a gift of a brand new book Crazy Sexy Diet.  How is a book a gift?  Well, it is filled with some fun writing which collaborates all her research and self experimentation with her diet to stop her tumors form taking over her insides.  Cool.  Less work for me!
    Alright, so the ultimate end to this journey is vegan-green-juicy-momma to create an alkaline, anti-inflammatory blood in which these cancer jerks starve.  What rocks is that Kris is so encouraging to take things slow, adjust to your needs, and forgive yourself immensely.  And why?  Well, because the brain, the stress, the guilty is as much of a sugar to these rogue cells. 
     So how is this adventure going and where will I go?  I already eat super well.  Most of what I  put in my mouth is not processed, milk and soy free, and organic.  So this should be pretty easy, right?  Well, not exactly.  One huge hurtle is the morning.  I don't have the luxury to make green juice, cook, or actually remember to dress myself in the morning when I am getting two kids ready for school.  Okay, did I hear you say, get your butt out of bed earlier?  I mean we are talking about saving my life and not feeding my cancer with gluten ridden cereals and acidic chia tea.  Not being a morning person AT ALL, there is my first forgiveness.  I give myself permission to eat Casadian Farm's raisin bran cereal with rice milk in five minutes and sip my chia latte, with rice milk, while driving to school drop off.  I will drink juice for lunch, maybe.
    Lunch, a much easier prospect for a green meal.  No problem, salad.  That brings me to the adventure of grocery shopping.  Do you have any idea how much yummy organic greens cost in the center of the 48 contiguous states in the winter?  Okay, I can stay in the budget but have consumed most of the produce in four days time. 
     And let's talk about proteins.  I am learning about green proteins.  However, some great stables of the vegan world for proteins is nuts and those give me headaches if I consume more then a tablespoon or so.  Lentils and beans...not a good thing for me tummy, never been.  Okay, and that brings me to onions, peppers, night shades, celery, and corn.  These things wreck havoc on my system and always have.  So lunch is a salad of spinach, tomato and avocado.  Oh, yes, and a boiled egg or smoked salmon.  Yes, I am still going to eat a few animals here and there.  Kris recommends a 60 raw green and 40 other yummy stuff.  Eventually, move to the 80/20.
   No problem.  So what is it that I am eating, you ask?  Well, it is somewhere between green raw girl, vegetarian, and enjoying the occasional chicken fajita at Chili's.  I will try a few recipes and move towards the 80% green raw foods and juices.  I will find a place for my blender on my counter top even though the real estate of my kitchen is extremely limited.  And, I will celebrate that Natural Groceries carries pre-juiced, frozen, ice cube size, mixed wheat grass plus other good stuff frozen shots to add to my recipes.  And, yes, I am still eating a bit of sugar.  A bit.  I just can't deal with going crazy sugar and carb free vegan heroine, but I do hear the voices saying, "Are you feeding them...are you feeding them with this you put in your mouth?  Is it worth it?  You say yes, then please do partake in this bite of deep dark, organic chocolate.  Just put down that donut and go do a shot of grass"

Caring for Fairies

     The problem with caring for fairies is that they are little and often over looked.  My fairy is quite fetching and smart enough to know it.  So she doesn't comb her hair.  She is temperamental and easily frustrated when she can't get her magic pixie dust to work.  Oh, spangles.  She likes to be little while she dreams of being big; sixteen years old to be exact.  When she is sixteen, she will be brave enough to get her ears pierced and drive a car.  She loves her world.  It is a world mostly her own filled with pegasuses and unicorns under the bluest skies filled with pink clouds.  In fact, most of her world is pink.  Everything is pink, except for the bluest skies, of course.  She has a world to escape to when grey clouds mess up the reality she so carefully tip toes through.   Well, on some days she tiptoes.  Most days she barrels through with tears and voiced displeasure at the craziness presented her.
   Yes, it is touchy business to care for fairies.  If you touch their wings, they can not fly; just like a butterfly.  The tough thing is you can't actually see a fairy's wings as they are so delicate.  So you must always be careful to hug a fairy gently.  Do hug your fairies as much as possible, even, and especially when they are being quite temperamental.  And, most definitely hug her when she is crying and angry at you.  But, don't really believe her when she says she is mad at you because she is most likely just angry at the world or something.  So hug her until she understands that you are here to care for her and love her just the way she is.
   Fairies can get quite attached to their care takers.  Though they will tend to yell, scream, and push away their caretakers when they don't get their way, if there is any threat that the caretaker may leave them, fairies will surely crumb into a ball of tears and fears.  So it is important to not over look these little beings.  And, seek assistance in their care.  Find other caretakers who will watch out for your fairy when you can not attend to their needs.  Make sure these caretakers are kind and gentle.  And, of course, know how to hug a fairy without crushing her wings into bits of pink dust. 
   Always allow your fairy to feel in control and in charge of her world.  Make small adjustments to your life so that hers makes more sense to her.  Give her little jobs to complete that offer immediate results and satisfaction.  This will allow you to build upon her confidence.  Eventually, she will find the strength to take on bigger jobs with great success.  But, be careful not to give her too big of a job or up the anti too fast.  For, if you move too fast and scare her, the fairy will flutter away from your world into her pink palace in the sky faster then you can say: skuttlebug. 
   Yes, tending to fairies is a challenging job.  They will pout and tell you they hate you while holding you at the center of their universe.  Though it is tough to balance the teeter-totter world of a fairy as a care taker, you will reap great rewards as she shares her world with you.  You will discover talents in yourself that you didn't know you had.  And, most importantly, if you are a very careful and loving caretaker, you will be rewarded with a strong and gracious fairy godmother who just might make your dreams come true.

Piss and Salt

I have to say sorry that my last entry was full of piss and salt.  I really had a great day today.  Sure, I was still late to school drop off by five minutes, but no one did cry in the car on the ride over.  Daughter, who has been full of tears when she leaves my side in the morning, did not cry at her drop off at our second school.  Rather, she went in to her classroom smiling.  Then, I went on home to workout on the elliptical in the basement deciding it was still too cold for my asthmatic lungs to function for an outdoor run.  But, I watched which was pretty funny and not too much of a waste of mind madder.  Then, I went to meet Husband for a spot of coffee and off to pick up Son.  I was early.  I did get on the phone and began the journey of working through the insurance issue with the Tykerb.  This was not my high light of my day nor was the two hours over four other phone calls to the pharmacy and the insurance company.  Alas, it does feel good to finally think I have it all figured out.  Just pray that RMCC gets their bill processed for the January 7 date of service in the next couple of days so that we meet our deductible through them, can set up a payment plan, and then the Tykerb (nearly $3,000) is covered under our plan.  After picking up Son, it was off the Daughter's school for a lunch date in the cafeteria.  I really do enjoy sitting with those first graders.  They are quite silly, and I pray they never loose that light.  Returning home, Son was being a little naughty but then admitted he felt tired.  The wind was picking up and clouding our beautifully sunny day by this time.  He was scared as his second story windows do rattle quite loudly.  I know this because his room used to be my art studio.  However, they do profile a beautiful view of the mountains with the storm brewing above them.  We fell asleep for about an hour and woke to snow.  The afternoon was unremarkable as I made those calls and waited on hold with the insurance company.  The walk to school in the soft snow was lovely and timely.  Son is quite entertaining in his bemusement of nature.  Daughter was all smiles, usually it is tears, as she comes out of her classroom.  She asks to have a friend over.  So we dash home with friend in tow.  Well, it was more of a meander with three little voices and my toes beginning to get a bit nippy inside my boots.  It was joyful to hear the play of children upstairs.  Oh the giggles of the girls!  I cook dinner, talk on the phone some more, clear up the issue, finally, and serve to three hungry hippos that actually sat for about ten minutes at the table waiting to be served.  I guess they were hungry.  Their little bodies popped up and down and giggled and squawked to my amusement through out dinner.  Then they dashed upstairs for the "last fifteen minutes" of time together.  By the time Friend's Dad drove up his chariot, my two were ready with their coats on, boots, on and sleeping dolls in hand to head home with Friend's Dad.  Needless to say the parting was bitter sweet, but we were able to scurry our kittens up to start the bedtime routine.  PJs, teeth brushing, face washing, and two books.  Then it is Dad's turn to tuck them in as I dash off with my neighbor for a round of Bunco with other neighborhood gals.  It was a fun night of chatting, and I won five dollars.  We also closed with a white elephant gift exchange.  I unwrapped a beautiful turquoise bracelet and felt pretty lucky.  Yes, today was a good day.  There might be a few ghosts I need to get out on my head, but they are gone now.  Lemon water and dark chocolate.

Please Excuse my French

I go back and forth about blogging about how I REALLY feel right now.  Like, how I feel inside my mind.  I think about "when" instead of "if" I die.  It is kind of a trip, really.  I bounce between making a to do list of things I should prepare like find a good day care, seeing if the school counsellor will start meeting with my daughter to start a level of trust between them in case she needs it sooner then later, and cleaning out all my crap so when I kick it, there aren't a bunch of skeletons in the closets husband and family have to deal with.  Then I bounce back to a (excuse me) fuck it attitude, let me eat cake!  Then I read the reports that transpired over the past month between docs.  I read about my physical and psychological states.  No weight lose: bad.  No weight gain: good.  Shows signs of understanding the impact of current metastatic state and its impact on life expectancy: good or bad?  Okay, sure, I shook my head I understand that I have to have these fuckers radiated out of my head and take a drug that may or may not work and will make me feel icky.  If it doesn't work, I will die, like, whenever the fuckers decide to rule the grey mater between my ears, and if it dose work, I may not be able to be on the drug for, like, ever.  So if I can't be on it for like ever, then those fuckers will rule my head.  Oh, and did I say if we do, wait when we do as it is a real possibility in a just a handful of years, when we do decide to have a full brain radiation I will become some dough head idiot and possibly loose function of my bowels or something more embarrassing like not remember my children's names.  So, excuse me again, fuck it all.  I am concentrating seeing my grand babies.  And no, Kids, you aren't going to be teen parents, you will be 30, I will be 60, I am putting my foot down.  Statistics fly at meat a high speed on some days.  They crash at my head and then I have another, excuse me, fucking head ache.  So then I find an article about a woman diagnosed stage IV in her 30s and sill walking the walk at 58 (http://livingbeyondbc.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/living-through-my-breast-cancer-timeline/#comment-1624).  No, make that 58 and one half because every six months in between every scan counts.  What does it feel like to live scan to scan?  What does it feel like to take a nap with your five year old son because he so tired but too scared of the wind?  And, then we wake up to snow.  Tiny angels floating on a soft breeze, snow.  The snow is beautiful.  I won't die tomorrow.  It might snow tomorrow.  So maybe this isn't the last time I will see it snow.  Today was another good day.  I pray will see the snow when I am 60.  There feels like a lot of really important days between now and 60.  I don't want to miss a single one.  Tomorrow morning, I have my follow up brain MRI.  Time to march upstairs, kiss my two babies on the their forehead sand make sure their covers are all straight, and climb into my bed next to Husband.  Maybe I better take a Valium.  But wait, I have to take the Tykerb on an empty stomach.  Does momma's little yellow happy pill (and I only take them at night when I am not sleeping) count on the whole empty stomach thing?  Ah, who cares?  You do.  Goodnight.

Izzie Stevens - Grey's Anatomy/Season 5

Sex and the City - Samantha at the breast cancer benefit