Qwerty-itis

Being solely a housewife, housewifing around, is as bittersweet as I ever thought it would be.  It's okay, I like bittersweet.  It's the only chocolate consumption that I have control over.  But not having a mandatory, preset hour to rise, scheduled lunch hour, and clock-out time has me all over the map.  Now, I could definitely see myself enjoying this unemployment if our income remained the same:

• Coffee rendezvous
• Charity work
• Gourmet meals everyday
• Expensive hobbies
• "Lunching"
• Raising babies

Nope, I'm confined to a 5-mile radius to save on gas and eating more rice and beans than my country people back in El Salvador.  Being forced to take it easy is nice on my energy levels, but the bone-works still creak and spasm.  I still clean-up in the same manner I did during the good ol full-time days, in tiny spurts.  I've gotten more workouts in, more reading, more rest, and family time.  But I'm spending plenty of time plugging away at the keyboard as if I still had a job to get out of the house as soon as possible.

My one rule when I got canned was to wake up and get dressed, including makeup, even if I don't plan on going out or felt like poop.  Some days I dress casual, some I get in gym clothes, as if I could still make the treadmill cry.  It makes me move at a steady paced as opposed to PJ mode.  And sure enough, I've signed up at staffing agencies, scattered my resume across the Tampa-metro, and gave monster.com a good spike in web traffic.  In between brakes, I cleaned kitty litter.  They're so much happier now that I have time to refresh their potty box more often.

Progress update:

I'm still avidly searching with hints at a slightly better future.  Not too much.   Let's not get carried away here.  I'm looking for part-time so that my body may live 5 more years than if I had the full-time job, but those gems don't abound.  Administrative skills call for "9-5" days which are really8-5.  What a deceiving term.  Focusing on the Downtown Area so that I'll land in the heart of the city and feel more spunky than I did in an office with three guys burping and farting.  Making sure that this time there is a balanced gender environment, for sure.  I got a go-ahead from the county to take a Civil Service Exam and see if I can squeeze into a position for Library Assistant.  Dream. Job.

I immediately drove around my alloted perimeter and checked out books on the information I will be tested on and have been practicing my typing skills.  It is required to have 75 words per minute with 90% error rate allowed.  Haha, yeeaaaaa.

The next two days I will be practicing my little fingertips off and refreshing my multiplication skills (since I've had Excel do all my math work in the last 10 years).  I find the task challenging and exciting and it keeps my day mentally busier than killing the 30Rock Seasons on Netflix.  Even if I fail this time around, I love any reason to go to Downtown government buildings; and there is always next year.  I want that job.  I'm already practicing bossing people around, telling them to "Shhhhh!", and visualizing myself rolling around in a pile of books when the lights are out.

via blog.calgarypubliclibrary.com

So, what's your typing rate?
http://www.sucss.state.il.us/etest/itest.asp

Shotgun on All Natural vs Organic, for the curious on health

Let me learn you on something new.

For years, America has been adopting little lessons on health and slowly converting meat eaters into herbivorous creatures, as nature intended.  People have slowly started accepting that Coke cleans rust off car engines.  Wary citizens refrain from cocaine and stick to weed.  (Hey, it's better than the chemical alternative.) In my world, it seemed like I was on the vegetarian bandwagon alone, so much, that my insecure teenage paranoid personality wasn't ready to be that outcast.  I ate anything in my path.  Eventually, I said screw that and ventured on my own into veganism.  I got laughs, scoffs, and many reactions similar to the Big Greek Wedding movie...."Ok, I maek laam!"  During this time, people thought I only chewed on lettuce and grazed for berries.  In reality, I spent much toil and money to enjoy an interesting variety of yummy foods.  I raved about how healthy, alert, and energized I felt and people blankly nodded while munching on the BBQ ribs, not really caring to understand the concept of radically changing a dietetic lifestyle.  That's fine.  I wasn't trying to impose it on anyone.

Until recently, I only had one friend, who lives a few states away, understand healthy and natural eating.  The ins and outs of vegetables and grains, the (not-so-secret but certainly not published) nature of mainstream foods, bad habits, and tofu marvels.  In the last week I have learned that two+ friends are now vegan and one is going gluten free.  This makes me rejoice.  I....rabbit food eater....was able to eat a gluten-free chocolate cake among friends.  The scene of the world is changing.

Friends are discovering books like Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet, Suzanne Somers' Sexy Forever featured in Sex in the City and other books on hormones and health, that NY housewife Bethenny Frankel's Naturally Thin, and other diets that encourage healthy and plant based diets, ditching or at least moderating, foods that are not naturally beneficial to the human system.  No meats, no dairy, and if so, do it organic.  While not bragging about it since I certainly wasn't the first hippie to grace the planet and since I'm not even following a solely veggie and grain diet currently, I've been reading books like Skinny Bitch (about not eating crap food) and watching documentaries like the Future of Food (free on Hulu.con, and shocking) and changing the way I eat since I learned how to fight for my natural reaction to the movie Babe the Pig when I was eight. I just knew something lay deeper than meat is hard to digest.  The story of corporate food is what is harder to digest.  Please heat this if nothing else, a hard life lesson... HAD I STUCK TO MY HEALTHY DIET, I MAY NOT HAVE HAD A DISEASE TODAY.

I'm so proud of my friends trying to be healthier and closer to nature.  Not only discovering new lifestyles, but loving it.  I've been trying to share that for a very long time without isolating myself every time I wanted to tell you that your chicken had beak pieces in it or that your cheese is affecting your puffiness.  In relation to what I said in my last post about celebrities okaying certain topics of awareness, this is one that affects everyone, and can be enjoyed in so many personalized/customized ways.  So if it takes Olivia Wilde to inspire vegan eating, this is one time I'm willing to swallow my words about celebrity endorsing.  Go for it.

Here is one I'm beating you to the punch to though:

If you're trying to be healthy, unless you do your research, you're probably still being taken.  If you think that taco meat at Taco Bell is real meat, you'll wanna read this.  If you think eating an all natural carbonated beverage is any different than the average marketed death drink, peruse a little bit.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "NATURAL" AND "ORGANIC". Label reading has not been made any easier as they're trying to vaguely promote through a smoke screen of advertisement claims, with FDA and USDA stamps....read on.  And if this is the first you hear about it, I'm totally taking credit for it.  If you're trying to eliminate chemicals or unnatural ingredients in your food, please consider this:

http://www.live-the-organic-life.com/natural-vs-organic.html

IMPOSTORS!

Cause now I know in a few years, everyone will believe me and not just think I'm an overbearing stickler that now falls under the medical and psychiatrist diagnosis of having an eating disorder: Orthorexia (people who abstain from chemicals and pesticides who eat a raw diet).  Goes to show every one in the labeling business are idiots!

And for those who are not curious enough about changing such an embedded lifestyle in regards to food-for-fuel vs food-just-to-eat, that's understandable.  It usually takes an emotional push to get there.  But I do encourage you to toy with the idea.   Curiosity killed the cat, but that feline had a dang good recovery rate to come back 9 times.  Leaf through these books and watch these documentaries on what you are eating.  Imagine what foods you can eat and enjoy, rather than what would be taken away.  The best book for people who aren't ready for a full on commitment is the Kind Diet mentioned above, which teaches you how to flirt with food.

This is not fanaticism my friends, it's a way of life worth sharing for those who want to be vibrant and radiant after they eat a hearty and exciting plate of legumes, rice, and veggies; not take a half-day nap with nightmares after eating a Triple Appetizer from Chili's.  Click on stuff below.  Click it. 

More articles on Natural versus Organic:

http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=natural_vs_organic_whats_truth_and_whats_hype


http://almostfit.com/2008/08/13/demystifying-chicken-labels-from-organic-to-all-natural/

http://www.organicfacts.net/organic-food/organic-food-basics/difference-between-organic-and-natural-food.html

Link that recently inspired a meat-lover friend to eat a plant based diet...The China Study, for you Dr. Oz fans.

For those with Autoimmune Diseases, pay attention about CRP (C-reactive protein or inflammation) levels. Please enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdVT9UFMFY

Back me up ya'll!

Relating to Reality TV

Catherine Zeta Jones admits to the public she's battling bipolar disorder, so it's okay for the public to be a little more honest about their own mental health issues.  Now Toni Braxton is coming out with a reality TV show (because who isn't coming out with a reality TV show?) on the WE channel to display to the world "THIS IS WHAT LUPUS LOOKS LIKE".  Maybe now people will understand what it's like? Whatever!

As if being a D-list celebrity with no worries about having a real job or wracking your head over where to afford the tests you need to understand health, rights, and benefits, is a realistic portrayal of what having lupus is all about?  I'm already fed-up, and hope the rest of you are, with Reality TV, but exploiting whatever minimal survival stories paired along side with dying fame is shameful.  Having a TV crew, makeup artist, and whatever else entourage may follow you and your ridiculous fame-seeking leaching family members and telling people it's hard to be you because you're tired doesn't extract empathy from people in the real world.  Should it really take the voice of a celebrity to raise Lupus Awareness?  Not everyone with the Wolf Disease jumps on the diseased marathon band wagon or cares to attend conferences about "hope" and "butterfly survivors" and "spoonies."  Certainly not me.  Some glamorize the disease as if it's a culture in the making.  Same with the Breast Cancer Awareness, which has become more of a marketing opportunity, than actual knowledge and understanding of cancer.  Seriously, what truths have you learned about Pink Ribbons other than "it happens a lot" and "it's a real problem"?

Although my feathers were ruffled upon hearing of this show, this scolding one is not truly toward the Braxton family.  My own frustration with my health is the reason over the upset of this edited view of chronic illness.  It's a whole lot more than being exhausted.  It's so difficult to try to be understood when you barely understand yourself.  It's a lot uglier than what the public will perceive while these ladies parade their drama in couture apparel.  Many will think they relate to it, but they won't.    Misinformation about any illness shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who isn't directly experiencing yourself of someone you love.  Exploiting one case to the public will not accomplish much except limited awareness of the existence of this growing epidemic.

I don't want to be a hater.  If people want to expose their life on day time TV, they have the right to do it, but please don't bother with the catch phrase: "This is what lupus looks like." Reality TV...is not real.

http://www.wetv.com/shows/braxton-family-values

Maybe I should just keep my opinions to myself and be grateful that someone is willing to talk about it, even if in a comedic warped Hollywood script? Life should still be fabulous even if you feel like poop all the time, right? Right? (I ask, cause I honestly don't know.)

Luckily, I don't have the WE channel and I don't have to bother with it.  I'm learning to deal with my health nearly on my own.  As you see, it causes a lot of emotional upset.  It requires a lot of humbling toward myself, toward our finicky nature and it's complexities, toward the unsuspecting.  It feels more like a magical illusion than a balancing act, but it'll be a wonderful success when I finally accept this new evolving lifestyle without getting so pissed about how other people deal with it.

Hearing about this new show amidst a barrage of addiction to celebrity lives caught me on a bad day and incited a rant.  I hope the next time I come to this blog is on a good day, one where I'm at a point of acceptance.  For now, I'm glad I had a reason to bitch about something else rather than my own problem. Ha.

Here's a handful of positives vibe to make up for the venting comin at ya:  Relax, relate, release!

For anyone else suffering a chronic "something", how do you find your balance? Or how are you finding it? Do you ever figure it out? Would love to hear someone else's take on this.