The Vaulted Files: Infestation??? Horrors!!

Tags

head lice, Logic Products Group, natural lice remedies

I have a rather insane storage vault of unpublished posts, both for this blog and for my life and love ramblings over at DomAndLori.  Some of them are not just unpublished, they are unfinished.  But I intend at some point to publish them anyway. Here is the first to come out of the vault: 

 

Let me be honest at the start, here: this is not something I want to be talking about.  For the second Christmas holiday in a row, my family is battling head lice.  Go ahead and gag now.  I’ve made a morning of it, myself.

I truly had hoped that we would be done with all this nonsense once the kids got out of elementary school.  Oh, sure, I had seen many a note come home in their backpacks about a lice sighting in their wee years’ classrooms, and I was smugly grateful that it never struck us personally.  Until 2012.  There we were, minding our own business, settling into the new home, enjoying Christmas and BAM!!  We were hit with a one-two punch.  Vic and me.  E-gad!  This is what I get for snuggling my kids?  I took roughly five days off of work to deal with 1) the infestation of those little unseen buggers and 2) my personal trauma/embarrassment/failure as a parent.  Overdramatic much??

To debunk any misconceptions of the nastiness that surely must exist in my home and on my person, I learned the following during that horrific week of wanting to claw my own eyes out:

1. Lice attaches itself better to clean hair.  Yes, folks, contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be a filthy person to suffer the injustice of head lice.  Clean hair holds the eggs better, so I guess, Yay, we’re clean!
2. You don’t just have to share hairbrushes with someone or sleep on their pillow to get head lice.  Lice are sneaky, creative travelers and sometimes where it came from and how you got it is only a guess.
3. There is a proliferation of chemical-laden treatments on the shelves of our local pharmacies.  None of them are natural or holistic, and very few of them are safe for repeated use.  Granted, I almost don’t care if it burns my scalp off, I want to use whatever I can as often as I can to make the hell pass more quickly.

Last year as I was confessing the horror to a coworker, she knowingly stated, “It doesn’t matter how natural and against chemicals you are, once you are dealing with head lice, you will practically douse your kids in gasoline just to get rid of it.”  Omigosh, having now been through it twice, I can tell you…truer words were never spoken.

For months afterward, any time either of my children itched above the neck they would run to me and blurt, “Check me!!” and I would commence to combing through their hair to make sure they were not infested again.  And fortunately, they never were.  But there I was this morning, unassumingly stroking my son’s hair as he slouched on the bathroom floor, nauseated from what we would determine four hours later to be the flu.  The flu, people.  My son is wrestling the flu and I’m thinking out loud, “We need to cut your hair soon, sweetie.  Wait a minute, what’s this in your hair? WHAT THE %$#@! IS THAT?!!!!!!!”

But I knew exactly what it was.  And I was nearly sick right beside him.  Within minutes I was checking the Hubster, my daughter and myself, determining whom to treat and whom to all-out quarantine, practically in tears with the memory of last year.  But I sniffed the tears back, grabbed my keys and a ponytail holder and sped off to WalMart at 6:30 in the morning to begin my journey:

Step 1: Drop well over $100 on every kind of lice treatment on the shelf.  Throw in some homeopathic cough meds and several packs of Ricola, and hope something gives the kid some relief.

Step 2: Treat every head with gawdawful pesticides while Hubster strips beds down and begins the laundry cycles.  I love the Sanitize feature of my washing machine.  It’s great for making sure my stuff is clean when we’re dealing with crap like this.  Forget that it takes four days to wash two loads.  Sheesh!

Step 3: Send text messages to family members whom we have been around during the holidays.  Pray that they don’t have it too.  This brings up a touchy point:  Yes, it is highly embarrassing to admit to someone that you have head lice.  I get that.  I’ve had it twice now and sharing the news hasn’t gotten any easier.  You will feel like a pariah.  But hear me on this one thing: You must let others know so that they can treat and/or prevent the malady in their own households.  Yes, it sucks to call someone up and say, “Hey, great seeing you the other day! I’m so glad we got to spend those eight hours together!  By the way, we have lice, so check your heads.”  There’s no easy way to do it.  But you have to.  And when that person you’ve called is dealing with head lice later, hopefully he or she will remember your honesty and pay it forward.

Step 4: Run to the pediatrician’s office for flu test on a Saturday morning.  Thank God they are open on weekends!

Step 5: Take a moment to actually breathe and read the label on the spray can for the furniture.  I had forgotten why I didn’t use it last year.  Dear goodness.  We would have to sit all four of us plus the dogs outside in the cold while the stuff dries on the furniture, then ventilate the cold into the house so that we can once again breathe indoors.  Who the hell created this stuff?  Monsanto?

Having two dogs and one flu-ridden son prevents me from opening windows and spraying toxic chemicals in my home on a December day.  So I took to the Internet, hoping something somewhere would provide some measure of treatment for my furniture and non-washables.  Vacuuming, steaming and scrubbing just doesn’t seem like enough.  In the five days I took off work last year last year I wiped down, scrubbed and cleaned every surface to the best of my ability.  I was exhausted.  I’ll do it all over again out of necessity, but I’d like some help.

And so I stumbled upon the Logic Products Group, founded by a mom just like us.  She too dealt with the horror of head lice and discovered that there were no natural, safe treatments available.  She has remedied that.  I ended up on her site because of her household spray, which is reported to be safe for repeated use around pets and people, unlike any of the spray products you will find at the pharmacy.  I ordered a bottle straight from her site and another bottle from Amazon with my Prime membership.  Unfortunately, I won’t have the product until next week, so I’ll be vacuuming and scrubbing until then.  Without the benefit of trying the products yet, I am impressed by what I see on their site.  They have general products for the home as well as flea and tick treatment for pets. (Update: I purchased the furniture spray and the lice shampoo.  I sprayed everything down and was pleased with the spray, but did not have the opportunity to use the shampoo, as it arrived a week after the trauma had ended.)

The Nourishing Gourmet also wrote a great post on natural treatments of head lice.  Neem oil and tea tree oil are top choices for treatment and prevention in her post.

So – quick recap – we have head lice, flu and now (oh joy!) a puking dog.  There simply is not enough wine in this house.  I seem to recall a bottle of tea tree oil in my bathroom cabinet, so I’m off to mix that into some water and spray on all our heads for good measure.  Hey – better than gasoline!

Why No Wheat?

Tags

diabetes, glycemic index, Grain Brain, no grains, paleo, pre-diabetic, wheat, Wheat Belly

I had the “wheat-free” conversation with two friends recently, which prompted me to write this post.  Over the course of the last year and a half whenever I tell someone that I try to follow the Paleo lifestyle for eating, they always ask why I don’t eat grains.  I suppose sugar is a no-brainer for most people, as it was for me, but I didn’t always have a ready answer on the grain part.  I had only vague “grains are anti-nutrients” statements that I could not support with any memorable scientific notes.  Not being one to try to force people to my way of thinking, I’d shrug and let it go.  What’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for someone else.  Hadn’t I learned that already in my own household?

Last autumn when my husband was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic I read through the literature his doctor sent home with him.  It recommended low-fat foods, fruits, vegetables and lots of whole grains.  Ugh.  But I nearly lost it when the literature encouraged diet soft drinks and sugar-free candy.  ENCOURAGED!!!   I read the absurdities out loud and then tossed the literature across the table.

“Will you help me eat right?” my husband asked.

“I don’t agree with that crap,” I said, pointing to the literature endorsed by the American Diabetes Association. “I can’t even explain to you exactly why I don’t agree with it, but I can’t stomach the idea of medical professionals telling people whole grains and Aspartame are good for you.”

“Then we’ll throw those papers away.  Will you help me eat right?” he asked again.

How could I say no?  He was placing more trust in me than in his doctor, and I wasn’t about to let him down.  I jumped back on my Paleo bandwagon with both feet.  Dom immediately cut out grains and sugars.  His blood sugar, which we tested daily, normalized at once and over the course of the next three months he lost 20 pounds.  Even better than those awesome health benefits, we were enjoying cooking dinner together almost every night and sharing lunch at home during the workdays.  I decided to make it my mission to find out why this grain-free life was treating us so kindly.

Two of the books I have read in my quest are Grain Brain and Wheat Belly, both written by physicians and chock-full of science.  Admittedly, I sometimes found myself zoning out from all the scientific references, but two things caught my attention and held it: 1) Both doctors referenced cases of various illness and disorders which other doctors could not specifically diagnose – all alleviated with the elimination of grain from the diet; and 2) the scientific trials referenced in both books included tens of thousands of individuals – large scale research.  Conversely, I overheard our local news recently touting a health study in which 200 individuals participated.  Wow…a whole 200 people?  Please.

Even though I had already given up wheat and other grains, these books reinforced my resolve to avoid them.  Some basic facts that strengthened my understanding are:

• It’s not my great-great-grandmother’s wheat.  The wheat we eat today has been so genetically modified in order to produce larger crops and greater profitability that it no longer resembles the wheat of our ancestors, and it wreaks havoc on the body in ways that ancient grains simply did not.
• The inclusion of grains as the basis of our food pyramid (not to mention the sheer proportion of grains compared to other foods in our “recommended daily nutrition”) is not based on any scientific evidence.  It was pretty much decided by a group of politicians in the 70’s (who were likely trying to support corporate agriculture) and simply never challenged.
• Genetically engineered wheat (roughly 99% of all wheat world-wide) can not survive in a natural environment.  Originally created to produce higher yields in an effort to offset world hunger, these grains were propelled into our food supply without any studies on their health effects.
• From a blood glucose standpoint, a slice of whole wheat bread whacks out your blood sugar more than a Snickers bar.  (NOT that I am advocating you dine on Snickers!)  To be precise, a Snickers bar has a glycemic index (GI) of 49.  A slice of whole wheat bread has an average GI of 71.  This information alone makes me furious that the ADA literature I referred to earlier actually promoted wheat products and whole grains for people wanting to manage diabetes.  I guess I should just be happy that they didn’t advise we have a Snickers bar with our diet soda.

I looked at the American Diabetes Association’s website explanation of GI on various foods.  They list the GI of a piece of whole wheat bread as “medium GI (56-69)” while stating white bread has a “high GI (70+).” Conversely, according to the Harvard Medical School, whole wheat bread averages a GI of 71, the very same as white bread.  Surprising to most, a “healthy” bowl of instant oatmeal averages a GI of 83.  I looked extensively at various groups’ food GI charts and came to my own conclusion:  given the extensive varieties of food products available to us in the stores, the data pretty much can be expressed in any light to support any claim.  But I have to marvel at the fact that a whopping 79 million people in the U.S. are “pre-diabetic.”  From my standpoint, it’s easy to see why.

Okay, so I gave up bread (and oatmeal and crackers and cereal and donuts and… you get the picture).  Wanna know what else I gave up?  My ever-growing list includes joint pain, cramps, blemishes and skin oddities.  Dom gave up antacids entirely.  Just a little slip (which we made on two separate weekends) brings back symptoms we would have otherwise ignored in our former selves.  So many health inconveniences were just accepted as a part of life and aging.  But the elimination of wheat (and likely sugar too) has proven that life and aging can be so much better than we had been trained to accept!

So, what do I eat?  Well, lots of eggs, uncured meats, cheeses, whole milk (I’m “paleo plus dairy” 🙂 ) fruits, nuts and vegetables.  We drink red wine with dinner.  No sugars, no starches.  I rely on sweet potatoes for an indulgent carb boost and paleo “treats” for my occasional sweet tooth.  (See Living Healthy with Chocolate and PaleOMG for some awesome treat recipes!)  I don’t worry about calories, fat or cholesterol for many of the reasons cited in the two books referenced above.

And no, quitting wheat cold-turkey was not super-easy.  I actually did it three times before it stuck.  This last time, with Dominic’s health at stake and armed with much more information, I walked away from wheat and didn’t look back.  But I know how hard it can be… after all, I made an Italian give up pasta.

I’m no doctor and I don’t pretend to be.  I don’t know your personal situation and cannot guarantee any results for anyone, including myself.  But if you’re dealing with an ailment no one can identify, or you’re simply just wishing you could feel better, try eliminating wheat and grain from your diet.  Give it four weeks and see how you feel.  It may work for you; it may not.  I’m betting that it will.

I found a quote on Facebook the other day that stated, “Every time you eat or drink, you are either feeding disease or fighting it.”  (Credit: Heather Morgan, MS, NLC.)  I have learned that I’m a fighter.  How ’bout you?

I wish you health and peace.

Where Did I Go Wrong??

Tags

aspartame, headache, wrigley's gum

That’s a rhetorical question, of course. I know exactly where I went wrong.  No need to rub it in.

It all started a little over a week ago when Victoria popped a piece of Juicy Fruit gum in her mouth.  Wow…Juicy Fruit.  I used to LOVE that gum when I was little.  My immediate reaction, though, was “That’s not a gum I approve, you know.”  Oh, she knows. My comment made little difference as she smacked away on it and tucked the remaining pack back into her purse.  I reasoned to myself that a stick of Juicy Fruit was certainly not the end of the world, high fructose corn syrup be damned.

Fast forward to last night at the grocery store, where as I am sliding my debit card back into my purse, Victoria is slapping not one but TWO packs of Doublemint gum on the counter behind me, cash in hand.

“What’s in that gum?” I ask.  She shrugs and emphasizes the fact that she’s buying this contraband with her own money.  Fair enough, I reason. I try to give my kids freedom in spending their own money while encouraging them to make smart choices along the way.  How else will they learn, right?

I pick up one of the packs and flip it over to the ingredients list. Corn syrup, no surprise.  Guar gum, gum base, yadayadayada.  Holy crap: Aspertame.  Acesulfame K!  BHT!!  I feel my own head exploding as I announce the evil ingredients.  “Vic!!  This stuff is horrible!!”

“I’m not going to chew a whole pack in a day, Mom!” she protests.

“No,” I reply, “you’re going to poison yourself a little at a time over the course of the next week, rendering your entire nervous system defenseless against the tiny, steady onslaught of toxins.  My God, you might as well start drinking Diet Coke!  I mean, really, what if you want to have children when you’re grown up?  Is that pack of gum worth ruining your chances before you’re even old enough to want them?!”

Yep. There it was.  Did you see it?  I became THAT mother.  I didn’t say anything I don’t believe, but I said it in a way that I can’t stand, and worse, in front of people who don’t understand.  I could feel the eyes of the cashier upon me as Dom bagged up my slew of organic, unprocessed, non-GMO groceries.  I know she was thinking, “Oh, poor kid!”

Truthfully, though, for reasons I couldn’t readily explain to anyone, I felt like a dagger had been driven through my heart.  Aspartame and BHT were two of the first ingredients I identified as dangerous back in 2010.  Everyone understood their harmful effects.  Didn’t they?  Or had the passage of time and priority weakened our commitment to safe and healthy eating?

Our commitment.  Was it really ours?  Or was it just mine, forced on my family because 8 and 9-year olds don’t have as much buying power as (the now) 12 and 13-year olds?  It was a really low moment for me.

In the car on the way home I tried to reiterate to Victoria what Aspartame and BHT do inside the body.  I ran a short litany of side-effects.  At the mention of headaches, light bulbs switched on for both of us.  Vic had been having unexplained headaches for about the past week, complaining at least every other day.  We had estimated causes to be the change in weather, change in hormones, not enough sleep.  It didn’t occur to me to ask, “Have you chewed any crappy gum lately?”  It’s not labeled as sugar-free, because there is corn syrup in it, so I would have never guessed that Wrigley’s made its gum with the artificial sweetener Aspartame.  But now we know.

Part of me feels that she’s still young enough for me to control what she has access to.  And I do not mean to give that up entirely, lest you think I’m okay with her touring crack-houses as a hobby.  But another part of me feels that she has to learn some things on her own.  She has to be allowed to make choices, even those that I don’t agree with.  My part in this stage of her life is to keep her alive and safe and make sure she can match the effect to its cause in any circumstance and learn from the experience.

I just pray that I have the grace to not be such a jerk about it.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Tags

3-Free, Butter London, mother-daughter time, nail polish, summer fun

Victoria and I did a novel thing Friday night.  At least, it was novel for us.  No one else in a three hundred mile radius would have blinked an eye, but we established a new mother-daughter bonding activity: Trampoline Manicures.  You must realize that the novelty of this is that I actually, in fact, enjoyed it.

This hen party spontaneously combusted simply because Vic wanted to jump on the trampoline and I wanted to paint my nails.  Don’t all wise women just assume those two activities are compatible?  Duhhh…

So, out to the trampoline we marched…into the 90+ degree early evening (I don’t know what the thermostat actually registered because, quite honestly, some days I’m too chicken to look.)  This particular evening was not nearly as scorching as I expected it to be, though, and I found myself enjoying the gentle breeze blowing through the tree branches high above us while we buffed and filed and painted each other’s nails – all in the middle of our net-walled trampoline.

And then we squealed and laughed and bounced each other through the air as if we had not a care in the world for our freshly decorated fingers and toes.  And here is yet another shameless plug for a product I have fallen in love with:  Butter London nail lacquer.  Lisa over at Simple Beauty Minerals (formerly Style Essentials, my fave beauty supplier) suggested it to me because it is “3-Free,” meaning it is manufactured without the three toxic chemicals commonly found in nail polish: DBP, formaldehyde and toluene.  It smells like regular nail polish – it is paint, after all.  But it also has the staying power of regular nail polish, a feature we had begun to miss in our more “natural” polishes.  And Butter London magically causes me to speak with a British accent, which makes Victoria giggle endlessly.

This spiffy polish also comes with a hefty price tag, but I’m sold, nonetheless.  $15/bottle.  Yesirree, you read that right.  Still, it beats the $20 bottles I had tried in the beginning.   And, up until midnight tonight you can get 30% off your entire order on Butter London’s website.  (Sorry to be so late bringing this news to you, but it’s still worth sharing.)  Basically, if you put four bottles in your cart, one of them is free plus you get free shipping.  Don’t ask me how I know that little detail.  😉  If you’re reading this too late for the sale, go on over there and sign up for the newsletter so you won’t miss the next one.   If you happen to go looking for Butter London locally, I can tell you that most ULTA stores carry it, but don’t expect to use any coupons on it.  Also, there is an extensive list of American retail shops on Butter London’s website.  God Save the Queen!

The only downside of our trampoline manicure was that both dogs had gone outside with us.  While Mabel, our four-year-old Labrador Retriever, tried (unsuccessfully, thankGOD) to get on the trampoline with us, Mason, our 13-year old Lab rested in the grass nearby, but had such difficulty in the humidity that he could not walk himself 20 yards back to the house.   He had 30 minutes of labored breathing outside, during which I managed to lay him on a blanket and drag all 80 pounds of him back to the patio.  Five minutes after that, I was hovering above him and supporting his torso while he ambled across the patio to the back door.  I was absolutely beside myself, fraught with guilt for having let him venture outside with us for longer than he could withstand.  But he did eventually cool down – 30 minutes later – in the kitchen, where Victoria lay across him, crying and begging him not to die.  (We don’t mince too many words in our house, you see.)  He happily obliged, coming around to his old self within another half hour, wagging his tail and slobbering kisses on us, and inspecting our fingernails, which were not marred in the least for all the doggy drama they had endured.   Ahhh, Mason…Carry on, old chap!!

(I believe it is proper blog etiquette to note that I get no rewards, kudos or even nods for recommending these products with my lopsided, drooling reviews.  Seriously.  I wish.)

And Now We Juice

Tags

green lemonade, homemade tomato juice, juicing, vegetables

A couple of months ago my parents introduced us to juicing.  Mom and Dad were experimenting with juice recipes and happily sharing their discoveries.  A few days before my own introduction, they showed my husband the wonders of the juice machine and enthusiastically gave him a glass full of some celery concoction.  Dom is NOT a celery fan by any stretch of the imagination, so when he left my parents’ house that afternoon, he was not sold on the idea of juicing.  At all.

By the time I stopped by their house later in the week, Mom had found a website of promising juice recipes and had me pick one.  I chose Green Lemonade because I liked all the ingredients in the juice: apples, lemon, kale, cucumber, and spinach.  Mom juiced it up, and I drank it down.  I loved it.

I loved it so much that I came home to Dom and barked all night long about how awesome that juice was. Dom eyed me warily, since his juice experience had not been as rapturous as my own.  I had to explain to him that the juice he tried had celery in it, and Mom didn’t know he abhorred celery, so future juices could definitely be tailored more to his taste.  “Besides,” I added, “we could make you fresh tomato juice in the mornings.  How cool would that be?”

Earlier in the spring, Dom had marked tomato juice off of my grocery list.  Confused as to why he would voluntarily omit his favorite breakfast item from the list, I pressed him for answers.  He said he had done his own research on BPA and decided to nix the plastic additive on his own.  If you’ve followed the blog for long, you have witnessed a slow progression of understanding on The Hubster’s part.  He battles me until he researches on his own, and then quietly comes around.  It can be a maddening wait, but the ultimate validation is totally worth it.   Apparently, the idea of making our own tomato juice was a winner, because 48 hours later we were the proud owners of a brand new juicer.

We loaded up on fruits and veg and headed home to make our own juices.  I first made the Green Lemonade, which he liked, and I promised to find a good tomato juice recipe that resembled a spicy V8.  (By the way, if you are into juicing, JuiceRecipes.com is a great site that allows you to select the ingredients you have on hand, and it generates a list of recipes you can make.  It’s been a lifesaver for me when I’m staring into the fridge with that “duh” look on my face.)

Eventually I found a tomato juice recipe on someone else’s site that promised to taste just like V8, so I washed up all the appropriate vegetables the night before and had them waiting for breakfast.  The next morning I juiced them all up into this really unattractive brown beverage.  I smelled it.  It did nothing for me.  I handed it to Dom.

“This is just like V8?” he asked skeptically.

“Supposedly.  Taste it.”

“You’re not drinking any?”

“Nah.  You go ahead.” I watched him drink half of it, squint, stick out his tongue and shake his head.  I eyed the half-full glass.  “That’s three carrots, two tomatoes, half a cucumber, a cup of broccoli and some garlic left in that glass.  You done?” I asked him.  He made another disgusted face and tossed the rest of it down his throat.  He looked like he had just swallowed motor oil.    I felt bad that our tomato juice was such a horrific failure.

He kissed me goodbye and headed out the door, saying over his shoulder, “Lose that recipe.  Please.”

I’ve had some practice with juicing since then, and I wonder if I could have saved that nasty recipe with a beet.  Beets overpower everything else, and they’re sweet.  Plus, who doesn’t mind a pretty purple beverage?  It might have at least saved the taste.  I’m on the verge of purchasing a recipe book, with hopes that it lives up to its promises.  But first I’m going to the kitchen to juice up some beets and sweet potatoes from yesterday’s Farmer’s Market.  Yum.

Paleo Progress

Tags

grocery shopping, paleo, progress

You’re probably wondering how this whole putting-my-kids-on-paleo thing is working out.  It does, after all, have the potential to land me flat on my face, or at the very least, my cavewoman butt.

I didn’t want to start them out on paleo before school ended, because I had no clue what to put in their lunchboxes and decided that three more days of PB&J sandwiches wasn’t going to kill us.  So school ended on Wednesday, and then we found our fridge and pantry pretty bare of essential ingredients.  With payday and a resulting grocery trip looming on the horizon, I decided to hold off a couple more days before turning this dietary apple-cart upside down on the weekend.

So, yeah, we are officially on Day Two.  Four hours ago, my family completely hated me.  Four hours ago, we were also standing in the middle of WalMart while foods we used to buy with reckless abandon taunted us from their shelves.  Who wouldn’t be hating during that?!

But let’s back up a bit.  Yesterday we made our first ever paleo pancakes, which ironically got two thumbs up from the Hubster.  The kids did not share his enthusiasm for the pancakes.  They were a messy pain to cook, so my enthusiasm was waning before I ever tasted them.  But they ended up being the kind of pancakes I can’t get enough of.  If you’ve ever had the harvest grain (nut and grain?) pancakes at IHOP, these are similar in texture.  And totally paleo.  The kids ate bacon as they explained to me that the pancakes just didn’t turn them on.  So be it.  Not everything is going to be a win right out of the gate.

Lunch was a little more enjoyable for everyone.  We had bunless hot dogs and homemade tamale chili.  I can’t get my family to buy into the best-for-you hotdogs at the health food store, but everyone tolerates Hebrew National fairly well.  Let me state that nothing about a hotdog makes it paleo.  There are several ingredients that make me cringe.  For now, though, it’s a means to an end, and it represented our first everyone-seems-happy-eating-the-same-thing meal.

Dinner was hosted by my Mom, who rocks steamed squash like nobody’s business!  Breakfast this morning was fried eggs (but I think I slept through it) and A LOT of complaining and whining that everyone was hungry and all they really wanted was a bowl of cereal.  I was the Wicked Witch of the Kitchen, starving my subjects with grain withdrawals.  Waaa, waaa, waaa.

It was with these attitudes and prejudices that we went grocery shopping.  You can imagine how much fun we had.  Despite the fact that my children were bickering through the entire store, that I threatened to flat-out beat them on the salsa aisle in front of an innocent bystander, and the fact that I was abandoned to push my own buggy with a fractured elbow not once, BUT TWICE during the trip, there were some positive highlights.  For one, the Hubster actually started reading ingredient lists.  I showed him what he needed to look for, and as he picked up item after item that he used to LOVE to eat, he grew more and more disgusted.  I think he was more disgusted with the fact that he knew those things were never again going in my buggy than with the fact that the ingredients themselves are dangerous.  But, whatever it takes, ya know?

And, even though we usually despise WalMart, I have to give them kudos for carrying my fave brands of organic coconut milk, coconut oil, and chicken at really decent prices.  Their seafood and produce still leave A LOT to be desired, but I’ll be heading out to Kroger this afternoon to finish stuffing our fridge.

We came home with our still-sour attitudes and blood-sugar crashes to a lunch of fajita chicken, guacamole and cherry tomatoes, after which Aaron informed me that even though it’s tough, he does believe these changes are worth it.  I really needed to hear that from him.  Sometimes I don’t know if he is trying to convince himself, or if he just wants to say something that will make me smile.  But he’s a smart kid and I know he believes in positive change, even if it sucks for a while.

A few notes of confession:  I have not nixed dairy from the kids’ diets because I still think milk is important for their bodies, and a little cheese adds great flavor to some otherwise boring recipes.  I still let them have a little sugar – we bought some V8 fruit/veggie juices to drink – and of course, I add dark chocolate to my homemade trail mix.

If you’re wondering how making this change is remotely possible for us, I found these two incredible resources this morning.  Paleo Plan has great recipes, and BTB Fitness gave a perfect standing grocery list and a ton of info on implementing it.  Worth the reads if you’re interested.

Nixed the Tan. Please Send Chocolate

Now that I have swung my feet over the top of the proverbial Hill, I find another demon to wrestle…my vanity.

See, there I was, minding my own business, perfectly content with my cosmetics and my skin care, with my frozen pizzas and my toxic toothpaste… when suddenly, out of the blue, BAM!!  One little meeting sends me into an information tailspin.  Next thing I know, I’m tossing out makeup, shampoos and half the contents of our pantry.  For almost two years now (gosh, has it been that long??!) I have worked diligently to nix the petrochemicals from our midst and provide healthier options for my family.

It ain’t been easy, folks.  That is one seriously bumpy road.

Those who have followed my journey will recall that I have two predominantly unnatural addictions: my hair color and my sunless tanner.  I worked very hard to find suitable, affordable alternatives that I could trust.  Knowing that it was completely laughable to think that there would be purely natural applications to yield purely unnatural results, at a minimum I insisted on no parabens (hormone disruptors) and no petrochemicals.

Toxic Beauty recently turned me toward Bubble and Bee’s website, which I found to be so full of information that my head spun.  Hopping through links, I landed on an article about the dangers of sunless tanners and, thinking I already knew everything, clicked to have my suspicions confirmed.

Oh my holy stars.  What I learned almost drove me to Starbucks in the middle of Lent.  Or to Thrifty Liquor.  It’s really a coin-toss at this point.  But I digress…

DID YOU KNOW that sunless tanners, even the natural, “safe” ones I have touted, contain Dihydroxyacetone (DHA) – the chemical responsible for the faux bronzing of one’s skin.  Without DHA, your sunless tanner is practically useless.  (Remember my homemade tea tanner?  I rest my case.)  There are a ton of things I find disturbing about DHA, but I am most bothered by the fact that DHA messes with the body’s ability to produce Vitamin D.  You need Vitamin D not only to shield you from the sun’s harmful rays, but also to help the body absorb calcium.  Calcium helps your bones. ..Hello…

Studies show people exposed to DHA usually have a Vitamin D deficiency.  I’m deficient enough in other areas…I just don’t think I should risk this one.  I really can’t afford to break a leg trying to run from the Osteo-monster, ya know?  (For those of you who want all the sciency jargon, the studies are linked here, here and here.  Oh, and here too.  Thanks to Bubble and Bee for laying it all out there.)

Long story short, a half-full bottle of “natural” sunless tanner now rests at the bottom of my trash can, and my vanity will have to find another vice.  Like, fake eyelashes or a surgical butt-lift.

I kid…I kid…

If I have to be so ridiculously pale in the dead of summer, can I at least be a Cullen?

Paint Tips for the DIYers

As I have mentioned, we are preparing to sell our home, so I am painting like a mad woman.  Mad, I say.  Stark raving.  To the point that if Mason falls asleep too near me, he may wake up with a newly sanded, textured and painted tail.  Stuff like that happens at my house.  I’m just sayin’…

Yesterday I had a SuperWoman lunch hour, which turned out to be actually two hours.  During said lunch break, I did my grocery shopping and flew home to stock the pantry and fridge.  Knowing Mom would be visiting this morning to help me with painting, I decided to get a jump start on today’s project and spray a texture onto the bathroom walls I had recently bared.  Yes…me…on my lunch hour…spraying a can of oil-based wall texture.

I am not, as one might say, the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Five minutes and three sneezes later, the can was empty, my eyes were burning and my dress clothes were speckled.  I brushed at my clothing and my hair and ran to wash my hands, which looked like I had been in a marshmallow food fight.

Those of you who are smarter than I am already know that water will not clean oil-based paint products off of your skin.  I finally caught on, thankyouverymuch.

I read the can and learned that the suggested cleaning agent is paint thinner.  On my skin?  AS IF!!  So I reasoned to myself: if water cleans water-based paint, then oil should clean oil-based paint.  Makes sense, right?  You bet your boots it does! I reached for a bottle of almond oil, put about two drops onto my hands and began to rub it in to the white paint residue I was wearing.  And voila!! That almond oil gave new meaning to the phrase “gone in sixty seconds.”  It worked like a dream, and my hands were moisturized too.

I had to share that with you – just in case you ever need to use oil-based paints on your lunch hour.  😉

“I’ve Been ‘Yes’ and I’ve Been ‘Oh Hell No!’” – The Homemade Shampoo Review

I have recently had more bad-hair days than I care to admit.  Anyone who sees me regularly will tell you that my hair pretty much always looks the same.  (Style-wise, that is.  Dontcha go talkin’ ‘bout my color!!)  Last week my hair was pulled up, pulled back, and lopsided on various days of the week. Every morning was a struggle to settle on a ‘do that had a chance of lasting through lunch.  And the problem was that I have finally run out of conditioner – a conditioner that I did not want to replace, despite the fact that it worked just fine.

(Side note to my dear co-workers: if you didn’t notice my bad hair days, thank you.  You are too, too kind.  If you did notice and privately wondered what was up with my hair, well, now you know.)

The conditioner, while promoted as “eco-chic” and even borderline “organic” had more twenty-letter ingredients than I cared for.  I could pronounce less than a third of the listing, and my conscience was working overtime on what that might be doing to my hair.  Likewise for the corresponding shampoo.  There has to be a better product.

This brings me to what I have wanted to try for a year now…making my own shampoo that will cleanse and condition my hair all at once while preserving my un-natural color so that I don’t end up looking like a copper kettle on legs.

(And about that hair color:  I am far too vain to go THAT damn natural.  I am pushing both 40 years and 40 gray hairs.  I can’t do nuthin’ about the years, but the gray hair is another matter entirely!!!  I use Naturtint permanent color about every 6 weeks – I should use it every 4.  Although plant-based, it too has ingredients I’ve never heard of.  But it has no formaldehyde, no ammonia, and no burning or funky smell.  It’s a win for the natural-yet-vanity-obsessed.)

In the vast majority of my research, I ran across one problem:  many promoters of homemade shampoo tout its awesomeness by cheerily proclaiming that they can go up to five (or so) days without washing their hair.

Dear goodness.

Friends, I cannot go a single day without washing my hair.  Not because it gets nasty and funky and such, but because I CAN’T STYLE IT WORTH A DAMN IF IT’S NOT WASHED AND FRESHLY BLOWN DRY.

You’ve never seen me on a weekend morning, have you?  There’s a reason.

So while I am anxious to try some homemade shampoo recipes, I am going to need a lot of support from those of you who have to see me.  Sure, there are some great sounding natural shampoos that I really would love to try, but they are $20/bottle.  That’s not a price I can experiment with, ya know?

This morning I tried an egg-yolk, coconut oil, lime rinse concoction and PRAYED that I wouldn’t end up smelling like a happy-hour special, or worse yet, breakfast.   It felt okay in the shower, but afterward…

You guessed it.  Oh.  Hell.  No.

My hair was remarkably easy to comb through, but no matter which direction I combed it, it stayed in that position.  This is not a good thing.  Plus, after I managed to rid my hair of all the lime pulp (the lime was a bad idea…just a really, really bad idea…) and blow-dried it, it still looked wet.  And unnaturally “shape”-able.  Ick.  It reminded me of the time I used jojoba oil to condition my hair.

I emerged from the bathroom to be greeted by the shocked looks of my children.  “Mommy!  What did you do to your hair?!” asked Victoria, her eyes alternately wide open and then scrunched shut.

“I made my own shampoo, sweetie.”

“Did it work?  Why does it look like that??”

My thoughts exactly.

And this brings me to my next thought…how in the heck do some people manage to go five days with hair like this when I can barely manage to go five minutes?!  I foolishly thought it might somehow get better as the minutes passed, so I put on makeup and plugged in my rollers.  And then I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I got back in the shower and used the Giovanni shampoo to rid myself of this horrid memory.

So now it’s time for you to enlighten me.  Do you use a natural shampoo?  Do you make your own?  Do you feel the need to wash your hair every day like me?  And finally, is there any hope that I will ever find a shampoo or a recipe that makes me both pleased and proud?

What’s a Person Gotta Do for a Scoop of Ice Cream Around Here????

True story:  This week we were due for grocery shopping.  I usually hit four stores total on grocery day.  Before I was ready to go to the third store, Dom offered to round up our Kroger items (the need for beer and/or milk usually gets him somehow involved). He and Aaron headed to Kroger armed with the list of items I typically buy there.  Such dears.

Much later that evening, after dinner and cleaning the kitchen and everything else that has to be done in a day, Aaron marched into the kitchen with a brand-new tub of Blue Bell ice cream.  I eagle-eyed it as if aliens had just invaded my home.  Aaron proceeded to explain:  “Daddy said this would make you mad, but he bought it anyway.”

I was livid.  LI. VID.  Is all this consumerism and change of conscience really just a joke? I turned and walked away, overdue for a little time on the backyard swing (provided the mean neighbors aren’t cussing each other in their own backyard.  That really invades my “chill” plans in a totally unacceptable manner.)

When I finally approached Dom about the ice cream, he explained to me that nothing tastes as good as Blue Bell, and that’s that.  Was it really so wrong for him to seek a little happiness in a tub of Homemade Vanilla?  And what was it I didn’t like about Blue Bell anyway??

Without the ingredient list in front of me, I couldn’t tell him.  I mean, I’m a conscientious consumer but I don’t have a photographic memory.  As I explained to my soul-mate who was looking at me like I’d just cancelled Christmas, something about the ingredient list was a red flag for me.  And anyway, why the hell didn’t he know how to read labels, huuuhhhhhhhhhhhh???

It was a sore subject for three days.  This afternoon in a very demure and non-threatening manner, I brought the ice cream tub to Dom and asked if he wanted my explanations on why I don’t buy it anymore and really don’t want the kids eating it.  He looked skeptical, but was at least willing to hear me out.

“Milk, sugar, cream…all perfectly fine.  Not organic, but relatively natural products if you can overlook all the antibiotic residue most likely entering your system as a bonus. High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup…why do they need to put so much corn into the ice cream?  Did you ever wonder that?  Do you think corn belongs in ice cream?  Besides that, these corn products are 90% guaranteed to be genetically modified products of Monsanto (and thereby resistant to Roundup, which means no matter how filtered the end product, it still comes to the consumer with traces of pesticides.)  Natural and artificial vanilla flavor…what do they use to make an artificial flavor?  Chemicals.  ‘Artificial’ means it was created in a lab, and chances are it was created with petroleum.”

He blinked a few times and nodded that he understood.  I continued with the list of stabilizers and emulsifiers  – which I generally recognize as safe, but still I wonder why they need so many different ones – and ended with my explanation of the final ingredient, annatto color.  “Annatto is a naturally occurring substance typically used to give color to cheese.  The problem with annatto is that, even though it is natural, it is an allergen for many people.  Not the sniffly, sneezy type of allergen, but one that induces headaches and other random symptoms.   I truly believe annatto is the reason Aaron doesn’t like cheese.  Something about the mainstream cheeses turned him off.  Annatto was a common ingredient in all those things that he liked at one time, but doesn’t eat anymore.”

Please understand I am not on a campaign against Blue Bell.  I generally could never completely stomach their vanilla ice cream, but other flavors with all kinds of unnatural colors fit my formerly non-discriminating palate just fine.  (I was a complete fool for Mint Chocolate Chip in our salad days.) I just think that the only way to hold our food companies to a higher standard is to not buy the crap that they sell.  We have to actually demand better ingredients.  They’re not going to get the picture if the “crap” keeps getting votes at the checkout line.

I have a kick-butt vanilla ice cream recipe, and I plan to keep it fresh and on hand at both my home and my mother’s home for when the kids want to eat ice cream.  And hopefully, everyone in my house will someday come to appreciate the more wholesome varieties for what they don’t have.