Flu, living alone, and rereading books.

I have a bug of some sort. Just achy, my eyes hurt, I'm stuffy, and dizzy. Bleah. Right now I kind of think I might be hungry, but am not sure....I just ache...

I'm rereading a book that inspired me when I was on the weight-loss roller-coaster again a few years back...Frances Kuffel's Passing For Thin. I still remember what it was like being over 220 lbs. I was fat, but invisible (and in some ways still am...I'm still fat, no question). The problem is that I have a real disjunction between what I see in the mirror and what the reality is. I'll get dressed, look at myself in the mirror, think I look nice, and then see a picture of myself and cringe...

but I am losing weight. I could pull a pair of jeans off without unbuttoning them the other day! (size 16, but still, progress). That's the good thing with joining a CSA. Even though you end up with a lot of food in the house, it encourages you to cook and eat the fresh stuff...

I just wish I felt up to eating anything tonight... bleah.

Thoughts on food and eating....

So I was reading Mark Bittman's column this morning, on McDonald's oatmeal, and one of the comments really got me thinking, and thinking back to when I visited Paris.

Here's the page for the comment

Lets see if I can copy and paste the comment itself:

hmmm, doesn't look like it. Grrr.

Anyway, in a nutshell, the gentleman in question apparently spent three hours trying to find out why the Newman's Own salad dressing at MCD's HAS corn syrup, where the grocery store version does not.

And really, this, to me, exemplifies what has happened to the eating patterns of our country.

Not only is everything highly sweetened, most of it has corn syrup. Whereas in Europe, most things do not. There's also freshness, and fads.

Even with all this produce being trucked in every day, food isn't fresh. I've had some foods stay ;fresh' in the fridge for months (which, yes, says something about my housekeeping, but I digress). I know I can taste the difference between organic and not, and my fruit intake does suffer in the winter, because there is less organic fruit in the market. There is a real difference with fresh food, with fewer chemicals...

I've been reading a weight-loss blog where she has lost over a hundred pounds. Fabulous! But right now she is sick. She is using Medifast, which is a lot of chemicals, and I start wondering if she is really getting healthy. Its a little scary reading her blog, because she talks about being addicted to food, and binge eating. And guess what? Its the chemicals and fat and sugar that they put in the foods. The artificial flavors, etc. One post she wrote that was incredibly telling to me was that she binges looking for a 'taste memory' for something to taste as good as she remembers....

That to me says that all these 'natural flavors' they are using, yes, even in some organic products, are addictive. And it worries me.

No, I'm not skinny, but you know what? I'm losing weight doing the CSA, because its fresh. Because I have to come up with soups and stuff to use the produce, and that gets me eating healthier.

And I use sugar and honey. But now I'm scared because I read in an earlier piece by Bittman that, apparently, one of the things they have been doing genetic engineering on is sugar beets. To me, that says that the industry said "ok, people want sugar, not corn syrup, how do we go about creating sugar as cheaply as corn syrup, so that we can load up the foods with sugar?".

Unfortunately, I do buy packaged bread, because of my food allergy, but other than that, I try to stay away from junky foods... I just remember being struck by how much the food in Europe is better. How the same products that have corn syrup here don't there.

And the people who end up eating at McD's, the ones who do because its cheap and they only have a limited income... they are the ones who really need a healthful option. And oatmeal-flavored sugar is not a healthy option. There has to be a limit, a control, and we have to get big Agribusiness out of our government.... If they just want to make money, fine, but lets stop subsidizing them on our tax dollars...

On a snowy winter morning, contemplating desert...

So I've been watching some of the footage from Cairo, from Tahrir. And people have already started putting up patriotic, stirring videos on Youtube...

Patriotism

But I worry. Mubarak is pretty stable, he's lasted for almost 30 years. And there is no real successor for him, as far as I know. He should have been moving Egypt towards more of a democracy, but its not happening.

And its very odd for me to watch these images from Tahrir, from Egypt, and see people I went to school with posting about journalist friends being arrested, or how to survive tear gas attacks.

And the media is obviously having a field day with this, particularly after a British journalist was rounded up as well...I had one friend out in Maadi who said it didn't seem like there was really much going on...that it seemed like an ordinary day. So the protests are probably pretty localised. But it also seems that the impetus is growing. And some of this is a result of modern technology.

I think its going to be a lot more difficult to have dictatorships with the advent of the Internet, youtube, twitter. There are more and more devices that record, that take pictures, that document. There are more ways to access these sites now, even remotely. So even if the Egyptian government, as an example, blocks twitter, or blocks Facebook, people can still access it through third-party apps. So the word still gets out there, and is growing.

Even China, with blocking blogs and blocking various Internet sites, can't get them all immediately. So a few people see something, grab it, copy it, post it...and its out there.

I don't think Mubarak is going to go out without a fight, but I think that people now have information as well as frustration. And that is going to make a difference.

And now I'm off to dig myself out of the most recent mountain of snow....

Snow, ice, and climbing over the Christmas tree...

Ok. So the first thing you need to know is that when I'm snowed in, I do NOT spend all my time on Facebook playing Frontierville. Got that? Sometimes I clean! So during the last snowstorm I actually took my tree down, and shoved it out the front door.. (this does have a bearing for later in the story)... I also took down the real pine roping and tossed that out too... (it left most of its needles, which I shall be attempting to clean up until JULY!)

Now, I've been proudly entering and exiting my house through the garage, not the front door. (Why proudly? Because me, myself and I changed the doorknob to one that takes a real key...the previous owner, whom I refer to in the privacy of my own head as...hey, its in the privacy of my own head..are you nuts? Anyway, stupid mcnumbnuts had put an eminently pickable lock in the garage, which made it impossible to use the garage) Of course, the advantage to actually using the front door meant that I would keep it clear and the path shoveled...

So yesterday I try to leave the house through the garage, and the garage door (the one that lifts up so that hypothetically one could put a car in the garage? yeah, that one) is frozen shut. Immovable. And I have a giant bush blocking the front door...which also has not been shoveled since I wasn't using that door... So I go out, climb over the tree and then slide on the ice out to my car... go out, to work, then costco, reconn and the theater... I come back. And now remember, I've been to costco, so I'm not empty-handed.

I try the garage door once more, for shits and giggles, just in case. (and where on God's Green Earth did I pick up the expression shits and giggles? eeew)

No luck, frozen stiff. Won't budge.

I look down the ice road to the door with the tree standing proud sentry in front... grab my bag of Costco goodies (at least I'd had the sense to have a bag in the car!), slipskateslide down to the door. I put my purse and the bag on top of the tree, nestled into the branches, nice and safe...(this is also uphill and coated in ice too...) Reach over the tree, unlock the front door... climb over the tree, trying to avoid the spots where my feet went through in the morning...

MADE it!

Needless to say, I don't think I'm going anywhere today.

Dear Martha...

You never told me what a bloody mess pine roping makes when you try to take it down.

Yes, it looks lovely up...all green against the dark wood...

But taking it down...brittle, crackling, flying pine needles...I have a pine carpet on my stairs!

Single and sick...

Well, I think I may finally be learning how to manage being sick, when its just me. Maybe.

I'm actually eating relatively regularly this go-round, healthfully too...

But still, this is one of the times it would be nice to be in a relationship... to have someone I could call or email (or ask in person) to please pick up some books/DVDs/Orange juice.

Or to make breakfast, or wash the dishes...

Still, I made some broiled chicken the other day, and I'd made a pot of lentils and rice and kale that I've been adding veg to and eating off of....

All I really want to do is just curl up in a little ball and watch junk... relatively mindless tv (yes, MAD MEN is mindless....its really about the outfits, the sets, and the old graphics)

Or read something escapist. Something simple, comforting, wild....

And the dishes will keep until I get better. And breakfast doesn't have to be complicated.

And I always have HULU for junk tv....

Now, really, I just need a shirtless manservant to peel grapes for me... not some silly relationship.

(and yes, I know relationships are about loving/nuturing/caring. I have ended up in relationships in the past where I've been given a can of soup, and that's been considered 'taking care of me'...this is an idealized, unrealistic relationship I'm picturing above...)

Well, in some ways. Because I want a relationship where my partner is going to be aware of my needs, where they are going to say "hey, you are sick, let me get you some tea" or something...

Dear Facebook...

I still like you for the connectivity factor...BUT. You used to be a place where I could have my settings tidy, I knew what they were, who could see what, I could manage groups, I could manage friends. I now have some friends who are not in the groups they should be because there was no way to add them when I added them. And you've made managing friends ten times harder.

You've now made it impossible to search for status reports. (I play Frontierville. Do you know how much wall stuff I have from that? I used to love being able to scan for status reports and see what was up...)

Now its just a matter of if I'm on at the right time. I don't WANT to spend all my time online (even though I play Frontierville). I used to be a person who had a handle on the 'new' Facebook.

Do you not understand? I have people from work on Facebook, I have people I've never met IRL (have I mentioned that I play Frontierville?). I have different settings for everyone so that work people can't see the Frontierville crap or personal joking around, but that Frontierville folks (hopefully) can't see my address, phone number, all that crap. I don't want to end up in the position that someone can tell when I am not home... or when I am, for that matter.

It used to be easy to do the controls. And NO, I do not want to inform the world where I am at any given moment. One of these days we will hear about a rape or an abduction because someone inadvertently let slip some information....

I even have a setting for guys I've met online who are potential dates (which, granted, is empty right now). But please! We don't need to share EVERYTHING with the entire world. We used to have privacy on Facebook, and I, for one, would like it back.