Thoughts and Prayers

  I need to get a few things off my chest that have been simmering for a while. It's been a hell of a month. My partner is out of state dealing with his mother who has uterine cancer that has spread to the base of her spine. I was having health issues before he left, but I felt like it was more important for him to go be with his mother before the end. 

  When I told my sister about my mother-in-law, her response was "uh oh." Nothing else. I had one person say they would be here for me. Yeah, right. I have a broken foot, yet I'm outside trying to deal with yardwork alone. I have several other health issues I am trying to get addressed by a doctor, who did not have an appointment available until late August. I have dragged my sick broken self to the store, around the house trying to take care of things and our two elderly dogs, and our housemate has not offered even once to help. When I said I was having a particularly bad day but need to drag myself to the store because I need dog food, his response was "Can you get me a loaf of bread?" I get that he doesn't drive, but he could have offered to go with and help. 

  My partner calls me "fiercely independent". As an unwanted child, I learned at an early age that no one was coming to save me, yet I am always the first person to offer help when someone needs it. The one person who did help me, my beloved oldest sister, died in 2018. I have helped too many people who have taken advantage of me and refused to help or flat out ghosted me when I needed something. 

 From here on out people can have "thoughts and prayers'. I'm done. 

Father's Day and wishful thinking

  Today is Father's Day in the US. I am envious on Mother and Father's days, as I did not have loving parents. Just the opposite. 

 I was a menopause baby, and by the time I was born 4 of 4 children, my parents were nearly 40, and my next oldest sibling was 9. I was neither wanted nor loved by my parents, and was dumped on my siblings and a nanny. When I was 3, my nanny was discovered trying to leave the country with me and return to her home country of France. She was immediately fired, and I was dumped with an older mentally ill woman who took care of me when my siblings weren't available to watch me. When I was 8, my parents decided if I could walk across the HIGHWAY to get to the babysitter, I could stay home alone. My siblings were all gone at this point, so I spent my days alone with my dog. My oldest sister said I "grew up like a weed", neglected and unwanted. 

 I found my nanny after I became an adult, and she told me her side of the story. She was appalled at the abuse (Including sexual) that my siblings had suffered at the hands of our parents, and was determined to save me. She was infertile, and she loved me as her own. She was going to return to France and claim I was her own child. Her story matched up with my siblings accounts and my own experience at the hands of my parents. I can't think of how many times I wish that had happened, but it didn't. 

 I am envious when people talk about their relationships with their parents. I will never know what that was like, being able to be safe and loved in my own home growing up. I can only stand outside and watch, and at least be glad that some other people did not have to live through what I did. 

A Heart Wrenching Decision

 Tomorrow, Feb. 1st, I will be putting down one of my dogs. He was supposed to be my sister's dog. 

 K'mpec came to us as a foster from the Texas Great Pyrenees Rescue. He was 67 pounds, nearly bald and according to the intake vet, had been chained and beaten for a long time. He was terrified of everything, and it took two of us to even get him in the car when we went to pick him up. Once I got him home he did not know what he was supposed to do, as he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be inside the house. Even though he had been starved he never snatched food, always taking it very gently from our hand even from the first. The signs of abuse were obvious. He had gall marks on his neck where he'd been chained, and if you touched him when he wasn't watching, he would literally fall to the ground in terror, trying to get away. It took me about a month to show him that someone touching him wasn't to hurt him. If he saw someone walking in his direction holding anything like a broom or a garden tool, he would run in a panic and try to hide. We worked with him constantly to show him that he was safe, and that no one would hurt him ever again. 

 During this time my sister had 10 acres out in the country in North Central Texas (We're in Austin.) and just fell in love with K'mpec. We had been fostering him about 2 months when my sister decided she wanted to adopt him. So she paid the adoption fees on a Wednesday, and we prepared to drive K'mpec to her place on Saturday. 

 Friday came, and my sister called. She had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic and liver cancer. She asked me to keep K'mpec, and of course I agreed. I tried to keep her involved in his life as much as possible, I sent her daily pictures and told her about his recovery progress. He blossomed into a beautiful floofy boy, happy and with the sweetest disposition. He was protective of the property, but loved for visitors to come over and give him many pets and belly rubs. My sister died 9 months later without ever seeing K'mpec in person, but I always thought of him as hers. 

 Fast forward to 2025, and K'mpec is 10-12 now, which is the life expectancy of a Great Pyrenees. We aren't sure how old he really is as he came to us a full adult. The vet said he was probably around 3, but could have been older. Last summer he started sleeping and laying around a lot more. He also began panting heavily all the time, which we contributed to the brutal summer we were experiencing and that our central air had died and we were using window units. He hadn't been able to go on his usual morning walks, but when the weather started cooling down he did not seem to be getting any better. He still ate and drank, but wasn't enjoying life like he used to. Then he began having difficulty getting up, and we could tell he was hurting. 

 Last weekend I noticed he was having issues urinating. On Monday I found a mass the size of a grapefruit hanging next to his genitals that was bright red and soft to the touch. I called the vet and took him in, they said he was bleeding from somewhere. They ruled out trauma and poison, and after tests it was decided to treat him for prostate disease. Cancer was not ruled out, but because of his age it was agreed by all parties that treatment was not an option, so no tests were run. They sent us home with several hundred dollars worth of medication, and we hoped that would be the solution. He seemed to be getting a little better on Wednesday. 

 Thursday morning I was checking the area where the swelling had been (It was gone at this point leaving massive bruising.) when I noticed another huge blood filled mass in a different spot, and the back of one hind leg was massively swollen and hard to the touch. I called the vet, and after a discussion they said it was probably time to call the mobile vet and have him euthanized. 

 This is not the first time I have had to do this. With the previous two dogs, they had both suffered strokes and were pretty much 'gone'. K'mpec had not, and is still eating and drinking, and thanks to the meds, able to pee, but still not normally. I can tell he is in pain when the pain meds start wearing off. 

 I found a mobile vet (Ours had retired some years ago.), got the appointment set up, and I haven't stopped crying since. We are in the 'good death' period the vets talk about, after quality of life is declining, but before the really bad suffering starts.

  My son came last night to say goodbye, and K'mpec got up several times to get pettings. Today he gets the royal treatment. He got smoked pork jowl bacon, bread, a fried egg and a small bowl of coffee with cream and sugar for breakfast. Many snacks are being administered, even a little of the forbidden food, chocolate. We are making sure that he is never alone, and tell him constantly that he is the Best Boi, which he is. Tonight he will get pork roast, a can of sardines and other goodies for supper. He's having a good day, he made a patrol of the yard, which he hasn't done for a while, and scratched around a bit in his current favorite wallow, but didn't lay down. He usually wants to spend a long time outside, but he stopped wanting to do that last weekend, and now usually comes right back in to lay on his bed in the living room. 

 I have spent the last 24 hours second guessing myself. Is it too soon? Would he recover if we just gave him time? That he is still all there mentally makes the doubt even worse. 

 I am having such a hard time with this because even though she never got to see him in person, I always felt that he was my sister's dog. My sister was a mother figure, a best friend, a mentor, and a sibling soulmate. When she died half of my soul was ripped away, and K'mpec is the last living link I have of her. I think that's why this is hitting me so hard, it's like I have to let go of the last of my sister and it is breaking my heart all over again. 

 I hope I am making the right decision at the right time, I don't want him to suffer like my sister did at the end. 

 

Low Carb and Why It Didn't Work For Me Long Term

So after 18 months on keto/carnivore it is time for my thoughts about it.

  After losing my eyesight in one eye in 2019 and having my blood pressure and blood sugar skyrocket from the treatment I knew I needed to get my health back on track. After 7 doctor visits with different specialists doctors who threw a stack of prescriptions at me and refused to find out why I was having these issues I realized the medical industrial complex had zero interest in fixing me, because they would lose income. They don't want to cure patients, they want lifelong cash cows. 

 I got a new glucose monitor and spent 3 months poking myself 4 times after I ate anything to see what effect it had on my blood glucose. (30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes), started exercising again and cutting back on food in general and lost 45 pounds. I still wasn't feeling any better so I put my research training into practice and started researching lifestyle and diet more in depth. I ran across Dr. Ken Berry, a practicing medical doctor who was advocating a carb free lifestyle. This led me to other doctors who were advocating low/zero carb diets and claiming they were the panacea for modern health issues. They claimed that as a species we were supposed to be straight carnivore. Um, okay. I double majored in cultural anthropology and ancient history and double minored in biology and botany. Eating large amounts of meat did allow us to develop past the other animals, and cooking it did even more. However, biologically speaking we are designed to eat plants too. 

 Many of the carnivore docs claim that because modern plants are nothing like their original forms that we shouldn't eat plants at all. Yes, we have as a species improved the plants we like top eat through selective breeding and hybridization. It takes around a thousand years for adaptation to happen and we have been farming for ten thousands years. Even in the early days of our species we ate about 65% animal products and the rest fruits and vegetables. 

 Despite this, I decided to give it a try. I was at a point that I figured what the hell, might as well. 

In spring of 2023, I started on keto, then went carnivore after a couple of months. In the first 3 months, I felt great. Joints stopped hurting, gut issues cleared up, skin cleared up, mental health improved tremendously, depression got way better. It was easy, just cook some meat and eat it and eat LOTS of fat and salt.

A major downside, I immediately gained 20 pounds of the 45 I had lost up to this time. Okay, not thrilled about that, but I was losing body fat at a rapid weight. All the carnivore experts say weight will come off. Nope, it didn't.

Next issue was body cramps that ramped up to a nearly debilitating point. So back to the carnivore docs, asked in live chat a few times about it. The answer was always massive doses of salt and electrolyte supplementation with gallons of water. Didn't work, no matter how much I took and how much water I drank.

Then came acute pancreatitis. Twice. If you've never had it, it is like having a razor sharp knife stuck in your body that is being constantly twisted around. Would not recommend. Back to research, and too much fat looked to be the culprit. So I reduced the amount of animal fat I was eating. Which triggered massive constipation. It was so bad that it caused actual physical damage. So back to the carnivore docs who told me to eat much more fat, despite it triggering pancreatitis. Pass, thanks.

Next was kidney stones. The Carnisphere claims it is 'oxalate detox'. Ooookkkaaayyy, I wasn't eating anything that had oxalates for nearly a year. "Oh, it will be years before you detox from oxalates!" SIX MONTHS of suffering with horrible kidney stones and the pain. I definitely was rethinking continuing the diet at this point.

The final straw was that I could not keep my blood sugar above 70. I was born with hypoglycemia, and when my sugar drops below 100 I get waves of terrible nausea, break out in a cold sweat and get very light headed. I would eat some meat and it wouldn't help at all, only carbs would bring my sugar up to low normal level.

At this point I decided to throw in the towel and start eating carbs again. Gut pain improved immediately, kidney pain took longer but finally went away. I do have to limit grains and high carb veg to keep my blood sugar down. I still haven't lost the weight I gained, but I hope it will eventually. I'm able to function again without pain.

Am I disappointed? I am, it looked to be a simple fix for a lot of problems. I was optimistic in the early days since it did seem to be doing everything that the Carnisphere said it would. I see people on interviews talking about how they have been carnivore for 5,10 and even 60+ years with no issues. I'm glad it works for them, and I would say it is worth a try, at least as an elimination diet, for most anyone. It didn't work for me, so I have returned to a lower carb omnivore diet. I am one of those weird people who like vegetables. Even as a kid I loved Brussels sprouts, they were my favorite veg. I missed those during the carnivore months.

One other thing I want to comment on is the Carnisphere itself. There is a massive amount of gatekeeping and toxic behavior. Many of the carnivore docs tout only grass fed/grass finished beef as the ONLY food a human needs. No it is not. It is a food that you can survive on for a very long time, but it is not the be all to end all food for humans.

For myself, I am cooking from scratch again and eating the way I did as a kid in the 1960s and 70s before the influx of processed plastic food like substances. We are replanting the garden we let go during the carnivore months, and I am looking forward to having good fresh produce. Meat is awesome and will always be a big part of my diet, but carnivore diet is not for me.

Why is it so much harder at 60 than it was at 30?

  Aging has its ups and down. There are good days and bad days, both physical and mental. It can be a time to slow down and reflect, or a time of non-stop social interaction. The one thing that no one told me is that being an Aspie and trying to find friends at this age sucks. Maybe it is because people are no longer accepting as they age of anyone who  is different.  Maybe it's just me.

 I have finally started to come out of a several years long depression and illness which was compounded by the Plague. I have been getting out more and trying to be social. It has not been going well. I have reached out to several people I have knows for years, and the responses have been nil. Back when I moved to Austin, new friends were everywhere, it was easy to meet people. As the years went by I realized that the majority of them were only 'party friends', people you only see when there is a social gathering. Don't expect them to stick around when the going gets rough, they aren't interested in sick sad you, or even you as a person, they are only interested in what they can get out of you, and when you longer provide those things, they are away to the next person who can.

  When my sister died, I got 'thoughts and prayers'. My world had been destroyed, and not one single person here bothered to even come by to see how I was doing. They felt like waving some thoughts and prayers my way online was enough, and then they went about their day. I get it. This wasn't their tragedy, and they had zero interest in what I was going through, so why waste the energy? Not one single 'friend' bothered to even check on me in person. 

 Then I got sick and was hospitalized. Nothing contagious, I had lost vision in one eye and I was stuck in a hospital bed being pumped full of steroids. I regained my sight mostly. It was excruciatingly painful, and pretty terrifying. My husband would come for 30 minutes or so after work, but he had the household and all the animals to deal with. I spent 3 days alone, and exactly two people came to visit me, and they were a couple, so one visit. They even drove from the next town over to do it, and I can not express how much I enjoyed their visit and the comfort that they gave me. Radio silence from everyone else I knew in town. Then the plague struck and everyone was isolated. 

 Fast forward to now, and after a year of lifestyle change, I have finally started to regain some health, both physical and mental, and wanting to return to the world of the living. So I tried reaching out to people who I thought were friends. Boy, was I wrong. People aren't even bothering to return messages. It's not like I'm asking for money or anything, all I wanted to do is say hi, maybe hang out a little and catch up on with what's been going on. 

 Maybe it's where I live. I'm ready to switch gears in my life, live a bit slower, quieter pace than the hectic big city noise and constant hustle.  

Or maybe it's just me. Aspies can be a lot to handle, I get that. We're very Hobbit-like, we don't like crowds and loud venues, we tend to obsess and geek out over weird things, and it is hard to find someone who has the same interests to geek out over. Knowing that doesn't make it suck any less though. 

Life, Food and Arting

 Hideyho neighborinos! 

 It's been a minute since I have posted anything here, and it has been a wild couple of years. The plague years were rough. We didn't lose any friends or family, but a lot of people did. Both myself and my partner contracted it in the early days, and mine segued into long form. Luckily our adult son escaped it, although his biofather and biofather's wife wife contracted it. Due to health and lifestyle issues they both had very severe effects, which caused my ex to have a massive stoke he will not recover from and is in steady decline, and eventually took the life of his wife after she was sick for a year.  

 2023 was a sucktacular year for me. We had been on the cusp of moving for a while, with the partner's job jerking him back and forth about it. The stress as well as other things was causing my own decade long health issues to get worse, and I started trying to go through the medical community to find out just wtf was wrong. I finally gave up on doctors when I was met with a runaround of multiple different specialists claiming I didn't have MS/thyroid issues/rheumatoid arthritis/cortisol issues/whatever their specialty was. GPs are worthless unless you have basic sniffles, a sprain or need a cut stitched up. After having one not even examine me (He rested two fingertips on the back of my forearm for less than 10 seconds, I have wondered if that was some sort of state requirement that he actually had to touch me to get paid.) stared at his computer in silence for 5 minutes then threw two pill scripts at and told me I would be taking them for the rest of my life.) and another tell me I needed a battery of expensive tests not covered by insurance, I fired them and began my own search to fix myself. 

 Putting my college training in research methods to use, I started researching. And did more research. And even more research, wading through medical papers, videos, podcasts, webpages, anything I could find related to the issues I was having. Totally by accident I stumbled across a video by a Dr. Ken Berry, and that's when I began to find some answers. From there I went to Dr. Cywes, Dr. Saladino, and a host of other medical professions who have grown sick and tired of the gaslighting and patient abuse-for-cash of their field, and embarked on their own journeys to return to actually healing people instead of creating lifelong shills for Big Pharma. 

 I started cutting carbs, then eased into keto, then finally carnivore over the course of a year. I was losing weight at first, then when I transitioned to carnivore, my weight shot up by 24 pounds (I was in the 240s when I started.) and refused to budge. All the carnivore 'experts' claimed this was normal, natural and I should just let it happen. Body fat, however, was shrinking at an exponential rate. So I continued with carnivore, eating 95% animals products, all the things the doctor influencers claimed I needed. I was seeing a huge reduction in inflammation, stomach issues, moods, lots of things. The carnivore diet was working great.....until it didn't. 

 A week before Thanksgiving I started to feel not so good. I developed a lower backache that only seemed to be getting worse by the hour. Then hours of nausea, finally throwing up while my lower insides were on fire with pain. I went to the urgent care clinic, thinking I had developed a massive kidney/bladder infection. They took a sample and sent me home with antibiotics. After 2 days they called to tell me it was not an infection, I was clear. The discolored urine said different, and then it suddenly occurred to me that I had passed a sizeable kidney stone. I had one 25 years ago, and stopped drinking sodas which the doc claimed was the cause, and never had another one until now. 

 So back into the research, as I continued to have kidney pain and pass small stones every few days. While many of the carnivore influencers claimed carnivore healed their kidney disease, I started to run across stories of people having the same issues as me. After suffering for weeks, I made the decision to add some carbs back into my diet by way of berries. The pain started to ease after just a few days, so I added organic honey to my fruit and homemade yogurt, watching my blood sugar since I had started this journey due to upwards creeping blood sugar numbers. 

 As I continued to improve, I delved into deeper research on proper diet for our species. We are developed biologically to eat and thrive on a range of materials, plant and animal. For me personally I seem to do the best on animal products, low oxalate veg and fruit. ('Fruit' includes anything with seeds, like squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) We've been on this way of eating for a few weeks, and I am seeing weight finally dropping, kidney finally healing, and I'm no longer constantly tired.  

 Now, to the arting section. I did get a third book published in the Salvage series, a collaboration with my partner. I have been working on the house again since we are staying, adding artistic touches here and there as we remodel, as well as working on some sculptures and other things. I am also in the process of editing and doing the cover art for my partner's latest novel in his supernatural series. While I am not at a point to write another book, I decided to return to blogging for a bit to scratch the writing itch.

Things are slowly getting better from the clusterfuck it has been the last few years, and I can only hope it will continue. 

Turning Breakfast on its Head

 With the slight chill this morning I am sitting here having a big bowl of soup with a piece of homemade bread crumbed into it. During the unrelenting heat of this past summer (52 days of 100 plus heat.) cooking became a dirty word. Our kitchen faces west with zero shade and even with the air blasting the house would still be in the mid-eighties, the kitchen being in the nineties due to the sun beating on the wall. The food I was buying was sitting uneaten because it was too miserable to add any heat to the house. Breakfast was the only meal I really cooked so I started cooking the evening meal in the early mornings and eating it later. After several weeks of this I was making stir fry one morning, and it looked so appealing I had a bit.  At that moment it occurred to me that I am a grown ass adult and if I wanted to cook and eat 'supper' foods first thing in the morning I could. So I started cooking and eating whatever I wanted for first meal. Even with cooler weather I am still eating 'supper' foods for breakfast, and it is glorious. 

 Overturning family traditions has always been something I have done. Some things I still do because they invoke pleasant memories, like making pancakes for supper on Shrove Tuesday even though I was never a Catholic. (My mother was but no longer practicing by the time I was born.) Other than Shrove Tuesday, pancakes were strictly a weekend thing because my mother worked full time and was heavily involved in the American Legion and VFW and weekend mornings were her only free time. I was in my 20s when I decided to make pancakes on a weekday, and I still remember how decadent I felt, like I was on vacation or something. Next up was cooking holiday foods on non holidays, like turkey in June. One reason foods were eaten at certain times of the year is because back when I was young food was still mostly seasonal, so you ate what was available locally. October became pork month because fall is when pigs were slaughtered and processed. Produce was only in the stores at the time of their harvests. We got oranges in our Xmas stockings and were excited, oranges were very expensive in the winter. 

 Now that we have been eating non traditional breakfast foods for several years, we have decided we like it and will be continuing. Sometimes I want a plate of eggs and bacon, but that might be in the evening after we had pasta for breakfast. Eating what we want when we want it is awesome and I don't think I will return to adhering to societal tradition dictating my mealtimes. 

Finally some cool weather!

  The first real cold front of the year has finally come to Texas. We had a bit of rain, not near enough to really ease the years long drought, but a nice change from baking heat. That will make working around the place a little more pleasant. 

 Things are usually in flux around the Collective, we try to go with the flow of things as much as we can. Something that has been a major issue for me since the easing of Covid restrictions has been the massive increase in noise in our area. We are situated between two major north-south freeways and two railroads. Up until just a few years ago the noise was much less. There was some from rush hours, and the occasional train going by. Then the city blew up with West Coast transplants, and suddenly now we have light rail blaring horns every 30 minutes, traffic noise 24/7, massive multi floor apartment buildings going up blocks from our house, and oh yes, let's not forget the new entertainment district the city is busily developing a couple of miles away that includes a new stadium for the newly hatched Austin soccer team. Back up beepers from construction trucks start going off at 5 a.m. and don't stop until mid-evening.

 As an Aspie noise is an issue for me. Ie simply cannot deal with too much noise. I would love to move to the country, however we are tied to living in a major city due to the Husband's job, he's in IT and high speed Internet is a must have. We have looked into options, and there are none for the speeds we need, so please do not blow up the comment section trying to tout Starlink or whatever satellite system/mobile phone hotspot you have. It simply will not work for us. We also have a set of criteria, such as specialized medical services no more than 30 minutes away, access to decent grocery shopping, preferably mobile veterinarians for the animals, auto mechanics, you get the idea. 

 We are also interested in heading into retirement debt free or as close as we can get. We are unwilling to pay the redonculous amount of money it takes to get an edge of town place with acreage. The actual move would cost thousands of dollars not to mention the hassle of packing and transporting three people, four dogs (Two of which are well over a hundred pounds.) a cat and all our stuff . Our options now are to turn to noise deflecting landscaping and remodeling. Being trapped here in the house for the last two plus years has really taken a toll on my mental health as well. In a perfect world we would have a vacation house out of town. Too bad this isn't a perfect world. 

 Continuing to develop the Haven Collective is the upside to living inner city. Senior support is sparse in rural areas, and specialists non-existent. There are many adult orphans here (People with no family to help them in their later years.) and banding together Golden Girls style is the way for our group to have a better quality of life. For now the pros of staying outweigh the cons. Time for me to invest in some noise cancelling ear wear. 

Time For A Change

 I have enjoyed writing fiction, the worldbuilding is the most fun. You get to make up an entire universe just the way you want it. I will definitely finish out the Salvage series, I have put way too much work into that storyline to let it just fizzle off. But my true loves are and always have been history, anthropology, and food. 

 When I was young, there wasn't much on TV. We had a whole three stations, and a snowy PBS station that came in a bit more clear early mornings and late night when the local stations powered off for the night. I have always been an early riser, and my parents were not. So by the time I was 6, I was getting up and feeding myself in the mornings. I discovered on the snowy PBS station The French Chef followed by The Galloping Gourmet. These two shows plus the food traditions of my own family and culture cemented my interest in where food came from and why, at the ripe of age of 6 years old. 

 Since cable wasn't a thing at that time, I read everything I could get my hands on from the two local public libraries. Some of the books made such an impression on me I later bought copies for myself. Some of my favorite fiction works have food integrated into the storyline, both fantasy and historical fiction. It was these interests that nudged me towards a degree in anthropology. It wasn't until I moved to Austin and went to work at a museum that it hit me that food anthropology/archeology was such a huge part of human culture.  

 I have worked over the years at various food jobs, working as a private chef helped support me financially in other endeavors such as my foray into the music industry. When I would move to those things full time, I would find I was bored to tears, and I would invariably return to food and my interest in its history. As I have aged, my immune disorder I have had most of my life has rendered me unable to work in the food industry any more, which is why closed my bakery and tried my hand at writing. 

 In a review of my first novel Salvage, the reviewer commented on my detail to food and eating, almost as if it were a bad thing. We spend a good chunk of our time getting food and eating it, and I feel that it should be a pretty substantial part of the story, and not just in times of crisis. (As in 'Oh look, we've crashed on a desert island/the world has ended and we're starving' kind of way.) Food is entwined with history and culture and there would not be either history or culture without food. 

 Food is my passion. It always has been from an early age. I started cooking at 6, thanks to my grandmother. She gave the the basics, and my mother (who was a good plain cook0 and other people I met along my life journey continued my education. I still love learning about new foods and how they are worked into the culture of the region they come from. Writing, while not my passion, is something I am good at. 

 I am ready to put my college and lifelong education to work again but this time instead of trying to be a museum curator, which I had zero passion for, I am going to blend my loves of history, food and anthropology and see where the road takes me. I am considering videos as well as blog and Meta/FB posts as I wind my way through the world of food, history and culture. Come along for the ride, it should be fun as well as interesting, and you may learn something new. I'm sure hoping to!

 Cruise on over to the new blog, The Why of What We Eat. 

A Long Time Coming

 

I have had multiple people I know recently lose loved ones. I have made the calls, reached out like one is supposed to. The last one was a couple of days ago.

This has brought up some major feelings for me. When my parents died, none of the people who I thought of as my friends called or offered help. I had help in the form of siblings and husband, so didn't need it. Several years later, I lost my oldest sister, who was a mother figure and my best friend as well as my sister. NO ONE locally reached out. Oh there were FB messages of condolence, but not one single person came to see if I were okay or needed anything. I was not okay. I spent two years so depressed I rarely left the house. My health began to worsen, and then I temporarily went blind in one eye due to it and got to spend 3 days alone in hospital hooked up to an IV. Exactly one couple reached out and even came to visit. Again, from everyone else, there was radio silence. When I did try recently to ask for help during a particularly bad stretch, I was ghosted so I stopped trying.

For all my life, I was the first person to be there in times of trouble with help, whether it be food, a ride, staying with someone in hospital, cleaning their house, taking care of their kids, pets and plants, holding their hand in times of trouble. I did it because I truly cared about the people and their well being. It had been made very clear to me that it was not reciprocated, I was nothing but a convenience to be taken advantage of and when I ceased to be one and began to say no and set boundaries, the 'friends' disappeared.

Because of the experiences of the last couple of years, I have stopped trying to make friends. I tried a local social group before the plague hit, but every event I went to I felt like I wasn't particularly welcome so I stopped trying to attend. Is it that I only have 'worth' when I allow people to use and abuse me? Or is this a sign that I am really a horrible person who doesn't deserve to have real friends? Maybe so. I don't think so, but then we don't see ourselves as others see us.

Being weird is paying off!

  I had an unusual childhood. My city bred, college educated mother taught me things like finance, how to shop to get the most for your money, and interestingly enough, how to drive a stick shift. My country bred, grew up too poor to be a dirt farmer father taught me about the outdoors, guns, hunting/fishing, boating, building, and gave me a love of reading. There were no children living anywhere near our home and my siblings were all much older than me, so I spent all my time alone, reading and acting out the things I read about. We had a large yard, and an abandoned pecan orchard behind the house where I built lean-to shelters with a rope and leafy branches, pretending to be a primitive person. Sometimes I was a Native American, sometimes a Celtic warrior, a space traveller on an alien planet, or a Cimmerian from the world of Conan, it all depended on what I was reading that week. 
  My parents would take me everywhere with them, and often the older people at the various gatherings would tell me stories to keep me entertained, usually about what they did when they were my age. I was fascinated hearing about life in the country, farming or ranching, growing a garden for food, wild gathering other foodstuffs. I paid attention, and often the older person would be happy to teach me the skills they knew.
 As I grew older, I became even more interested in primitive living. I was born in the early 60s, and the hippy culture was full steam by the time I was 10 or so. In Jr. High I met a classmate who had an actual hippy for a mother, and she introduced me to the good and the bad of living with less, or as my parents called it, dirt poor. I learned much at her knee, and she was happy to pass on her knowledge to anyone who was interested in learning. 
  Freshman year of college, I was rummaging around in the magazine bins at a local used bookstore, and stumbled across a magazine called Mother Earth News. I opened it, and became hooked immediately. I dug through the bins and found the entire first 5 years, all in good condition. I think I paid something like five or ten cents each, the bookstore owner was just glad to get rid of them. I took them home and devoured them. Some of the things I had already learned over the years, and some things were totally new, or things I had read about but never tried. As time went on, I found books in the library on homesteading and other things, and began teaching myself. I learned to spin and weave from a book, hand carving a spindle from scrap wood and picking up spilled cotton bolls on the side of the road around the cotton gin. I got hides from local hunters and learned to tan leather and fur, learned how to knap flint and make tools and weapons, how to wild gather food, how to build a solar still or oven, pretty much anything I took an interest in, I was able to teach myself or learn from the area older population. 
 I was always the weird kid that no one really wanted to play with. I did find a small group of other weird kids in Jr. High, but only a handful. Even in college I was fairly isolated because I had such different interests from everyone else. As I grew older I continued learning new things, and doing a lot of homesteading practices. Even after I moved to the city I continued to read, research and learn how to do 'old fashioned' things. I would buy large amounts of food and can/dehydrate it, grow some of my own food, and raise small livestock. As time went on I met a few more people with the same interests, but it wasn't until the Internet that I really found my tribe. While it is no longer feasible for me to live in the country, thanks to others like me who have learned to adapt and overcome, a new wave of urban homesteading has sprung up, fueled by the economic uncertainties and food insecurities of the last decade.  People have always laughed and joked that when the apocalypse hit, they were heading to my house. With the current state of affairs, they have stopped joking, and started asking how to do things. Sometimes it pays to be the weird one. 

Today is not a good day.

Yesterday was an okay day. Despite the pain of a cracked tooth, I was able to get up, do a bit of housework, ten minutes of Tai Chi, and get out to do some shopping. I ended up going to five different stores to get everything I needed. Leaving store #5, my body decided to rebel, and by the time I got home, I was crippled to the point I was barely able to make it from the car to the house. Last night's supper was a poor choice of salty prepared food yet again, as the pain made it impossible to stand, and no one else in the household cooks. Today will be spent in pain from multiple parts of my body, sad and depressed that once again, I can't do the things I need to, let alone the things I want to.

I contracted mono as a young teen, like many people. Mine didn't even come from making out (Mono was called 'The Kissing Disease' when I was in high school, with a wink and nod.) I contracted mine from an idiot in theater who knew she was sick, but didn't want to give up her starring role in the current play. We all shared drinks and smokes back then, no one thought anything about asking a friend for a sip of their Dr. Pepper. She infected the entire theater department. I was also cursed with a mother who didn't really understand illness or even want to admit it existed, and didn't take us to the doctor unless it was absolutely necessary. By the time I was finally taken to the doctor, I was very sick indeed. I remember our family doctor yelling at my mother in the hallway for not bringing me in sooner. The standard treatment for mono at that time was a massive shot of penicillin. I immediately went into anaphylactic shock, and then the fun began. I noticed as high school progressed that I seemed to feel 'off' all the time, unlike my classmates. I woke up tired and depressed many mornings, which got worse the older I got. Like most of us in the 70s and early 80s, I was on fire to get out of high school, out of my parents' house, and do Great Things, which i had been told was expected of me and everyone else. I got a job like my friends, but I didn't seem to be having as easy a time as they were. Some days I could go out after work and party, some days I was so exhausted it was all I could do to make it home to collapse into bed.

By the time I was in college, I knew something wasn't right. I didn't feel exactly good much of the time, but there wasn't any one thing I could put my finger on. Complaints about how I felt were met by my family with skepticism, when I mentioned widespread pain with no apparent cause, I was told 'It's just growing pains', and 'You're imagining it'. I finally went to a doctor at the college clinic, since it was free and I had no insurance, who listened to everything I had to say, did a thorough examination, then diagnosed me with something called Epstein-Barr Syndrome. She explained that something had happened when I was sick years before and had the reaction to the antibiotics, and it had affected my immune system, and that I would basically have chronic severe mono-like symptoms for the rest of my life, and would most likely get worse as the years went by. I wasn't happy exactly to find this out, but at least I now knew why I felt like I did. I remained active, and able to do most things most days without too much pain and fatigue.

As I grew older, things started breaking down more. When I would go to a doctor and tell them of the EBS diagnosis, I would be met with derision by the medical 'professionals' and told no such thing existed, and it was all in my head, and I needed to be in therapy, which was the hot new thing in the mid-80s. As time went on, and my German/Italian/Northman body, already 'overweight' (which I wasn't) because I didn't look like Twiggy, began to thicken, the doctors added 'lose weight and you'll be fine' to their litany, instead of actually trying to help me. So began my abuse from the medical community for the next 30 years. It took going blind in one eye on my 56th birthday for the doctors to finally admit that I had an immune disorder of some sort.

I have been handed off to no less than 7 doctors in the last 6 months. They all agree, yes, there's an issue with my immune system, but no one is willing to put a name to it. I have been tested for MS (negative), rheumatoid arthritis (negative) and endocrine disorders (negative again). They shrug, and say "Well, it's not in MY field, so off you go, and no I won't/can't help you." It's not like I'm asking for drugs or narcotics, in fact, I usually refuse them when offered, I want to save them for a time when nothing else will work. I'm now out of money, the insurance having refused to cover one of my days in the hospital, because according to them, sudden onset blindness with optic neuropathy isn't a reason for a hospital stay. And at $60 a pop, I can no longer go to specialists to continue trying to find out what is really wrong with me.

I have spent the majority of my adult life being told I was lazy, faking, and lying because I didn't 'look sick', and just 'didn't want to work' and the ever popular 'If you would just do.....'. Yeah. I just LOVE living in poverty most of my life. Really? So you think I am just living it up over here at 56 years old in a house with no hot water, walls literally crumbing, plumbing shot to the point the entire system needs to be replaced, in pain from a cracked tooth that I can't afford to get fixed because our dental insurance is a joke? (Don't EVEN get me started on the 'Well then you should just move somewhere cheaper!" assholes.) Tack on the lack of support system with the cultural loss of extended families, which terrifies me after having to put both parents in a nursing home and seeing the rampant abuses first hand. It is no surprise why so many people in my situation end up committing suicide because 'thoughts and prayers' are a bullshit cop out that we hear daily, with not one single person willing to stand up and help us.

No, we will no longer remain silent

 Normally I do things like this on my Facebook page, but I feel the need to share this further. Facebook has removed and blocked a photographer from their site because of a powerful photo shoot that she posted. You can see the details here. 

 Enough! This bullshit whiny PC crap needs to stop now! This is totally BS that a bunch of crybaby titty babies with sand in their vaginas are too busy sticking their fat fucking noses in everyone else's business. Don't want to view the pics? The learn to ducking use that little x on the upper corner TO CLOSE THE DAMN PICTURE! And if I hear one more rant about "What about the childreeeen???" I am going to go Pulp Fiction on their asses. Maybe if you educated your children instead of trying to keep them from knowing how the world works, there wouldn't be as many teen pregnancies, drug over doses, and suicides from bullying. 

 The world is a hard scary place, and while yes, children do not need to be exposed to all the horrors that it holds until they are able to understand it, it is past time to stop trying to keep our entire society in a state of extended childhood. Grow the fuck up, learn to deal with your problems instead of hiding them and drugging them away, because that solves nothing. NOTHING. 

July Day Trip

 For our July day trip, we rolled a 4 sided die and came up with the direction of northeast, and this morning we loaded up and headed out in a general northeasterly direction meandering out of Austin. 
 Our first stop was the town of New Sweden, a wide spot in the road. The only thing of note that we could find was the New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church out in the middle of nowhere.

 Next stop was Coupland, population 298, home of the Old Coupland Inn and Dance Hall. 

 Next door to that is the other main tourist attraction in town, the former train station. 

 It's a museum now, I think. There weren't any signs of it being open, but there was a case with some old items in it inside. 

Coupland is also the birthplace of Morgan C. Hamilton. Exciting. 

 Leaving Coupland we headed north on 95 to Taylor, 8 miles up the road. The countryside out here is flat, mostly farmland growing maize and hay. Boooring to look at. 

 Taylor is a big larger town, about 17,000 people. There are definite signs of growth, as it is one of the hottest new bedroom cities to both Austin and Georgetown. The old downtown district still had some cool old buildings, but it looks like they are quickly being gentrified with new construction. 

The original bank building for the area. It's all boarded up now. What a badass home that would make for someone with the $$ to rehab it. 

 After our bit of sightseeing, we headed to Louie Mueller BBQ, owned by the Mueller family for three generations. For my blog post and review of that, click here. 

 Sorry about the fuzzy pic, I didn't take it. 

 Our trip home took us through Hutto, where they are frantically building to handle the overflow from Austin. We did stop at a nice little veg stand outside of Hutto and picked up a few things for supper. 

 All in all, a nice quiet little half-day trip. I look forward to the August trip! 

Sadness and Anger

 Lately the news seems to be all bad. The Stamford Rapist, and now the Pulse shooting. It seems that things are getting progressively worse, not better since the Great Recession. The country has been divided socially and economically for decades now, with the poor getting poorer and the rich dodging the massive amount of taxes they should be paying. Reading last month about the atrocities that American companies have perpetrated on Central America, it makes me sick. The people are being exploited, and the environment will take generations to recover, if it ever does.

 Westboro Baptist Church is speeding their way to Florida right now, to vomit their hate all over the grieving community. People carp on 'free speech', however, they have no clue what it is, exactly. Constitutional free speech simply means that you can criticize the government without fear of being snatched up and sent to prison or worse.What is does not do is allow you to say whatever you damn well please without repercussions. I find it thoroughly amusing that every member of Westboro will be going straight to their Hell, express lane. And they don't even see the irony. When a mother can't even feed her baby in public without some ignorant fucknut screaming "WHORE", it is past time for us to retake our country.

 As much as I admire the people preaching love and peace, remember that it took violence at Stonewall to get the message across that we will not just lay down and let the government and worthless pieces of shit like Westboro stomp all over us. Stay strong sisters and brothers, and we will overcome. 

Old World Customs

I grew up for my first 10 years in an Italian household. My grandfather Pete was the uncontested head of the family, even my father made it a point to never go against him. I spent much of my time hanging out in his shop, watching him work (He was a blacksmith.), and listening to what he had to say. 

 Papa was raised in Chicago, in the area known as Little Italy. My great-grandfather had immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s, and my grandfather was one of the children born here. He was an unusual man, he left home at 13 after being molested by a Catholic priest, hitchhiked to New Orleans, and went to work on a banana boat going back and forth to South America. When WWI broke out, he lied about his age like so many young men, and joined the Army at 15. He ended up in the cavalry, where he learned the blacksmith trade. He shipped out almost immediately to Europe, saw 13 major engagements, and was mustard gassed twice. (No one to my knowledge ever saw him naked except his doctor.) He met a German girl of 16, fell head over heels in love, married her and spent five years in Ochtendung with the occupation forces, waiting to get my grandmother's papers so she could travel to the 
U.S. 
 
 My grandfather had a very interesting outlook on life. He was generous to a fault, but when he felt he had been wronged would cut a person off in a heartbeat, and never help them or even acknowledge their presence again. One of his favorite phrases was "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." Their house in Chicago had the kitchen in the basement, and my grandmother had a table set up at all times to feed hungry people during the Depression. The hobos who traveled around looking for work marked the house with symbols showing that generous people lived there. I was taught that if someone is hungry, even if we didn't have much, we shared what we had, with the unspoken understanding that they would do the same. 

 As I have gotten older, and the world has changed, this standard no longer applies here in America. Everyone is out for themselves, and screw the rest. There are a few pockets of us still around, and usually we are called old fashioned, hippies, or even rubes, because we are still willing to help out others in times of need. I still believe, despite having been burned time and again, that it is my duty to do so. Sadly, this is seldom, if ever, reciprocated. Sometimes people mistake my generosity for weakness, and when they try to take advantage of me, they are totally surprised to find themselves cut off. I think the rest have good intentions, but they weren't raised in that type of culture, and don't really comprehend that kind of a give and take relationship. The relationships I do have like that are all with people who were raised in a similar culture, and understand it on a subconscious level.  These really and truly are the friends that you can call at 3 in the morning, and they will be there. There was a time when people had large family/tribe units to rely on, but most times that is no longer the case. People are roaming further from their families following jobs, college, romance, and are not returning to the familial areas like they used to, so those connections are being lost, and we are having to wade through a sea of posers to find those like ourselves, to create our intentional family, the people we can rely on to have our backs in times of need. Sad that this is no longer the norm in our society, but looked upon as a colloquialism, a throw back, old fashioned. 

 

End of an Era

 Within the last 3 weeks, we have had two holidays, and three upheavals. We celebrated our anniversary and my birthday, and in between the two, S got laid off by AT&T after being one of the top 1% in his department for nearly 11 years. Rather than try to return to the call center, he has decided to move forward, rather than back, and look for a job in the computer industry, which is the field of his degree. 

 I had decided to close the Pagan shop, and scale back the bakery to my current customer base several weeks before this happened. Instead of trying to open back up, I too have decided to shake things up, and finally get around to writing. I was published in my younger days, and with self publishing, writers are no longer tied to a publishing house, fielding weeks/years of rejection letters, and being under the editor and agent's thumbs. This will be my first foray into fiction, as previously I wrote research papers and a bit of bad poetry, which none the less managed to get put into print, long before home computers were a thing. 

 Number three hit last week was our son informing us he was quitting college to find a dead end minimum wage job. I am super bummed that his biofather is letting him get away with this. Why the man wanted a child in the first place, I will never know, since he takes zero interest in what W is doing. They have given him little help in the year he has lived with them, and he is refusing to move home so he can get his life together. I'm sure he's going to show up on my doorstep at 28 with no job, no education, and no where to live, and I will have to fix my ex's fuck up once again. 

 So at 52, I am once again striking out to new territory. Brave new world! 
 

Whyever did I think this was a good idea?

 It's May, it's May, the lusty month of May......

 Yes, I tend to revert to my musical theater days when I haven't had much sleep.

  Our newly formed Kindred had its first ritual, Valborg, the spring celebration. We invited some of the members of a local Druid Grove we are considering Hearthkinning with, and it was a good ritual and a pleasant evening. Shawn and I did manage to make it to the dawn ritual as well. 

 It has been a long time (Close to 10 years.) since I have had to deal with people in more than a very limited social setting. I do enjoy social gatherings, but I try really hard to not get sucked into people's lives and drama, because it saps what limited energy I have that I really need to other things. Shawn is keen on the hearthkin thing, but after the events of the last couple of weeks, I am thinking that for me, this is might not be such a good idea. There has been already some fairly major drama that I have been sucked into, and I know that becoming the clan matriarch to a bunch of baby Pagans yet again means that I must be involved in their personal lives to an extent that I am not sure I am willing to take on at this time, not to mention the inevitable politics that arise in any group of people that numbers more than two.

 Time to withdraw for a time and think on things.
 

Children and time

 Talking to a friend this morning, and she commented that she was suffering from what I like to call "Mommy burnout syndrome". Her oldest is entering puberty, which is such a fun age in a young person's like. NOT! (Every mother out there who has lived with a teenager is nodding their head right now.) 

 Mommy burnout happens right about the time puberty hits. Your precious sweet little baby who you cared for through earaches, broken toys, the Terrible Twos and the start of school becomes a demon possessed spawn of evil, and it happens so fast you are left sitting in the dust thinking "What the hell just happened?" 

  During this period, nothing you can say or do is right, and unfortunately, this is the time when the little heathens NEED to listen to the wisdom you have to impart to them, things they are going to need in their young adult life. Too bad their ears are stopped up by hormones and not a damn thing you say is really going to sink in. Like the line in True Lies, their parents are now Axel Rose and Madonna, or whatever teen pop icon is out there at the time. 

  In tribal societies, it is common for adolescents to be fostered by another adult, (This does not mean the same thing as it does in modern Western society.) since they will more often listen to someone who is not their parent. This foster parent is the one responsible for teaching them the things they need to be functioning adults. The foster parent also is someone the young person can go to with issues they wouldn't feel comfortable talking to their parents about, like dating/relationship/sex issues. 

 In modern Western society, we do not have that safety net of being able to hand off our teenagers when they hit the point that even the simplest thing sets them off, like asking what they want for supper or how their day was. This causes the Mommy Burnout (Daddies get it too, but not as bad unless they are the primary caretaker.) that is so prevelent today. We really need to be able to hand off our teens at least part of the time to someone who they will actually listen to. Most people expect the school system to do so, and while many educators are wonderful in helping, but they can not give the one-on-one attention a developing young person needs, their time demands are so massive. In the lucky families, there is often a relative willing and able to take on the task, but since WWII, the nuclear family being pushed as 'the norm', the tribal aspect of family was lost. Due to the economy over the last several years, generational living is becoming more common in this country again, where the family stays together, with the older retired relatives taking care of the children while the younger family members go out and earn a living.

 If you don't have someone you can hand your child off to when they are behaving like Bevis and Butthead, I have had parents tell me that things like summer camp and activities like hobby/interest groups help relieve that constant barrage of hormones that we are forced to endure. if you are currently raising an adolescent, I feel for you, been there, done that. The good news is usually by their mid-twenties they will level out and become quasi-human adults. Just remember, this too shall pass. Take a deep breath, hang on to your hat, and good luck!  

 

Things Proceeding Apace

 Now that we are out and about in the Pagan community again, we are needing space to do Pagan things. So after looking at the back space that we only use for compost and storage, I have decided to build a Temple and guesthouse. This is the space as it looks now: 

 It's pretty rough at the moment, but I think it has the potential to be a really cool and unusual ritual space. I'll post as things progress.