Now Go With Me On This

It's February, and I haven't gotten sick once this winter.
That, my friends, is highly unusual.
Do you know why I think that is?
Well in referring back to my plan at the beginning of the year, I have made it a point to bring my lunch to work almost every day. In addition, we have not been eating out nearly as much as we usually have. Although when we eat out, we usually eat in, meaning we'll get pizza and wings, watch a movie, and all is right with the world.
Last night after my eldest daughter commented on how bad my hair looked, she also noted that it looked like I had lost weight.
Well first, thanks a lot, and second, thanks! But to be fair, I was wearing black, and the lights were dim in the lobby of the building, so what she might have thought was shadow was actually an extension of my hips and a**. But thanks again anyway. I kind of think so too.
For my red headed friend and I, bringing lunch to work has become almost a support group of sorts for each other. Sure we enjoy the occasional pizza on a Friday when we and our co-workers gather around the counter, ensuring that our collective girth maintains the upright position of said one ton counter, and subsequently gorge ourselves.
The rest of the time, however, we eat at our desks.
And we eat (relatively) healthy meals!
I have used a vegetable stock recipe that my red headed friend has been using for years as the basis for most of my chicken or turkey soups (maybe she'll share it with us?), but I like a good cream soup too.
Not being lactose-intolerant is a blessing, and if you are, my apologies for this blatant appreciation of foodstuff that derives from cow's milk.
I love Panera Bread - mostly for their bacon turkey bravo sandwiches, but also because I love their broccoli soup.
Because they are an extremely expensive eatery (at least I think so, $60 or so for five people? that's high in my book, but what do I know, I'm sooo provincial), and also because the closest restaurant is 12 miles away, I don't eat there as much as I used to (like when we lived in Northern Virginia and thought nothing of driving 12 miles in very heavy traffic to go places). New York State will change you (or maybe it's the cold weather and the desire to hibernate...or laziness).
So when I picked up a big bag of broccoli at the local farm market just before Christmas, I knew that I wanted to make some broccoli soup. After all, I have a freezer to fill.
It was late broccoli, and they were labeled as seconds (meaning, I think, some parts were starting to become a tad discolored, or yellow), but a bag with about 10 heads of broccoli cost about five dollars or so.
I came home and immediately started looking for a good broccoli soup recipe - cheese in the soup was not necessary, but I wanted a creamy soup.
I found this one on Allrecipes:

Best Broccoli Soup
By Carolyn Weinberg

2 cups water
4 cups chopped fresh broccoli
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped onion
6 tablespoons butter or margarine
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon onion salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt


In a Dutch oven or soup kettle, bring water to boil. Add broccoli, celery and carrots; boil 2-3 minutes. Drain; set vegetables aside. In the same kettle, saute onion in butter until tender. Stir in flour to form a smooth paste. Gradually add the broth and milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil; boil and stir for 1 minute. Add vegetables and remaining ingredients. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 30-40 minutes or until vegetables are tender.


What I like about the Allrecipes site is that you can also manipulate the ingredients to reflect amounts required for a larger, or smaller number of servings. For the first batch I made enough soup to feed 25 people.
Why? Do I have to tell you again? Really? I have a freezer to fill, folks.
So the first batch I thought was very, very good.
But my second batch was even better.
Yes, I had that much broccoli. Oh, and there was some leftover for a casserole. It was quite a lot of broccoli.
Into the second batch I added some cheese, and pieces of potato.
That batch was as good as, or even better than, Panera's.
Why go out, when you can make it at home.
Now back to the healthy part.
I haven't gotten sick this winter, not once (don't say "yet," don't say it!).
Part of me believes that this is for several reasons:

1. The only hands that touch my food are mine. Granted, I won't be getting an A+ rating from the Health Department, but I am used to my own germs.
2. Eating fewer processed foods of unknown origin. Well, they are being "processed", but mostly by me. 
3. Have you seen what they've been putting in McDonald's burgers?
4. I've been saving money on my grocery bill, and that, my friends, is less stressful overall.
5. We've hardly had much of a winter - January temps in the 40s and 50s? Yes, I know, sickness is spread by germs, not the weather, but it's really been a strange winter. It could be that we're not locked inside quite so much like normal when our offices become germ gestation stations.

So no flu so far, no colds, maybe a little post-nasal drip, but it hasn't turned into anything worse.

I'm hopeful.

And of course I do realize that I have probably just jinxed myself.

Well, being sick does mean that I can enjoy more soup, right?

...and so it began

The year 2012 began with a right punch in the face.
My mother passed out in church (we go to different ones), and I received a call at home (I had actually skipped church that day - serendipity? - I think so otherwise I would have still been at my church), so I was at home to take the call at 11:03.
Exactly at that time. I remember.
I went down to the hospital and actually got there before she did - the ambulance crew was taking their time, giving her an EKG, etc.
So I waited the hour, marveling over the varying degrees of social aptitude and personal hygiene displayed by many of those who live around here. Yeah, it's interesting, but that's a blog post for another time.
My mother was eventually transferred to a hospital in the city where she stayed for the week.
Happy New Year's Day!
I'd like to say that knitting helped calm me down, but I felt like a caged lion...or hippo....I'd go with the hippo. I was too antsy to really focus, so it took me almost an entire week to knit this simple hat. I mean, I am a slow knitter at best, and extremely inattentive, but that was much too long a time to take for that hat. (Now ask me if it's actually finished, as in ends sewn in, etc. - you guess the answer.)
I had been off of work for two weeks already (our annual shut down period - love it!), so being out of work during a week when I had intended to catch up was really not on my to do list!
Fortunately my boss was not at work that week, or my guilt/anxiety level would have been even higher.
Anyway, so far all is well, no heart attack, but we're proceeding cautiously. My mother will be turning 81 at the end of this month, so it's time to slow down. Living in a place where it snows almost six months of the year doesn't help either, as she really shouldn't be out in the snow/cold/ice, so I'll be doing her grocery shopping for a while.
Such is the life of the youngest/only daughter/only one living nearby.
Fortunately my husband is very patient with her although she talks enough to drive a man (or woman) to drink.
Hmmm, that could explain all his beer drinking....
So there's my saga for the beginning of 2012.
From here out let's hope it only gets better!

Everything has a downside to it

So...discovered the big downside to using honey as a face wash today.
Bees.
Sitting on Main Street at lunchtime enjoying a slice of pizza with my youngest son, we had four - yes four! - bees buzzing around us.
Granted, we were outside, they wanted some of the pizza too, but no one at any of the other tables was having a problem.
Only us.
On the plus side neither of us were stung, so I guess there's some camaraderie involved here.
Go bees!
No really, shoo...

But is it money well spent?

So my youngest is still a pre-teen for at least another two months.
After October we'll be going full throttle into the heady teenage years.
Fasten your seat belts!
This ride is going to be a doozy!
She's different from her older sister in that as a younger girl she is focused on many areas of beauty such as maintaining a polished set of nails on both hands and feet, likes to get her eyebrows threaded, and she fixes her hair every morning - things like that.
And like many adolescents she is anxious to stave off the oncoming signs of hormonal disturbance - you know, the bad stuff that happens to your face when it's not sure what the hell is going on with your body.
I bought her the generic brand equivalent of ProActiv in the grocery store a couple of months ago for $12, and then for some reason when she was in Macy's last week her father bought her the Clinique version as well as something else.
I can't remember what the something else is - all I know is that the Macy's bill was $55 for stuff from the cosmetics counter.
It's time to do some math here - you've got my $12 plus the recent $55 purchase - what does that come to?
$67.00
Now you may recall that in a previous post I was effusive in my delight over the effects of washing my face with honey.
I've been doing it for how many weeks now? It really does work.
That jar of honey (local honey, my friend - I firmly support NY farmers and bee keepers) was $6.00
I think you can see where this is going.
For the past week the youngest has been washing her face with honey.
It's unbelievable - her face is clear and youthful (one would hope, she is only 12).
In other words, she really likes using the honey - a lot!
(What's even better is you can use the crystallized stuff at the bottom of the jar as a scrub.)
Time for math again.
$67 worth of chemicals with so-so results vs. $6 worth of honey with perceivable results.
You can see how she feels about it:

(Pay no attention to the crap on the couch in the background - focus on the face!)

Late to the Party, but Still Dancing

I have been getting older.
It can't be helped.
It's almost an epidemic.
We're all getting older!
What can we do to stop it?!?!
Is there any kind of emergency drill?
Part of getting older for me is that my normally very oily skin has now become somewhat dry.
The expensive beauty products that I used to use now don't work, and only make my skin dry out even more.
So I over-hydrate, and then it becomes oily and breaks out, so I have to dry it out...It's a vicious cycle.
Something has changed to fix that - certain information has come my way, and it's been good - and I mean really good - for the past week.
That's how long I've been using a new facial treatment.
See, I was creeping on someone's blog and noticed that they were convinced to take up a challenge by another friend.
What's the challenge?
To wash your face with honey for two weeks.
Seriously.
Honey.
But won't that be sticky?
Sure, if it gets in your hair, but water washes it right off your face.
So why honey?
The answers can be found on Crunchy Betty's blog, and let me tell you, this blog is a compendium of wonderful, life-changing information.
And you can put food on your face!
The short answer is that I missed out on entering her challenge, but the long answer is that the challenge was only to just kind of participate and maybe win a prize, and I decided to do it anyway.
Man, am I glad that I have.
Not even a week in and a co-worker/cousin/friend told me, "It's like you're glowing!"
I'm sure she was just saying that because we work together/are related through marriage/and are friends, but the truth is my pores are smaller, my skin is softer, and there really is a difference to my skin.
I have been using some honey from Crete that I bought at the Greek Festival in June, but today I went to Wegman's and found some local organic raw honey (and did I mention it's local).
I believe this is the kind I really should be using, but I have to tell you that the probably over-heated honey from Crete still has worked wonders.
So give it a try - challenge yourself.
And the bonus - when you're rinsing off the honey, if you are like me and tend to leave your mouth open as you rinse, you'll get the sweet taste of honey in your mouth as opposed to the chemical taste from your over-priced beauty aides.
Go natural, follow Crunchy Betty's advice, and let me know how it works out for you!

Public Health Emergencies

Wow, did you hear that the government has declared the swine flu epidemic a public health emergency?
And here we all thought that the next pandemic would come from the Spanish flu.
Who knew it would come from the pigs.
SN2 just got back from Mexico (Cancun), so we'll be watching him for symptoms.
This could be a serious thing, because you never know what you'll pick up on airplanes.
There have been 81 deaths in Mexico so far, and just this morning I think the total was about 8 or so.
This could be scary.
Be careful.
Wash your hands.
A lot.

Doctors

I went to the doctor yesterday for the first time in a long time.
Of course I have a slew of follow-on appointments, but one thing interesting came up.
It has been a very stressful weekend, because we were so busy, and yes I watched movies, but I couldn't sit down and watch them all at once. It was my turn for the birthday celebration in the office so I made an apple pie, pumpkin pie, fudge, magic cookie bars, and Cousin Helen Ruby's Sour Cream Pound Cake.
I don't know who Cousin Helen Ruby is, but damn, she makes a good pound cake, and it was a hit.
Unfortunately I couldn't stay for the feast, which everyone said they enjoyed.
I had to race down to the doctor's office.
When they took my blood pressure, which is normally normal to low, it was 142/70.
Was I calm?
Hell no.
I'd been rushing around all weekend and all that morning.
So when the doctor came in she told me that next time I come if my blood pressure is that high (!) again she will talk to me about medication.
I looked at her and said, "I bet if you took it now it wouldn't be that high."
She didn't.
She should have.
Because now I have another stressor.
Next appointment I am not going in to work before.
That is a given.
Because work is the penultimate stressor, isn't it?
Perhaps I should spend the morning knitting and listening to melancholy music, like this hit from Gilbert O'Sullivan:



Of course it may lower my mood straight into depression.
Well that's a chance I'll just have to take.

My pupils are taking in a lot of light

Why, you ask?
Because I've been to see the eye doctor today and 5 hours later I'm still having trouble seeing because of my pupils being dilated.
Fortunately for me, relatively good news.
Although I'm pretty blind my vision has not decreased at all in 2 years.
For me that's miraculous.
He did give me some contacts to try out for a week to see if I like them, so I have to go back and see him again.
DN2 also had her eyes checked.
She has said that she has been having trouble reading the board at school.
So for 2 weeks she's been talking about getting glasses and will I help her pick them out.
Well she came out with the doctor and he said, "Her vision is perfect. 20/20."
I couldn't believe it. "Really?" I asked.
"Yes, she does not need glasses."
He took me back to his office and told me that he knew she really wanted glasses but that she just does not need them. And he also talked to me about why her vision may be blurry when transitioning from looking at a paper to the board.
I think it's amazing and I'm very happy that she has no problems with her eyes (speaking as someone who has had problems literally since the day I was born). Well once we got outside the tears began. We had walked no further than 3 feet from the doctor's office door before she started complaining that her eyes hurt.
But I knew there was something else.
And I found out.
She wanted glasses!
While I was in being checked she had even picked out a pair and she was sobbing because she couldn't get glasses!
Please.
As SN2 said when he found out why she was still crying (yes, even after we got home), he told her, "You're crying because you can't have glasses? That's straight up wack!"
Too right.
I wish I had that problem.