Another federal program the Republicans want to do away with, at least ones like Paul Ryan, is snap, the food stamp program. Many of us are struggling to buy food, with or without them, because they are usually not enough.
I see many posts about food on fb, and all these foods we need to boycott, etc, however, some people cannot afford organic food. We can buy lots of fruits and vegetables and some organic, but not all.
I know that the meat and eggs are full of hormones and antibiotics, and that we want humane animal products such as cage free chicken and eggs, and never veal, a very non-politically correct, inhumane food I have boycotted for many many years.
Still, although I am using soy milk now because I am a bit lactose and gluten intolerant, I do buy a small amount of meat, such as ground turkey and some sandwich meat. I cannot afford organic meat, although when it comes to eggs, I buy cage free when on sale and rarely chicken now.
For my birthday, I got some organic coffee, a real treat. If you drink wine at all, you can tell a lot of the wines are full of sulfates which make one feel awful and congested, even sick, at least in my experience.
I am doing my best to feed my family in a healthy way, fresh lettuce, home made salad dressing, fresh red onion, garlic, tomatoes, etc.. Yogurt and fresh fruit are staples in my home and the absence of sugar or saturated fat.
When you think you are in love, you cannot see the forest for the trees. You also may not have enough confidence to know your own worth.
I have had a lot of experience and want to share the signs of a bad or toxic relationship. 1) If you are in a relationship where there is 'one-up-manship' meaning that someone has power over you, your life, who your friends are and keeps you in fear in some way of losing them or their love, 2) if the person you are with wants you to change your political or religious views to suit them or puts yours down, 3) if you find that you have no energy for other things because your relationship is taking everything you have in terms of energy to sustain it, 4) if your significant other does not respect your boundaries or privacy or gives you the constant third degree and little to no trust, 5) if your loved one has family that is judging you with no reason and they are holding this against you, 6) when you cannot be yourself and constantly try to be who someone else wants you to be to make him or her happy, 7) if you are feeling insecure about their love for you, because they make ultimatums, 8) if you have no time for others in your life, 9) if the person you are with does not love your children if you have them, and 10) if you are feeling less than or uncertain about your normal everyday habits that always seemed alright to you before.
I am not saying that one should not try to be a better man or woman or stretch from one's comfort zone, but to completely reinvent oneself or try to to be accepted by another person is outrageous. I have done it. I hate to admit it. I have starved myself to ninety-five pounds to please a guy who wanted me skinny. That is not healthy. I have worn long dresses and spoke softly to please another. I acted like a Stepford wife to please my husband. I realize this is my bad, my shortcoming, my mishandling and my own failure to empower myself. I guess now that I am fifty-one years old, I have experienced enough to know what love is and what love is not.
I was shopping with my son and I found a beautiful lavender purple sun hat with a big brim. It was stunning and half price.
I tried it on and Ted said it looked good, but I had had a bad car accident in a big wide rim hat years ago when I used to drive, so we thought it was a bad idea. However this cotton hat is not floppy. It is a bit Mary Poppinslike, but I think it is stunning, and I love that color.
Well, I did not buy it, but eventually I went back and bought it, because I thought it was special. I went to the beach to try to figure out what to do with my anger and bitterness. I have no one to talk to, because I am usually the one giving advice, and I feel like no one understands my predicament. I think they call it terminally unique. My friend Alan used to say, "can you speak English please?" That was when we were at the beach at I was doing yoga twists and talking about squeezing out the toxins.
Ironically, Alan would say "speak English" if he were to hear the way I talk about not getting closure about him.
Anyway I wore my new hat at the beach. There were too many people there for me to get any answers from the ocean and sky, and it was too hot. I was wearing a matching purple sundress. I wish I had a camera, but I haven't in years, and do not know how to use my computer camera, except my web cam.
I wanted to start a new blog about fashion, although I was not sure if men would read it, since I do not know enough about men's fashion, except that the owner of Maxim magazine was quoted saying, "GQ is for men who like socks better than sex." He is the richest man in Scotland and like Hugh Hefner has the U.N. represented in his hot tub. Well so much for style, and it is OK if men do not read my style articles unless they want to.
I was on a downward spiral, looking for happiness in unhealthy ways and looking for love in all the wrong places, lol. I was raising two teenagers alone.
I met a guy who happened to be a yoga teacher and I went with him to his classes in North Carolina. I really enjoyed it. I had taken yoga in India in '96 when they offered it the last time I was there.
I really liked yoga. He said I had amazing balance. I kept doing it for years and years. Now, although I cannot get to a yoga class, because of transportation issues, since I live in a town with no public transportation except medical, I do yoga at home every day.
It helps keep me balanced, teaches me to move correctly without stress on the back and spine, helps me relax and keeps my chakras in alignment, a very important thing to keep the chakras all open. Our body is like a channel and the chakras move up our body from root to crown, and to have a full sense of well being they must flow and be aligned. Namaste. Shanti, shanti.
Although I am a holistic practitioner, since I do Reiki, I have always leaned a bit towards western medicine. Mostly, it is just my personal beliefs and also financial, because holistic health is usually not covered.
When my sons were born six and a half years apart I made decisions. The second time was easier because I had had a baby before and knew the choices I had made and I made the same again, including having my children vaccinated, which is not done all at once or in the hospital as some people believe.
My older son had a bad reaction to the pertussis vaccine, so I decided not to have my second son get that one, since you can get the DT, dyptheria, tenitinus, without it, the DPT. I did not think twice about it.
When my younger son David was fourteen he came down with a really bad cough that would not clear up. He also has asthma which made it even worse. We went to the doctor a few times. He was not getting better. They took blood and his white blood cell count was over 50,000, so the doctor hospitalized him. They found fluid near his heart. He was tested for everything, TB, cancer, leukemia. He was in a room where you had to wear a max. If I was in there without a max, the nurse said, "put your mask back on."
Finally lung fluid was analyzed and he had pertussis, whooping cough, which is extremely rare. It was like an episode of House.
The health department contacted us at the hospital wanting to know everyone who he had been in contact with so they could bring them free antibiotics. My other son and I had to take them too.
Back home I looked over his vaccination records, because I did not remember that I had chosen not to have that vaccine for him.
Sure enough I had not. It said DT.
Later I went to see a doctor about some small issue of my own and mentioned that my son had not so long ago had whooping cough. He asked me who my son's doctor was and I told him. He said, "Oh, I had dinner with him recently and he told me he had a patient with whooping cough." It made doctor's dinner conversation, because it is so rare.
The reason these diseases are so rare and small pox is gone, and we do not see polio, etc. or German measles which can cause birth defects if the mother is effected, is because we have vaccines.
I realize there is some reason to believe that the pertussis vaccine could cause autism. I believe this is highly possible in some cases, but having had my son so sick with whooping cough, it would have been better had he had the vaccine. The disease also scars the lungs, which is not good. Thank God Medicaid for children payed for all this, which was 2003. I hope the Republicans do not destroy health care for poor children. That would be a tragedy.
Well, that is my story and I have my opinions which remain firm from experience and intuition. You can make whatever choice you want for your kids, but as far as I am concerned, not vaccinating is endangering other children who are too young to be vaccinated yet, for example with the measles vaccine. Make an educated decision, not one based on popular fads and new age doctrine.
The picture above shows me with my son in the winter of 2010, and as you can see, he is a big, strong, healthy, handsome man now.
OK, I know I am legally blind so who am I to talk about seeing anything anyway? However, today my eye allergies were bothering me because I needed to change the air conditioning filters and I did. I had vacuumed them to save money but this did no good. My eyes feel fine now, but I realized that seeing through clear filters is important.
Many of us get swayed off our own path by distractions, by things people tell us, but we and only we know our own truths. For example: I like many feel very insulted by Romney's words during the 50,000 dollar a plate dinner caught by a waiter, with a cell phone to record his words.
Whatever your political views, I know you know what is right and wrong. I have tried to view conspiracy theories to make it all the more complex, but I only find them unpatriotic and lame as I do criticizing the president in a way that is disrespectful.
I think Obama's foreign policy is perfect. The prime minister of Israel said things have not been as secure for Israel under any administration ever as they are under Obama. This was on CNN, a neutral channel.
I am Jewish and I support the president totally on everything. I support him being a citizen, a disabled person, a woman, a patriot, a mother, a daughter, a sister. I support the president of the U.S.A., of the people, President Obama, four more years.
Resentment is unhealthy for everyone, and it never leads to anything good. It is a waste of time energy and will not change anything.
When I feel a resentment, I take a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself knowing that it is either fear, insecurity, self-esteem or sex relations threatened or destroyed, such as when you are left for someone.
Sometimes life is unfair. Some get second chances, and some do not. I think it is just your karma and impressions. Perhaps these can be modified, but perhaps not. I think we can change our future karma, but maybe not our past already made karma from other life times for example or a long time ago in this life.
Sometimes I think I am being punished cosmically for something mean I might have said to someone when I was a child not thinking. I will not tell the thing I am thinking about, because I am ashamed, but I guess I was just a little kid and did get a lecture from my daycare provider. I was only five or six.
Still, I do not think it really matters anymore. Things are what they are. My life is about family and working on my music and writing and trying to promote a positive world. Namaste.
I love a good cup of coffee. I was out of town at a friend's house. Not characteristically I got up early to go to yoga with her. I usually am not at all a morning person. I sleep late, but I came down for breakfast after taking a shower. There was fruit and fresh smoothies, etc.. I just cannot eat in the morning.
"Do you have any coffee?" I asked.
"I can make some," she answered, and she made it with a french press. It was delicious.
Since I came home our coffee maker broke down and I had coffee making appliances on my wish list, but I did not buy any. Instead, I got coffee gifts for my birthday, a coffee bean grinder from my mother and arabica organic coffee from a friend. I also bought Eight O'clock Bean Coffee whole beans. The taste of fresh ground coffee beans makes so much difference, especially when ground finely. I do not have a coffee maker, but my sons and I use a cone filter, pot, filters and boil water the old fashioned way. It really tastes better. I am a coffee connoisseur now. However, in the picture I am drinking chai with my food, because I was at an Indian restaurant. I also like chai, but there is nothing like a great cup of coffee. Namaste.
It seems dreams faded into the evening sky
into its rose color to lie,
Buried in illusion all the same
lost without a name.
What I wanted was what I knew I could not have but mattered no longer,
As it paled into the dimness of the night
a mere ember of light.
I let it go as the water reached the edge
and then I let it go again,
Watched my dreams wash back to sea,
to blueness everything that was once me.
I started over without wanting, desiring not, nor fearing,
Wiped the mirror clear and looked into the starry night.
Dazzled by the clarity of nothingness, not emptiness,
Disillusioned yet grateful for this stillness and mindfulness.
Remembering that God was within me, the pain faded, I felt free,
And the sand beneath felt like clouds against me.
For a long time I had this silly notion that the more sorry someone felt for me, the more they 'loved me.' I realize equating pity with love is ridiculous. But, I had a friend who got boyfriends that way, and it never worked for me. I am legally blind, but guys never feel sorry for me, and I am not sure if they do not want to 'rescue me' or if I just never let them. Maybe I do not need to be rescued. I shared this at my old Course in Miracles class down in Surfside Beach which I miss. I said it right out loud.
"I have a friend who has always gotten the guys to feel sorry for her, even cry and thus fall in love with her. No one I ever date ever feels sorry for me, no matter how sad I make my life sound."
My teacher said, "I like your guys better. They sound healthier." Everyone laughed, and I am laughing right now, just remembering this. I have always been a bit outspoken and overly candid, but people like that about me. I mean, some do. I am sure some find me extremely annoying.
In fact I have been wanting to tell all my fb friends and blog readers, "I love and appreciate you, for staying my friends even when I have been a badly behaved, not very nice person sometimes." I almost feel like even though I do not know a lot of you, you have some sort of unconditional love for me, or maybe I am kidding myself. You may just be tolerant of me, but I have said hurtful things, and I am sorry. I realize some people are probably technically friends, but blocking anything I post, but I will not dwell on negativity or who does not like me on a rare day like this when I actually feel happy and a sense of well being without alcohol, a false sense of well being like it says on the warning on prescription medications. I always thought that was funny. Warning: this drug may cause a false sense of well being, use caution when operating heavy machinery, etc.. OMG! God forbid, I have a false sense of well being. It's false! I cannot possibly be OK!
Back to the pity thing. I really did believe that. I wanted to be felt sorry for. That is stupid, I know. Now I see it is ridiculous.
