Weighing in on: Division in our country

 I know that I started this as a weight loss/health blog, but I think it's just going to become my blog. Just me and my random-ass thoughts that I want to put out there.  Maybe you, dear reader, will agree with them. Maybe you won't. I try not to judge. (There are enough people in the world to do that for me, thank you.)

So, I recently had what was probably food poisoning, but it kept me at home for the last three days, making sure I didn't get too far from the bathroom.  I seem to be recovering. (I lost 13 pounds this week, but will probably get it back when I stop shitting my brains out...Hey! I need those brains!!)

What brought me here, drear reader, is that in my ick addled phase, I didn't want to think very hard, so I turned on a movie that I used to use to teach genocide and the Holocaust: Hotel Rwanda.  I haven't seen it in years, but when I was finished watching it, I was sobbing at the end - and not for all the dead Rwandans, although that was sad as well. 

(Side note: Do you ever get that feeling that everything is just kind of better if you've had a good cry.  Sometimes I put on REALLY sad movies just to make myself cry. I love those movies, and I do have a good cry, and then I feel a bit emotionally better.  Yeah... Catharsis. Love that.... anyway, back to the show).

So, if you haven't seen Hotel Rwanda, here's the plot in a very small nutshell. Rwanda is in political turmoil, some political mucky muck dies, a band of one group of people blame another group of people and decide to kill everybody who they think is responsible because of... some arbitrary bullshit thing that a  group of white Europeans put on them. As this band of people goes around trying to kill everybody (thus the genocide bits), one brave dude is like "not in my hotel" and sort of accidentally ends up turning a hotel into a refugee camp, which gets attacked and threatened and nearly loses his family and his life and... lots of people die. In the end, enough of his guests are important (read: rich) enough to call in some favors and get the UN to help them out. Lots of people die, but hotel dude saves like.. a bit over 1000 people or so. (Kinda like African Schindler's list in the 90's).

Now, that's all sad and stuff. People die. They show a lot of dead people. They show bands of people with machetes and machine guns just murdering swaths of people. It's awful. But that's not the part that got me right in the feels the hardest.

There is a scene where Joaquin Phoenix (as this American camera man) is hitting on one of the young women at a bar, and he asks them which group they belong to. They admit to being on opposites sides (but still friends.. yay!) JP comments that "they could be twins", and that's where I kind of got all chilled up weepy... and scared. Mostly because I see so many parallels to our current political situation and that scares me.

Because- Democrats look just like Republicans. Like the Civil War in the 1860's, people take up arms to  fight against brothers and sisters, cousins and parents, because of a stupid belief, and I worry so much that someone on the internet may just put out the call to "Cut down the tall trees" like they did in Rwanda to signal the time to kill, and then that will be that and we will have blood on our streets again.

No matter what side you are on of the political debate, you have to admit that the internet and everything is kind of making things crazy, and there are people on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum who look like normal people, but when they open their mouth the crazy just pours out.  And that's scary, because on the fringes of "normal people" who are just trying to make a living and get by, are the crazies, and it was the crazies in Rwanda who started taking over and killing people, who took up machetes and machine guns. What's to stop them from doing that here? 

I know, there are a lot of fail-safes and systems in place here to stop that from happening. National Guard, military, normal sane people. But it's still scary when you start seeing the little bits of common sense that you thought people have just sort of leaking away.

Do have I have solution? No. Just fear.  And hope. And hope is stronger. 

We must learn from the past.

Episode 70: Whole

Wow.. new blog window.  Kind of looks like Google Docs! Cool!

I went to the grocery store today to pick up some stuff that we needed around the house.  Some of those essential things that seem to be on everybody's weekly shopping list.  Today I bought: a half gallon of milk, a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread.

A couple of years ago, that would have been just those things. The half gallon of milk would have probably been 2%, the bread would have been cheap white bread and the eggs would be the store brand.  Today, those purchases were very different.  I bought whole milk, cage free eggs and multigrain whole wheat bread. Not to presume what you are thinking, dear reader, but I know that many people would say "Wait a minute! That milk is bad for you!  It's got all sorts of fat in it and you should drink something with less fat.  It's better for you!"  This may be true, but.. let me justify myself a bit.

I believe in whole foods. If I could find and drink raw milk and cream, I would, but pasteurized is good enough, since it is just a process that heats and cools the milk, killing bacteria, so it doesn't kill you. Other than process, and skimming off the milk fats to make butter (which I also buy in whole fat variety), that's about all the processing I would really like to see my foods go through. If I could live on a farm where I could make sure that my chickens are well treated and well fed and their eggs are healthy, I would, but the eggs I buy are certified by the American Humane society, which is good enough for me.  When I have time and the inclination, I make my own breads, so that I know that it is whole wheat flour that goes into it, and I know I'm not using artificial chemicals to make that bread last longer in my bread box.  Sure, it's not sliced to perfect uniformity, but I feel better knowing what goes into my bread won't kill me or make me even sicker.

We live in an age where everything is highly processed.  We drink and eat things with high fructose corn syrup, where the sugars have been pulled out of corn, melted down, made into syrup and added back into things that have sugar in them.  Much of our food has chemicals that are nearly impossible to pronounce added to them.  Much of our food comes from a plant where workers and machines process whole foods into something that doesn't even look like food anymore and then add dyes and chemicals so that it looks like food again and is something that we will bring to our table and share with our family.

If I have children, I want to be able to raise them to make healthy choices and eat real food, food like it used to taste in the time of my grandmother and my great grandmother.  I want them to choose foods that are good for them.  I buy whole milk.  I buy fresh, cage free eggs. These are the choices that I make for myself and my family.

I've been making these choices for myself for over a year now.  Though I haven't lost a lot of weight (mostly because of my sloth-like lifestyle and lack of willpower, which I will get to in a future post), there have been a lot of changes because of these choices.  My skin is healthier and clear where I used to get tons of acne.  My perpetual battle with cold sores has become nearly non-existent.  My cheeks are rosier and I recently went into my hairdresser, who I visited a year ago, and she was amazed at how fast my hair grows and how much healthier, thicker and fuller it was.  My energy levels are increasing, I can do a lot more for myself.  I am empowered... I am healthier, I am happier and I feel like I am becoming whole again.