nobody puts baby in the corner

i feel like i've been in timeout all week.

i was assigned as a restroom monitor for TAKS week. this means, for four hours, i sit in front of the restroom and listen to adolescents go pee-pee. not really, i'm making sure they go in one at a time, aren't using their cell phones, aren't talking to one another, etc.

the only thing is that MY restroom is in kind of a remote area of the building so i don't have very many visitors. also, my restroom was the one where a couple of kids were found doing the dirty so there is some sort of unspoken quarentine for that restroom. so my day is long.

throughout my pee-pee escapades, i've gotten quite a bit of reading done. i'm near the end of this book.
have any of you read it? what are your thoughts?

what i think so far:
--beautifully written
--i like that the author emphasizes relationship (with God) over religion
--i like that the author provides a framework through which to understand how tragedy and suffering exists in our world. (i am NOT saying i believe the book contains the ultimate Truth on the matter)
--it is a little dangerous to those who read it both as fiction and as non-fiction (as a theological text)...it would be easy let your view of God be shaped by Mack's personal experience...i think it is important to read it with the knowledge that it is fully fictitious, with themes based on the author's understanding of the Truth. which can STILL totally transform your life.

i want to hear your opinions!

things I'm loving

well, i don't think all of you blogstalkers posted like i asked, but for the ones that did, i applaud and exalt you, and will make sure you are on my little list to the right.

if you decide you want to come clean and reveal yourself, my offer still stands.

anyway, I decided to do a "Things I'm loving" post like so many of you out there:

1. Coconut milk

Ladies and Gents, if you don't use coconut milk, get up off your booty and go get a can (or carton--original only, vanilla flavor is nasty). First of all, it's non-dairy so a little less toxic for your digestive system...secondly, DELISH!! I use it for my oatmeal in the morning instead of water or cow milk. Also great in curries, smoothies, and other sauces. Half of the medium-chain fatty acids in coconut milk are composed of lauric acid, which is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-microbial and anti-fungal. Coconut milk can help boost the immune system and fight off illness and disease.

2. Spaghetti Squash

We have been on a spaghetti squash kick. So far, I've made it with pesto and chicken and a tomato meat sauce. Both were awesome. Benefits: it is a low-glycemic food (some might say low-carb, but it does have carbs...the sugar from the carbs is just on the low end) and squash has a ton of good vitamins and minerals. It's pretty easy to make, too.

3. Rowing

OMG, I never really used this machine before we started doing crossfit, but now I'm hooked! It provides an excellent endurance workout. Disclaimer here: form is everything...without good form on this machine, the benefits of using it are nil. The little pictures and instructions posted on it are a pretty good description of proper form. But with good form, you will have a wonderful, full body workout.

4. Mambo Taxi from Mi Cocina

Frozen margarita. Sangria. Together. Enough said.

5. Rompers

I think these little things are too cute! I really want to get one (or two...or seven...) for the summer.

That's it folks, hope you enjoyed this edition of "Things I'm loving"

i'll tell you mine if you tell me yours

BS

NO, I'm not talking about that word with bull in it.

Blog-Stalking.

That's right, I said it.

Definition: consisitenly viewing people's blogs who you don't know or who don't know you follow their blog. even if they know you (or know of you) and you view their blog without their knowing, that is blog-stalking. basically, if you aren't mutual "followers," it's blog-stalking.

You know you do it. You know you don't subscribe or follow or comment for fear that the blogger would find you creepy or weird.

I blog-stalk a LOT. And I'm not going to divulge my favorites to stalk for above said reason. (don't want to seem creepy or weird)

Anyway, I would like to conduct a social experiment of sorts. Or maybe I'm comment-hungry. Who knows.

BUT, if YOU blog-stalk ME, I would like to know. I implore you, stalkers, LEAVE A COMMENT. I do it so much, I'm dying to know who stalks me. I promise, I won't think you are creepy or weird. In fact, I will be flattered. If I know you, if I don't know you, I don't care, LEAVE ME A COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!

And if you reveal yourself, I will become a follower and devoted blog-fan. In fact, maybe we blog-stalk each other and don't know it! We are destined to meet!

Also, if I don't receive comments, I might develop a severe inferiority complex and fall into a deep seated depression, resulting in a loss of job, friends and happiness.

Summon your eagle powers.

Sometimes, it is more healing to make a pallet and watch a stupid movie than to have intimate conversations.

This has been a rough week for the Byrd family.

First off, I would like to have words with April 15. I would like to tell it to hurry up and get here because it is stressing my husband out. Poor Tommy has worked SO HARD this week. It is just the nature of tax accounting and it will be over soon, but it has been quite a doozy for him. This is probably the roughest week he has had yet.

Secondly, my sister ended up having an infection and had to go back into the hospital for surgery. SHE HAD A BABY 4 WEEKS AGO. Things happened pretty much like this:

Saturday: her c-section incision started to get a little inflamed and tender.
Sunday: Still inflamed, she called the Dr, and they said to come in on Monday as long as she didn't have a fever
Monday: Went to the Dr, definitely infected, started penicillin
Tuesday: Hi infection, glad you decided to RUPTURE. Blood everywhere.
Tuesday night: Oh hi surgery, guess we have to open Jenn back up to get the infection out.
Wednesday: Wound vacuum attached to Jenn's OPEN WOUND. CAT scan. Oh hi, STAPH. And goodbye Austin, Jenn can't hold or touch you.
Thursday night: finally found out it's not MRSA strain of staph (the deadly one) so Jenn can hold the baby again.

She is in the hospital till Monday. She has to wear the wound vacuum for a MONTH. This is basically a tube coming from sponges that are inside the open wound, sucking out all the nasty STAPH-y blood and pus.

Friends and family took shifts staying with Jenn and the babe during the days and my parents took him home at night. Last night, her husband stayed the night at the hospital with her and the baby.

There is ALOT ahead of them, so please keep them in your prayers.

So as you can see, it was quite a week. Between work and the hospital and my night class, Tommy and I hadn't seen much of each other and were pretty on edge. So we cuddled up and watched Nacho. It was good. :)

austin.

Can't believe i haven't blogged about this little monkey.

Meet Austin Trevino Scogin, my sweet little nephew. (loving the wrinkles...) It has been so fun being an aunt! and I am so blessed that I am close enough in proximity to help out my sis. This week (my spring break) I got to hang out with them a whole bunch.

As you can see, he is a really cool little dude.

He can be really really sweet....

And really really cranky....

But he and mom are doing great. My sis is such a good mommy!

Private Lives

The new episode of House last night was intriguing. It was about an ultra-blogger who gets sick and asks followers for medical advice. She is super transparent on her blog, literally documenting every detail of her life...except one, which ends up being the answer to her diagnosis of course. The shows touches on the idea of "private life" as a modern invention and the new concept of "community" with the new global network.

You can watch it online if you would like. All those bloggers out there would relate. www.fox.com

The Case for FAT

I have linked some interesting articles below.

if you are at all interested in health/nutrition, I recommend reading these articles in entirety, though parts are very science-y and boring.

basically...Americans are killing themselves. not with fat but with FAKE fat.

some nuggets to chew on:

from here
The following nutrient-rich traditional fats have nourished healthy population groups for thousands of years:

For Cooking
Butter
Tallow and suet from beef and lamb
Lard from pigs
Chicken, goose and duck fat
Coconut, palm and palm kernel oils

For Salads
Extra virgin olive oil (also OK for cooking)
Expeller-expressed sesame and peanut oils
Expeller-expressed flax oil (in small amounts)

For Fat-Soluble Vitamins
Fish liver oils such as cod liver oil (preferable to fish oils, which do not provide fat-soluble vitamins, can cause an overdose of unsaturated fatty acids and usually come from farmed fish.)

The following newfangled fats can cause cancer, heart disease, immune system dysfunction, sterility, learning disabilities, growth problems and osteoporosis:

All hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils
Industrially processed liquid oils such as soy, corn, safflower, cottonseed and canola
Fats and oils (especially vegetable oils) heated to very high temperatures in processing and frying.

Saturated fats, such as butter, meat fats, coconut oil and palm oil, tend to be solid at room temperature. According to conventional nutritional dogma, these traditional fats are to blame for most of our modern diseases--heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, malfunction of cell membranes and even nervous disorders like multiple sclerosis. However, many scientific studies indicate that it is processed liquid vegetable oil--which is laden with free radicals formed during processing--and artificially hardened vegetable oil--called trans fat--that are the culprits in these modern conditions, not natural saturated fats.

Humans need saturated fats because we are warm blooded. Our bodies do not function at room temperature, but at a tropical temperature. Saturated fats provide the appropriate stiffness and structure to our cell membranes and tissues. When we consume a lot of liquid unsaturated oils, our cell membranes do not have structural integrity to function properly, they become too "floppy," and when we consume a lot of trans fat, which is not as soft as saturated fats at body temperature, our cell membranes become too "stiff."

and from here
Vegetable oils are more toxic when heated. One study reported that polyunsaturates turn to varnish in the intestines. A study by a plastic surgeon found that women who consumed mostly vegetable oils had far more wrinkles than those who used traditional animal fats.

The hydrogenation process was used on both cottonseed oil and lard to give "better physical properties"—to create shortenings that did not melt as easily on hot days. (Do we really want our food altered merely for convenience?)

Although trans fatty acids are technically unsaturated, they are configured in such a way that the benefits of unsaturation are lost.

The particular mix of fatty acids in soy oil results in shortenings containing about 40% trans fats, an increase of about 5% over cottonseed oil, and 15% over corn oil. Canola oil, processed from a hybrid form of rape seed, is particularly rich in fatty acids containing three double bonds and the shortening can contain as much as 50% trans fats.

Foods containing trans fat sell because the American public is afraid of the alternative—saturated fats found in tallow, lard, butter, palm and coconut oil, fats traditionally used for frying and baking. Yet the scientific literature delineates a number of vital roles for dietary saturated fats—they enhance the immune system, are necessary for healthy bones,provide energy and structural integrity to the cells, protect the liver and enhance the body's use of essential fatty acids. Stearic acid, found in beef tallow and butter, has cholesterol lowering properties and is a preferred food for the heart. As saturated fats are stable, they do not become rancid easily, do not call upon the body's reserves of antioxidants, do not initiate cancer, do not irritate the artery walls.

Disclaimer: Don't go out and eat a stick of butter. There are still appropriate percentages of fat which you should consume. This details what kind. And that you should be consuming fats.

I will stand on my little soapbox about wheat. Too many diets target FAT as the culprit of weight problems. Know this: while you may lose weight on a low-fat diet, you probably are losing important muscle mass as well. Those high-glycemic foods like white breads, rice, pasta, potatoes, corn, etc do much worse things for your body...they cause malabsorption in your intestinal tract , cause insulin spikes (and crashes), cause bloating and fatigue...and alot of other things. And don't confuse this with the idea of a low-carb diet. Carbs include grains AND fruit, vegetables, and legumes. We like the latter 3 carb sources. Grains have only been consumed for 500 generations – that is, only since the transition out of the Paleolithic into the Neolithic era approximately 10,000 years ago. They are MODERN (relatively).

Anyway, I'm not an expert. And while I agree, I still drink my Diet Coke everyday (only 7.5 oz) and occassionally we have to splurge on potatoes or pasta. While we do make sandwiches we use whole wheat (with no partially hydr. oil).

That's my soapbox. Try eating this way...it feels great!