I came in first at the Christmas party!

Last night we went to a Christmas party and I was a little nervous how I would do with all the food. I haven't been around bread or baked goods at all since we started the diet, so I didn't know how tempting it would be.

The first hurdle was the drinks. Beer, wine (which I don't like) and lots of sugary drinks were everywhere, but I took my time and didn't commit to anything. After a bit I found out someone was drinking a gin and tonic, so I got one of those. First hurdle cleared!

Then the food. The setup was a make your own ham and beef sandwich, with oven baked mac and cheese, mashed potatoes and salad. I went for the ham, potatoes and salad and felt completely satisfied. No temptation to eat the mac and cheese, which I usually love.

Next hurdle: dessert. There were various pies and then some mini chocolate eclairs were brought out. These I eyed and one of my friends grabbed one and tried to give it to me. After I said no, I told him why, and what I was doing, and one bite into the eclair he decided that he didn't want it anymore. So not only did I not have the dessert, I turned someone else off to it! I call that a win.

On the way home I felt so proud! I really did feel like I had won something good (besides the white elephant gift Cards Against Humanity) and I was so excited that I had navigated the party without feeling weird about it or missing anything. And the most amazing part was I didn't feel tempted to eat any of the stuff. Pretty awesome! Also I had fun! Haha. Which is also very important.

So one week into my paleo diet I'm going strong and really proud of myself.

No More Chili!

Good morning! So I now know that beans are out. Traditional paleo doesn't include them, but I had wanted to start out including them. Last night we had a delicious (if I do say so myself) chili, but this morning my stomach let me know in no uncertain terms this was not a good idea. So no beans! Good to know.

In better news, yesterday I had a really cool 'ah-ha' moment. A coworker of mine had some almond flour crackers, and I thought "why not? almond flour is good, right?" so I tried one, and instantly wanted to binge. I had just eaten lunch and before I had that tiny cracker I had been completely satisfied. Right after eating I was sooo hungry. I just wanted more! So much more. SO that was a really cool little experiment. I haven't been eating any super yummy processed foods, just a few rice cakes in the morning, and that drove the point home that I shouldn't eat  anything processed if I want to stay on the diet. And such a crazy experience to see how intense the reaction was! It also felt validating because I have always had some amount of shame in the fact that I go on food binges and can't stop eating. This proved that part of that is the food itself and how it's designed to make you want more.

The Road to Paleo

Taking the plunge back into a predominantly paleo diet. My goal is to completely avoid gluten and sugar, and eat mostly veggies and meats with a few exceptions here and there. One of them being gluten free toast or rice cakes in the morning with my coffee. 

So far I've been feeling good. I'm on day three, and haven't noticed any drastic changes, good or bad. I haven't had any really intense cravings, after dinner I always crave something sweet, but it's been manageable. Last night I had herbal peach tea and that really helped. I may get something from www.bulletproof.com just in case I get a really bad craving for something sweet. 

So some background. Both me and my husband suffer from food-related health issues and have dabbled with paleo for years. We both feel better and seem to have less issues when we eat mostly paleo, but it's been hard to stay consistent and keep on track, which is why I've decided to blog about my process. My hope is that if I have an audience to hold myself accountable to, I'll stick to it. That doesn't mean never cheating or eating things that fall outside my healthy foods, but getting back on track afterward and moving forward. 

I will also be sharing recipes that I really enjoyed, the first of which you'll find below: 

Slow Cooker Chicken Adobo 

PREP TIME 25 MINS • COOK TIME 4 TO 6 HRS • SERVINGS 4

1 large yellow onion, sliced 
1 (2-inch) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced 
1 head garlic (about 12 cloves), peeled and thinly sliced 
2 bay leaves 
14.5 ounces full-fat coconut milk (about 1 3/ 4 cups), canned* or homemade (see here) 
1/ 2 cup coconut aminos* 
1/ 3 cup apple cider vinegar* 
2 teaspoons black pepper, plus more for the chicken 
2 tablespoons cooking fat** 
3 pounds bone-in chicken thighs sea salt 

Layer the onion, ginger, garlic, and bay leaves in the bottom of a slow cooker. In a bowl, mix together the coconut milk, coconut aminos, apple cider vinegar, and pepper. Heat the cooking fat in a skillet over high heat. Season the skin side of the chicken thighs generously with salt and pepper and place them skin side down in the skillet. Cook for about 5 minutes or until the skin is browned. Transfer the chicken thighs, skin side up, to the slow cooker and pour the coconut milk mixture over the top. Cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 6 hours. For a thicker sauce, remove the cooked chicken from the slow cooker, bring the remaining sauce to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat, and cook for 20 to 25 minutes to reduce or until desired thickness is achieved. 

Serve over Garlic & Green Onion Cauli-Rice.

1 large head cauliflower 
2 tablespoons ghee or coconut oil 
3 cloves garlic, minced 
3 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced 
sea salt and black pepper to taste 

Shred the cauliflower with a cheese grater or food processor. Heat the ghee in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes or until fragrant. Add the green onions and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes, then add the shredded cauliflower and stir to combine with the garlic and green onion. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until the dish is warmed through and the cauliflower is softened. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Sanfilippo, Diane (2014-01-05). The 21-Day Sugar Detox Cookbook: Over 100 Recipes for Any Program Level (Kindle Locations 2346-2351). Victory Belt Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

More Serial Killers? Really?

I've had an odd week, especially the past few days. I'm hoping to blame some of it on planetary influence, although I have no idea if I'll get to. (Mercury retrograde, anyone?)

Anyways. Some of it I can attribute to fighting a cold, which I've been keeping at bay with herbs and homeopathic medicines, but it's present just enough to make me tired and cranky. 

All of this leads to my night last night, which was kind of the culmination of a bad week. I was weirdly emotional and irrationally cranky and generally hating life. I went to bed latish due to numbing my brain with a tv show for a few hours, and right before I fell asleep I had one of those horrible, jolt-awake moments where I remembered that I might have screwed something up at work and it would be really crappy if I had. Anyways. This is how I went to sleep. And had a night-long nightmare about a serial killer. 

It's not new for me to have nightmares about serial killers (I've even posted about it before), but this one seems worse for some reason. I think part of it is that the crappy feeling I've been having all week got entangled in the dream, and now the fear and panic from the dream is entangled in my crappy mood. So now I don't just have a crappy mood to deal with. I have this horrible memory of my dream and it just won't go away. 

In the dream I was caught by him twice. And both times I couldn't get away, and I couldn't scream, and he was toying with me like a cat with a mouse. And I knew that he was going to kill me.

So that's how I started my friday. I guess it can't get any worse, huh? The old, Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day, adage. This is what I'm rooting for, anyways.

The Bits I Miss

Since I've been in Boulder I haven't really missed Portland that much. I miss my friends, and a few places, some restaurants and whatnot, but I not the city so much. But last night I had this very vivid dream: 

I was driving to Portland. I didn't have very much time, I was on my way somewhere. I hadn't made contact with anyone, no one knew I was in town and I didn't have time to see anyone. As I drove through town I got a surge of excitement. I was back in Portland! It was beautiful, the sun was shining, the buildings were huge (I was downtown), and I was driving to my beloved Powell's. I got to drive by it, but then the dream changed and got weird the way dreams do. I never made it inside, and the dream ended not long afterwards. But the feeling of excitement of being back in Portland has stuck with me, and now I miss it. 

I knew the feeling would catch up with me eventually. If I had been paying attention I would have seen the signs. Just last week I was bemoaning the lack of good restaurants in Boulder, and thinking about all the amazing places Portland has. I've been craving Podnah's Pit for a solid month now. And I miss McMenamins theaters. And the Horse Brass Pub. And Crema Coffee Shop. And Saint Cupcake (I dream about their red velvet with cream cheese frosting).


Of course moving is never easy, and I don't regret my decision. I'm just having a bout of homesickness. 

So in memory, here are some photos of my favorite things: 

Drinking a beer in the Pearl on a clear, sunny day.                       

The Hawthorne bridge.                                           

Free drinks and friends (courtesy of Wweek)      

Willamette Week (tho I don't miss working on Sunday)

 MusifestNW (this was The National in Pioneer Square, amazing show)

A very different winter, where things got greener as the months wore on.

Sunday softball. I didn't play, but I drank beer and cheered, which was just as good.

Best of Portland, where I got way too drunk off of free drinks with my coworkers. (I did the sign, too)

Liz! (and Saint Cupcakes)

So anyways. I had some good times in Portland. But I'm sure I'll have good times here, too. Now it's just a matter of making those memories. 

Reawaken Our Freedom to Change

I know we're all inundated with politics right now, so I apologize for adding to it, but it just must be discussed. 

So. Many things about the way politics are set up have not been working for awhile now. I'll start with the most surface-level problem: the completely crap choices we have. 

So I voted for Obama the first time, and I believed in him 100%. And I voted for Obama again this year, but my reasons were skewed. I voted for him because the idea of a brainwashed, wealthy, white man running my country is too terrifying to face. What happened to actually having options? I don't want a president that is just better than the other guy. I want to be able actually weigh my options, regardless of Democrat or Republican. Bringing someone like Mitt Romney into the ring skews the entire structure of democracy. Mitt is a fringe candidate. His views are radical. He does not reflect a large section of the population's interests. He reflects a small, fanatical group. And he should not be running for president. 

Now. In light of this, I was considering the problem. The problem, as I see it, is that our democratic structure, all the way to the foundation, is decaying. It is no longer working. It hasn't been for years. Bush took office and won twice, with serious concerns about how he won. THAT should have been our wake-up call. I don't care if you vote democrat or republican, you should care that the process is flawed. That these elections are NOT WORKING. 

We need a restructuring of the political process, we need to re-evaluate how we run our country, we need to separate church and state, and more importantly we need to separate corporate spending and politics. These are not fanatic, fringe ideas (I have a fair amount of those as well) these are just the basics of running a clean, fair country. 

I don't have the answers, I don't know how to rebuild, but I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it needs to be done. We need to restructure our country. We need to get back to basics and put our citizens first. These are not wants, they are needs. We can't keep fighting to keep basic structures in place (who threatens to cut funding for disaster relief?!) we can't keep fighting to keep the freedom to choose what to do with our bodies (land of the free besides reproductive rights) we can't keep battling corporations and insurance companies (how can one person take on a multi-million dollar corporation and hope to win?). So we need a change. And it needs to be bigger than one president, because one man cannot fight an entire governmental structure. That is OUR job. 

Fashion Bug

I adore fashion, but as with all things in my life, I'm very particular. Mainstream fashion has never really done it for me; most things that go down the catwalk turn me off. I don't even really get into the indie fashion scene. So when I find a fashionista I like I get pretty excited. 

My latest clothing crush is WearingItOnMySleeves. I found it through Pinterest, and was pretty deeply engrossed before I made the discovery that the blogger, Sarah, is Mormon. Now I've always been a bit wary of very religious people, but this discovery peaked my interest. I started noticing that her style is very modest –never a lot of skin showing– and I realized that was something that I really liked about her outfits. This was a surprising discovery for me, since I've never thought of myself as modest or old fashioned in any way, but when I thought about it I realized that I really am quite modest when it comes to showing skin. I get uncomfortable when girls wear low-riding pants and tank tops, or when guys strip off their shirts in the summer. When my sister used to run around in her underwear I always had to fight the urge to turn into an old lady and tell her to put some clothes on. 

With this new discovery I've started to question other areas of my life. Where else am I modest where I thought I was so modern? What other latent, conservative emotions have I been suppressing? So far nothing else have surfaced, but I now know to keep an eye out for them. And it's always good to re-evaluate ourselves now and again. 

I know I will never agree with her ideologies, but to find someone who so artfully puts together outfits that I absolutely adore had been very satisfying. And illuminating.

"Are You Living Your Dream?"

I just saw a photo of this tagged on a wall with a tired-looking older man walking in front of it with sloped shoulders. Instead of feeling bad for him, I suddenly thought: who the f*@k are you to judge a persons life from one snapshot of a downtrodden pose? It angered me. What a presumption! To assume that someone is pathetic because they're old and tired is such an egotistical thing to do.

This, of course, was my reaction and my own assumptions and all of that. But still, it's a trend seen often among art and film. So it got me thinking about my dreams and ideals.

I realize that as a young(ish) American, I have an ideal of My Dream. It's not exactly The American Dream, but it's in the same ballpark. Now as I look closer at this Dream, I realize something odd. It's not just that I want and yearn for it, although I do most of the time, but I also feel responsible for wanting it. I feel like a failure for not having it, but worse than that I feel almost blasphemous when I consider whether or not it's something I even care about. In the right light this lovely Dream of mine starts to look like a standard that I've set for myself. A bar that if I fall short of, I consider failure.

Now, I feel I should backtrack a bit here, because last I posted I was feeling like I had lost that dreaming part of myself and was mourning that loss. Well, I found it. With the help of a good friend, and for a few days it was lovely! Pure bliss as I constructed dream houses in my head and googled business plans and real estate. But now I'm questioning those dreams. Where is the true desire coming form? To prove myself to the world? To myself? How do I know that is really what I want to do? How do I know if any of my dreams are really what I want?

And why do we look at someone's life and judge it based on whether or not they've fulfilled their dreams? What a terrible burden to put on someone: Fulfill Your Dreams.

Now this is not to say that I'm against dreams now. I love dreams, I think they're wonderful. And I think it's possible to fulfill your dreams. I just want to lose this feeling that I have to fulfill my dreams. That I have to make something of myself, show the world what I'm capable of. What's wrong with just living a quiet, comfortable life? No fanfare. No spotlight. No giant accomplishments.

So this is my next quest: I want to find the heart of my dreams. What I really want in life, not for the admiration of others or what I feel compelled to do, but what I want to do. Really. What I want to experience, see, accomplish. It will take a balance of my right and left brain, which will be interesting for me. I usually give over completely to one or the other, but now I must use both to construct my new dreams.

So wish me luck! I have no idea where to start.

I guess this is growing up...

I just watched "With Honors" (Brendan Fraser, I had a huge crush on him back in the day). It's about college students and a house where they all live. Lots of other things, but that's what struck me. Their age, the way they act and interact at that time. 

It was something that I first watched when I was about 15. I really liked it, and watched it quite a few times. I remember it being something that I looked forward to, before my life began, before things really started. They were so cool. And grownup. I was in awe of their world, their life. 

Watching it now has been emotional. I'm now past those times. It's this strange mix of remembering how it felt at 15 looking forward to my life, and remembering my twenties. I had big houses that I stayed in, roommates and friends. We'd run around, goofy and unsure. I had so much fun, and when viewed in snippets, it would make quite the movie.  

But I never dreamed of life in my thirties. Never got that far, past the wild college years. And now that I am  I guess I'm feeling strange. My exciting years have past, and I don't really know what to do with myself. I have goals: I want to get healthy, lose weight, make money. But they're not the same as dreams. I had dreams growing up. So many, so fun. Now I don't know. I'm not sure if I want kids. I may want a house, but where? I do want a husband, but later, I guess. 

It's like, I've gotten here. I've grown up. And what now? It's not the end, but it's not the beginning, either. It's not that I'm unhappy with my life. I have stresses and very unpleasant things that keep me awake at night, but it's more than that. I don't dream, I don't have crushes, I don't imagine how amazing my life could get. And I know that's normal and that's what happens when you grow up, but I feel like I'm mourning my wide-eyed, daydreaming self. 

Is google+ stalling?

I believe it's time for facebook to be turned into a dinosaur. They change things that don't need to be fixed and make them worse, they don't fix things that should be. All their innovations end up falling flat and all we can do is bitch about it and pray that they change it back.
So who have we turned to when yahoo ate our hour-long email and we've just had enough? Gmail, of course. To look something up we google it, google docs is a thing of beauty, and being able to have a multitude of to-do lists anywhere I log in is amazing. Of course there are the many, many failed attempts. Buzz I still don't get. Google Wave happened and died before I even realized it. That is the way with most of google's failed projects: they come and go without a ripple in our collective digital consciousness. They've become pros at failing, which is actually a daring, brilliant way to do business. Without failure there would be no success. The fact that they're constantly trying new things is great.
But my humble opinion is that they've gotten too good at failing. With a social networking site to work, it needs members. Lots and lots of members. To create a social networking site and have a limited release to just try it out is like partially building an airplane to see if it will soar. It's got to be all or nothing.

Google+ is failing. It's faltering. It's losing momentum. And this, to me, is tragic because we're primed for a new social networking site. We're all savvy facebookers at this point. We know what's what. We know how to keep our grandmother from seeing our post about how much we f#@king hate our job. What we want now is the next level. The site where navigation is easy and flawless. Security is completely in our hands and straightforward. We want the controls now. Because we know what to do with them.

Now if Google can't give that to us, who the eff can?

What is age?

So this morning I got a terrible song stuck in my head. It actually might have started last night, I don't remember, but this morning is when I started to really sing it nonstop. The song is this: 

Which I've shared cause I'm an evil person. (How it got stuck in there is anyone's guess, I might have seen a part of the lyrics on an ad, or said something about age. It's ridiculously easy to get pop songs stuck in my head.)

So what happened this morning after I was singing it nonstop is I actually started to analyze the lyrics. I started to wonder where this person was coming from. Is it so important to act your age? I think if you think it's important to act your age, your a youngster who is trying to be mature. As a 31 year old, I really don't find it important to act 31. In fact I prefer not to.
And who are his friends, anyways, to tell him to act his age? What bitches. Will he start to have a low self esteem because of it? But then listen to the rest. What an immature asshole! I mean, who does that?!
When I realized that I was, in fact, analyzing a Blink 182 song while I dressed and got ready for work I was both discusted and amused. Obviously my brain was overwhelmed by the simplistic and extremely self absorbed lyrics and fought back the only way it knew how. Not by stopping the constant reply of this terrible song, but by finding depth where there is none.
So in this way I'm proud of my brain, even though it put me through hours and hours of bad music.

When Sheep Just Don't Cut It

I've always had issues sleeping. It usually takes me between 1 and 2 hours to get to sleep. If there is stress or excitement it could just be a battle all night. You'd think I would have tried the gamut of sleep aids by now, but actually have hardly delved.

The reason for this is that I have a distrust for drugs. It took me years to start taking asprin for aches and headaches, I had always opted for just dealing with the pain. I tell people that I get too drowsy the next day when I take sleep aids, but in actuality this is just the theory I have and I don't know if it's true. I did try melatonin for awhile, but heard something negative about it somewhere and stopped using it.

The thing is that I truly believe my sleep issues could be solved through naturopathic means, both herbs and diet. The problem comes from my inability to put these into play. When trying to solve health issues by natural means, it takes time and determination. You can't pop a pill and make it go away, you have to stick to it and live with the discomfort for awhile before you can even expect any sort of change.

So since I don't have the stamina and willpower for a natural approach, but I don't believe in taking drugs for it, I do nothing and am plagued with insomnia and low energy from it.

It's absurd, I know. The worst part is that I tend to use this model of thinking in many areas of my life. I end up locking into a state of inaction rather than taking an action that I believe in but find difficult or easy but immoral.

I suppose this is why I find the self-help phrase "knowing is half the battle" so frustrating. Knowing, in my case, does squat. And may even be detrimental, since if I didn't think about it I would probably just take the easy way and move forward.

With that, I'll make another attempt at sleep. And tomorrow I will break down and get some Advil PM, goddamnit.

Dreams, serial killers, childhood nightmares

So I had this dream last night about a serial killer. He is was very rich, lives in on a large estate and lures his victims to him before killing and eating them. It was a very realistic dream. So last night I wake up 3 times from this dream, and each time go right back into it.

I mean, why can't that ever happen with good dreams? Good dreams you can never get back into them, but this dream. This dream was waiting for me each time I closed me eyes. Granted it got less scary each time. Most of it was spent on the estate, running from this guy, trying to keep him from killing me. The second bits got more proactive: finding out ways to get away, working with other people to make escape plans.

Thing is I have an irrational fear of serial killers. Not that it's irrational to fear them, more that it's irrational to imagine them coming after you at night. The first time I ever thought of it was when I was young, 9 or 10. I lived out in the country down a long, winding driveway. I remember one night when the moon was really bright I imagined that a man was slowly making his way down that driveway towards the house. He wasn't a robber, or anything like that. He wasn't anyone we knew, he was just coming to kill us.

I think this fear was based in fact. Not that anyone ever attacked our house or even came down our road, but the news of the time was all about a serial killer in Spokane, WA, which was 3 hours away. I don't remember any details at the time, but you hear things and see things and while I was living there he was never caught. It took them 10 years to finally get him, and he had killed 16 women during that time.

So between this and me having an amazing imagination, I was terrified of serial killers as a child. And apparently still am.

But no more dreams about them. K?