Hello out there

I’ll bet you guys though that when I lost my job that I’d be blogging more often.  Well, so did I.  But instead I’ve been spending more time playing with my son, hanging out with the Holistic Moms and pursuing some of my hobbies, such as cooking, crafting, reading and spending time outdoors.  Its been a very fulfilling lifestyle, and I wish it could last forever.

But, I know its not going to.  As we speak, I’m applying for a seasonal night time job and applying to go back to college next semester to finish my bachelors in environmental science.  Or I might change my major, considering that I don’t really intend to make a career out of anything I can major in at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

I also really want to keep this blog active so I can share with the world what I’m doing now in my newer, better life.  I am probably getting out of the Army in January and I’m moving on to bigger and better things.  I am grateful for everything that the Army has given to me, but for this Soldier, it is time to move on.

I’m working very hard on a home made Christmas.  I have to be even more strict about it this year because my income has dropped so dramatically.  I’m also scouring Freecycle, and hopefully putting to good use what I learned last year in my first attempt at a Freecycle Christmas.

I’m trying to get more involved in community activities and I’m doing a lot of interviews for doula work.  I expect to be certified within the next six months.  I’m moving forward with my midwifery training, and feeling really good about the present.

I look forward to sharing all of this with you again!

Birthday Wishes

Here are my birthday wishes for today, my 26th birthday.

• I wish everyone in this country had access to top quality health care.  Health care that includes as many holistic options as conventional ones.
• I wish single mothers got paid as much as married mothers.  I wish mothers got paid as much as single women.  And I wish all women got paid as much as men.
• I wish parents who abandoned their children would be held accountable for their actions, and that conservative talking heads would stop spouting cruelty about the parents who actually do stick around.
• I wish every consenting adult is able to make a legal commitment binding them in love to any other consenting adult.
• I wish the government would stop subsidizing junk food.
• I wish the whole world would go see Food Inc. and The Business of Being Born.
• I wish you would become a fan of Rock Your Birth Doula Services on Facebook.
• I wish all single moms, and especially all single pregnant women, would read Mari Gallion’s book, The Single Woman’s Guide to a Happy Pregnancy.
• I wish that President Obama would actually do something worth getting the Republicans this angry.
• I wish people would start voting for third parties.
• I wish world governments would take the 350 goals seriously.
• I wish Whole Foods hadn’t bought out Wild Oats, and Wild Oats hadn’t bought out Alfalfa’s.
• I wish Placebo hadn’t cancelled their American tour.
• I wish this country and culture would make ease of breast feeding for all women a top priority.
• I wish the United States had a maternity leave policy like Canada does.  One year off at 60% of your pay, plus one optional year off, unpaid.
• I wish mothering were recognized as the full time job that it is.
• I wish men would stop lying about how tall they are.
• I wish companies built consumer goods to last, instead of to break, become obsolete, or go out of style within a year or two (or less!).
• I wish we’d get serious about alternative fuel and energy resources.
• I wish CAFOs would go away.
• I wish we would crack down on companies who hire illegal immigrants, instead of cracking down on the illegal immigrants individually.  Companies who hire illegal immigrants usually do it so that they can commit grievous human rights violations without fear of penalty.
• I wish we focused more on Fair Trade and less on NAFTA.
• I wish all chemicals had to be tested for safety before they are put on the market in consumer goods.
• I wish drug companies weren’t allowed to advertise to the general public.
• I wish there were an ocean in Colorado, and also a place where avocados, bananas and citrus fruit would grow, then I would have no problem going to an entirely local diet.
• I wish I could speed read.
• I wish that I will be able to send Elijah to schools that don’t focus on standardized tests, especially not in Kindergarten.  On that note, I wish every parent in America would read Crisis in the Kindergarten.
• I wish I was a size 10 again.
• I wish my mouse would stop doing the weird stuff its doing.

Now I’m going to go make some potato soup for my birthday meal.  Yum.

My first week as a stay at home mom

Today marks the end of my first week of unemployment, or, as I prefer to think of it, my first week as a stay at home mom.  Its different than I thought it would be.  I really need to get into the swing of things.

I was going to go to the zoo with a friend of mine today, but I am just exhausted, I’m hoping we can reschedule for next Friday.  I don’t know why I should be so tired, considering I’ve been home all week … except for all the running to meet potential doula clients and go to job fairs and get groceries and drop a disc off at Buckley I forgot to leave there and waiting on hold with unemployment for literally four hours.  Ugh.  I just want one day to do nothing.  Is that so much to ask?

But I probably won’t do nothing. I’ll probably pick up around the house, maybe vacuum, maybe mop, maybe scrub a few toilets.  And I really need to take my giant zucchinis and make some zucchini bread.  And I’d like to peel Elijah away from the TV long enough to go for a walk to the bank, and I have laundry to do, and dinner to plan, and …

How did this stuff ever get done when I was working?  Actually, judging by the size of the laundry pile I’ve been working through, it didn’t.  And we didn’t eat many home cooked meals, and we rarely ate before 7 pm, because that’s how long it took us to get home from work and get the kitchen cleaned enough to cook in and then make dinner.  Ugh.

So, although I already knew all this, I feel that this week has allowed me to really appreciate this article I found today, Parenting … a Radical, Political Act.  I thought you guys might enjoy this.

People aren’t black and white, and the environmentalism movement isn’t all or nothing

One day there was no internet at work, so there was nothing much for the people in our office to do.  Somehow, the topic of vegetarianism came up, and I said to one of the Sergeants in our office that I understood the draw of vegetarianism.

“What is it?” He asked, skeptical.

“Its healthier, it has a lower carbon footprint, its cheaper,” I replied, but he cut me off.

“Lower carbon foot print?” he scoffed.

“Yeah,” I replied, preparing myself to explain to him why it was better for the environment than meat eating.  But that wasn’t where his next line of questions were leading.

“So, do you have a problem with motorcycles?” he asked.

I was a little confused by the question.  “No.  Why would I?”

“Because motorcycles are the most polluting vehicles on the road,” he said, explaining that motorcycles do not have the same efficiency standards as cars, and adding some things about the motorcycle engine I did not understand.  I was a little surprised, I had always assumed motorcycles had less emissions than cars, because their fuel efficiency is so much better than cars (I’m still going to have to look up his claim, because I want to know this fact for sure), but I still didn’t understand what that would have to do with the carbon footprint of a vegetarian lifestyle.

I questioned him further.  He gave me a slew of ideas.  That giving up meat made no difference if people are still doing things like riding motorcycles.  That lots of things, like motorcycles, should be more important to people than their food (I corrected him on that one, the livestock industry puts more greenhouse gasses into our environment than motorcycles do, it puts more into the atmosphere than all vehicles do!).  That one person wouldn’t make a difference just by changing their diet.  What it all came down to was this; going vegetarian isn’t going to fix everything, it may not even be the biggest impact you can make, so why bother?

I tried comparing it to going on a diet.  When you go on a diet, you evaluate the foods you eat and decide where you can and where you want to make changes.  You may be able to give up drinking sodas with each meal, but you can’t give up your morning coffee.  Maybe you’re willing to go exercise every morning in order to have a few hundred more calories to eat each day.

He said that was just jumping on the “green” bandwagon and doing as little as possible to be trendy.

So then I explained to him that people who give up meat because of environmental reasons usually do lots of other things to be environmentally friendly too.  At that point, I think he was done with the conversation.

I wish I could have gotten across to him that people can’t be expected to do everything, and the environmental movement doesn’t expect that of people either.  Everyone’s got different lifestyles and different needs as a result.  It would be unreasonable to expect a person in an apartment in the heart of a city to be able to grow most of their own food.  It is unreasonable to expect someone with an hour long commute and a kid to drop off at daycare, like me, to take the bus to work in a city with so-so public transportation.  It is unreasonable to expect a single mother living off of minimum wage and WIC to buy everything organic.  The environmentalist movement doesn’t expect it all from us.  It gives us a series of suggestions, and hopes that we’ll do the things that work best for us, as many of them as we can.

Environmentalism understands that people are not black and white, and doesn’t expect that we should be able to do it all or do nothing at all.  Perhaps what keeps people like the Sergeant in my office from considering the environmental movement is the impression he has that environmentalism requires everything from us.  It does not.

Now of course I understand that as a culture, we’re going to have to make some drastic changes pretty quickly here, but we’re never going to get the people like the Sergeant in my office to make a big leap if they can’t even understand the little leaps.  I’m all about showing people options.  Eating meat, for this guy, is something he could never, ever give up.  Okay, fine, what else can he do?  Well, he could start by eating locally sourced meat.  Meat that wasn’t shipped here from across the country.  That would lower his carbon foot print quite a bit.  He could switch to only organic, free range and grass fed meats.  Not only would that lower the carbon footprint of his diet, but it would mean he’d be eating healthier, tastier meat as well.  Maybe he can’t find local meat, and can’t afford organic meat, maybe then he should just try to eat less meat.  Maybe to one meat free meal a day, or one meat free day a week.  There are lots of options for lowering the carbon footprint of your meat consumption, and no one’s saying he has to be perfect all the time.

Even if he finds none of this fits his needs, that doesn’t mean he can’t do other things to lower his impact.  Its not like if his diet isn’t perfect, he can’t use CFLs, or drive a fuel efficient vehicle.

People aren’t black and white, and the environmentalism movement isn’t all or nothing.  The more people doing little things, the bigger the impact becomes.

Book Review: In Defense of Food

Disclaimer:  After seeing him on the Colbert Report a few months ago, I totally have a crush on Michael Pollan.  He is not a bad looking older dude.  And his environmental values are right in line with mine.  SWOON.  Yes, I know he’s married and has a 16 year old son.  It’s not going to happen anyhow.  But my crush is not biasing my book review.  His books bias my crush.

 

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

These are the first words of Michael Pollan’s brilliant book, In Defense of Food.  I got it on audio book from the library and it was so good, I listened to it twice.  

This book is sort of a sequel to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I haven’t read yet.  I don’t think you need to read it to appreciate this book.  Pollan starts out the book talking about the history of nutrition science and what its results have been for our health as a nation.  Of course everybody knows that we have massive health issues in our country, not the least of which are obesity and diabetes epidemics, but I guess I never put two and two together before.  For decades, we’ve been receiving advice about how to eat from nutritionists, food manufacturers and the government, and it hasn’t made us any healthier.  In fact, in almost every respect, we are less healthy than we were before the nutrition scientists started advising us.

The part that blew my mind entirely was when he criticized the official dietary sanction put out in the 70’s to eat a low fat diet.  Apparently, there was little to no scientific evidence linking dietary fat to heart disease, obesity, or any of the other diseases of civilization.  What there is evidence of is that in cultures where the people lived on a traditional diet that was low in animal products, diseases of civilization (as they are called) are almost non existent.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that the fat in animal products were causing the problem.  Perhaps, as Pollan points out, the problem is something else in the animal products, or perhaps its that in diets heavy in animal products, we tend to eat less plants, and plants prevent the diseases of civilization.  We simply don’t know.  But what we do know is that the advice to replace animal fat with hydrogenated fat (trans fats) is perhaps the worst piece of health advice anyone could ever follow, because hydrogenated fat is the only fat that has been scientifically proven to cause heart disease.  We also are relatively sure that the advice to cut out fat led to adding more refined carbohydrates to our diet, which is very likely at the root of rising obesity and diabetes rates, and to a nation wide deficiency in Omega 3 fatty acids, which can have a disastrous effect on brain and nervous system function, in addition to lots of other health problems.

When I stopped to think about the period after having Elijah, I remembered that as soon as my milk production was well established, about six weeks after his birth, I proceeded to go on a low fat diet.  I lost a minimal amount of weight, almost had to quit nursing because my milk supply went way down (and never fully came back), and I suffered from post partum depression and something I could only describe as brain problems.  I could not remember anything (seriously, there was a time I had to call my mom to ask her how old I am), I couldn’t concentrate on anything, I couldn’t figure out how to do new things, and I often would be listening to someone speak to me, but be unable to process what they were saying.  It basically felt like the connections in my brain had been cut, and even more than a year since I had pretty much abandoned the diet, I was still feeling that way.  Pollan proposed something in the book that made it all make sense to me.  The brain is 60% fat.  The greatest concentration of Omega 3s in the body are in the brain. If I was deficient in fat, it seems reasonable to assume that it might have had a negative effect on my brain, an organ that is primarily fat.  I immediately went out and bought some almond butter and flax seed oil, and then I set to researching the links between fat intake and PPD (in between spoonfuls of almond butter and flax seed oil laced fruit smoothies).  Apparently, there is much talk about this subject out there, but I was only able to find two actual studies, one confirming a potential link between Omega 3 deficiency and PPD, and one that found that increased fish consumption (fish is high in Omega 3s) did not seem to have any kind of affect on PPD.  Some of the doulas I knew emailed me siting other studies that confirmed a link between healthy fat intake and PPD, along with a slew of personal experiences.

But Pollan cautions against following any food trend in which one nutrient is demonized (low-fat, low-carb, etc.) and one is glorified (protein, Omega 3s, etc.).  The whole point of the book is that the value of food cannot be measured by amounts of known nutrients.  Food is complex, and there is always some new nutrient being discovered and hailed as a miracle nutrient, or a toxin.  Often, the nutrients go in and out of vogue with nutrition scientists so quickly that we don’t even know what’s supposed to be healthy and what’s not (the history of the egg is a perfect example).  Instead, Pollan says that we should consider foods over nutrients, and eat a well balanced diet without worrying about the nutritional content.

Thus the rule, eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

There are some sub rules, to make the primary rule more clear.  For example, don’t eat anything your grandmother (or great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, depending on how old you are) wouldn’t recognize as food.  He targets GoGurt while explaining this rule, which made me smile, because GoGurt is a product that grossed me out from the minute I first saw a commercial for it.

Other rules include don’t eat anything with unpronounceable words or things that you don’t know what they are in the ingredient list, especially high fructose corn syrup (I would add aspartame and hydrogenated oil of any kind to that list).  Cook your own meals from scratch, always eat at a table, of the plants you eat, most of them should be leaves/fruits/vegetables (as opposed to grains), and eat slower.  That’s not all the rules, but it gives you an idea of where he’s going.  I don’t think he says a damn thing that any doctor could really argue with (who can argue with a varied diet based primarily on fruits and veggies, then whole grains and nuts, then animal products?), although nutrition scientists and government officials might take offense at his review of the work they do.

I have not eaten the same since reading his book. I have found it easy to abstain from I Can’t Believe Its Not Butter Spray and Skinny Cow Ice Cream.  I have been eating a lot more veggies throughout the day (I can’t give up snacking, like he suggests, but I don’t think it’s so bad if you snack on fruits and veggies, right?).  He has convinced me to try anchovies (as soon as I find a good recipe for them that might make them seem more palatable).  The changes I made to my diet haven’t been that dramatic, but I’m hoping that I can report a positive difference once I’ve been doing them long enough.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Mommy Multitasking – Reading While You Drive

I am dead serious about this.  I read while I drive.  Even when Elijah is in the car.

I know you’re all waiting for the punchline (if you haven’t guessed it yet), so here it is.  I’ve discovered audio books.

I love to read.  I always have.  I was reading before I was in school, and its always been my favorite past time.  I never thought I would ever stop reading.  Until I had a baby.

Maybe I didn’t stop reading entirely, but my reading time was severely cut back, and most of what I was reading was parenting books, and then doula books, and now midwifery books.  While I love reading this stuff, I miss reading fiction, and other subjects as far as non fiction goes.  But I was working more, commuting more, and when I got home, I had a baby to take care of.  When did I have time to read?  I did most of my reading while pumping breast milk at work, two or three half hour breaks a day (my work was super generous and accomodating for pumping milk, more companies should be like my work was).  Other than that, I didn’t get to pursue my favorite past time really at all.

At the same time that I had to give up one of my favorite past times, I had to increase one of my least favorite; driving to and from work.  I HATE commuting.  I’m not much of a fan of driving in general, but the worst is driving in rush hour on the way to or from a place you never really wanted to be in the first place.  I have a 50 minute commute to work in the morning and an hour commute home at night (traffic is better at 6:30 in the morning, when I leave, than it is at 5 in the evening, when I go home).  Trust me, if I could take the bus to and from work, I would, but there are no lines that will get me from my house to my work in a reasonable amount of time (less than three hours). 

Anyway, since discovering audio books, my commute is finally bearable.  In fact, some days I actually look forward to it.  And in the three months since I discovered audio books (or rather, discovered that I enjoyed audio books), I’ve read more than I have in the whole 18 months my son has been alive!

I got my first audio book quite accidentally.  My Holistic Moms Network group was doing a book club for the book A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle.  I had heard a lot about this book and wanted to join them, but wasn’t sure if I’d actually finish it, and I didn’t want to spend money on the book if I wasn’t ever going to finish it.  One day at work, about half way through the month we were doing the book club, I got an email about a service that provides free audio books to service members through a service that works kind of like Netflix (they mail you the books, you listen, mail them back).  I checked out the selection.  It was mostly books on how to improve your leadership skills, not the kind of stuff I was interested in reading, but low and behold, there was A New Earth.  I signed up and ordered it, along with Total Money Makeover, The World is Flat, and An Inconvieniant Truth.

The first books that came in the mail were A New Earth and Total Money Makeover.  I listened to A New Earth First, and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was developing an obsession for audio books.  It was great!  I could drive and read!  There were so many more books I wanted to get under my belt!

Since the selection at 3Leaf Group (the Netflix like service) was pretty lame, I got the brilliant idea to see what kind of selection my local library had.  I had not had a library card for my local library since I was 15 years old.  I had abandoned my card after the Columbine shootings, because the park that Columbine High School and my local library were both in was closed up and police taped off for a month, and I was unable to return my library books, but they continued to charge me late fees!  I didn’t think I could get a new library card, but when I saw how good their audio book selection was, I had to try.  I signed up for a new card online, and picked it up on my way home from work.

I am just flabbergasted at how much reading I’ve gotten done for free, without sacrificing time from anywhere else in my life.  So far I have read:

• A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle
• The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
• Total Money Makeover, by Dave Ramsey
• The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
• The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant
• Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian
• The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
• An Inconvieniant Truth, by Al Gore
• And I’m currently working on In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

I can’t get enough.  As I’m writing this, I have another window open to the Jefferson County Libraries website putting audio books on my hold list.  Even if you’re not a big fan of reading, I think audio books are a great option for you.  Its enough like reading to satisfy the bookworm, but its different enough from reading to entertain the person who prefers radio or television.  In fact, listening to an audio book is very much like listening to a radio program.  You can pick something funny, romantic, tragic, informative, whatever.  Who doesn’t like to have a story told to them?

Results of used Christmas

I promised I’d post them, then I didn’t.  But here they are now!

Elijah examines his Christmas haul

 See that fire truck behind the stockings, the toy train in front of that red and white striped package, and the bench with Elmo on it?  All of that was Freecycle haul (in fact, they were all from one stop!).  That boat toy just barely visible behind Elijah there, along with a few other toys in his stocking and scattered around were used toys my mom picked up from a friend at work.  That rocking chair is the one I got on Craigslist for $25.  That little white car with the red spot on top of the silver package is a wooden ambulance toy I found at Thornton Winterfest.  It was hand carved by a local craftsman, I fell in love with it on the spot, and bought it even though I vowed no new toys.

Here’s what went well:

• I spent far less than previous years.  Actually, I spent very little on Elijah, about $100 total.
• What I bought new for Elijah was organic, handmade, local and/or natural, with the exception of some Tonka cars.
• My home made spa products were a big hit with my mom and sister.
• Elijah was totally overwhelmed with all his toys, and is still thrilled with all of them and plays with them regularly.  He particularly loves the train.
• What I bought new for my mom was pretty inexpensive, and mostly useful (I got her a cutting board – useful – and a box of petifours – not useful, but yummy).

Here’s what didn’t go so great:

• I still feel like I spent too much.  Total spending for Christmas was a little over $120.
• I should have started looking on Freecycle and Craigslist sooner.  On Freecycle, you pretty much have to take what you can get.  Did I go out looking for a fire truck, train, Sesame Street tool bench and a Bumble Ball?  No, I just got lucky and found them there.  Will I always be so lucky?  Who’s to say.  That’s why I should start looking earlier next year.  This year I started looking in November.  Next year, I might start looking as early as October.
• I turned down offers on Freecycle because they were too far away to pick up in a reasonable amount of time.  Everything I ended up getting off of Freecycle was close to home or on my way to work, so I didn’t do too much driving out of the way, but I can see how driving could quickly cancel out all the savings you’re doing by using Freecycle if you’re not careful.
• Speaking of a lot of driving, I drove for an hour and a half in the snow to get that rocking chair, and got stuck in a ditch at one point along the way.  Was it worth it?  Yes.  But I should evaluate that better in the future.  On the bright side, the guy who stopped to pull me out of the ditch was kind of cute.  That’s one reason why I’m glad some people still drive gas guzzling trucks.
• The toys I got off of Freecycle were a little dusty.  Not a big deal, but cleaning time should be factored into the convenience.
• I wanted to do more crafting for the holiday season, but I just didn’t have enough time, because I wasn’t thinking about Christmas early enough.
• My mom still bought a lot of new presents.  I’m glad I got An Inconvenient Truth, and I think all of Elijah’s new toys are pretty cool, but with some more planning next year, I think we can all do better with buying used.  We just didn’t plan enough (and my mom’s broken ankle threw a big wrench in things).

Non Consumerist Christmas Plans, DASHED!

Its been a rough few weeks for my family.  First, my mom got an infection in a broken tooth she had been unable to get fixed for a while.  It made, her terribly sick.  Then, I got tonsillitis, and my mom and Elijah both caught what I had, and we were sick for weeks.  Then my mom got her tooth pulled.  Three days later, last Monday, was the final blow (knock on wood).  While leaving work, my mom slipped on the ice and severely broke her ankle.  I mean SEVERELY.  Her foot was turned around backwards.

So now she’s basically bed bound.  We had plans to go check out a traditional German Christmas festival down town (its somewhere on 16th Street mall, if you’re interested in going).  We wanted to go to the Georgetown Christmas festival.  We wanted to go to Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo.  We wanted to go to all the Advent services at church, and Sunday services, and Christmas Eve candle light services, and Christmas morning services.  We wanted to do a lot of things, to appreciate the spirit of the season through activity more than gifts.  But we can’t do any of those things now, because my mom can’t walk.

She has crutches, but its hard work doing those things on crutches, if not impossible.   We might still do Zoo Lights next week, because the zoo has wheel chairs you can check out, and we’re still going to try and get to Christmas Eve and morning services at church, but beside that, all of our Christmas plans are dashed.  To top things off, my mom had not done one bit of shopping for me and had only gotten one gift for Elijah (she wanted to do more), and now she is unable to do it.  I understand why and don’t mind not getting gifts on Christmas morning, and Elijah won’t know the difference if he gets one gift from Grammy or a thousand, but my mom is pretty upset about it.  She loves to give just as much as any mom or grandma, and this year she won’t be able to.

I have felt a great urge to make up for all of this, and have spent more than I wanted to on stocking stuffers for all of us and a “gift” for myself (a Deepak Chopra book), just so that we all have something on Christmas morning, and it will still feel like Christmas for my poor mom. 

I am however pleased because I had decided my big gift for her would be the same thing I was doing for my sister, home made spa products.  She knows I did that for my sister, and as I was showing her my sisters gifts, she said “I wish you had done that for me”.  Ha ha ha ha ha!  I did!  So at least I know she will like her gift.

What’s bothering me most of all is how hard it is to take care of my mom, my son and the house.  I just can’t seem to keep up!  The house is a mess, and I’m going to be spending a lot of time over the next two days making sure that its at least clean for Christmas.  When my mom scoots downstairs on her butt (because our stairs are too narrow to get down on crutches) on Christmas morning, I don’t want her to be distracted by a dirty house.

Tomorrow, I will post all about my successes and failures with my Christmas shopping goal to do everything off of Freecycle, Craigslist or homemade.  I will make sure to include pictures.  This is, in essence, the first Christmas I’ve put together entirely by myself, so I think a few failures are normal.  I’m working out the kinks.  Next year, my economical, green Christmas will go much more smoothly.  I learned a lot of valuable lessons this year.

EWG’s tips for a healthy home

Want to make sure your home is the healthiest possible environment for your kids?  Here’s a great list, for those who aren’t up on this.

I was telling a friend the other day about how parabens and pthaylates can wreak havoc on a developing boys reproductive system, and told her “I want my son to have a big wang and a high sperm count one day.”  I don’t think it had much of an impact on her, because her son’s penis is bigger than my son’s and she uses products with parabens and pthaylates.  He just has lucky genes.  I’ll bet my son grows up to have more sperm though.  Ha!

No Christmas Gifts This Year

In my effort to have a greener, less consumerist Christmas, I am scaling back on presents.  I’m not eliminating presents, but I’m scaling back quite a bit.  I mentioned my digital cook book idea (its a Word document with a collection of recipes in it, Breakfast, Appetizers, Entrees, Desserts, etc) which I’ll be emailing out to friends near and far as a free but thoughtful gift.  But maybe I want to do a little something more for them?  Maybe I want to give a gift of experience.

Enter No Christmas Gifts This Year, an e-card service that gives you the opportunity to give a friend or loved one a gift of experience of their choosing, for free.  The recipient gets the ecard and chooses from a variety of activites listed in the card.  What they choose is what you’re obligated to give them for a present.  Activites listed include “Learn a new skill”, “Play at the park” and “Cook a meal”.

I think I’ll be adding this to my gift arsenal this year.