Taking a break from blogging- I'll be back in the fall

image reference: www.genrecookshop.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

The joy of the only child- not just for only children

With my oldest daughter away at sleep-over camp, I am having the delicious experience of solo-time with my younger son. Just the two of us. Reading. Playing. Watching movies. Wandering around outside. Giggling. Answering his stream of questions/needs without the competing stream of sister's questions/needs. Not having to "tag" along to big sister's events; having important events of his own.

Things are so simple with one child. Unfettered. Direct. One set of needs, one set of snacks, one focus of my attention. In many ways, I feel that second (or more) children get the shorter end of the stick in terms of parental attention. The stick is lengthened by the love and attention of siblings, but still. It is easy to confuse frustration with a younger child with frustration at having to meet the needs of two children. It is easy to be annoyed with the younger child, especially in comparison to an older sibling who is on the cusp of independence.

These three weeks that we have together, alone, are simply magic. I've fallen in love with my son all over again- his sweet face and ancient eyes, his fierce commitment to justice and fairness, the way his mouth twitches into a smile as he comprehends a subtle bit of humor. I am back into all the blissful bits of mothering. Instead of just the work.

The things you can think, even when asleep

When I was in college, I had a life-changing class taught by Professor Jean Bradford, Jungian Archetypes and Dreaming. Or something like that. We learned about the Jungian concepts of the anima and the animus, the male and female archetypes that are in our subconscious mind. We learned about the various cross-cultural symbology that represent these archetypes. Symbology we could then look for in our own dreams. That same year, my stepmother gave me The Dictionary of Dream Symbolism, an anthology of various images and symbols from every imaginable culture and what they mean in the context of that culture.

Professor Bradford gave me the basic framework: my dreams are an organized manifestation of my non-conscious mind that I can navigate. My stepmother gave me the vocabulary: what the symbols and images mean to me. I put them together, along with a nifty trick my grandmother taught me to deal with night terrors: lucid dreaming. And this is where my journey into dreamwork really began.

I started having regular and reliable communication with my sub/unconscious mind. The language of dreams is not the same as the language of the waking mind. Information comes in words, sometimes, but also in dream knowledge, dreamscape setting, and symbols. More on those another time. The real point of this post is that I've taught these skills to my daughter. I didn't begin to develop a communication path with my sub/unconscious mind until I was in my twenties. Patience has been doing it every since we could talk about her dreams, which was pretty darn early.

Various times along this journey, I've asked my sub/unconscious mind to help me with things from finding my keys to dealing with difficult relations. Sometimes, a figure in my dreams will teach me things I didn't ask for, but are still interesting, like how to tie up fresh herbs to dry. A few days before her Bat Mitzvah, Patience had a similar experience: her dreamself showed her how to put her hair up with a chopstick.

She came into the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and informed me that she learned this skill in the night. She pulled out a chop stick and whipped her hair up into perfect swirl bun. Since then, she's also had more substantive dream interactions. And I find her pouring through the dream dictionary many a morning.

The thing about living in the country...

The garden. The garden I planted at the right time with the right plants and the right irrigation and all that jazz. The bugs really like it, too. A lot. Very few things are surviving the affection off the bugs: the garlic, the onions, the horseradish. The rest is pretty much eaten up completely or not thriving. The bugs I can't really do anything about- I am not willing to use chemicals so the solution is better varieties of plants. The not thriving I can do something about, but I have no idea what. First step is to get my soil tested at the cooperative extension.

The chicks. Which vanished overnight without even a trace feather. All six of them. The neighbor spotted and killed a fox at his coop, but we'll never really know what happened to our chicks. Gabriel was devastated. Then we lost one chicken a night for three nights in a row, despite closing them up in their coop. There were feathers for them, I guess because they were big enough to put up a fight. We're down to two hens and the rooster. One of the hens is broody, so who knows? Maybe she'll hatch some chicks for us. I'm not holding my breath. I've not mentioned this to Gabriel. He hasn't wanted to come with me to feed the chickens since the chicks went missing. All that guarding them from the cats, from the cold, from the bigger chickens. All that energy he put in, gone, *poof* just like that.

And then there are the hicks. The ones down the road with the Confederate Shrine on their front yard. The ones across the street who informed us, when we first moved in, that "We don't want to be friendly with you people." The ones further up the road who have NO TRESPASSING signs and chain on their driveway. The ones in town who rev the engines of their souped up gas-guzzling trucks and shoot eat-shit-and-die looks at brown faces. The ones who pull the Wall-Mart Yank-and-Spank on their screaming two year olds. The ones who look at me blankly at best, and suspiciously at worst, when my Jewish heritage comes into the conversation. The farmer next door who keeps mowing on our side of the property line, right before he sprays chemicals all over his land. Chemicals that don't stay on "his" side of the line, but drift all over my house instead.

And last on my (current) list of Thing I Didn't Know About Living in the Country is: the driving. A lot of it. Driving to friends because none of the kids' peers live in the neighborhood. Driving to classes. To co-op. To the grocery. To Chinese. To everywhere. I don't usually appreciate the news spin of CNN, but this article on the New American Dream, Walking Urbanism, really caught my attention. Added to this is the newly acquired knowledge that we live within 100 miles of an active nuclear power plant.

I am feeling, suddenly and without warning, that I don't want to be here anymore. Is this feeling real? Or am I bored and fabricating a thing to focus on? Is there anywhere that is really any better than this?

Ain't that the truth!

This image is from the BBC Day in Pictures.

FINALLY: habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo prisoners

Habeas corpus is a constitutionally guaranteed right. It allows anyone to formally challenge his or her arrest/detention in a federal court. If there are insufficient grounds to hold the person, s/he must be released. By classifying persons as "enemy combatants," the U.S Government stripped prisoners of their right to habeas corpus. Some 250 people were held for SIX YEARS with no day in court. An international human rights humiliation.

For the third time, the Supreme Court has made it clear to President Bush that Guantanamo prisoners are entitled to habeas corpus. Welcome to the land of the free.

I can hardly wait for Bush to get out of office. I want to get one of those countdown widgets.

Read more in this LA Times article
Read a funny but hardcore explanation of habeas corpus
Read my sister's blog post on how iguanas are treated better than Guantanamo detainees

Melina's super yummy and often requested salad dressing recipe

I came up with this dressing in college and have been dousing my salads with it every since. Many people have asked me for the recipe, which I dutifully re-type and send each time. Last night we had a wonderful dinner with our nephews, one of whom wanted the recipe. I've decided to immortalize it on a blog post.

• 1/2 cup Tamari sauce (soy sauce will work in a pinch)
• 1/2 cup rice vinegar (I used the seasoned kind, but plain also works)
• slightly less than 1/2 cup water
  
• 1 teaspoon sugar (replace with honey for thicker dressing)
• 1.5 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1.5 teaspoons onion powder
• a splash of sherry, if you have it on hand
• once you've mixed it up, have a taste and adjust the seasonings as necessary
• Shake VERY VIGOROUSLY before using- the seasonings tend to settle at the bottom

Try adding sunflower seeds and raisins to your salad along with this dressing- a wonderful combination of sweet, salty, and savory. This does not need to be refrigerated and is great on salad, meats of all kinds, fish, seafood, and stale toast.

If you can't ask for more wishes...

Gabriel: Mommy, do you know what I would ask for if I had a genie?
Mommy: Three more wishes?
Gabriel: No, you cannot do that. That is against the rules. I would ask for three more genies.

My eco-footprint according to EcoFoot.Org

Tina tagged me with a curious quiz created by EcoFoot.Org. The quiz informed me that it would take 3.2 planets to support the human race if everyone lived like I do. This troubled me. I was hoping for at least a one, if not a less than one. So, like any good scientist, I started messing with the criteria to see what would happen.

I morphed from a four person milk-egg-meat eating household, living in a 2,000 sf green design home with running water, a car, and 10 hours of airplane flight per year to a one person vegan household, living in an apartment with no running water, no car, and zero hours of airplane flight per year. My new footprint: 2.3 planets.

Hmmmmmm.

I played with all of the options and could not get a score of "1 planet" no matter what I did with the variables. I can't tell if this is a glitch in the program or operator error: maybe after one hour of futzing with this I still didn't pick the right combo of variables for a sustainable score. Perhaps it is the secret true message of the test. My guess is that if I could adjust for the total population of the earth that the score would change. In other words, with almost seven billion human beings on the planet, there is no shade of green that is green enough. But if there were, say, only 3 million of us, we could use running water and electricity in good health.

Sometimes I think that our standards of living (running water, antibiotics, electricity, etc.) are simply incompatible with our resources. If we want to live in mud huts and die in childbirth, we've got it made. But if we want to live sophisticated, healthy lives, the planet dies. Is there a middle path here? Anywhere? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Power usage March, April, May 2008

It is June and 87 degrees as I write this. My A/C is on. A lot. So I am curious to see what happens this summer. Last year, we began running our A/C in May. This year, we think due to the green roof and its insulation properties, we got four more weeks before we had to start running the air.

I am not 100% sure what all the differences are in these two years, but our power consumption dropped significantly compared to the same months last year. Things like line drying clothes, eliminating the power drain of the rainwater harvesting system, and significant improvement to the insulation of the ceiling (thanks again to the green roof) all played a role. We also intermittently turn off our electric hot water backup and rely exclusively on the solar hot water, especially in the heat of the summer. We are consistently hitting our goal of 1,000 kWh or less per month and have not sacrificed quality of life; we use a dishwasher, clothes washer, have nice hot water, computers, lights, etc.

March
2007: 1531
2008: 884

April
2007: 1658
2008: 754

May
2007: 975
2008: 615

Is it a recession just because you can't borrow money?

I've been reading a lot today about the recession, rising oil prices, loss of jobs, and people not being able to get credit to buy stuff. Gas is getting really expensive. People cannot fund their lives by refinancing their homes every five years. Companies are cutting their lowest level employees because they cannot afford to pay them. Overall, I think things are going very well.

Gas SHOULD be very expensive. It is a precious resource and if the only way to get us to treat it as such it to raise the price, then bring on the four dollar gallon. The more expensive it is, the more individuals will be compelled to create viable alternatives and technologies. Hopefully, before we blow each other up or poison the food stream beyond repair.

Mortgages SHOULD get paid off, not perpetually re-financed. I'm delighted to hear that the "purchasing power" of the average US citizen is diminishing. I am sick of all the buying buying buying being percieved as a sign of national fiscal health. Smells more like disease to me.

When enough people get laid off, voices will be raised that address the issue of income disparity in our workforce. Top executives can clear seven figures. Our minimum wage is $6.55/hour. That's roughly $13,000 per year, before taxes. Give me a break! Another couple of months with layoffs in the thousands (of mostly hourly wage-earning employees) and we'll start seeing a bunch of people yelling about it. Really loudly. Which is a good start.

And woven through all this is the undeniable feeling that everyone knows something is not right with our system. We're all getting the idea that war does not solve things, that lots of poor people stuck together in one place is a bad idea, climate change is affecting our society, we can't work the growth model indefinitely, our government has no clue what it is doing, stuff like that. WE ARE SICK and I love it that the symptoms are so completely undeniable.

I have this image of America, covered in bruises and welts, oozing plastic, stinking of hate, and crushed under huge SUV's. Stumbling into an emergency room only to be denied treatment because she doesn't have the right insurance. This is when evolution happens- when it gets so bad that people are compelled to take action.

And yet another way in which greed ruins a good thing

Twelve years ago, California started allowing the cultivation of marijuana for individual medical use. While most other med-pot states limit its use to specific medical situations (like cancer), California allows it for any condition (anxiety, depression, etc.). This was A Good Thing and the people were happy. The drug companies, who until that moment had a monopoly on the chemical treatment of anxiety and depression, were probably not so happy.

Then someone figured out that they can use this legal structure as a cover for commercial growing and selling. The result: a justified backlash against the legalization process. California will now have to legislate limits on the type of growing allowed. You can read more about it in this well done, but very conservative, New York Times article.

Forty million Americans struggle with anxiety disorder and another 14 million Americans grapple with depression. Many of those people buy their drugs from their doctors. I wonder how many of them could grow their drugs in the garden.

I could not find a good statistic on how many people enjoy a serving or two of alcohol each day, just for the pleasure of it. I don't understand why marijuana is illegal or why its use has to be medically justified.

I love coming home

Back home and getting into my flow again. My travels were safe, my experience wonderful, and I'll be writing about it on my JoHo Ireland blog over the next few days. My excitement at leaving for this trip was matched only by my excitement to come home when it was done.

Dad- Thank you so much for helping with the kids while I was away.

Mashi- Nothing got dropped while I was away and I know this is because of how hard you worked while I was gone. Thank you for creating the space I needed to re-charge.

Creating an erotic culture for your relationship

Lucas and Tracy have hired me to help them re-establish their intimate relationship. Their homework from last time was as follows.
Tracy: Find three porn clips you could watch with Lucas.
Lucas: Find three ways to show Tracy you love her body.

Tracy tried to complete her homework, but could not find any porn that worked for her. "It's all so stupid." What she did bring were some arty erotic photographs that she found at a library book sale. She did not, however, feel that they added to her erotic culture or her arousal. Lucas was unmoved by the images Tracy brought, but was very impressed that she was thinking sexy thoughts.

I asked Tracy how Lucas did with his homework, showing her that he loves her body. Tracy blushed. Lucas squirmed. I was very curious!
"Well?" I asked.
"Well, he did it." Tracy answered.

Apparently, he did it in spades. He called her 10 times a day, at least, and mentioned a specific body part and specifically what he wanted to do with it. Tracy liked this, but it made her uncomfortable when he called her at work.
"Calling her at work was my favorite." Lucas grinned.

I asked them if their physical intimacy had a different quality, which they both agreed it did not. I asked them if they were feeling sexual chemistry between them. Vigorous affirmative nods all around.
"But the sex still sucks." Lucas says, flatly.

They still had a lot of tension surrounding Lucas's viewing of porn.
"It hurts me so much knowing that he is watching those young girls. And the stuff they do is so humiliating."
"I only want to watch the... you know, the fucking parts."
"Yeah, but you watch all the stuff leading up to that, too."
"That's true."
"And all the girls are so young."
"That's true. What should I do? I don't want to stop watching. Do I have to stop watching?"

Tracy felt very strongly that he should not watch the type of porn he generally watches. Lucas was angry about this and several minutes of back and forth followed. Tracy feels pressured to become younger and more wild in bed, Lucas feels pressured to stop watching porn that he enjoys. Judgment and anger around this issue flows both ways. I asked Tracy to use the Magic Wand. The Magic Wand is a coaching technique I use to help a person focus on attainable solutions. The Magic Wand can only perform one trick, and it has to be theoretically possible.

Tracy: I would use my wand to make Lucas stop wanting to watch porn.
Lucas: I would use my wand to make Tracy feel comfortable with the lights on.
Me: You can only use the wand on yourself.
Tracy and Lucas: Oh.

Tracy: I would use my wand to make myself so sexy that Lucas would want only me.
Lucas: I would use my wand to make this all go away so I can go back to fucking my wife in peace.

This broke the tension, we had a good laugh, and discussed some very important differences in the way that males vs. females experience arousal. As a very general rule, women associate arousal with feelings of safety, security, commitment, and body-insecurity. Men, generally, associate arousal with feelings of immediacy, release, freedom, and performance anxiety. Lucas and Tracy agreed that they had similar feelings.

I pointed out that Lucas is implying that if Tracy was comfortable with the lights on, he would no longer "need" porn. Was this true?
"No," he said, "I would still watch porn."

I pointed out that Tracy is implying that Lucas's porn watching is responsible for her feelings of body insecurity, and that she would feel better about her body if he stopped watching porn. Was this true?
"No," she said, "I felt bad about my body before I knew he watched porn, so no, the two are not related."

According to Tracy, Lucas not watching porn was "extremely" important to her. Lucas says watching porn is "pretty" important to him, but not "extremely" important. I suggested that as they heal their sexual relationship, he avoid porn. Not forever, just for now. Just until our next meeting in about three weeks.
"It would really mean a lot to me, " Tracy added.
Lucas agreed, with a very loving look toward his wife, not to watch porn until our next meeting.
"OK. I think I can make it until then, but not past that, OK?"

We spent the rest of the session discussing how to build erotic culture into their relationship. The sexy phone calls were a good step. What are some other possible steps? We brainstormed, and came up with the following homework.

Tracy: Initiate sex at least one time between today and our next session; try to leave a dim light on during sex this month.
Lucas: Not watch porn; find other ways (besides sexy phone calls) to show Tracy he loves her body.

Next session we'll check in on the erotic culture they are building, and discuss specific sexual techniques that build body-love for Tracy and performance-security for Lucas.

Vertical glass vs. sloped glass earthship design

I was wondering why you chose to have vertical windows on the front face rather than angled - building code difficulty or construction problem? Does the greenhouse area get cold at night in the winter?

We chose vertical glass because of the heat. Sloped glass ships (SG) get significantly more sun, year round, than vertical glass (VG) ships. And the sun is HOT, my friend. Very very hot. In fact, the sun is so hot here at our latitude that if I had it to do over, I would have gone for a westerly facing angle instead of due south. In southern Virginia, cold is not the challenge; heat is the challenge. Summer night lows can be as high as 80 in our neck of the woods, so the concept of convection cooling at night just does not apply. Ships located in the western desert can rely on convection cooling since the nighttime lows (even in summer) can hover closer to 60.

The other thing we've done to deal with the heat is separate the greenhouse from the living space with exterior grade sliding glass doors. The greenhouse gets as hot as the outside in summer (90+ sometimes), but only as cold as 55 or 60 in the winter. We open and close the greenhouse doors as needed to adjust the temperature. This is especially useful in the winter, when the greenhouse will heat up to a balmy 85. We open the doors and the house is flooded with warm air. The greenhouse, even though we have lots of below freezing nights, does not go below 55 in the winter. We grow tropical plants like lime and lemon grass in our greenhouse. In the summer, we keep the doors closed so the heat stays in the greenhouse and out of the house. We also have a commercial grade greenhouse ventilation fan. Without the fan, the greenhouse is upwards of 100 on a sunny day, even in winter!

Reggae tribute to Barack Obama

Roots Reggae music leaves me feeling energized, close to Great Spirit, hopeful, heartbroken, determined, and ALIVE. All at the same time.

This music is a vehicle for religious expression for me; voices raised for the cause of peace and unity. Papa Robbie's postcast features an entire play list of Reggae music selected to support Barack Obama, including the lead track Barack Obama by activist and musician Cocoa Tea.


Click here for code to embed this play list.

On feeling visible, or I do not work alone

My friend Rain once pointed out to me that most other people work with other adults, other witnesses, and they get to see one another's offices and go to meetings together. They get to see how different people do the same things, differently. Homeschooling moms, though, work alone for long stretches. We often work in groups, too. But not for 40 hours a week.

Sometimes, this makes me feel isolated.

Early this morning, feeling drunk on the first sunlight in a week, I snapped a picture of my fridge and tagged my blogging friends to do the same. As I was driving to co-op today, I thought, Hmmmm. That fridge thing is sort of personal. Seeing pictures of my peers' fridges was, surprisingly, incredibly intimate. Why is that?

This is an important aspect of my life, packed with emotional context and health consequences, and yet, one of the most isolating tasks I do. I call it foodage: the task of thinking about, preparing, serving, cleaning, storing, and re-serving delicious, nutritious, pleasing, healthful food to myself, my partner, and my children, at least three times a day, sometimes to-go.

I have lost things in my fridge, like a dozen Yorgo's Bagels, three tubs of homemade lentil soup, shrimp scampi, and five rotten pieces of ginger. Today I found something in my fridge: my sense of belonging to a community of working women, all of whom experience foodage in their own way. They have large bottles of katsup. They have edible flotsam in the freezer. They have miso and tofu and nuts. The have prolifically breeding condiments in their doors. They have animal food in their drawers. They have soda, chicken nuggets, cream cheese, and frozen prepared food. They have organic food that costs a small fortune. They have beer. In short, I AM NOT ALONE.

Gratitude to all the brave women who flashed their fridge and
to Mashi for taking over the grocery shopping.

TAG, you're it! What is in the fridge at 7 AM?

I've tagged everyone I know who blogs to take a similar picture. That means YOU, the chic reading this who has a blog!

Last year this email thing went round of "what is in the trunk of your car?" I loved that. Besides. This is the first sunny day in, like, a MONTH and I feel silly.

I am not sure what that huge brown lumpy thing is in the freezer, but it has been there a very long time. We have a shelf of yogurt, a drawer of beer, a drawer of cheese, apples for an army, salad veggies, three different kinds of milk (whole, lactaid whole, skim), and several tubs of leftover soup. In the freezer we've got pizza, chicken nuggets, frozen fish, and fleece squares filled with rice that we call "boo boo squares."

Lydia, Shez, Michele, and Leah all responded... thanks!

Managing the anxiety/insomnia cycle

A crucial part to managing anxiety is getting good sleep. A low-sleep you will be a more anxious you, no matter what you do to treat the anxiety. It's been my experience that most women who struggle with anxiety also struggle with insomnia and that the two are related: disturbing thoughts and images come with great intensity while trying to fall asleep or during the middle of the night.

For me, using ambien or other sleeping pills made sure I stayed asleep- but my sleep quality was synthetic and my dreams were useless. Plus, I eventually could not fall asleep without an a pill. So I stopped entirely for 2 weeks (during which time I rented a bunch of low-stim old movies and stayed up a lot) until the ambien was out of my system.

Then I switched to 6 mg of melatonin right at bed time, the very last thing I do before I turn out the light. In about 3 nights, the melatonin was opening a sleep window for me. Not a big window, mind you, not like the ambien vortex of sleep, but still a window. If I was all brushed, peed, and ready to roll over, that window was big enough. After about 5 months, I switched to 5 mg, and then to 3 mg.

When disturbing thoughts or images come into your mind, it takes simple discipline to think of something else. It can sometimes feel that our thoughts are out of control when in fact we are in complete control of where our brain goes, at least when we are awake! Here are things I do to get control of my thoughts:

• imagine tying knots, imagine each thread, try to follow it through the knots, try to imagine a knot that represents peacefulness... what does it look like? how would you tie it? untie it?
• try to remember exactly what I was thinking about what I fell asleep last night
• think of a happy place (beach, childhood home, my own bed, etc. etc.) and go through all my senses: what do my eyes see, what does my nose smell, what does my heart feel, etc.

If I just cannot manage and am feeling like I am going to jump out of my skin:

• get up and turn on lights, read a distracting book, take a bath, check on my kids
• call my friends in other time-zones and chat
• have hot milk or cold beer
  
• I do NOT go online (always end up looking at depressing things)
• I do NOT eat (reinforces anxious thinking behavior), although once I am not stressed out anymore I'll have a night-snack

Usually one of these tricks has my anxiety managed in an hour or so.

And last, but not least, consider that you may have a legitimate reason to feel anxious. Maybe taking a moment to feel gratitude for your nerves can help- as in, thank you anxiety for giving me a bearable vehicle to express my unbearable feelings.

Fire Safety Camp, Suffolk VA

The Suffolk, VA Department of Fire and Rescue offers a Fire Safety Camp every summer. It costs $50 and meets for 5 consecutive 1/2 days. There are 4 sessions offered. The description of this class bewitched me with words like responsibility, leadership, teamwork, and safety. This is a wonderful opportunity to become involved with our local community and I love it that it is a half day program. The price is fantastic, and the station happens to be less than 3 miles from our house. Gabriel was delighted to hear that YES, they will get a chance to go on the Fire Truck.

This program is made possible by the Jeff T. Messinger Memorial Fund. Jeff was a 26 year veteran of the Suffolk Department of Fire and Rescue. You can read more about Jeff on page seven of this PDF document. If you would like to donate, please make your check out to "Jeff T. Messinger Memorial Fund" and mail to:

Suffolk Department of Fire and Rescue
400 Market Street
Suffolk, VA 23434
ATTN: JTM Fund

Hypothyroid and anemia

Maybe it is the water around here, but I know several women in my immediate circle who have hypothyroid (low thyroid functioning). Hypothyroid is more common in women than in men. Many women also have anemia, due to menstruation and/or poor diet. A diagnosis of anemia can be particularly alarming for women who also have hypothyroid, like myself. Is it a sign of something more serious? How can I treat it?

There are basically 3 causes of anemia: loss of blood (low iron); low production of blood cells; early destruction of blood cells. Low production and early destruction are the ones to worry about, and also the least common. Iron deficiency anemia can come from menstruation and/or low-iron diets, and is the most common form of anemia.

Identifying the cause of your anemia is a worthwhile venture because anemia can be an issue itself (not enough iron in the body) or a symptom of something else (various diseases, including thyroid issues). Sometimes, the cause of anemia cannot be found and then one just treats the symptoms. Your red blood cell count, as well as a visual of your red blood cells, helps to diagnose your anemia. Large red blood cells point towards pernicious anemia, a B-12 deficiency. Small red blood cells indicate iron deficiency anemia, caused by poor diet or blood loss.

TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) and ferritin (iron transport protein) work together (along with a bunch of other compounds) to help your body metabolize iron. So if your thyroid numbers are off, this can have an effect on your iron levels and/or ferritin levels. Vitamin B-12, follic acid, vitamin C, iron, iodine, selenium, and zinc are necessary for healthy thyroid functioning; if your iron levels are off a cascade reaction can happen where the other things are disrupted as well, like your TSH. Vitamin C is also necessary to fully metabolize iron. All these things are interrelated in a complex web. If one point of the web is disrupted, it will effect every other point.

Some tips for anemia in the hypothyroid population:

• Get your thyroid numbers as close to perfect as you can make them. Re-test every 4 months until your anemia and TSH are on target.
  
• Get a CBC, if you haven't had one already, to make sure that only your iron and TSH are off. This is a simple test that yields valuable information and can easily exclude many serious things.
  
• Take B-12, folic acid, vitamin C, iron, iodine, selenium, and zinc.
• Consume extra fiber because iron supplements can be very constipating, as can low thyroid.
  
• Eat broth made from fish heads or marrow bones. The fish broth will have trace amounts of naturally occurring iodine and naturally occurring thyroid hormone from the fish's thyroid glands. Marrow broth is rich in iron.
  
• Sweet red peppers and most hot peppers (chile, habenero) have very high vitamin C content, as do strawberries! Eat as much RAW, natural occurring vitamin C as you can stomach.
• I don't usually suggest copious amounts of red meat because iron pills are just as effective without the fat, but I do love organic chicken livers, mashed with egg yoke, and chased with fresh squeezed OJ. I often eat this after a heavy menstruation.
  
• Treat yourself like a person who has given too much blood: rest, iron, vitamin C rich foods, and COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF CLEAR FLUIDS.
  
• Expect to feel significant improvement of your energy levels at the 20 day mark, and slight improvements each day after that. By five weeks you should be back to whatever normal is for you, if not, go back to the doctor.
• Keep a "couch-active" schedule as opposed to a bed rest schedule. I find that bed resting makes me sluggish and depressed, but couch-active (reading aloud, working on the internet, lessons while laying down, etc.) helps keep my brain and soul happy while my body heals.
  
• Spend time seeing the weak areas of your body surrounded by healing blue light, visualize healthy organs, visualize an energetic self, etc.

Here are the links I used for this research:
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/anemia/anemia_causes.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000560.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/anemia/DS00321/DSECTION=3
http://www.hopkinshospital.org/health_info/Blood_disorders/Reading/anemia_and_fatigue.html
http://thyroidhost.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=Talk1&action=display&thread=5483

G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair Sponsors

by guest author Lydia Netzer
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The G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair took place on May 5th in Norfolk VA, where smart young scientists shared their research and conclusions with their peers, their families, and the judges. Fun was had, friends were made, hypotheses were proven, and prizes were awarded! Thank you to all the sponsors of the G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair!

If you would like to help thank these generous sponsors by boosting their links on key search words, please steal this post, links and all, and republish it to your blog. When you've done this, email guess@littleblueschool.com and let us know, so that we can add you to our "Science Fair Bloggers" and give you some links and traffic too! You'll get a link on Little Blue School, Homeschooled Twins, and on the homeschool science fair web site. Need the code? Click here to get the .txt file with all the links in place.

Moore Expressions is a homeschool bookstore in Virginia Beach, VA. They sell used and new homeschooling curriculum, host a support group, and publish a newsletter called the Bayith Educator. They are the premier source for homeschooling books in the Hampton Roads area.

Art of Dance Academy is a dance and theater school on the border of Norfolk and Virginia Beach. They offer "Tiny Tots" toddler dance classes, youth classes for ballet, tap, jazz, and hip-hop, and adult classes too. Most importantly, the host the famous summer princess dance camp.

Norfolk Karate Academy offers classes in Tang Soo Do (Korean karate) and Gracie Jiu Jitsu (Brazilian grappling and self-defense). With classes for children, teens, and adults, it's a great way for anyone to get in shape and kick things in a socially acceptable way!

Nauticus is Norfolk's maritime museum and home of the USS Wisconsin battleship. The hot new exhibit is Seabots: Pilots of the Deep! Have you seen it? Nauticus is in the process of setting up a Homeschool Advisory Group to talk about homeschool science programs at the museum.

Mariner's Museum has amazing programs for homeschoolers learning about maritime science, history, and even pirates! Their next homeschool open house is on May 15th and features a class in pirate lore. Visit Mariner's Museum for historical exhibits and educational programming.

Homeschoolingbooks.com offers homeschool curriculum packages to take the guesswork out of selecting materials that compliment each other to create a whole year of learning for your homeschooler. Three collections are available for each level, and individual books are for sale too.

Brooks Systems offers standalone software and web applications that check legal compliance in all municipalities in all fifty states, and create truth-in-lending documents for residential lenders. Using Brooks for your automated mortgage compliance, you can be sure your loans are safe.

Dr. Bernard Nebel has written two books to help homeschool teachers integrate learning in different areas of the curricula into one living breathing learning experience. His new book, Building the Foundations for Scientific Understanding, is a science curriculum for K-2.

Young Chef's Academy is a marvelous kitchen classroom with amazing cooking classes for kids. Go ahead - cover yourself in flour! Most amazing of all: their summer camp offerings are themed around the Olympic Games. Cook for the Gold with Camp Can-I-Cook in Norfolk this summer.

Mad Science is Hampton Roads' premier provider of science enrichment classes for children. Summer classes include "Crazy Chemistry" and a space camp developed with NASA! New homeschool science classes are being offered in Norfolk and VA Beach, with more planned for fall.

eScienceLabs creates boxes of joy for science loving homeschoolers. In each kit is a complete science experience -- from individual lessons to full years of high school labs. Hands-on science kits are the answer to your laboratory woes. Everything is in there: test tubes, goggles, and fun.

Folkmanis Puppets makes the most delightful animal puppets available outside Santa's workshop. Meet their most unusual creations like llamas, Chinese dragons, ostriches, flying squirrels. Unusual materials create realistic textures, and they all move in very realistic ways. Irresistible.

Book Exchange is the largest used bookstore in Eastern Virginia. Unlike most musty and confusing used stores, this one is clean, bright, inviting, and has a huge selection of used homeschool books.

Thank you for your help in promoting these homeschool-friendly sites. They took a risk on sponsoring us in the first year of our science fair, and we appreciate their support.

How do you teach your kid street smarts without letting them on the street?

In my cohort of homeschoolers, many families cite bullying as one reason they chose to educate at home. I am one of those families. And while I do not want my children to be subjected to assholes, I would like them to learn how to deal with assholes, all without becoming assholes themselves. As the mother of a girl, this issue is also laden with fear of rape or abuse; a fear that she is a target for exploitation. How can I prepare her for that?

One of the defining qualities of adulthood is the ability to handle, with grace, intense emotions like: love, lust, hate, envy, loss, suffering, etc. Another defining quality of adulthood is the ability to tell when someone is trying to screw you- hopefully before they finish. But how do we practice these things without getting hurt? Without being in dangerous situations? Without becoming jaded?

I think film is a great ways to impart experience in a safety-net setting. Sort of like an allergy shot. A small dose of the scary stuff: death and suffering, predators, broken people. A small dose administered with lots of love and parental presence. When it comes to street smarts, sexuality education, and internet safety, my motto is better too much too soon than too little too late. With this in mind, here is a list of movies (and some TV shows) that toughened up my kid while leaving her openhearted.

• Labyrinth
• The Dark Crystal
• The Emerald Forest
• The Secret of Roan Inish
• The Guru
  
• Lady Jane
• Little Black Book
• The Black Stallion
  
• The Piano
• Air America
  
• Ladyhawke
• Girl, Interrupted
• Quest for Fire
• Smooth Talk
  
• Elizabeth
  
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Little Buddha
• A Little Princess
• The Breakfast Club
• Moulin Rouge
• Contact
• E.T.
• Star Trek, TNG
  Special stars for the episode Chain of Command, which is about torture and was produced in conjunction with Amnesty International.
• Kung Fu
  My hands down favorite and most often quoted media input.
• Mission Impossible
  The original series, not the new Tom Cruise movies. Note how much silence there is- more than half the show.

Earthship green roof at 6 months

We planted the roof in October of 2007 with over 1,000 seedum plugs. We watered with a soaker hose for a while, but the plants didn't look so great. We switched to a sprinkler and that did the trick. We also applied Miracle Grow when the weather warmed up. They really took off. I spend about 1 hour a week weeding it. Theoretically, once it grows in thick it won't need weeding.

The plants feel like animals, like creatures, more than they feel like plants. Seedums have a rubbery texture. Gabriel says being on the roof is like being underwater. The kids have named the plants things like "squidy" and "octy."

Getting swamped in administrative work: how to escape

Email. Medical appointments. Bills. Scheduling. Shopping. Errands. Vet. Photo management. Birthdays. Lesson plans. Phone calls. ListServes. Yahoo. Facebook. Flickr. Picassa. MySpace. The list of potential administrative to-dos is ENDLESS.

My solution to this problem is to decide how much time I want to spend on administration, and fit all my tasks into that time. If I give the tasks as much time as they can handle.... well... then I would be doing it all the time. Which is my definition of a bad day: lots of energy expended, but on NOTHING.

I decided that no more than 20% of my time can go to administration, or about 8 hours a week. I do four hours on Monday and four on Thursday. I stay off the internet completely on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. I automated as many of my bills as I could, and don't check the math. If I get screwed, I'll consider it a fee for having them act as my secretary. I don't join new internet networking sites. I don't do administrative work as soon as it pops up in my email. It gets filed and pulled out on Monday or Thursday. This leaves me with 80% of my time for the important stuff: my children, my marriage, my community, and myself. The result has been that I spend significantly less time administering and significantly more time LIVING, which is way more fun.

We live in a culture that stresses and values being "productive." It can be difficult to distinguish "productive" from "busy." They are definitely not the same thing. Productive means you are making progress on your path, whatever that path may be. Busy just means "intensely scheduled." And I don't like busy work.

Inspriational quotes

Every once in a while, I hear something that strikes me right to the soul. It is an inspiring experience. Here are my latest three waaaa waaaa waaaa full-body-goose-bump quotable moments. Every time I read them I feel validated and happy and REAL.

Janis Dean
[We try to]... find a balance between accountability to class objectives and accountability to our ideals about enjoying learning.

Hot (anonymous) homeschooling mama
My husband watches porn on his laptop on one side of the bed. I read some well-crafted erotica on my laptop on the other side of the bed. We're ready to rip each other's clothes off when we're done!

Matisyahu
... Jah please take me up so Babylon don't take me shopping.

mushroom and bug ID for Suffolk,VA permaculture garden

I asked Mother Pat, my neighbor and local naturalist, to help me ID these creatures.

The caterpillar turns into a monarch and will decimate dill and parsley unless physically removed and squashed. Yuk.

The mushrooms love the manure I have in the garden and are not terribly poisonous, but they are NOT edible.

Day 15 of the omer: beauty/lovingkindness

Today we begin to explore the divine attribute of beauty (tiferet). Tiferet, beauty, can also mean compassion, harmony, and truth. What is beauty? What is a beautiful person? A person who possesses compassion, harmony, and truth.

One of the important aspects of truth is that it is neutral. The truth does not pick one side or another, it simply is The Truth. While love is positive and discipline is negative, truth is the neutral thread that binds them together.

When expressing lovingkindness, we must assess our truthfulness. For example, if giving change to a beggar are we doing so to impress anyone? Did we judge the beggar? Did we flick the change with a bit of contempt? Is there sarcasm in the affection we give our children or partners? Does my compassion feel loving, or does it come across as condescending pity?

Activity for the day: try to make neutral eye contact with all the members of your family for 15 seconds; no praise, and no critique.

I'll be continuing with the next 15 days of the omer next year.

Day 14 of the omer: discipline/nobility

Every time we correct our children we have an opportunity to increase their self-respect. We also have a chance to cut them to the quick. Choose wisely.

Phrases that help me discipline while increasing self-respect:

• I've seen you successfully handle situations like that before. What happened today that was different?
  
• What can I do to help you the next time?
• I felt that you were really struggling today and that your self and your actions were not in harmony. Is everything OK in your world?
• Let's practice that situation together and try different ways of handling it differently in the future.
• Do you need me to be the "bad guy" to help direct you in situations like this?
• Do you need food/water/hugs?
• In very rare situations, I'll use the phrase "That was beneath you."
  

Day 13 of the omer: discipline/foundation

Foundation, in Hebrew, also can mean bonding. In what way does discipline help us to bond with others? I think this means letting go of ego and self in relationships. For example, when I am feeling cranky, it is very easy for me to lash out at my family. The reality is that my family is there to help me with my cranky spell, but my reptilian perception of the situation is the they are the cause of my cranky spell. This dynamic results in a me vs. them situation. Not good.

By letting go of the "me" in that situation, I can partner with my family against my crankiness. This letting go requires discipline. I have to swallow my pride when I am at my weakest- it's like asking a marathoner to do a sprint at the end. But it is worth it. In the instant that I extend the effort to let go of ME, I am suddenly so much more powerful than just ME. Now I am an army of four. Extra hugs, empathy for my experience, an a general rallying against the CRANKINESS occurs.My crankiness doesn't have a chance.

Omer activity for the day: Pay attention to your family and their moods; do they ever need your help, but may not have the control to ask for it? Try a hug instead of a snap.

Day 12 of the omer: discipline/humility

This is taken directly from A Spiritual Guide to the Counting of the O