My babies like to eat the flowers!!

Maybe I’ll put a few back up after elections…

Personally, I’m sad to think about the flowers being shipped to Miami from South America and then trucked all the way to California. I remember though, visiting my grandmother in Oceanside California and driving past those AMAZING vast fields of blooming flowers. I’m kind of sad to think that all those flowers aren’t either being taken into consideration, aren’t enough, or what. I’m comfortable though knowing that at least those flowers must be making oxygen…right?

So what IS a truly green mother’s day present? I think a drawing, or maybe a painting…and if you are a kid (or husband!!) with money? Send mom to the spa please!

Ok, let’s make a list, highly dependent of course on WHO MOM IS but yeah, I think you’ll get the hints:

1.) Bulbs…IF mom is into flowers, for real, then I recommend getting a potted plant (or bulb!) that is blooming, there should be those wonderful scented lilies or tulips or daffodils around and the wonderful thing is…that IF mom is a plant person she knows next year the bulbs from these plants will create flowers again next year..and she will plant them. The carbon footprint of the initial bulb/plant will be greatly reduced each year as you no longer have to purchase new flowers, you instead can point to where you HELPED HER PLANT IT and remember with her how wonderful of a mother she is.

2.) Spa…IF mom is into being pampered, and especially if she rarely treats herself to pampering, I recommend sending/giving her a spa gift certificate. Mom’s are often VERY guilty of NOT pampering themselves and could use a little hint. You could say something in the card like, “Please use this mom because I hate to think I wasted my money!” It will leave her with the message that you want the best for her and you are willing to invest in her well being.

Shop Amazon’s Gift Cards – Perfect Anytime

3.) Amazon…Ok, so it doesn’t have to be amazon but they have got a HUGE selection and they will be able to buy whatever book or trinket, ebook (a particularly green option!), or anything else their wonderful hearts desire. Also if you get the gift card through that link above I’ll get a tiny bit of commission that I will consider a gift as well! Another option that you might want to consider if you have a green mom is a gift certificate to a b-corp like UncommonGoods.com (btw that link is NOT an affiliate link, they rejected me for the affiliate program for some reason that I’m frustrated about yet I continue to promote them because I love them) that has a commitment to improving the world with their profits.

4.) Art…If your mom is into art OR you are an artist OR your mom is just totally into your art and could care less about other art, for a mother’s day gift you can draw her a picture, paint her a painting, or in my case, I’d say to paint a coffee mug. Moms who eat a lot might prefer a plate, you get the point. Give mom some of that beautiful artist side of you!!!

5.) Card + …. ok the “…” in this one is up to YOU. You know your mom, and what she loves, it’s her day, mother’s day, let her know you know. For this one I’m just calling it Card+ because mom deserves a card (one you made or one you bought!) and whatever kind of mother’s day gift floats her boat. You could take her out to her favorite restaurant, cook her favorite meal, spend some time in the garden with her, buy her some starts for her garden, or grab a pint of Ben ‘n Jerry’s!

More than anything please appreciate your mom (wife)…let her know about the GOOD things that you appreciate about her…however you choose to communicate it…she will appreciate it I’m sure.

Giving the gift felt good, even if the person who once expressed this “wish” might not even remember doing so, I’m hoping that it will be an abundant surprise of blooms that appear, and of course I hope she likes them. No guarantees but it was fun to go on kind of a guerrilla planting mission with baby Z on my back.

I still have some more bulbs…I have tuberose as well as some lily bulbs that I am not sure where I want to put. I haven’t decided if they’ll be free and in the ground somewhere or safely contained in a pot somewhere…

I have been struggling with some sort of pity-pot feelings and I am ready to get RID of them, I have been trying to rationalize my way out of it but it isn’t working…so 29 Gifts it is!

If you have ever gone through this and would like to share your story or any tips you have feel free to do so below! I linked the picture of the book to it’s page on Amazon too so if you have no idea what I’m talking about check it out! I highly recommend it.

I’d love to connect with others too, you can find me on http://www.29gifts.org

Cheers to giving!!!

I have been vaguely paying attention to the whole pink goo debate…I can see how it is gross BUT I can also see how pink goo COULD be really good. Through my Paleo journey for example, I definitely see the benefits of including more “parts” of the animal than is typically included in the “breasts” and “thighs” that we get when we order piece by piece…I think of livers, gizzards, and I think NUTRIENTS. It’s when I get to the bleach part of the articles

that it bugs me…I don’t want my kid eating bleach!

I do want my kid eating entrails if possible…gross right? No I atually don’t think that it is gross at all. If we look to cultures that actually hunt the food they eat they are VERY good at eating everything, and I am all about that. I would like for all those parts to be mixed up with the muscles so that my kids ate the “good stuff” without thinking much of it. It would be a blessing really! I think that kids eating all the parts of the animal would be healthier, more satiated, and better off in general. It’s just the processes that follow including bleach to disinfect and more that I have a problem with.

Maybe if we did the pink goo in batches of just a couple animals at a time, took the bones out, made the bones into bone broth and then saturated the meat mix (pink goo) into that and then squeezed it out to cook into whatever burgers and nuggets they wanted we’d be better off…am I missing something? Cut the chemicals…Keep the Meat!!! We can make Pink Goo into something good…or would it be red without the chemicals? I’m ok with that…Red Goo over Pink Goo!!!

…maybe that product could be a fast food nation I could deal with!!!

MS MRI

To understand the therapies it helps to understand what Multiple Sclerosis is thought to be, which is an autoimmune disease. Autoimmunity means that one’s immune system sees a part of itself as an enemy and aims to destroy it. In the case of Multiple Sclerosis it is the Myelin that is considered to be under attack and causing the symptoms and scars to develop in response.

Myelin is the fatty sheath that protects our body’s axons, or brain connections through our body. When the Myelin gets attacked the axons can be damaged and the signs and symptoms range from numbness to blindness, tingling to pain, spasms to loss of bodily control and more. Some of these therapies for Multiple Sclerosis work by suppressing the immune system, and some by suppressing the inflammation (some people take steriod treatments for example).

When you look outside of the typical American Neurologist’s list of available treatments the list gets much much longer however.

There is also treatments that are becoming a lot more well known throughout the world and the United States:

IVIG (Immunoglobulin) is a treatment that in some places is considered a standard treatment for Multiple Sclerosis after a women with Multiple Sclerosis gives birth to a baby. Other treatments listed above are not considered safe for pregnancy or nursing which is why it is the only time this treatment is typically recommended.

Bee Sting Therapy is an alternative treatment for multiple sclerosis that became popular in the past…there are definitely people who swear by bee sting therapy for multiple sclerosis as well as studies claiming to disprove bee sting therapy.

Helminthic Therapy is one that is less heard of though I find it fascinating. It is a kind of Worm Therapy for Multiple Sclerosis that is basically based on the premise that perhaps as children, people who now are diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis weren’t exposed to parasites that are actually needed to keep us running optimally. Apparently it was banned by the FDA as well which is an interesting topic, it was classed as a “drug”.

CCSVI is an interesting one for people diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis to read about. It is an intense therapy in that it is a surgical procedure to improve blood flow from the brain, kind of like what happens for a heart attack victim except done in an almost prophylactic kind of way as most patients weren’t aware of the decreased blood flow prior to asking for the ultrasound diagnostics to be done.

Wahl Diet(Minding My Mitochondria 2nd Edition: How I overcame secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and got out of my wheelchair.)/Overcoming MS Diet(Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis: An Evidence-Based Guide to Recovery)/SWANK Diet (The Multiple Sclerosis Diet Book) … Dietary options run rampant with Multiple Sclerosis as they do with many conditions. Those are some of the top three that are currently being touted as good options though there are many more. These three books were all written by doctors, first Dr. Swank who wrote the last one many years ago after doing a lot of research, and the first two are written by doctors who resorted to these treatments after they themselves were diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and found it was what helped them the most. Terry Wahl also has a great TED Talk video that gives a great overview on her diet and how much it has done for her.

Another interesting thing about the Multiple Sclerosis diets is how dramatically different they are…for example the Swank Diet has extremely low fat and no beef…whereas the Wahls Diet does include meat, but only the grassfed high quality kind.

Low Dose Naltrexone otherwise known as LDN is another interesting treatment option that has come about. Derived from red wine it is a treatment usually used to treat heroin addicts…and if you study work by Gabor Mate the questions that come into my mind are around the reasons that people do turn to drugs…their body’s learning not to produce the happy hormones and having to find ways to get it themselves.

What is multiple sclerosis? How do you get Multiple Sclerosis? It is something that has a lot of people confused, it is something that has a lot of different treatment options. Multiple sclerosis is considered to be an autoimmune condition but if some of the treatments above work, then that means that there are other possible causes and definitions probably too…right?

I know that getting a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis is a challenge sometimes for some people…and that once you get it then it is near impossible to get rid of. Usually getting diagnosed includes a couple MRI’s, a spinal tap, and a basic neurological exam similar to that someone gets when they have a stroke. Being diagnosed with both I know that they are treated in similar yet different ways.

One thing I have wondered is if burnout, emotional burnout and stress could possibly lead to being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis…maybe we’ll find out if this Stress Vaccine comes about…what do you think? Is our immune system doing this on it’s own? Because we aren’t taking care of it right? Because we aren’t eating right? Thinking right? Feeling Accepted?

Years ago, my husband and his dear friend Danichi started doing a radio show on blog talk radio…this was approximately three years ago. I remember when it was because it was right around the time that my daughter was born and her birthday is in less than two weeks! I remember I thought they were crazy, but I wanted to be supportive. I got my BlogTalkRadio account all set up and started listening to their show and some other shows. Eventually I came across FlyLady, who I thought was really fun and interesting, but let’s just say I had no idea what a hit she was.

So skip back to what I was first saying…I have been having a hard time. I have been trying to find a way to hire someone to help me, watch the kids, organize things so that it’s easy to put them away, get boxes to put stuff in, you name it I’ve either done it or wanted to. Then I posted publicly about it…and “FlyLady” kept coming up…

Long story short, I finally got back on the site and on Monday I “Blessed my Home” as she calls it, spent an hour listening to her comforting voice talk me through spending an hour cleaning up the house switching what I was doing every ten minutes or so…even taking breaks to sip some water!

Go back those three years again…if you have been following me for long you know that after Hazel was born, I had a terrible Multiple Sclerosis Exacerbation. I could barely walk, and I was posting statuses about using the stroller to help keep my balance that unfortunately weren’t exaggerations. It was soon after that my process ending in my Paleo Diet culminated. Within the last year I also found out about Terry Wahls who as a doctor diagnosed with MS that progressed to the point that she was in a reclined wheelchair…who has since “gotten back up” and is attributing her health to her diet, that is very similar to yet more strict than mine. Her videos, particularly her TED Talk are some of my most referenced videos (and her book!) that I post on my MSDiagnosis.info and MomsWithMS.org sites regularly as well as posting them to my Google+, Facebook, & Twitter accounts.

So now, back to my intro, these two things are seemingly random…I suppose that what they have in common is that they are finding some simple logic in making complicated things strikingly attainable (clean house/health). It still kind of blew my mind when I got a FlyLady email just today featuring a diet package and a show featuring Terry Wahls that happened recently.

It was like having my two best friends connect and then contact me telling me about this cool other person they met…

I had some other random stuff come up today as well, I went to Jiffy Lube to get an oil change (there was an awesome Groupon that I couldn’t pass up) my car was well overdue and so I had to do it. Last Sunday Geoff and I teamed up to clean out the car of trash…a disturbing amount of trash and stuff to be kept that had been piling up in the car. I had planned on getting it vacuumed that day when we went to go buy some toner but we ended up ordering that online instead so lots of dirt was still on the floors of the car. It was a happy surprise when the gentleman asked if I wanted them to vacuum the car out too in other words!! I was a VERY happy customer, new oil, new wipers, new air filter, and now the floors and seats of the car were all vacuumed up too! It was awesome. I then talked to them about what they recommend doing to get my Mercedes in running order…if it made sense to go to a similar place down south or what, and it turned into a long conversation that eventually got me confused enough that I decided to talk to my insurance company AND the Jiffy Lube closer to where it’s parked before I decided anything.

So then I was thinking about stopping at the Nursery…I have some plant starts that I want to put in some pots. I was hungry too though and decided that a quick snack at Taco Bell wouldn’t kill me, I went through the drive thru…and when I was handing my card over to pay I couldn’t believe who I saw. My old next door neighbor whose husband was the one who had fixed the car that I was discussing at the oil place. She asked for my number and said that they had been contacted about the car, and hadn’t been able to find our info, it was urgent that we get it taken care of.

Now that wouldn’t be random had I known she worked there, if we were anywhere near the old neighborhood or anything like that…but the car in question is at the opposite end of the city and there was just a lot of randomness in this to put it simply…worlds collided.

So what that means? I don’t know. Maybe my psychic energy is so strong that things important to me are all being attracted to each other forcing me to acknowledge them or something like that. It’s blowing my mind though…it’s an interesting bunch of mechanisms I’m manifesting…wonder what tomorrow will bring.

…are what I am drawn to in this regard. With all the craziness in the world, to have a permaculture garden like this, where my offspring and their friends could live, visit, and get food from would be a dream come true. I can’t imagine anything better than a long standing food source that would always be providing for them.

I have been looking a lot into things like ecovillages and finding communities dedicated to a sustainable existence on this planet and I strongly feel that incorporating this kind of agriculture is a part of doing this effectively. After experiencing the benefits of growing some fresh food over the past few recession influenced years it seems ignorant to NOT be growing food. I’m incredibly grateful for youtube having users like growingyourgreens posting these amazing resources of information and of course for John and all the other passionate gardening/composting types that are making these contributions. I’m starting with the 40 feet or so that I have available to me now to grow food and look forward to my next piece of land that we own and making it a longstanding food source for my community and family.

I believe that it is at least part of my obsession with gardening, which provides my family with VERY FRESH and very ORGANIC food. It is also something that to me totally vibes with the The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy (Primal Blueprint Series) which came out years later and is preaching a LOT of the same message, just in a different way.

I hear she lives somewhere near me and I hope I can be so lucky as to meet her sometime…in the meantime I’ll reference the Susan Powter site as much as I can. The insanity STILL needs to be stopped.