Tired

Perfection is really just a balance I think. Everything seems so perfect until something feels off balanced. Or maybe it's winter. I never really did well in winter. Makes me feel fatter, which really feeds on itself (haha get it??). Sometimes "It" feels like a prison, this balance of perfection. Isn't that ironic?

How far can one go in letting oneself forget, or suppress all the things that one used to do, enjoy, be...when one was just 1, and not 2, and not 3? How much do you give of yourself until you feel like it's just too much...that these tiny invasive thoughts of destruction creeping into your head are getting really stupid...like a sci-fi movie randomly running through some channel behind your wide opened eyes...then you realize oh shit I missed my pill again this morning now I'm 12 hours behind my hormones, which must not be good since I did the same thing yesterday...

That's why sometimes getting high is so great. That moment of blur is really a release from your left brain I swear to God- like in this brain scientist's book, which can also be seen on Ted here. She had a stroke and got to experience life with only the right hemisphere of her brain (b/c her left was the area of the stroke) and recovered to tell the story from a brain scientist's perspective. Her shit is spooky. She talks about how she felt total nirvana, released from the ramblings of her thoughts and the baggage of her emotions, which she says originate in the left hemisphere. I probably shouldn't compare getting high to having a stroke...

Apologies to Ms. Bolte. I'm sure she'd understand that I'm being dominated by the left side of my brain right now.

September Grateful List: Okay it's all good.

This last couple of months have been one huge up and down transitional time. I have 2 major things that I am grateful for this month.

1. "Sabidee" in Royal Oak, MI:

A Thai restaurant run by a Laotian family. What do you know, I had to go looking for a Laotian family to find authentic Thai food...they make their Tom Yum soup OUT OF SCRATCH. Do you know how hard that is? They boil the REAL spices, w/ huge pieces floating around proclaiming authenticity. The reason this is so amazing is b/c almost every popular Thai dish can be found in a jar or container, which takes away the necessity of making these labouring spice pastes from scratch every time. BUT THEY LABOURED. And their shit is GOOOD.

I have to say seeing these galangal and kafir leaves floating around in an orangey broth excited me. Like, wow, is this for real? Am I in America? Are my taste buds messing with me? Do I have wings?

Side note: There are 2 reasons I think that this Laotian family makes authentic Thai that I have yet to find at a Thai restaurant in Michigan: 1. There is a lot of immigration into Thailand by neighboring borders. Thailand, when you look at it on a map, is surrounded by Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia. We're up in everybody's face. The last time I visited I remember absorbing a sense of the country that made sense to me- I noticed a national atittude empitomized in a a popular Thai phrase "mi pen a-lie" (translated as "that's okay," "it's cool, "whatever," "don't worry"). It is a laid-back attitude that I think has allowed the Thais to be centrally located on mainland Southeast Asia. HOWEVER, that is not to say that the country is a utopian and fully accepting place...lots of Muslims that live near the Malaysian border are not happy with how they are being treated by a government proud of their Buddhist nationalism.... Getting back to the owners of the restaurant, I think the reason they make such authentic Thai is b/c they lived in Thailand....(Oh, by the way, the class you're taking right now is called: TyiaTheory.) (Another Oh, my grandmother is a Laos immigrant who moved to Thailand! My mom understands the language...mixed blood baby, we're all muts.)
2. They appreciate the food and understand that Americanizing the food, or dumbing it down by adding sugar for profit, is not a good strategy to gain a strong customer base, since they can easily choose the Thai or Chinese restaurant down the street with the really bad decor.

(They'll be a quiz on this next week...)


2. The Woman Who Forgot Her Baby In the Car for 8 Hours:

Why? If anyone saw the Oprah special on this they will know who I'm talking about. An assistant principal left her baby in the car in the morning in late August only to find her after the school day ended. The baby died of a heat stroke.

This is one of the most horrific things I have heard of in a long time. And I have heard and experienced some crazy stuff. What makes this horrific is the simple fact that this WAS a GOOD MOTHER. She was a RESPONSIBLE citizen. She is an AVERAGE, REGULAR woman. She LOVED her child as much as any mother. Like most mothers, she was trying to juggle her life.

Yet, in this fast-pace lifestyle, her MIND got in the way of her INTUITION and overrided her maternal instincts of safety, protection. SHE KILLED HER OWN CHILD. And it could have been ANYBODY.

I am always moved by Oprah and the grace in which she handles her guests and topics. But today the way she wrapped up this incident gave me even more respect for her. Do you know that she doesn't have any children of her own? She said that when she heard of this story, the first thing she said was that "This child has become an angel for everyone to realize that they need to slow down." And for me it is true. This baby became a messenger. And Oprah did not judge this mom. This also made this story more powerful. Instead of crucifying her as some might, alienating this mom to be "one of that careless bad moms" (something we are always so willing to label on others), she humanized this mom's mistake, which actually allows people to see themselves in her shoes, AND allow oneself to see that one can prevent such a sad accident to take place. THIS IS the MOST IMPORTANT lesson in her story. That we can also SLOW down our lives. That I can slow down and must slow down. That the fears we have as mothers of something evil or bad happening to our children by evil or bad people are just as fatal as trying to be supermom and juggling a life in a fast-pace world.

As a mother myself, absorbing our modern-day cultural messages is an intellectual overload which is not always a consciously acknowledged (even scarier still). Seeing celebrity professional millionaire moms juggling their new movies and glamourized for their "post-baby" body, I ask myself why I am still playing with my belly flab scarred with stretch marks 2 years after the birth of my child. Watching crappy Rachel Ray recipes and reading about pesticides and animal cruelty while trying to make fresh organic exotic recipes every night, I ask how can I make fast and good food for my baby when most of our ingredients are already contaminated. Listening to other women in their twenties make voyages to India, China, or jumping from NYC from SF, I wonder when I get to be that "free woman" again as I find new ways to stimulate an almost 2-year old's mind with free resources.

What this adds up to is a huge amount of pressure on moms. Not only are moms moms, they are wives, teachers, professionals, cooks, therapists, dreamers of their futures, watchers of politics who also want change, affected by the beauty, weight, and age pressures that every other woman deals with. So how can we judge mothers? The worst judge of my mothering abilities, I have learned, is ourselves, is me. And the next person we judge the harshest: our own mothers for their mistakes and for what they COULDN'T do. If you know my mom, you know that this is an internal journey for peace that I am still on. (It's been going good lately.)

So I thank this baby and her mother for telling this story. I saw this baby in the car when she told her story. And when you can see this in your mind, oh it is so sad because this little thing suffered. She was 3 years old. And I am grateful for her for being a lesson about stopping and slowing down. And I thank her mom because all she was trying to do was be the best mom and woman she could be.


******
The bed doesn't always have to be done. Fast food can be okay. Everything is just fine. As long as that baby is in your arms. As long as my baby girl is in my arms.

Living CHEAP but feeling like a Buckinaire (okay, I'm bragging a bit)

So HungyHubby and I have decided a while ago to live a very simple life. Basically, that means we have CHOSEN to be poor b/c we don't want to struggle. That means even though people our age with babies living in the suburbs would be working in night jobs, juggling 2 jobs, working for people they hate, fighting with each other, putting the baby in daycare even though they don't make much more than what it costs, and waiting for a raise, we just said, FUCK IT.

We are young. I have a teaching degree, but have chosen to work part-time so I can watch my baby grow. So I make: Shit. He is going back to school. That will take 3-4 years. So he makes: Shit. (But he does work part-time at Whole Foods and we get a discount!)

But the reason I am writing this is because I feel strongly that even though some people might think that we are ridiculous for not doing the above mentioned, they have not tried being ridiculous. We're ridiculous only b/c we have made this work...our way. But we are the type of people who would rather eat well than buy new clothes and TVs.

My argument is: We are NOT STRESSED, we're well-fed, insured, and our baby is beautiful. I mean, here's a picture of her. For those who want to escape the cycle that actually keeps you away from your baby for no good reason and stresses you out, here's how we weird folks do it (and we do it in an eco-friendly way too yo):

1. We have insurance, not much of it, but it covers for emergency situations.
2. We live near family and his mom watches her 1/week.
3. We have date nights 2/month where we will only either go out to eat or frolick in the part, or better yet, have crazy sex.
   
4. When he works, I watch baby, and vice versa...therefore, no childcare.
   
5. We go to libraries, parks, free concerts, family events, throw potlucks for fun.
   
6. Dollar Stores for simple crap for the kitchen, like sponges.
7. We don't throw out shit b/c it's out of fashion, just b/c, or to buy more. We use most of ours stuff until it completely disintegrates before our eyes for excessive wear (ie, pots and pans).
   
8. ValuPak coupons for discounts at some restaurants.
9. No cable.
10. No shopping sprees.
11. Material rewards only when money is coming in better than usual. This means, maybe $20/month per person.
    
12. No starbucks, no Jamba Juice, no drive-thrus (this isn't hard for us guys, we feast on water and rice.)
13. Eating out weekly budget: $20-$30/week.
14. Shopping taste-smart at grocery stores to avoid eating out at fine-dining expensive restaurants: I go to 8 different stores (not weekly), Whole Foods only for goat milk for LittleMama and some meat and some organic veggies (cuz HungryHubby works there and I get a discount), farmer's markets, Chinese groceries, Indian Groceries, Korean Groceries, Japanese Groceries, Trader Joe's, and the huge local chain, Meijers. And of course, you gotta LEARN how to cook these foods.
    
15. Shopping health-smart w/o needing to go all organic and raw vegan: I look at the ingredients of EVERYTHING I buy (except produce duhh) and avoid preservatives, anything hydrogenated, high fructose corn syrup, sugar as a top ingredient, too many names I can't read, coloring, MSG (your doritos has it too, not just Chinese food), food enhancers. I compare quantity to price, I look for big yellow SALE tags, I compare the sales to the company brand (sometimes the regular priced company brands are cheaper), I only get what I need (no organic raisins for $8, I'm not that crazy). Doing #13 and #14 is the only way I mix health, saving money, add flavor to my tongue and life, and keep HungyHubby and LittleMama vital. Does it seem like a lot of work? I do this shit naturally (loser???) and am am completely self-taught (yes, loser and has no life).
16. What I don't buy: Recently we have cut out having more than 1 cracker box, more than 1 sweet, all canned veggies (except for tomatoes and corn), and frozen foods except for waffles.
17. We only buy chicken (in the larger packs b/c they're cheaper) and pork, no beef. For various reasons.
18. We eat ALL left-overs, cook a lot, clear our plates, throw out only 5% of our food.
    
19. We only spend about $70-$90 a week on groceries for 2 adults and 1 child.
20. We do laundry at the in-laws...yes, this one is a little lame...
21. We don't buy furniture every time frigan Art Van has a sale...you will only understand if you live in Michigan and see their commercial on every 5 seconds.
22. We clean our little 2-bedroom apartment often and love it more than any big mansion in the world.
23. We stay away from too much TV and media besides cyberspace.
24. We invest in books (Borders has a bunch for less than $5) for the babe.
25. We spend A LOT of time together...b/c it's free!
    

So, as you can see, I am a bit crazy, but there's a reason behind the madness :) We're poor, living in white suburbia, finding our way, and we're all satisfied.

I am Freaked out about Autism (and my child doesn't even have it)

From spaghetti...

My child is 18 months and I just recently became serious about researching vaccinations and its correlation to autism. So I get a schedule of all the shots she has received, and sure enough, she has taken them all. She has no signs of autism except for weird occasions when she will let older kids push her and not say anything (Man, I thought poverty would just take care of putting some rage in her...). For some reason I am still freaked out that if she shows signs of autism in the future that I could have prevented this from happening by saying no to some of these vaccinations beforehand. As I write this, I hear myself sounding like a frigan anal-retentive over-concerned mom.

But I am still researching this, because it is fascinating. They say that a change of diet that excludes dairy and wheat products can dramatically DECREASE the autisitc child's behavior. So if these foods affect children whose immune systems "may" have been weak to begin with, how does it affect children in general? Does that sound paranoid? Paranoid or not, this has inspired me to cook even MORE asian, from Vietnamese, to my Thai, to Korean, to Chinese. These foods naturally contain the least amount of wheat and diary...it's the shit I grew up with. LESS pasta, less cans, less processed, less sugar, less meat, less frozen...

To Pad Thai...(rice noodle yo)

Am I creating my own religion...(which has only 1 follower: me.)

Or I am just a little racist...(against 'white' food...since I have been eating more of it since I have moved to Michigan than I have ever in my life...)

Medicating Kids?

Ever since I had my little Sol, whose first b-day was also this last Sunday, I have been trying to stay up on the latest issues about school, parenting, nutrition, etc. (Any new mother would understand.)

I came across this series on PBS.org about ADHD and the new rising trend in diagnosing children and then medicating them for this "condition." I have always been skeptical about it and always felt that it was mostly an "American" phenomenon. In the series they explore the lives of four children who have been diagnose with ADHD and the controversies surrounding it. To my surprise, there are a lot of parents who are AGAINST it (I thought I was the only one.) The series raises questions about the REALNESS of this "disease." And of course, they highlight the involvement of the drug companies and their promotion of ADHD to increase sales. THAT is totally disgusting. And isn't it convenient that Wikipedia describes Adderall, the drug used to treat ADHD is "deemed to have a high potential for abuse and addiction despite genuine medical uses."

The scary part about all this is that most parents do try all they can to "cure" their children's inability to stay focused and they find that the drug "works." But what I don't understand is: is this going to be longterm? My husband commented that this "condition" isn't like a cold where you can take penicillin and it will go away. So does that mean these kids take the drugs forever?? Does it not scare people that their kids are the first generation of children who are taking them- so in effect they are the lab rats because we really don't know what the long term side effects are?? Does it not scare people that they don't even know what this "condition" is??
What about dealing with root causes and changing lifestyles habits and the foods we eat before medicine or surgery or any other shortcuts?

Anyway, here is the link for Medicating Kids.