Becoming A Vegetarian

I have fallen completely in love with my Bite Me 2.0 course. Everyday its like I spend 3 hours with my great aunt and uncle, who share very similar believes and talk in much the same way as my teachers. The books, Food Politics, The Ethics of What we eat (my favorites of the course), have been highly educational and have really changed my perspective of the political food system. We watched several movies, including: Dirt, Fresh, Killer at Large, Botany of Desire, and Power of Community. All are very educational. I think Power of Community is my favorite though. It really makes me want to live on a commune, lol.

Last week I made an effort to reduce my meat consumption, and ate only the meat still available in the house. Starting on the 17th, I fully ‘converted’ to being a vegetarian. If the ethics behind eating meat aren’t enough to get you to change your eating habits, the health benefits certainly are. I feel twice as energized as I used to, and even with only 6 hours of sleep I wake up feeling extremely well rested (which used to be a really rare thing) and falling back to sleep after my alarm goes off now takes a big effort. My Bite Me course currently is having us do a nutrition project, in which we have to track our daily meals (using fitday.com) and then print off the results after a week. I decided to start this project on Monday (the day I changed my diet completely) and according to the website I have well over 100% of my essential vitamins and minerals every day. I’ve made a creamy carrot and sweet potato soup, and pizza so far, as well as having cereal and our traditional olive oil and vinegar salad.

Just as importantly as becoming a vegetarian, I have tried to be an organic one. There’s no reason that everyone shouldn’t be eating organically. We went grocery shopping monday, bought a weeks worth of groceries (for 2 people, with enough for my sister to have some as well usually) and spent less than we would on a weeks worth of normal groceries. I spent most of monday making soup and organic apple sauce, waiting until tuesday to make banana bread.

Oh, and for you french fry eaters out there, the first day I switched I went to Red Robin and ate 3 baskets full of fries on my own. I barely reached my recommended daily allowance for calories that day, and had more than enough vitamins and minerals. So, giving up meat means more deep fried goodness for me!

I also feel a lot happier than I have in months. Maybe its just the increase in light because of the time of year, or the fact that my sister was gone for three days; I dunno. All I know is I’m actually able to get out of bed in the mornings, where as two weeks ago the thought of moving was often almost more than I could bear.

Complaining Again

I’ve been pretty uncomfortable the last few days. I skipped my last class of the day yesterday and just came home and spent the rest of the day laying in bed. My whole lower abdomen is extremely uncomfortable, and I think I may have found a lump in there as well. I’ve been extremely tired and unable to get enough sleep to feel rested, excluding today, and have been a little short tempered as well. Today was alright because I managed to get 8 and a half hours of sleep, and woke up feeling almost normal. I only had a moment of discomfort once or twice, but have a headache so I still haven’t been able to get much done. Yesterday I told my Anthropology teacher that I may be unable to make it to school Wednesday, because sitting in her class for two hours is really unpleasant. I actually almost threw up yesterday because I had a random moment of extreme nausea. She told me not to come to class, and was very willing to work something out if I wasn’t feeling up to the final. I told her thanks and that I fully expect to go to class for that.

The trouble is that the quarter ends next Friday. I have two finals on Wednesday and one on Friday (of next week mind). So I really only have a few more days of genuine work to do before I have a few tests to take and I’m done. This makes it incredibly difficult for me to stay motivated, especially because I don’t care for any of these classes anyway. Plus, with the way I’ve been feeling and the potential for a life threatening disease, school isn’t exactly high on my to-do. I’m just kind of stuck in this floating stage at the moment, which really is what my life has been for the most part anyway, but it’s a little more pronounced at the moment I think. Oh! And I never had my wisdom teeth removed, because I hoped that they would never erupt and I wouldn’t have to deal with them. The furthest most back corner of my mouth began hurting severely yesterday, and my gums have definitely started moving around. So I may have to deal with the removal of all kinds of body parts before too long, which would be pleasant. My jaw pain is also contributing to my headache. And I’m just so tired…

Maybe I’ll hurry up and finish my Art project, which isn’t due until next Wednesday… I hope… Oh no, I’ve just checked and it’s due Monday… How unfortunate. And there’s quite a lot more to do than throw images together… whoops.

Sorry, I somehow got distracted by tumblr… ugh, somebody come save me. I’ve been out the last two nights in a row, which never happens. I’m normally a homebody, but… I don’t know, I think the idea of finally confirming I have cancer has put this desire to do things in me. Which is a bother, because if I’m going to be stir crazy (which I’m sure I will) while going through chemo, I may go properly mad. In more exciting news, I went out and bought a new plant and some velvet medicine for my fish. The male’s fins are beginning to split, which shows how extremely unhealthy he is. I was reluctant to try treatment again, because I used something that treated for ick and velvet before and had no results, but this medicine is supposed to treat the fish themselves, not the water. So! Here’s hoping they get healthy, because watching sick fish while slowly being killed by chemo just doesn’t sound like fun!

Murder, Mayhem, And Carnivorous Plants

I didn’t have time to post about this yesterday, but do you guys remember my neighbors who live two houses down from me? The ones where the father stabbed his son who had attacked his mother? Well, that son was recently released from jail and was going into rehab next week. Yesterday he lost it and shot both his mother and father in law, as well as his grandson (not at the house two houses down though). My neighbors F and S, who are friends with the man’s sister (the woman who currently lives two houses down) said that he killed his wife. After attacking his family he fled north where he killed himself in a rental car.

Here’s the link to the official news report if you’d like to read more. http://www.komonews.com/news/At-least-one-shot-in-Renton-area-176120421.html?m=y&smobile=y&clmob=y&c=n

While that all was going on, I was out to a short play with my mom, sister, grandpa and his wife. It was surprisingly fun. The play was a short, 40 minute thing performed at Molbec’s (a nursery a couple towns away), by the employ’s there. The nursery was fantastic, and my mom bought me a hanging pitcher plant. I have wanted one for YEARS. Its one of the proper large ones that would catch a small rodent. It was $40, the most expensive houseplant I’ve ever bought, but i think it was well worth it. It makes my room so much more exotic! I had a pitcher plant, about a year ago I think, that was a ground-dwelling variety. I managed to get it to bloom accidentally, but it never recovered and it died. This one is large and sturdy though, so lets hope it lasts longer than a few months. The tag it came with says it should be kept in 50% shade, but everything I read online says it needs bright, indirect sunlight. It also needs high humidity and lots of water, so I may just keep it in the bathroom and see what happens. If it appears unhappy I’ll move it.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. I’m not looking forward to school tomorrow :/

Birds, Bees, Flowers, and…

I planted turnips last year, but I don’t like turnips so I never dug them up. Instead I decided to let them bloom, and found out that my honeybees love them. Which of course meant I now had to let them go to seed so I could plant them again. Unbeknownst to me, purple finches seem to enjoy turnips seeds. Which means I had two of them eating from my turnip stalks yesterday. It was so cute! After they flew off I had to go inspect the plants to see what they’d done. They had nibbled off a few pods and there was little bird poops on the rocks holding up that small section of the yard. With any luck we’ll get wild turnips around the area now.

 

Here’s a honeybee on a rhododendron. I didn’t know they liked them… actually, now that I think about it, wasn’t there a species of rhododendron that produced poisonous honey in Rome or Greece back in ‘ancient’ times? I feel like I remember reading about that somewhere…

Anyone know what kind of pollinator this is? I think its a species of bumble bee, but I’m not sure.

I don’t know what this plant is called, but honeybees LOVE it. We’ve got it scattered all over the yard, and unfortunately it hasn’t gotten to be a large enough population yet. It spreads like strawberries though, through plants the mother plants sends out on long runners, so the population should more than double by next spring. Which really is going to make weeding impossible…

This yellow jacket (? [I'm horrible at identifying between hornets, wasps, and yellow jackets]) was very interested in our peonies. She crawled over this bud for a while, as if looking for pollen or nectar or something. I know ants pollinate peonies, and we even have a ‘wild’ one that’s popped up in the yard, and because ants and yellow jackets are related, maybe yellow jackets pollinate them as well? I dunno, just a theory.

Forgot To Title This

This quarter in school involves a really long break between classes. I’m taking Astronomy 201 and Math 98 (equivalent to 9^th grade math). Unfortunately Astronomy is from 9:30 to 10:20 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Math is every day from 1:30 to 2:20. Which means I’ve got a three-hour break, three days a week. I came home for lunch today. Its much too nice out (the weather report claims its only 57, but its definitely in the 70s where I’m sitting) to be stuck in a stuffy cafeteria. The dogs are glad to be out I think, except Sam. His dark fur makes him too hot almost instantly, so he’s inside. He’ll come lay on the cool concrete at my feet every so often, and when I first let him out he was rolling in the freshly mowed lawn, but for the most part he stays inside. Buttercup and Kira both play until they’re unable to breath, and then they take a break in the shade with me.

The bees are out of course. Every so often a flower will bob unexpectedly in the yard, and a little glowing orb of gold will streak away from it. The last couple days have been really nice, and flowers are popping up like crazy as a result. The blossoming cherry burst into bloom in under two days. All of the hyacinth are up, which is a big part of where the bees are getting their nectar from right now I think.

I’m really hoping I do well in Math this quarter. Math is my absolute worst subject. For some reason I just don’t understand it. I really need to figure it out though, because if I plan on being a botany major, I’m going to need a ton of chemistry classes. And Chemistry requires math. I hate both

A Long Post After A Short(er) Break

I miss my bees. I feel like I’ve lost a dear friend or someone close. Every so often the memory that they’re all gone will flash into my head and catch my breath in my throat. It’s depressing. My life dream, gone. I’ll have to wait a few more months before I can buy bees again. And it was a bad winter so many people are struggling. I’ve just got to sit and wait, which I’m not happy about. It could be another year before I get bees again, if I can’t find someone willing to sell me bees towards the end of the season.

The weather returned to crap today. I don’t understand how it can drop 10 degrees over night and be suddenly raining when it was so clear-skied the day before. That’s not true, I understand it, I just don’t like it.
I caught two more rats today. Blech. They manage to lick clean some of the traps, which is annoying. And the peanut butter has started to attract a hoard of sugar ants. I just want to bomb the whole area over there. My mom is reluctant to take things to the dump this weekend because removing the rats home will force them to look for a new place to live, i.e. our house. It’s a bad situation all the way around. *sigh* I’m not a city person. I need wide open fields as well as rivers that cut across them and tress that shade them and mountains in the distance with a gorge beside me. I need the wild. Even if there are rats and mice and things of that nature out there (which of course there are) I can at least get cats and know that they’ll hunt them because they’ll be wild as well. I want to live my life season by season, entirely at the mercy of whatever the winds may bring.

What job could afford such a life though? One that is simple and requires little math. I’m terrible at math. I can see patterns and answer correctly when put on the spot, but why or how I got the answer is something I can’t explain. I can’t do anything involving math. My brain will fry. I wouldn’t mind being a history buff, but those don’t get paid much. I’ve decided I can’t be a teacher. Teenagers annoy me too much and kids are too dependant. I can’t farm anything except flowers because there’s no money in food crops anymore. I think food crops shouldn’t be subsidized. It’s made everything too cheap and makes growing locally something that costs more than it earns. I watched a documentary (the future of food I think it was) that explained how money was divided up among the government and farmers from goods sold by farmers. I think farmers earned something like a nickel for every ear of corn they grew. Most have to have second, off-the-farm jobs to support farming. It’s ridiculous.

I did a bit of yard work yesterday. Not as much as I’d hoped obviously, but some. I can’t believe that we’ve managed to fill two yard waste bins for the last two weeks and have made no dent in the weeds in the yard. It’s insane. Dandelions are rampant, those little white flowering things are so out of control it’s something that won’t ever truly be contained, and we have more grass in the flower beds than we do in the lawn. Ugh. I hate lawns. I found an article online today that listed a species of zinnia as an alternative to grass and immediately sent the link to my mom who loves zinnia. It’s good for the bees and butterflies too!

I could be an ecology person, but I don’t know how much they make, the college requirements, or where to even apply for a job. I do love working out doors though. I’ve slowly become a bit more accustomed to working in the cold too, so I don’t know that I’d mind that. And it’d give me an excuse to wear flannel and wool socks all the time! Hmmm, I do like the idea of this. Perhaps I’ll spend some time looking online tomorrow.