Conventional/Industrial Paleo

I make no secret about the face that I am not well off.  I am in the middle class, hanging on by my fingernails from falling into impoverished.  Things have been rough and we've been juggling our bills to survive until we get our tax returns.

Needless to say, I cannot afford to eat Paleo in its pure form.  I splurge a little on organic bagged apples for my daughter because they're always the perfect size for her and I don't feel so worried if she pulls the damned things out of the bag and eats them before I have had a chance to wash them.  Other than that, everything -- regardless of if it is on the dirty dozen list or not -- is conventional.  I'm sorry, but even the frozen veggies are stupidly expensive.  I can buy almost 3 pounds of the conventional, store brand bags of cauliflower for the price of one of the store brand organic bags that is slightly smaller.

Organic chicken thighs are $6.99 a pound.  With three people to feed, that is not going to fly.  Chicken thighs, where I work, are typically $1.38/lb.  Right now they're on sale for $1.  Hm... I wonder.  What am I going to buy?  Not to mention, pastured pork does not exist in my area, and I certainly can't begin to afford the prices farmers are demanding for it.

Grass-fed beef?  I'm lucky if I can afford beef at all.

I wait for vegetables to go on sale before I buy them.  I find myself staring at the fresh broccoli, waiting for the price to go from $1.58 a pound to 88 cents.  Forget affording fresh asparagus.  This is just the conventional stuff to boot.  I splurge on my fresh vegetables.  I pay that $2.48 for a pound of fresh brussel sprouts once a week.  I make sure that my daughter has pork rinds, apples, bananas, and berries to snack on.

Is it ideal?  No.  But it is the best I can do.

Do I get annoyed when paleo bloggers go on and on about how you can afford organic food if you want to?  Yes.  Even if I ditched the internet and my cellphone it still wouldn't cover the cost of the food.  It is 2-7xs more expensive for organic food.  And locally sourced food?  All my farmer's market sells is jewelry, sugary jellies, and peppers and onions.  And they are very proud of those things.  The butcher has decent prices for some things, but their veggies are bagged and stickered with the same things from the grocery store I work at so I am not sure I believe the woman that sells them.

It costs a lot of gas to drive 30 miles to the nearest Nature's Grocers.  Forget having Whole Foods near by.  That's over an hour drive.  Never even seen a trader joes.  We'll probably stop by a store when we go to our daughter's dermatologist appointment.

Anyway, my point is that just because you can't reach the ideal doesn't mean you shouldn't do something.  My husband's... foot problem has started to clear up, my daughter's hair is growing back, and my weight is steadily dropping.  Take what steps you can to have a healthier life.  Grains made me fat and ravenous.    My life is better for losing them.

Later, y'all.

Been awhile

A lot has happened since I last posted something.  Rob and I fell off the wagon during the holidays and my dearest little girl's hair started to fall out.  Alopecia Areata.  Poor baby is half bald with only thin, scraggly hair left.  It happens often enough for them to tell us not to worry, but not often enough for them to bother studying it or its causes.  All I know is that it is an autoimmune disease that kids may or may not grow out of.

Well, I am not going to wait until she is in school to find out if she'll grow her own hair.

So, the hubs and I decided to take a serious plunge and went for the autoimmne protocol for paleo figuring we had absolutely nothing to lose other than some dead weight (which is happening).  Five days in and the babes has started to show substantial hair growth and it is showing in more and more areas already.  It is super exciting.

We have been eating pretty boring the last week.   Fresh brussel sprouts cooked with onions in duck fat and coconut aminos have been my true proud moments. Up until last night.

Last night I made chopped liver... no eggs since we can't have those until the 31st, but it was still good.  I put it on butter lettuce for wraps with fresh cucumber and some pickled daikon.  The hubs had to put balsamic vinegar on it and it still doesn't rank on his favorites list, but at least he'll eat it.  I also have an appreciation for butter lettuce.  I don't recall having it before.  It is a good and tender and easy for my daughter to bite through.

I'm doing a lot of cooking today so that my daughter has stuff to eat at my parent's house.  They aren't as on board with the whole diet as they seemed before it started.  Hopefully they will be encouraged by the results.

The Last of Us, a parent's view

So, it's been a while.  I've been pretty busy doing this and that and the other thing.  Mostly, I've been not writing on this blog, but hell, I don't have any readership, so I don't owe anyone anything, I guess.

I know it's a little late, but when "The Last of Us" came out we were broke.  Dead broke, and we couldn't afford to get it even though I wanted to play it.  I read control alt delete, and I like to read Tim Buckley's reviews on games, and I was hooked by his review and his comics about it, but I had to wait quite a while to have the loose funds to get it.

We got it on the pretense of my husband's birthday, but we both know it was for me.  I'm not a big fan of zombie apocalypses as I feel they are overdone, boring, and at the same time manage to scare the crap out of me.  However, I like games where I sneak around and kill someone without them even knowing I was there.  You need only check out my Elder Scroll saves to know that.

So, for any of you that have stumbled on this... here is my warning.

There are Spoilers ahead.

I'm not kidding.

Spoilers.

Don't get all annoyed when you see them, because I have given ample warning about the spoilers.

Here there be spoilers.

Moving on to the spoilers now.

So, the ending.  As the title suggests, I'm going to be looking at this as a parent.  I probably would have felt the same way about it before I became a mother, but... well, what can you do.

The beginning is important to me, because it establishes Joel, the co-protagonist, as a bereaved father.  You get a brief glance at his daughter and how much he loves her.  He'll damn the world to protect her, as shown when they pass up the three people walking along the side of the road.  He'd do anything for her, break his back for her.  As a daddy's girl until the day I die, I connect with Sarah because of her relationship with her father.  Now, I wasn't raised by just my dad, and I have two brothers, but I understand the love there.  It is simple, sweet, and makes perfect sense.

I bawled like I was at a funeral when she died, but not because she died. I cried because of the grief I knew her father would be feeling.  I cried because I thought, "What if I lost my child?"  It is honestly hard to say.  Losing a child is a hard thing to comprehend until it's happened.  I know that you move on, but there is a part of that child that will always be there.

So then it's 20 years later and Joel is alive, but he's estranged from his brother.  He has a lady-friend named Tess who you know he cares about, but they both are careful to keep their distance, and honestly I can't blame them in this post apocalypse.  In 20 years, I can only imagine how many people you trusted and relied on that died or betrayed you.  At that point, you definitely start keeping things in perspective.

Then enter Ellie (yeah, I'm skipping a lot), and Joel is like "Wtf, really?"

You can tell he pretty much could care less about this girl.  She's cargo and he doesn't even refer to her as a person most of the time.  His only concern is about getting the cargo (Ellie) to the fireflies so that he can get his guns.  Fair enough, I guess.

Things change, however, after Tess gets infected with the fungus.  She sacrifices herself to buy them some time, which honestly didn't do much good.  People refer to her as the girlfriend in the refrigerator, but I think that's the wrong trope.  I'm not going to look it up, but I've seen enough movies to know that what Tess did was not the woman sacrificing herself for the greater good, but the infected future zombie wanting to die before he or she (in this case) turned into a zombie.  It just so happened that instead of a man going out in a blaze of glory it was Tess.  Who was a bad ass.

Anyway, moving on.  Ellie and Joel, as they go try and find the fireflies really begin to trust and depend on one another.  You can see Ellie becoming more jaded and disconnected from the world as she kills more.  She forms a "This is us, and everyone is the other" bond with Joel.  They become a team, and save each other more than once.  Ellie fights tooth and nail to save Joel's life, and Joel does some really unethical things to save Ellie (things that I would do, mind you, but still unethical).

And here for the end.  This is the real spoiler that I want to discuss.

You work your ass off with this girl that Joel has practically adopted.  You listen to them talk about him teaching her how to swim and play guitar.  They both see a future.  It is together and beautiful.  You feel at peace for a bit, hopeful... but there is that fear that everything will go wrong.  You're not sure how... and then she almost drowns.  I panicked.  I went after her as if nothing else in the universe mattered only to find out minutes later that some retarded doctors are going to take her brain out.

I mean, what the world is going on here?  Those are some crappy and unethical scientist right there.  They get an immune person, and instead of handing her delicately in order to ensure that they have what they need they just decide they're going to cut her brain out.  How does that make sense?  I was furious, to say the least, and I planned on killing every last one of those bugs.

And I did.

Oh, I killed them all.  Even when I didn't need to.

It took me a while because I suck, but I still made sure every last one of them was dead as dead could get.

When I got into the operating room, I honestly kind of thought I had gone into a cut scene.  Without hesitation I killed the doctor with his own scalpel.  Who knew you could shoot him or burn him to a crisp with a flame thrower?  I don't think I would do it any differently though, because I loved seeing the rage on Joel's face.  That primal anger of a father protecting his child.

It was terrifying and beautiful.

Then the nurse called me a monster, and I wanted to scream at her.  "You're murdering a child without a second thought!  You're the monster."  I didn't kill her right away though.  I tried to get Ellie, but the triangle didn't pop up, so I killed the nurse that accused me of being a monster and when the other one told me to just take her, I did and left.

And then Marlene.  What a crappy ass surrogate mother.  I wanted to kill her to.  I wanted to scream at her when she said it was what Ellie would have wanted like she was already dead.  Did they bother to ask Ellie?  No.  They didn't even bother to explore other options.  They went straight for the brain pan.  As Bill would say, "Fuck'm."

The cinematic that followed was beautiful and cathartic to me. I know others didn't feel that way, but I was relieved when I saw her in the back seat.  I was vindicated when I saw Joel kill Marlene.  I was a bit frustrated with the lie, but at the same time I understand why he did it.

A lot of people call Joel selfish and I say "So what?"  The whole damn world was selfish.  They wouldn't hesitate to kill me, but Joel is a monster for defending himself.  Yeah, Joel wasn't a hero.  He wasn't a great guy, but he was a survivor.   Compassion and charity wouldn't last long in a world like that.  He evolved and adapted to the way things were.  I kind of think about it as a world with its own morality.  It isn't the same as the world we live in now.  It has devolved to "Us vs. Them".  We're back to where we started.  You protect your own.  Maybe you're aggressive.  Maybe you're reactive.  In the end, a lot of death is going to happen as people struggle over resources.  There is no law.  No courts.  The strongest, most organized get what they need to survive and keep it.

That's the world they live in.  It's easy to say that "That is wrong," and that what Joel did was selfish.

But really, as a player of the game that doesn't live in that world I have the luxury of stepping back and looking at it.  The world is in shambles.  They want a cure and are willing to preemptively kill Ellie to get it.  They'd probably do a lot of unethical testing to top it off.  Ellie wouldn't be the only one to die.  She'd just be a next one in the long line of dead humans.

So, assume that they get a cure.  What are they going to do then?  There is no more infrastructure.  There are no facilities to mass produce it assuming they could even do so after they, you know, murdered patient zero without a thought.  They'd have to contend with the military, bandits, all sorts of bad folks.  Civilization doesn't take long to fall, but it certainly takes a while to build.  Not sure where I'm going with this other than, a vaccine probably wouldn't make the vision the fireflies envision happen.  It might help.. if they weren't child murderers anyway.

But all that is hindsight.  You could say it's just me trying to make myself feel better about Joel's decision.

But who cares?  I don't.  Joel did the right thing for the right reason, as far as I'm concerned.  The doctors were doing the wrong thing for supposedly right reasons.  I'd say "Fuck the world" if it was my daughter or someone that I cared about, especially in a world that didn't seem worth saving.

On another note, Druckmann said that no parent disagreed with Joel while none parents were split pretty 50/50.  I told my husband last night that it shows who should be parents and who shouldn't.  If you don't have kids and think that Joel was wrong.  Have kids and then play it again.  I bet it'll change the way you look at things.

Anyway, off to work!

Somebody put me out of my misery.

Smashed fingers

Having a smashed index finger does make one appreciate the work it does to type.  While it isn't broken, it does make writing anything... interesting.  My poor right middle finger is work triple time.  I think I will write on my phone since my thumb does all the swiping.  I will be flirting with first person.  I think it will be easier for the reader to relate to the Character that way.

Lame Nightmares

When people think of nightmares, I think they think of running away from clowns, unseen monsters, and a general sense of fear and foreboding.  I wish to God I had those sort of nightmares more often, since I find them adventurous.  Instead I get nightmares like being late to work.  I don't even view public nudity as a nightmare, usually because I'm the only one that notices I'm naked.  Other than being fat and having some serious big tummy issues, I get on OK with being naked, but being late?

Heaven help me I can't stand being late to work.  Nothing gives me more anxiety.

I think "Oh, God, I'm going to get written up.  My boss is going to be so disappointed in me.  My co-worker is probably starving right now."  Of course, this time I find myself living in this townhouse.  It's totally attached and a corner home.  It's actually nice, like, really nice.  (I had a lot of dreams that I was crazy rich all night, or at least my folks were.)  It was the sort of place you'd drool over in House Hunters or Property Virgins.  But, the night before I had to park a little farther away from the house and then my car was gone.  I was already 40 minutes late for work, and I find that my car has been towed.

Horrible.  I thought I was going to lose it.

Which is kind of odd, since if I'm going to be late for work I just call out.  Rather use sick time than be at work and still get written up.  Yes, I am that sort of person.

I also had a dream that a bunch of stuff fell on my neck that I had to categorize, but that was just Rascal kicking me in the neck.  So not cool.

I decided that I am going to tear up the Mary Sue LitmusTest later.  Should be fun.  And by later I mean I'm going to do some of it today.

Goodbye 240's

Good bye 240's.  I hope to never see you ever again.  You can stay lost, even outside of my memory.  If we ever meet again, it will be too soon.

After I stepped on the scale this morning I felt motivated.  Motivated to what, you might ask?  Walk the dogs.  I took the mongrel and the mongrelette for a walk.  They enjoyed it and Rascal is now pretending that she's tired.  I know she wasn't tired while we were walking.  That dog could walk for hours with a doggy backpack and never slow down.  It's Scoundrel I worry about.  He gets tired so quickly and he wanted to pee and poop on everything.  I'm glad he listens when I tell him no.  The marking everything isn't so bad, but I don't want him leaving pitbull sized turds all over my neighbor's yards.

I am making breakfast right now.  Letting the onions cook as I type.  Then I'm going to throw in half the stuff I have in the house with some spinach and green beans.  It will probably serve as the base for our breakfast for the next few days.  We're limited to whatever we have in the house due to being in the hole after paying all our bills.  Well, at least until Thursday.  I am thinking of putting $125 onto a gift card a week to serve as our weekly food budget.  This would include, of course, drinks (read water) and stuff for work.  I try and bring my lunch everyday, and other than having nothing to bring the other day I have done very well.

I have a vacation coming up, and it's probably going to be filled with cooking and writing.  I've been feeling inspired.  For reasons unknown, every time I read any feminist literature I am driven to write my novel.  I think it's because I am writing my own female power fantasy.  I can already hear the critics now... oh well.  

The Busy Bee

Man, it has been a crazy past few weeks for me.  Dogs, gaming, baby, work, cooking, minecraft, and most importantly: Sleeping.  Other than being dead broke after all our bills fell on us at once (and we get paid throughout the month one week at a time), things are going all right.  Despite not being a 100% paleo type of gal, I have continued to lose weight, albeit much slower than I did the few couple of weeks.

What I am most excited about and what I just can't get over is that my nails have never looked better since I laid off the dairy.  Now, I can't say that I have been 100% strict on the no dairy, but if I can't get the high quality stuff I just go without.  Anyway, since I stopped drinking the conventional stuff at your average grocer, all the white blemishes on my nails have gone away.  I'm not really sure what else to call them.  But, you probably had them a time or two in your life.  Well, I always had one somewhere.  As soon as one started to make its way to being cut off, I would inevitably produce another one.  At one point all of my nails had these strange, white marks.  Now I don't have a single one.  I even flicked them on the edge of something hard to see if they would form and nothing.

So, that's exciting for me.  Apparently I have gotten all that I need from the kale, broccoli, and other veggies I have been eating like an addict.

I think I might change the name of this blog to something a bit more open.  I mean, I was really fired up about changing my lifestyle when it happened, but I'm a busy woman and there are so many other things I love to do.  I write, game, raise a kid, and tend to my perpetual canine toddlers.  I like to spend time with my parents and now my little brother is going to be a dad soon (barring sad events anyway).  While I might not be happy about the circumstances, I am excited to be an aunt again, and I'm excited that my future niece or nephew will be close by for me get to know and to be a cousin to my little angel.  I'm also going to be "adopting" his two future stepsons as my nephews, and that makes me happy as well.  They're good kids and I hope to see more of them.

So, my diet isn't the most important thing about me.  I've lost that fired up, evangelical passion that I had when I first started.  I mean, I still get pretty ticked off when people go on and on about moderation just because they can stuff their faces with anything and everything and still be rail thin, but the reality for me is that I can't.  I mean, I'm not 100% because I live in a food desert, and what I can get is insanely expensive.  It's great that the paleo big names can talk about "Trader Joes", whatever the hell that is (I know it's a grocery store of some sort, but I've never seen one) or Cosco, Costco.. anyway, never seen one and the closest wholefoods is an hour away.  I don't drive to Austin unless I'm visiting my best friend, and I'd rather go to Central Market since the company I work for owns it and I can get a discount if I shop smart.  I substitute things.  My cheat is the lean pork sausage that my company sells.  Yeah, it has some sugar in it, but since I'm not eating twinkies I'm not too concerned right now.  I'm not going to sweat sugar in my bacon either.  I've decided that I just can't so I won't.

I wish I could afford to be obsessed with food quality, but it isn't in the cards.

However, if I finish writing my and it takes off I just might be able to one day.