About five minutes ago, I came to a sudden realization: David has absolutely NO concept of addiction and it's really not his fault. There is no one in his family who suffers from addiction. Yes, his parents used to smoke pot regularly and, on occasion, still do. But the fact that they ONLY smoked pot and that their usage lessened, rather than increased indicates that they were able to truly use it in moderation, not to feed an addiction. Like the "glass of wine after dinner" comparison a lot of folks make. And they do both smoke cigarettes, but stats definitely show that one does not have to have an "addictive personality" to become addicted to nicotine. Cigarettes are the most addictive drug. And, again, neither of them increased usage or spread to other addictions.

Now, his grandparents: On his mom's side, neither his grandma or grandpa have had any addictions, as far as I know. His mom's step-dad was an alcoholic and a gambler. Okay, definitely an addict. However, he is not genetically link to this man at all, and he never lived with him, which would have exposed him to the reality of addiction. All he has are stories from his mom and grandma. His dad's parents were also not addicts, as far as I know. His dad's mom did have a strong dependency on prescription drugs, later in life. This is kind of gray. Prescription drugs, like cigarettes, can snag people who otherwise would never have a problem with addiction. Also, this was so late in her life that not only did David never live with her, his father wasn't even living with her. Therefore, his father did not grow up with an addict in the home.

Ok, so why does any of this matter? I DID grow up with addicts. I do have an "addictive personality." Both my parents were heroin addicts and alcoholics. Not in the way past, either. Growing up, I watched the effects of drug abuse and addiction in my home. My mother would lay on the couch some mornings, unable to move. My mom and I would have to ride the BART to deliver my dad his "lunch" to his work in SF. My mom would hang out in the laundry room of our apartment building for hours drinking, so she was nice and drunk by dinner time when Dad got home. We also were pot dealers, so we had a lovely assortment of associates coming through the house. (Though, to be fair, Mom realized how icky these people were and did her best to keep them away from us. They never hung out at the house getting high. They had to get their bag and go.)

The point is: whether it's genetic or from how I was raised, I am VERY susceptible to physical addiction. Not just strong cravings or distraction, or yearnings, but physical withdrawal symptoms resulting from a specific chemical substance. My substance of choice just happens to be sugar. This sounds absolutely ridiculous to most people. How could I possibly compare a sugar craving to a heroin withdrawal?? Well, besides comparing my own physical symptoms to my parents' description of theirs, there's a growing body of research indicating that this is precisely the  case!!

Yay! I'm vindicated! Oh, wait... I'm still STUCK with this bullshit. And my husband DOES not, possibly CAN NOT understand why if he brings cookie dough in the house and leaves it for 4 weeks in the fridge, I might go crazy one day and eat it all while he's at work. I'm actually at a point where I can (most of the time) pass on a dessert, if I choose to. But -damnit! - don't work against me! Don't leave it there, so it's the only thing I can think of. Eat it when you get it, or don't get it! Is that soooooo hard? It's really not me just being inconsiderate! Gah!

Ok, this went from a well structured piece into a rambling rant....

Vegan Month Reflections


1. WHY did you do it??

Hmm... Well, I have actually been thinking about it for different reasons for years. I'm not an animal lover -pets are gross- but I was pretty horrified the first time (and second and third and so on) I saw images of animals being so badly mistreated for cheap meat and dairy. Also, around that same time, I was taking an environmental class and we discussed how much damage raising meat does from things like methane polution, clearing land for grazing, and growing all this extra grain just to feed them, to damage to immediate areas like water pollution. Why should I contribute to poisoning some small, rural community somewhere because I like burgers?

*** Yes, I'm VERY AWARE that there are places you can go where cows and chicken and corn and flowers are grown happily together under the protection of farm fairies, until the day they're butchered. You can seriously stop talking about it. But for the MAJOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORITY of people, that's NOT how our food is raised! And if we all decided to suddenly switch, these magical farms would not be able to produce at the rate necessary to meet the current demand. ***

Anyhoo, so recently I got back into reading eco-living books again and the issue of vegetarianism/veganism came up again.

2. Why not just vegetarian?
Because I didn't want to just eat Mac and Cheese for a month.

3. Huh?

4. Did you notice any health differences?
Not at first. After a while I noticed that I really didn't have a lot of the stomache issues I ALWAYS have. No constant nausea or discomfort. My bathroom experiences were more pleasant.

5. Did you hair shine, eyes sparkle, etc.?
Nope. I think that comes with the RAW diet. I dunno. I'm still unsparkley.

6. Did you lose weight?
I lost about 5 pounds in the near month that I was doing it, with no exercise. But most of that was in the beginning when I was eating a lot of veggies and nuts. Towards the end I was eating a lot of bread and pasta, so a lot of the good stuff stopped.

7. 30 days wasn't too long. It was me, not the food that had the problem.

8. Why'd you stop early?
I was getting tired of washing the blender and the food processor. I like convenience foods. That's why I'm fat to begin with. There ARE convenient vegan foods, but I was specifically avoiding them. Basically, if I had a personal chef and dishwasher, I could do it indefinitely.


Ok, so I covered most of my experience with those. I've noticed stomache pains, discomfort, acid reflux -all the good stuff- has come back. Yay.

I haven't decided exactly what I want to do next. Do I want to give up meat? Not if I'm just going to make spaghetti every night.

Home Activities

What have I been doing at home? Nuffin. Yeah, nuffin. Basically trying to sleep as much as I can, waiting for the day to be over, so I can either fart around on the internet/ with games/ with tv/ reading (yeah, I do that, believe it or not) or go to bed and sleep some more.

Here's basically what I'd LIKE to be doing:
WORKING (but since that's not what's happening right now)

-Looking for work
-Cleaning the house
-Enriching Mel with all kinds of fun, educational activities

But every time I start one, I feel bad for neglecting the others. Then  I end up freezing and end up not really doing anything really well.


I've always gotten headaches, but they seem to be getting worse. Brain-crushers. Twice in NH I ended up crying from the pain. I probably just have a tumor or something.

I'm such a fatalist. Or is it defeatist? What's the difference? Whatever, my glass is half empty and probably has a whole in the bottom.

Preschool at home

Ok, so since David and I are both not working, we took Mel out of the 3-day preschool/childcare. So, I figgered I should do some constructive stuff at home. A few months ago I decided to do afternoon/evening activities with her, but it kind of fell off. I had it set up so every day was a new subject. So I just revived that, changed it to morning and added weekly subjects. This was the first week.

Bird Week

Monday - Words/literacy: Read "Bird Watching" and a few other books we got from the library. Also practiced writing some CVC words (like "bus").

Tuesday - Art: Bird masks using paper plates, felt (no, not the "real stuff") and feathers. Very open ended. Lots o' fun. Our art won't always be so "projecty" though.

Wednesday - Music: Played "Alouette" on the keyboard, then just played with the keyboard. Will talk more about this.

Thursday - Science: Made bird-feeders out of toilet paper rolls, peanut butter and birdseed. Went out early Friday morning to bird watch/listen. We were hoping we could see some bird eat from our feeders. No luck. Lots of birds to observe, but I think the feeders are too low.

Friday - Math: Sorting birds into different group, then counting and writing the numbers. Will talk more about this, too.

Ok, so the music. I've gone about this ALL wrong! I've been finding specific songs, turning them into number notes and trying to teach her to follow the numbers on the page. Might be cool for a math project, but 1) I don't think it's age appropriate, 2) it really doesn't teach about music and 3) Mel is sooo not into it. She just want to press all the neat sound effects on the keyboard. I really wish I could disable all that crap and just have a piano!

Ok, so I need to go back to the roots of learning music. I mean, I'm not a music person, so this is pretty hard for me. But... I need to focus on just the sounds, louder, softer, melodies, that kind of thing. I did do a neat activity a few months ago. I lined up empty glass bottles, filled them up with different levels of water and we just experimented with them. We blew on them, tapped them with different things and talked about how the sounds got higher or lower, louder or softer. That's the kind of thing I need to do more of.

Now, the math project. Originally, I was going to cut out 10 bird pictures (each of a distinct bird) and have her sort them into different categories. (Sorting is an early math skill.) So, I would say, "which ones fly and which don't" and she would put penguin, etc. on one side of the table and owl, etc. on the other. Then, she'd resort them a different way. Ok, well, I had to "evolve it" into something else! Phooey. I printed and cut out three sets of the ten birds and three sheets, each with different category options. They were "flying/ no flying," "hunters/ not hunters" and "webbed feet/ claw feet" using pictures on the top of either side. She had to sort them, then glue the birds down. Last, count each side, write the number of each and count up the total and write that (always 10). I added that last part because she's gotten really good at adding numbers.

Yeah, but CLEARLY, there are just too many steps. Again, cool activity for an OLDER child. Not that she couldn't do it, she could do each step, but it just got tedious. She got tired of me giving her all these instructions. (I was tired of it, too.) She only did two and the second one was pretty painful. She's funny. Even if she's bored with something, she'll say she still wants to do it and just keep fooling around. So I ended up doing the actual gluing on the second one. She just told me where to put them and counted at the end.

The lesson: KISS. I should have just done my original sorting idea. She would just have one instruction and would have had a lot of fun. Oh, well.

I'm looking at what we've done and seeing a lot of "preschool project" stuff. I need to avoid doing the shit I hated when I worked in a preschool!


Scratch That...

So I wrote a long post about parenting.

Bump that.

We're doing a great job. Melanie is wonderful. She's sweet, considerate, a great listener (I don't mean she obeys, I mean she listens, like if another kid is telling a story), creative, she's frickin' awesome. David and I both have so much fun with her, and listen to her and just enjoy her company.

That's enough!

It's okay if she cries sometimes, it's okay if we give her time out, it even okay if she gets a spanking occasionally. She knows she's loved, listened to and safe.

Go, us!