Taking Charge

August 8, 2011 at 4:04 am (Healthcare)
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Sometimes life is a lot like my unexpected potato.

As my friends and family all know, I have struggled with my health since childhood. It wasn’t so much that I was a sickly child; I seem to remember being pretty active when I was very young. But I remember having bad allergies, and my weight gain started very early. I was very prone to respiratory infections, which continued into my adult life. And in high school I was diagnosed with depression, which I have been fighting ever since. These things have left me exhausted, but without any other obvious problems.

I decided to do something about my weight last year, and had a gastric bypass surgery in late December. To date I have lost about 115 pounds, which is a ridiculously large number. I had expected that as the weight came off, I would start to regain my energy. Instead I have felt even worse as the months have gone by.

I decided to look for a new doctor in the hopes that she would have new insights into my problems. I wanted someone to look at ALL of my problems. Not the surgeon to look at my stomach, and the psychiatrist to take care of my depression medication, the rheumatologist to look at my fibromyalgia and the orthopedist to look at the pain in my hip.

I have decided on a doctor that combines Eastern and Western medication. She recommended a book to me call The Mood Cure, and it has completely changed the way that I am looking at health care.

From now on doctors are not going to run my medical care. I am. I will decide which tests I need. I will decide which medicines I need.

With all of the information that I have at my fingertips, and all of the insight I have into my own body and mind, there is no reason for me to sit meekly and accept the diagnosis of someone who has looked at me for 5 minutes and glanced at a blood test. I can read that blood test.

So I am embarking on a journey to heal myself. I am already seeing strong changes after just a week on the program I am building for myself. And I am going to do my best to chart all of my recovery here, because I think that a lot of people out there can help themselves, too.

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Earwigs!

May 6, 2010 at 8:45 pm (Gardening)
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My garden is now planted and merrily growing, but I have run into a new problem: Earwigs.

While I was on vacation, I left my brother and mother in charge of the garden. They sent me reports that earwigs were eating the garden, so I immediately went to the extensive library of gardening books I have collected for answers. Every book I have says that earwigs are beneficial insects, and that I should leave them alone, as they will kill slugs and clean up debris.

Needless to say, I was confused. I mean, my mom has been gardening her entire life. It seemed unlikely that she was wrong, but all of my books contradicted her. So, on my return, I went hunting. Bradley and I snuck out in the dark with flashlights.

And there they were.

Hundreds of hungry earwigs munching all of my plants. The squash is completely gone; the spinach is soon to follow. There were holes everywhere.

I turned to my only true friend: the Internet.

There doesn’t appear to be an agreed upon solution for organic earwig control. I will be laying my first two traps tonight. The first is just rolling up moist newspaper and then dumping them in oil the next morning. The second is the beer trap. bury a dish up to the rim then fill it with beer. Apparently the earwigs enjoy a good kegger.

I will report of the success of each tomorrow.

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Ready for Planting!

April 17, 2010 at 1:15 am (Gardening)

The garden is finally ready to be planted!

It took about six weeks, but the garden has finally gone from this:

to this:

Tomorrow, Planting!

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Death of a Seedling

April 15, 2010 at 6:44 am (Eco-Friendly, Gardening)
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Behold my beautiful soil blocks. I lovingly crafted two trays of these little dirt blocks about six weeks ago. In them, I planted tomatoes, squash, peppers, artichokes, and a plethora of other wonderful vegetable seeds.

And then the rain came.

Now, I am not saying that things were growing especially well before that. I might have bought the wrong potting mix, so that the blocks kinda fell apart when you watered them. And maybe I didn’t put them in enough sun, so all of the plants got really leggy (meaning there was way to high a stem to leaf ratio). But they were at least still alive…until I maybe/possibly left them directly under the eaves in a downpour.

That was when they all drowned.

So today I went on a plant-shopping adventure to replace all of the seedlings I killed. I hopped on my phone, googled nurseries in the area, and then I headed out.

The first lesson I learned was to call the businesses that are listed on Google before you drive off to find them. Otherwise you will drive all over town and not find a single nursery (out of 3), after which you will throw your hands up in the air and end up at KMart.

The second (and much more uplifting) thing that I learned was about Bonnie Plants.

I was feeling really guilty about going out to buy plant starts because I assumed that they were being shipped into Hemet from somewhere halfway across the country. I’ve seen the Bonnie brand at every major retailer I’ve been to this season, so I knew it was a big corporation. What I didn’t know is that they hire local farmers to grow and distribute their plants.

I was at Lowe’s looking over their seedling selection while the Bonnie truck was delivering the day’s shipment. I struck up a conversation, and discovered that the plants had been grown less than five miles away. Not only does that mean that they fall into the locally grown produce category (I am trying to go locavore), it also means that the plants are already adapted to the local climate, so they will suffer less of a transplant shock.

How awesome is that?

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Gardening by Accident

April 11, 2010 at 2:04 am (Gardening)
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Last October, I started a large compost pile at my mother-in-law’s house. It grew to a respectable size over about four months. In February, we had a lot of rain here in Southern California, so I put off turning the pile until it dried out a bit.

Today, my husband Casey and I went out to do some spring gardening chores, including turning the compost pile and starting a new one.

Anyone who has made a compost pile knows that this is not easy work. The ties that I used to hook the chicken wire together had rusted to bits, and for some unknown reason I had brilliantly turned the seam to face the fence. Between those two things it took us 20 minutes just to get the chicken wire down.

The Seed Potato

After we succeeded in getting the wire down and making a new bin, Casey graciously offered to turn the pile for me. I delightedly accepted and went inside to rinse off the four carrots that survived the horrible choices I made putting in the fall garden.

About a minute later, Casey dashed up to the house holding something in his hand. It was a potato. Somehow all of the rain and cool weather had caused a potato plant to sprout on the very top of the compost pile.

It wasn’t a big potato, but it represented a turning point in my gardening career. Nature wants things to grow. I just have to learn to get out of the way.

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